Part VII: Time Warp 2000’s – Cut! #2 (Chapter 104)

December 15, 1987

Dear Mr. G. Byrnes:

Thank you for your detailed letter.

No need to apologize for your delayed response.

I really didn’t expect to hear from you; six months is a long time to wait before answering a classified ad.

Also, it doesn’t matter about the armed robbery conviction.

Murder might have been another matter; To be honest, I’m not sure I would have felt comfortable writing to a murderer, despite what I said in my previous letter.

However, it doesn’t matter that you’re in for another 15 years. Still, before we go any further, you should know that I can’t ever visit you; our relationship must remain strictly on paper.

Is that acceptable?

No photographs, okay?

And my husband must never know.

S. A. Weiss

*

January 1, 2001

Layer upon layer of family secrets.

Every generation has its ghosts and shadows. God knows I have dug out many of ours, both past and present.

But I never saw this one coming.

Candy’s exit from the family – and I’m still vague on the actual details – must have shocked my people into a collective amnesia, at the very least, an unspoken vow of silence.

Scant memory, few hints, although one now echoes faintly:

You’re my little Candy Kane.

Auntie.

Was she talking to me, or is this merely the bud of distant memory?

And, yet, the secret has resided deep within me.

Goodsam and Badsam, those twins of psychodrama.

I haven’t thought about those two imps since 1990, over 10 years ago.

I haven’t needed them.

But were they just trying to tweak my memory?

Today, they struggle to come to the surface once again.

But I no longer need my split selves, those twins of the superego and id, purveyors of good and bad.

I already have a twin.

Even though she was stolen from me.

Robbed.

We have unfinished business.

Go away.

Life itself is unfinished business.