58. July 16, 1969 Cape Kennedy, Florida
The car’s headlights cut through the predawn darkness, send golden light glittering across the black water as Beatrix parks off the highway’s shoulder.
There are already others gathered on the narrow strip of dirt between the road and the river’s edge, cars and motor homes and tents full of people waiting.
She doesn’t need Oliver to tell her history will be made today.
She can feel it in the air, something electric humming against her skin.
She pulls the key from the ignition and slides across the bench seat, the chill of the smooth vinyl raising goose bumps on her legs.
She has worn shorts and a sleeveless blouse because the weather report said it would be hot and humid, and nothing at all like England, but with the sun still an hour from rising, she wishes she had brought her cardigan from the motel.
She leans into Oliver, trying to steal some of his warmth.
“Wake me when there’s a rocket,” he mumbles, pulling her close. He lets his head fall against the passenger-side window.
She brushes a curl off his forehead. It’s warm. “Are you feeling all right?” It is early, but it isn’t like him to be this quiet, this still.
“Just tired,” he assures her, kissing her on the temple.
They doze together, curled up in the front seat of Beatrix’s car. Oliver falls into a fitful sleep, and Beatrix watches the sunrise through the windshield.
It doesn’t take long for the sun to make the inside of the car far too warm for comfort.
Beatrix slides across the seat, opens her door, and steps out into the bright morning and a sea of people.
She pulls a blanket from the trunk, spreads it over the back of the car to protect her bare legs from the sunbaked metal.
She kicks off her sandals and uses the chrome bumper to climb onto it.
Oliver climbs up next to her. He’s paler in the sunlight, his face drawn.
He checks his watch, studies it for a long moment before he says, “Forty-two minutes until launch.”
Beatrix stares out at the horizon with her two-toned gaze. For once, she isn’t the only one counting. “Forty-two minutes until the world changes forever.”
She has never gotten used to this feeling, of the world shifting, of time breaking into a before and after. She has seen so many events that have made history, has lived through so much time. She can tell when it changes.
“Forty-one.”
The din of the crowd fades. People tune their radios to pick up the broadcast out of Cape Kennedy, turn up the volume to hear the announcer, hush their children, and wait. A heavy silence falls over them, pulls them together, cut only by the authoritative voice of the radio correspondent.
“T-minus sixty seconds and counting,” the voice from across the water says through the speakers. Beatrix sits, riveted, as he counts down to zero, her gaze locked on the horizon. She sees the burst of flame a moment before he cries, “And we have liftoff!”
The crowd cheers as one, drowning out the distant rumbling of the rocket and the rest of the announcer’s words.
Her heart swells as she surveys the sea of joy—men and women, old and young, black and white and brown—every one of them united in their awe and pride.
They are going to the moon. And if they can do that, they can do anything.
She wishes she could freeze time, capture this singular moment beneath glass, to show the world when it has passed into history. Look at us, she wants to say. Remember this. The newsreels could never do it justice.
Beatrix shields her eyes with her hands and watches the rocket as it soars. The sun glints off its side as it grows smaller and smaller, until it is no larger than a bird, until it is a speck, until it has left Earth behind.
“We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?” She lets her hands fall into her lap. It is still impressive, even if she is sitting next to a time traveler.
Oliver doesn’t answer.
Beatrix glances over her shoulder, but the place where he sat a moment ago is empty. Her heart lurches. “Oliver?” Her cry is swallowed up by the ecstatic cheers of the crowd. She scans the faces around her, doesn’t find his among them.
“Oliver?” she calls, louder this time, as if he is hiding or has stepped away or is playing some cruel joke on her. She slides off the trunk. The scrubby grass pricks at her bare feet like needles, but she doesn’t care. She peers through the window into the car. Empty.
“Oliver?” Her voice is edged with fear now. Panic swells in her chest, threatens to suffocate her. She knows where he is, where he has gone.
Gone.
She startles at a loud popping sound, a man in a lawn chair uncorking a bottle of champagne. It spills golden foam over his hand and down the green glass bottle. He laughs and his friends laugh and his wife laughs, and Beatrix thinks she might be sick.
This is it, the end. No long goodbye. No goodbye at all. It’s what she wanted. But not like this.
A gaggle of young boys streaks past, swooping model rocket ships over their heads, squealing with joy. A wave of nausea crashes over Beatrix, turns her hot and cold and clammy.
Oliver was too sick to travel. Too sick to stay. Because Oliver is dying.
Her stomach clenches, and sour, acid bile rushes up her throat. Someone starts a rousing rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and everyone joins in. She vomits in the grass.
Oliver is gone.
Beatrix doesn’t remember how, but she makes it to the motel. She lets herself into their room. “Oliver?”
Silence greets her, and the last fragile hope she has clung to on the short drive from the launch site—that if Oliver was going to come back, he would have come back here—crashes down around her.
The room is exactly how they left it.
The silent television plays footage of Apollo 11. Two cups of coffee sit on the low table in front of it, cold and half empty—his with two creams and two sugars, hers light, with red lipstick staining the mug’s edge. Oliver’s notebook sits open between them.
The bed is unmade, a tangle of sheets and blankets. Her yellow suitcase rests open on the rack in the corner. His sport coat lies over the arm of the chair, like he has gone outside for some ice, will be back any moment now.
A knock raps on the door, and Beatrix goes rigid, trapped by a treacherous hope for a single thundering heartbeat.
“Housekeeping.”
Her shoulders slump under the weight of the truth. Oliver isn’t here.
The knock sounds again. Beatrix cracks the door open.
A round woman with big hair stands on the threshold.
“I’m here to clean your room, dear.” She raises a bucket of supplies as proof and steps forward, but Beatrix blocks her way.
“We’re fine, thank you.” She shuts the door in the startled woman’s face and slides the dead bolt home. She sags against the door.
We.
The room is suddenly stifling, as if it was already too small, and now the walls are closing in, too.
It can’t stay like this, this perfect image of a life.
Of two people, existing together, living together, loving together.
It’s a lie, like that perfect Lancaut the faerie showed her.
A heart-shattering, perfect lie she was fool enough to believe.
Beatrix snatches Oliver’s coffee mug off the table and hurls it at the wall.
Ceramic shards explode across the room. The cleaning woman bangs on the door.
Beatrix doesn’t notice. She grabs Oliver’s notebook, and the rage in her wants to rip it to shreds, like he ripped her heart out.
But it is too much a piece of him. She can’t bring herself to tear a single page.
Because this is all her fault.
Her fault, for turning back that day in London when she should have kept walking.
Her fault, for asking to meet him again.
Her fault, for letting him through her walls and into her undying heart, when she knew. It could only end like this.
She flings the notebook across the room, watches the pages fly and scatter. The knocking is more insistent now. She sinks to the floor and lets her sobs overtake her.
“Hello, miss? Is everything okay?”
No. Nothing is okay. And Beatrix is sure nothing will ever be okay again.