I take another sip of wine. I hold my goblet. I like the way the cool etched glass feels in my hand.
“When I was young, I used to pick out my cereal based on the prizes advertised on the box. I’d eat all the cereal, and then I’d get to the prize, and it’d never be as good as how it looked on the box. And I would have eaten all this cereal I didn’t even like just to get this disappointing, dinky little toy or whatever. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. About how that could have been my whole life. I would have been an old woman somewhere, wrinkled as a raisin, realizing I’d spent all my good years eating shitty cereal for an unsatisfactory prize.”
“Mm,” Sophie says. “I’ve never had cereal.”
I laugh. “Really?”
“I’m glad you see now,” she says, “what I’d been trying to tell you all along.”
“I do,” I say. “I’m so happy. The happiest.”
“Oh, Annie, to think! We’ll be able to celebrate so many more of your birthdays together. So many you’ll lose count.”
She reaches across the table and wraps her hand around my wrist, her fingers stroking the soft valley of veins, feeling the gentle surf of my pulse. Her amber eyes drip with affection.
I lift my glass. “Another toast!”
She raises hers. Ralph perks up and begins to parade around the table.
“To the years ahead,” I say. “To the future.”
And what a thing it is to know.
My future is my own.
EPILOGUE
I don’t leave the house now without flowers in my hair. Today, the first day of October, of a year I don’t know, I wear a crown of yellow freesia. I amble through the farmers market, eating an apple. It’s crisp and pink and delicious. There’s another one in my pocket for later. When I’m done, I’ll save the seeds. They have many uses.
“Hello, Annie,” I hear as I pass by the tents. “Good morning!”
I smile and nod. If I like the person who says it, I’ll say “Good morning” back. If I don’t, I’ll say nothing at all.
“Miss Crane?” A woman dressed in overalls waves at me. She calls me by a name I haven’t heard in a long time. “Miss Crane?”
I almost say, No, I’m not Miss Crane. You’re mistaken. Instead, I say, “Yes.”
“It’s Madison Thorpe,” the woman says. “I was in your class. You wrote me a recommendation letter for college. You let me eat lunch with you sometimes. You were one of my favorite teachers.”
I remember her now. The palest blue eyes. She still wears excessive black eyeliner. It settles into her crow’s-feet. I wonder how old she is.
“God,” she says. “You haven’t aged a day.”
“Oh, thank you,” I tell her. I’m now interested in this conversation. “It’s good to see you. How have you been?”
“Eh,” she says, shrugging. “Got my bachelor’s at Sarah Lawrence, as planned. Then I moved to California. I was out there for a long time. I wanted to get my PhD, but I’m massively in debt and my partner and I recently separated, so . . . I’m back in Aster living with my parents. Which is great, because they’re horrified that I’m forty-two and unmarried.”
She rolls her eyes, and I remember. She used to have pins on her backpack. She stood up for me once. When they were chirping at me.
“Sorry. I’m vomiting all my problems. Oversharing. Anyway. It’s funny. Back then I was convinced we’d be friends if I were a little older. I thought I was so deep, so wise. That I understood life and all its intricacies. I look back and laugh. I must have been insufferable.”
“You weren’t,” I say.
“You were a really great teacher.”
I wasn’t a great teacher. I was okay at best. But I appreciate the compliment.
I look at her. Her overalls are dirty, paint spattered. Her hair is dark and parted straight down the middle. She’s flushed. There’s something doll-like about her. An innocence.
She’s in pain, of course. She burns with it. It’s in the air around her, billowing up past the treetops, up toward the bright morning sun.
“Would you like an apple?” I take it out of my pocket and offer it to her.
She accepts.
“Thanks,” she says, and takes a bite. “Would you want to get coffee sometime? I kind of hate everyone else who lives here. I mean, in Aster. Rowan is pretty nice.”
“Yes,” I say, “I would like that.”