Or maybe not the most mysterious. I think of the psychic. And the realization slams into me like a freight train.
I look up at Oliver through wide wonder and tears.
“You gave me a baby,” I say.
“I gave you a baby,” he repeats slowly, as if he’s just now realizing it, too. Then he tilts his head, considering, the corner of his mouth turning up. “Not quite the way I was hoping to.”
Laughter bursts out from deep within me. I look back down at my daughter, taking in her tiny ears and fingers and perfect wisps of eyelashes, and think how wonderful and awful it is that nothing in life happens quite the way we expect.
* * *
I’m standing at the base of the Rocky statue, peering up at the bronze metal glinting green in the afternoon sunlight. The sky is a brilliant blue, one of those rare times it actually matches the color of the crayon by the same name. People pass by in a blur.
I spot a man running up the stairs, his forehead slick with sweat, jaw clenched in effort. I don’t recognize him, yet he’s familiar. I know that I know him.
Then, just like that, he’s next to me. Close enough that I can almost feel the heat radiating off his skin.
“Hi,” he says, slipping his hand in mine.
“Hi,” I say.
And then we’re in the middle of the Philadelphia museum, one scene fading into the next. One setting morphing into another in the way only dreams can do. I’m staring at a framed tattoo—three Chinese characters. My tattoo. I glance down at my wrist and see that it’s no longer there. It’s now in this museum. I look to the left and there’s a life-size rendering of David Bowie’s face looking back at me. I’ve seen it before.
“It’s funny,” the man says, still holding my hand. “The things people leave behind.”
A bird squawks above and I look up.
I look back at him then. Really look at him. And I know. “Harrison,” I say.
He smiles. “Dios Mia.”
I am overcome with relief. And the inexplicable urge to laugh.
“Why don’t you look like you?”
“I don’t know. It’s your dream.”
“Have you seen her?”
“She’s perfect.”
“She is.”
I stare at him. This man that isn’t Harrison, but is. “I don’t want to wake up.”
“But you have to,” he says. “She needs you.”
And that’s when I hear it, the birdcalls, which have now melded into faint baby cries. Harrison starts to fade away. “Wait! Don’t go!” I say.
But he does.
I wake up, the baby’s cries crackling loud and tinny over the monitor. I blink, long and slow, trying to straddle the gap between dream and reality. Between what I want to believe is true and what is.
Maybe the future already exists.
Maybe I will see my husband again one day.
Maybe time is a circle.
Or maybe not.
Maybe all that matters is that love is a circle. Infinite. Eternal. Present, even when the person you want to be there most is absent.
I think of Oliver. What he said when he left the hospital, right before Vivian got there.
“Mia,” he started, and I cut him off before he could voice the words I saw in his eyes.
“I’ll always love him,” I said, quietly. “It’s always been him.”
“I know,” he said, nodding. “But maybe one day while you’re doing that, you could let me love you.”
Maybe one day I will.
But not today.
I close my eyes and try to return to sleep, to the dream, to Harrison—to allow the ache in my chest to lift for the briefest of moments—but another squawk from the monitor on my nightstand reminds me that life beckons.
I slip out of bed and go to our daughter.