CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO #2
I closed the lid on the dream and set the cascara box next to the one Vivian had made from cherrywood.
The hope was intoxicating and too powerful to keep me in one place.
I backed up and wound around the worktable as if it were the only place I could go.
The wardrobe stood behind it. I approached and shut the double doors for the first time since discovering them.
There, I finally took in the weight of the stained glass image she’d set with a thousand colors and shapes.
It was the last impossible phenomenon that summer—that she had dreamed about and foretold this scene weeks before I had even lived it.
As if she, or time itself, had known how much I would need it.
I reached out to touch the inlaid figure. Golden-brown hair draped over a smooth profile, highlighting the shape of her chin and nose.
“Your tía must’ve spent forever on this piece,” Penn said, coming up behind me.
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway.
“That girl looks just like you.”
Because she was me.
A hand reached out near my shoulder, hovering inches away from the stained glass figure. Before, Penn had always asked if it was okay to touch me. (It was—always.) But he didn’t ask about touching this enchanted wardrobe. He just went in, dragging one finger down the sections of vibrant color.
This me—this girl—etched into the wardrobe stood on clean sand. Blue waves crested behind her, and liquid sunlight poured thick along the top edge. Her profile gazed upward, eyes closed. And in her hands, she held a red glass globe. Whole and unbroken.
“That’s a Finders Keepers float,” Penn said. “From Lincoln City. I found one of those years ago. Mine’s blue.”
I clenched my fist. I know, I know, I know.
“I found one too, just like this,” I whispered as Penn circled the glass globe with his fingertip. I couldn’t resist. I had to tell him. “But mine was cracked in half.” And lost to time. My tía had re-created it, though. She’d made it whole, setting the treasure free to catch the light.
I couldn’t move my head. Couldn’t turn to look even though his cheek was right there, millimeters from mine, until he stepped back abruptly.
His palm splayed over his temple, and his eyes seemed to fill—not with moisture—but with inexplicable clarity.
I had witnessed this move before. But real life had cast the moment into Technicolor.
My belly dropped, but the hollow space behind my ribs bloomed with red and blue and sunlight yellow—then a rainbow of shades.
“You cut yourself on the edge,” he said.
Twin sounds (choked, breathy) filled the space. My shock and his, together. Something as close to hope as I’d ever felt had me raising my left arm and opening my palm.
“Your hand. Oh my God, your hand,” he whispered, coming closer. His mouth was a full moon over the neat white scar.
It happened then. Penn touched me for the first time outside of his dream. His hand cradled mine as a million sparks of memory seemed to pass through his blood and bone. The whole of him was coming back to life. I gave a whimper when he placed a soft kiss over the wound.
“You always did that,” I said. I couldn’t help it.
“I know.”
The wonder of it was unending. “You know?”
“I’m remembering.”
“What parts?”
There he was again, touching me and touching me. Careful of my injuries, he cupped his hands over my shoulders. “All the parts. It’s . . . you.” He began to test my bends and curves, more and more. The length of my arms, the span of my brow line. “You’re really here.”
I nodded, and the tears that fell dropped over his hand this time. “So are you. You’re not dreaming.”
“Syl,” he said, and this was how I really knew.
“Patrick.”
He shook his head. “Penn.”
The first name he gave me rang out, and it was my turn to touch him.
I didn’t ask either. Everything about him was leading me forward, and I went.
My hands splayed over his cheeks; he leaned into them, sending fiery darts through my limbs.
I twisted my fingers into the soft, dark hair curling into the nape of his neck. How long had I wanted to do that?
“The watch,” he said, pulling back slightly as memory continued to flood. He glanced at my wrist. “What happened to it?”
“I destroyed it. I used a mallet on it. I went into the forest and set it on top of a tree stump, and I started railing away,” I said, as reliving that day pulled through my limbs with tension.
“The hands reversed direction before the whole thing disappeared, and I woke up at the crash, but I didn’t—”
“God, Sylvie.” He pulled me close. “You did it.” He edged away just enough for me to catch the wonder splashed across his face. “And you’re here. For real,” he said for the second time today.
I could’ve heard it a hundred times.
“Can I try something?” he said.
Memories swirled around me of that night in my room, and I wouldn’t—couldn’t—let him go. “Anything.”
He moved like we’d waited long enough. His lips trailed over the hollows of my cheeks and the sloped angle of my jaw.
I used to be the one to bring him wherever I was.
Before I could blink, his mouth dropped over mine, and he was everywhere I wanted him.
Giving and taking, muscle and skin and bone erasing the faint memory of gauzy touches and butterfly wings.
“Better than my wish,” I heard him say as the small of my back hit the edge of the worktable with a gentle thud. There, we took all the time that clocks had never given us, refusing to part for an eternity we both designed. We were immeasurable. And finally, we were possible.
“You really remember everything?” I asked when the choice between kissing Penn and questions became unbearable. I had to know more, but I kept him close. “The covered bridge and the library computers? Del and the lake?”
He linked our hands with remarkable care. “Yeah, and Anne Shirley, and the fact that I should’ve paid attention to some lottery numbers.” Two squeezes. “And your tía, Syl. I remember coming here and watching her work. I can help you remember her too.”
Tía Viv. The artist behind my greatest love.
Later I would tell Penn the truth about the wooden box his grandfather had found.
What I suspected that caja de suenos had done decades ago to a golden watch.
Then to a little boy and the waking dreams he’d live and love inside, years later.
And finally to the one girl who, maybe time had always known, was destined to love him back.
And I did, so much, the enormity of it and everything we’d gone through spilling over my cheeks.
Instantly, I was tucked into the tight hold of Penn’s arms, my head notched into his shoulder.
The wardrobe stood in view. I stared at the beautiful glass float inlaid into the door.
Red and whole and round. It could’ve fit into the center of my chest.
We stayed that way until we both decided it was time for all the things that would happen next. I didn’t need to wish for them or jot them down in any notebook. I didn’t even think to plan for them. I lived them instead. We did. And they couldn’t have been better.