“Gerald Rhinelander. Yes, that was a mystery.” Harold stood from his chair, motioning for them to follow.
They left their coffee on the table and walked after the older man as he zigged and zagged through the interconnecting paths of relics. Lance marveled at how quiet the building seemed. How still. Perhaps it was the passage of time suspended in increments everywhere he looked. The bottling of history all in one place instead of evenly spread out.
Harold came to a stop before a table with several leather-bound albums on its surface. He selected one from the rear of the table, a coat of dust layering its dark cover. He turned and flipped it open, squinting as he turned the stiff pages.
“Gerald Rhinelander was a young man who lived in this area back in the late sixties. Worked for your grandfather’s shipping company, actually, now that I think about it. He disappeared on the eighth of October, 1968. He was supposed to meet his ex-wife for dinner that night but never showed. She reported him missing the next day when she went to his house and didn’t see his car or any sign of him. The police finally went into his place when he didn’t turn up after a few days. Nothing seemed out of place. Actually, his wallet was still there.”
Harold flipped another page and then nodded, turning the album so Lance and Mary could read the clipped, faded article plastered beneath the clear plastic that held it in place. Lance read the brief report, no more than a blurb about Gerald’s disappearance, and searched for something that he would recognize within the print. Nothing jumped out at him, and Mary shook her head too, reading his thoughts.
“So did they ever find anything? Any leads or reasons for the disappearance?” Mary asked, handing the album back to Harold, who closed it and set it back in its place on the table.
“No, not really. Apparently they interviewed a few of his fellow workers and his supervisor, but everything came up a dead end. Some people said suicide, but that didn’t ring true either. That was why it was such a mystery. Why would a young man, in the prime of his life, suddenly up and leave a decent job, his home, and an ex-wife that he was trying to rekindle a relationship with? It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Why was he meeting his ex-wife? Were there children involved?” Lance asked.
“No, no children. From what I heard, he and his ex were merely trying to make amends. They had gotten married young and divorced young, but still lived in the same town. They were having dinner that night as a first date, so to speak.”
Lance frowned. Rhinelander didn’t seem to be anything other than a repeated name on his grandmother’s crossword. Perhaps she’d met him and he’d made an impression on her, since he had worked for his grandfather’s company. Maybe the name somehow seemed important to the torn rigging of her mind and she couldn’t get past the letters she wrote down each time she had pencil and paper.
Harold flipped through another album, his brow wrinkled in concentration. Mary shifted from foot to foot and gave a shrug as Lance looked at her, as if to say, It was worth a shot.
“This is the only other article I have on the disappearance,” Harold said as he handed the new album to Lance.
The column of print offset to the side of the page was just a few paragraphs, but that was not what held Lance’s gaze as his eyes widened in shock.
A black-and-white picture was pasted next to it. He could see light colored hair hanging carelessly over the man’s forehead and an easy smile on his face, the picture obviously one from a happy time in his life. The eyes twinkled at Lance through over forty years of time as he stared at Gerald Rhinelander, the main character from his novel.