60. July 20, 1969 Cape Kennedy, Florida
Beatrix packs her things into her suitcase, the low voices on the television her only company. Her eyes ache from all the crying, puffy and raw.
The first night was the worst. She thought she had finally gone numb to it all, but when she slid into the empty bed, it hit her all over again: Oliver was gone. He was gone, and wherever he was, he was dying. She couldn’t breathe, felt like she was drowning on dry land, her heart hurt so much.
She had to make it stop. She told herself she wouldn’t let Oliver have this effect on her, hold this power over her, like she was some pathetic lovesick girl.
There was only one thing to be done. She would move on, put one foot in front of the other like she did when she fled Lancaut. She could stay in America. Start over.
Then yesterday her birthday dawned, sunny and bright and beautiful, and she never even got out of bed. Because her birthday reminded her of Paris, and Paris reminded her of him, and maybe she really was pathetic.
She lay alone in the bed and sifted through every moment she’d shared with him.
She told herself she was searching for answers, but it was reasons she was looking for.
A reason to harden her heart against him, to take those wonderful memories and tarnish them, wear away the sharp edges that were tearing her apart.
It wasn’t what she found in those memories that hurt the most. It was what she didn’t find: everything she never said to Oliver.
A voice from the television draws her attention.
The president of the United States, placing a phone call to the moon.
She shakes her head in wonder. Apollo 11 had made it to the moon and a man walked on it, and Beatrix knows it is the start of something, even without Oliver’s notebook, still lying on the floor.
“For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this earth are truly one,” the president says to the moon and the world. But Beatrix has never felt more alone.
She closes the lid of her suitcase and fastens it with a click.
Her whole life fits neatly inside, with room to spare.
It is a practicality of reinventing herself every decade.
She can’t keep her old clothes, has no use for corsets and petticoats.
And she has never been one for sentimental trinkets, not since she traded away her wedding band.
If it doesn’t serve a purpose, she doesn’t keep it, and reminding her of a life she can never have again is not a purpose.
Besides, she doesn’t need a keepsake to call up the memories. She remembers them all, and she is certain she has never made a mistake like this. Not even the faerie’s curse, which at least brought her Oliver.
Oliver, who loved her.
She should have told him what he meant to her, should have told him she loved him, should have said goodbye. She should have said a lot of things.
She pulls his plaid sport coat from the arm of the gaudy chair in front of the television.
It smells faintly of lavender and apples and forest and him.
Or maybe she is already imagining him in places he’s not.
She throws it over her shoulders, slips her arms through the sleeves, and wraps herself in it.
Her gaze lands on his journal lying on the floor. The last piece of him.
She crosses the room and gingerly picks it up. The cover had been worn from use ages ago. Now, the spine is broken, a few pages torn loose and scattered nearby. Beatrix gathers them up.
She sits on the unmade bed, crosses her legs beneath her, and opens Oliver’s journal in her lap.
She will read his stories over and over, try to find him between the lines he has written.
She will memorize his words—etch them into her heart—yet she will still open the book, just to touch the pages he has touched. But not tonight.
Tonight, Beatrix flips past the pages Oliver has filled. Past Shakespeare and Carnevale, the ballet and the Crystal Palace. She passes Amelia Earhart and Paris, slows when she reaches Apollo 11. Turns the page to find a single word written across the top in Oliver’s blocky handwriting: Woodstock.
Her stomach drops, hope twisting into dismay, twisting into hope again.
Oliver hadn’t come back to the car, hadn’t come back to the motel. He doesn’t have the time. But Woodstock is here, in his journal. His next excursion. Already planned. Already approved.
Her heart races. Woodstock is less than a month away. She could get there. He could find her. Just like they promised each other under the bright stars of Lancaut.
And then she will tell him everything she has never had the courage to say.