4.3.25 - The Book Keepers Dilemma pt 13

Parable 13: The Children Who Spoke From the Gaps

It began with a drawing.

The twins were on the floor, hunched over construction paper, sharing markers in relative silence. Father passed by, carrying a laundry basket, and caught a flash of something too symmetrical in their scrawl.

He set the basket down. Picked up the drawing.

A house. A flame in one corner. Two children standing outside. A woman in the window.

And a shadowed figure near the mailbox.

“Who’s this?” he asked, pointing at the figure.

One of the twins said, “That’s the other you.”

Father froze. “What do you mean?”

“The one that stayed after the fire,” the other said.

“You mean me?”

They looked at each other.

Then shook their heads.

“You’re the one that came back.”

That night, at dinner, the same twin asked, “Why don’t we visit Grandma anymore?”

“We haven’t visited Grandma since Christmas,” Mother said. “You remember that.”

“But she came last week. She brought the pink cake. She said Daddy looked better.”

Mother stopped chewing.

“There wasn’t any pink cake,” she said carefully.

The child frowned. “There was. You took a picture.”

Father checked his phone.

Nothing.

In the bathtub, the other twin said, “When you were gone, we had a different dad.”

“I was never gone,” Father said.

The child squinted at him.

“Not all of you.”

That weekend, Father found a sheet of paper tucked under one twin’s pillow.

A list. In shaky block letters:

“Things Daddy Used To Do”

• Put jelly on pancakes
• Say “boom boom boom” when we run
• Have lines by his eyes when he smiled
• Remember our birth story
• Talk about stars

He sat on the edge of the bed and cried without sound.

At bedtime, he tried to reclaim normal.

Told them a story.

Made it funny. Talking frogs. Rockets in the garage. A lion who wore socks.

They laughed. But when he finished, one twin asked, “Can you tell the one about the zoo again?”

“What zoo?”

“The one with the giraffe that looked like Mommy.”

“There’s no story like that.”

“Yes there is. You told it when we had three beds.”

He shook his head. “We’ve only ever had two.”

The child’s mouth twisted.

“You’re not doing it right.”

Later, Father asked Mother if she remembered the pink cake.

She didn’t respond.

Just stared at the sink.

He opened the junk drawer. Rifled through birthday candles, batteries, paper clips.

At the bottom, he found a photo.

Grandma.

Holding the twins.

A pink cake on the counter.

Everyone smiling.

Except him.

He wasn’t in the picture.

But in the corner—blurred—was someone who looked almost like him.

Wearing a red shirt he had never owned.

Smiling with a mouth that wasn’t quite his.

The twins were looking up at him like they knew him best.

He flipped the photo over.

Written in faint pencil:

“Version 3.9 – Temporary joy maintained. Rollback pending.”