“She went alone to the park the next day, and she returned with stars in her eyes,” Alain concludes. “From that moment on, they were inseparable. It was love at first sight.”
I sit back in my seat. “That’s a beautiful story,” I say.
“Everything about Rose and Jacob was a beautiful story,” Alain says. “Until the end. But perhaps the story is not yet through being told.”
I look off into the distance. “If he’s still out there.”
“If he is out there,” Alain echoes.
I sigh and close my eyes. “So Christmas Day, then,” I say. “He was born on Christmas Day. Nineteen twenty-four, I guess, if he was turning sixteen in 1940?”
“Correct,” Alain agrees.
“Christmas Day 1924,” I murmur. “Before Hitler. Before the war. Before so many people died for no reason at all.”
“Who could have known,” Alain says softly, “what was to come?”
That night, with Annie at her father’s, Alain and I sip tea in the kitchen, and after he shuffles off to bed, I sit at the table for a long time, watching the second hand on the wall clock go around and around and around. I’m thinking about how time ticks by without anyone being able to stop it. It makes me feel powerless, small. I think about the seemingly infinite number of seconds that have passed since my grandmother lost Jacob.
It’s nearly eleven when I pick up the phone to call Gavin, and although I know it’s inappropriately late, I’m seized with the sudden panicky feeling that if I don’t tell him about Jacob’s birth date now, this very second, it might be too late. It’s a silly thought, of course. Seventy years have ticked by with nothing happening. But seeing Mamie slip away in the hospital day after day makes me acutely conscious of the relentless progress of the second hand.
Gavin answers on the third ring.
“Did I wake you up?” I ask.
“No, I just finished watching a movie,” Gavin says.
I feel suddenly foolish. “Oh. If you’re with someone, I can call back . . .”
He laughs. “I’m by myself, on my couch. Unless you count the remote control as someone.”
I’m unprepared for the feeling of relief that courses through me. I clear my throat, but he speaks again first. “Hope. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah.” I pause and blurt out, “I found out Jacob Levy’s date of birth.”
“That’s great!” Gavin says. “How did you find out?”
I find myself telling him the short version of the story Alain told me earlier.
“What a great story,” Gavin says when I’m done. “Sounds like they were really meant to be.”
“Yeah,” I agree.
A moment of silence passes, and I look up again at the clock. Tick-tock, tick-tock. The second hand seems to mock me.
“Hope, what’s wrong?” Gavin asks.
“Nothing,” I say.
“I could start guessing,” Gavin says. “Or you could just tell me.”
I smile into the phone. He’s so sure that he knows me. The fact of the matter is, he does. “Do you believe in that?” I ask.
“Believe in what?”
“You know,” I mumble. “Love at first sight. Or, you know, soul mates. Or whatever it is that we all keep saying my grandmother and Jacob Levy had.”
Gavin pauses, and in the silence, I feel like an idiot. Why would I ask him something like that? He probably thinks I’m coming on to him. I open my mouth to take it back, but he speaks first.
“Yes,” he says.
“Yes?”
“Yes, I believe in that kind of love. Don’t you?”
I close my eyes. There’s suddenly a pain in my heart, because I realize I don’t. “No,” I say. “No, I don’t think I do.”
“Hmm,” Gavin says.
“Have you ever felt that way about someone?”
He pauses. “Yes.”
I want to ask him who, but I realize I don’t want to know. I feel a small surge of jealousy, which I quickly push away. “Well, that’s nice,” I say.
“Yeah,” Gavin says softly. “Why don’t you believe in it?”
I’ve never asked myself that before. I consider the question for a moment. “Maybe because I’m thirty-six,” I say, “and I’ve never felt it. Wouldn’t I have felt it by now if it was real?”
The words hang between us, and I suspect Gavin is trying to figure out how to answer without offending me. “Not necessarily,” he says carefully. “I think that you’ve been hurt. A lot.”