Rose sat up in the bed, and he wondered what the movement had cost her. She needed rest and sleep. Not this. There he went again, taking from her. “You’re wrong,” she said. Then her expression shifted. Her voice was certain and clear. “I never thought that. I never thought it was your fault. Not once.”
“Rose—”
She placed a hand on her forehead and sat up a little higher. “How could you have possibly thought it was your fault?”
He shook his head wildly. “I was driving the car—”
“It wasnotyour fault, Landon,” she said. “Do I wish we hadn’t left the house that morning? Yes. With everything in me. But we did leave. And we left because we were giving ourselves a chance.I’mthe one who holds this, Landon. I’m the one who distracted you. It’s my fault.” She laid her head in her hands. “From the moment she was even a thought, all I wanted to be was a good mother,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “And I couldn’t protect her.”
Landon stared at her, fighting his every instinct to reach for her hands. “I couldn’t protect her, either.”
“It was my fault,” they both said at the same time.
“I don’t blame you,” she said.
“How could I blame you?” he said.
Landon had carried the weight for so long it had fused to his bones, grown heavier with every passing week, every unanswered question, every sleepless night. And now,this. To find that they’d both been pushing the same boulder up a hill alone when they could have been using four hands.
It would have been impossible to say who moved toward who first, their bodies drawn to each other like magnets as they were. Their lips met softly, tentatively, as though it were the first time. She sighed into him, her mouth as stale as his. He cupped her cheek in his hand and smoothed her tangled hair. And he had the clearest thought—as close to a vision as he’d ever had—that maybe the passing of time was ceremonial, the way the ancients thought. Not the modern world’s graceless obedience to sequence and increment, but the stunning imperfection of human memory and the movements of heavenly bodies. Maybe the moon that lit their bed last night was the same one that had shone through the plastic blinds in their dorm room when she’d run her hands down his chest, when he’d first seen her unguarded and bare. Maybe tomorrow they would stand in that musty barn she’d fallen in love with, drinking warm cider and crisp wine while they danced for the first time as husband and wife, sweat dripping down their foreheads and pooling in their clothes. Maybe yesterday she’d already told him she did not blame him.
They were everywhere and nowhere, the kiss full of grief and love. He pressed his forehead to hers and whispered, “You kept your name.”
She smiled sadly. “I grew into it so well, I felt it a shame to leave it behind.”
Landon pulled back a touch, the list of things he needed toatone for still feeling miles long. “Do you remember her?” he asked. “Other Rose?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “None of this feels real. How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know how these drugs work any more than you do,” she said. “It’s just like other Rose told you. I’m the guinea pig.”
The Jamie inside him felt enormously guilty. “I shouldn’t have lied to you.” He shouldn’t have done a lot of things.
“No,” she said, “you shouldn’t have.”
“And I shouldn’t have come between you and Graham.” He didn’t mean that, but knew it was something he should say.
Rose laughed. “Give Rose some credit, okay? She made up her own mind.”
“She really was something,” he said, wondering what she would say if she were here. “I’ll give you that.”
“Did you love her?”
The question disarmed him, but he hadn’t come this far only to lie to her now. “No,” he said, finally admitting it to himself. “No, we didn’t have time for that. But she helped me, she really did. I was happy. And God, that’s no small thing.”
Rose bit her bottom lip, and he couldn’t tell if his response had pleased or upset her.
“I wish you hadn’t left.” Part of him knew he shouldn’t have said it, that he should have let them live in this time outside of time a few minutes longer. But Landon never passed up an opportunity to put his foot in his mouth. “I wish we had just talked, back then, just like we’re talking now.”
“Me too.”
“It would have changed everything.”
Her body stilled. “It wouldn’t have.”
It was all so clear. Why couldn’t she see it, too? “Of course it would have. We would have found our way back to each other, just like we’re doing now. You don’t blame me. You didn’t blame me, even then. I thought that you left because of me.”