Do you know how much this hurts?
He bows his head and breathes in the familiar smell of his son’s hair, and then lays Joshua down gently on the stone floor, careful not to wake him. Then he leaves his hands against the soft wool of the blanket, reluctant to take them away now the moment has come. He has kept himself as calm and composed as he can until now, but he knows that his whole world will collapse when he lets go. The realization is stark. He will never hold his son again. For all intents and purposes, he will forever be a stranger to the boy.
It will be such a long time until I see you again.
Hobbes tries to tell himself that all moments are present, and so in some way he will always be here, with his hands touching his son to soothe both of them. But it doesn’t help. It does nothing to stem the grief that is building inside him. There will be so many stories he will miss as Joshua is growing up. But he also knows that Joshua’s story will be cut short if his son remains with him.
Because the world will continue to creak.
And Edward will never stop his quest to correct what has been changed.
So he has no choice.
“Are you all right, sir?”
Hobbes looks to his left, startled. A stewardess is standing in the aisle beside his seat, looking down at him with a concerned expression on her face.
For a moment, he is confused. Where is he? When is he? But then he realizes. It is a little later in the night now, and he is on a plane on his way to Italy for a conference. He will be called home first thing in the morning.
The cabin is trembling.
He swallows.
“I’m fine. It’s just … the turbulence.”
“Yeah, I get that.” She nods sympathetically. “Honestly? It’s a bit worse than usual, but we’ll get through it okay. Promise you.”
“I’m sure we will.”
“Trust me—I’ve done this a thousand times before.”
Hobbes smiles, and she moves away. He turns his head to the small window beside him. The world outside is dark, but after a few seconds the plane tilts slightly and the ground swings up into view. The flight path circles over the north of the city, and Hobbes stares down at the spread of black land far below. It is speckled with tiny lights, one standing out a little brighter than the others.
The fire in his house that Edward arranged in order to kill Joshua.
The one Hobbes knew would come to pass.
The sight of it empties him.
Money can buy many things. Right now, Peter Leighton, the babysitter his brother hired to look after his son, Nathaniel, is already settling into life abroad under the new name Hobbes acquired for him. The money Leighton will receive every month until he dies will be sufficient to ensure his silence.
The plane tilts again, and the world outside swings up, the sight of the ground replaced by a blue-black sky filled with racing wisps of gray cloud. The cabin continues to tremble for a moment.
And then … it settles.
The stewardess is making her way back down the aisle and gives him a wink as she passes.
“Told you so.”
Hobbes smiles emptily and closes his eyes.
Right now, Joshua is wrapped in an extra blanket and is being comforted by the cleaning lady who arrived at the church soon after Hobbes left. An ambulance has been called. Joshua’s life with Hobbes is over, and his new life with his adopted family will begin a few short weeks from now. It will be a long time before they see each other again. And while all this is necessary, it feels like the valves in Alan Hobbes’s heart are crumpling one by one.
I love you so much, my beautiful boy, he thinks.
Do your best for now.
And then the plane flies higher, and the land below is invisible for a while.
* * *
It is April 15, 1986.
Edward Leland is walking down a long, narrow corridor, a nurse on one side of him and a policeman on the other. Despite the warnings they have given him, he is filled with hope. Nathaniel has been missing for over a week now—vanished off the face of the earth, along with his babysitter—and Leland had all but accepted his son must be dead. The grief and loss and rage have consumed him, soaking him through like torrential rain.
But now a baby boy has been found abandoned in a church.
Who else can it possibly be?
Leland walks into the room and looks down at the child. And then freezes. He gradually becomes aware of a terrible noise building in the air, and then realizes it is coming from him. It is something between a scream and a sob, an awful keening that grows ever louder and more desolate as he stares down at the thing—he can no longer think of it as a child—that is lying before him.
Charlotte’s eyes are staring up at him from Joshua Hobbes’s face.
And he understands what has been done to Nathaniel.
Standing there, the horror building inside him, Leland can see it all in his mind’s eye. Alan has organized it all so carefully. Using their father’s book, he has learned how Leland was intending to correct the course of the world by killing Joshua. And even though a part of him must surely have recognized the blasphemy of his actions, he made the choice to save his son. He arranged for Nathaniel to be abducted and delivered to him. And then he swapped the infants, so that instead of Joshua, it was Nathaniel who perished in the fire.
The fire that Leland had arranged.
The fire that killed his own child.
He blinks.
“Not him, right?” the officer says.
Leland will realize later that, had he better control of himself in this moment, he should have pretended it was. Yes, he should have said. Yes, it’s my son. Even if they didn’t believe him, all he would have needed was enough time alone with the infant. And he knew that God would have nodded along in encouragement of his actions. But reason has deserted him right now. He is too consumed by the horror of what Alan has done.
What he himself has done.
“No,” Leland says instead.
And then repeats it, over and over, as they lead him from the room.
“No, no, no.”
* * *
It is October 4, 2017.
Hobbes clicks the top onto the fountain pen, sensing the ribbon of its history as he does so. Nearly a century ago, a little boy called Jack Lock is already scribbling incessantly with it, attempting to translate the strange tongue he is hearing.
And here it is now.
Hobbes places it in the cabinet, alongside all the other surviving remnants of Jack Lock’s life that he has spent the last few decades collecting.
Then he stands up and leaves the room forever.
In the bathroom, he looks at himself in the mirror. What appears close to a skull stares back at him, its eyes hollow and blank. There is so little of him left in the present, and it is nearly time for the pages of his own life to come to an end.
He has done his best.
With his hands trembling, he pours himself a tumbler of water.
And then he begins swallowing pill after pill.
Thirty-eight
“Is my wife in trouble?” Sam Gardener said.
Laurence pursed his lips and considered the question.
It was the next morning. Gardener was sitting in his front room, with a little girl beside him on the couch, wrapped in an odd piece of fabric. The child was young, but perhaps old enough to understand the conversation, and so Laurence had suggested he and Gardener talk somewhere more private. The man had said no. He claimed his daughter was feeling clingy due to Katie Shaw’s absence. Laurence had actually seen very little evidence that this was the case—the girl seemed almost entirely oblivious, lost in the picture book she was reading—and he suspected Gardener was keeping her close right now more for his own reassurance than hers.