The Probability Factor

Chapter Twenty Five – Probability

I know a lot of time has passed since Matthias was born, but things kind of exploded after his birth. Glorfindel quit the modelling world so he could pursue his love for directing film. He spends most of his time in Los Angeles, but has a penchant for filming his movies here in Vancouver. It means he spends some time with us at home, and he ended up giving Matthias the acting bug. Matty was five when he first began acting in small walk-on roles in Glorfindel’s movies, and now that he’s sixteen, he’s acting fulltime in a Sci-Fi show that shoots here for five months a year. He’s quite the heartthrob, according to the teen magazines. I guess his white-blond hair and light green-blue eyes doesn’t hurt, but I truly think that my husband’s strong physique, passed down to Matty, is the real ticket to hunkdom. Matty is a younger version of Haldir, but he has my lips and eyes, and most importantly, my sense of humour. Haldir has taught Matty many skills, but I think the most important is that of knowing who he is, especially in Hollywood where one can lose their identity so easily.

Haldir moved from being head of security of someone else’s firm to owning a very successful high tech security company, which has gained quite a reputation in Canada and the United States. Haldir is hoping to branch out to Asia and Europe, and in the next five years, he hopes to have branches in London, Paris, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. I’m hoping he hasn’t bitten off more than he can chew.

We moved out of Kitsilano, and now we live out in Tsawwassen, right on the beach. I love the schools and the local grocery stores, and the fact that I can walk the beach at night and still feel safe. Matty teases me about my penchant for midnight walks, but my neighbours got used to it relatively quickly. I was only confronted by the local police once, and that was because one of my neighbours didn’t know we had moved in down the beach from them, and thought I was some kid, looking for somewhere to break in. Once the police walked me back to our new home, woke my husband from a sound sleep and gotten a reasonable explanation, everything evened out. I just made sure I went around the next day and introduced myself to everyone on the beach.

I left my job with the Government, in order to raise Matty, and never went back. Now I write for an online magazine, and enjoy the perks of a husband who makes more than I do. The writing freed me up for shuttling Matty to and from auditions and to acting gigs. I like my life as it is now. I have a great husband, a son who makes me laugh and has promised to buy me a vacation home in Hawaii when he makes it big. I have that in writing, better safe than sorry, I say. Plus, I love to bug Matty by dragging out the contract when he’s being petulant with me over curfew or something stupid, as I remind him he owes me big and I’m waiting for my payback.

Glorfindel has a home in L.A., but stays in the guest bedroom whenever he’s in town. He’s had a few girlfriends throughout the years, but nobody ever stuck. Katherine hasn’t been around since Matty turned one, and I guess Glorfindel figures that he’s happier being single than attached. Glorfindel was a bit of a lone ranger back in Arda, too, so I can’t say I’m terribly surprised. He gets companionship when he wants it, and buries himself in work the rest of the time. Just like he did back in Arda. Some things never change.

Haldir was aging more gracefully than I, as he could pass for someone in their forties, and not someone who was fast approaching sixty, as it said on his “birth certificate”. My rush up to sixty was full of new grey hairs, creams to fight wrinkles that kept appearing on my forehead, around my eyes, and neck, and getting used to having breasts that slowly but surely were making their way down to my waist. Sure, I had all the plastic surgery help I could wish for, but I didn’t want to look like one of those women who couldn’t have an emotion if their life depended on it. I chose to age somewhat gracefully and only used hair dye and wrinkle cream. Plus, we ate well and exercised daily. I would make the hike up the hill to the mailboxes every morning at as fast a clip as I could manage without falling down and gasping for breath. We had a treadmill in the den, and I used that during mucky weather. Haldir has a metabolism that astounds me. He can go to the climbing gym for a few hours and look like he’d been putting in hours everyday at the gym.

Alistair and Steve had adopted a baby girl two years into their marriage, and now that she was a teenager, she would come out to hang out with Matty when her folks wanted time to themselves. Angie fancied herself a bit of an actress, but everytime Matty would get her an audition for something, she’d blow it, so her dreams of following in Matty’s footsteps were dashed everywhere but in her mind. Matty was the kind older “cousin” and never let on that he thought she was a terrible actress, even though he would complain to me about how Angie made him look to the producers and casting agents he had sent her to. I would tell him to stop sending her out, and break her lack of talent gently to her, but Matty has a soft heart and can’t hurt someone’s feelings even when they need to hear the truth.

Angie doesn’t know the truth about Matty and Haldir, and neither does her father, Steve, but Alistair keeps the secret close to his heart. Now that I am getting old and grey, I am becoming more and more concerned about Haldir and Glorfindel’s sailing once I passed, so I confided my fears to Al. Al promised me to make sure Matty would be all right, should he survive me, and Matty knew the scoop. While Matty knew the story behind his father and favourite “uncle”, he didn’t have the whole picture. He saw his father aging, albeit slowly, and I felt that maybe he thought we were telling him some kind of myth. I needed Al to make sure that when I passed, Matty was fully prepared to lose his father too. As far as I know, Matty would die just like I would, and would never see his father again, after Haldir and Glorfindel sailed. I had made a bargain with the powers that be to have my husband with me in this world, but now that we had a child, it sure made things that much more complicated.

My parents had passed within a year of each other a couple of years back. David and Patricia were a mess, as they had taken over the care of our parents when Mom and Dad got too feeble to be independent anymore. I saw my parents every few days, and it was hard to lose them, but somehow I didn’t suffer like David did. David worshiped the ground our father walked on, and when Dad went first, David lost it. Mom was doing very poorly, but David just couldn’t be there for her, so Patricia took up the reins. I did everything I could, but Patricia was the real hero with out mother. She even held Mom’s hand when she passed. I had just left for the evening, when Pat called me back to tell me that Mom left just a few minutes after I drove away from their house. I felt badly for weeks, as I had been there for Dad’s passing, but just missed Mom’s. Even though I had said my goodbyes, it was still hard to know that it was my sister-in-law that had made my mother’s passing easier, and not me. At least they had a long full life when they died, but Matty took having no grandparents hard. His cousins had their grandparents for longer than he had, so he felt gypped.

As for my friend, June, she had married Michael and had actually immigrated to Australia. She and Michael had two kids, now in their teens, too, and lived in the suburbs of Melbourne. I never thought June would move down under, but she loves it there and works at the University as the executive assistant to the Senior Vice-Principal for the school. I gather that’s like the President of the University, but I don’t usually talk to June about her work. We mostly talk about our kids, husbands, and what’s going on in our lives. Michael has some research job at a firm in Melbourne, but I have no idea what he really does. Frankly, I don’t really care. I don’t get into Haldir’s job with June, and she doesn’t get wordy about her husband’s work either. Haldir and I have gone down to visit June and Michael once, and June and Michael have made it back up to Canada once as well. It’s such a long flight, that I think it’s just a little more than we can handle for a couple of weeks at a time.

I’ve been trying to write a book about my adventure in Arda, but I just can’t seem to get things quite right. My life there was so fantastical, that I keep thinking that people wouldn’t believe a word I’ve written. Haldir is supportive, but I just can’t get over my insecurities about what I experienced. I’m rewriting what I have so far, and making it into a fantasy, or else people really won’t buy what happened. My editor at the online magazine is supportive of my foray into the real world of publishing, but it’s one thing to write for a magazine, and quite another to write “fiction”. As well, I’m not a spring chicken anymore, and I often wonder how my reception would be with the fantasy genre fans. Matty keeps telling me to write a script, because he knows the folks at SciFi would be interested in reading it, but I think I’m a little more comfortable with the book medium. Less chance of someone screwing up my work in the process of putting the work to paper.

One day last week, Haldir came up to me as I was doing the dinner dishes and wrapped his arms around my waist. He nuzzled my neck and kissed my cheek before he whispered in my ear, “Do you have any regrets?”

“What?” I asked, puzzled.

“Regrets. Do you have any?” he saw my blank look. “About us. Coming to Arda, and going home to Earth. Marrying me even though upon your death we will be separated forever?”

I had to think about that for a moment. “No. None. Even though you won’t join me in the afterlife, I am glad I got to spend even the shortest time here with you. You are my soulmate.”

Haldir hugged me closer to him. “Neither do I. I think finding you here was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to me. You have given me a life that I never knew existed. Thank you.”

I stared out the window, thinking, as Haldir held me. “I guess that could be attributed to the probability factor. While it may’ve been improbable for you to come here and meet me, you did. That makes it probable, not improbable. Call it destiny or fate, but mathematically you had to come to me because that’s what the math demanded.”

Haldir tilted his head as he thought about what I said. “Yes, I think you are right. It was probable that I would find you. That math is very intelligent.”

I turned to Haldir and kissed him deeply. “That’s the probability factor for you.”

I really don’t regret anything. Haldir loves me and I love him. We have a great son, and family and friends who love us. It seemed only probable that my life would end up this way, now that I think of it.