One place suits one person,
Another place suits another person,
For my part, I prefer to live
In the country like Timmy Willie.
That was weird.
But not as weird as shelving the fiction and the nonfiction together and alphabetically.
Next to the quote was a photograph of a little girl: Simon’s daughter, Penelope. “Isn’t she beautiful?” said Simon, coming into the room.
Sylvie nodded. She put her arm around him and pulled him close. “And the Beatrix Potter quote?”
“I feel very guilty about not living in England with my father. But it doesn’t suit me. Beatrix reminds me that it’s OK to know what suits.”
Sylvie smiled. Not so weird, after all.
While she had been snooping around, Simon had set a picnic table in the yard. They settled at table, sharing a bench—Sylvie in her underwear and Simon’s T-shirt, Simon in his boxer shorts.
(“Really?” said Florence later. “OK. I’d pegged him for a tighty-whitey type.”)
Sylvie gazed over the water as she ate, and they fell into an easy banter. Sylvie wanted to ask about the alphabetizationof nonfiction,but decided to wait—the Dewey decimal system was an important topic for her.
They watched the bay in silence. Sylvie leaned against Simon and she felt sheltered.
—
It seemed like a dream: They made love and were quiet and sat next to each other with books, and after a few blissful months, Simon asked her to marry him. The proposal was sudden. They were reading in a shared hammock and he put down his book and said, “Sylvie? I love you. I want to marry you. This is rushed but OK, my dad is sick. It’s worse than anyone thought. He told me last night that he’s…dying. My dad is dying, but somehow that makes me feel like I want to marry you. I want you to be mine forever. I want to marry you with my father there, at my side. Sylvia Peacock, will you marry me?”
Sylvie’s mouth dropped open. Her finger rested on the last sentence she had read ofThe Witch Elm,Tana French’s thriller. Her mind was still partially in Ireland, where a skull in a tree trunk had just been discovered.
“What?” she said. As a gesture to the momentousness of the occasion, Sylvie closed her novel, not even marking the place.
“My dad has cancer,” said Simon. “We’ve never been close, but still, I—”
“I’m so sorry, Simon.”
“And everyone’s so sad.I’mso sad. And I thought, about three minutes ago, what if I brought Sylvie to Mumberton Castle, and we had a big wedding, and everyone would be happy, most of all…me.”
“Me too,” said Sylvie. Willie the dog, also crammed in the hammock, looked at Sylvie. The thought of a wedding and going to England and Simon being hers forever and her sisters and mother having reason to berelievedfor once instead of worried about her, and meeting Simon’s father, and Sylvie never having to be alone again…
Sylvie’s happiness was too much. To save herself, she went numb.
Once, Sylvie had googled “why do I float above myself sometimes dizzy” and learned that what happened to her was called “disassociation.” A strong emotion came and her mind just…fled. Good or bad emotions—it didn’t matter—she sliced a hole in the fabric of reality and slipped out, finding peaceful nothingness while her body remained in the world.
Sometimes it wasn’t nothingness. Sometimes Sylvie escaped to a place decorated in calm colors, a hammock by a mysterious sea, or the rocks behind her childhood home—the bright Montana sky above. And when the strong emotions faded, she could swim back to consciousness.
Sylvie fought against her comforting escape now, trying to root herself in this moment.
Say yes,Willie seemed to say with her soulful brown eyes.
The universe was singing. Willie was sending a telepathic message. Even the ghost of Alexander (also in the hammock, of course, because he was always, always with her) seemed to nod his spectral head.
“Will you marry me?” said Simon.
4
