Page 61 of Never Tear Us Apart
‘Don’t you?’ I ask, incredulous. ‘You think you are here to atone, Sal, but perhaps you are justhere. And perhaps you are a figment of my imagination.’
‘Or . . .’ Sal thinks for a long moment. ‘Perhaps we are both wrong. The modern mind assumes it knows more than all those that came before, but perhaps it doesn’t. I thought of the island as a sentient thing, but perhaps it’s just an anomaly; a passing-place in time that the ancients learnt to live with, but which we don’t even recognise; a mouth that knows exactly who it can feed on and takes what it wants.’
‘If that’s true, then you will never atone.’ I find I can’t look at him, this frail man who ran away, even though he and I are so much the same.
‘Is there nothing in your life that you regret with every breath?’ Sal asks me.
For a second, I can feel a small hand growing cold in mine. But I can’t speak of her aloud. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I only know that you are my friend. You made an awful mistake – I’ve made them, too. When I was, back there, in my own time, I was out of place and lost. I missed you. I missed all of this.’
‘I’m still the same man, Maia,’ Sal says sadly. ‘A man who has done wrong, once. In the past, in the future – I’m not sure. But I am the man you think I am now. That’s all I can tell you.’
‘You’re right,’ I say, remembering a thought I had, the one that gave me the courage to keep going. ‘Sal, you’re right. What you did, what I did. It hasn’t happened yet. And if you and I are here, then . . .’
‘We have decades to make sure it never happens.’ Sal’s eyes light up. ‘Do you really think that can be true, Maia?’
‘I know that we have time. Maybe enough time to change what will happen somehow.’
‘But don’t we risk changing everything? Tearing up the world for our own benefit?’
‘No,’ I say, ‘because there is no future to alter yet. There is only now.’
‘Maybe . . .’ Sal thinks, a glimmer of new hope on his face. ‘Perhaps you could be right.’
‘All I know is that I just met my father. I know the little boy who becomes my father – or a version of him at least. Whatever kind of real this is, it doesn’t matter. I have a chance to save a child – two children if you count the fatherless little girl I was. Maybe it’s ancient wisdom or cosmic fate or just that my neural pathways have brought me here, but I am here. In every way that counts. I’m going to save my father from all the loss and pain that changed him. And that starts with making sure that Stella doesn’t die on the day she’s supposed to.’
Chapter Forty-Three
‘Kathryn said that Stella was killed the evening before the siege was broken,’ I tell Sal once we are again in the cool and relative comfort of the half-house.
Our walk back from the truths we told one another under that arch was silent and somehow distanced.
We both know things have shifted between us, that we see each other in a different light now – one that casts us as we truly are, instead of in the images we want to be true.
That I have grown to care about Sal in the days I’ve known him hasn’t changed, but now I see him for what he is: not a perfect paragon but a man as fallible as any one of us, as capable of doing great good and of making mistakes. In his two lifetimes, Sal has done both. Somehow, that makes me love not only him but my own father even more. It makes me want to redeem them both – and myself – even more.
As for what he thinks of me now . . . Sal seemed a little wary and preoccupied on the way back, mulling over thoughts that perhaps he hadn’t dared to allow before.
In realising that David will grow up to become my father, we have both found a reason for hope. Because it is surely possible to undo any harm if it has not yet been done.
‘The evening before the siege was broken,’ Sal says thoughtfully, mopping his furrowed brow. His frown is deep and etched with sadness.
‘Do you know what date that is?’ I ask.
Sal doesn’t answer at once, which makes me wonder. He stands up, then seems rooted to the spot for a moment before making a decision about something only he knows.
‘I do.’ He nods, then goes to a bookshelf and retrieves a small brown notebook from between two large hardbacks where I never would have noticed it. ‘I don’t suppose I need this to remember that particular date, but when I first arrived, I wrote down everything I could remember in this book, and I’ve added to it. When I was still taken to other times, I would write down everything I could learn then. Some things that I read about the siege, well . . . I do my best to forget what I know. If you ever need answers, Maia, and I can’t help you, look here.’
‘Can I look now?’ I say.
Sal holds the book to his chest. ‘I’m not sure.’
Frowning, I look at the notebook, and one of the first things he said to me – something that was quickly lost in the confusion and chaos – comes back to me.
‘On the day we first met, you said that you had been waiting for me – that you knew I was coming because you’d read about me.’
Sal nods. ‘Yes.’
