History Moves in Circles

History Moves in Circles

Prologue

My name is Brian Anderson, and once, emphasis on the once, my life was normal.

My life when I was growing up was literally picture perfect, something out of a dream almost. I lived in a small town with my parents, a brother and two sisters, and was one of the stars of our High School’s baseball team. I played basketball, too, but spent more time warming the bench than actually out on the floor. Not that I minded; baseball was much more my style. I studied enough to get good grades, and attended my senior prom with one of the prettiest girls in the school. I didn’t have a worry on my mind, other than the next game or test. Nothing truly earth shattering.

I wish I could say the same for my life now.

After High School, I attended one of the big state Universities, and went to law school, studying enough to graduate close to the top of my class. I was finally going to get to go somewhere in the world; I was fresh out of college with a degree in law, I’d passed the bar, and the doors of opportunity were endless. Signing on with a firm in Boston, I thought I had it made, the money was flowing in, and I could pretty much do whatever I wanted. I was successful, I had money and some power, what more could a man want?

I wanted a family to call my own.

At first I scorned the married men I worked with. Their freedom was a joke, and most of their money was channeled into their big houses, apartments, and savings for college education. I never wanted that. But then I went home to visit for a few weeks and remembered what I’d been missing. The joy of living with other people who loved you and watching children grow into fine adults was contagious. By the time my brother had finally succumbed to wedded bliss, I was fairly sure that was what I wanted, too. After seeing how happy my siblings were, and my parents, even after almost 40 years, my lone wolf lifestyle wasn’t what I wanted because it couldn’t fulfill me anymore.

So I plunged back into the world of dating, actually on the market for a serious relationship. Instead of looking at prospects for a few month fling, I wanted a woman I could spend the rest of my life with, someone I could love the way my father loved my mother. How hard could it be? After what seemed like an eternity of looking, I came to the conclusion that there would never be a girl out there for me.

Then I met Harmony.

It was completely by chance. I had been wandering around Salem Street for a long lunch break, watching the tourists, when, a young woman engrossed in some tourist’s pamphlet, walked right into me, making me spill scalding coffee all over my suit. I opened my mouth for a rude comment when I got my first good look at her, and was promptly swallowed by the warmest pair of chocolate eyes I had ever seen. I was immediately attracted to her, which only increased when she offered, in a very flustered English accent, to pay for any damage she’d inflicted to my suit. Not very many people in a big city are that considerate; most of them have their own things to do. When I turned her down, she insisted on letting her at least replace my coffee. While we waited in line at the coffee shop, I offered to buy her lunch at a little restaurant nearby and started to learn about the woman who was to be my life’s true love.

Over the cheeseburgers and chili, she’d delighted me with tales from Harvard, which she attended, as well as a mini-disaster she’d caused at a party in France with her rusty French. She’d also listened attentively as I told her about some of my own disaster stories, and I found myself elaborating and entertaining just to keep the laughter shining in her eyes. In our first meeting, she absolutely captivated me; everything was so new to her; she was relatively new to Boston (she was from England, after all) and all of the sights and history that I thought commonplace she found interesting. She brought a bit of fresh air into my everyday life, with her endless questions and bright smiles.

I walked away from that impromptu date with her phone number, and a promise to get together again soon so I could show her all of the sights. Little did I know how many times we would meet in the near future, and how fast I would fall under her spell.

Harmony was the most amazing woman I’d ever met. She was smart, had a wry sense of humor, and, much to my surprise, had a strong attachment to her motorcycle. Her cat took a while to get used to, but the English beauty had soon wormed her way into my heart forever. I don’t regret that, but I wished I’d been a bit more observant back then. It might have saved us all heartbreak in the end.

Within a few months I had taken her home to meet my parents, who loved her as much as I did, and were absolutely delighted when we announced our engagement a few weeks later. My Harmony and I were married thirteen months to the day after we’d met, in a church with ornately carved wooden doors. Even then, it should have seemed wrong. Hardly any of Harmony’s friends or family were there; just her parents and four others who didn’t stay very long. I wish I had been able to remember them; it would have saved me quite a few arguments with my wife much later if I had any sort of remote clue about them.

But I had been too involved in Harmony that day to remember the black-haired man with the funny scar on his face, and the redheaded woman who had clung to his side during the whole ceremony. Harmony was my whole world, I lived to make her happy, and she completed my life like no other has ever been able to. Soon enough, we’d moved to a little house in a nice neighborhood, close to my work and her school. For a few short months, things were perfect.

Then things began to get a little odd. Harmony kept working much longer hours; I knew she hadn’t increased her class-load at all, but she kept disappearing for longer and longer times. Some days I would hear her come in after two in the morning and crawl into bed, and still rise at six the next morning to prepare for school. She kept telling me she needed more study time, but she was, without a doubt, the smartest woman I knew. She took a heavy course load, and managed to get top grades in everything, without working excessively late hours.

About a year after we’d been married came the morning I lost my Harmony. I’d gone downstairs for breakfast to find her sobbing in the kitchen, a very large owl perched on one of the kitchen chairs while Crookshanks continuously wound through her feet, purring as loudly as he could. Back then I didn’t know what owls were for, nor how smart that orange devil of hers really was, but I didn’t really think about how oddly they were acting, or that it was wrong to have an owl in my kitchen.

When I pleaded with her to tell me what had upset her so, she refused, clutching the yellowed paper she held in her hands tighter to her chest. Her eyes were what disturbed me the most, because when she finally stopped crying, they were hard with determination, and, more importantly, a glimmer of fear lurked in them. I had never seen Harmony afraid before, and to see her so then disturbed me.

Reluctantly, I went to work, promising myself to call and check on her a few times. But the first time I called there wasn’t an answer, and I panicked. I took the afternoon off and rushed home at lunch to find our house empty—my lovely Harmony was gone. She hadn’t taken her clothes, but her voluminous shoulderbag was missing, and her motorcycle was gone from the garage. It would take me a few days to find out that Crookshanks was gone as well, not that I would ever see him again.

I found a note tucked underneath my pillow that night, written in Harmony’s clear handwriting.

My love,

I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you anything this morning, but I was too upset. One of my old Professors, also one of my mentors, died a few days ago, and I’d just gotten the message. The Professor didn’t have any family left, and he asked that when he died, I would help take care of what he left behind. There have been a few complications, and I don’t know how long it will take me to get this entire mess sorted out. I’ll be in a range where my cell-phone won’t work, but I’ll try to write to you as often as I can, and call if I can get to a phone.

All my love,

H. G. Anderson

Aside from that note, she had disappeared without a trace, another vital clue I should have noticed. I called her friends, her professors at the college, and even her parents, but nobody knew exactly where she was. She had withdrawn from school, and her parents told me that she was somewhere in Scotland, but they didn’t know the exact location. If it hadn’t been for them, I would have thought that Harmony had dropped off the face of the earth. Harmony actually had disappeared, but I wouldn’t discover that for five more years. Once a month, I would get a long vague letter from her written on curiously thick paper, which was never postmarked. But it was her handwriting, which assured me that she was still alive. She never did call home.

For a year I lived that way, in purgatory without Harmony. I couldn’t claim abandonment; she was keeping in touch with me. I even went to her parent’s house over Christmas for a planned meeting, but she called with an with a rapid explanation that she had been in France, trying to track someone down, and that she had to be back in Scotland in the morning. I never even got the chance to speak to her; her father was the one who answered the phone.

I went to work almost every day, and came home every night just long enough to see if there had been any message from her. I was disappointed all of those nights too, excepting my scheduled letters. I was miserable, but I survived. People eventually began to ask where she was, and I made up all manner of lies to tell them. She was in France, visiting a friend, studying overseas; she’d taken a job for a year, anything plausible that popped into my head. But how could it be plausible if I didn’t know what she was doing? Even if I had known, I probably still would have felt the same, because the truth wouldn’t have seemed possible at the time. It still doesn’t, but I’ve come to realize that there are things about her I could never understand.

I’d made up my mind that when she came back, the first thing I was going to do was hear an explanation. I loved her too much to divorce her, but the thought had crossed my mind on more than one occasion. Eventually I gave up wondering where she was, and just lived, hoping in the bottom of my heart that she would come home to me.

One day, after a particularly exhausting business trip, I was driving home when I realized something felt different. Something different about my house, that wasn’t just the shadows cast over it by the trees and the gloomy and rainy day. When I tried to put my car in the garage, I realized what it was. A silver and blue motorcycle sat in the garage, looking much more battered than it had been the last time I’d seen it.

Harmony had finally come home.