Deep somewhere cries pain, they say. It has been a week. But they cling to faith in probable grief. It is clear that they still believe all will be well. They reassure their visitors that nothing would shake their trust in providence. They claim the good do not perish, even if they did in form, remain immortal. Yet, they seem to crave for form more with every passing minute.
Everyone knows the Kxincs. None escapes notice in a small town anyway, many townspeople say. But the Kxincs are different, as others say. They are active in some areas, impossible to engage in others. This, many insist, makes them peculiar, not because of what they do but do not. This is perhaps why word is going round about them again.
Now there are two to listen, four prior to the fateful day it all started. Even now, people say they must all still be in touch. They claim it is the usual thing for the family to seek attention. Many consider the loss merely an act. No one has ever claimed though to know the reason why an elderly couple who helped found the town would be so attention-seeking to declare their children, themselves middle-aged adults missing, until now.
The person that claims to have the answer is himself a pioneer of the town. In fact, he arrived just days after the Kxincs where the town now stands also seeking solace from what most people in the town still call a soulless world. Things have since changed. Many now acknowledge the presence in their midst, of souls in which that world lingers, and which although hushed, they claim are the Kxincs.
It thus seems Mr. Zankcs has triumphed in a rivalry that is as old as the town itself. Even as they throng to their place to commiserate with them on their loss, it unlikely the irony of their hosts being the accused escapes the visitors’ souls cloaked in beleaguered mien. Indeed, the mix of what many of the visitors term the façade of faith is what they allude to when just outside the door after their visit sympathy sheds empathy, then itself, and the small talks start again.
Mr. Zankcs also visits days after the Kxincs sent emissaries to him. When someone asks why the man cannot seem to leave the past behind, having heard their side of the story just weeks earlier on a courtesy call to the Kxincs, the answer comes from the man himself who happens to walk in at the time, although not until he wonders aloud what has happened to the missing pair.
He says it is hard to forget love. He elaborates when pressed that it is even harder to recognize it will now remain just a dream. However, he evades why he blames the Kxincs for aborting his dream, particularly when he is clearly more affluent than they are, something they openly loathe. The Kxincs later provide an answer, but not until he left. It is upsetting they claim to see the man so obsessed with the past. They do not apologize for being together. They insist that it could not have been anyway else. They claim they were in love. They say just that Mr. Zankcs found the treasures and is rich does not mean anyone he chooses must reciprocate his love. They say he is smart, strong, and rich, but could never win the love he still craves.
Neither appears to remember the details of their arrival in the town, but they say he remains bitter to this day, and even claims he never married anyone else in the hope he would still win the heart of the one he claims he would love until death. They say they used to think he was deranged, but now know he is just jealous. Mr. Zankcs they insist knows what he wants and he seems quite willing to wait until he gets it.
Not that they think he ever would. The man is infirm now and, some say, moribund. This is why the Kxincs say they do not see him as a threat, although they hear people implicate him in their present quandary. He tells people the children, a pair of male twins, should have been his. He treats them just as his own. In fact, they both now run his business. As far as evident, he has no biological children. Indeed, many assume they would inherit his bounty.
Some claim the Kxincs do not like this situation, and only accept it because they need the funds their children provide. The Kxincs were subsistent farmers for many years and retired decades ago. Despite their claim to fame, which incidentally Mr. Zankcs disputes, and he is ever ready to blame a freak accident that injured his horse for the two-day delay that made the Kxincs arrive in the town before him, many see them as divisive. He even claims they rode his horses, the three-some friends from childhood, and that things might have been different if they all arrived at once.
Mrs. Kxincs never really denies dating the man.Even Mr. Kxincs admits, albeit reluctantly, that the relationship between his wife and Mr. Zankcs before they left home must have been more than platonic. Indeed, she sometimes says he is right the picture might have been different if her husband did not tag along at the last minute, not because they did not all arrive in town at the same time.
The missing pair soon resurfaces. Once home they are out again to Mr. Zankcs’ place, where he lays dying. They return to hear their parents tell some visitors they would not attend his funeral as they do not attend funerals, one of what they do not do that appalls many. What appears to stagger their children though, is the seemingly joyous mood of their father that is until Mrs. Kxincs’ indubitable bombshell.
Apparently, Mr. Zankcs died soon after the missing pair said goodbye to him and headed elsewhere. Before all present, including those there to wish the Kxincs’ well on the safe return of their children, and those there to deliver the news of Mr. Zankcs’ death, Mrs. Kxincs, seemingly alarmed to see her husband rejoice at someone’s death declares the deceased might have been right after all.
“Right about what?” Mr. Kxincs is visibly irate.
“That we should have been together”
“What?”
“Yes. Isn’t the spiritual connection between him and the twins something?”
