Seeking Solace

It has been� years. Too long, I am ashamed to say. Holmes was once my closest friend, my one unchanging companion, and yet time and everyday life has the curious knack of drifting us apart from each other.

Times have changed. Society is becoming easier in its company, but I am an old man, an old doctor, set in his ways and caught in the grasp of a young woman who is my complete opposite.

Temptation is the biggest sin, after all.

Holmes never liked my current wife, the one and only time he met her, I remember. Perhaps it was the age difference, or the simple fact that they are as opposite as it is possible to be. She disliked him; he dismissed her � it all went wrong from there.

I was infatuated. I can allow myself to be blunt about it, now, in the beauty of hindsight. She was young and extraordinarily pretty, and she paid attention to me. I allowed myself to be fooled. My only warning was when she began to give her delicate, subtle hints, voicing her concern over my friendship with Holmes� making excuses why I should not visit him at this particular weekend, and the next, and the next.

When I kept visiting, the arguments began. Soon the weekend visits to Holmes became my solace for escaping the arguments, and her countless receipts, and the flirting with older men that I know went on. With Holmes, I was safe, and comfortable, and could sit and talk of old times and he did not make me seem like a doddering old fool. But then her sulks became long, and the weekend visits turned to monthly ones, and then to� none.

Beekeeping suits him. He will still leap to a case presented before him. His seven-per-cent solution is no longer an option. He has changed, and so have I.

The past sits between us like a cloud, a veil neither of us can find the courage to properly pierce. Can we leave so much unsaid and undone?

I walk closer and closer to him. He is in the garden, bent over something. He stands and a sense of such strong memory overcomes me. We are younger, hot on the scent of a new case, and so much has not happened. He has not died and resurrected; I have not married again and again, hunting for the ever-elusive domestic perfection that I always seek.

Perhaps it was always before me, and I just did not see.

He glances at me, and then freezes, watching me approach. He raises an eyebrow. �Watson.�

We live in new times now, in a time where close friends greet each other by their Christian names. But we are two old men, set in our ways. We are unchangeable, now.

�Holmes. I am� intruding,� I begin foolishly. �Forgive me. I-�

�Nonsense,� he says briskly. �You never intruded, Watson. Never.�

The silence is oppressive. It must be broken. I must speak; I must find the words. I do not know what to say; the words trip off my tongue. �May I stay? I know it is rash, and with no warning, but��

He smiles at me, a rare smile that I can count having seen on one hand. It is rare that he smiles or laughs without boding ill to anyone. �But, of course,� he replies easily. His eyes seem to gleam. �You are always welcome, my dear Watson.�

He knows. He knows it has the possibility of being a very extended visit. But then, he has always known everything about me.

He smiles at me again. The silence and his smile speak volumes.

I follow him inside. His presence expels the shadow of my ever-demanding wife to a fading mist on the wind. I am, for the briefest of moments, content.