May 2 Prompt

Unboxing and finding something from the past

This is a follow up to this story of mine from long ago - reading the story first might help. The First Time They Met - (link at bottom)

The red table was littered with papers and files in an order which, most of the time, only Sherlock could understand. 

Joan hesitated. She took a breath, “You have a moment?”

He glanced up from the table’s mess. There was an odd look on her face and she fidgeted with something behind her back. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. Remember last week when I picked up a couple of boxes from my mom’s? Stuff from my old room, books and things?” She paused.

“Mm hmm.” 

Joan squinted, “I was just going through one of the boxes and found something … something that triggered a memory. I … uhm …” She pulled out a chair, sat and leaned in. “Did you ever visit New York when you were little? Like around age seven or eight?”

He knitted his brow and stopped to think. It was a time in his childhood he chose to forget as much as possible. “That was around the time my mother ‘left’.” Sherlock made a point of using air quotes.  “Yes … actually, yes. Father brought me with him to New York in hopes of distracting me. It was like jangling keys in front of a crying baby … it had little effect.” He stared silently as old pain tried to make its way forward. “Why do you ask?”

“This is going to sound weird but I found this notebook and it reminded me of something long forgotten…meeting a small boy at the park one afternoon when I was around seven years old. He was investigating strange markings and I joined in,” she handed him the notebook. “We never exchanged names. He had an accent … British. And he had a magnifying glass…”

He flipped through the notebook’s pages. “And you had a copy of James and the Giant Peach,” he whispered.

They stared at each other in wide-eyed wonder until they could no longer keep in the beaming smiles and joy of meeting an old friend.

Collected Shorts - Chapter 6 - NairobiWonders - Elementary (TV) [Archive of Our Own]