“I can’t believe you did this.”
“I just had a conversation with my father.”
“I can’t believe you did this to me,” I clarify. “You promised. And we—” I stop. “And you promised.”
“Not you.”
“What?”
“I didn’t do this to you. Please, Mab. I didn’t break my promise to you because I already knew. It was Mirabel. Mirabel told me.”
“We are the same, Mirabel and I.” I am shaking so hard he looks wavy before me. Or maybe he’s trembling too. “We are the same person. We are exactly the same.”
We have turned and headed back toward my house. I am almost home. There is so much left to say. There is nothing left to say.
But it turns out I’m wrong about that.
“We’re leaving.” His eyes dart to mine, then away again as soon as they meet. “I came to say goodbye.”
I stop walking. I stop breathing. “But you won.”
“Exactly, so my mom says we don’t have to be here anymore. She says my dad can run the plant remotely now. Our actually being here was mostly a publicity thing, a gesture of goodwill.” He shrugs again. “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“I guess not.” The list of things that apparently don’t matter anymore is long and winding as a river, long and winding as history. Literally.
At the front door, I don’t know what to do. Something violent? Something tender? Do I kiss him goodbye? Promise never to forget him? Tell him I’ll write? I stand and look at River, really look at him, and force myself to know: I will never see him again. He can’t look back at me, can’t say goodbye, can’t walk away, can’t bring himself to touch me. Or maybe it’s that I won’t let him.
“I really liked you, Mab.” The past tense. The past tense might fell me.
But I say anyway, “Me too,” because it’s true, and it’s important that it’s true. I don’t want him to think—I don’t want to think—I did all I did on a whim or for fun or just to see what would happen. I was in love, I’d plead before the court, if we ever got to go to court. I’d plead before my sisters. It wasn’t my fault. I was in love.
“I wish I didn’t have to go.”
“Really?” I am genuinely asking.
He blushes. So he is lying. “I wish I didn’t have to … leave you,” he amends. “I get great reception in Boston. We can keep in touch.”
Why? I think, but I just nod at my shoes.
“I have something for you,” he says. I look up. He reaches into his not-a-backpack and hands it to me carefully, ceremonially even, without taking his eyes off mine. And I receive it. But when I tear my eyes from his to look, it’s just a college catalog, one of those glossy brochures that fill the mailbox as soon as you sign up for the SATs. I don’t know what I was expecting. Or would have wished for. Something sentimental maybe, anything really, but this is nothing.
“For your escape,” he says, “and all your future endeavors.”
My stomach clenches like I’ve eaten something off, rotten, like I’ve stuffed his stupid catalog into my mouth page by page and swallowed it.
“This is where my father went to school,” he offers.
I know this from when we called the library in search of his dissertation research, but I can’t tell River that.
“And where his father went to school. So it’s where I might go too. Maybe we could go together. Take a look.”
When I still don’t say anything, he pulls his wand out of his back pocket. Waves it around half-heartedly. Offers it to me. “Want to say the magic words?”
I cannot even shake my head no. I cannot say a word. Magic or otherwise, there are none left to say. So I do the only thing left to do: Turn away. Turn away and back to my worn front door and my worn life. My body is Mirabel’s. It can listen, but it can’t not listen, and it can’t reply. It is sapped of strength, control, and agency. I have my one hand. I can turn the doorknob and let myself inside and close the door behind me. That is all.
* * *
In bed, I can hear Mirabel typing, but her Voice is silent. I can hear her and Monday listening to me cry, waiting for me to be done. Mirabel must know I know what she did now. What we both did. Monday can’t have any idea why I’m so upset, but in some ways it doesn’t matter to her. She’s upset I’m upset. And that’s enough.
Still, I can feel her itching to ask—she doesn’t like to not understand—and itching to comfort me too. They both have so much they want to say. But instead of tears it feels like words are leaking out of my eyes, and soon I won’t be able to tell them anything at all. And I have a question I need answered before I surrender forever the power of speech with no magic Voice to replace it. I wipe my face off and roll over.