The Book of Doors

by Gareth Brown

This is the Book of Doors. Hold it in your hand, and any door is every door.

“It’s been so hard. It’s a wound that won’t heal and I spend my life alone, reading my books and staying in. Maybe if I can tell you things, maybe it will all be different and I can still be at home, reading in the workshop while you work.” The look he gave her was one of concern, but it was tinged with disappointment, she saw, and she heard how pathetic her own words sounded. “Cassidy,” he said. “What you are talking about, that’s just life, no two ways about it, and you just need to get on with things.” Her brow creased in frustration. He didn’t understand. “You don’t have a right to be happy, Cassidy. Look at me, look at my life. I lost my wife and my daughter, I work every day to put food on the table and just about manage to keep my head above water. But it’s never easy. There’ve been times when I went hungry, when I couldn’t pay the bills. Happiness is not something you sit and wait for. You have to choose it and pursue it in spite of everything else. It’s not going to be given to you. And that stuff you are talking about, missing the house, missing me. That’s just growing older. You think I don’t miss your grandmother? I do. Every day, in every breath, every moment we would have shared together. But you have to let things go or it will eat you up. Let things pass.” “I don’t want to,” she said through her tears. “Nobody does. But you have to.”

Don’t waste your life hidden away in your own mind. Make the most of the time you have, otherwise before you know it, you’ll have no time left.”