Epilogue
We had finally gotten Rose Financial into shape that worked without breaking a zillion ethical principles.
Our research division was humming along without human or animal experimentation.
It felt like a renewed sense of purpose that they were going to prove, in their own lifetimes, that not only was the multiverse real, but somehow, we were going to visit alternate Earths, with our goal being the pursuit of knowledge.
I was just finishing up a simple supper when I heard the front door open, and then Clark’s cherry voice say, “Are you still hungry? I brought lobsters for that craving you've been having.”
That night was familiar like an older pair of comfy pyjama pants.
Clark had picked up enough from one of our preferred lobster fishermen that we were indeed able to settle my craving and have enough left to freeze for dip and a risotto if I wanted to get fancy.
If I didn’t feel fancy, sandwiches. I always felt bad about killing lobsters but didn’t make Clark do it.
My Nova Scotian tradition, my time to do the dirty work.
Memories of my life as a fisherman’s daughter growing up on seafood were too strong to let go, and too entrenched in my identity to toss away and…
what?! I had been a fisherman’s daughter.
Since when? Said who? I ran to the bathroom to throw up while an onslaught of memories ripped through my damaged brain, repairing what was lost, and Clark rubbed my back as I held on to the side of the tub, crying for joy and for the sadness of forgetting these memories for so long.
I could see them all now, in complete clarity, not hidden in static or rushing by like a river.
There was a cacophony of ecstasy inside me as creatures from the deep down surfaced, breached, and then settled back down, their joy adding to my own.
The faces of my parents. My father’s face, so much like mine, except for the evidence that he had broken his nose playing hockey on a frozen lake.
My mother, with her long, gorgeous, curly red hair that I loved to brush.
And Thomas, my Thomas, who had loved me and protected me the best ways he knew how, be it from bees in the wild roses I adored, to adults who always wanted more from my mind, strapping me down, running currents through my brain, injecting me with more shit than I would ever be able to remember.
And Maya, the lost girl who was never meant to be.
“I remember, I remember,” I cried, turning in Clark’s arms, not even sure when he joined me on the floor and wrapped me in his embrace.
I rested my hands on his shoulders as parts of my mind I thought were gone forever flowed freely back to me.
I remembered my third-grade teacher who was famous in the school for hitting students over the head with a book.
I remembered my family being in my Dad’s cape boat, the smell of the ocean filling my nostrils, and it being just us between sea and sky.
We’d stop at Big Tancook sometimes, and we’d run around the island whooping it up like a bunch of wild creatures, having the time of our lives while visiting with my father’s mother, whose house I now recognized, but was not for sale, and I really didn’t have any desire to own it.
I also remembered an ancient silver book that belonged to that grandmother, and being told it was not meant for me, but to make sure her great-granddaughter got it.
She warned that the book would “know” if the wrong person read it and punish them accordingly.
She even had B.R.E. engraved on the cover of the book, under a list of other initials, which I hadn’t understood as a child, but now it was all so clear.
Beatrice Rose Evans would inherit the book when she inherited her trust, and I would continue to keep my nose out of it.
I turned down the position of chief information officer at Rose.
In fact, I turned down every possible position I could be offered, but I surprised myself by keeping my seat on the new board.
Luckily, that didn’t take up too much of my time or energy.
I understood Clark’s perceived obligation to these people, given his connection to the company through Edward, but I had been too involved, the wounds too deep.
Losing Shepard last winter was really my breaking point.
I needed to continue therapy, and I needed the time to raise my daughter.
Before long, she would look like the portrait I kept hidden in the laundry room storage closet, but would be able to hang once Bea looked about the age she was in the painting.
And I knew that would happen all too soon, so I would cherish every moment I had with her.
I indulged in simple pleasures like gardening, and soon had a garden of sunflowers and wild rose bushes, whose smell mixed with the sea and made me feel like healing was possible.
Over the years, the sunflowers grew to tower over our heads, and the wild rose bushes took over part of the garden, and it looked like a wee bit of jungle with daisies, black-eyed Susans, crocuses, hostas, daffodils, ferns, lady slippers, and a smattering of wild lupins.
My gardener was happy to teach me the proper ways to tend the soil, which flowers made happy bedfellows and which did not.
I let him handle the vegetable gardens, as it was the flowers that filled my cup and soothed my soul.
Bea, for her part, was given lessons in practical matters from the jump.
She wasn’t quite one when I started her on swim lessons, and almost two when I began communicating with her psychically on what was allowed and not allowed to do with the gifts she had inherited.
The only thing that hurt was the lack of visitors in our lives.
I missed my brother like crazy, and even had Phil, the helicopter pilot we decided to hire full-time rather than fly ourselves, do a flyover at East River Beach on the way to Halifax or home, even though it was completely unnecessary.
I wanted to look down and see if I saw Thomas sitting on his favourite rock, in his crisp linen white shirt, waiting for me to join him.
I never saw him in the waking world, and I never saw him in dreams.
That was, until he came back.
Bea was five and was blooming like the Rose of her middle name.
One day when I was hanging some laundry on the clothesline, I heard her laughter coming from the dock—accompanied by the tenor of a man’s voice.
Oh, hell to the no was some strange man talking to my daughter, who I thought was playing by herself on the dock.
Over the years, we’d made the beach a bit more sandy and less rocky, as both Bea and I loved to sink our toes into the sand.
This was why I made sure she could swim before she could crawl.
I would not lose a daughter to drowning just because having an oceanfront property fed my soul.
My child was far more important. I looked down at the dock and saw her sitting there cross-legged about six feet from a man in a white shirt and raggedy jeans, and no shoes in sight.
He must be one of those hippie tourists we got, who occasionally ignored the Private Property signs we had up everywhere and biked through.
Some even thought our dock was public property and set up on it with towels and the works.
But this was the first time a young man had taken an interest in my daughter!
I ran to the dock and hollered, “Hey, creeper! Get off my dock and away from my kid.” He looked up at me, and a wide smile broke open on his face.
It was Thomas, Thomas looking about twenty-five, and wholly real.
Then, carrying some wild lupins, two little girls of around eight came running out of the woods, one with that unmistakable look of my Maya, and the other like a little female Clark.
His Rose, Rosie. I’d know them anywhere, especially since I’d seen them painted just a wee bit older than this for the last six and a half years.
I threw my arms wide, and Thomas picked up Bea, and somehow I fell to my knees, and they all fit in my embrace.
“Where have you been? What...oh, I’ve missed you so much, Thomas, and Maya. And I’ve been waiting so impatiently to meet you, sweet Rosie. From everything your brother has told me about you, you must be pretty special.”
“We went travelling,” Thomas said, and looked at me with a touch of regret in his eyes.
“We, the three of us, merged our powers and found a way to ‘visit’ another reality. It’s out there, Oliver—the multiverse is real.
I’m not smart enough to calculate the equations or provide scientific proof, other than a few trinkets I have on me...
maybe they have a different chemical composition than one would expect because they have come from another Earth?
I don’t know, but I thought it was worth offering them up to Clark.
Time is different when you don’t have a solid body most of the time, and to us it felt like we arrived at a different East River Beach, in a different world, and were there for what, a few days? ” he asked the girls.
They both nodded, and Maya said, “Then we get back here, and it’s been five whole years. What’s up with that?” She sighed dramatically.
“You didn’t happen to run into Shepard out there anywhere?
” I asked Thomas, as I clung on to Maya and ran a hand down her silky hair.
He shook his head, and I closed my eyes for a moment, picturing my beautiful friend with the fiercely stubborn streak having passed from our reality altogether and onward, to whatever afterlife awaited him.
I herded everyone inside, and we had settled down to a serious game of Uno after a successful Go Fish tournament when the helicopter could be heard, coming to drop the boss off from his day at the office.
“Everyone stay inside until I say it’s safe to go out, okay?
” The excitement was palpable in the air, but they all nodded solemnly.
When I heard our pilot take off, I said, “Clark’s home! Let’s go!”
It was chaos, utter chaos, but the girls, me, and even Thomas made it out of the house and as far as the flower garden when meeting up with Clark.
“Oh my God,” Clark said, his voice sounding somehow both confused and elated.
“‘Oh my God’ what, Clark?” I asked, having a wee bit of fun with him.
I was by his side just in time to study his face as he watched the girls run by, giggling and shouting in only the way ecstatic children can when they are running for the pure joy of it.
They were still careful not to harm the flowers which towered over them, gently swaying in a calm, warm breeze, a riot of golden and yellow richness on display.
“Who is that, playing with Bea by the sunflowers?”
“Who do you think?” I asked, trying to make my voice sound casual. “All you have to do is look at the portrait in the storage closet for your answer.”
“Maya,” he breathed, reaching out and clenching my hand. “And is that—oh my god, Olly, that’s Rosie. Rosie is running around sunflowers playing with our kids. And Thomas is back but got a glow-up. How…?”
“Love, darling. The easiest answer you are looking for is that love brought them back to us.” I leaned up and kissed his cheek.
“Oliver, I—” he sounded choked up.
“Not now, okay?” I asked, squeezing his hand.
“Let’s just enjoy the day.” I led him inside to drop off his briefcase, and to help me bring out some afternoon snacks, because at least three of us needed to eat.
Clark picked up the tray of sandwiches while I followed, carrying lemonade, out into the smell of wild roses and the sea, and the song of seagulls, surf, and the high-pitched laughter of our girls.