“I can’t find them!” Jim shouts through the door. He’s looked everywhere he could think to, but his keys remain hidden and lost.

“Did you check the countertops?” Sherlie asks, hobbling down the hall with her walking stick. “You always leave them–“

“Yes,” Jim cuts her off. “I have looked in every conceivable spot and found nothing.”

Sherlie studies Jim a moment. He’s flummoxed again and glowering. It’s a shame, really, because he used to be so sharp. Still is when he feels like it, but age has been catching up with both of them for some time.

He grumbles and stalks inside to check the countertops again, mistaking her pause as a challenge. Always. Is it truly a mistake, though? Neither can tell anymore.

“What about by the couch?” Sherlie asks as Jim roots around the kitchen.

“They wouldn’t be over there,” Jim calls back.

“But did you check?” she asks. “Things have a way of–“

“Don’t metaphor me, woman, I’m not in the mood.”

Sherlie purses her lips, her grip tightening on her walking stick, but otherwise, she doesn’t react. He gets like this sometimes. It’s no excuse, but it happens so rarely nowadays she hardly thinks of it.

She hobbles back to her chair in the sitting room to pick up her paper with the crossword. They’ve been getting trickier lately, what with her not keeping up with the cultural things anymore. Not that she did to start, but it was easier to follow when she was younger. She didn’t have to devote much time to it, she just knew and picked up things. No longer, and it was too much work to try. But the crosswords still beckoned with their tiny black and white tiles.

She and Jim had a bit of a competition running on who could solve the day’s crossword fastest. It was currently a tie, but Jim was more and more distracted by his lost objects. Quite a reversal of roles, if her recollections were correct, and even with her own mind in slow decay, she’s not often incorrect.

Today it was his keys. There was a chance he lost things on purpose. She no longer had the energy to delve into the purposes and complexities of his moods.

There was also a chance that she took his things to see how long it took him to find them. The case for this option was strong for the lost keys, as they lay behind her teacup on the end table between her chair and the couch.

If he thought to look in the sitting room as she suggested, he would have no trouble finding them. But she knew how proud he was, and that would always be his downfall.

Almost like that time they took a trip to that waterfall shortly after they’d first met. They’d heard a lot about each other at that point, but some providence had kept them separate for longer than either thought necessary. And yet.

What was that place called again? She couldn’t quite remember, the name at the edges of her fraying mind, just over the edge. Ready to be called back, but her mind not strong enough to pull at it. Frustration ate at her throat. She took another sip of tea. At least he still knew how to brew a decent cup.

They both dreaded the day they could no longer hold a pen or make a decent brew, and they also knew that day was coming swiftly.

So their games intensified to keep that day as far from their minds as possible.

“Sherlie!” Jim called from the kitchen. “Where are those damned keys?”

She smiled into her cup and said nothing until after she’d taken another calming taste.

“You should check the sitting room, Jim,” she said as if it were the most natural thing for his keys to be in the room he so rarely spent time in.

“They wouldn’t be there!” he shouted back to her, but he stormed in a moment later. His face was pink with rage. Did his hands shake just slightly from the same emotion? They did. Pleasure at his frustration calmed Sherlie more than it should have.

“Perhaps you should take a look in the bedroom?” she suggested. If he didn’t see them now, his wit was truly lost.

He grunted but made no comment. The only reason they would be in the bedroom was if he had a late night at work; something he hadn’t had in over three years.

After a long moment of standing and staring, his face lost its vexed color and he deflated with a muttered, “Damn you, woman.” But there was softness there. They did enjoy these games. Perhaps too much.

She smiled to herself as he took the keys and left without another word. He was smiling, too, even if it was only a hidden grin that she alone knew to look for when he was pleased.

fiction prose Writings aging fiction getting old gettingold holmes holmes and moriarty james moriarty jamesmoriarty jim and sherlie jim moriarty jimandsherlie jimmoriarty moriarty serial post serial stories serial story series series post sherlock and moriarty sherlock holmes sherlockandmoriarty sherlockholmes short fiction short story story story blog story series