It doesn’t mean we’re not. I take his hand as I search for the right words, so he can’t move away.
But he takes the pen back first. You know what the splintering has done to me. Do you think I could go on with you, realizing I’ll never be the same?
Yes! I answer. So you got hurt. So you’ve been changed. If you were a danger to me—then yes, I would let you go. Both because I would always protect myself and because I know you’d rather be alone than ever cause me harm. But you aren’t a danger to me. You were able to control yourself with Romola, weren’t you? You aren’t broken. You only have new scars, and I would always love you despite any scars. Wouldn’t you love me if I were scarred, or sad, or hurting?
Paul hesitates. Am I getting through to him? He writes, Of course I would, but this is different. You won’t see that, because you still believe in some mystical fate—
I snatch the pen from his hands to stop him right there, and so I can say the most important part. Paul, fate doesn’t guarantee us a happy ending. We’re not promised to be together no matter what. But in dimension after dimension, world after world, fate gives us a chance. Our destiny isn’t some kind of mystical prophecy. Our destiny is what we do with that chance.
I don’t dare look up. I don’t dare stop writing. It’s pouring out of me now, the one thing I feel I’ve learned for sure.
You said it yourself. Each new quantum reality splits off when someone makes a decision. Every single world we’ve visited isn’t just random—it’s the result of countless choices, all of them combining to create a new reality. You and I have been given an infinity of chances, and that’s so much more than most people will ever get—but in the end we get to live in only one world, and that’s the world we make. I want us to create that world together.
My eyes feel hot. My throat tightens up. When I look over at Paul, I see that he’s even closer to the verge than I am. I’m forcing us both to confront the fact that one of our most beautiful dreams was a lie.
We both believed in destiny as a kind of guarantee—a promise from the cosmos that we would have our time together in virtually every world we shared. But now I see that believing only in destiny means giving up responsibility. We fooled ourselves into thinking happiness was a gift we would be given time and time again. It’s so much scarier to admit that our lives are in our own flawed, fallible hands. Our futures are not kept safe for us in the cradle of fate. We have to hack them out of stone, dig them out of mud, and build them one messy, imperfect day at a time.
By now my hand is shaking so much that my letters are a mess, but hopefully Paul can still read what I have to say. You grew up believing nobody could ever love you unconditionally. That you didn’t even deserve to be loved. But everyone deserves to be loved, and there’s so much waiting for you. You don’t need fate to give you a friend like Theo, or mentors like my parents. They chose you. The more they knew you, the more they understood who you really are, the more they loved you. And it took me so long to see you because you hide yourself so well, but I see you now, Paul. I see you and I love you so m—
The pen falls from my fingers, my words trailing into a scrawl, as Paul pulls me fiercely to him. I slide my arms around his neck and hug him back, willing him not only to understand what I’ve been saying, but to believe it, too. He kisses my forehead, my cheek, and finally my lips, both of us slowly opening our mouths as we drink each other in.
I swore that I would never make another mistake like I did in the Russiaverse, never again assume what kind of choices one of my other selves might make with her body. But we are within a Paul and Marguerite who share a bed, a life, and a child. What we feel is not so different from what they feel.
We’re in our home. We, and this world, are safe. We have the entire night.
I’m the one who gets off the couch, takes Paul’s hand, and starts leading him to the bedroom. He’s the one who picks me up in his arms to carry me the rest of the way, lays me down on the bed again, and covers my body with his own.
But we each help the other struggle out of our clothes. We each call on our memories of that one night in the dacha. We each reveal ourselves completely, bodies and souls, as we never have before. Paul and I are united in shadow and silence. What we create, we create together.
25
I AWAKEN FROM A DREAM I CAN’T REMEMBER, EXCEPT THAT sounds were a part of it. The seashell roar in my ears jars me only for the first instant. After that, I have more important things to think about.
Paul lies on his side next to me, his gray eyes gentle. How long has he been watching me sleep? I hope I didn’t drool or something. Maybe not, because as he sees me blink and stir, a small smile dawns on his face. When I smile back, he traces along my hairline with one finger. His touch warms me like a sunbeam as we lie side by side amid the rumpled white sheets.
We spent one other night together, in the dacha in Russia, but he was Lieutenant Markov then—both my Paul and someone else entirely new. This time, even though we inhabit other bodies, we were no one but ourselves. Despite the tremendous emotion between us then, this is even more intimate. Maybe it’s our true beginning.
Or maybe not. Paul’s eyes remain sad, his smile wistful. Does he believe in what I wrote last night? Or does he still doubt himself, and believe his splintering will shadow him forever? Does he think destiny is something we can create—or something we’ve lost?
To ask these questions, or at least get the answers, I’d have to find a pen and a sheet of paper. But maybe it’s for the best that communicating isn’t as easy between us here. Instead of plunging back into doubt and angst, or having some awkward, irrelevant conversation about anything but what’s most on our minds, we simply lie together in this fragile, stolen moment.
Paul startles and turns toward the door in the back of our bedroom, the one that leads to the nursery.
Oh, right. We have a baby, and babies cry.
The rest of the morning is not as romantic.
What else can she want? Paul writes at one point, after the mashed sweet potato becomes the third potential meal Valentina has thrown at us.
I shrug, feeling helpless. My chest is as flat as usual in this universe, so I’m obviously not breastfeeding her. (Which I’m selfishly grateful for, because that would be deeply weird.) We changed her. We tried to feed her. We burped her. Now we’re trying to feed her again. That’s pretty much all there is, right?