“I came close to doing that a few times myself.”
I finish my drink. I lean forward on my hands.
“Are you finally going to tell me?” I ask her. “How you spent it?”
Sylvia stands. Here, in the moonlight, her edges softened, she could be any age. She could be a child. She could be ninety-one years old.
“I’m not going to tell you,” she says. “I’m going to show you.”
And then she reaches inside her pocket, like she’s pulling out a tissue, and hands it to me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I stare at the slender piece of silver in her hands. It looks exactly like mine did, before Stone, before that night. But I know instinctively it’s not. I haven’t looked, I went right to New York, but I knew if I were to open that box that the ticket would be gone. The only thing from the old life that would disappear.
“You have it,” I say.
Sylvia says nothing, just turns it over in her hands. The silver catches the glow of the moon and shines like a flashlight out here, illuminating her palm.
“Take it,” she says.
She tosses it, like a piece of paper, and I catch it. It’s light as a feather.
This is her ticket, her one do-over. She never spent it.
“Life moved only forward,” she says. “I didn’t want to tamper with it.”
“But—”
Sylvia shakes her head. “I made my choice, and now you have to make yours.” She stands. She turns to walk inside, and I stop her.
“Why?” I ask her. “Why give it to me and not Mom?”
Sylvia shrugs. She looks tired. “You’re here,” she says. “That’s what life mostly comes down to—where you are, and when.”
She walks inside. I see her pour a glass of water at the tap and then turn off the lights to the kitchen, and then she heads out to the back house.
I curl my feet underneath me and pull the blanket tighter around. The wind still whips, and the waves crash. I press the ticket into my palm.
We have the power now. We can do something about this.
I think about my father in that hospital bed, about my mother beside him. I think about all the choices that have led here, everything that was supposed to happen and did and then didn’t. Everything I owe my life to.
The magic of the ticket is obvious. It is not just a chance to get it right again but the chance to save someone we love. The most powerful force on the face of the planet isn’t water or wind or love. It is love directed. It is love in motion. It is life in the face of tragedy.
I sleep for a few hours on the couch, fitfully, and then, before dawn, I pack up the things Marcella requested and I get back in my car. As the sun pops up over the horizon, I feel the pain of the past twenty-four hours begin to dissolve. In another day, it will all be a distant memory, known only to me.
We can choose, I think. We can choose what story we stay in.
I turn off the 10 at La Cienega Boulevard. They’ve been doing construction for years and it’s always jammed, but this early there isn’t a car on the road save for a few pickups heading to early-morning construction jobs. I’m nearly alone.
I get there quickly, but I’m also not in a rush. I stop off for a coffee at Verve on Beverly. I pick up one for Dave and Marcella,how they like them. We have time now. We have so much of it—as much as we need.
I carry the coffees in a cardboard crate through the parking structure and two sets of elevators up to the second floor.
I shrug off my jacket and sling the overnight bag farther up my shoulder. Some of the coffee sloshes. I feel the hot pricks of liquid on my pinky finger and down my jeans. No matter. That will be gone, too.
I round the corner to room 372. I pull back the curtain.
