Memoir of a Contract - Part Three

  At this point, Inge and I had befriended the church in our town and were spending most of our days there, with Alexander Diederich, a boy just a few years older than me. We spent so much time with him, Ophelia was often left to sit and listen to conversations she now had no part in. My brother and I never spoke of her to Alexander, keeping her to ourselves, and yet I think he noticed something, even then, because he would remark once in awhile on how Inge and I both had the bad habit of speaking to ourselves when no one was around. He always said he liked it.

  Eventually, Alexander told us of how he came to the church, and that he would talk to his parents. Even knowing that they were long since dead, he would speak out to the darkness, just to tell them something interesting each day.

  I never had the heart to tell him that they were there. That they could hear him.

  Despite all of our apparent obstacles and differences, we bonded with him quickly, and our family grew by one. Even if he was not ’special’ like my brother and I, he had this air about him. Looking back, I wonder if perhaps Ophelia saw something in him that we didn’t, and that perhaps that was why she did not pull Inge and I away from him as she had with so many others we had met…