Chapter Thirty-Three #2
“Come here,” Rose said calmly, holding out her hand.
Landon took it without thinking, and the effect was immediate—his breaths slowed and fingers uncurled.
“You know,” she said, rubbing her thumb over his like she’d done a thousand times before, “Rose was fine all those months, before you got on that plane. She was happy. Blissfully happy in the most uncomplicated way.” She paused, placing her other hand on her temple.
“When I reach back into that time—” She gasped. “God, it hurts.”
“Hey,” he said quickly, gripping her hand tighter. “Just lean back, okay? Lie down.”
“No,” she snapped, but didn’t let go of his hand, looking at him squarely. “I need to finish this. She didn’t draw faces. Not like that. Not without a model. No faces at all, until a few days ago. The day you and Rose met, that night. That’s when she started.”
There was no color in his face left to drain.
“And I don’t know what it means. Plenty of people take the pill and go right back home to their families, living as their other.
Maybe every one of them experiences something like this.
Or maybe we’re special.” She let out a small, startled laugh.
“But if we’re not special and they do remember these bits and pieces, does it almost kill them? Because this very nearly killed me.”
Landon looked at her and saw something he hadn’t before.
Not just the woman he knew, but the young girl in the framed photos on her parents’ walls: small, innocent, in need of protection.
“You’re saying this is my fault?” Despite the efforts the nurses had made, there was still dried blood under her nose, dark and flaking.
It was a pattern he had willfully ignored.
But now the thought had air. And once it had air, it caught fire.
The bookshop, reading an old favorite like it was the first time.
The receipt, scribbled in her handwriting.
The morning after.
“I’m saying that you have to let me go, Landon.”
The sob snuck up on him. It was sharp and high-pitched and didn’t sound like him at all.
“When I get out of here, Poppy is going to get me another pill. I’m going to write myself another letter.
But this time, I’m not going to erase you.
I’m going to tell her about a love so big it couldn’t be snuffed out by a drug.
I’m going to write down all the good—and there was so much good, Landon—and enough of the bad for her to understand why I don’t want to be me anymore.
” She looked at him, her eyes misty but unwavering.
“You can’t follow me there. I’m telling you now, clearly, so you don’t go off writing lines for me where there aren’t any.
This”—she lifted her hand with effort, gesturing between them—“was more than most people get in a lifetime.”
Landon didn’t want a lifetime. He wanted forever.
Their time was running like sand through an hourglass, but he still had so many questions, so much more he wanted to say.
One question rose above the others. “You took the pill on our wedding anniversary,” he said. “August twentieth. Why? To punish me?”
“Oh, Landon.” Rose’s eyes filled. “That was the most perfect day of my life. I thought maybe if I tore the fabric of the universe right then, you might always be able to slip through and find me there.”
This woman. He was certain he could search the world and never find her equal. A tear in the universe would have to do. “I love you.” His voice cracked. “I just got you back. Rose, I can’t lose you again.”
The machines whirred: beep, beep, beep. The room spun.
“What we had was enough. You have to know that.” She squeezed his hand. “You should finish the story. It’s a good one.”
His soul ached. “I can’t live without you.”
“You did.”
Walking out of that hospital room was among the hardest things Landon had ever done.
It’s not often you have to consciously send signals from your brain to your body, first to ask your wobbly knees to bend, then to tell your legs to move.
One step. Another. Five more to the door.
Because it wasn’t just a door. It was her life.
It got a little easier once he was in the hallway—so bright, and sterile, and pungent, sickness and death barely concealed.
Landon took a breath and realized that he was going to be sick.
He hoped he could make it outside. Maybe find a tree or a thick hedge, somewhere to hunker down, but he didn’t want to run.
Running in hospitals was an act reserved for emergencies, where there was panic because there was still hope.
He turned a corner and pushed through the heavy door that led to the parking lot.
No tree or shrub in sight, he braced himself against the nearest brick column and let it come.
“Jesus,” a voice said. The voice was familiar. Landon wiped his mouth and raised his eyes.
Conor.
He’d been there the day he’d married Rose, standing by his side holding his grandmother’s ring.
He’d been there the day before their first couples counseling session, to be the one to tell him hard truths before someone else would.
He’d been there when Cordelia died, wiping sweat and vomit from his face and hands.
And he was there now, a duffel bag slung over one shoulder.
“Poppy called you,” Landon said.
“Of course she did. But I’ll have you know that I started packing a bag the minute you dropped that phone on the ground.”
Of course he had. “But you—I mean, your work. You can’t just leave like that, can you?”
“If it’s important enough.”
How many times had Conor dropped everything for him?
It was a question that Landon had considered before, but never interrogated.
Too many times. Conor had thus far been spared death and disease in his own life, but death and disease come for us all in one form or another, one way or another.
Landon felt a rush of love for Conor even thinking about the future trials he might go through.
If he took the pill, could he find a way to still be the friend that Conor deserved? The scales felt so woefully unbalanced.