—
His second trip across the crack left him twice as nauseous. Isaac opened his eyes and found himself lying on the floor of a room he had glimpsed from his side of the wall. Except for one difference. Andrea was not in it. A tall, handsome man with blond hair and drawings over his skin had taken her place. The man staggered away from him and bumped into a music stand.
“You…” The man clutched a cello at his side. “Who are you?”
Isaac stood up. He steadied his legs and straightened his suit. He had read Andrea’s journals so often that he slipped into Mr. Westin’s mannerisms like a well-worn coat. Her pages had also told him about the other people she held dear. “I believe you already know the answer to that, Nate.”
Nate’s jaw dropped. “I’ve seen you before. You gave me a letter to give to Andrea and…” He clutched the metal disc he wore as a pendant. “You’re Isaac? But why are you so old? Why are you dressed like that? Where’s Andrea?”
“Andrea?” Isaac’s heart stopped. “Is she not here?”
The color drained from Nate’s face. “She was with you. She crossed over. She’s been gone for months. Did you leave her behind? Where is she?”
Isaac glared at the wall. “Dear God…”
“What? What’s wrong? What have you done with Andrea?”
“This moment!” Isaac gasped. “This is not the first time I am to see Andrea.”
“What do you mean?”
Isaac hung his head. “It is the last.”
“I don’t understand,” Nate said. “You’re not making any sense.”
Isaac’s skin glowed bright. “There is no time to explain. I beg you, Nate. Save Andrea. Play her song now.”
My dearest, the wall stole me back before I could witness you cross into your world. It has opened several times since then, allowing me to deliver my letters to you. Each time I stepped through the crack, I emerged at the date and time you recorded in your diary entries about my visits, and in the same order that you narrated my deliveries had transpired. The pages of your journal have been my guide and have served as my script. I did my utmost to be faithful to every detail of your chronicles, delivering my letters to you in the sequence that you listed. For you, my visits happened over the course of several years. For me, they transpired in one day.
On each sojourn, I looked at you and wondered if you could see a glimmer of the man you used to love in my tired eyes. The first time you crossed over to my time, you told me that you feared you’d come too early. It is now my turn to apologize for coming too late. The story in your journals has ended and I have run out of pages to tell me what shall happen next. I am ending this letter not knowing if it shall find its way to you and if I shall see you once more. All I know is what the numbers have told me.
My calculations show that this is the last day that the crack shall open in my lifetime. If it does not permit one more visit before this day ends, I pray that you shall somehow know in your heart that you and our child shall be my last thought before I leave this earth. Perhaps in the next world, in a little limestone cottage by a meadow, we shall be permitted to be the family that we were not free to be in this one.
I love you now and always.
Isaac
—
Tears soaked the letter in her hands. Andrea looked up from the page, unable to see beyond the river flowing from her eyes. She tried to take a breath, but her lungs could not hold anything but sorrow. Margery’s giggle echoed in the church and pierced her sobs. She wiped her eyes clear and glanced at her daughter. Her chubby pink hands pointed to the side of the pew. Andrea turned.
Mr. Westin’s cloudy hazel eyes smiled at Margery. He bent down, reached behind Margery’s ear, and plucked a dandelion from thin air. He handed it to her. A 1952 Omega peeked from under his sleeve. Margery played with the flower and giggled. He looked around the church. “This place has not changed much. It echoes the same way.”
“You lied to me,” Andrea hissed through her tears. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth about who you were?”
“I told you who I was the day I delivered your first letter. Oscar Ian Westin.”
“Stop playing games.” Andrea stood up.
“An anagram is amusing but not quite a game, wouldn’t you agree? I found that it was a good place to hide the truth, if one was reluctant to lie….” He looked down at his wing tip shoes. “And half-hoping to be discovered.”
Andrea moved her mouth to speak, but her voice died in her throat. One word squeaked out, heavier than any she had spoken before it. “Why?”
He exhaled a tired breath, breaking the line of his perfect posture. “Do you need to ask? I am an old man.”
Andrea stared at Isaac’s face, searching for the man she loved behind its doughy skin and lines. “That wasn’t what I was asking.”
“Then tell me what you want to know. You can have more than one question on this visit as it appears to be our last. Go on. Ask. Why didn’t I tell you? Why am I here? Why now? What would you like to know first?”
“None of them. None of that matters.” She picked up Margery from the floor. “What I want to know is why aren’t you holding us? Why are you standing there like there’s still a wall between us? Do you still hate me for leaving you behind?”
“It would be easier if I did. I could have lived my life without thinking about what I had lost. But I could not hate you, Andrea, as much as I tried. Not after I read your journals. I know why you pushed me away. I forgave you a long time ago.”
“Then why won’t you hold me?” Andrea sobbed. “Us?”
“Here is your answer. Look at me, Andrea. I’m old and gray. I’m not the young man you fell in love with and left behind.”
“You’re right. You’re more than that. You’re the man who found his way back to his family.” Andrea stroked his cheek. “I see you, Isaac.”
He flinched and turned away. “This was a mistake.”
“How can you say that? This is your daughter. Don’t you want to hold her?”
Isaac’s eyes wandered over Margery’s face. Tears watered them. “More than you can imagine. I did not know what to expect when I crossed over this time. After you left, I had no way of knowing what had become of you. I prayed every second of every day of the past forty-seven years that you were safe behind my wall. I imagined an entire life for both of you down to the smallest details of your days. The porridge our baby might have for breakfast. The sound her laugh might make. The way you might sing her to sleep. This myth was the air I breathed. Without it, I could not live. When I saw both of you in the cemetery, it took every ounce of strength in this feeble body not to run to you and hold my family in my arms.” He reached out to Margery but pulled his hand back before his fingers touched her. “But I know I must not.”
“Why?”
“Because if my arms remember what it is like to embrace you, their emptiness will be unbearable when I let you go.”
“Then don’t go.”
“You know your history. You know that the crack will not let me stay. Your journals have informed me of my future. Fourteen years from now on my side of the wall, on the thirty-first of March, I shall meet my death.” He lowered his eyes. “I should not have come today. I should have been content with my little myth. Instead, I was the worst kind of fool. I thought that if I came here and proved to myself that my family was alive and safe, all the pain from the years we lost would vanish. Though the joy of seeing you and Margery is beyond any words, I already feel the crack wrenching you from me. There is no magic great enough to heal the wound that losing my family a second time will carve into my soul.”
White light broke through Isaac’s skin, lighting his face from within. The light erased the lines around his lips and eyes, and for the briefest of moments, he was Andrea’s Isaac again. “You can’t leave us. I won’t let you.”
He looked down the church’s nave and sighed. “Life has quite a sense of humor, doesn’t it? We are finally here. Beneath the roof o
f a church, in front of a proper altar. We have a place to say our vows.”
Andrea held his wrinkled hand. “We made them long ago.”
“And I have kept all but one. I have grown old, though not at your side.”
“You’ve always been with me,” Andrea sobbed.
“And now it is time to let me go.” He looked into Margery’s eyes and then Andrea’s. His skin glowed brighter.
“No.” Andrea clasped his hand just as she did the first time they touched through the crack in the library. She dug her fingernails into his skin to keep him with her. “Never.”
“My dearest, I beg you. Do not follow my path. I have lived a lifetime lonely enough for the both of us. Allow me solely to bear the punishment for our crimes against nature and time. I want a better life for you and our daughter.” He kissed the top of Margery’s head and brushed his lips against Andrea’s cheek. “Find love again, Andrea, one as fierce and strong as the one we shared. I have scoured the pages of your life and if you saw the truth hidden in your words as clearly as I have, you would know, as I do, that you would not have to look far. Give our daughter a father to know and love. If you ever loved me, allow yourself to embrace happiness so I can find peace.”
“Isaac…” Andrea wept.
“Promise me.” He glowed brighter.
“I…promise.”
His hand vanished from Andrea’s grasp. Cold air filled her fingers. Andrea stood there, her eyes fixed on the empty spot where Isaac had been standing. The wisps of candle smoke drifting through the church, the faint chirping of birds spilling through the doorway, and the weight of Margery on her left hip seared into her soul.
—
Andrea did not know how long she had been sitting inside the church. She had not run out of tears and her legs were too weak for her to stand. Margery had fallen asleep on the pew next to her, smiling in her sleep the way only children can. Andrea stroked her curls.
“Hey, you.”
Andrea twisted around, tears flowing down her cheeks. “Nate? What are you doing here?”
He sat down beside her. “Keeping a promise.”
“What promise? What are you talking about?”
Nate pulled out a white handkerchief from his jeans and dried her tears. The shadow of a small stain in the corner of the cloth caught Andrea’s eye. She grabbed the handkerchief from him. “Where did you get this?”
“He gave it to me.” He unfolded the handkerchief. The name of the church they were sitting in, along with a date and time, were scribbled in the middle of the cloth. “That’s how I knew you’d be here.”
Andrea stared at the familiar minuscule handwriting on the handkerchief. “Who gave this to you?”
“The same man who gave me this.” Nate slipped his pendant out from behind the collar of his shirt. It gleamed like a mirror in the sun.
Andrea rubbed her temples. “I don’t understand. You’ve had that pendant since we were kids.”
“Yes. I’ve had it ever since the day I ran out of your house when I saw the glowing crack in the music room. For years I refused to admit remembering anything about that afternoon, but the opposite was true. How could I forget the day I was convinced that I was becoming like my mother? Every detail about it was branded into my mind. The black sneakers I wore. My Metallica shirt. The way I ran out of your house and collided with an old man who was walking to your door. I slammed into him and knocked down the small wooden telescope he was carrying. It smashed into pieces on the street. I thought he was going to be furious, but he wasn’t. He just asked me what my name was. He almost seemed glad to see me. He told me that the telescope was supposed to be a gift for his daughter, Margery, but he said that he was going to get her something better.”
Nate glanced at Margery. “He asked me if I believed in magic. I told him I didn’t. He waved his hand and made a shiny round metal mirror appear from the air. He gave it to me and said that the mirror was magic because it was touched by a girl who was magic herself. He said that one day I would see my future in it. I told him I didn’t believe him. He pulled out a slightly stained white handkerchief from his suit pocket and scribbled an address, date, and time on it. His handwriting was so small that I almost couldn’t make out what he wrote. I squinted at the date and thought he had made a mistake. It was fourteen years away. He said the date was correct and that if I went to St. John the Baptist Church at the time he listed, I was going to find that magical girl. I asked him how he could possibly know something that far away in the future. He said it was because—”
“That’s where he had just come from….” Andrea gasped.
Nate nodded. “He told me that when he had left, the magical girl had been sad. He wanted to return, but instead, he found himself in front of her old home. He said that when I saw her, she would need this handkerchief to dry her eyes.”
“But you never said anything, Nate.”
“My mother was locked away in an institution because she said she saw fairies, Dre. I wasn’t exactly keen on telling anyone about strange old men, mysterious mirrors, or magical girls. I pushed it out of my mind even though a part of me wished that it were true. I grew up and didn’t think any more of it. But then I saw that guy at your doorstep after your father’s funeral. He looked familiar, but so many years had passed that I wasn’t sure that it was him. The third and last time I saw him was the day you came back. That’s when I realized who he really was. He told me to open the crack and save you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about him?”
“I wanted to. But you were so hopeful about opening the crack again and returning to your life with him. The man I saw that day was an old man who said that the day you crossed over from his time into this one was the last day he would see you. I understood then that you weren’t going to be able to go back to his world.”
“So all this time…” Andrea closed her eyes, trying to wrap her mind around the chain of events that had led Nate to the church. “You knew that I wasn’t going to be able to go back?”
Nate nodded with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to make you suffer more by taking away your last hope. I saw how difficult rebuilding your life and raising Margery on your own was on you. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt you more. I’m so sorry, Dre. Can you forgive me?”
Andrea leaned her head against Nate’s chest. His pendant, the metal mirror that she had helped Isaac attach to his telescope, cooled the tears on her cheek. Like the writing box that had drawn Isaac to Woolsthorpe the first time he crossed over, the mirror she had touched had pulled him to Nate on the day he needed to save her and Margery. Isaac and Andrea’s connection was a natural law, greater than any he had ever discovered: unbreakable, timeless, and absolute. It had bound their hearts just as gravity married the earth to the moon. But now Isaac was gone and he had given her one last gift through the crack, a gift that time couldn’t turn to dust. She closed her eyes and sealed him inside the pages of her life with a love stronger than time and molten red wax. She held Nate’s hand. “I understand.”
A shadow lifted from Nate’s face. He exhaled and squeezed her fingers. “It had been so long since I received the handkerchief. I would take it out once or twice every year, reliving the conversation I had with a stranger. There were days the whole thing no longer felt real. But as the date written on the handkerchief approached, a thousand possibilities ate away at my doubts.
“But they were never fully erased. Not even when I booked a flight over here or when I got out of the cab and walked up to the church’s door. I didn’t know what I was going to find or if I was going to find anyone or anything at all. I just knew what I hoped for.”
“And what did you hope for, Nate?”
“I hoped that if I did see that magical girl, she wasn’t going to need a handkerchief to dry her eyes.” He brushed a tear from Andrea’s cheek with his thumb as a hot drop rolled down his own face. “It kills me to see you cry, Dre. I just want, more than anything, for you to
finally find whatever it is you need to be truly happy.”
“Nate…” Andrea dried the little stream on Nate’s face with the white handkerchief and glanced at the shiny pendant around his neck. Isaac had told Nate that its reflection held Nate’s future. In it, Andrea saw her face. History could not remember what it did not know, but the truth was what Andrea would never allow herself to forget. She recalled everything about the last time she saw the man she had loved her entire life. And the first time she truly saw the man she was going to love for the rest of it. “I think I have.”
Epilogue
The apple fell into Andrea’s right palm. She closed her fingers around it and tossed it into the air again. Her eyes followed it along gravity’s appointed trail. She caught the apple, polished it on her silk sleeve, and bit into it. This was her new preshow ritual. It was healthier than eating orange M&M’s and more calming than counting the steps of stairs. There was nothing more certain than gravity. It kept her feet firmly planted on the ground. She set the apple down next to the pile of music sheets on the table, shut her dressing room door behind her, and made her way to the Isaac Stern Auditorium’s stage with steady steps.
Two thousand eight hundred and four pairs of eyes watched her take her seat in front of the orchestra for her latest performance at Carnegie Hall. She took her cello from its stand. A yellow Post-it note was stuck on its back.
Hey, you.
Breathe.
Andrea smiled at the note, took its advice, and played.
Apple pie à la mode. Four ice cubes. And the warmth of her father’s arms around her after their “Eleanor Rigby” duet. These were the memories that Andrea drew from her cello’s strings. A little limestone cottage and a sky full of stars flowed after them. The melody swelled and swept everyone in its path along with it. Loss. Longing. Laughter. Love. Andrea set each free to tell its chapter of her story. They swirled around her, finding their place in the same song.
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