55. July 21, 1960 London, England
Beatrix unlocks the door to her apartment and pushes it open. She lingers in the hushed quiet of the hallway with Oliver, not ready to be home, for their trip to be over, for him to leave her.
“When will I see you again?” She forces a lightness into her voice she doesn’t feel. The last three days have been a dream, one she doesn’t want to wake from.
“I’d love to,” she says. Her cheery tone drains away. That isn’t for another nine years.
Oliver slips his notebook into his pocket. “I know it’s a long time.”
“How do you feel about meeting sooner?” she asks. “There’s something I’d like to show you.”
He smirks at her. “Now I’m intrigued.”
She disappears into her apartment. Oliver leans on the doorframe and watches her rummage through the telephone table tucked in the hall, a bemused smile on his lips. She pulls out a pen and a small pad of yellow lined paper. In her neatest cursive, she writes: Lancaut, August 6, 1965.
She isn’t sure what’s left of it. Maybe nothing. But she wants Oliver to see it. She wants to see it with him. And five years doesn’t feel as far away as nine, at least. She tears the page from the pad and hands it to him.
He glances down at it. His smile disappears, and he straightens in the doorway. “You’re going to Lancaut?”
“I want—I need to know what’s left of it,” she says. “If anything is left of it.”
“Why?” Oliver asks.
“Closure.” The idea came to her on the train ride from Paris—at least, the resolve for it did.
She wants to cherish every moment she has left with Oliver.
But the past haunts her. “Will you come with me?” She wants him to see who she was before she picked his pocket at the Globe, wants him to know every part of her.
“I’ll have Lucy add it to my itinerary as soon as I get back.”
Beatrix’s heart sinks. She tries to keep her regret from showing on her face.
Oliver still notices. “Hey, what’s that look for?”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m being selfish.” She reaches for the paper, but Oliver holds it high, out of her grasp.
“You’re not.”
Beatrix folds her arms over her chest. “How long will it take to change your schedule?”
He shrugs.
Beatrix glares at him.
“About a week,” he admits.
She snatches at the page. Oliver steps into the hall. “You know, you used to be good at stealing things,” he says with a somehow still infuriating smirk.
“Never mind,” she says. “You don’t have to come.”
“I want to come.”
She frowns, and Oliver’s brow furrows.
“What is this about, Bea?”
She searches his eyes. Are they duller than when he appeared in the Whispering Gallery to whisk her away? The shadows under them are darker, she’s sure, his face grown more pale. “How long was Paris for you? In your time, I mean.”
“Three and a half weeks,” Oliver says. “And every second I spent waiting to get back to you was excruciating.” He pulls her close and kisses her on the temple. “I don’t know how you do it.”
Her heart aches. Three and a half weeks to give her three days with him, returning to his time in the minutes it took her to walk to the corner café for their breakfast or down to the lobby for fresh towels. A piece of a normal life—a normal life with him—she will cherish forever.
“It’s too much time.” Too much, flowing away too fast.
“What am I saving it for?” Oliver asks.
It dawns on Beatrix how transactional it all sounds.
Spending time. Saving time. As if time is nothing more than currency Oliver can save, second by second, minute by minute, hoarding it away in a bank vault somewhere instead of losing everything.
“That’s why you’re doing all this, isn’t it? To get more time?”
Oliver slumps against the wall next to her half-opened door. “That’s why I started.” His gaze lingers on her.
Her heart skips. “And now?”
Oliver hesitates. “I want to live. Maybe that is seeing as much of the world as I can or being there when history is made. But maybe it’s reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and eating birthday cake for breakfast and visiting a tiny village on the border of Wales that no one has ever heard of, too.
I think… I lost sight of that.” He tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“If we had all the time in the world, would you still want to go to Lancaut?”
“Yes,” Beatrix admits.
He smiles, easy and bright, despite the weariness in his gaze. “Then I’ll see you in five years.”
She lays a hand on his cheek, just turning rough with stubble. Her stomach twists. She hopes this isn’t a mistake. “I’ll see you in a week.”