She didn’t need to locate her father’s desk in the space to know whether she was awake or asleep.
It should go back in the center of the room, though. She went to it and began attempting to drag it from where it had rested against the wall since Father’s death. If she was successful in her planned speech to Effie, he might want to sit there, from time to time.Shewanted him to sit there.
She grunted as she put all her weight into attempting to pull the desk away from the wall. She wanted to have every detail attended to before she made her move. She wanted everything to be perfect.
That was what she told herself, anyway.
It was possible she was procrastinating.
She stopped pulling.
She was scared. Terrified, really. That was why a fortnight had elapsed since the dream—the version in which she finally heard “father.”
What if she was too late? What if he didn’t want her anymore, under any circumstances?
She struck a match, intending to light a candle, to catch her breath and fortify herself for the task ahead, but she stopped and stared at the flame. The adages she lived by marched through her mind. She had spent so long hewing to them, organizing her life around them, for fear that if she didn’t, she might . . . unravel.
But she’d unraveled anyway, had she not?
There is only now.
There was only now, until there wasn’t. Until “now” wasn’t enough. Until you met a person who wanted your future, who made the pleasure of his ongoing company contingent upon being part of that future.
You can’t miss what you don’t let yourself want.
That one only worked when the power of your will was stronger than the power of your desire. That had always been the case for Julianna. Until, again, it wasn’t. And once you flipped, once the wanting became all-consuming, so too did the missing.
The magazine above all.
She had been ruminating on Effie’s comment, the day they parted, that he sometimes thought Julianna cared more about the magazine than she did herself. Didthe magazine above allmake sense when she, her very being, was included in thatall?
What was shedoing? Why was shewaiting? Because of fear, yes, but she was no longer accepting that as an excuse. Time was passing. Opportunity was diminishing. Effie was not Edith. Perhaps that should be a new adage.
A wave of impatience crested inside her, coming out her mouth and snuffing the flame just before the match burned all the way down. It was time to go to him. It was time to ask him the question that frightened her more than anything ever had before.
“What if you could change the dream?”
Or, it was time to turn toward him, for he was here.
Hadn’t it always been like that with them? That day, at the Pavilion, she had turned, and there he’d been. That last night together, she’d lifted her hand to knock on his door, and he had opened it before her knuckles made contact.
“What if I could change the dream?” she echoed, struggling to shift her attention from the astonishing yet not at all surprising fact that he was here—he was here!—to the content of what he’d said.
“That’s what you asked me, in a letter, when you introduced the idea of trying to control my nightmares, change the outcome of them.”
“I remember, but I’m not sure I follow what you mean saying that now, in this context.” She stepped back and gestured him into the dim office.
“I changed the dream.”
“Yes, you told me.”
“I’m still changing it—the awake one.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You have been speaking about marriage as if it is something that happens to you.” He perched on a table. He looked like he belonged here.
No, he didn’t “look like” he belonged here. Hedidbelong here.
