All the Stars in Her Hand

Chapter Fifteen

I typed relentlessly, the old keys pounding against the new sheet of paper rolled between the bars. The letters jumped, wavering here and there due to a crookedness in the keys mount from multiple replacements. On the paper before me, words that didn”t belong to me, but to Alistair Davies. I was copying them, almost all of them, to replace the ones that were too damaged to easily read.

I had sorted the manuscript into chronological order, hoping it wasn”t as damaged as I suspected. Lots of mud and sand stains on paper proved I was wrong about this, and the crumpled ones needed recopied simply because the paper itself could never be pressed flat again.

At last, I was reading his words — only too quickly to savor them, or do anything other than comprehend the right order, because that was the priority now.

Typing anew was the only solution. I cranked through a clean white sheet of paper, rocking it into the correct position. My fingers rested against the caps for a millisecond, feeling the impression of his fingertips, from touching those places thousands of times before.

The keys began clicking beneath the tips of mine. My rhythm synced between the original page and the new one, so it could fly back and forth as light as a bird. Each finished page I slipped aside, into a heap beside an old copy of a Buchan novel with a turbaned figure on its cover, and a spare pair of Sidney”s reading glasses. I noticed the pencil lying beside it for corrections, chew marks in the wood.

”Emotion was not Sullivan”s chosen master; he was moved, however, by her plight. Shuffling through the letters, he found no provision for her future, only a pretense of understanding and sympathy. ”Poor helpless child, cast off as one of life”s inconveniences....”

Where the ink was blurred beyond reading, I had to guess at words. Here and there, a sentence had been erased by seawater, leaving it up to me to fill the gap with whatever phrase I chose, so I intuited those words, that the original author might have chosen.

It was as if I could hear his voice in my head at times, and if I didn”t, I chose anyway. That part was my contribution to the story: my instinct of what made it good and great, rising to the challenge.

I didn”t take a break for a cup of tea, but kept on. The restless sea outside the window was my only company, the view of the water with its own drive towards an unknown destination. My imagination pictured it breaking against the rocks on a distant point of the island”s shore.

Once, I had actually believed it was the restlessness of a view like this that drove these characters. I could laugh at my naive concept of it now, only I was far too busy — far too aware of all it meant.

The afternoon waned into evening, darkening the rocks and water against a melon sky. I slipped off my shoes, wrapping my bare feet around the legs of the chair, feeling the grit of dirt in old floorboards beneath me. The carpet stopped short beneath with its threadbare fringe. The latest finished page fluttered aside, into the pile beneath Sidney”s reading glasses.

”... she sometimes bit her nails, hearing within the chidings from a make-believe voice akin to that of her childhood nurse twitting her for it. This must be the real problem with all of humanity, she reflected, that few ever fully became mature to the point of never having to cheat to ensure their own stability....”

”... the steps of the piazza, decorated with a thousand Arabian tiles in blue and white, like miniature paving stones leading her to another Mecca ...”

The pile was growing bigger, messier, in the finished stack at my elbow as I pulled out the latest sheet of paper, crisp and neat, with words nearly identical to the one I was now letting drift to the floor, except where a wet, crumpled corner had obliterated the final words of its finishing sentence.

”.... marooned in life”s late absolution, bent over the flour-white table of dough: a nun in a prayer over her bread, with a country kitchen for her cloister....”

”It was a dream, one in which Arthur raced to the door, both of the boys galloping in unbridled melee almost at his heels, not knowing that his heart was running ahead of all three. Expecting Julia on the other side, laughing with the shopping in her hands and keys forgotten; only for him to be greeted by a solicitor instead, holding the papers which had brought his life thundering down in legal typeface .…”

I knew Sidney had gone downstairs earlier, by the creaking of the banister rail. He had not disturbed me, except to push open the door behind me, enough to ascertain that I was busy, when I was sitting on the floor, in the midst of a break to re-sort some of the ruined pages — trying to make the connection between some missing parts of the story for clarification.

He hadn”t spoke, only retreated, silently. Probably thinking I was reading the manuscript”s battered corpse for clues to the ending that would never be. My focus made him feel he shouldn”t disturb me. That, or he felt ashamed of facing me whilst I held the book”s corpse.

I switched on the battery-operated lantern on the table, adjusting the glow so it fell on the unfinished pages. Daylight waned, night coming on the heels of the dusk; the shadows cast across the desk were growing tall. I shifted each paragraph as I typed. By dark, the lenses of the reading glasses reflected twin stars from the heart of the lantern”s kindled element.

”On the other hand, you could always sell,” remarked the stranger..

”Sell?” Leonard”s head lifted. ”I couldn”t.”

”Others would. In your place, I would.” A shrug of the shoulders. ”You might as well consider it.”

It was simply impossible. Leonard could not fathom doing it. Caught helpless, it made no difference to the fact.”

I could hear his voice in my head, reading the lines aloud to me, with that same cadence as in Dean”s cottage, on a summer”s afternoon when I should have believed that there was only one reason that his voice and those words combined could have such a powerful affect on me.

”Was it worth the price. It was the only question which had to be asked about sacrifice in the heat of battle, trite as it seems. No one asks the question regarding sacrifice in the despair of self. On the precipice, that decision is weighed against only the consequence of its defeat.”

The last page finished, sliding down to the top of the heap on the floor. My keys paused, and I gazed into the blankness outside the window, with no view of lights in the nighttime harbor, letting its finish settle within me.

In an early morning hour, I carried it downstairs with me. Sidney was in the kitchen, the only light the faint blush of it from outside the window, the flame from a gas hurricane lamp on the shelf near the old stove. I could smell the fuel from the portable camping stove which had heated the kettle, responsible for the cup of tea in front of him on the table.

”I”ll pour one for you,” he said, gently. His tone may have softened, but fatigue was riding under its surface. He started to rise, but I laid the finished stack before him on the table.

He looked down. I could feel the conflict within him, as if its aura rose from beneath his skin. One part wanting to push it away with renewed force, another part hesitating to follow through on that instinct — out of kindness to me, I assumed.

I sank into the chair across from him. I detected the change in his body — the physically-imperceptible shift in human chemistry as he realized that it was not the same stack as before.

Silence. I spoke. ”You may mean what you said,” I began. ”But I can”t let you give up that easily.”

His lips parted.

”You did all this?” His thumb fanned the topmost pages, the barest touch he could give it without ignoring the fact it was there. His shoulder moved in response to the restless feelings within, which were still alive in part, at least.

I touched his face, meeting no resistance as I turned him to look into my eyes.

”You may mean every word of it, and if you do, I”ll support you, I”ll give up with you and never ask you to feel regret,” I continued, softly. ”But please, be sure before you say it to me. I can”t believe it until you can look me in the eye on the other side of the storm and tell me you mean it. I can”t, Sidney.”

Those hazel depths were less angry than before; still red-rimmed from the emotions that had been festering, but not raw. Conflict and confusion deep within, however, was not withdrawn when they met my own in this situation. That was enough to quell me, but I shored up my courage by any and all available materials and pushed back with my own gaze.

My other hand traveled, framing his face now, one on each side. Once, not so long ago, I had been able to see the whole universe in those eyes, all its possibilities and questions. Those features had been embedded in my memory, permanently preserved in sensory and visual memory. Looking in my own, I hoped he saw me, the girl who had changed his world and stayed with him in his worst trial, and not just the girl who once pursued a fictitious version of him because she had loved his books.

The golden sparks were not lit. The look in those eyes was not on fire with wonder, the way it had been in former times, even in Italy most recently, on the day those rings from the jeweler”s shop took their permanent places on hands. The person looking back at me was not a stranger. Just the hardest version of someone I loved.

I felt his hands slide around my arms, then my wrists. Moving up to my hands, which he gently withdrew. Both of them held in his own for a few seconds as he moved his gaze from mine. My fingers he pressed close to his face, burying it partly against them. His lips brushed them, a kiss. I felt its heat and strength, a little of Verona”s intensity, before he let them go.

I tried to hide my disappointment that there were no words in his answer. Subject dismissed. That”s how it felt to me.

His glance landed on the manuscript which lay beside his cup of tea. I thought he might shove it away, still, but he didn”t. I could not identify what was in his eyes — the self within him fractured into many facets, no clear emotional winners among them.

He rose from the table, poured a cup of tea from the pot and placed it in front of me, along with the packets of sugar and of milk substitute from a little travel-size box.

”There”s pastry in the cupboards. Some tinned soup,” he said, quietly. ”I know you must be hungry. You haven”t eaten since you came.” He slid his hands in his pockets as he watched the flame beneath the kettle”s eye extinguish, its fuel cut off. He left me there with the stack of pages and the vapors of heat from my cup.

The pastry wasn”t satisfying. Neither was the feeling of loneliness, gnawing me in ways I had grown spoiled into thinking were safely beyond me. It felt like a betrayal, even under the same roof. Even if what he said when I first came meant we would go back to Cornwall and try to have a life much like our old ones, minus Alistair Davies and the fourth manuscript”s mysteries.

The kitchen felt cold. The castle was as drafty as the rooms at Lewiston must be in wintertime, sitting in their stately preservation under dust cloths, mourning the happier times that would never again be possible in the Davison family.

I almost felt sorry for the anthropomorphized objects in my fantasy, empathizing with their sense of loss. Tea tasted bitter and drab on my tongue, the whistle of breeze though a crack in one of the window panes like the sound of an unfamiliar bird roused by dawn. I was far from home, and far from happiness, at the beginning of a long day.

Climbing the stairs, I didn”t know whether to go or to stay. I thought I would be tired enough to sleep, yet I wasn”t; not when I opened the bedroom door to the empty camp bed, with Sidney”s clean pullover shirt across one end. I sank down on the bed, waiting for him to come back, even though I didn”t know what to say.

I should at least wash my face in the basin of water in the bathroom, which would be chilly, coming from one of the cold water jugs lined up next to the toilet and tub, to make up for the lack of plumbing. When those ran out, that would be the end of the water supply unless someone went back to town by boat, but I very much doubted either of us had to worry about running out of supplies. Neither of us would be here for much longer. Whether it was the same silent ride home, or separate ones, at the end of our first real rift.

Reaching atop my suitcase, I lifted down the old copy ofA Dark and Glorious HouseI had laid aside before. The split tape along the binding, yellowed and frail, was trying to come free. It fragmented away when I flexed it, turning to microscopic confetti on the floor.

I fell asleep with it in my hands; I was aware, because the sun and shadows had changed position on the opposite wall when I opened my eyes. My face was burrowed in a pillow that smelled of Sidney, his soap and cologne, his particular scent of skin and breath traced there. I propped myself on one elbow, discovering I was still alone, although Sidney”s shirt was gone, replaced by the knit pullover he had been wearing, now bunched atop his open knapsack.

My hand rubbed the sleep from my face, as I laid the book in my hands atop my suitcase again. I glanced around, looking for further signs of him, before I rose and stepped out of the bedroom, into the hall.

The castle was silent, except for wood creaks, and the whistle of wind through a crack somewhere on the floor above. I heard another sound as I listened. The soft, repeated staccato without any particular rhythm, coming in bursts of steady activity, with pauses in between. The sound of the typewriter”s keys, clacking away in the room across from me. Unmistakable.

My heartbeat picked up speed as it continued. I laid my hand over it, trying not to let it race too hard, but hope was an adrenaline drug that I could not resist.

It was not over, not quite yet.

________________________

The manuscript pages I had retyped were missing from the kitchen table, with my teacup and his both sitting in the sink with cold water and suds from a tiny box of antiquated washing up powder. The pump, I discovered was attached to a cistern of water, which, when considerable arm pressure was applied, let me rinse off a few extra clumps of soap powder stuck to the inside.

I opened the window on its squeaky hinges, letting in some cool but fresh air, and letting the dust fly from the old curtains that had been drawn across it. Outside, another view of the wraparound sea isolating us from the rest of the world.

Dean”s sisters had been telling the truth about the castle. It was dusty, damp, and unglamorous, except in the romantic sense of ancient history. Its rooms smelled of neglect and long abandonment, settling into the cushions and the carpets.

The sparse Norman interior had long ago been whitewashed, some of it painted to look like cozier cottage-style rooms. The chintz and roses was probably the work of either Dean”s mother or a female friend of the deceased university don who once lived here, but the study had a mannish air in its sparseness and the framed canvas of a fox underneath a drape cloth. The books in the room could be anyone”s, but a lot of them were legal texts when I flipped through them. I had never asked Dean what subject his uncle had read or taught.

An old geography atlas was among them, a tall volume with spindly binding and grey cover engraved with a globe and sailing ships. I opened it whilst sitting at a desk with its drape cloth bunched over an old ink pen set and a block perpetual calendar, lined up in front of the place Dean”s uncle probably used to write correspondence in between shooting parties or fishing trips — where I could picture Dean and Sidney building a fort with old knit afghans and pillows from the little window seat nook in the next room.

Colored plates of nations and flags, some of which had been remapped on the globe twenty years ago with new names and boundaries. I flipped its pages, the illustrations of ancient explorers and conquerors, from Alexander the Great to Marco Polo traveling Asia. Hannibal crossing the Alps by elephant, Cyrus invading Babylon. Legends of Prester John and tales of Doctor Livingstone, with pictures of cities of gold and man-eating lions in jungles.

Not the same book which had inspired Sidney and Dean to travel, but probably very much like it in spirit. I thought so when I landed on the glossy folio of the Valley of the Kings, seeing not the pages of outdated facts about their purpose and construction, only the desert landscape and stone monuments that could have been a landscape portrait of Dean”s imagination. I pictured two small figures waving from the top one, boys between the ages of nine and nineteen.

After that, I retreated to the window seat”s nook again, among the dusty pillows, with my notebook in hand. It lay open to the love letter tucked in close between its pages, not to any actual writing I had done as of recent. My words were still stalled behind the unformed idea, the shape of which was changing as fast as the clouds in high-altitude winds, where conditions are unpredictable and prone to capriciousness.

I let my pencil trail away without leaving a mark on the page. My ears were listening for sounds of the repeatedclack clackdespite my common sense.

At teatime, I rapped on the door, but there was no response, although I could hear the click of keys, and the faintpingof the bell at the page”s end. I touched the latch, then hesitated. Old habits being what they were, perhaps this was what he wanted, to be left undisturbed, lost in an intense state of concentration.

I placed the tray with the teacup and an apple outside the door. Glancing back once, I went downstairs again to my own cuppa.

I had two, still sitting in the window with my notebook and a novel borrowed from the study”s scant fiction collection, as the sun dropped low on the horizon. The window latch was stuck, but I forced open the frame, swinging in the panes of leaded glass diamonds to the sunset across the green lawn below. I folded my arms, my head resting atop them, and tried not to feel so keenly the knots tied in my stomach.

For two more days, I read, I doodled among my notes on love and letters, and walked the path from the castle”s far side to the old dock and back, twice daily. The old boat shed was empty, with holes in the floor and an empty space where someone had once kept one, perhaps. A cracked oar left behind in a corner, along with a spare life preserver ring.

At the edge of the short cliff, I tossed a few pebbles to sea, watching the foam play restlessly along the shoreline. I squinted, pretending I could see as far as the next island, the populated one with houses and boats moored along its shore.

At lunchtime, and at dinner, I cranked open cans of soup and heated them up. The apple and tea were untouched; I replaced the latter one, and added the soup, rapping gently at the door again. I withdrew, eating mine alone with only the whistle of the wind for a dinnertime companion.

Once, in the middle of the night, I woke with the lightness of a sleeper in unfamiliar rooms, hearing distant noises. I sat up halfway, listening to faint noises, aclinkmetallic, a creaking of a cupboard door settling. I checked the time, then lay down again, debating whether to go below or leave him on his own. I fell asleep again before I could decide, lulled by the warm duvet I had pulled around my shoulders again.

At one point, I thought he came and laid down for awhile to rest, for I had a sense of his warmth and weight beside mine. A sleep-veiled memory lingered of his embrace, and I felt myself holding onto him, trying to keep him from leaving when he slipped away. By the time I was fully awake, the room was lighter, and the only present change was the towel draped over the chair.

His tray was gone outside the door, which was closed again. I found it downstairs by the sink with the dishes in water and suds, the apple core tossed into the old compost bucket. The kettle was still warm to the touch on the stove”s eye, so I reheated it and poured myself a cup.

After lunch, when I came back from another walk, I searched the cupboards and the scant grocery supply, finding a powdered mix for cake in a tin, a bar of chocolate in the newer groceries. I made a creative effort at making cookies with those ingredients, using a little cooking oil and dried currants, and a little pan over the stove”s eye.

Two for me, two for Sidney, who did not answer the knock at the door when I left him a plate and a cup of tea around teatime. I washed my hair and brushed my teeth, as frugally as possible with the small water supply, then refilled the lavatory tank. Noting that only two jugs of water remained.

My novel didn”t hold my attention. I lit the lamp in the kitchen at dusk, and built a fire in the old fireplace with some kindling and chopped wood gathering dust beside it, hoping that the chimney was not stopped up or full of birds” nests. I tried to make myself eat an orange, finding I was not particularly hungry. The cobbled-together cookies were to blame, probably, so I made myself another cup of tea, nursing it with both hands as I stared into the flames.

In the back of my mind, I worried about Sidney”s eating and his sleep these past few days, which I imagined to be nearly-nonexistent. But if this was his last push to know the truth about himself, I wanted to do nothing to change his course any more than my words had done.

The jugs of water were now one in number when I filled the tank in the bathroom again. I wouldn”t waste it on anything frivolous from here on. We could get by at least one more day, maybe two.

I”ll wait.There was no need to do anything until supplies ran out. By then —

By then he would know. One way or the other, we would come to a decision. Downstairs, I swallowed a little more of my midday tea, and discovered it was cooling to the point that I couldn”t taste its spice anymore. I rinsed my cup and left it on the counter. I finished reading a novel until dusk claimed the daylight, then doused the fire, leaving only the lamp for Sidney, should he come downstairs later.

I overslept, realizing it was late morning when I opened my eyes, sleep-bleared, to sunlight on the wall. In my final minutes of sleep I had half-heard, half-felt the creak of the camp bed”s frame as Sidney settled himself on its edge. Watching me sleep, until I was awake enough to perceive him.

”Hi,” he said, softly.

”Hi.” I brushed one hand over my face, wiping away the tingle of sleep. My other hand reached to touch his back, to be sure he was there and I was not still dreaming.

”I thought I would make something for breakfast, if there”s still some porridge in the cupboard,” he said. ”I fancy you won”t want any shortly, but if you do, I”ll cook you some.”

”What makes you think I wouldn”t be hungry, too?” I said, trying to sound more awake than I felt. ”Not because you”re an awful cook, surely.” My teasing would be better in a less-froggy voice.

”Maybe another reason,” he answered, with a shrug as he smiled back, an odd twist in the movement of his lips. He leaned over, kissing me, lightly. ”Take your time,” he said. ”I want it to be honest.” He rose and went out of the room without saying what he meant by this.

I heard the soft rustle of paper against the sheets. A moment ago, I had been dreaming it was my old copy of the first novel. My eyes were now resting on a thick pile of typing paper, however, loosely bundled together with a cord. That”s when I became fully awake, as if my consciousness had thudded hard into my body by gravity”s force.

I sat up fully, pushing back the blankets. The stack of pages was topped with a blank one, the old title page gone. Underneath it was the first chapter I had retyped, all the way to the point where the story dropped off in my copying stage, where new and unfamiliar paragraphs followed, on page after page of freshly-typed story.

I glanced towards the doorway, then towards the book in my hands. My whole body was shuddering within, from the impact of what I held, shaking me down to the core. For a moment, my hands did not work, and the paper was only held by numb and tingling fingers that placed it down again, as if it were fragile china. Then its electricity had invaded me, throwing off sparks of energy that had me scrambling from the bed to pull on my blouse and jeans, slipping on my sneakers from beneath the chair.

My jacket was atop my suitcase, underneath the copy of the first novel. I seized the free end of the multicolored striped scarf that had been a gift from Sidney, dangling from between the two lips of my unlatched suitcase, pulling until the opposite end”s fringe emerged.

Afterwards, I gathered the manuscript into my hold, carefully, cradling it against my chest to keep its pages from slipping. Sidney would be back soon to sleep — I wanted to go someplace where he wouldn”t watch me read, or be aware of it, for there was nothing worse than the suspense of waiting for someone to deliver an opinion. Nothing worse than being watched by someone who knows the full cost of the words you are reading, too.

The stair rail creaked as I descended, hearing the splash of water from the kitchen”s old pump. Sidney was making porridge and tea, but he was right in his prediction about me — I was no longer interested in nourishment or a bracing morning pick me up.

In the old boat shed, I sat on the remains of the bridge connecting to the dock, in the sunlight of full morning. I was careful to keep the pages away from the edge, keeping each one carefully weighted down by the scarf folded beside me.

With concentration and curiosity hand in hand, I read each one not as a writer, nor as a critic or a friend, but as a fan. One who had been waiting for a decade to know how this story would unfold, and wanted to savor it with full attention.

There would be no assessments, no judgments, no notes to be written. I was entitled to this reading as much as he was, no matter how much of it was finished or how roughly it was drafted. He was entitled to know that was how I treated it, when he fulfilled his promise to me after all these years. After so much time and so many obstacles, this manuscript deserved no less.

One by one, I laid the pages aside, moving deeper into the story. Its typed leaves were slipping by faster as it drew me in, the steadyshuffof paper broken only by the water lapping against the old pillars beneath me.

”Destiny is not discernible, but he almost believed that he could detect its presence in some people. Their company triggered an electrification of the nerves beneath thousands of follicles in his body, by that greatness which appeared to be inevitable in certain humans, whether bonded with talent, fortune, or ingenious design...”

”... the initials on the suitcase made identity of its ownership perfectly evident to him. With leaden feeling, Frank unfastened both of its corroded brass latches and opened it. Comb, shirt, shoes. A tie from Bergdorf”s which had been a gift from Meredith Christmas three years ago....”

When the sun disappeared and the dock grew too chill to stay, I reluctantly gathered them up and climbed up the steps to the boulder near the rocky drop to the water, where I had recovered the manuscript”s previous pages. On the side out of the wind, I sat tucked in its hollow, and continued.

”.... ”It can”t be true,” said Janet. ”It can”t be.” She stopped here, saying nothing else so stupid in the face of what her mind could not accept. The foreign paper, proof in ink, lay spread on his lap, where, between those typical columns of conflict and debate, lay the naked words of her shock....”

Carefully, I weighed down another page with the heavy fringe of my scarf, feeling the stack growing lighter on my lap, but without feeling the lightness of a near finish. I had lost all attentiveness for how far I had come.

I laughed at a twist of irony, brief but realistic, and a biting remark or two that made me think of Dean”s humor. Shock ran through me when the plot twisted in a certain direction, although I had known its outcome was nearly unavoidable.

When I reached the fate I had dreaded for one of my favorite characters, I cried as I read it. The traces of those tears dried on my cheeks in the wind; I had brushed them away from my chin before they could fall to the paper below and stain its words.

””... and I would think, ”if only I hadn”t loved him as I did,”” said Lillian. ”I would catch myself at it, feeling the regret. Hurting in that manner makes one almost regret loving another. Then I would realize it was in my mind and how terrible I had been to ever think it.””

Before twilight came, the rose light on the rocks just offshore, I reached its end. The last page lay in my hands, the others anchored safely beside me. I laid this one atop them, face down, and laid my own against my knees for a moment to let my emotions settle within me, and let my thoughts gather themselves after so many hours of being lost to myself.

Then gathered the stack into my arms.

Sidney had lit the fire again in the kitchen, sitting in front of it, watching the flames as I had the nightbefore. I settled myself on the floor at the other end of the hearth, laying the manuscript between us. He glanced down at the pages slightly less tidy in their rebound state, then glanced into my eyes. It was a searching look, only a brief one that wasn”t so sure about receiving the full answer yet.

”I”m sorry,” he said. ”About Leonard.” In a gentler voice this time. He reached up, his thumb gently wiping away the last trace of one of my belated tears, as a hint of a smile touched his lips — but only just. ”I didn”t want to do it, you know.” His gaze sobered.

I felt a little bit of sympathy cross mine, a little bit of a reassuring smile also.

”Don”t be,” I said. ”The rest was ... everything I would have wanted. Everything I would have hoped for, if I had known what to hope.”

Even rough, and written at a mad pace more jarring to the creative mind than the one which had produced any of the other three, he had managed something real and extraordinary in those pages. I could still feel the finality of them in my mind, even with their grip now loosened on me. Could still feel the scope of satisfying exhaustion that comes over any reader who has been swept into a story, riding its force to the end.

He stared into the fire. ”Then I”m also sorry it took as long as it did.”

I watched it too, and played with the fringe on my scarf, two fingers weaving a braid in order to distract me from how strangely somber all of this now felt. I tried not to be distracted by his profile in the firelight, which had the sharpened look of his recovery stage, with the shadows playing in the hollow of his cheek. I was reminded of when I still called him Alex; a time without the hope of the pages between us having any chance of completion.

”Why did you change your mind?” I hesitated. ”To decide maybe ... it wasn”t beyond you.” I couldn”t believe it was just a few words, after how long he had struggled. He had been failing for weeks, had failed longer than that, as he reminded me before — nothing that one sentence of affirmation could reverse, even in a remote Irish castle, the equivalent of a desert island on this side of the ocean.

He was quiet at first. ”Dean used to say that I was my own worst enemy,” he said. ”My own worst critic. He was right.” He paused. ”I drove myself away from it. Before Byron”s people began doing the same to me. The time before the trip to Petra, I began the process of fooling myself into believing that willpower and inevitability was enough.”

He looked at me. ”It wasn”t good enough, and it would never have been,” he said. ”I came here, and I realized it. I was going to disappoint you and Dean for believing I could finish what I began. I was never going to give you the story you deserved to read.”

I didn”t let his gaze escape me, for I had felt a stab of pain for the regret underneath his voice. ”I didn”t expect it anymore,” I said. ”It wasn”t about that, not since we came to Cornwall. All I wanted was your happiness, not the book.”

”What we know someone wants for us, it differs from what we know they deserve from us,” he answered, emphasizing the difference between these two ideas.

”So how?” My voice softened.

A smile touched his lips. ”You retyped every one of those pages,” he said. ”All of them, after you fished them out of the sea. Then you told me if I chose to throw them away you would never so much as mention it again. That felt like ... colossal sacrifice.”

”From me? I don”t think so.” I echoed this idea as if he made a joke. But I could feel the heat in my cheeks, so close to the surface that it felt like the fire itself was inches away from me.

He reached across the way, his hand locating mine, and closing around it. ”I sat upstairs and thought about it, for hours. I had lost everything — everything that gave those pages meaning. Except the one thing I still had, that kept me believing in hope. This chance could only be about that. About you.”

He looked at me. His turn to hold my gaze with so much honesty that I could not break it. ”When I looked at it in that light, it wasn”t as simple to walk away. I could think about the story, and the ending, and what I was hoping to find when I began it, and not hate it for being what it was. Not looking at it through your eyes only, not imagining what you wanted it to be — but what you wanted me to be through it.”

Beneath his eyes and his words, my heart pattered wildly, wings of flight behind the walls of my chest again. I could not help the feeling that my hand was trembling in his hold.

”A crazy notion, but not to me.” He shrugged. ”I believed in it by the end. I thought ... just one more page. Just to be sure I had told you the truth. Just one more try, if only to show you a little more of what you saw in them in the first place. Then ... one more. One more afterwards. They came, but only so long as I thought in the back of my mind of the person who wanted so very much to know what the answer was to all those questions ... the ones I already knew, at least.”

He paused, his fingers tracing the tips of mine, which had touched those keys only a few days ago. ”Gradually, it began to pick up a bit of speed, and I found it was doing it all on its own,” he said. ”No reason to stop until I came to the end.” His smile had turned sillier, but I knew those words were still truthful, even if they sounded like a joke to tease me.

”I thought when you said it was for me you were being kind,” I answered. My heart was ready to break free of the shell which contained it.

He eased himself into the place across from me, turning me to face him completely in the light cast by the fire. His remaining free hand found mine, and I felt the surrounding warmth from those fingers with their strength.

”Thank you for still believing, even when I couldn”t,” he said. ”That”s why it always had to be you, Maisie. No one else.”