“I bet Mom would have loved it.” Theo smiles at the thought of her.
“She would have,” Oliver agrees.
Their smiles fade with the memory. Silence envelops them. Oliver breaks it before Theo can. “How’s work?”
“It’s good,” Theo says. “Busy, you know?”
“Yeah,” Oliver says, even though he doesn’t know the first thing about being a neurobiologist.
Theo had just finished his first year of college when their parents died, and until a month ago, Oliver assumed that was what made his brother change course and follow their father’s footsteps into the medical field. But sitting alone in his hospital room, an empty chair pulled close to his bed, his own obituary crushed in his hand, the truth crashed over him with a cold certainty.
I thought something could change it.
Theo didn’t upend his entire life to honor the memory of their father. He did it for Oliver, in a futile attempt to prove Aevum wrong. He didn’t delay telling Oliver the truth because he thoughtsomethingcould change his future.
He thoughthecould.
Theo runs his hand through his short hair, his oldest tell that they are about to discuss something serious, like college applications or moving out or the absolute worst, safe sex. Oliver braces himself for the lecture.
“Listen, Oli,” Theo says. “I know I fucked up. I’m sorry.”
The apology catches Oliver off guard. The cemetery is making his brother sentimental. “I know.”
Theo raises an eyebrow at him. “You know I fucked up, or you know I’m sorry?”
Oliver rolls his eyes. “Both.”
“It’s not enough, is it?” he asks quietly.
Oliver doesn’t want to hold a grudge, but some things are harder to forgive than others, and what Theo did was a betrayal. “It’s not that. I just need some time.”
Theo’s gaze darkens and Oliver knows what he is thinking, because he is thinking it, too. That’s the one thing they don’t have.
Theo shoves his hands into his pockets. “Okay. Well, you know where to find me when—if—you want to talk.” Theo hesitates. Oliver isn’t sure if he wants to say something more or if he hopes Oliver will. Neither of them says anything. Theo turns down the path.
“Hey, Theo?”
Theo looks back. Oliver wants to tell him to stop waiting. To stop carrying the weight of Oliver’s life as if it is more important than his own. To let him go. He doesn’t. He can’t.
So, he asks his brother the same question Theo asked him ten years ago, after everyone else was gone and their new reality had started to sink in: They only had each other. “Do you want to grab some lunch? Your pick.”
August 5, 1914Great Yarmouth, England
Time moves on and on and on.
Beatrix tries to. She throws herself into her search for answers, collects odd jobs as she crisscrosses the isle. She visits the places Professor Winfield wrote about in his letters, every wood or field or standing stone she can remember. But she can’t ignore the ache in her chest. Can’t shake her melancholy. Can’t forget Oliver. And that simply won’t do.
She packs her life into her small leather case. She takes the next train out of London, doesn’t even care where it is headed, as long as it is far away from her old city and her old memories and all her old lives. She needs a fresh start.
The train takes her up the east coast. She decides on Great Yarmouth, a seaside town that is a popular escape from the daily drudgeries of life. She takes comfort in the ancient town walls—even older than she is—still standing and watching the tides come and go in their steady, predictable way. She spends her evenings walking alone on the beach for miles after her shift at the Royal Hotel, barefoot in the sand.
But the rest of the world is restless.
Every morning, the pit in her stomach grows as she reads the front page of the newspapers tucked neatly onto the hotel guests’ breakfast trays.
Austria at war.
Serbia at war.
