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“It was hope,” she said. “You gave me hope for a few hours and that was nice.”
Still, Mr. Webber seemed pained by her low mood. When they spoke about it a few days later, over dinner in the apartment, she told him why he should not feel bad.
“It was devastating,” she said. “In that moment. But it made me realize how much I want to get back home. It made me realize I need to start thinking about that. I had an idea, a few weeks ago, a memory of something Drummond Fox said to me. I want to work on that.”
“A way to find the Book of Doors?” Mr. Webber asked.
She shook her head. “An idea about something I can do so that I am ready when we catch up with my present. So I am ready to deal with the dangers waiting for me.”
Mr. Webber nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said.
In the following months she began a slow process of investigating her idea, looking for a person instead of searching for a book. It took her almost six months to make the contact she needed to make, and then another few months of discussion, two people cautiously figuring each other out. She discussed things with Mr. Webber often, testing her thoughts and idea with him.
Almost a year after her epiphany in Bryant Park, nearly five years after she had first arrived in the past, Cassie took a long journey by herself. She had a meeting and a discussion and made a deal. And then she returned back to New York and the apartment that had become her home.
“Well?” Mr. Webber asked, when she arrived.
She nodded. “It’s done. Now we just have to wait.”
The Final Goodbye to Mr. Webber
In the ninth year of her life with Mr. Webber, Cassie’s mind turned toward the inevitable future that was now barreling toward her. For so long it had seemed so far away, and too long to wait, but now it seemed that she didn’t have enough time to get ready. What had felt like an eternity looking forward felt like a moment looking back.
Mr. Webber had grown weaker and frailer over the years, a process so gradual and sneaky that Cassie hadn’t even noticed until one day when he had struggled to get out of his chair, smiling with embarrassment at his frail knees. Cassie had looked at him, seeing how skinny he now was, how loose the skin was around his neck. His face was still smooth and youthful, his hair full and white, but his hands were increasingly weak, his naps longer, and Cassie knew that his time was running out. The knowledge that these were the last days of his life, his last Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s, his last spring, saddened her greatly. She had to hide her emotions around him, terrified that she would reveal something he shouldn’t know.
She found herself thinking about her grandfather again, and that conversation in Matt’s. She had tried to tell him about his health, but he had refused to listen. She didn’t know if it would have made a difference, but looking at Mr. Webber she knew, somehow, that there was nothing she could do to change what would happen to him. He was a man who had lived his life to its natural conclusion.
“Oh, the light is fading for me, Cassie,” he said to her one evening, without any real sadness. “But that’s okay. It comes to us all, and I have lived a charmed life, all things considered.”
“Please stop talking like this,” she scolded him. “You’re fine. You still have your mind, you’re still able to get out and walk around and go to the bookstores. You’re still reading, aren’t you?”
“I am not complaining, Cassie, I am just being realistic.”
Cassie busied herself with work in the kitchen that didn’t need to be done rather than engaging with the subject.
Mr. Webber had become her friend, perhaps the best friend she had ever had. He had been stability and security and a bedrock of kindness and compassion when she needed it most. It was unbearable to her that he wouldn’t be in her life anymore. She had already grieved for him once as a casual acquaintance; she dreaded that she would have to grieve for him again as a dear friend.
In the summer of the year of Mr. Webber’s death, the year when the other Cassie would receive the Book of Doors, Cassie realized she had to leave Mr. Webber. She told herself it was because she had to prepare for what was to come, but she knew it was because she couldn’t bear to be with him.
She told him, one evening, when the city had grown quiet and dark, when they were sitting together in his living room, a radio on in the kitchen playing Baroque music in the background.
“I need to go,” she said.
“I know,” he said simply. “Your past is almost your present again.” He smiled, enjoying his wordplay.
She nodded.
“I never did get the Book of Doors, did I?” he said. “I don’t suppose it matters now if I do. Not much value to you being able to jump forward a few months.”
“No,” Cassie agreed.
The question of the Book of Doors remained a puzzle. How had Mr. Webber ended up with it to give it to her in the first place?
She sighed.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s passed so fast. Ten years. It’s felt like no time at all. But I remember coming here that first night, thinking it was so long, it was forever.”
