“I know you’re trying to protect your brother, Theo,” Beatrix says. “You’ve been doing it for so long you don’t know how to stop. But I have nothing to prove to you.” She pushes the sleeve of her sweater up and steps closer to him. She offers him her exposed arm. “But for Oliver’s sake, if you’d like to cut me open and watch my skin stitch itself back together, by all means, go ahead.”
Theo looks horrified. “I’m sorry. It’s just so—”
“Unbelievable?” Beatrix says. “I know. That’s why Oliver is the only one I ever told. But he’s trusted you three with it now, so here we are.”
“Because he thought we’d believe him,” Zoë says guiltily.
“I believe him,” Luke says.
Zoë studies Beatrix for a long moment. She doesn’t know what Zoë sees when their eyes meet, but her gaze softens. “So do I.”
Beatrix looks to Theo. His shoulders sag. Because Oliver told him everything. Because he believes him. “I’m sorry, Beatrix.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
September 18, 2202Winchester, Massachusetts
Oliver sleeps fitfully in the darkness. Beatrix can’t. She rises from his bed and goes to the window across from it, pushes the heavy curtain aside. The last stars of twilight fade, disappearing into the coming dawn.
“Good morning,” Oliver says from the bed. He sounds unsure, like he shouldn’t say those words on this day. His last full day. His face is etched with agony and exhaustion.
Beatrix burrows into the blankets next to him. “Not yet,” she says. “The sun won’t rise for another three minutes.”
His mouth lifts at the corner. “Why do you know that? Did you become a meteorologist while I was gone?”
She swallows the lump that has risen in her throat. “I thought we could have one more adventure together. One more thing we’ve never done.”
He musters a smile, so weary and pained it makes her want to cry. “What is it?”
She props her chin on his chest. “Watch the sunrise and the sunset on the same day.”
He lays a gentle kiss on her forehead. “I’d love that.”
They watch the sun break the horizon through the glass. Oliver clutches her hand. “I don’t want to go,” he says, to her, to the universe, to anyone who will hear his plea.
She squeezes it. “You still have time.”
Hours.
She shoves the thought away, but it lurks in the shadows of her mind, injects every other thought with its poison. This is it.
“I brought you something,” she says. She rolls over and reaches forher bag, tossed on the floor next to the bed. She rummages inside. “Or should I say, I brought you something back.” She pulls out his journal.
It isn’t the same one he left in that Florida motel. The leather cover is softer now, worn from his touch and then hers. The corners are dog-eared, the edges of the pages discolored. And it’s twice as thick—at least—crammed with scraps of paper and postcards scrawled with her notes, no longer the slim notebook he could slip into a coat pocket.
It isn’t his anymore. It’s theirs.
She hands it to Oliver. He runs his fingertips over the embossed cover, flips through the dotted pages. “You finished it?”
“I had time,” she says.
Oliver rolls his eyes. He smiles anyway.
He slowly turns the pages, stops when he reaches one headed with his cramped printing but filled with her neat cursive. He passes her the notebook. “Will you tell me about it?”
Beatrix glances at the page. Woodstock. Her first entry. “You would have loved it.” A pang of sadness pierces her heart at the memory of those long-ago days. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to go.”
Oliver squeezes her hand. “I’m glad you did.”
