Subj: Remember Chapter Six
Date: 2/3/00 12:37:34 PM Central Standard Time
From: Melissa
Remember
Chapter Six
Daphne still hadn’t returned when evening came. Quentin sat starring at the system, when he could no longer stand it he turned it back on, but Daphne still wasn’t there. Finally the lack of sleep caught up with him, and he could fight it no longer, he lay on his cot and fell fast asleep.
He dreamt of Maggie, they were in the lab. Quentin suddenly realized that he was inside the hologram. Maggie was watching him and crying, he could do nothing for her. Then she turned him off.
When Quentin woke up the next morning he found that Daphne was back, she was sitting on a stool that he had never made for her.
“Daphne,” he said relieved, “I’m glad your back.”
“I’m sorry I was gone so long.”
“Are you okay?”
Daphne nodded. “That was a long time ago, he was only a country doctor and didn’t have the things they would have at a hospital. Charles blamed himself, he said it was his fault because we were in the country.”
“There was no why he could have known,” Quentin said looking at her, she was now forty-five or so, but she was still as beautiful as she had been.
‘He thought of the cause and effect, if we weren’t in the country we would have been able to get to the hospital,” she was silent for a few minutes, “It was a girl, a beautiful little girl.”
“I am so sorry,” Quentin said.
“Oh Quentin, I wanted it so badly. I wanted the chance to love a person the way I hadn’t been.”
Quentin stopped listening, he had heard someone else’s voice saying those same words.
“What is it Quentin?” Daphne asked.
“Maggie. . . my wife’s mother died when she was little, after that her father began to drink heavily. I never understood what she meant until now.”
*******
Daphne spoke of the changes in Robert, but she talked less about herself. They talked about books and’ movies they liked. Once when Quentin asked if they tried to have another baby Daphne quickly changed the subject, and Quentin didn’t press it any further.
By the end of the day Daphne’s hair was practically gray. They were playing chess, he was trying to get her to talk more about her later years with Charles. But she didn’t want to talk about herself anymore. They continued to play, then she asked him, “Have you talked with Maggie lately?” Quentin said nothing. “Do you want to lose her,” she asked.
Quentin looked up angrily from the chess board, “Look don’t talk to me about losing things. Once your happy everything goes wrong, and everything gets taken away.”
“So if you don’t know happiness, you don’t know what it feels like to lose it?”
To be continued. . .