Chapter 36
CHAPTER 36
Adeline wandered to her bedroom with a cup of coffee in hand. She couldn’t deny it was nice to have coffee again, but she’d have preferred to have the edge of her fatigue taken off by Logan. She’d have preferred to have a few other things taken off by Logan, too—namely, the comfy clothes that she’d quickly readjusted to.
She walked into the boxy walk-in closet and sat down cross-legged, setting the coffee down on the carpet. It had been two days since she’d been found on the beach, and already, she was going out of her mind with boredom. If she’d been allowed to go back to work, she’d have had something to distract herself from what she’d lost, but her job had been filled in her prolonged absence.
Although, some of the nurses had posted about her on social media while she’d been missing, which made her feel like her time at the hospital hadn’t gone entirely unnoticed.
Opening her phone, she checked for any messages from Jane. She’d tried calling, but the grumpy person on the other end had informed her that Jane would be out in the field for a few days, and the island where they were working didn’t have any cell service. So, it seemed Adeline would have to wait to give her sister the good news that she was back… and that she was thoroughly miserable about it.
“Right, where is it?” she mumbled to herself, skimming her fingertips along the cardboard boxes that lined the wall.
Emma had mentioned that she’d put away a few things for Adeline while she was gone, storing them for when—or if—she came back. And Adeline wanted her book on survival medicine. She had a delivery message dated December 27 th that said it had arrived, so it had to be in there somewhere, thrown in a box with whatever else Emma had tidied away.
Her fingertips settled, instead, on the box she’d searched through on the night she found Logan. Her box of old memories.
Curious, she dragged it toward her, waving away the dust that puffed up. She opened it, not really sure what she was expecting. The old school reports unleashed a stale, library scent, while her old medals glinted. Pictures crinkled as she moved them aside, digging into the corner of the box.
“Shut up,” she gasped, her fingertips touching something smooth and solid.
She grabbed the object and pulled it out, her heart in her throat as she realized what it was. A black, hinged box. The same one that used to hold the snow globe.
“Of course, it’s here,” she muttered to herself, feeling stupid.
For a moment, she’d forgotten that the snow globe was gone. Emma had probably cleaned it up and dumped the bits in the bin, or the police had it as evidence. But the box it came in had no reason to be gone.
Nevertheless, she opened the box, bracing for the sight of bare black velvet.
She almost passed out as a chocolate-box cottage in a forest, surrounded by glittery deer and frosty pine trees, stared back at her. There wasn’t a single crack in the glass globe. It was exactly as it used to be before she’d smashed it against the wall, right down to the pie cooling on the windowsill and the doves roosting in a tree.
Did Emma buy me a new one?
It didn’t seem likely. Emma would have mentioned it if she had.
But something had repaired it, so perfectly that there wasn’t a visible flaw.
Confused, Adeline pulled the silver cloth out of her pocket and held it up to the closet light. As she tilted it slightly to the left, words began to appear, as if someone was sewing them into the fabric in real-time, right before her eyes.
Once more, and then no more,
A choice that must be made,
Wish hard and clear and have no doubt,
Of the place you wish you had stayed,
A final leap that then will close,
A price that must be paid.
All the pieces slotted together in her head. The seer gave her the cloth for a reason. It wasn’t just to wrap up the opal egg, it wasn’t just to give instructions—it carried the time-travel juice within it. And when Adeline had come back to her time, that cloth had worked its magic on the snow globe, giving her one last chance to choose happiness.
A token.
“I could go back,” she whispered, overwhelmed and overjoyed and hesitant all at once.
But what about Jane?
She cursed the cell service of rural Scotland.
She jumped up, grabbing clothes from her closet, putting on as many as possible. Her warmest sweaters, several pairs of underwear, her favorite pajamas, her favorite t-shirt, and threw her borrowed dress on top of it all. This time, she was going back to Logan prepared. She was aware that it might cause a few upsets in the future if archaeologists found her clothes in an ancient site, but at least it would give them something interesting to mull over.
That done, she sent a text to Emma, explaining that she’d left two letters: one for her, one for Jane. And if she could send the letter on to Jane, she’d be eternally grateful.
All she had left to do was write the letters, which proved a lot more difficult when she was bundled up in ten layers of clothing. She kept the notes as brief but heartfelt as possible, telling them both that she loved them dearly and that she was taking off so that she could finally be with the love of her life and be of use to a lot of people with her medical degrees. After all, that had been her purpose all along.
If she could, she would’ve written pages and pages to Jane, detailing everything that had happened since she’d gone missing. But it seemed kinder, somehow, to keep the letter vague. She didn’t want her sister to worry that she was having a mental breakdown. She just wanted her sister to know that, where she was going, she would be blissfully happy.
And I can leave a message for Emma, passed down through the ages, if there’s something I desperately want Jane to know.
That alleviated the slight pinch of guilt in her stomach.
“In a way, Jane,” she said out loud, “I’ll be closer to you. You just won’t know I’m there.”
Folding up the notes and writing Jane and Emma’s names on them, respectively, Adeline jogged back to the tiny walk-in closet and picked up the heavy snow globe. She held it for a moment, frowning at the festive scene.
“This isn’t where I did it.”
Panicking slightly, she took the snow globe to the living room and sat down where she’d sat on Christmas Eve. She couldn’t muster a violent rage like last time, since she didn’t have anything to be angry about, but she hoped it wouldn’t matter, as long as everything else was the same.
With a deep breath, she shook the globe as hard as possible, crying out, “I don’t want to be alone!”
The living room stayed where it was. No thunder or lightning rattled the skies outside. It hadn’t worked.
Was it the wrong time of day? The wrong time of year? Maybe the seer could’ve put down a few more instructions, to help her along.
Then, it dawned on her, a smile stretching from ear to ear.
She waited for the glittery snow to settle and then immediately shook the globe again, so hard that her wrists began to ache. And as she did so, she shouted at the top of her lungs, “I wish to be with him!” and threw the globe at the wall.
The glass shattered, and the world shattered with it. Thunder boomed overhead, the sky outside the window turning black, lightning cracking downward with a flash of blinding light.
And with that flare of hope, Adeline passed out.