I was halfway back to my hotel when I realized my bracelet was gone.
Chapter 27
On Thursday night, I flip through the remaining pages in Beckett’s book. This is it. Tomorrow is the last day of school. Evan’s waiting to hear from me. Beckett’s waiting to hear from me. Summer starts in less than twenty-four hours, and I have nothing planned.
It’s time to finish this,I decide.
I take my hacky sack off my nightstand, appreciating the instant comfort it offers. I flip the book open to the dog-eared page.
Here goes nothing.
I felt terrible that Harmony was running late to get back to her mom, but my body shifted into adrenaline mode. I jumped in the shower, rinsing quickly—more to wake up than for hygiene purposes—and located the last clean outfit in my bag. I dressed as fast as I could, then scanned the room to make sure there was nothing I forgot to pack.
That was when I saw the basket. The incense, bread, sugar, and matches were wrapped neatly in a black cloth napkin. I toyed around with the idea of burning it, but the clock read 9:34, and with every passing moment, I was getting later and later for my departing flight.
I called for another cab, then closed my bag. I went over to the safe and removed my laptop and passport, then grabbed my phone charger and placed them all in my backpack for easy access. I slid my phone into my pocket. I took one last look at the room, deciding that I didn’t need the incense. I was already as lucky as I could possibly get.
So I left it there and checked out of the bungalow.
The ride to the airport was only fifteen minutes long, and it was barely 10:00 by the time I printed my boarding pass from the JetBlue kiosk. I had time. My heart rate slowed. The big blue board that listed all the flights for the day showed that our flight, JetBlue 1117, was on time, departing from Gate 7 at 11:58 a.m.
No worries.
I walked through the outdoor corridors connecting one area of the airport to another, marveling at the giant fans they had jacked up with water spray to keep passengers cool as they waited on lines. Filled out the form and went through customs. Took off my shoes and went through the scanner at TSA security.
Finally, after maybe forty minutes of lines and steps, I emerged in the waiting area for the few airlines that flew out of Aruba.
I looked around. Gate 7 was a stone’s throw from where I waited, just like all of the gates, which ran down a single corridor. There weren’t any shops aside from a lonely tax and duty-free store and a little souvenir stand. To the right of those two shops was a Cinnabon.
I’ll get a box of Cinnabons for us,I thought.That way, when Harmony gets here, we can have breakfast.
I stood on the line, studying people at the gate in their various states of waiting. An elderly woman was being read to by a younger caretaker, which struck me as sweet. A middle-aged couple ignored each other by the window, each on a device, with AirPods plugged into their ears to drown out the noise. Near them, a little boy faced the floor-to-ceiling windows pointing at a plane taking off while a man with a full head of gray hair crouched beside him. Despite feeling a pinch in my chest (the kind that comes when a sad memory sneaks up and surprises you), I focused my attention back on the menu board, trying to figure out how Harmony would like her coffee; she’d absolutely need some after the night we’d just had. Shuffling toward the counter, I ordered a box of four cinnamon rolls and two lattes, deciding that either Harmony and I could share mine and her mom could have the other one, or I could just order a third when they arrived.
I paid for the food and turned back around to survey the terminal and find a place to sit. I began walking, absentmindedly balancing the paper tray of hot beverages in one hand and the Cinnabon box in the other. My eyes were drawn back to that boy and his father watching the airplanes at the window. But as I walked toward the bank of chairs, the boy—who couldn’t have been more than three or four years old—bolted across the carpeted floor toward a younger woman who looked like she might have been his nanny. She was rail-thin with long, blond hair, a backpack in her lap, and some kind of snack in her hand.
Sometimes, the moments that define your life path happen so fast they’re almost impossible to recount. This was a recurring theme in my work in progress. In the space-timecontinuum, there are four dimensions: the three obvious dimensions that make up matter are length, width, and depth, but the fourth, less tangible element is time. Lots of research has been conducted about the space-time relationship, because while we can move in any direction through space, we can only move forward through time. Some theorists believe that the ability to go back in time might exist if a break, or a tear, were to occur in the space-time continuum. In my manuscript, the son, Mark, lost his father in that sort of break. It was the equivalent of a black hole.
Just one small break can make you lose everything.
The boy by the airport window tripped and fell down, scraping his bare knees on the industrial carpeting.
He let out a wail.
The man stood up and turned away from the window to go take care of him.
I saw the man’s face. It was an expression of concern, of worry.
Of love.
What I didn’t see was the duffel bag in front of me on the ground.
My foot got caught in the bag’s strap, and I tripped also, just like the boy.
I only knew the coffee spilled because I could feel myself lying in a warm puddle of hot liquid, though later, I’d be told that part of it was the blood leaking from the side of my head.
I didn’t know I cracked my skull on the metal armrest of an airport gate area chair.
All I knew, collapsed in a heap on the ground, was that the man by the window was definitely my father.
