“I’ve been trying to do that for months, but I don’t even know what I need to work through, or why it all hurts so much. I hurt her. She hurt me. But the worst part is that I miss her. I don’twantto process and move on. All I really want is to be with her again, but she’s not here.”
For three months, James has feared those words, thinking they would shatter atmospheres and tectonic plates, open skyscraper-swallowing sinkholes in the street, kick-start avalanches, explode dormant volcanos, push tsunamis to rise, summon meteors from the sky.
Instead, snow falls. The streetlight flickers amber.
“I can’t believe I admitted that.”
Lucy nudges his shoulder. “Was it hard?”
“No,” he says. “Not at all.”
Chapter 29
Nelle is on a plane back to New York when she has the dream, brought on by a double shot of vodka. She is surrounded by smoke. From the haze comes a rumble like hundreds of people murmuring. Two recognizable voices cleave through. Quill and Penelope, holding each other, calling out for her. She can see only their faces, distorted in pain.
Nelle snaps awake, snorting. She drifted too close to the woman on her right, who has been dutifully reading an Amish romance novel since the microwave meals were served. Nelle apologizes softly and sits upright.
Back in London, it hit her like a bus. An epiphany that plopped into her mind while she sipped a hot latte and stared out an overlarge window at a gray street.
She misses James.
She did everything she set out to do, and yet the last three months left a sour taste in her mouth. Every mystery novel, evening drive, glass of wine, and forgettable man carved her out, scooping until she was hollow. It all felt pointless without James. Who cares what that crackpot Chika said? Kissing James again would heal Nelle’s heart instantly.
So she hopped on a plane to New York.
Her planwasto show up at Jessie’s apartment and tell James that she wants him back, but now she can’t stop thinking about Penelope and Quill, screaming like coyotes in her dream. Quill she couldn’t care less about, but she can’t shake her great-grandmother’s anguished shrieking.
If James is in New York, he can wait. Nelle needs time to prepare for their reunion, anyway. Answers to his inevitable thousand questions. A pang hits her as she thinks over whatshewill askhim. Did he get into school? Can she read his novel? Has he started seeing someone else? She pushes the thought aside.
What if Penelope is in trouble, and Nelle’s the only one who can help?
Though she hates to admit it, her great-grandmother’s forewarnings have come to fruition. Wreckage follows Nelle. Flooded cities, shattered vertebrae, heartbroken men.
Even if her dream is just a dream, she needs to forgive Penelope, face to face.
The plane drops below the clouds, and Nelle presses her nose to the window. Below, James’s new home sits like a city made of silver dimes, swelling into the East River. Bridges stretch across the water like spiderwebs. Nelle turns away. She doesn’t want to see what she can’t have.
It’s torture, waiting for the jolt of the wheels hitting ground. The plane taxis to the gate, and disembarking begins. Nelle shuffles off the claustrophobic exit ramp in a line of slow-footed passengers, turns around at baggage claim, and books a seat on the next flight to Edinburgh.
She lands at midnight. Takes a cab from the airport. Dark stone houses rise like hedges on either side of the road, interspersed with parks and restaurants and cafés. Edinburgh has a coziness that other major cities lack. Shops along the street sell wool sweaters, cafés serve pots of tea and beans on toast, print shops and publishers operate from centuries-old buildings.
Her favorite parts of the city are closed at this hour, of course, and when the cab lets her out at the bus station near the city center, shediscovers that there are no routes to Scourie, and nonenearScourie, until tomorrow.
She runs back out to the street and flags down the cab before it pulls off.
“Where to now?” asks the driver.
This part she hasn’t thought through at all. “Any suggestions?”
“You’re askingme? Er, there may be a couple of small spots open still. Were you wanting more of a pub or café?”
“Café.”
Nelle’s eyes shut after she is buckled in. Exhausted from back-to-back transatlantic flights, the thought of coffee sends her into a dreamlike state ... espresso, cinnamon on foam, and black, aromatic beans.
“It’ll be ten minutes, all right?” says the driver as he pulls away.
She lets her forehead rest against the cool glass until her thoughts spin away.
