I nodded. There was no need to check; I could already hear the rhythmic crash of the Atlantic, could already feel the infinite emptiness of the Threshold stretching beyond the Door. A triumphant laugh rolled in Samuel’s chest, rumbling against my cheek, and then I was laughing with him because it had worked. It had worked, and I wasn’t dead—it had been almost easy, compared to the words I’d carved into my own arm at Brattleboro. Like drawing aside a veil.
We staggered back toward the city, dizzy with relief, leaning drunkenly into one another. I could almost pretend we were two ordinary young people stealing an unchaperoned stroll past their curfew, sure they’d catch hell in the morning but too giddy to care.
Until Samuel said, quietly, “This means we are safe, you know. They think this world is gone forever, don’t they, so they will not come looking. We could stay, at least for a while.”
There was a question in his voice, but I didn’t answer it. I pictured Ilvane’s spinning copper compass and the way he’d sniffed the air like a hound on a trail. He would find me again.
And when he did, would I be cowering in some other world? Hiding behind the protection of better and braver people? A movie reel spun and clicked in my skull: Samuel falling pale and lifeless to the cabin floor; Solomon wrapped in that white sheet; Jane lying in her own blood, eyes on the stars.
No.
I might be young and untried and penniless and everything else, but—I clutched the pen in my hand until my knuckles were white crests—I was not powerless. And now I knew no Door was ever truly closed.
I looked sideways at Samuel’s silhouette in the graying almost-dawn. “Yes,” I answered him. “Of course we’ll stay.”
I’ve always been a good liar.
I wrote three letters before leaving.
Dear Mr. Locke,
I want you to know I’m not dead. I almost didn’t write this letter at all, but then I pictured you worried and irritable, pacing your office or yelling at Mr. Stirling or smoking too many cigars, and figured I owed you this much.
I want you to know, too, that I don’t hate you. I think perhaps I should: you knew my father’s true history but kept it from me; you’re part of an archaeological society that’s actually some kind of malevolent cult, you fired Jane, let them hurt Sindbad, shipped me off to Brattleboro—but I don’t. Quite.
I don’t hate you, but I don’t particularly trust you, either—were you really trying to protect me? From creatures like Havemeyer and Ilvane? If so, you should know your protection was woefully inadequate—so forgive me for not telling you precisely where I’m going next.
I wish I could come back to Locke House, to that little gray room on the third floor, but I can’t. Instead, I’m following my father. I’m going home.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be your good girl any longer. But not very.
Love,
J
Jane,
Just in case: I’m officially willing you my entire book collection. Consider this letter a binding legal contract. Maybe one day you can show up at an estate sale and show it to the auctioneer and walk away with the first edition of The Jungle Book or the entire run of Pluck and Luck.
It’s funny—all that time I spent longing for a chance to escape, to fling myself into the endless horizon without worrying about keeping my skirts pressed or using the right fork or making Mr. Locke proud—and now… Now I think I might trade it for another rainy afternoon rereading romance novels with you, curled in the towers of Locke House like stowaways in some vast, land-bound ship.
But looking back, I realize both of us were secretly waiting. Holding ourselves in careful, painful suspension, like women standing at the station with our luggage neatly packed, looking expectantly down the tracks.
But my father never came back for me, or for you, and now it’s time to stop waiting. Leave the luggage at the station and run.
Jane: you are released from the promises you made to him. I am my own keeper now.
I might wish you’d move to Chicago and find a comfortable job as a bank security guard, or go back to Kenya and meet a nice young lady who helps you forget about the leopard-women and their wild hunts—but I know you won’t. I know you’ll keep looking for your ivory Door. Your home.
And—though the word of a Scholar might not be worth much to you anymore—I want you to know:
So will I.
Love,
J
S—
