CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE #2
Where one part of my heart is full, another one gapes open.
I wish the ghosts were here, I wish Everest could meet my other family.
They’d love him, and I can picture him singing with Nova, taking care of my mother.
His very presence would be anchoring, a pinch of the reality that I’ve lived.
In some ways, I feel too much for this place, and that’s a sensation that will only lead to self-loathing if I follow it too long.
Everest would understand – this sense of never being here or there.
“Excuse me,” I tell my family. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
I meander to Valentin’s bathroom, which has clear signs of her family all over it.
I stand at the sink, inhaling the warm citrus scent emitted by an unlit votive candle.
Three toothbrushes, one sporting a Disney princess I don’t recognize, sit snug in a cow-shaped mug, and a bright pink stepping stool leans against the wall, probably to help Esther reach the sink.
My face looks hollow in the mirror reflection, and I reach out and touch the stranger looking back at me. The string of time trails down from my hand, and it’s like the air around the line blurs, smudging the edges of my reflection. No matter how hard I try, I can’t snap out of this unease.
Someone knocks.
“Ryka?” Valentin’s worried voice asks.
I open the door to find her and Nova waiting on the other side.
“Is everything okay?” Nova asks, and I can tell she puts more weight on her right leg.
“Yes, sorry, I just needed a minute,” I explain.
Valentin looks at Nova nervously. “You’ve been in there for half an hour.”
That pierces right through whatever cloud looms over my head.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize,” I mumble, and my alarm must be clear because Valentin takes my hand.
“Come, have another drink.”
We return to the living room and fall back into conversation, but dread pools at the nape of my neck.
Thirty minutes felt like five seconds to me, my very bodily functions no longer responding to the passage of time in this world.
As if to remind me, the string on my hand yanks again, insistent. I know I should let it go already.
“You look and sound like I imagined you would,” I tell Novalie, as we click our glasses together.
“And you look the same,” Novalie says, grinning.
“You were always like this, you know. Even when we were younger, you were the last one to want to stop playing a game. You read the same books over and over again. That’s what made it so brave to me, that you made the deal at the fair, and yes, I knew in my heart that you did.
When you didn’t come back, I worried sick, but I made a recovery more miraculous than was possible.
We always knew there would be a cost, but I hadn’t expected it to be you. How hard that must have been.”
Excruciating at times, but wonderful, too.
“It was worth it, wasn’t it?” I laugh. “Look at you. You’re the same in most ways, but in others, not at all.”
Novalie smiles widely. “Futures are meant to evolve, Ryka. I think that’s what makes them so beautiful.”
My words stop in my throat. Around my hand, the timeline gives a tug.
“I don’t know how to choose, Nova,” I say quietly.
She studies me. “I think you do,” she says sadly. “I think you always have, and the choice has always been yours. You just have to be brave enough to accept it.”
“Does it make me a terrible friend?” I ask. “A terrible daughter?”
“Do you really believe that?” she asks, leaning back to take me in. “I would have none of this if it weren’t for you.”
And I realize then how horribly, wretchedly, desperately I needed to hear that.
That I didn’t only cause pain and abandonment, that choosing myself isn’t a rejection of the people I love.
This home, Valentin, Esther…none of this would exist if I hadn’t made my choices.
All of this has come to pass because I chose to walk away.
And if Everest were to unravel time, none of this would be guaranteed.
“I love you,” I tell her honestly, and my heart turns from lead to air, a rush of sweetness coursing through my veins.
“I love you, too,” she says. “And that will never change.”
I hold out my other hand with the sprig of lavender. “Keep this in Esther’s room? A gift from a god of time.”
Novalie’s eyes water, but she’s grinning from ear to ear.
The next second, we’re locked in an embrace, but this time, my heart is aching for different reasons.
It’s the kind of bittersweet pain that comes with every fork in the road.
Goodbyes are never easy, turning your back on a destiny you’ve crafted in your mind will always tear a part of you away, but I’ve spent so long searching for a way home when my new home has loved me in a way no one else can.
I’ve spent my life chasing the past, weaving through other people’s stories, and dreaming about the end of mine.
I know the heartbreak that comes with loss, and now I let myself feel it fully, the loss of a life I chose not to live, and the gift I received for being brave enough to walk away.
I pull back, laughing as I wipe away her tears.
“So you’ve come to your senses,” Ma says, appearing at the door. Val is by her side, helping her stand.
I choke up, resorting instead to hugging her tightly. She pats my back. “You may be older than me, but I am still your mother. I can tell that you are not where you’re supposed to be.”
“You’re not angry?” I ask, crying into her shoulder.
She pulls away, studying my face. “All I’ve ever wanted was to know that you’re happy. I could never be angry at that.”
I memorize the lines on her face, the wisps of white hair that curl above her ear. “I love you, Ma.”
“More than the whole world, Ryka,” she whispers.
This has been the fair’s gift to me: time that I didn’t quite earn, a chance for a farewell most dream of but don’t get.
I press every inch of this into my skin, knowing the impressions of this scene will be forever embedded in my head.
My mother, Nova, Val, everyone I know has died, will die.
But somewhere in time, they will also be alive.
I will not see them again; of this I am sure, but I don’t need the carousel to remind me of their presence.
This moment right here, and all our history and love, will endure.
Valentin wraps her arms around me tightly. “I will miss you dearly.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” I tell her, and I will; the stars and the skies know I will. But how wonderful it is to leave your heart in so many different places. What a privilege to feel stretched across the expanse of the universe.
To have a place to go back to, where you can feel whole. And I’ve already been away for far too long.
The string around my hand pulls.
“Go,” Valentin says, giving me a small shove. With one last look at them, a portrait of past, present, and future, I turn on my heels and run.
It’s only when I get to the edge of the string that I realize something has gone wrong.