May 8—There wasn't a candle sitting atop the fireplace.

Normally, this sort of situation wouldn't be alarming. By my rough estimate, the narrow shelf above our living room fireplace is candleless some 96% of the time, the space instead filled with our usual collection of books, toys, and dust.

But this was one of those rare times when there should also have been a candle sitting there ... one of those tiny glass-jarred ones that Glade makes and sells in two packs. Wandering Stream was the scent, which sounds like it should make our house reek of dead fish and bear droppings, but disappointingly just has the generic, perfumey smell of any other scented candle. Just a few days before, I'd set the thing on the far left corner of the mantel and let it burn for a while to mask the scent from one of our cats' recent excursions to the litter box.

Now, it clearly wasn't there. I searched the mantel twice, tiny cardboard coffin of Diamond matchsticks rattling in my hand, just to be certain. Nothing.

I believe I said, "That's weird," although it may have been something more nebulous, like "Huh" or "Hmm." Ostensibly, I was talking to myself, but my goal was to prod a reaction from my wife, stretched out on the couch and feeding her masochistic tendencies by scrolling through Facebook on her phone.

When she didn't respond, I tried the more direct approach.

"Did you move the candle?" I said.

"What candle?" was her response.

"The candle that was on top of the fireplace."

"Is it not there?" she asked.

I checked again just to ensure the thing hadn't hidden itself from view. It hadn't.

"No," I said.

"There's a candle in the bedroom," she told me, although I already knew that.

"Yeah," I said, growing more frustrated and perplexed as I searched the mantel for a third time. "There were two of them. I put one in the bedroom and one out here. Remember?"

"Not really," she said. "But if you did, it's got to be somewhere."

"Yeah," I said, scanning every other shelf in the living room and then dropping to the floor to see if it had somehow inexplicably fallen and rolled under our furniture. "It's got to be somewhere."

Turns out, that's not strictly true. Unless, of course, "somewhere" isn't restricted to locations within our house. Because a thorough, 10-minute search of the place may have revealed my need to straighten up more frequently, but no candle.

"Maybe someone walked off with it during Arlie's birthday party," I hypothesized upon my return to the living room and another fruitless search of the mantel. "There were a lot of people coming and going."

"Why would someone take that?" she said.

"I don't know where else it could be. It's just gone."

"Glitch in the matrix," she said.

"A glitch in the matrix," she repeated, then explained that some people rationalize mysterious disappearances and other mundane but mysterious changes in what they believe to be true as something akin to scratches in the vinyl record of reality. Sometimes, when the needle hits these marks, the music skips, then resumes in a slightly different place.

"So, a blip in reality has caused our candle to disappear?" I said.

"Could be," she said, and then, "Why don't you just get the candle from the bedroom and move it out here?"

A few moments later, I returned from the bedroom and placed the glass-enclosed candle on the mantel where I know for certain its twin had been just days before. I flicked a match alight and set the wick to burning. I stood there for a few silent moments and watched the flame dance.

"Where could that candle be?" I said to no one in particular.

"Maybe it'll turn up," she said, clearly unconcerned by the potential deviation in our understood reality.

"Yeah," I said. "Maybe."

But as the overpowering scent of something that smelled nothing like dead fish or bear droppings filled my nose, I couldn't help but wonder if that was true.

ADAM ARMOUR is the news editor for the Daily Journal and former general manager of The Itawamba County Times. You may reach him via his Twitter handle, @admarmr.

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