“You know how much she hurt me. You know.” Lucy’s eyes were filled with tears, but she refused to blink, refused to shed them. She’d shed enough tears in her life over her sister.
Jack put his hand over his heart and said, “My kingdom for five minutes. Please?”
Something in his voice, his eyes, gave her pause, made her think her pain was causing him pain. Even in her anger, her shock, her sadness, she remembered that his books had gotten her through the worst years of her life. She might not owe him much, but she could give him five minutes.
“Five minutes,” she said.
“Thank you, dear girl. My office?”
On leaden feet, she walked down the hall to his writing factory. She felt like a kid again, scared and unsure. Jack opened the door for her and let her in. He pointed to the old sofa, the same one she’d sat on at thirteen, but she shook her head.
“I’ll stand,” she said.
He didn’t argue, just sat behind his desk.
“It’s fun, isn’t it?” he said. “Reading all about people facing their fears. Not so much fun to do it yourself.”
“I’m not afraid of Angie. I hate her. There’s a difference.”
“I know fear when I see it,” he said. “Trust me. I see it in the mirror every morning.”
Lucy glared at him. “What are you afraid of? You’re rich. You can buy anything you need or want.”
“I can’t buy time. No one in the world can buy time. All those wasted years of my life…I can’t buy them back. And if there was one thing I would buy if I could, it would be the time I wasted running from what I was afraid of instead of facing it.”
His voice trembled with regret. Lucy sank slowly down onto the sofa.
“What do you regret?” she asked. He’d achieved so much—fame, wealth, the love and adoration of millions…
He sat back in his chair and gave a little whistle. Thurl Ravenscroft flew over from his perch and landed on Jack’s wrist. He stroked the bird’s graceful neck.
“I wanted to be a father,” he said. He pointed at her. “Bet you didn’t know that about me.”
“No, I didn’t know that about you. Why—”
“Oh, you know why. Even now, it’s hard for a single man, especially a single gay man, to adopt children. Imagine how impossible it seemed thirty years ago when I was young enough to do something so brave and stupid as try to be a father on my own.”
“It wouldn’t have been stupid. Brave, maybe, but not stupid.”
“My writing career was just getting started,” he said. “I used that as an excuse to put it off. Then I was in love with someone who didn’t love me back. That old song and dance. After that I was famous, and I used that as another excuse to put it off. Fact is, I was worried the truth about me would get out, and schools would ban my books. And if you think I’m being paranoid, let me remind you that a cute little book about two male penguins raising a chick is still one of the most banned books in America, Land of the Free.”
“I’m sorry, Jack. You would have made an incredible father. Better than mine. Not that that’s saying much, but I…God, I wanted you to be my father so bad when I was a kid. You know that.”
He gave her a wan smile. “Hugo tells me you know about Autumn?”
She paused before replying. “He told me, but you could have told us. We would have understood.”
“I’ve always believed that children should never have to worry about adults, that something’s gone very wrong when they do.”
“I believe that too,” Lucy said. “But we’re not kids anymore.”
“You are to me.” He smiled at her. “And Autumn…after that phone call with her, I contacted my attorney. I wanted a police investigation of her father. I would pay for it myself if I had to. Stupid old man…I thought I could save her, bring her here, adopt her. In my heart, she was already my daughter. And then she was dead all because of me and the promises I couldn’t keep. What kind of father…”
“You aren’t the one who made her want to run away in the first place. You just gave her somewhere to go, somewhere she knew she would be safe, if she could only get there. I mean, that’s what Clock Island is to kids. Even the kids who’ll never ever come here, they can go to Clock Island in their imaginations. When things got too bad in my real life, I came here in my dreams. It helped.”
“That’s sweet of you to say, but I admit that for years I’ve wishedClock Island had never existed—on the pages of my books or under my own two feet. She might still be alive.”
“Don’t wish Clock Island away,” she said. “Too many of us need it. I started reading the books to Christopher the first night he came to stay with me. He’d found his parents dead that morning, and he was…lost. In shock. A zombie. Then I got out the books and started reading. Got to the end of chapter one, and I asked him if he wanted me to stop. He shook his head, and I kept reading. The next day, he asked me to read him another Clock Island book. The stories brought him out of the bad place he was stuck in. And me. And Andre. And Melanie. And Dustin. And Hugo.”
