56. August 31, 2202 Boston, Massachusetts
Oliver massages the back of his neck, tries to chase away the persistent throbbing in his head. Every clack of Lucy’s keyboard feels like she’s stabbing him in the base of his skull with one of her black stilettos.
“A friend mentioned it. She thought I’d like to see it,” Oliver says.
Lucy shakes her head, but she keeps her eyes fixed on her screen and the writing scrolling past in a blur of green light. “Some friend. There’s nothing there.”
“Nothing?” Oliver slumps back into his chair.
“A forest. A river. Some ruins.” She pulls her glasses off and looks across her desk at him, like he’s a riddle she can’t figure out. “Are you sure you want to spend an excursion on this?” She says spend; she means waste.
He straightens in his seat and lets his hand fall away from his neck. “I’m sure.”
Lucy sighs and puts her glasses on. “It’s your time…” She hits Confirm on her display, and the chamber door rotates open. Oliver steps inside the glass-and-metal tube, and Lucy secures the door with her palm print. A green light washes over him. He squints against the brightness.
A message flashes on Lucy’s display, glowing red, pulsing in time with the throbbing in Oliver’s skull.
ACCESS DENIED: SUBJECT UNSTABLE.
ACCESS DENIED: SUBJECT UNSTABLE.
ACCESS DENIED: SUBJECT UNSTABLE.
The chamber door releases with a quiet swish.
“No, no, no, come on!” His heart pounds against his ribs. This can’t be happening. “I have to get back!”
“Relax,” Lucy says, all professional calm. Her fingers fly over the chamber controls. “This happens sometimes. I’ll reset the system.”
Oliver sags against the glass wall, his heart racing, his mind reeling with grim what-ifs. This has to work. It has to.
Lucy secures the door, and Oliver straightens. The green light washes slowly over him. He counts in his head, his hope growing with each agonizing second. One. He’ll get to Lancaut. Two. He’ll get back to Bea. Three. He’ll tell her—
ACCESS DENIED: SUBJECT UNSTABLE.
The chamber door rotates open.
Fuck.
Lucy presses her crimson lips into a thin line. “Have a seat, Mr. Rhodes.”
He slumps into the chair across from her. She straightens and folds her hands together on the desktop. “The trans-temporal chamber has deemed you unfit for travel.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
Lucy glares at him. “As part of Aevum’s safety protocol, you are suspended from using our travel chambers for the next seven days, effective immediately.
Once your suspension is complete, you may attempt today’s excursion again.
If the trans-temporal chamber finds that you are in stable condition, your excursion will proceed as planned. ”
His heart pounds against his ribs. “And if it doesn’t?”
Lucy hesitates. “Aevum has a strict safety policy, Mr. Rhodes. If you are denied access by the chamber again, the rest of your contract with us will be terminated.”
His heart plummets to his guts. Oliver has known the day he dies for months, has built the rest of his short life around it as if it is the only date that matters. He was wrong. The only date he cares about now is the one he fears has already passed him by. The last time he sees Beatrix.
“This is for your own good, Mr. Rhodes.”
It doesn’t feel that way.
“Go home and rest,” Lucy says, an order more than a suggestion. “I’ll reschedule your excursion for next week.”
Oliver leaves Lucy typing away at her station, probably writing a report about how the trans-temporal chamber is the only one willing to face the facts.
He’s getting worse.
He’s running out of time.
He’s not ready to go.
It’s pouring when Oliver gets off the T, and the cool rain has soaked him through by the time he’s walked the fifteen minutes to Theo’s house. He rings the bell and watches the lightning as it streaks across the cloud-darkened sky overhead.
Theo answers the door. His eyes grow wide at the sight of his brother, either because Oliver hasn’t set foot on his steps in six years or because he looks like a drowned rat. Maybe both. “Oli? What are you doing here?”
“I—” Shit. What is he doing here? He got on the T three blocks from Aevum—like he always did after an excursion—but this time, he didn’t get off when it reached his stop. He came here, to his brother.
Theo opens the door wide. “Come on, get out of the rain.”
Oliver steps over the threshold and into the warm foyer that has smelled of fake cinnamon since he was a child. His chest tightens.
“Let me get you a towel.” Theo jogs up the wide carpeted staircase and disappears down the hall where their bedrooms used to be, leaving Oliver dripping a puddle on the polished hardwood floor.
He clenches his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, the cold from the rain seeping through his clothes to his skin, to his bones.
Theo returns and hands Oliver a plush white towel. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”
“I’m—” Fine. Except he’s clearly not. His usual stretched-truth reply transforms into a blatant lie that sticks in his throat when Theo looks at him. “I don’t know what to do,” Oliver admits. He scrubs his hair with the towel.
Theo’s gaze softens. “About?”
“Anything?” Oliver says. His brother doesn’t laugh.
Oliver wraps the towel around his shoulders. “I met this woman—” He stops himself. It sounds so trite. How could Theo ever understand? “Forget it.” He steps toward the door.
“Wait,” Theo says. “At least stay until the rain stops.”
“Yeah. Okay,” Oliver concedes, shivering in his wet clothes.
Theo leads the way through the wide archway into the bright white kitchen, even though Oliver knows the layout by heart. “You might have some clothes upstairs if you want to change,” he says. “If not, you can borrow some of mine.”
Oliver takes Theo up on the offer. There are only empty drawers and a bare closet in his own room.
He took everything with him when he left for college, intent on giving Theo a fresh start.
But as he climbs the stairs and walks down the dark hallway toward their old bedrooms, he realizes it’s not only the cinnamon scent in the foyer that hasn’t changed.
The house looks just like it did the day he left, six years ago.
Oliver returns to the kitchen in Theo’s gray hooded sweatshirt and dark jeans. He slides onto a stool at the end of the counter, but not before Theo eyes him critically. He’s obviously lost weight since the last time his brother saw him.
“Are you hungry?” he asks. “I can make you a sandwich or something.”
Oliver shakes his head, and for a moment there are two Theos watching him with worried, weary gazes, neither of them quite solid. He pulls the glasses off his face and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to chase away the fog of fatigue.
Theo sets an open bottle of beer in front of Oliver, then opens his own. He takes a sip and leans against the counter behind him.
Oliver can’t hold his expectant gaze. He puts his glasses back on and looks out the window over the kitchen sink.
The sun has set. Lightning flashes across the night, silhouetting the trees.
“If there was someone you knew you could never be with, would you still see them?” He’s not sure why he asks.
Maybe he wants to hear Theo say what he already knows.
That he was selfish to visit Beatrix. That he should never have let it get this far.
That he should have been more careful, should have let her go, should have said goodbye in Paris.
Or maybe he wants to know if Theo would have made the same mistakes, too.
“The woman you met?” Theo asks.
Oliver nods. He picks at the label on his beer bottle.
Theo treads carefully. “Does she know you’re sick?”
“Dying,” Oliver corrects. “And yeah, she knows.”
“And what does she say?”
Oliver takes a long drink. She says she’ll see him soon in the steadiest voice she can manage. She says she wishes he could stay, while fighting back tears. Says she loves him, without saying it at all. Zoe warned him. “I am going to break her heart either way.”
“Then I think you make as many memories as you can before you run out of time together,” Theo says.
Too late.
“All she has is memories. That’s what she told me once,” Oliver says, glancing over at Theo. “She said she wanted something real. Do you know what I said?”
Theo shakes his head.
“I told her memories are real. That the love that made them was real. You told me that.”
“I remember,” Theo says. It was their first Christmas without their parents, only six months on from the accident. “I was panicking because I didn’t know what the fuck to get you as a gift.”
“Likewise,” Oliver admits. “That’s how you ended up with the world’s ugliest tie.”
“Hey, I liked that tie. I still have it,” Theo says with a smile Oliver hasn’t seen in a long time.
“You do not. It was hideous. It had ducks on it.”
“Penguins,” Theo corrects. “I’ll go get it right now, if you don’t believe me.”
Oliver shakes his head. “You don’t have to prove it. I believe you.” He takes a swig of his beer. So does Theo.
“Christ, what a fucking disaster that was,” his brother says. A smile creeps over his lips at the memory.
A record-breaking blizzard had hit New England three days before Christmas.
It took Theo and Oliver a day and a half to dig out the house without getting frostbite.
By the time they got to the grocery store—an hour before closing on Christmas Eve—the shelves were bare of the usual festive foods their mother would have made.
Theo wanted so badly to re-create their last Christmas together as a family that Oliver thought he was going to have a breakdown.
He lied and told Theo he didn’t like ham anyway.
They ended up with a Christmas Eve feast of spaghetti and meatballs, with frozen waffles topped with ice cream for dessert.
The next morning, two gifts sat under the tree.
Theo’s hideous penguin tie and a photo album for Oliver.
It was full of photos of him with his parents, from the day he was born to his last dance recital, just a few weeks before the accident.