| Epilogue - The epilogue to Dolphins at Daybreak Rome Point North Kingstown, RI |
| Six months later... Standing at the very tip of Rome Point, Dirk Alvarez shook his head slightly as he gazed at the view of Narragansett Bay spread out before him. It contained a magnificent vista of Jamestown and Aquidneck Islands but did nothing to lighten the leaden feeling in his stomach. This is where it had all started several months ago. He turned away from the beauty and headed back to the path leading into the woods. A short walk ahead lay the point where his co-worker had begun her slow demise as an agent of FLEEA. When he reached the spot where Jessica had found her first letterbox he gave a long sigh. He barely noticed the quahogger wading through the water by the Hummocks, scaring up the swans as he pulled a small float with his bivalve reward behind him. This had seemed like such a simple task when he had assigned it to Jessica several months ago. He uncovered Rubbermaid box from the small pile of rocks. There on one of the later pages was her flowing handwriting. At some point in her assignment she had ceased being a law enforcement agent and had become what she was assigned to apprehend. He carefully replaced the box under the pile of rocks, unable to bring himself to confiscate the box as evidence of the growing civil disobedience that was letterboxing. He returned to the trail, staying to the right and slowly headed back in the direction of his car. Jessica had been more than just a friend and an employee to him. She had secretly been the love of his life. For two years he had been trying to work up the courage to share his feelings with her when she had finally disappeared for good. He barely noticed the water of the cove sparkling through the trees on his right as he strode along the trail, lost in thought. He stopped short as he realized that the path split under the power lines and decided to take the less worn path to the left. Over the past several months Jessica had grown increasingly distant; her weekly reports were submitted late with scanty information. When she did show up for work she failed to turn in the boxes that she had found but her notebook was becoming filled with stamps from the evidence she had uncovered. Finally last week she had stopped showing up altogether. Rumor had it that she had left for the Pacific Northwest where letterboxing was also beginning to spread like a virus through the population. Shortly after passing a long cement foundation on his right Dirk glanced up and saw a huge split rock ahead. He followed the trail around the rock and noticed that a very large tree seemed to be growing out of it. He walked up to the tree and saw that it was nearly dead and the trunk as hollow as his heart had become. He pulled the only reminder that he had left from Jessica out of his breast pocket. Her notebook filled with all the stamps from the various letterboxes she had discovered. He could no longer bear to keep it. He looked at the hollow tree; there was no safe place to hide it here. Instead, he turned due east and returned to the path, where he came face to face with a large oak on the trail. He glanced into the woods on the east side of the trail and saw remnants of a stone wall. He took 14 long strides southward and noticed, on his left, a faint trail, such as a deer trail. He was drawn to follow this trail further east for a short distance to the crumbling stone wall. He felt a pang of recognition, for his hopes also were crumbling. He stepped over the wall at its lowest point, and turned around to face it. He had to face it. He had metally retraced the past months as he had hiked through this place, and as he turned around to see where he had been, he was jolted by the sight of the wall, eroded and decayed, tumbling down at his feet, just like his hopes for reuniting with Jessica. On the east side of the wall, low and about 5' to his left, Dirk buried the notebook under lichen-green stones. With this act, he said good-bye to her and quickly returned to the trail, heading south and west to the sandy dirt road and his waiting car. Many thanks to Mary (from RI) and Dan for helping Dirk to find a safer place for Jessica's journal... Before setting off be sure to read the waiver of responsibility and disclaimer. LBNA Homepage Kurdziel Homepage |
 |
|