45. October 7, 1931 London, England
Beatrix tries not to count, but old habits die hard.
It has been more than three years since Beatrix invited Anna to her apartment for tea the first time.
More than three years of bicycle rides all around London and beyond, picnics beneath beech trees, and late nights at the dress shop trying on Anna’s latest creations.
More than three years of a normal life, with a friend and a job and a home.
With family. Not that Anna knows what they are to each other.
Beatrix has six years left, seven if she is lucky, eight if she is very lucky.
It will come out of nowhere, innocent words that will upend her existence.
Anna will ask what face cream she uses to not have a single wrinkle.
Mrs. Jones will quip she hasn’t aged a day in the time she has been coming to the shop.
Her landlady will wonder how Beatrix has lived in her apartment for so many years, when she looks just like she did on the day she moved in.
And then she will disappear.
She won’t show up for work. Anna will worry. She’ll take the tube to Beatrix’s apartment and find it locked. The landlady will tell her Beatrix has gone, without a note, without a trace. She’s even left her bicycle behind.
Beatrix is sure this life will be the hardest yet for her to let go of, even with the counting to remind her: It cannot—will not—last.
The bell over the door of the shop jingles. Beatrix stops tapping her pencil on the counter and looks up from her neatly folded newspaper. Anna beams at her. For now, at least, she still has time.
“Working on today’s crossword?” Anna asks as she hangs her long camel-colored coat on the rack behind the door.
“Yesterday’s,” Beatrix replies. She never buys the paper, instead plucking the morning edition from one of the public bins while she waits for her train home. She doesn’t worry about Anna spoiling the answers. She thinks the puzzles are a waste of time.
Beatrix agrees. That is the point.
“Here’s today’s, if you want it.” Anna pulls a fresh paper from inside her coat and slides it across the polished wood counter. “I read it over breakfast.”
“Thank you,” Beatrix says. She stacks it neatly beneath her paper and lays her pencil on top. She catches Anna’s eye. They haven’t both come in an hour early to chat about the Times. “What are you waiting for?”
Anna practically leaps at the question. “I’ll go put it on!” She dashes to the workroom.
Beatrix grabs her pincushion from the sewing basket beneath the counter and slides it over her wrist. She doubts she will need to do much.
Anna had scrimped and saved for weeks to buy the fabric—silk the color of champagne—and has been working on her latest project every spare moment she can get.
She sketched and measured, cut and sewed, until every elegant detail was exactly as she wanted, from the expertly draped cowl-neck to the precisely tapered sleeves to the dozen handmade miniature silk flowers cascading down one shoulder.
The dress is a work of art. Of course, she doesn’t blame Anna for wanting her wedding gown to be perfect.
“Close your eyes!” Anna calls through the doorway.
“How am I supposed to pin with my eyes closed?” Beatrix asks.
“You can open them for that bit,” Anna says. “Just close them for the grand reveal.”
“A touch dramatic, don’t you think?” She squeezes her eyes shut anyway.
“Nothing wrong with a touch of drama,” Anna replies from somewhere in front of her. “All right, then, have a look.”
Beatrix opens her eyes. Anna stands in front of her in her wedding dress. She fidgets with her engagement ring, twisting it on her finger. “What do you think?”
Beatrix takes Anna’s hands, stilling them. “It’s absolutely stunning,” she says. “And it suits you perfectly.”
Anna turns toward the full-length mirror in the corner of the shop. She pinches and pulls and scrutinizes every inch of the dress, from the sculptural sleeves to the train trailing behind her like a puddle of shining moonlight.
“You haven’t left me anything to do,” Beatrix jokes.
Anna seems pleased with the dress as her gaze flits across her reflection, but something is bothering her. Beatrix can tell by the way her brow creases and her mouth turns down. Her mind is somewhere else.
She props her chin on Anna’s shoulder and meets her eyes in the mirror. “What’s the matter?”
Anna sighs. “What if I’m not what Thomas expects?” The crease between her wide brown eyes deepens. “What if I’m not what he wants?”
“Then he’s an idiot,” Beatrix says. That earns a laugh from Anna. “Does Thomas strike you as an idiot?”
Anna giggles at the idea of her foreign news correspondent fiancé being an idiot. “Of course not.”
“I didn’t think so,” Beatrix says. “As for not being what Thomas expects, well, no one knows what to expect from you, do they? And I am sure that is exactly what he loves about you.” It’s what Beatrix loves about her, anyway.
Relief floods Anna’s face, and she pats Beatrix playfully on the cheek. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Just what you’re doing now, I expect.”
“I’m dead serious,” Anna insists. She catches Beatrix by the hand before she can pull away. “You’ll come to the wedding, won’t you?”
Beatrix has been putting off her reply for weeks.
The first time Anna asked her, she claimed she never received the invitation, even though it was propped on her mantel, perfectly addressed in Anna’s fine calligraphy.
She thought that would buy her a few weeks, but two days later, Anna hand-delivered a new invitation to Beatrix’s apartment herself.
She had missed the RSVP date, but apparently Anna wasn’t taking no—or, at least, no answer—for an answer.
“Oh, I don’t know, Anna.” Beatrix sighs.
“What don’t you know?”
She doesn’t know how to tell Anna that her absence is still the best wedding gift she can give.
That she is going to disappear in six or seven or eight years, and she wants Anna to forget she ever existed when she does.
That she doesn’t want to tarnish the memories of Anna’s wedding day. She wants her to be happy.
“It’s nothing against you, Anna, I promise. But it would be a mistake.”
“My life’s full of mistakes,” Anna says. “They make it interesting.”
“I think it would be best if I don’t attend.” The déjà vu lands like a wave from the sea, knocking Beatrix off-balance, words spoken centuries ago.
She pulls the pincushion off her wrist—Anna’s dress is perfect—and returns to her place behind the counter. She busies herself with a bin of wooden spools, as if sorting thread is the most important task in all of England. She ignores Anna’s gaze on her, taking her in.
Anna slowly approaches the counter. “You’re a strange one, Beatrix. And I mean that in the fondest way possible.”
She looks up from her sorting.
“I have never known anyone so incapable of living in the present. Even your crossword puzzles are a day behind.” She laughs, but there’s a sadness to her voice when she adds, “I don’t know what’s got you stuck in the past and yearning for the future all at once.
If you haven’t told me yet, I don’t expect you ever will, and that’s all right. We all get to have our secrets.”
She lays her hand over Beatrix’s on the counter. “But I am getting married, here, now, in the present. And I want you to be here with me, too. No matter what happened yesterday. No matter what tomorrow brings. Please?”
The sight of Anna in her wedding dress has stirred up memories of the last time Beatrix wore her own. All she can think of are the faerie’s words: You will live to regret this moment. Maybe because this is one of those moments, too.
Regret, Beatrix has discovered, is its own living thing.
She could regret some matters for an hour or a day, and others for a lifetime.
Longer. She regrets some choices from the moment she makes them, while others she can live with for ages, content in her decision, only for the thing to become twisted by time or circumstance into something she wishes she could undo.
She wonders if the faerie understands regret.
It is the most human of emotions, to relive past choices, to examine them from every angle for what-ifs and what-might-have-beens that can never be, to live with the consequence of a decision.
As far as Beatrix can tell, the only choice of any consequence in the faerie’s endless life is the one that made her.
The one that was made for her. Beatrix almost feels sorry for her.
She meets Anna’s gaze. It isn’t regret Beatrix feels when she looks at her, though she is afraid to name the thing she does.
She doesn’t regret their bicycle rides or their picnics, their nights spent at the dance hall or the picture palace, or having tea together in the workroom while Anna sews and she reads.
She doesn’t regret walking into the shop that day. “All right. I’ll come.”
Anna’s face lights up with joy, and she lunges over the counter. She throws her arms around Beatrix’s neck in a crushing hug. “Oh, fantastic! You’ve made my day!”
Beatrix hopes she has chosen wisely—that it isn’t selfish of her to keep Anna in her life for a little while longer—but she can’t be sure. That is the thing about regret. It is patient. It lies in wait. It strikes when you least expect it.