The Mnemosyne Gamble- Chapter Six: A Day Well Spent in Full

They walked until nightfall, stopping only when the road ahead became too dark to safely navigate. Rhynar was fully aware that they could have reached their destination on time had Tully not been dragging her feet due to being tired from the previous night's shenanigans. They made camp for the night. This time safety, as it was away from the busy border station. However, their rest was brief; Rhynar made sure they started again early the next morning, reaching Tully's family home not long after sunrise. She decided another day would be too much for her patience to endure.

During the last leg of their trek, a truck drove by, and Tully scoffed, "Oh, by the way, never hitchhike out here. Some people are nuts!" Rhynar silently agreed, but opted to keep her mistake of getting a ride from the old couple to herself. She had learned her lesson; Tully didn't need a play-by-play recap. Not that she could have gotten in a word edgewise.

Tully talked nearly the entire way there. She told Rhynar about her family, pointing out landmarks as they approached the property and explaining who lived where. Her parents had the main house, but grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and their children occupied homes scattered throughout the surrounding land. Some were close enough to see from one another's porches. Others were so distant that Tully could only gesture vaguely toward the horizon.

The property had been in the family for generations and seemed to extend farther than Rhynar could see. For the first time, Rhynar understood why Tully had been so horrified by the idea of asking her mother to sign it over. It wasn't simply land. It was the physical history of her family. Generations had been born there, built homes there, and divided pieces among themselves without ever truly dividing the property itself.

By that afternoon, Rhynar found herself sitting with Tully's parents and an assortment of relatives who had gradually joined the conversation. "So, both of you have to sign," Rhynar explained to Tully's mother and father. "You're the registered property owners. Central North requires your authorization before they'll release Tully from her obligations."

This caused exactly the reaction Tully had predicted. Everyone began talking at once.

Rhynar waited for the objections to die down before continuing. "You're not actually giving them anything." Tully's mother looked unconvinced. "The contract will be marked completed and filed with thousands of others," Rhynar explained. "That's it. No one from Central North is coming here to claim your property."

"How do you know that?" one of Tully's uncles asked. Rhynar confidently stated, "Because they can't." That quieted them. Rhynar continued, "Corporate bylaws require reliable communication with any employee sent into the field. The unincorporated territories don't maintain communication systems that meet corporate standards. So Central North can't legally send anyone here to enforce the contract."

Tully's father, Chuck, frowned. "Then why have us sign it?" Rhynar was relieved he asked that and not how she was out there outside of corporate protocols. She answered, "Because Tully can't be released without it." He hardly let her finish before he started again, questioning, "And they can't collect it?" Rhynar did her best to smile as she addressed him reassuringly. "Not without coming here."Tully's mother, Joan, looked worried and finished her thought out loud. "But they can't come here." Rhynar, placing the contract in front of her, responded, "Correct."

There was a long silence. Tully smiled. "See?" Joan gave her a look that immediately erased the smile. It was, Rhynar supposed, a corporate catch-22. The contract was perfectly enforceable in theory and functionally useless in practice. Central North could claim the property, but its own regulations prevented anyone from entering the territory to claim it. Eventually, the document would disappear into a sea of completed contracts, unlikely to ever be examined again.

The family finally agreed, though apparently their signatures came with conditions of their own. "If you're so good with corporate equipment," one of Tully's uncles, Duke, said, "you can help us with something." Rhynar wasn't sure what part of her explanation had suggested any particular aptitude with machinery, but she was curious enough about rural life to agree. After all, she'd once spent a month performing basic maintenance on a facility garbage compactor as punishment for insulting her boss in front of his boss. Surely some of what she'd learned during that miserable month could be applied to whatever Duke was about to drag her into.

They took her to a storage building near the main house, where several of Tully's uncles and cousins were already working on a problem with the foundation. The structure needed to be lifted so they could make repairs beneath it. Around the building, they had positioned enormous hydraulic lifts that reminded Rhynar of car jacks, if car jacks had been designed for something the size of a barn.

Rhynar looked from the machinery to the men maneuvering the lifts into position.

"What exactly am I doing?" One of Tully's cousins looked her up and down. "You're not tall enough." Rhynar stared at him. "To help us hold up the beams," he clarified. That did not improve her expression. Fortunately, Tully's oldest uncle, Keith, rescued her dignity by waving her toward the hydraulic combine that powered the lifts. He was apparently the only person in the family who knew how to operate it, which meant everyone else was needed around the building while someone stayed behind to control the machinery.

After a brief lesson, Rhynar took her position at the controls. She had imagined farm life involving crops, animals, and perhaps an unreasonable amount of dirt. She had not expected her first afternoon to involve helping an entire building rise off the ground. By the time the storage building was finished, Rhynar was ready to return to the city. More importantly, she knew how to get there. She had learned the roads.

This pleased her far more than it probably should have. For the first time since entering the unincorporated territory, she didn't need Tully to point her in the right direction or a stranger to tell her which road eventually connected to another. She knew the way back to the border station herself. Rhynar was becoming surprisingly competent at being somewhere she technically wasn't supposed to be. In truth, Tully's family not meeting them at the border station to sign the documents meant they were in breach of the terms. However, Rhynar's accompanying Tully to her family's property fell into a grey area of being there in an official and unofficial capacity, something Gent knew well enough to chance.

Rhynar enjoyed the walk back to the border station. She was relieved, too, that neither Tully nor her family had put up more of a fight about the property contract. She had expected another round of objections before she left, but the signatures were done, Tully was home, and Rhynar could return to Central North with everything she needed.

For long stretches of the road, she didn't see another person. Rhynar had never been anywhere so empty. Every so often, a vehicle passed her, kicking dust along the road before disappearing into the distance. Occasionally, she spotted a house far beyond the roadside, standing alone among fields and trees. Otherwise, there was only Rhynar. She loved it.

Without the constant hum of the city, she could hear animals moving in the brush and birds calling from places she couldn't see. The plants grew wherever they pleased. Trees leaned at strange angles. Wildflowers appeared without any discernible pattern. Nothing had been planted by a city attendant following the specifications of a planning project. No plaques explained who designed it or which department maintained it. It was simply there.

Rhynar decided it was better that way. She resolved to come back to the countryside when she had the opportunity. Not necessarily this far out, and preferably somewhere her fob still worked, but somewhere quiet. Somewhere she could breathe fresh air and spend an entire afternoon without anyone needing anything from her.

She nearly made it back to the border station before nightfall. Nearly. By the time she arrived, the final train had already departed, and the gates had just been closed for the night. Rhynar stared through the fence at the station on the other side. Of course.

At least this time she was stranded somewhere safe. No mountains to cross, no lagoon to dive into, and no questionable strangers offering directions. She walked to the edge of the fence line, found a reasonably comfortable patch of ground, curled up against her pack, and decided to sleep until dawn.

When the gates reopened the next morning, her fob connected to the corporate database almost immediately. Rhynar looked at it with disproportionate affection. She passed through the checkpoint without incident and joined the line for the train back to the city. Then she stopped.

There was no particular reason she had to return immediately. For the first time in weeks, no one was waiting for her. No one knew precisely where she was supposed to be. Central North believed she was completing an assignment, and as far as Rhynar was concerned, she had completed it exceptionally well.

The morning air was cold enough that she found herself thinking about the warmer clothes packed away in her mother's garage. That settled it. Rather than board the train back to the city, Rhynar changed routes and went to visit her mother, Marguerite.

She told herself the detour was practical. The weather was getting colder, and it made little sense to buy an entirely new collection of winter clothes when her favorite things were sitting in boxes at her mother's home. She didn't know when she'd have another opportunity to retrieve them. But she missed her mother, too.

She wanted to sit with her for a while and tell her what had happened. It was only on the journey there, with nothing immediate left to solve, that Rhynar began to appreciate how absurd her excursion into the unincorporated territory had actually been.

She had walked into a place where her fob didn't work, followed roads she didn't know, climbed through unfamiliar country, and dove into a secluded lagoon during one of the most peaceful mornings of her life after one of the most stressful nights of her life. All to end up at a park that time itself had left alone. She had done more in a week than some had done in their entire life.

As the train rolled along. Rhynar had time to process the many new events she had experienced. She was pleased she'd done every bit of it. She was especially glad she'd gone to the lagoon. Before leaving, Rhynar had managed to pocket a handful of sand from the bottom. At the time, she hadn't known why she'd wanted it. She had simply liked the idea of taking something tangible with her. In hindsight, however, she had to admit the trip could have gone considerably worse if Tully hadn't been there. That thought inevitably led her to Rollo. She hadn't given him a proper goodbye. Rhynar opened her fob and searched for him. Nothing.

She tried the social sites first, then widened the search. Rollo had always maintained enough of a public presence that finding him had never required much effort. Now there was almost nothing current at all. It was as though he'd simply stepped off the global stage. Rhynar searched for the marketing campaign he'd told her about before leaving. Nothing there, either. She found that worrisome. By the time she reached her mother's house, however, there were warmer things to put on, stories to tell, and enough familiar comforts to temporarily push the question of Rollo aside.

Marguerite was particularly taken with the sand Rhynar had brought back from the lagoon.

Rather than leave it forgotten in the bottom of Rhynar's pack, the two of them had a small portion of it sealed into matching charms for their fobs. The rest Marguerite poured into a glass vase and placed on her bookshelf. It fit the space well, especially after Marguerite wrapped a fanciful ribbon around the neck of the vase to cover the empty space. To each, it meant far more than just sand in glass. Rhynar liked seeing it there. Proof, perhaps, that she'd actually gone somewhere beyond the carefully planned world she'd always known—and returned with a little piece of it.

Rhynar dropped in on her mother without warning. Marguerite was delighted to see her, though Rhynar had apparently caught her during a very narrow window of availability. Her mother had only recently returned from one of her retiree group trips and would be home for a few days before leaving again, this time for an overseas bus tour.

"You're bus touring overseas?" Rhynar asked. Marguerite was just getting in the door herself answered. "Yes." Rhynar was oblivious to her being in her mother's way as she rolled her suitcase down the hall. "Why?" Rhynar reflexively asked. "Because someone else does the driving." Her mother joked. Rhynar couldn't argue with that. She knew it was good for her mother to have a social life and to travel. These group trips were the only way she could have both.

They spent the first part of the afternoon catching up while Rhynar went through the boxes she'd left in the garage. Marguerite followed her in and out, listening as Rhynar recounted increasingly improbable portions of her trip. Eventually, while sorting through a box of winter clothes, Rhynar found herself thinking about Rollo again.

"What did you think of Rollo?"

Marguerite didn't answer immediately. Rhynar looked over. "Mom, come on, please, you have an answer." Rhynar was looking for guidance on whether or not to try to reach out to him from someone she trusted. "I have several," Marguerite mumbled. "Pick your favorite." Rhynar pressed.

Marguerite considered this. "He always seemed like he had one foot out the door."

Rhynar stopped digging through the box. "What do you mean?"

Marguerite continued, "Whenever he was with us, he always seemed to be waiting for something better to happen. Another person to talk to. Somewhere else to go. Something more interesting than whatever was happening in front of him." Marguerite shrugged. "I thought it was rude."

Rhynar sat back on her heels. "You never said that." Her mother had always dodged questions or input about Rollo when they were together. "You liked him." Marguerite defended herself. "That has never stopped you before," Rhynar recalled her previous partner, an equally unlikable character named Keith.

"No, but you were an adult. You weren't asking me to like him." Rhynar smiled despite herself. Marguerite sat on another box. "I did look him up once." This was certainly news to her. Surprised, Rhynar blurted out, "You looked Rollo up?" Marguerite shook her head as if she were shaking off an accusation. "Not Rollo specifically. His characteristics." Rhynar repeated. "His characteristics?" Marguerite, remaining evasive, murmured, "Yes." Rhynar narrowed her eyes. "What did you search?" Marguerite waved the question away. "It said he had narcissistic tendencies." Rhynar laughed. "A search engine diagnosed my boyfriend?" She has always suspected Rollo was not the golden child the world viewed him as. "Former boyfriend." Marguerite corrected. "Former boyfriend." Rhynar agreed. "And it didn't diagnose him. It identified tendencies." Marguerite clarified. "That's much more responsible." Rhynar joked sarcastically.

Marguerite ignored the sarcasm. "It said people with those tendencies can be very protective of their image. They sometimes keep secrets because they're afraid the truth will change how other people see them. Then, when they feel exposed, they become defensive or lash out because they think they're losing control." Rhynar's amusement faded a little.

"Well," she said, "Rollo certainly had secrets."

Marguerite looked at her. Rhynar went on, "He had a daughter." Her mother's expression changed completely. "What?" Rhynar confirmed the highly guarded secret. "A fifteen-year-old daughter." In shock, her mother blinked hard, asking again, "Rollo?" Rhynar, shuffling some knick-knacks on Margueite's table, nodded. "Yes. He disowned her before she was even born." Marguerite was astonished. "When did you find this out?" Rhynar expected this reaction. "A while ago. She came looking for him at our apartment." The memory shook Rhynar even still, as it had been sprung upon her at the time. Marguerite continued to seek details. "And you're telling me now?" She was slightly irked with Rhynar over it. Rhynar, taking a deep breath, admitted. "I didn't want to face it. I was ashamed because on the spot I covered for him, and I regretted it."

Marguerite stared at her. Rhynar pulled a sweater from the box and unfolded it. "She came to the apartment." The memory returned with surprising clarity. Rollo had been acting strangely all morning. Rhynar even caught the tail end of a conversation he was having where he said, "... Doesn't matter that we are so much alike. The answer is no!" Then someone knocked at the door. He didn't move. At first, Rhynar hadn't thought anything of it. When the knocking came again, she looked at him.

"Are you going to get that?" She had asked, surprised that Rollo was unmoved despite being near the door. "No," he said, practically glued to where he was. Then another knock, louder this time. Rhynar glanced at the security feed. A girl stood outside in a uniform, holding boxes. "It's a Girl Scout." Rollo remained on the sofa. Looking straight ahead. "So?" He grumbled. Rhynar went on, "So she's selling cookies." Normally it would have been Rollo who was chiding her for not being helpful to others. He was so big on networking. It made him fretful of accidentally offending anyone at all.

Yet, he continued to frown at the floor. Rhynar remembered becoming frustrated more than suspicious. She went to the door herself and opened it. The girl on the other side was older than Rhynar had expected. "Hi," Rhynar said. The girl looked past her into the apartment. Rhynar followed her gaze toward Rollo, who hadn't moved. Something about the silence made her uneasy. "You look a little old to be a cub scout. How old are you?" Rhynar asked. "Fifteen." It was an age when children start to wonder where they came from.

Behind her, Rollo seemed to be holding his breath on the sofa. Rhynar bought cookies to get her to go away. It wasn't until later that Rollo finally told her the truth. The girl was certainly his daughter. She had his family's trademark dark black hair, dark blue eyes, and pointed chin. Rhynar later learned from Rollo's sister that he had left the girl's mother when he went to his technical school and had made little effort to remain part of their lives. According to him, the mother had repeatedly tried to involve him in their family, something Rollo resented.

"He told me then that the girl's name was Voisina, her mother was Pomona, and that he was going off to trade school when he found out about her. He said the timing made him think Pomona was trying to 'trap' him, and he felt betrayed. So he rejected them both." Rhynar said. Marguerite's eyebrows rose. "And controlled." Rhynar, unsure what Marguerite was getting at, asked, "His ex made him feel controlled?" Marguerite said, "The expectation that he should act like her father made him feel controlled." Rhynar thought quietly to herself for a moment. "That's worse." She commented. Marguerite nodded. "I know."

Rhynar folded the sweater again, though there was no reason to. Before that day, she had been seriously considering having children with Rollo. Not immediately, perhaps, but eventually. She'd imagined they were moving toward a life that would naturally include a family. Then she'd watched him sit perfectly still while his fifteen-year-old daughter stood outside their door. Something had changed after that. Not dramatically. There had been no great confrontation, no sudden breakup. Rhynar had simply learned something about him that she couldn't unlearn.

Marguerite shook her head. "I'm glad you never married him." Rhynar looked at her mother as she spoke in awed silence, never having witnessed her be so blunt on the subject before. "And I'm glad you didn't have children with him."

"You really didn't like him," Rhynar mumbled in his defence for reasons even she didn't understand.

"I didn't like the person he was when he thought no one important was watching." That landed harder than Rhynar expected. Marguerite continued, "He could be charming when he wanted something. But there were moments when he thought I wasn't paying attention, and he could be very cold. Backhanded. Little comments. Little looks. Then someone would turn toward him, and he'd be pleasant again." Rhynar nodded slowly. "I noticed that too." She said, almost to herself. Marguerite launched, "Didn't you?" at her. Rhynar admitted, "Eventually." She sat beside her mother. "It got worse over time."

For a while, neither of them said anything. Rhynar had been considering calling Rollo. His disappearance from the social sites still bothered her, particularly after she couldn't find anything about the marketing campaign he'd supposedly been working on. Part of her wanted an explanation. Another part simply wanted to know where he'd gone. She took out her fob and stared at it. She could call him and ask if he was well.

She could probably find another way to contact him if she tried hard enough. Then she thought about the girl standing outside their apartment. Rollo was staring at the floor. All the things she'd learned about him afterward. All the things she'd probably never learned at all.

Rhynar put the fob away. Calling him might answer a question. It might also reopen something she'd already managed to close. For now, she decided, she could live without knowing. She assumed she'd be another Pomona for him if she were to try to get in touch with him.

Marguerite watched Rhynar put the fob away. "Is that why you moved?" Rhynar looked at her. "What?" Marguerite asked again, "Rollo. Is that why you left and switched companies?"

Rhynar's first instinct was to say yes. It would have made the situation tidier. Things with Rollo had ended, things at work had gone wrong, and she'd left. One event leading naturally to the next.

But when she thought about it, that wasn't true. "No," she said finally. "I don't think it was."

Marguerite waited. "I've always wanted to go places. See things. Do something different." Rhynar leaned back against the boxes. "I've always had wanderlust. I just kept trying to discipline it out of myself." Marguerite wondered, "Why?" Without thought, Rhynar answered the hindrance immediately, "Dad."

Marguerite gave a knowing nod. Her father had believed in steadiness. A good position became a good career, a good career became security, and security was something a sensible person protected once they had it. Rhynar had taken that advice seriously. For years, she'd treated her desire to move on as an impulse that maturity would eventually cure. It never had.

"I kept thinking if I stayed long enough, I'd settle into it," Rhynar said. "Instead, I felt like I was in a rut that only got deeper." Marguerite wondered, "Then why did you stay?" Rhynar didn't truly know the answer, she reasoned out loud, "Because I was good at staying." Marguerite smiled faintly.

Rhynar thought about her old job and all the things that had gone wrong near the end. At the time, each one had felt significant. Now, from a distance, she could admit something she hadn't been willing to admit before. "Any one little thing would have been enough," she said. "Enough for what?" She answered, "An excuse."

Marguerite tilted her head. "To leave. I wasn't really that upset that things didn't work out there. I acted like I was, and some of it certainly hurt me, but I could've worked through those problems. I've worked through worse. Or I would've found some way around them." Marguerite sympathetically patted her back, saying. "You always do." Rhynar, trying to get out what she felt like she had been containing too long, went on, "Exactly. And then what?" Marguerite said, trying to help her get it out. Rhynar realized, "I'd still be there."

That was the part Rhynar finally understood. She could have repaired things. She could have adapted, compromised, maneuvered around whatever stood in her way and made her old life functional again. She'd done it so many times before that she knew exactly how. But functional wasn't the same as wanted.

"I'd followed that road to death," Rhynar said. "I knew where it went. I was ready for another one years ago. I just needed something to permit me to take it." Marguerite laughed softly. "I suspected that." Rhynar, baffled, asked, "How?"Marguerite told her, "You've been like that since daycare." Rhynar frowned. "What does daycare have to do with anything?" Marguerite continued, "You wouldn't stay on the padded floor." Rhynar asked, "What padded floor?" Her mother explained, "The play area. They had this enormous padded floor with toys everywhere. All the other children loved it. You couldn't have cared less." Rhynar thought hard for a moment but came back with, "I don't remember this." Marguerite said, "I do. Every time someone opened the door, you'd try to get outside." Rhynar laughed. "I was escaping daycare?" Marguerite shook her head. "No. That's what was so irritating. You liked daycare. You just wanted to know what was outside." Rhynar smiled. That sounded like her.

After a moment, Rhynar shifted the focus onto her mother and asked, "Are you happy?" Marguerite seemed surprised by the question. "Yes." Rhynar felt like she couldn't go back to her life in Central North without knowing the truth. "Really?" Marguerite reassured her, "Very."

There wasn't any hesitation in it. Marguerite explained that Rhynar's father hadn't understood her decision to retire early. She'd known she was sacrificing some of her eventual retirement benefits by leaving when she did, and he'd considered that reason enough to wait. Marguerite hadn't. "I knew exactly what I was giving up," she said. "I also knew what I was buying with it." Rhynar didn't see the appeal. She wondered, "Bus tours?" "Among other things." Marguerite quipped. Rhynar laughed.

"Time," Marguerite explained more sincerely. "I wanted my time while I was still able to use it." Since retiring, she'd found an entire community of people who felt the same way. There was always another trip being planned, another place someone wanted to see, another group willing to go. Marguerite had discovered a life that Rhynar suspected she'd been quietly waiting for just as long as Rhynar had been waiting to leave her old one. "I'm glad we both did it," Marguerite said. Rhynar looked at her. "Did what?" Marguerite pointed to the sand in her vase. "Went our own way." Then she reached over and squeezed Rhynar's hand. "And if you decide you hate this new life of yours up north, my door is always open." This greatly eased Rhynar's worries. "I know." Marguerite let her daughter know, "You don't have to prove anything by staying somewhere you don't want to be."

Rhynar smiled. "I'll remember that." On Rhynar's final day with her mother, it rained.

It began in the morning and continued steadily into the afternoon, washing over the windows and darkening the streets. There was a chill beneath it that hadn't been there before.

The seasons were changing. Marguerite accompanied her to the train station.

Rhynar had made a similar departure once before, leaving the Midwestern Corporate Dominion with everything behind her feeling unresolved. She remembered the desperation of it. The feeling that she had to keep moving because stopping might allow everything she'd left behind to catch up with her. This felt different.

She wasn't running from anything. That realization healed something in her. Not all at once. It didn't transform her memories of the Midwestern Corporate Dominion into pleasant ones or make the things that had happened there matter less. But those memories no longer seemed attached to her ankles. They belonged to somewhere she'd already been.

The train arrived.

Marguerite hugged her before Rhynar boarded. "I'll come see your new place when I get back." Rhynar squeezed her back, knowing how much she'd miss her. "You'd better." Marguerite smiled. "I want the full tour." Rhynar shyly admitted, "It's not that impressive."

Marguerite always had a way of making her feel better. "I'll decide that." Rhynar laughed and hugged her again. Then she boarded.

From her seat, she could see Marguerite waiting beneath the station awning as rain streaked across the window between them. Rhynar raised a hand. Her mother waved back.

The train began to move.

For years, Rhynar had thought leaving meant abandoning something. A job. A relationship. A plan. A version of herself she'd worked too hard to become. Now, watching the familiar station disappear behind her, she understood that leaving could mean something else.

Sometimes you weren't running away. Sometimes you were simply going home. And for the first time in a long time, Rhynar was ready to go to hers.