Morning all. I hope you are having a lovely week. Mine is actually skating along fairly easily. I don’t want to say anything too loudly lest I tempt fate, but thus far, I can’t complain. So lets jump into the morning prompt and hope for a cost into the weekend.
I need to think about this one. Something disastrous needs to happen, I just don’t know what, yet.
Thursday, February 8th: It is a cypher.
It is a cypher,” he said. Mary picked it up and looked at it. He turned away and looked out if th window.
“So what does it say,” she asked.
“Don’t know,” he replied. “It’s never been cracked.”
“Oh,” she sounded disappointed and Ralph looked over his shoulder. She set the framed paper down. He wondered if she would be interested in learning, trying to learn it’s secrets for herself. It didn’t seem so. Once he could not explain it, she lost interest. He wondered if there was anything she was actually interested in learning for herself. They only met two months prior when her parents brought her back to the estate to live. His bother and family, including Mary, were living in the main house now while he occupied one of the guest cottages.
Ralph thought it would be interesting to have children about. He sent birthday and holiday gifts at the correct times but had never met his niece or his nephew. His work took him away often and sometimes for long periods so he never bothered finding anywhere else to live. The cottage was deeded to him when he came of age so it was his home and couldn’t be sold out from under him. His father also didn’t want him to feel beholden. He was responsible for maintaining it and paying his bills, but when he was gone for long stretches, those at the house could always look after it.
After his father died, Ralph received his share of the estate, but his brother received the house. He was the one with a family and the one who had someone to leave it to. So it seemed right. Ralph was interested in meeting this next generation.
Thus far he had not been impressed. He was asked questions but the answers were barely listened to and nothing seemed to spark an interest in them. Raph found it odd. He met other children and didn’t think he was judging the children based on age. Other children seemed to have more of a spark to them than his niece Mary and her brother Andrew. In both children there was something lacking.
Mary decided there was nothing else of interest and wandered out of the room. He wondered if he should ask his friend Dana about them. She taught art classes in one of the charted schools in town. She spent lots of time around children and might have actually met his niece and nephew. Perhaps she could provide some insight.
‘Maybe it is because of their mother,’ he thought even as he made a note to call and ask Dana out for dinner. Ralph met his sister-in-law on several occasions throughout the years, mostly before the children were born. They were each polite to each other, but didn’t share much in common. She always seemed bored with him and inclined to look through him when he spoke. He suspected that she forgot his existence as soon as he was out of the room. As his brother came into the room, he set such thoughts aside.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Wallace said. “Hope you weren’t bored.”
“No I showed Mary the cypher,” he said. Wallace laughed, spotted the frame and picked it up.
“The eternal quest. How many late nights did we spend trying to decode it?”
Ten til Midnight 