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My pulse began to pound.
No. It couldn't be—
I crossed the room without remembering moving, hands already reaching, already shaking. The books slid free of the shelf with a dry whisper of paper against wood.
They were worn. Not collector's pieces, not decorative copies. Read. Handled. Lived with.
My breath hitched.
I opened the first one.
The hinge of the cover creaked softly, the sound impossibly loud in the quiet room.
Inside, on the yellowed flyleaf, a name had been written in looping, careful script. Ink faded to the soft brown of old tea stains.
Marigold.
My breath stopped. This couldn’t be a coincidence.
These were hers.
The very books we had pressed into her hands, still smelling of ink and paper and hope. The ones she had hugged to her chest like treasure. The ones she promised to read “very carefully so they wouldn't wear out.”
My fingers traced the letters, hovering just above the page as if touching them might smudge the past itself.
She kept them.
For decades. Through a lifetime. Long enough for the paper to yellow, for the ink to fade, for the covers to soften at the edges from being opened again and again.
Something inside my chest twisted so tightly I could barely breathe.
“Where did Mum get these?”
Miya glanced up from where she was riffling through a stack of sketchbooks, barely looking at the volumes in my hands.
“Those old things?” she said. “Mum got them after Gran died. You know books aren't my thing.”
Gran.
The word knocked the air from my lungs. She was still gone, but I couldn't think about that right now.
Because if Mum had the books, then she might also have the necklace.
The hourglass.
The one object in this world that held the power to take me back to him.
My fingers tightened around the book, pulse roaring in my ears. Hope surged up so violently it hurt, sharp, dangerous, impossible to control.
August.
I turned before Miya could say another word, vision tunneling, the edges of the room dissolving into meaningless color and light.
If the necklace was here, if it still existed, then this separation wasn't final. This wasn't the end. He wasn't lost to me forever.
I was already moving.
Out the door. Into the hall. Down the stairs.
