After Woodstock, she knew in her heart he wouldn’t come back. She shoved that fear down, kept going, kept trying. Each new page held the faintest hope that maybe this time she was wrong, that maybe this time she would find him. And each time she was left alone, again; still, she thought she would stop. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. So she traveled the world, looking for him. Until she ran out of pages. Until she ran out of hope.
So she returned to London. To St. Paul’s. To somewhere old and familiar and hers. If not home, then something like it. Because now that her map is spent, she doesn’t know where else to go.
The gallery is quiet tonight. A handful of visitors sit around the edge of the dome, whispering and listening. A few others peer over the high iron rail to the mosaic floor far below. Beatrix settles against the wall, in the spot she always chooses. She closes her eyes, and she listens, as if she might still hear Oliver’s whispers in the walls.
She wipes her tears away and swallows the lump in her throat. She turns the last page, moves it into the past with the rest of her memories of Oliver. An ending.
Not yet.
Beatrix pulls a discolored envelope from the pocket of her yellow peacoat. Oliver gave it to her 137 years ago, under the stars of Lancaut, told her to open it when she was ready. She couldn’t bring herself to read his goodbye when she still had hope she might find him. Now that hope is spent, just like her map. His goodbye is all she has left.
She still isn’t ready, but opening it feels like the right thing to do.
The only thing left to do.
She slips her finger beneath the flap and carefully tears the envelope open. She pulls out a folded, dotted page with a rough, torn edge,Beawritten across the front in Oliver’s familiar handwriting. The real last page of his journal.
Bea—
If you’re reading this, I guess it’s time for our goodbye.
I know you hate them. But I think I have tried to write this at least a hundred times and I can’t. Putting into words everything you are to me is impossible. I could never do it justice. So, I’m including an address, somewhere I want you to see. Somewhere I want to see with you. For old times’ sake, I guess.
I hope you’ll come. I hope you’ll have a thousand new stories to tell me.
—Oliver
She scans the date Oliver has scrawled on the bottom of the page, a map through time, leading to him. She slips the paper into the journal with trembling hands, between her last entry and the cover, where all of Oliver’s chaotic wishes have faded with time.
Their last adventure together.
She closes the notebook and hugs it to her chest. She has a hundred years to get there. One hundred years with no plan, no guidance, noidea where to go or what to do next—untethered from Oliver and his journal.
One hundred years to live her life, however and wherever she pleases.
So she does.
September 17, 2202Cambridge, Massachusetts
Time is still a strange companion.
The closer Beatrix gets to the day Oliver promised to meet her, the slower it passes, each week dragging, each day crawling, every hour sticking—like something out ofAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland—until she is sure it must be broken entirely.
She has thought about finding Oliver early, just to make it stop. But it is a foolish idea, fueled by her impatience. She wants to see him again, is desperate for every extra moment she can get with him. But not desperate enough to risk everything they have already shared, to break the vow she swore to him in Lancaut. So, she waits.
The day dawns as if it is any other day. Beatrix paces outside the doors of the redbrick museum, hugging her oversize cardigan closed against the chilly morning. She isn’t sure when Oliver will arrive, but after 233 years, she doesn’t want to miss a single moment with him.
A docent unlocks the door and ushers Beatrix inside, out of the gloomy Boston morning that reminds her of London. She purchases her ticket and follows the sign pointing the way to the Glass Flowers exhibit.
She steps into the gallery and gasps. Oliver Rhodes is still trying to impress her.
Rows of glass display cases line the walls. Others stand freely in the center of the bright gallery, edged in warm, dark wood. They are all filled with flowers, precisely positioned on white backgrounds, each with a tag noting its scientific details. Flowers of every shape, every size, every color—some newly opened, some nearly spent—from all over the world. Each one vibrant and delicate and breathtakingly beautiful. Each one sculpted from glass centuries ago.
“They look so lifelike, don’t they?” A docent pauses as she strolls past the case to admire a branch of autumn-red maple leaves. “Every day someone comes in here and thinks they’re real.”
But the flowers are real. They’re just…
Undying.
