The Bookseller(71)

“I just . . . I didn’t think I’d lose them . . . this soon,” I whisper to my son.

He holds me tighter. “I know, Mama. I’m sorry. I know it must be really hard for you.” He sniffles. “Even if you are all grown up.”

I nod into his hair. “Yes,” I say. “Even if I am all grown up.”

I close my eyes and wait. Surely this is the moment when I ought to be going home. I’ve accepted it, haven’t I? I’ve accepted this crazy news the dream has thrown at me, and I’m being the adult here and doing the right thing. Surely that ought to earn me a trip back to my own bed in my own apartment—oughtn’t it?

But I remain where I am, holding my son against me. After a moment, I let him go.

Lars steps forward. “Let me tuck you back in, buddy,” he says, taking Mitch’s hand. To me, he says, “Go back and sit on the sofa, Katharyn. Just relax and I’ll be back soon.”

But I don’t go to the sofa. Instead I walk to the hallway and stand in front of the photograph of myself with my parents when I was a baby. I am still staring at it when Lars returns.

“She was twenty then,” I say hoarsely. “She had me at twenty. He was twenty-two.” I do not turn to face Lars. “She is only fifty-eight; he just turned sixty. I know they’ll die someday. I know that. Everyone loses their parents someday. But not yet. Not this soon.”

“Katharyn . . .”

“Don’t call me that!” I whirl on him. “My name is not Katharyn. It’s Kitty. My name is Kitty Miller, and I am an old maid who owns a bookstore with her best friend. My life is very simple. There are few surprises. It does not resemble this life whatsoever.”

“Okay.” Tentatively he places a hand on my shoulder and steers me toward the living room. “Let’s sit down again.”

We go back to the sofa, and he gently presses my shoulder until I am sitting. After he has seated himself beside me, I say, “Tell me exactly what happened to them.”

“Katharyn.” His eyes are sorrowful.

“No.” I sit up straighter, resolved to hear this out. “Tell me. I don’t care if you think I already know. I don’t know. You have to tell me.”

He sighs and sips his Scotch. “They were flying here,” he says. “They were coming home from a big fortieth-wedding anniversary trip they took to Hawaii. There was weather, a storm, and . . .” He sighs again. “Their airplane went down, Katharyn, in the Pacific. Everyone onboard was killed.”

I shake my head. “That’s not true,” I say. “They did go to Hawaii, but they arrived home just fine, safe and sound. Their airplane did not go down. Nothing of the sort happened.”

He doesn’t answer. He is waiting.

“When was it?” I ask. “Tell me the date.”

He frowns, considering. “It was a Wednesday,” he says. “It was Halloween. They’d flown over Tuesday night; that must have been the night of the thirtieth. Their Honolulu flight was scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles on Wednesday morning, and then they were to take a connecting flight back to Denver. It would have been the morning of Halloween.”

“Well, there you go.” I stand up. “They did not come home on Halloween. They came home the day after Halloween. I remember it distinctly.”

“No.” Firmly, he shakes his head. “No, it would have had to be Halloween day, because they wanted to be here for Halloween. To see the children in costume.”

I laugh. I can’t help it. I shake my head, and I laugh and laugh. It’s almost too hysterical for words.

“Are you all right?” Lars asks.

“Of course,” I say, practically gasping for breath. “Of course, but you see how absurd that is. My parents would not come on Halloween to see the children in costume. Because in the real world, Lars, there are no children! Don’t you understand?” I sweep my hand around the room. “None of this is here, Lars. None of it. No house, no Mitch and Missy, no Michael. No you.”

And then my face falls, as I think about what that means for him. He is so lovely and so beautiful and so perfect, and the last thing I would ever want is for such a divine man to have died as young as he was on that October evening in 1954, when we talked on the telephone.

I turn to face him. “I’m sorry,” I whisper to him. “I’m sorry. I don’t want it to be this way for you.” I laugh again, a bit cynically this time. “I would rather you’d turned out to be who I always thought you were—the rat who stood me up. Not someone who died alone in his apartment.”

His brow furrows. “What in the world are you talking about?”

“You died,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry, truly I am, but in the real world, Lars, we didn’t continue talking on the telephone. We made plans to meet each other, said good-bye, and hung up. I went to meet you for coffee two days later, and you never showed up. You had a heart attack and died that night. Right after we got off the telephone.”

He swallows the last of his drink. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“But it’s not!” I put my hand on his knee, pressing into the flesh through his trousers. “This is what’s crazy, Lars. All of this. You are a figment of my imagination. This house and this family and Alma and the neighbors and not speaking to Frieda anymore and my parents dead—all of that is crazy, Lars. Not the real world. Not the world I live in, where everything perhaps is not perfect, but at least it makes sense.”