Page 20 of The Invisible Hour

They were standing together under the awning, waiting for a cab for Mia, when she thought she saw him. At the parking lot across the street a man was sheltered from the snow. She told herself not every stranger was Joel Davis.

“Here you go,” Sarah said when the taxi pulled up.

It was snowing harder, there would be over a foot by morning, a rarity in New York City. They hugged and said their goodbyes, and when Mia turned all she saw was the snow falling. West of the moon, when the snow falls it’s made of sugar, her mother had always told her. That way it melts when the sun comes out and the only ones who know it’s ever been there are the ones who have seen it before it disappears.

MIA CAME BACK TO Concord most weekends now, and on Saturday nights they often fixed a supper of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, Constance’s favorite back when she was a girl. Unfortunately, Constance seldom ate; she seemed to be subsisting on mugs of pale tea. She was fading right before their eyes. There was no more treatment possible, and the painkillers Constance had been given upset her stomach. She was sleeping more and more, so that night and day no longer made a difference to her. Each time Mia visited, she thought about the day when Constance had greeted her at her front door, waving to Mia, welcoming her home. She remembered standing on the lawn of the library when Constance had called Joel a piece of shit. Mia couldn’t stop herself from sobbing when she thought of her life here in Concord. Oh, how lucky she’d been to find herself here, in a place where she could grow up without fear. She wished Ivy could have lived this way, surrounded by people who loved her, surrounded by books. She often thought of the day when she’d seen the men carrying Ivy across the field, when her boots had fallen into the grass, when the whole world seemed silent.

On evenings when Sarah watched over Constance, Mia often left to walk through town. She had never lost her talent for seeing in the dark, and in the fading light she crossed the meadows where there were still bluebird houses tacked to the trees. No matter where Mia’s route began, it always took her to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Hawthorne’s grave was marked only with his last name, the spelling changed from the original Hathorne when he began to publish so that he could distance himself from his ancestors. His wife’s and daughter’s graves were just beside his; they had been buried in England, then disinterred and moved here to be with him. Yet he seemed alone. He seemed to be waiting for Mia. As always, his grave site was festooned with offerings. Flowers, rocks, pinecones, along with many pens and pencils, to honor his work. Mia had fallen in love with the book, and then she had fallen in love with its author. Perhaps that was why she was still alone, reluctant to have anything to do with a man who couldn’t compare to the brilliant author. You were mine.

Mia walked through the garden at the Old Manse, planted by Thoreau as a wedding gift for Nathaniel and his wife. What would she not do for a love like theirs? Anything. Everything. She looked in through the cloudy glass windows, written upon with words of love, then she walked home through the sleeping town.

SOON, THE DAYS HAD grown warm enough for them to sit out in the garden in the evenings, beneath the flowering wisteria vines, where they could watch the soft violet light fold itself over the river. Constance had rallied, insisting that she would rather be awake and in pain than dragged down into a drugged coma. She wore a blanket around her shoulders, and sometimes she seemed to be drifting off; then she would startle awake. It was the pain that drove her deep inside herself. That and the idea that each day was a gift, and soon enough she would be gone.

When Sarah went inside to get some glasses and a pitcher of water, Constance took Mia’s hand in her own. It might well be the last opportunity to have a moment alone to speak. “Will you look after her?” Constance asked, worried about leaving Sarah alone.

“Of course,” Mia assured Constance. “I always will.”

“And what about you? Who will look after you?”

“I’m fine on my own.” It had always been true, and it always would be.

“Don’t be afraid to love someone just because of that one horrible man,” Constance told her.

“I’m in love with my favorite author.” Mia smiled. “Doesn’t that count?”

“If you’re talking about one that’s already dead and buried, it won’t do you much good.” Constance knew about Mia’s visits to the gravesite, and she had come upon the first edition of The Scarlet Letter while cleaning up Mia’s room. The inscription had been especially curious, and she wondered if Mia had written it to herself, or if it was just a coincidence. Constance was in pain, and she was failing, but she was too concerned for Mia’s future to hold back. “When you love someone, look what happens,” she said.

“What happens?” Mia asked, hoping Constance wouldn’t notice that she was crying.

“This.” Constance gestured to all that was around them with a look of delight on her face. There was the river and the wisteria blooming in the falling dark. There was Sarah returning from the kitchen with a pitcher of water and three green glass tumblers. There were the birdhouses in the field, and the stone path they had put in one summer. There was all they had been to each other through the years. “You have a life,” Constance said. She was the one who was crying now.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Mia wanted to know. “Just name it.” It seemed that she did have a heart, something she’d never wanted, for as it turned out, it was breaking.

“My dear girl, you gave me back a hundred times more than anything I would ever want,” Constance told her. “We were a family. What could be better than that?”

A WEEK LATER SARAH telephoned at six in the morning. It was a workday, and Mia was stealing a little more sleep before she dressed to leave for the library. Manhattan was quiet at such an early hour, with the birds in the yard next door singing in the tree that had been there for two hundred years. Right away, Mia panicked, and as soon as she answered she could tell that Sarah had been crying. Sarah had been up all through the night, until now, when it was a decent hour to phone Mia.

“Constance waited until I was out of the room,” Sarah said. “I had just gone to get her old copy of Walden. I read it to her every night.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Mia was already packing. She didn’t need much, only her black dress, and her mother’s red boots.

MIA TOOK THE EARLY train to Boston in a dazed state, then caught the commuter train at North Station out to Concord. She walked past the library and headed toward the river, thinking about the first time she’d come to town, when they’d driven all that way from Blackwell, barely saying a word. When she reached the house, Mia found Sarah crying in the kitchen, stunned by grief.

“Don’t look at me,” Sarah said. “I’m a terrible sight.”

“What can I do to help?”

“The funeral has been arranged. I did it this morning.”

“I’ll phone everyone who should be invited,” Mia assured her.

They were both wrecks, but they hugged fiercely, and after a while they stopped crying and decided to have tea. English breakfast, Constance’s favorite. No sugar, no milk.

“I didn’t actually think she would die,” Mia found herself saying.

“Nobody ever thinks it will happen,” Sarah replied. “Real life is unbelievable. Souls are snatched away from us, flesh and blood turn to dust, people you love betray you, men go to war over nothing. It’s all preposterous. That’s why we have novels. To make sense of things.”

They chose some of Constance’s favorite passages from Thoreau for Sarah to read at the service. It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. They skipped dinner, for neither had an appetite, and instead sat outside at the small wrought-iron table overlooking the river. They drank martinis, in Constance’s honor, for a martini was always her cocktail of choice.