45
My mum picks up her phone on the second ring. “Hullo?”
Her voice is muffled by the throbbing beat of a dozen drums. Ah. She’s at a drum circle.
I walk to the window of my bedroom and peer through the frosted pane at the half-moon waxing over the snow.
“Mum—”
“Moonbeam! Happy winter solstice!” Her voice has that high, chipper beat I recognize from weeks-long spiritual retreats and fireside chats outside camper vans.
“Right, happy solstice,” I say, speaking loudly to be heard over the bang and thunk and beating of at least twenty people banging drums.
I should’ve expected my mum would be at a party, but once Max left for the night, after pressing the ruby and diamond ring firmly into my hand and saying, “Think about it. Take as long as you need,” I felt the urgent need to call my mum.
I pace across the length of my bedroom, the soft wool rug whispering under my feet. There’s a draft spilling through the window, a cold winter chill that no amount of modernizing can fix. This is a centuries-old chateau. Drafts are part and parcel. Still, once I left the warmth of the sitting room I threw on a wool sweater over my camisole.
“Mum,” I say loudly, hoping I don’t wake Mila, “I have to ask you about the watch.”
“What watch?” she asks. Then, “Just a moment, Felicia. I’m speaking with my daughter. What watch? You have a lot of watches.”
I’m back at the window, my reflection wavy in the glass. My pale face is superimposed over the dark night sky, the smudges of trees coated in snow, and the wide, dark expanse of the lake, flat and fathomless. I press my palm to the glass and the cold seeps into my skin.
“I mean the watch you gave me on summer solstice. Adolphus Abry’s watch.”
The white frost, hoary and spidery, begins to melt and the glass around my hand clears to black.
“Oh, the watch I stole from dear old Leopold?”
“Yes. That watch. I was wondering, did Uncle Leopold tell you what happened after you dreamed? Did he say what you were supposed to do?”
“Well . . .” My mum trails off, and for a moment the only noise is the throbbing beat of the drums, rising and crescendoing.
My hand is nearly numb from the cold, so I pull it from the glass. My handprint, surrounded by frost, remains behind.
“He only said that it let you live your dreams. So, I suppose you’re supposed to live them.”
I let out a sigh and my breath fills in the handprint, leaving a fog over the window glass.
“He didn’t say anything more?”
“What happened? Moonbeam?—”
“Fiona.”
“Fiona. You don’t sound as if you’re happy. You don’t sound as if you’re living your dreams. I thought this watch would help you find yourself. It’s why I took it.”
I shake my head, the weight of the pearl bracelet heavy around my wrist. “Max proposed.”
I don’t know why I tell my mum. We don’t have heart-to-hearts. We don’t have chats where she gives worldly advice or even loving advice. I haven’t shared anything with her in decades.
“The hoover salesman?” she asks.
“Mum.”
“Fine. I hope you turned him down.”
“Why?” I clutch the phone, knowing precisely why.
“Because he isn’t right for you.”
“I love him.”
“Of course you do. But that doesn’t mean he’s the man you should spend your life with. Or even a few years with. I’m still learning about life, but there’s one thing I know. You have to trust yourself. You can only live a true life if you trust yourself. What is your heart telling you?”
I look down at the floor, breathing in the cool stone and the scent of lavender that always lingers in my room. I look toward my nightstand, where I still keep the antique box and the gold pocket watch.
“It’s telling me to dream.”
“All right. Then do that.” She says it as if it’s simple.
It’s not.
I think perhaps Uncle Leopold knows that too. After all, he left Abry, Geneva, all of this behind, because life and love weren’t simple.
“Do you have Uncle Leopold’s phone number by any chance?” I ask.
The clouds have parted and the moon throws its silver light across the garden, where a winter hare sprints across the snow, leaving only its tracks behind. Overhead the shadow of a hawk falls over its path. I watch, my breath held, until the rabbit dives beneath a snowy mound at the base of the chestnut tree.
“I do,” my mum says. “I’ll send it to you.”
“Now, please,” I say, my heart still beating fast at the rabbit’s flight.
In the background the drums pick up speed. “Sent. Done. I’m off then.”
“Thank you?—”
“Ta-ta,” my mum says, and then she’s gone.
So, before I can think about doubt or delay, or waiting for the morning, I ring Uncle Leopold.
Uncle Leopold, from what I can tell, is ninety-nine years old and the younger brother of my great-grandfather. That he still lives on his own and has a phone he answers at ten o’clock at night is quite incredible.
I’ve moved down to the study. I don’t want to wake Mila if I have to shout to be heard. I lean against the old walnut desk. I’m surrounded by bookshelves, full to the brim with old horology hardbacks, encyclopedias, handwritten Abry records from two centuries of meticulous bookkeeping, old adverts, proposals, and hand-drawn designs of our watches. It’s an archive of Abry history. It has the familiar, comforting smell of the beeswax used to polish the walnut desk, and of old parchment.
The walls are insulated with walnut paneling and the rug is thick. The brown leather chair is cracked and comfy. I perch on the edge of the armrest, my back straight.
“You used the watch? You dreamed?” Uncle Leopold asks. His voice is creaky and rough, like an old rocking chair squeaking under a heavy weight.
I woke him up from a dead sleep, but he didn’t seem too terribly upset once I told him who I was. For a man who left the family, he was surprisingly cheery to be phoned by an Abry.
“Yes. I’m sorry my mum took it?—”
“Sorry? Sorry? I practically had to dangle the thing in front of her. I nattered on and on about it. I nearly shouted ‘Take the darned thing, give it to your daughter!’ I thought I might have to brain her with the fire iron and drop it in her handbag. Lucky me, when I refilled the tea she slipped it in her pocket.”
“You wanted my mum to take it?” I ask, astonished.
“It belongs to the family. I don’t have a use for it anymore. I failed it. I hoped that you would do better.”
I shake my head and stand, walking to the bookshelf. The books line the wall from floor to ceiling and I run my hand over them. I imagine if Amy were here, she’d curl up in the leather chair by the window. In the afternoon the sun always falls through the glass and settles over the chair like a golden blanket on your lap.
She’d love it here.
Except.
“How could I do better? What is there to do better with?”
“By dreaming!”
I frown. “Yes. I know. I dreamed. It felt real. Just like you, I found love. But . . . it’s a problem.”
He coughs, a phlegmy, chest-rattling noise. “What do you mean, it’s a problem?”
“I can’t forget him. The man I fell in love with. I learned my lesson. I found what I desired. I haven’t used the watch for four months so I could live and find love in the real world. I get that a love like his is my heart’s desire. But I can’t forget him.”
“What did you say?” Leopold asks, his creaky voice sharp.
I frown and pace across the study, dragging my hand over the edge of the walnut desk. The computer monitor glows a soft, ghostly blue.
“I said I can’t forget my dreams. I can’t forget or let go of the man I met there.”
“Why would you?”
I frown, a line creasing my brow. “Because he isn’t real.”
The stillness of the room presses down on me.
“What?”
“He isn’t real.”
My lungs are tight, my breath short. There’s something wrong here. Something I’m not understanding.
“He’s real,” Uncle Leopold says. “What do you mean, he isn’t real?”
A prickle starts at the back of my neck and climbs, heat flushing over my skin. “I mean I dreamed. It was all just a dream. He’s just a dream.”
“My word. Is that what your mother told you? I told her the watch let you dream your heart’s desire. I told her it let you see what is true. What is real.”
He says “real” with a hard conviction.
My heart slows and there’s a shrill ringing in my ears. “You’re saying the place I dreamed, the people, they’re all alive?”
“I’m saying they’re real. I’m saying that I dreamed my Annalise and I couldn’t get to her in time. I lost her.” He says this bitterly, viciously. “And you let four months pass? You, who had the watch, let time pass? He’s waiting for you! Just like she was waiting for me!”
The room tilts and my skin goes cold. The smell of parchment and old stone wraps around me, keeping me in the here and now. I stumble, catching myself on the leather chair.
It’s what Aaron said. That he’d be on the island, holding out his hand, waiting for me to take it.
“He’s real?”
“What else could he be? Couldn’t you feel it?”
The heat of the island, the sea-salt breeze, the taste of Aaron’s lips as I lay on a soft sand beach. It was all real.
My legs fold and I fall into the chair, the leather cold beneath me. I take a breath, trying to breathe around the tight constriction in my chest.
I shake my head. “But I wasn’t myself in the dream. I was someone else. Everyone thought I was someone else.”
“And I was a Polish officer in the army. Annalise was a nurse. What does it matter who they see? You’re you. He’s him. My word, you had it all wrong. You aren’t supposed to learn a lesson. You aren’t supposed to dream and then forget. You’re supposed to find him. The watch shows you your desire so you can grasp it.”
“Find him,” I repeat.
Aaron’s alive. Aaron’s real. Amy is real. Sean. Maranda. All of them are real. And Aaron’s waiting for me. He might not know it, but he is. He’s waiting for me.
“I have to go,” I say.
“I’ll say,” Uncle Leopold says. “Go find him.”
And then he hangs up.
I drop my phone. It clatters to the walnut desk. My hand shakes as I reach out and unlock the computer.
The room is still, the snowy night quiet and hushed. The chateau, the world, feels as if it’s holding its breath.
The ocean-blue enamel of my watch glistens in the study light as I type in four words.
Aaron McCormick Marathon Swimmer.
And there, on the glowing computer screen, is the biography of the man I love.