it’s all over.

You have completed your journey. Wow! Who knew that all along the thing that drove you forward was the rescue of your forgotten long-lost sister from the clutches of your forgotten demented brother? You were pretty sure that your motivation was internal, that annoying ongoing restlessness … but of course restlessness itself has a cause, an origin story all its own.

It’s almost little bit of a bummer, the ending. The whole journey was pretty interesting to this point but maybe not so much the dramatic finale, right? How just moments ago you bumrushed the enormous mansion and found your age-old nemesis in an armchair, reading calmly, as if the world all around him mattered hardly a whit. Confronting him as you never could in all your youthful years which led to his entirely predictable response: standing tiredly from the chair, removing his glasses, rubbing his nose in that snotty way, then quietly accusing you of your childish habit of always constructing ornate fantasies, again and again and again throughout your entire life, how still even at this age you haven’t grown up, and how no one ever calls you this behavior but him. Haven’t you read Leslie Fiedler? Can’t you take things more seriously? Of course not, he sighs, now wiping his classes with the tail of his shirt. Of course, he says, you’ll just keep on letting your awkward memories and impulses bubble out of you in confusing ways, you can’t help yourself, you always were and always will be a childish, defensive, reactionary geek.

Yet even as he went on, you realized that he was–as ever–trying to distract you. You could hear, deeper in the house, your sister’s cries for help. Coming from a locked room. Then, what?—a gun that appeared from nowhere, or was it a knife slipped into your hand?, and your brother falling over, the final redness leaking out from the evening. Only then did it finally return to his eyes, the cold fury you remember dancing forever—now slowly draining away—his voice growing quieter—breaths shallower—and you, good brother, comforting him as he drained away, and away, away.

The minutes and days that followed were even dreamier, the happy reunion with your loving sister, your shared return across the countryside, across the seas, by car, by ship, by plane, to your parents’ home—they were still very much alive, you’d simply misremembered, so much confusion happens when you conk your head on a strange book. The doctors agreed: concussion, a good time for rest and rehab.

Everyone was so very kind to you. They sat you in the old family estate, over in the quiet study, turned on the TV. Each night your mother brought you chicken soup. Oh, Mom, the absolute best. Your father patted you on the head and said what a good boy you were, what a good boy you had always been, and when you asked him if you’d done the right thing, he assured you that yes, of course, what other choice did you have?

Some days they leave you be, your family. Let you alone in this great big house. There’s something sad about this, the lonesomeness. But also reassuring: that you can in fact be alone. It’s something you’d forgotten, a way to be you’d lost along the way. Now you sit in bed, wrapped in blankets. The windows are covered by curtains; pull the curtains. Look out on the glorious garden. Let the sun shine in. You’ve done good. Haven’t you? Yes. Yes? Yes. You have. And you are. Home. Yes. In the bosom of your family. They’ll be back soon from town—they promised.

For now, take a book off the shelf. Nice way, after all, to pass the time.