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That doesn’t seem right.
She laughed. “Well, they were mostly empty ones. Just the date, but then it looked like he had nothing to write. But I did find two short passages I wanted to share with everyone. I took pictures of them…” Her eyes went wide. “If that is not allowed, I can delete them—”
“May I see them?” I asked, hand outstretched to her.
“Of course.” She pulled out her phone from her pocket to show it. “This one was the first one.”
I tilted the screen to see. It was dated nearly…twenty-nine years ago.
“The mountain seems no more a soulless thing,
But rather as a shape of ancient fear,
In darkness and the winds of Chaos born
Amid the lordless heavens’ thundering-
A Presence crouched, enormous and austere,
Before whose feet, the mighty waters mourn.”
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked. “I didn’t know King Lionel was such a poet.”
I glanced down at her, and for some reason, that made me laugh. Father, a poet? Not in this life.
“You think he wrote this?” I asked her, amused.
“He didn’t?” she questioned.
I snickered, shaking my head. “It’s part of an old poem by one of the greatest American poets hardly anyone ever knows about: George Sterling.”
“Who?”
“Exactly,” I said, flipping to see the next one. It was another George Sterling work; I had no idea my father was a fan of his. “They called George the Uncrowned King of Bohemia.”
“He was Bohemian?”
“No, his plays were focused a lot on the lifestyle. He, like many poets, had tragic lives, and in the end, he ended up taking his.”
“Well, that kills the theme of my whole project.” She sighed.
I chuckled nodding. “Yes, I’m not sure why he wrote it down, but I think you should avoid using it until, at the very least, we understand the reason behind it. Then again, it might be interesting. I’ll leave it up to you to decide. I’m glad you found it.”
“Hurray for snooping. I was looking for something to add…I don’t know…light and positive,” she grumbled and then remembered who she was talking to. She spun back to me. “Not that your father’s life is depressing or anything.”
“I mean, it is a tad bit depressing,” I replied.
“Right!” She grinned.
I had to stop because I hadn’t seen him laugh or smile in weeks. And normally, I would have been happy, only he wasn’t smiling at his family or me. He was smiling at a pretty blonde in the gardens, and it wasn’t his fake polite smile. It was his real one. The longer I watched…the more this feeling…it ate away at me.
You’re overreacting, Odette.
He’s just talking, Odette.
It’s not a big deal, Odette.
Don’t make it a big deal.
