Page 162

“For me, that was just a few weeks ago. I’ve been puzzled about it ever since. I assume that Clare isn’t going to suddenly become a Quaker after I’m dead, so why was that woman there, the one who read that beautiful prayer?”

“That was Beck Charles,” I reply. Don’t ask me any more.

“And who is Beck Charles?”

I am so tired of lying but I cannot open my mouth to say the truth.

“Also,” Dad continues, “Clare was wearing a gold band along with the rings I gave her, on the same finger. She hid her hand as soon as she realized I’d noticed.”

“Dad. You have to be very sure you want to know . . .”

“Please, Alba. It’s worse not knowing. If Clare is happy, I’ll be at peace with it.”

So I tell him. He listens with deliberate calm and not much surprise. He does not respond immediately, but stares out the back window at Mama’s studio. At last he says, “Maybe this is primitive of me, but it feels better, that Clare didn’t marry another guy. She started a different life with someone who seems pretty unlike me. I don’t feel so replaced. Beck seems like a good person. I’m glad I met her. Tell Clare I don’t mind—tell her I’m glad.” Dad watches me, to see if he’s convinced me, and he almost has. Perhaps he’s convinced himself. “And what about you, Alba? Are you happy?”

The question takes me by surprise. I worry about everyone else’s happiness; my happiness is a by-product of theirs. “I’m not happy now, but I will be, eventually. Zach found out about Oliver. I’ve been living by myself in that house on Ravenswood. It’s strange, being there in the present. Every morning I wake up thinking I’ve time traveled, then I remember.”

“Zach will forgive you?”

“Not yet.” I notice Dad shifting in his chair. “Do you want to lie down?”

“Yeah, thanks.” I wheel him into the bedroom and help him transition from chair to bed. He stretches luxuriously, like a cat. “I never noticed my feet while I had them,” he says. “Somebody should declare a holiday, National Foot Appreciation Day.” He pops another Vicodin.

“Don’t take too many of those.” I sit on my mother’s side of their bed, leaning against the headboard with my legs sticking out in front of me.

Dad closes his eyes. “That would have been better, I think. Just take the whole bottle and spare you and Clare all the blood and drama . . . but that’s not how it goes.”

“I think that would have been harder for Mama. Easier for you, though.” I stroke his hair.

“I’ll have a last hurrah. That’s something. I’m sorry you had to see it, Alba.”

“Me, too. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Alba.”

There’s nothing more to say. We are quiet together, in the dim bedroom. He falls asleep, and I continue to sit with him, until my own time pulls me away from him, as it always does.

The Return of the Darling

Friday, October 11, 2041 (Alba is 40, Lucinda is 34)

Alba: I’ve been thinking, lately, about how things happened, how things are going to happen to people I love, and how my knowing their fates narrows their choices, determines their paths. More than anyone else I care for, it’s Lucinda I’ve tried to protect—I have always tried to make empty space and time around Lucinda, to know as little as possible about her future, so that she has all the possibility she could ever need.

But I have failed her; there is always a chain of knowing that leads back to the present moment: my older selves knew how Lucinda would choose. In a sense, her choice was made in the moment when she and Isadora first met. The mourning girl and the enormous black cat—the Darling and the Anti-Darling—they were made for each other.

I’m sitting in Washington Square Park, aka Bughouse Square, erstwhile home of freethinkers and soapbox orators. The Newberry Library looms in pink granite splendor across the street and I think of my father, who was a special collections librarian there for years, who loved that library so much that he time traveled to it again and again. His office window overlooked the park; if Dad was there now, he’d see me sitting on this bench by the winter-dry fountain, waiting for Lucinda.

It’s a cool day, too late for lunch and too early for people to be leaving work, so I’m almost alone in the park. When Lucinda arrives, I see her immediately, walking south on Clark Street. She is towing a wheeled suitcase, wearing a bright red raincoat that’s too lightweight for the weather today. She’s been missing for more than a month.

I stand up and wave my arms. Lucinda sees me, pauses, then walks toward me, diagonalling across the park. I jog to her, meet her halfway. She embraces me. “It’s good to see you, Alba. What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you. You’ve been missing. We were so worried.”

Lucinda seems mildly surprised. “How long was I gone?”

“Thirty-four days,” I tell her. “Don’t you remember?”

“I was in the Museum of Lost Souls,” she says. “You know how it is in there. Isadora took care of me, took care of everything so I didn’t have to worry about real life. I lost track of time. I thought it was just a few days.”