“Do you want to see it?” He gropes around in his coat pockets, finally coming up with the folded triangle of paper. The letter she sent him that had pulled us into each other’s orbits. He holds it out to me, but I don’t take it.
“You read it to me,” I say. “Back in London. I know what it says.”
But Monty shakes his head. I think I might vomit. “Take it.” He flaps the paper at me. I can’t look. If it’s real—if it’s there, in her carefully looped l’s and spiky f’s, capped by her slanted signature, I can’t argue anymore. Not with him. Not with myself.
“Please read it,” he says again, and I step forward and take the letter.
The penmanship is shaky, the lines spaced out and the ink applied in varying shades, like she wrote it across several weeks at several different desks, adding new lines at sporadic intervals.
Dear Henry,
I was so happy to see you this month past. I am so happy
you found a better life than the one you had with us.
I knew you were unhappy and never did anything. I was unhappy too.
I’m sorry.
I will be dead soon. Once, long ago, I sailed to Barbados. On the return, I came into possession of a cursed spyglass. When I looked through it, I saw my own death. I’m afraid it’s coming. And even if it isn’t,
I’m tired of waiting.
You do not owe me your forgiveness or any kind of favor, but please,
if you can find it in your heart to do this one last thing for me, please find Adrian once I’m gone.
Don’t let him keep the spyglass. He’ll never let it go. I never could. I don’t want him to lose
Adrian needs someone to live through this
I hope you do it better than I did.
Caroline Montague
She didn’t send him looking for the spyglass. She sent him for me. Monty wasn’t chasing the same mystery as I was—maybe he didn’t even see a mystery at all. He’s followed me around the world out of obligation to our dead mother, hoping someday I’ll realize the truth on my own, drop the spyglass in the ocean, and he can slip out of my life once again.
“It’s not a curse, Adrian,” Monty says quietly. “It’s not fate or magic or some ghostly encounter she had in the middle of a shipwreck that doomed us all. I know you want something else to believe in, but she had a mind that was always against her, and you have it too. Not because of a curse and not because of any character flaw or defect in your brain or your soul or your heart or whatever you want to call it, but because that’s how it is. That’s the hand you were dealt. You either have to play it as best you can or . . .” He considers this, swaying for a moment, and I wonder if he’s going to fall over and if anyone would judge me for just leaving him there. But then he finishes, “There’s no other choice. You live with it. You keep moving. You keep trying.”
“You lied to me.”
“What was I supposed to do? You think if I’d read you this back in London you would have believed me? You think your mind would have let you believe me? This would have been another clue. More proof of your cause.” He drops his chin against his chest, then finishes weakly, “I’m sorry.”
I’m shaking my head. “That’s wrong. You’re wrong.”
“Adrian—”
“You’re wrong!” I can hardly get words out, my breathing is so stuttered. “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life heaving myself up this goddamn mountain when everyone else gets a flat country road. Something is wrong with me, and I’m either going to fix it or it’s going to kill me. It won’t go away or heal or get better. I’m either broken or I’m not.”
“Adrian.” Monty takes a step toward me, holding out a hand, maybe for me, maybe for the letter. I crumple up the letter and throw it on the ground between us.
“I can stop this,” I say. “She couldn’t, but I will.”
I turn, and I run. I follow the canal, past two more bridges and farther than the red-doored church with the walled garden. I start to turn down a cross street, where the whitewashed side of a shop is painted with a ship flying Dutch colors, but my legs are shaking and it’s so hard to breathe I’m getting dizzy. I tip sideways into the wall and slide down it. The alley is so narrow I could press my feet flat against the opposite wall if I stretched my legs straight. Above me, the dark outlines of the canal houses loom, the shutters bordering each window so white through the darkness, like bones poking out of a decaying corpse.
I’m not sure I’ve ever been so angry. Angry at Monty, who lied to me, and Felicity, who broke her promises, and my mother, who left without telling me why or how or being able to see the truth of what was happening to her. Angry at the captain of the Flying Dutchman, who dared to touch my family in the first place. Who thought one lousy spyglass was worth exterminating an entire bloodline.
I’m angry at myself, for being this person. For not being strong enough or smart enough or brave enough to just get on with my life. For the way my thoughts become moth-eaten by doubt. For the scars on my body I put there myself. For the feeling of my bones pressing up against my skin. For everything I can’t control or change or do a goddamn thing about.
Our family is cursed. We must be. We have to be.
I can’t breathe. I can’t see straight. My whole body is shaking, and I can’t feel my hands. I almost hold them up in front of my face, just to be sure they’re still there. Get a hold of yourself, pull yourself together, stop being this way! I’m gasping for breath and people are passing me, purposely looking away so they can give themselves an excuse for not stopping to help. My throat is closing. I yank on the collar of my shirt, so hard it rips, but it does nothing. I’m too late. I’m dying. The Dutchman got its fingers in already and I’m going to die on a street corner in Amsterdam.
I’m dying. I’m dying. I’m dying. Oh my God, I’m actually dying. I can’t breathe. The muscles in my chest are convulsing, trying to loosen enough that I can draw a breath, but it’s like trying to pry open a locked castle door with your bare hands. I’m clenching my teeth so hard they squeak, and I can taste blood at the back of my throat.
I realize someone is crouched beside me, and oh my God, it can’t be Monty. He can’t have followed me that quickly, even with two good legs—he’s not sober enough, and my path has been nonsense, impossible to follow in the dark. I don’t want it to be Monty, and I don’t want it to be a stranger and I don’t want it to be anyone. I don’t want anyone to ask me what’s wrong, what’s happening to me, I don’t want to attempt to explain it because it doesn’t make sense. I’m gagging on my own breath, folded at the waist like I’m praying. I want Louisa. I want my mother. I want her not to have stepped off that cliff, her spyglass and her wedding ring in a box under her bed.
“What’s happened?”
It takes a moment for me to recognize the voice.
It’s Saad.
Speaking is impossible. I can’t even get my muscles in my own control well enough to shake my head. My damaged lungs make this terrible, keening noise when I try to breathe. I sound like a rabbit in a snare, exhausted by its own thrashing. Put me out of my misery, I think. That’s what we do to animals in pain.