She pulls the pincushion off her wrist—Anna’s dress is perfect—and returns to her place behind the counter. She busies herself with a bin of wooden spools, as if sorting thread is the most important task in all of England. She ignores Anna’s gaze on her, taking her in.
Anna slowly approaches the counter. “You’re a strange one, Beatrix. And I mean that in the fondest way possible.”
She looks up from her sorting.
“I have never known anyone so incapable of living in the present. Even your crossword puzzles are a day behind.” She laughs, but there’s a sadness to her voice when she adds, “I don’t know what’s got you stuck in the past and yearning for the future all at once. If you haven’t told me yet, I don’t expect you ever will, and that’s all right. We all get to have our secrets.”
She lays her hand over Beatrix’s on the counter. “But I am getting married, here, now, in the present. And I want you to be here with me, too. No matter what happened yesterday. No matter what tomorrow brings. Please?”
The sight of Anna in her wedding dress has stirred up memories of the last time Beatrix wore her own. All she can think of are the faerie’s words:You will live to regret this moment. Maybe because this is one of those moments, too.
Regret, Beatrix has discovered, is its own living thing. She could regret some matters for an hour or a day, and others for a lifetime. Longer. She regrets some choices from the moment she makes them, while others she can live with for ages, content in her decision, only for the thing to become twisted by time or circumstance into something she wishes she could undo.
She wonders if the faerie understands regret. It is the most human of emotions, to relive past choices, to examine them from every angle forwhat-ifs and what-might-have-beens that can never be, to live with the consequence of a decision. As far as Beatrix can tell, the only choice of any consequence in the faerie’s endless life is the one that made her. The one that was made for her. Beatrix almost feels sorry for her.
She meets Anna’s gaze. It isn’t regret Beatrix feels when she looks at her, though she is afraid to name the thing she does. She doesn’t regret their bicycle rides or their picnics, their nights spent at the dance hall or the picture palace, or having tea together in the workroom while Anna sews and she reads. She doesn’t regret walking into the shop that day. “All right. I’ll come.”
Anna’s face lights up with joy, and she lunges over the counter. She throws her arms around Beatrix’s neck in a crushing hug. “Oh, fantastic! You’ve made my day!”
Beatrix hopes she has chosen wisely—that it isn’t selfish of her to keep Anna in her life for a little while longer—but she can’t be sure. That is the thing about regret. It is patient. It lies in wait. It strikes when you least expect it.
May 22, 1932London, England
The bathroom ceiling is a blur of light and shadow through the tepid water, the sounds of the world outside the claw-foot tub distorted and distant. Her eyes don’t burn anymore. Not from the bathwater, not from her tears. Beatrix stopped crying hours ago anyway.
This will accomplish nothing. Not what you are hoping for, at least.
Her throat is tight, her lungs full, burning with her last breath. She tries to clear her mind, to block out the voice that sounds like hers, even though it isn’t.
But it isn’t your last breath, is it?
The panic swells as the ache in her chest deepens to pain. Her heartbeat thunders in her ears.
Would you like it to be?
She’ll do it this time. Breathe in the water to make it all stop—the world, this pain, time—find peace, if only for a single moment.
I could make it last. You don’t have to hurt like this. You don’t have to be alone. Let me help you.
Beatrix closes her eyes and turns her world dark, opens her mouth and screams where no one can hear her.
A hand grips her arm, pulls her to the surface. She slumps over the edge of the tub and takes a gulping breath.
Oliver plunges his arm into the water and pulls the stopper out, letting the water drain away. He sags onto the tile floor, his face pale, his eyes wide, his shirtsleeve soaked through.
A torrent of ugly emotions threatens to drown Beatrix, like the water couldn’t. She spits the words at him, the most hurtful ones she can think of. “Get out.”
Oliver’s gaze snaps to hers, blue skies overwhelmed by a storm of fear and hurt and confusion. “Bea—”
“Get out!”
He clenches his jaw. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what the fuck is going on.”
Just looking at him hurts, her chest squeezed tight like she’s still underwater, a breath before drowning. She’s going to lose him.
No. She is losing him. Right now, with every beat of her undying heart. She is losing him without even realizing she is. Just like she lost Anna.
Anna is gone.
