Page 41 of The Invisible Hour

Mia looked up at Nathaniel, eyes shining. “That’s where I found your book.”

“By accident,” he said. “Perhaps any book would have done as well.”

“No. It was meant to be. You were meant to be.”

Mia suggested he go on to the library, for she wished to spend some time alone with her memories. She pointed to the far part of the green. “We set up the farmers’ market over there and sold apples and tomatoes. I haven’t eaten an apple since.”

Nathaniel was stunned. “Then you’re missing out on something wonderful.”

Mia laughed when she saw the concerned look on his face. “I’ve lived without them,” she assured him.

“The Puritans believed that women should be subjugated because Eve ate of the apple, committing the original sin,” Nathaniel told her. “You should eat an apple every day to spite the idiots who thought so.”

“I’d rather be kissed,” Mia said.

Nathaniel was glad to oblige and so he did right there on Main Street, even though several passersby turned to gawk. They then agreed to meet in the center of the green. Mia wandered along Main Street until she was certain that Nathaniel had entered the library, then she headed for her destination. The sheriff’s office was exactly where the police station would be when Mia lived here, although it was smaller. It was cool when she went inside. Both the sheriff and his assistant looked up when she entered.

“Can we help you?” the sheriff asked.

“Thank you for asking,” Mia said. “Not right now.”

The sheriff looked at her, curious. “Are you from around here?”

“Once,” Mia said. That much was true. “But not anymore.”

When the men turned away, Mia slipped an envelope onto the front desk for them to find later in the day, or perhaps not until tomorrow. That was when they would be needed, out near Hightop Mountain.

NATHANIEL WAS SITTING ON a bench beneath a huge elm tree that was already gone when Mia was a girl, stricken by Dutch elm disease. His arms were spread out and his face was lifted to the sun. He was so peaceful in that moment, not the haunted man he’d once been. He was here and nowhere else, delighted to open his eyes and see Mia standing before him.

“I have a gift for you,” he told her. He took an apple from the pocket of his black coat. “Your first, but not your last.”

Mia sat beside him, and he watched her take a bite, delighted by how tentative she was, as if she was accepting an offering from a serpent rather than from the man who loved her. My Eve, he thought, my darling who taught me what I needed to know. He wondered why the original Eve was not praised for the knowledge she’d brought to humankind, why she wasn’t honored instead of disregarded and disgraced.

“How is it?” he asked Mia, who now offered him a bite of his own.

“The best thing I’ve ever tasted,” she admitted. She could tell it was a Look-No-Further, the variety they had grown on the farm, in the orchard where her mother had been working, hauling a woven basket filled with apples through the wildflowers and the weeds, taking her last look at the beautiful world.

THAT NIGHT, THEY LEFT the window open so they could listen to the crickets’ slow call as they lay in one another’s arms. They were grateful they could study one another. They did so as if memorizing every feature, knees and elbows, throat and ears, loved and beloved. Mia thought of all the years when she had been certain she would never be able to love anyone, and now here she was. Not only did she have a heart, but it was already breaking.

“Shall I tell you your children’s names?” she asked Nathaniel.

She wanted to give him a gift before she left, but when she offered it to him, Nathaniel knew she would not stay. It was a way of saying goodbye, to say what he would experience, and she would not. He nodded and held her close.

“Una and Julian and Rose.”

Nathaniel’s throat was tight, and he found he could not speak. They were, indeed, beautiful names.

“They will be perfect,” Mia told him. “You will love them more than you love your own life.”

“Will I?” he managed to say. Nathaniel knew what the endings of stories were like; he’d written them enough times to know that this was theirs.

“You will adore them. You’ll write about them, and how fatherhood surprised you and changed you.”

“I expect it surprises everyone.”

“You’re not everyone.” His eyes were deep gray now, as dark as she’d ever seen them. As for her, she was still faded, a shadow of herself. Nathaniel could feel her slipping away; she was so light in his arms, she was a ghost of who she’d been and would be so until she returned home. She was glad she would leave before the end and that she wouldn’t have to watch him fall in love with someone else. “Your wife will be the right woman for you.”

“That’s you,” Nathaniel insisted, convinced.