CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The next part was almost too easy. Many tasks were, when you had the right tools. The following morning, I fed Anne Shirley and took my new keywords to the library computer nook. I didn’t even try to be noticed.
I started with social media sites, but only after deciding that I wouldn’t go anywhere near my own profiles, or Tía Viv’s, or the pages belonging to any of my friends and family. Maybe I would rethink that decision if I had time. Today was about nothing else but him.
Yes, sure, I considered the fact that what I was hoping (dying) to do was the riskiest thing I’d ever done.
I knew full well that when I left Tía Viv in the workshop and hopped in the old white Ford and drove out of Sacred, I’d be crossing realms that probably shouldn’t have been crossed.
I was breaching cosmic castles. I did it anyway.
I thought at too many points that the watch would’ve stopped me. Caused a flood or a dead battery or an hours-long pileup on the highway. When nothing happened, I was only half-surprised. If I knew anything about this timepiece, it loved a good twist.
The house where Penn slept and dreamed and then came to me was frustratingly close.
Eugene, Oregon, was minutes away from places we’d been.
The closer I got to his exit and to the street where a “last known address” search had led, sweat glazed the back of my neck, and tingles shot up my fingertips.
My first look at his house from a tree-lined parking strip was a monstrous Venice Beach wave that caught you by surprise.
The kind that left your eyes blurry with salt and your sinuses burning.
The kind that felt like almost too much for your body to handle.
I struggled to control what was left of mine. I stayed anyway. (Of course I did.)
Suck it up, Sylvie. I was better than panic. I had made a plan, after all. Find him. See him—the waking version that was rigid bone and solid muscle. But even I couldn’t plan my way into this kind of unknown.
I did manage to center myself, willing my lungs to not quit—no, not yet.
Telling my pulse to chill while I logged every detail like it was important.
It was, and I wanted everything. Penn’s house was adorable.
White siding, a bottle-green door, two compact stories topped by a black roof.
A no-frills lawn and a row of trimmed bushes made up the small lot.
My heart snagged on the green-and-yellow pennant flag waving over the porch.
A yellow O for the University of Oregon, the school where Penn would be a sophomore in the fall. Premed, biology.
A sloping driveway was empty, but the street was lined with vehicles, nose to tail.
One could be his. I imagined myself riding shotgun.
I imagined myself arguing with him over Spotify stations.
I imagined myself walking up that driveway and climbing the steps and pressing the doorbell, over and over.
Finally, I was doing it for real. And there I was, my feet planted on the rubber doormat while ding-dong-ding-dong chimed from inside.
The door opened. An early-twenties, medium-height blond girl took me in with the same surface-grazing, distracted look I’d gotten from everyone but Del.
A hundred questions came, most of them arrowing backward to the lake, when I’d wondered if Penn had a girlfriend.
My throat closed, mind spiraling. Only a handful of photos lived on Patrick Gerrity’s Instagram feed.
(It was how I found his town, then his school and major.) But he was only visible in a couple wide group shots in the woods, or the student center quad.
None existed of him with an arm wrapped around this pretty blonde who wore a cropped Oregon Ducks tank top and gray fleece shorts.
He was never truly yours. Even in the dark. Even in wishes.
“Hello. I . . .”
Had he moved houses? Was she just a friend or visitor? I couldn’t make my tongue work. Couldn’t make the right sounds.
The girl nodded once. “Wrong house? Cool.” She reached to shut the door.
“Wait, please,” I managed, grabbing the knob to stop her. Her look of alarm kicked my body into action. “Sorry, er, Patrick. I’m looking for Patrick.” It felt so weird to call him this.
But I could’ve danced when her face quirked with enough recognition to widen the space and move aside.
I took it as an invitation and risked three steps forward until I was truly in.
Twin archways led from the tiny entry to the kitchen and a living area.
A narrow staircase hugged the outer wall.
I searched the air for any trace of him.
The door closing behind me was cardiac shock number twenty, at least. The girl had gone to the mailbox and grabbed a stack of letters. She shuffled through, then looked up, startled.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” she pressed.
Because she’d already forgotten me. “I came to see Patrick,” I said. “Is he home? It’s important.”
“Oh.” Distracted. Disjointed. She threw her gaze around the room. “I’ll tell him.”
She shot up the staircase with a kind of determination I appreciated, but the dread of not knowing who she was lingered over everything. I had to push it aside. It seemed I was alone down here, and I wasn’t afraid to be curious.
Clues lived as much as Penn did in the living room. I went over to a massive bookshelf. A couple framed photos leaned in front of stacks of hardbacks. And there was Penn, shot from a wide angle at the beach, linked with four other people. The blonde was there too, on the end.
My eyes scanned sideways, finding recently published novels, and old Dickens and Michael Crichton titles, covers worn soft. Oregon wildlife manuals sat next to anatomy textbooks and a chemistry lab workbook.
I halted when I reached the next section and found the large silver frame. Inside was a poem etched onto thick parchment ringed with flowering vines. The poet was Emily Dickinson, and it was a verse I knew from school.
Because I could not stop for Death—-
He kindly stopped for me—-
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—-
And Immortality.
The inscription on the bottom had a name and two dates. A person, a birth, and a death. My eyes burned over the name. Patrick Murray. He died three days before Tía Vivian and I drove into Sacred.
Grandpa Patrick was gone. Dreaming Penn had either not remembered yet, or he’d felt this bit was one life-shock too many for one day. Had the watch made it to Sacred, to an out-of-place spot at Spines and Pines, because its owner had just passed?
So busy with guesses, I almost missed the glint of clear blue on the second shelf from the bottom.
Awareness came fast, and I made a happy-sad-strangled sound when I picked up the Lincoln City glass float that Penn had found with his mom and grandpa.
The treasure looked exactly as he’d described, whole and unbroken with cobalt and turquoise swirled together.
In my hands, it could’ve been a crystal ball that worked the wrong way.
Backward, past tense. Because I saw us and everything (long drives and side-eye jokes, the moonlit view from a Ferris wheel).
I jolted into the present when footsteps stomped above my head.
Carefully, I replaced the float, needing to see more before I ran out of time.
I took a flash survey of the room—vintage movie posters and mismatched leather furniture somehow worked together, and a hefty fireplace mantel held photos and random trinkets.
I scurried over. The entire memento altar (so like the ofrendas my Cuban family made) fell away until there was only one item resting on the crowded space.
The photo sat in a black frame, and instantly, the image captured every bit of focus and attention I had left.
I recognized toddler Penn immediately. His dark hair was the same shade and fell the same way.
And the sweet, pudgy face smiling for the camera held every building block for the one I’d imprinted everywhere inside my being.
But Penn wasn’t alone in the photo. He was being held by an older man with a goatee.
And fastened around the wrist that secured little Penn to his chest was the golden watch.
“Hello?”
The sound behind me was a soul crush, heart stab, lung freeze—a single word could do all that. Especially one with a question mark hoisting up the end.
I swallowed hard. Naturally, this was all new, and he would simply need a few minutes. I replaced the frame and spun a slow circle and . . .
The first sight of him shot through my body.
A direct hit. Oh, this was Penn, through and through, but so many of the traits I associated with the boy who came when I turned the gold crown were slightly altered.
His face was rosy and clear of stubble, and his typical mussed-up hair was combed and gelled into place—sharp and clean.
He wore his Bye Bye Bridget shirt and faded jeans and gray socks.
I sputtered inside when I noticed the shadow his body cast over the glossy wood floor.
Waking Penn was more handsome, more beautiful than ever, and his crisp blue eyes had never looked so alert.
“Can I help you?” he asked me, not a twinge of recognition on his face.
He didn’t know me.
Another punch to the gut. I took two steps forward with no plan for how to reach into his memory from here, and I—-
I said a single word out loud, either a mirrored hello or hi right as we were interrupted by low-toned laughter.
Shuffling from more than two feet came from the stairs into the little foyer.
The blonde from before popped into the room with a tall guy with light brown skin following behind her. (Lanky, good hair, excellent style.)
“Hey, it’s two-for-one burger day at Killer,” the girl told Penn. “You in?” She shifted toward me, brows furrowed. Because her eyes would tell her she’d never seen me before in her life.