Harold - 200 words

Harold - 200 words

by Jack Thrift


We return from France jet-lagged and hung over, loath to resume our workaday lives. Ella does errands, while I crash on the couch.

“Pictures!” she announces, returning.

We sip merlot and flip through the Paris photos. We laugh. We tease each other for the funny faces the camera caught us making and talk about how much we already miss the city.

“Hold on." I sit up. “Isn’t that Harold?”

There’s a man in the background of one of the pictures who looks an awful lot like Ella’s ex-husband. But no, it can’t be him: he’s in prison.

“Oh, God.” Ella shows me another picture. This one has Ella and me posing outside the Place de la Concorde. Harold is in the crowd milling behind us. “Is it?” she asks. “Could it be?”

“Impossible,” I say.

Twice could be a coincidence, but when Ella finds another picture Harold figures into, she goes around the house locking doors. Meanwhile, I'm thumbing through the stack of photos and spotting him in several more, always in some crowd in the background. I go looking for Ella, find her in the basement.

“Ella?”

“He’s here,” she whispers, pointing.

As I look, the lights go off.