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Now, as she stares up at the mottled dusk, she longs for home. Not for Roger, or the future she did not want, but the woody grip of Estele’s hand on hers as the old woman showed her how to wind raspberry bushes, and the soft hum of her father’s voice as he worked in his shed, the scent of sap and wood dust in the air. The pieces of her life she never meant to lose.
There, at the end, when Peter sits on the rock, the memory of Wendy Darling sliding from his mind, and it is sad, of course, to forget. But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten. To remember when no one else does.
What a luxury, to tell one’s story. To be read, remembered.
Nervous, like tomorrow, a word for things that have not happened yet. A word for futures, when for so long all she’s had are presents.
wishes that when Henry had said Wait, she had said, Come with me, but she knows it is not fair to make him choose. He is full of roots, while she has only branches.
Henry is fourteen the first time he steals a swig of his father’s liquor, just to turn the volume down. He is sixteen when he swipes two pills from his mother’s cabinet, just to dull the ache. He is twenty when he gets so high that he thinks he can see the cracks along his skin, the places where he’s falling apart. His heart has a draft. It lets in light. It lets in storms. It lets in everything.
Blink and you’re twenty-eight, and everyone else is now a mile down the road, and you’re still trying to find it, and the irony is hardly lost on you that in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.
I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real. There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.”
If she said real, sensitive, thoughtful, he might have bought it. But she doesn’t. She uses words like outgoing, funny, ambitious, and the more she talks about him, the thicker the frost in her eyes, the more it spreads, until he can barely make out the color beneath. And Henry wonders how she can see, but of course, she can’t. That’s the point.
He wants to ask her what she sees, to understand the chasm between who he was and what she wanted. But he doesn’t ask. Because in the end, it doesn’t matter. The fog twists across her vision. And he knows that, whoever she sees, it isn’t him. It never was. It never will be. So he lets her go.
You are whoever they want you to be. You are more than enough, because you are not real. You are perfect, because you don’t exist. (Not you.) (Never you.) They look at you and see whatever they want … Because they don’t see you at all.
“You can’t make people love you, Hen. If it’s not a choice, it isn’t real.”
He has asked the wrong god for the wrong thing, and now he is enough because he is nothing. He is perfect, because he isn’t there.
And when the girl looks at him, she doesn’t see perfect. She sees someone who cares too much, who feels too much, who is lost, and hungry, and wasting inside his curse. She sees the truth, and he doesn’t know how, or why, only knows that he doesn’t want it to end. Because for the first time in months, in years, in his whole life, perhaps, Henry doesn’t feel cursed at all. For the first time, he feels seen.
She folds her hand over his, guides his index finger to the glass, and leaves a single mark, a line of green. He can feel the air lodge in her chest, can feel the sudden stiffness in her limbs, as she waits for it to disappear. But it doesn’t. It stays, staring back at them in that fearless shade. Something breaks inside her, then. She makes a second mark, and a third, lets out a breathless laugh, and then, her hand on his, and his on the glass, Addie begins to draw.
This is the problem with a life like Addie’s. She has gone so long without roots, she doesn’t know how to grow them anymore. So used to losing things, she isn’t sure how to hold them.
It has been a long time since Addie felt true fear. Sadness, she knows; loneliness and grief. But fear belongs to those with more to lose. And yet. Staring into that dark, Addie is afraid.
Greatness requires sacrifice. Who you sacrifice to matters less than what you sacrifice for. And in the end, she became what she wanted to be.”
“I think he wanted to erase me. To make sure I felt unseen, unheard, unreal. You don’t really realize the power of a name until it’s gone.
He is so tired of hurting, so tired of being hurt. And that is why, when the stranger holds out his hand, and offers to pull Henry back from the edge, there is no hesitation. He simply says yes.
And Addie forces herself to ask, “How long do you have left?” Henry swallows. “A month.” The words land like a blow on tender skin. “A little more,” he says. “Thirty-six days.” “It’s after midnight,” Addie whispers. Henry exhales. “Then thirty-five.” Her grip tightens around his, and his tightens back, and they hold on until it hurts, as if any minute someone might try to pull them apart, as if the other might slip free, and disappear.
“You are not capable of love because you cannot understand what it is to care for someone else more than yourself. If you loved me, you would have let me go by now.”
“People are not things,” she says. “And you will never understand them.” “I understand you, Adeline. I know you, better than anyone in this world.” “Because you let me have no one else.” She takes a steadying breath. “I know you won’t spare me, Luc, and perhaps you are right, we do belong together. So if you love me, spare Henry Strauss. If you love me, let him go.”
He simply holds her tight, and says, “Enough,” says, “Promise me,” says, “Stay.” And none of them are questions, but she knows he is asking, pleading with her to let it go, to stop fighting, stop trying to change their fates, and just be with him until the end. And Addie cannot bear the thought of giving up, of giving in, of going down without a fight. But Henry is breaking, and it is her fault, and so, in the end, she agrees.
It was messy. It was hard. It was wonderful, and strange, and frightening, and fragile—so fragile it hurt—and it was worth every single moment.
“Think of it as a thank-you,” she says, “for seeing me. For showing me what it’s like to be seen. To be loved. Now you get a second chance. But you have to let them see you as you are. You have to find people who see you.”
