Then Monday reaches over. “I will take it. For the library.”
On top I am furious, raging at River, raging at Mirabel. And underneath that I am destroyed, betrayed by both of them, in pain from everywhere at once. And underneath that I am bereft. He is leaving, and how will it be here now without him? It will be the same as it was before, and I think I would rather go anywhere—anywhere—than back.
I feel what it feels like to know I will never be happy again.
I feel what it feels like to know not only do I have to feel this, I have to feel it alone because I’ve lost my sister, both of them probably (for we do not come in ones), and the only people who could help me find my way through are as lost in the woods as I am.
I turn off the light and turn back toward the wall.
I can hear Mirabel snuffling too.
I can hear Monday turning the pages of that stupid catalog. I should never have given it to her because I would like to bury it in the woods or I would like to set it on fire or I would like to feed it to a wild animal, but of course she has to read it with a flashlight under her covers.
And of course she has to do it out loud.
Probably because there was never any chance she wasn’t going to, however, it is closer to soothing than grating. I can’t stop thinking about a million things I wish I could stop thinking about, so listening to Monday intone the first-year experience at the Templeton alma mater is as good a sheep-counting sort of exercise as any. Students take five courses each semester and can join any of hundreds of clubs. There are three dining halls for them to choose from plus two coffee shops. They live in coed dorms with roommates specially matched for compatibility.
“There is a sidebar with photographs of famous alumni who used to be roommates,” Monday says. “Remember that blond guy from that movie we watched about dogs? He used to be roommates with that other blond guy from that other movie we watched about dogs. That is a good coincidence because—”
Monday stops reading, but I wasn’t really paying attention anyway, so it takes me a little while to notice. Then she starts keening from under the covers.
“Monday?”
The keening gets louder. I turn on the light.
“Shush! You’ll wake Mama.” No one slept much after Omar told us the election results last night. If Mama can get some rest, she should.
But Monday can’t stop.
“Tell us what’s wrong, Two.” Mirabel has that one long saved.
I pull the covers off her. Her hands are clamped over her ears, so the college catalog River gave me as the sorriest of parting gifts has fallen to the floor. I pick it up and look.
And there, grinning back at me, is River himself. “My only love sprung from my only hate!” (“Too early seen unknown, and known too late!” I’m realizing belatedly the important part of that quote is the second bit.) He has his arm around a guy I’ve never seen before, standing on a cobblestone path in front of a brick building covered in ivy. The pileup of love and hurt and anger and confusion—or maybe it’s just his sweet smile—makes the room spin. So it takes me longer than it should to realize this makes no sense. This cannot be a photo of River.
The caption clarifies. And then sets the world on fire.
“A match made in heaven! Roommates Duke Templeton (’68) and Scott Blakely (’68) on move-in day freshman year. Templeton went on to become owner and CEO of Belsum Basics. Blakely is owner and CEO of Harburon Analytical.”
The most exacting, state-of-the-art independent testing and chemical analysis company in the world.
I would like to join in Monday’s keening, but not as much as I would like my mother to sleep through this. I would like to hold Monday and rock her and tell her it will be all right, but Monday would never let me hold her and rock her, and I do not see how it will be all right ever again. Instead, I pull Mirabel into Monday’s bed and climb in myself, and we huddle there together, insofar as it is possible to huddle without touching, our warmth eventually melting Monday’s shrieks to cries to sniffles to silence.
Finally she says, “Independent testing does not prove anything if the independent tester is your roommate from college specially matched for compatibility.”
“Truth,” I say.
“We will tell everyone what we have learned and hold another vote.”
“That’s not how it works,” I tell her. “When you don’t like the outcome of a vote, you don’t just get to ask again.”
“But they voted wrong.”
“So they have to live with it.”
“Me too,” she points out. “And that is not fair.”
“Truth.”
“But they did not just vote wrong,” she says. “They voted with incomplete information because they were lied to and tricked, so they deserve to know the true and complete information and then have another chance to vote the right way.”
“It’s too late,” I say.
“For what?”
“For everything.”
And then Mirabel’s Voice out of the black darkness pricked only by faded, stapled-on stars. “The lawsuit was never the way. The vote was never the way. Nora’s way was never the way.”
“What way?” Monday says.
“Forward,” says Mirabel’s Voice.
“What is the way?” Monday says.
We wait while Mirabel types. “The dam needs repair because it is cracked and leaking already.”
“Truth,” Monday agrees.
More typing. “What if we help it?”
“Help fix it?” Monday asks.
“Help crack it,” Mirabel’s Voice corrects. “Tear it down. Open it up.”
“Who?” Monday asks.
“Three.” She does not mean herself. She means we three. She means us.
“How?” Monday asks.
Mirabel types. “Dynamite?”
“We do not have dynamite,” Monday says.
“Demolition equipment, backhoe, bulldozer, jackhammer.” This must be a folder buried deep in her Voice app for the toddler set, and she’s just going through and tapping each picture.
“We do not have a backhoe or a bulldozer or a jackhammer,” Monday says.
But I sit up, blow my nose, and turn the light back on again. Because it’s true we don’t have any demolition equipment. But I know where we can get some.
Two
When I first found the newspaper photograph of the pretending-to-fish Santas, I thought it was just Bourne.
Then I realized it was Bourne of the past.
Now I realize it is Bourne of the future, Bourne to come, the river—and everything—back where it belongs.
Very, very carefully, I cut around the edges with a utility knife, cutting the photograph from the article and caption and cutting through the glue and cutting through the extra-thick scrapbook paper the glue has glued the photograph onto. I feel bad about defacing library materials, but a scrapbook is not officially a book, and the back of a newspaper clipping is more newspaper whereas the back of this scrapbook page is blank for writing on.
I leave the Santa-postcard in the middle of the kitchen table for Mama to find when she wakes up in the morning and comes downstairs to start baking yellow things.
It would be nice to give her a nice surprise. But we do not know what will happen. So in case it is a not-nice surprise or one that takes a long time to come, I do not want her to worry. She has already worried enough.