He shakes his head. “Seriously, Ripley. Do you think we live more than one life?”
“Seriously? No. I think this life is all we have.”
“I’d like to believe in reincarnation,” he says, earnest andwistful. “It’s nice, thinking we could have another chance to get things right.”
“I don’t think so, James. I wouldn’t count on it, anyway. If there’s something you want from this life, you should probably go after it.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“I usually am, but I won’t hold it over your head.”
He makes a sound like he’s acknowledging the joke but doesn’t have it in him to laugh. “If you could do this summer over again—no, that’s not right. If I had told you the Smithson Foundation was your anonymous donor, would you have refused the funding?”
She pulls her mouth to the side, wishing she could tell him what he wants to hear, knowing she can’t. “Yeah. I would’ve told you to shove it up your ass.”
He takes a shallow breath like he was expecting this but hearing it still surprises him. “I’m sorry, Ripley. I meant not to bother you with more apologies, but alas, it appears I can’t help myself. I shouldn’t have kept the truth about the funding from you, and I knew it. I’m so terribly, terribly s—”
“I wasn’t done,” she interrupts. “I would have turned your money down, yes. And it would’ve been the wrong decision. The dig would’ve shut down in mid-June. Beauty would still be in the ground, and Beast would never have been found. Cara and Geraldine would be worse off financially. Will would be the Marsh Chair. And I might have left paleontology for good.
“If anyone besides a paleontologist had offered me the money, I would’ve taken it. But youarea paleontologist. You’re fuckingJames Smithson.”
He inclines his head in a courtly half-bow. “Despite my best efforts.”
“Exactly. You couldn’t be anyone but yourself, but I wouldn’t let you help unless you were someone else. I could have—should have—accepted that you’re not like Will. I could have trusted you to do right.”
She could have. But she didn’t, and in this life, there are no do-overs, no matter how much she aches to rewind the clock.
“I’m sorry I said those things to you in the airport, James. I’m sorry I sent you away and wasted what little time we had. The best moments I ever had in this job were with you. Digging with you. Road-tripping with you. Everything else with you,” she says, her voice failing on that last part, along with her heart.
“You gave me back so many things I thought I’d lost forever. Purpose, hope, joy. You’re one of the best, most honest, most thoughtful and true people I’ve ever met. And I just wish…I wish that if things had to end, they would’ve ended better.”Please, please, please,she finds herself thinking, the same way she did when she pressed her face between his shoulder blades on that terrifying horseback ride.Please don’t let this be over. Please see what I’m offering, and want it, and take it.
Some small, flickering light in his eyes goes out, but he smiles anyway, then puts his hand to his mouth when the expression won’t hold.
“It’s all right, Ripley. I’m grateful for every moment we had. It was more than I could ever have asked for. And I truly believe everything will come right with the birds. The Yellowtails and the foundation have been making good strides. The support for you and the outcry against Will won’t hurt either.”
He reaches into the pocket he’s been tapping and pulls out something too big and round to be his little metal box.
“I have a confession. I gave you the drawings I made for you and kept the ones I made for myself, and that seemed fair. Butthere was something I made for both of us.” He steps forward, catches her wrist, and places the object in her upturned palm.
The rock is smooth and surprisingly heavy in her hand, the etching barely visible in the low light. Her throat aches like she’s put the stone in her mouth and tried to swallow it. “I was looking for this.”
He puts his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels to gaze at the starless city sky. “I was planning to bury it in England. I liked imagining that someday, someone would unearth a stone from half a world away. If they tested it, there might be some Montana soil in the crevices. My DNA in the etchings. Possibly even yours. Perhaps whoever found it would wonder how it got there, then realize love is the only reason a piece of the earth could travel that far.”
His mouth quivers, and he looks down, taking off his glasses. When he goes to polish them on his sorely abused shirt, the hasty repair falls apart, the broken arm clattering to the sidewalk. He looks from the piece in his hands to the one on the concrete. Then he picks up the arm, walks over to the trash receptacle next to the bus stop, and pitches both pieces into the bin.
“Nevertheless,” he says, wiping his damp hands on his shirt. “It felt rather poetic at the time to keep it with me, but now I see it would be better if it went home with you.”
She smooths the rock, running her fingertips over the roughness on the face and the…roughness on the back?
She turns it over. The letters are shallow and nearly illegible, but they’re there, like fossils barely grazing the surface of the matrix. She tilts the rock until the words catch the light.
LOVE KNOWS NO TIME
MY BONES WILL FIND YOURS
“It’s nothing,” James says, his body and voice tight. “Nothing you have to do anything about, anyway. It was a snapshot of who we were at that moment, is all. Christ, my darling, don’t cry. Don’t cry, Ripley, love. Bloody hell, I can’t seem to stophurtingyou—”
Without seeming to move, he’s suddenly inches away. His hands clench convulsively, as if he wants to reach for her and cannot, cannot let himself.
