The front desk person instructed him as to how to find Room 402.
Alex knocked on the door and pushed it open.
Seeing Benjamin Hadaller sitting in a recliner was a shock. He was older than the last time he had seen Dan Hadaller, but not by that much. He looked like they could have been brothers.
The old man looked crossly at Alex, opened his mouth to say something rude, then saw Sanda. Immediately his face softened. He reached into a drawer beside him and pulled out a jar of butterscotch candies. “Can she?” he asked Alex.
Alex nodded and said, “Go ahead,” to Sanda. She was a great icebreaker.
Alex sat in a straight-backed chair that he pulled out from behind a small dining table. Sanda climbed into his lap and popped the candy into her mouth, smiling sweetly at Benjamin. “Thank you,” she said.
Benjamin grinned semi-toothlessly at her, then his face clouded. “Now what in the hell do you want?”
“I knew your son.”
“Impossible. You’re what thirty maybe? Dan’s been dead forty years now. I’m old, but not stupid.”
Alex shook his head. “That’s what I wanted to tell you.” He leaned forward, conspiratorially. “I found your walls. I found the door.”
“Psh,” Benjamin said. “You’re a damn fool too, then.”
Alex shrugged. “You’re not the first to tell me that.” He smiled to himself, remembering a conversation exactly like this with Dan years before. “I went through the door. Dan was there. Alive.”
Benjamin leaned forward, managing to squint and glare at the same time. “Prove it.”
Sanda’s eyes were wide. She had never heard anyone speak with anything but respect to her father.
“Here’s proof. I’ve read it. He did a good job of telling what happened to him after he stepped through the door.”
Benjamin’s glare wavered, then crumbled at the sight of his son’s handwriting on the front of the crude diary.
With sorrowful hope, he looked at Alex. “Is he...” He couldn’t bring himself to finish that sentence.
“Alive? No, I’m sorry. He passed on a few years ago. He spent almost forty-five years in that strange land. He wanted to get back to you. He told me if I ever made it home, to tell you that he did his best to get back, but just couldn’t.”
The old man seemed to sink into himself. He nodded vacantly, pulled the book to him, then opened the cover.
“We’re going to leave you in peace now. I just wanted you to know that your son loved you very much and was thinking about you until the very end.”
Quietly, Alex put Sanda on the floor. He walked to the door and before he opened it, he glanced back at Benjamin Hadaller. He was bent over reading. Tears dripped off his face.
Alex quietly closed the door behind him.
Chapter Forty-FourSeven Years Later
Amy and Sanda chattered noisily at the dining room table. Alex was in the kitchen, wearing an apron and making pancakes. Mondak laid at his feet, an ever-vigilant garbage disposal.
At the table, the two sisters, eleven years old now, pushed large drawing pads back and forth. They had been working on a secret project for weeks and it was nearing completion.
Alex brought a high stack of pancakes into the dining room. When the girls saw him coming, they swept the papers into a pile and hid them.
“Almost, Dad,” Amy said.
“Yeah, almost, Dad,” Sanda echoed.
She had stopped calling Alex Dadda when she heard Amy referring to him as dad or daddy. Alex kind of missed that. One more small part of his Winten-ah life gone.
“Perfection is the enemy of done, you know,” Alex said.
The two girls looked at each other as if they couldn’t believe how odd their father could be sometimes.
They tore into the pancakes and bacon with gusto. When they had eaten as much as they could hold, Alex dumped all the leftovers into a massive bowl in the kitchen. Mondak consumed it in two bites, licked his chops, and was ready for more.
“Later, big fella,” Alex promised.
Mondak laid down with a huff.
Alex sat down and said, “Young girls need to clean the dishes if they don’t cook the meal.”
Silently, the two stacked the plates and moved to the next phase of cleaning up.
Sometimes, when they’re quiet, I’d almost swear they’re communicating with each other silently. Did Lanta-eh find a way to gift them with that?
Alex shook his head. Now I’m getting ridiculous.
Alex picked up a copy of The Sunday Oregonian and leafed through, not finding much of interest.
Life had been good for Alex since he returned, but not without its sadness.
He and Mandy had never reconciled, but over time, they left their differences behind and became friends. On weekends when Amy was at Mandy’s house, she often asked to have Sanda over as well. On those weekends, Alex found it hard to fill his hours.
Two years after he returned from Kragdon-ah, Mandy had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Eighteen months later, she had died.
From then on, Alex raised two daughters with two sets of instructions from two dead mothers. He did his best to honor their memory and wishes.
He had been happy in the years since he had returned. His tiny house business was as busy as he wanted it to be, and he had those who were most important close to him. He had nothing to complain about.
And yet.
Sometimes, he daydreamed about running free and easy across the plains of Winten-ah in pursuit of a massive deer. Or, just sitting around the smoky caves, telling stories around the fire. Life was simpler in Kragdon-ah. There were times he felt a strong pull to experience that simplicity again.
After the impetuous decision to step through the door the first time, he knew he couldn’t risk that again.
And so, he kept those daydreams to himself.
He glanced up from his daydream to see two pretty young girls with massive smiles on their faces.
“It’s done,” they said together. “Do you want
