Penelope straightens the hood of her parka and clears her throat. “So, Wallace, where do you want to die?”
I suppose blunt questions run in the family, Nelle thinks, remembering a night of fireworks, her first conversation with someone other than Quill, the bees in her stomach. James. He pierces her memories of the last six months like an arrow. Where is he now? New York? Why isn’t she there ...Why did I fly back here?
“Calton Hill,” Quill says. “Before the sun rises, so we can be alone.”
The hike from Terry’s café in New Town to the foot of Calton Hill is hard. Nelle trudges up the lamplit streets behind what she can’t believe she thinks of as her family, wrestling with her guilty conscience. A part of her can’t wait to see Quill die. Never to be scared that he is going to hurt her again. He doesn’t deserve her forgiveness, and yet ... her chest twinges like a wounded bird when she imagines him dead.
“Quill,” she says.
He flinches. “Yes?”
“When the police officer came to our house, you told her that Eleanor survived. That she moved to Scotland with her grandparents after the fire. Why’d you lie?”
His mouth hardens. “The night of that fire was the worst of my life. Eleanor did die. She and Bianca both. I dragged them both out to the front yard, but it was too late. Carbon monoxide poisoning.” He laughs bitterly. “I just wanted to bring my baby back.” Tears choke him up, but he continues. “Eleanor’s birth certificate, social security card, and passport were all I could save from the fire. I knew how my mother was created. And how she made me. So I did the same. I lied to the police officer because I’d lied to the government. Legally, Eleanor never died. Legally ... she became you.”
Nelle tries to imagine the little girl who came before her.
“Do I look like her?”
“When you were an infant, you did.” Quill studies her sideways. “I had plans. I lied about her death because I wanted you to fill her place. To live in the world as Eleanor.”
“But you didn’t let me leave the house.”
“I’ll admit, I was scared for too long. But before James, I was starting to loosen up. I let you go to the library, remember? And then on the Fourth. I was testing your limits. How you responded to the world. How dangerous you could be if you weren’t writing for yourself.”
Nelle scoffs. “So it was never your plan to let me be free?”
“No.” Quill’s dark eyes fall onto her, and Nelle is not sure what he sees. Maybe shards of himself, maybe the truth of her last couple of months. “That was never my plan.”
At the top of the hill, a castellated Gothic tower stands over them like a shadowy spire with a cross at the top. Down a path, the National Monument’s long line of columns rises like a structure out of ancient Greece. Beyond that, the glittery city crawls to the sea. It’s no Paris or New York, but from above, Edinburgh has its own starlit shimmer.
“Here?” Penelope gestures to a shaded bend in the path, where roots have grown over dead grass and lichen.
Quill shakes his head and cuts through the trees.
Nelle ducks beneath low-hanging branches, climbing over rocks and roots after him. She emerges on a stretch of grassy hill dotted with ancient stones. All of Old Town splayed out in evening blue, windows reduced to luminous or dark squares, the peak of Arthur’s Seat like the hunched back of a sleeping giant.
“Right here,” says Quill.
If Nelle were the one choosing to die, this place wouldn’t be half bad. The wind is rough, and the air splices to the bone, but the utter freedom of the view ...
Penelope catches up to them, impressively composed after the long hike.
“I’ll only ask you this one last time, Wallace,” she says. “Is this what you want?”
He looks his grandmother dead in the eye. “Yes.”
“Then you know what to do.”
Nelle holds her breath, confused by the feeling of gratitude that fills her. Somehow, she is a witness to this strange wrinkle in the fabric of the world. A man created by mystical means, leaving by mystical means. A balance struck. It suddenly doesn’t feel wrong at all, but almost correct. Like Quill’s purpose has always been to return to the liminal space from which he originates.
Wallace Quill opens a pocket-size journal, pulls a fountain pen from his coat, and writes.
He looks up, surrounded by the shadows of dawn, and meets Nelle’s eye.
Then he’s smoke, coiling away in the mist.
And he is gone. Really gone.
