Elsewhere

by Dean Koontz

I dream of living in the 1930s, seeing Benny Goodman playing live in the Manhattan Room of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. Or of worlds that never were and never can be, Tolkien to Heinlein. I’m all about big bands and hobbits, just a consumer of wonder. But your mom … she created wonder, beautiful music. I could appreciate her work, I loved it, but she needed a bigger audience than me.”

The world at its worst seemed to want tears, and damn if she would give it what it wanted.

She strove for fame and wealth, certain they would bring happiness. Jeffy strove for happiness directly and found it in whatever the world brought him to his liking—Bakelite radios, Art Deco posters, fantasy novels, a wife, a child.

Tragedy was not the end of hope, but the birthing ground of a new hope,

For him, work was pleasant because it was also a chance to dream, and when work was done, the day was theirs for living out those dreams.

Love was not an act of reason, but a leap of faith, a belief that some mysterious meaning must lie behind existence and that two particular lives were fated to be one;