*
When Adeline left, the second quilt was done, and her mother was sleeping in the chair under the first.
Try as she might, Adeline couldn’t get to sleep that night. Her mind was filled with thoughts of her mother, and Charlie, and Nora.
She didn’t go to work the next day. She paced in her living room, teetering on the verge of doing something that would end the world: calling Elliott. Saving Charlie.
But there was no saving Charlie. The moment she changed the past, she threw it all away.
She tried to distract herself. First with books, then with TV; she reached for the wine bottle, but then put it back. She needed a clear head for what would happen tonight.
Finally, fatigue, and stress, and worry chased her down like a cheetah on the Serengeti, trampling her as she lay on the couch.
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, it was dark.
A bolt of fear ran through her. Had she missed it?
She sat up, checked the time, and dashed out of the house. She drove the half-mile to Charlie’s neighborhood but didn’t park in front of the apartment building. She parked two blocks away and walked the dark streets with her head held high, knowing cameras were recording her journey, knowing those videos would one day play on the screens in the basement of Elliott’s home in Absolom City.
Outside his building, she paused and looked directly at one of the cameras, creating the still image that would hang prominently in that room in Elliott’s basement.
She climbed the wooden outdoor stairs to the second-floor apartment. She knocked on the door and waited, but no one came. She leaned closer and listened. The only sound was that of music playing inside.
She turned the handle, and the door swung in. It was a tiny apartment with a shared living and dining space that opened to a small kitchen.
Charlie was lying on the couch, unmoving, skin ashen.
Adeline closed the door.
The moment it clicked, the bedroom door opened.
Elliott stepped out.
He didn’t look at his dead son lying on the couch. He stared directly at Adeline.
What he said, Adeline could have never expected.
And it changed everything.
PART IV
ENDINGS, BURIALS, AND BEGINNINGS
FIFTY-NINE
In the desert, a city called Absolom rose. In Palo Alto, two people who would change that city forever were laid to rest. And in the Pacific, an island was slowly transformed into a paradise, waiting for the future.
*
At her home in Palo Alto, Adeline woke to the sound of buzzing from her bedside table. She reached over and read the text message on her phone’s lock screen. It was from her father:
Elliott may have told you, but Charlie passed away last night.
The three dots indicating that he was typing pulsed. Then:
I’m going over there.
Adeline typed a reply:
I’m so sorry to hear it. I’ll stay at your house with Sarah.
The reply came a second later.
Thanks.
*
At her childhood home, Adeline didn’t knock. She didn’t want to disturb her mother in case she was sleeping （and she was likely to be sleeping）。
The door was unlocked. For the second time in twenty-four hours, she let herself in to a home where tragedy was about to strike.
The living room was empty. Her younger counterpart and brother, Ryan, were both at school. She heard a whispered conversation from the hallway.
She waited in the foyer, knowing she should walk back outside. Or to the sewing room. Instead, curiosity compelled her like a strong wind to the cased opening outside the hall, just beyond the door to the master bedroom, where her mother was speaking in slow, labored breaths.
“Just listen, Sam. When I’m gone—”
“Sarah—”
He stopped talking. Adeline thought that her mother must have held a hand up.
“When I’m gone, when you’re able, I want you to move on. Time heals all wounds. But it won’t work if you don’t give time a chance. Will you do that?”
Adeline heard his muffled voice but couldn’t make out the words. He was crying, she thought.
But her mother’s voice was clear. “It would make me so sad if I’m what keeps you from being happy.”
*
They buried Charlie on an overcast Saturday morning. Afterward, the world seemed to stand still. Adeline knew that she was simply waiting for her mother to pass. She could hardly think about anything else. Life, in a strange twist of fate, had given her this gift, this chance to relive her time with her mother.
There wouldn’t be a third time around. This was it, the last days and hours she would have with her mother. Adeline clung to them, but the force of nature that was time pried them away.