The day Kate woke up, she was completely disoriented. She could see that she was in a hospital room. When she’d been in the coma, she had traveled all kinds of places with Conor by her side—the Tower Suite at the Ocean House; the produce aisle in the Big Y; in her plane on the way to Block Island; in their bed at the Welcome Hotel in Villefranche-sur-Mer; in the Cocteau chapel, just down the quai.
Conor was the first to see her open her eyes. The funny thing was, she saw him open his too. When she first woke up, she saw him in a chair beside her bed. His eyes were closed, and he was asleep, making the little snoring sounds he always made when the sleep was deep. She stared at him for a long time. He must have felt it, because suddenly his eyes flew open and he stood up and leaned over her.
“Kate,” he said. He grabbed her hand. He was both smiling and crying at the same time.
“Yes,” Kate said. “I will.”
For a moment, he looked confused.
She wondered whether he didn’t know what she was talking about; that would be strange, because she was just answering the question he had been asking every day since she’d gotten here, during all their dream travels, during all the hushed hospital nights.
But then he knew exactly what she meant; she could tell because of the way his eyes softened.
“Can I ask you again, now that you’re awake?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Will you marry me?”
And, for the second time since she’d opened her eyes, she said, “Yes. I will.”
Then Kate said, “Why not do it here? We’ll get the hospital chaplain to marry us. Our favorite nurses can be our witnesses.”
Conor had been surprised and even a little leery that she was so ready to get married right away. After all they had gone through—the way their would-be summer wedding had been destroyed, how Kate’s trust in him had been shattered, the hurt he’d felt when she’d turned against him, all the pangs of doubt about each other—he wasn’t sure she would ever want to go through it again.
So, a few days after the hospital proposal, when the doctor had told her that getting out of bed was key to recovery, that walking a few steps each day was a goal, he asked her about it. They walked ten steps from the bed to the door of her room, where he had a wheelchair waiting.
Conor wheeled her to the family lounge at the end of the corridor. It had two separate seating areas. A group of grown children were clustered at one end of the room, speaking in low tones with a doctor while a talk show blared from a large TV. Conor pushed Kate’s chair to the quieter part of the lounge.
“This is nice, getting out of the room,” she said, taking in the surroundings—generic seascapes on the mint-green walls, a patterned sofa and matching chairs, and painted wooden signs with sayings likeLive Love Laugh; Life’s a Beach; There is Always Hope.
“I only take you to the best places,” Conor said.
“You do, indeed,” she said.
“You went through a nightmare,” Conor said.
“Let’s not talk about that,” she said.
“We don’t have to,” he said. “But you really want to marry me, after everything?”
She looked into Conor’s blue eyes, and her own vision clouded up with tears. Her stab wounds were covered with bandages—the doctors hadn’t stitched them up, because that could trap bacteria inside and cause more infection. When she closed her eyes, she sometimes had visions ofthem—she didn’t want to say their names or even think of them—the people of 1740, the girl who had stabbed her.
“I do,” she said. “I want to marry you. And what about you? Do you still want to marry me, after what I did?”
“What did you do?” he asked, looking confused.
“I wrecked it the first time. I doubted you. I believed her just long enough ...”
“Her?”
“I don’t want to say her name,” Kate said, shaking her head.
“Love means that you never have to,” Conor said, and they both laughed.
Conor held her hand. The worried look had returned to his face. Their time in the family lounge had taken a lot out of Kate. He sensed that without her having to tell him, and he wheeled her back to her room and lifted her into bed.
Then it was October.
