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From the day he had realized that he knew from whence the darkness came, Roderick understood that he could no longer ignore its significance as the others continued to do. He would be the challenge that checked the spread and drove it back. The fight was his, and he would devote his life to it. Connor Ridley, Shadows Fall
There are some actions in our lives the outcome of which are entirely dependent on timing. Most people become aware of that fact as they age and learn to pay attention to the subtle cues that it may be the wrong time to do something such as ask someone for a favor. Using those cues would lead someone to conclude that striking up a conversation with Connor Ridley would have been a poor idea during most of the previous week. All of the employees who had encountered him would have been able to tell you this.
He wasn’t generally what most people would call social, but he was usually affable enough with a smile and a nod for those he passed in the halls. He thought he had noticed that people had been shuffling by a little faster lately. He couldn’t blame them for their desire to get away as quickly as possible. He was confident that he was giving off an aura of general unapproachableness.
On this day, striking up a conversation would have been a very bad idea. He knew he was demonstrating a decided lack of professionalism in that he was letting his inner turmoil creep out on display to those who were not involved, but he was having difficulty making himself care. He was tense, his temper was barely in check, and he had locked himself in his office in a feeble attempt to prevent himself from going off on the next person who said something to him that wasn’t what he wanted to hear. That was the best mitigation he could presently manage.
He still considered it a feeble attempt because while he was avoiding actively going out and seeking contact with other people, he was still at work. That being the case, he was still required to do work related things. He could not completely ignore the rest of humanity until he wrangled his self-control and got himself fit for interpersonal interaction again. If his phone rang, he would need to answer it. If someone knocked on his door, he would have to respond (and “go away” would not be an acceptable form of responding).
There were a multitude of minor annoyances that had all coalesced and joined up with a few major frustrations to turn his life into one massive ball of irritation. Today was not his day (it hadn’t really been his week). The fact that he was wasting his time feeling intractable (wallowing really) was just making his mood worse; it was a rather vicious cycle, and he needed to break it immediately.
It was sad that he couldn’t even manage to work up the energy to wish that he could pack up and leave it all behind. It’s not like he could (or would) anyway. It was just sad that the thought didn’t even present itself. Wasn’t that what people were supposed to think of when they were feeling buried?
His mother was fond of mentioning (at what he felt were far too frequent and often inopportune moments) that his favorite book as a child had been Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. Jennifer Ridley had managed to work that information into a conversation with nearly everyone she knew at one point or another. Connor had never been able to figure out why she seemed to find it such an interesting piece of trivia that she felt other people needed to be in possession of that information.
It wasn’t that it wasn’t true. He had demanded that particular story as his default choice for years. The battered and dog eared state of his copy (that still held a place on a bookshelf at his home) was proof of its oft read status. He couldn’t tell you what had fascinated him so when he was younger -- maybe he empathized with the feeling of disconnect and inability to please his family. Then again, maybe that wasn’t it. In fact, that was probably reaching. It wasn’t a probable conclusion at all. That was likely the adult him looking back and projecting. The truth was much simpler. He had just been amused as a child. It was an entertaining story, and he had liked it for no other reason than he had like it.
Today he felt as if he was living in his very own, grown up version of the story (only the very bad day had expanded into a very bad week that was looking as if it had the distinct possibility of expanding into a very bad period of indefinite proportions). It wasn’t so entertaining anymore when you were the one living it. He wasn’t amused -- not remotely. There was nothing amusing about everything that could go wrong going wrong when you couldn’t figure out how to make the downward spiral end (which left you with the possibility for more things to go wrong or in a mental state fit only for you to dwell on what might be dropping on you next). There was nothing amusing about knowing that (unlike Alexander) all the awful day things might not end with simply your own inconvenience. There was nothing amusing about knowing that moving to Australia wouldn’t get you away from any of your problems.
That line of thinking certainly wasn’t helping. He was being so pathetically maudlin today that he was getting uncomfortable in his own head. That was probably a really bad sign -- of what, he didn’t know, but it couldn’t possibly be positive. He was just so very tired. He felt as though he had been beating his head against the proverbial brick wall while an endless stream of people walked by and shook their heads at his foolishness because he was the only one who understood why the wall had to be taken down. It made him feel more tired just thinking about it.
Of course, that might have been because he was already so tired from living it. There was something fundamentally exhaustion causing about feeling like you were all on your own. That might have been his imagination. It might be every bit as exhausting in other circumstances. There were just days when it felt as if looking at the seemingly endless to do list (his seemingly endless to do list) and knowing that it was his responsibility to tackle it was wearing on him more than the actual doing of the contents of the to do list (not to mention the burden of the knowledge of what could happen if he wasn’t successful in completing it).
His head made contact with the surface of the top of his desk (which was a mistake as that ended with his forehead knocking into an ink pen). That gave him yet another reason to stay hidden in his office -- that had probably left a mark. Sadly, the pain of his head bump wasn’t preventing the mental review of all the recent events that had led him to his current self-pitying emotional state.
Maybe that was what he needed? It wasn’t as though he was accomplishing anything constructive. He might as well take a few minutes to mentally decompress and sort through everything causing him to lose focus. Maybe he could sort them to appropriate mental files and get them out of the way. There was no maybe about it. He was going to have to do that. He couldn’t afford to get bogged down right now (ever really). He would tackle all of the things wearing him down head on and be finished with it. If he was deciding what was getting to him the most, then it was probably the conversation with his father. He might as well start with that.
The summons had caught him off guard. Getting called in to his father’s office for a meeting was not an uncommon occurrence. They went over budgets and production innovations and promising products from his division on a fairly regular basis. He was good at his job, and he took it seriously. Any grumbling about the position of the son of the owners being undeserved hadn’t lasted beyond his first year. There was, however, not anything going on at the moment that should have required a consultation. He had thought that there must be something unexpected that had cropped up that needed his attention. He had even held a slight hope that maybe his father was going to address the WIS rumors and ask his opinion on them (that had never been likely, but it had been possible).
His father hadn’t wanted either of those things. It had been something completely different that had precipitated the request for a conference. He hadn’t wasted any time with preambles either.
“I was happy when you seemed to develop more of an interest in the business,” Travis Ridley began the instant Connor was sea
ted. He, himself, did not choose to take a seat; that was Connor’s first clue that he was about to be taken to task over something. His father liked to tower over anyone he happened to be admonishing. He stood behind his own desk with his arms folded behind him in what Connor usually termed (only in his own head) his lecture delivery stance.
The posture shifted slightly as he held up a hand to prevent any attempt on Connor’s part to interject a response (which would have been an immediate questioning of just what this conversation was about). He waited for Connor’s open mouth to close before he allowed his hand to fall. It was reminiscent of not altogether pleasant childhood recollections of when his father would stare him down until he looked sufficiently cowed for the coming lecture to commence.
“I am not complaining about your job performance,” he added almost as if it was an afterthought. The proper thought would be for Connor to be thinking that if he didn’t know better, then he would think that his father sounded disappointed by that fact. The problem was that Connor didn’t know better. His job performance and his parent’s low opinion of his carrying out of it were an acknowledged (if not often mentioned) reality.
“You know this -- that we don’t make a habit of nitpicking or complaining.” Connor was pleased that his “listening to lecture” facial expression mask of neutrality was firmly in place or the eye roll that he felt that sentence deserved in response might actually have escaped. “I hope that you will take that into consideration and recognize the importance of this conversation. Your mother and I know very well that you have done everything that your job requires since the day you started. Whatever else we might have hoped for when you came on board, we both recognize that fact.”
Connor found himself thinking that his father just couldn’t seem to let the opportunity go by (whatever it was that this conversation was ultimately supposed to be about) without getting that dig in as he went. He was tempted to interrupt and ask if he could go ahead and get to the point, but he resisted the urge. That wouldn’t end well. It was always best to let his father do his passive aggressive pseudo venting and be done with it.
“You’ve even done an excellent job in many ways.” Connor knew he wasn’t imagining the grudging way the words were uttered. “Your colleagues and employees would all vouch for it, and they step up to do so any time that one of us expresses our concerns.” There was a pause, but Connor didn’t take advantage of it. What was there to say to that?
“What everyone else doesn’t understand, that your mother and I do, is that your heart has never been in this.” He shot his son a long suffering look as if he had been trying for years to understand something not understandable and had finally given up on the task. “You save that for your little art obsession.” Connor must have let a smidgeon of negativity creep across his features because his father’s hand shot back up into its warding off gesture. “Everyone needs hobbies; I’m not having this discussion with you again. We’ve wasted far too much time on the topic. You know we feel that you spend far too much time with yours; you disagree. Neither you nor we are inclined to change our minds. That is where everyone stands.”
“When you started spending extra time at the office, we noticed. When you started seeming to take a personal interest in some of the projects not directly your concern, your mother and I were pleased to see it.” For the first time since the lecture (Connor was not going to deign to label it a conversation in his own thoughts) had begun (and he still didn’t know what the topic of the lecture was supposed to be), his father actually made intentional eye contact with him. He wasn’t used to that. He and his parents had a habit of looking by instead of directly at each other.
“You are good at what you do, Connor,” his father told him. It felt like he was making a point of reiterating that throughout this dissertation. Connor could not quite pin down what emotion it was that he was seeing in his father’s eyes. It wasn’t the disappointment that he had come to associate with the current topic. There was something else brewing there; it was something darker than that. “Your mother and I would prefer that you be great.”
His father broke eye contact and turned around to gaze at the view outside of his window. His arms were folded behind him again. Unlike his usual posture, his shoulders were slumped. Connor couldn’t remember ever seeing his father stand in such a defeated manner. His father didn’t do defeated. He did annoyed. He did disappointed (did he ever do disappointed). He did agitated, and (under great duress) he did angry. Defeated had never been a part of the emotional spectrum.
“We thought we were seeing the beginnings of that,” his voice had gotten softer, but Connor could still hear him perfectly. “Our misunderstanding didn’t last long. We’ve heard the reports -- they’ve been coming to our ears nearly daily. You aren’t following product development in general. You aren’t even focusing on a smattering of products that you find worthwhile. You are focusing on a person.”
“Do you have any idea how many times someone on the floor has mentioned Anna McKee kicking you out of her office?” His voice grew more clipped as he continued. “Do you even know how not circumspect you have been? There have been many reasons in the course of your life that your mother and I have worried for you -- skirt chasing has never been one of them. I don’t care what sort of personal crisis you are going through -- you were raised better than to chase after a woman who has clearly expressed that she is uninterested. You will leave her alone.” He didn’t turn around; he didn’t look at Connor. His arms had dropped and his fists were tightly clenched at his sides.
“If it has finally sunk in for you what a colossal mistake you made in leaving Meredyth, then I hope you embrace the reality of the consequences and learn from them. That particular mistake is beyond correcting. Don’t make it worse. Don’t try to replace her with the first gifted woman that happens to catch your notice.”
Connor was feeling peculiarly as if his father had spun around from his window view staring and punched him in the stomach. He wouldn’t have been able to get any words out even if his father had paused long enough for interjection to be feasible (he hadn’t).
“Anna McKee is absolutely brilliant, and she will do great things in and for this company. You will not meddle with that. You will not get in her way. If I so much as hear a whisper about you in her space, interfering with her job, or so much as looking at her in a manner which makes her uncomfortable, then I will deal with you so swiftly that you won’t have time to process what hit you before it is already over. Ms. McKee has a bright future at this company, and I will not allow anything to jeopardize that. If it comes down to you or her, then the choice will be her. I don’t know what has gone wrong in your brain that your current course of action seems acceptable to you, but I suggest you correct it swiftly.”
He went silent then. Connor recognized the dismissal for what it was. He didn’t want to hear a rebuttal; he wasn’t even willing to offer Connor a chance to give one. He didn’t turn around. He was merely waiting, and Connor knew what he was waiting for was for him to leave. The ultimatum had been laid down, and Connor was to go off and abide by its terms. He had thought that he was immune to his parents and their chronically low opinion of him. He wasn’t quite as immune as he had thought. He couldn’t decide which hurt worse -- his father’s lack of faith in his character or his inability to look him in the eye while he stated it.
He shook off the memory (that was a mistake because it rolled the pen that was still located on the desk under his forehead). He reached up and pushed the pen to the side. That was slightly more comfortable. What was he supposed to be doing? He was supposed to be working through his frustrating memories so they would stop being a distraction.
He couldn’t think of any way to work through the frustration of his current status with his parents. There were so many things that he could have said at the time, but he didn’t. There was no point just as there was no point
in dwelling on it now. He could rehearse conversations in his head, but they would never take place. He could destroy something on his desk, but it wouldn’t change anything. His parents thought he was a loser and a jerk (a jerk that harassed unsuspecting women apparently). That was fine. They could think whatever they wanted (they always had). He had bigger problems (and, sadly, he wasn’t just thinking that to make himself feel better).
If he was going to spend time working through frustrations, then he needed to be tackling ones through which he actually had a chance of working. The parental issue was to be put aside. That was more easily said than done, but that was how it was going to have to be. He didn’t have time for thinking about it. He didn’t have time for getting angry over it. He just plain didn’t have time for it. He didn’t have time for much of anything.
If WIS would just go ahead and make a move one way or another, then he would be able to narrow down his focus. If he knew which way Meredyth was going to move first, then he would be able to concentrate on specifics instead of being spread so thin. That was where Will Walsh was supposed to come in (speaking of another issue causing him frustration).
He needed insight. He needed information. He needed someone who could command a direct line to said information (instead of being in the position of possibly overhearing something that might possibly be accurate and might possibly be useful to know). It would be an added bonus if the source of said information was a full-fledged adult who was capable of watching out for himself (instead of an underage addition to his already lengthy list of worries). Not to mention, the resultant removal of himself from Anna’s hit list would have accomplished additional wonders for his mental health.
It was marginally depressing that he hadn’t gotten any of that out of the meeting with Will. He had spent a great deal of time laying groundwork with Will. One didn’t just pop up and make demands of a person one had not spoken to since high school except for pleasantries at charity functions and the occasional holiday party. He wasn’t ready to cede that it had been a waste of his time. Will hadn’t given him a flat out refusal. The conversation hadn’t contained anything as definite as a refusal. He might be less frustrated if it had.
“Are you going to sit there and tell me it makes me a bad person that I like my life the way it is?” Will had demanded. His voice remained lowered despite the aggression in his tone. No one at nearby tables had so much as glanced in their direction. “That I don’t want to go stirring things up when there probably isn’t anything that needs stirring anyway?” The somewhat guilty shift of his eyes had told Connor that the other man didn’t believe his last statement.
“I’m not telling you what to do, Will,” he had responded as he realized that he was going to have to handle this more carefully than he had expected. He hadn’t expected to have to handle anything really. He wasn’t prepared for that, but he knew better than to push. Pushing agitated people only made them more agitated. He should know -- he’d dealt with enough of them.
“Maybe I wish somebody would,” the sigh that had accompanied the statement was louder than the words themselves. Connor had really needed that sigh to mean that Will was about to give him an affirmative answer. If Will had needed to wax poetical about the inconvenience to his life already in progress, then he would have to do that later (after he was actively feeding Connor information).
“You know what you want to do,” Connor had tried not to sound over confident. It wasn’t like Will hadn’t had adequate time to process what was at stake. All he had to do was to make the call and get going. The show of wishy-washiness had not been appreciated. Had Will always been so whiny? Connor couldn’t remember. He hadn’t spent enough time around Will back in high school (there was two years difference after all) to notice. “I’m just waiting for you to tell me what it is going to be.”
“He’s my brother, Connor,” Will had insisted as if that was some sort of an actual answer or justification for stalling. That it wasn’t entirely fair of him to look at it that way was something that Connor knew. It was a shock to your system when you got a front row seat to what people you thought you knew were truly capable of doing. Will, however, had had plenty of time to get over that. “He’s always been kind of a jerk, but this is . . . .”
“I get that,” Connor had cut him off (and he did). He knew all about that unwillingness to cross that mental barrier. He had been out of patience with Will in spite of that. As Will’s waffling seemed to be all about some misguided sense of family loyalty, Connor had been tempted to do something impolitic (like tripping him when he got up to leave the table). It would have been childish and completely unhelpful, but it might have made him feel better.
There was no love lost between Will and Wyatt. Anyone who knew the family in the most casual of circumstances knew that. Connor supposed it was one of those close rank against outsiders kind of mentalities that he had been working against. In a different situation, he might have understood that. He wasn’t in a different situation, though, and he knew exactly what information he had provided Will with over the course of their conversations. Will’s decision should not have been up in the air.
“You say that,” Will was saying as Connor had ended his fantasy about the tripping. “But you don’t, not really.” He had been shaking his head and reaching for his wallet. Connor had known that he was losing him. “You don’t know what it’s like to wake up one morning and realize that this person you’ve known all your life, your blood, has stepped off of some cliff and become something that you can’t even recognize.”
“Will . . .,” he hadn’t known what to say next. There wasn’t anything that he hadn’t already said three and four times over. It hadn’t mattered. Will had had no intention of letting him talk.
“Don’t Will me,” he had ordered as he stood and dropped a couple of bills on the table. “You are sitting there looking at me like this decision should be easy. You say you aren’t going to tell me what to do, but you are. It’s written all over your face that you don’t even understand why I need reasons or answers or time. That’s great for you. I’m glad that you are Mr. Moral Clarity who doesn’t have any qualms or issues or a life outside of this to worry about getting thrown under the bus during the process.” His hands had rested on the table as he leaned toward Connor (an attempt, Connor had thought, at keeping the conversation quiet enough that it didn’t attract any attention). Will’s hands, he had noted, were clutching the table cloth. He hadn’t been sure how to interpret that. “I can’t answer you right now. I can’t promise help. I can’t tell you that I have your back. I need time.”
He hadn’t waited for a response, and Connor hadn’t tried to stop him. There hadn’t been anything else to do.
His desk was far more comfortable without the ink pen between his forehead and the surface. He thought that maybe the position was actually bleeding some of the tension out of his shoulders -- or they might just be going numb. Either way felt better.
Lunch with Will Walsh was supposed to be a simple step forward on what was fast becoming a never ending series of steps that were Connor’s plan to save the world. It sounded a bit grandiose (even in his own head) to phrase it that way, but it was the reality of what he was in the middle of doing. Connor’s plan to save the world, Connor’s steps on the plan to save the world, Connor’s actions that were needed to save the world, Connor’s words that were going to convince other people to help save the world were all tumbling around in his head with the never ending refrain of it being all Connor’s responsibility (and all Connor’s fault if he didn’t succeed).
Will Walsh was supposed to lighten that load. It wasn’t that Connor expected the other man to take over responsibility; Connor wasn’t even sure that he was comfortable letting anyone take a very large role in that responsibility (it was, after all, his responsibility). What he had wanted was for Will to take over the piece that Connor was going to hand him
, complete his task, and report back so that Connor could move on to the next step (and the next and the next and the next).
What he hadn’t wanted was for Will to shove a whole new level of responsibility back at him. Will wanted Connor to convince him to do the right thing. He didn’t have time (or the energy for that matter) to convince Will to do the right thing. He shouldn’t have to convince Will to do the right thing. He shouldn’t have to convince anyone to do the right thing. Should he?
He hadn’t seen it coming. He thought that Will understood what was at stake. He thought that the meeting with Will was just a formality. It was supposed to be a settling of details. It was supposed to be a setting of time frames. It was not supposed to be a pointless waste of Connor’s time while he played sympathetic therapist to Will’s waffling.
He would just have to keep going without the inclusion of the Will Walsh step on the plan. The other option plan was already in preprocess. He didn’t particularly care for that plan, but it was where Will had left him. The problem was, deep down, all of Will’s slightly accusing words were right. He didn’t understand Will’s problem. He didn’t understand Will’s lack of clarity. It wasn’t like Will was ignorant. It wasn’t like the countless number of people who didn’t act because they were unaware that there was something that needed to be acted against.
Will knew. Will knew what they were up against. Will knew what the potential outcomes were. Will even knew exactly what he could do to fight back. He just wasn’t willing to commit to taking the stance. It wasn’t even apathy. It was something that was somehow worse than apathy. What did you even call it when someone knew and cared but still did nothing because he didn’t want it to have to be him?
He supposed that (following the theme of the mental file arranging he was doing) he should file Will Walsh under things he wouldn’t think about until later. That seemed to be a popular heading in his head these days -- no wonder he was so run down.
Not all of his recent conversations had been so content disappointing, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t causing him frustrations of their own. It was downright infuriating that he had to resort to after hours conversations with Anna (not that he hadn’t been talking to Anna at all hours of the day lately, but that was not the point) just because his father was being an extra exaggerated version of his usual self. He was not thinking about that. That conversation had already been mentally filed and dismissed.
Anna had been unaccommodating lately. He understood that. He knew it was killing her to have her brother even involved in the outside edges of this mess. He knew it was his fault that Kyle even knew what he knew. He and Anna had had quite the blow up over it. It was funny how arguing with Anna never left him with the out of patience, irritated feeling that he got from arguing with other people (or the hollow feeling he was always left with after an altercation with his mother or father).
Arguing with Anna just left him feeling oddly lighter, as if something had worked its way out of his system, and he hadn’t realized how heavy it was until it was gone. That always gave him a disturbing mental picture of himself unloading burdens onto Anna’s shoulders which, in turn, made him feel guilty. Thus, arguing with Anna was to be avoided whenever possible and ended succinctly when not.
The conversation that was currently running on a loop in his mind was not an argument between the two of them; it was more of an explanation. She had been awfully patient with him since this whole thing began, and it had seemed only right to offer her better reasons than he had ever bothered to provide her with before when she wanted to know if it was really worth including her baby brother. She wanted to know if he really believed that this was the take a stance now or never moment that he had made it out to be.
“I do, Anna,” he had told her reconciling himself to ending his attempts at sparing her the details. Connor hadn’t believed that she would be satisfied with his half explanations forever; he had merely wished to avoid anything additional for as long as possible. It was time. It had probably been time since the first moment he showed up on her doorstep, but she had exhibited an amount of patience (and a trust in his judgment) that was far more long suffering than he could have reasonably expected.
“I know you agreed to help me without really understanding why I was so determined to fight her,” he had mentioned hoping she knew how much he appreciated that. He couldn’t recall ever actually coming right out and telling her. “I’m pretty certain that you thought it was a business proprietary thing. You were willing to jump in and help. You even agreed to some decisions with which you were vastly uncomfortable. I’m guessing you suspected that Walsh might be inclined to use your work for some less than ethical purposes and that gave you some additional motivation.”
“You’re right about that, by the way,” Connor had felt it was a good idea to add. She should have some affirmation that her suspicions were correct. She wasn’t imagining the vibe she had once mentioned that the other man gave her. Walsh was what his grandmother referred to as an unsavory sort. “Wyatt Walsh shouldn’t be trusted around pretty much anything, but he isn’t the real threat here. Wyatt is an annoyance. On his own, he could cause trouble, but it would be the kind of trouble that we always have to deal with fixing. Meredyth is the one who is dangerous. She’s the one who is destructive on the you can’t come back from that level. And she’s the one who is calling the shots. I’ve explained the world view thing to you, and I know you agree that it’s disturbing.”
He had paused and waited for a sign that he hadn’t completely lost her with his rambling. The trouble was that he hadn’t known how to say what he wanted to say without some rambling to get there. Anna had nodded, but she hadn’t tried to speak. That was good. Connor hadn’t wanted to break his concentration. He had just needed to get out those words.
“What I don’t think you understand is what Meredyth is willing to do because of that world view. We aren’t talking about someone who is overtly delusional here. We aren’t talking about the kind of looking at the world that other people recognize as dangerous, but it is. She wants things -- not just for herself, but for the whole world. She doesn’t care what she has to trample on to get there. She only cares about making it happen.”
“Connor,” Anna had begun gently. “I know that there are a hundred different ways that Glimpse could be used wrongly, but it is not some sort of all powerful device that is going to grant the user whatever they desire. It’s a tool. It provides information, and the information that it provides is only as good as the information that goes into the calculations. Meredyth would have to . . . .”
“She could do it, Anna,” Connor had interrupted her. “She knows the right people. She has connections from her father. She knows the governmental circuits. She knows who leads and who can be led. She knows who can be pushed and who has to be worked around. I know it seems farfetched and like I should have black helicopters circling around my head, but you know it’s possible.”
Anna hadn’t started talking right away. She had only been looking beyond him with an expression that implied that she was watching something click into place inside her mind. He had thought she was still listening though, so he had continued talking.
“It would take time and resources, but she’s got both. She’s dedicated. She’s patient when she has to be. She’s obsessed. It would take trial and error. She would have to try different tracks and each one of them would open up the possibility of something going wrong that gets her efforts busted. But, she could do it. It would take decades, but she could do it.”
Anna had blinked and refocused on him. “She doesn’t need the program then.”
“Your program could eliminate a lot of the trial and error. Glimpse in Meredyth’s hands would completely change the time frame. What would have been a possibility over the course of a couple of decades would expand into a near certainty over the course of just a few ye
ars.” He had allowed that to sink in for a moment.
“Do you even realize what the world looks like after that?” He had asked her. “The practical, reality version of it?” He had prompted wanting her to really, truly process what he had been telling her. “Can you even wrap your head around a world where everyone is ‘safe’ because there is no possibility of choosing any other way to be?”
She hadn’t offered him an answer. He hadn’t expected one. He had walked out and spent the rest of the night pondering what had possessed him to shove his worries in Anna’s face like that. She had needed more information, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had overshared just to make himself feel better. When he tacked on the realization that the next day would bring about another meeting between Lia and Kyle, he had pretty much nixed any possibility of sleeping. That hadn’t helped his mood any, so he found himself hiding in his office trying to sort out his issues. That was coming to an end. He pushed himself up from the desk. He couldn’t hide any longer. He had things to do. He had a lot of things to do before he went to Anna’s to hear about Kyle’s meeting.