…this is Clare, Clare old! And she is coming to me, so slowly; and I take her into my arms.
We stand simply holding each other neither speaking; I can feel the deep, shaky breaths that this frail older Clare is taking. I feel her shoulders shake, and I realize that she is quietly sobbing.
"Sssh, Oh Clare, I'm so sorry; please, baby, don't cry." I softly say placing a gentle kiss in her hair.
She pulls away slightly and lifts her face to look at me; she smiles slightly her eyes shinning with tears and love.
"You're here, you really are here!" her voice is soft, almost a whisper.
I note the sense of wonder, and longing in her voice. I wonder if she knew that I was coming.
"What date is it?" I ask
"July 24, 2053"
We walk to the table and sit, facing one another, but holding hands across the table.
"You look so beautiful; it's the thing I regret most, and not seeing you grow old. Not seeing Alba grow old." Even I can hear the note of bitterness in my voice.
"You're here, now, it doesn't matter." Clare says her voice stronger than before, but her face and body betray the weariness of her years.
"I tried you know, to do as you asked not to wait, not to let your memory take over. Some days were better than others," Her sentence trails off, "Henry, you hungry, you were always hungry when I was little and you time traveled?"
I nod my head, because what can I say to this woman. My wife, my widow, whom I have known since she was a child, I remember Clare the first time I saw her in the meadow, I remember the first time I made love to her there, the first day I met her in the present. I have tried not to dwell on the cruelty of life, on how I have found and lost this woman. How she has found and lost me so many times over the years.
She sets a cup of coffee and a small plate with toast on it. She sits back across from me. I take a drink as she looks out the window. She looks back at me and smiles.
"How long do I stay?" I ask trying to find out how much time I have, do I get to ask any of the million questions I have, and would she tell me the answers. Is it her chance to withhold from me as I used to.
"You never told me, how long you would stay; you said that you didn't want me to have this rehearsed."
"That sounds like me" I say with a small smile.
She laughs, it is not the laugh I'm used to, and suddenly I wonder if this woman who has lived more than half her life without me is the same woman I fell asleep next to just hours ago. How has time changed her, and how would time have changed us if the end hadn't come to me.
"Henry"
"I think I know why you didn't tell me, and it's ok." She speaks quietly, she has moved to my side. "Lets go for a walk." She holds her hand out to me and we walk from the house through the garden, her garden reminds me of Lucy's. We walk toward the beach simply holding hands.
"Do you want to know?" she asks
I know immediately that she is talking about my death.
"Did I know?" I ask
She is quiet for a moment, "I don't know, you didn't tell me."
"I'm sorry I didn't want you to worry, I wanted you to live without knowing that time was running out. I think you know, but I don't want you to have the clock ticking."
"Thank you,"
The sun has risen higher now it seems as though its early afternoon. We have sat near the edge of the lake on a boulder for sometime. I ask her trivial things, nothing that matters. Not what I want to know.
"Henry, I was happy, with you, I tried to be happy without you, that's where I think I failed. I lost myself for a while. Do you remember the day that you met Alba at the museum? I tried to get there in time; you told me you loved me as you vanished?"
Yes, I remembered that day, the slight tone of desperation in her voice as she asked me to come home. The joy of seeing Alba of knowing that she was alright, that even tough she too had been cursed by time that she was ok with it, at least for the moment. And then the horror of knowing that my worst fear came true, that I left them.
"Yes, I remember."
Now it's my voice that is small.
"That was the day I was found again. When I was young you told me that everything will happen when it's supposed to. I couldn't try to find you before I was supposed to. That day at the museum I realized that I couldn't vanish to find you and time wasn't letting you find me so I had to be patient, just like when I was a girl. I couldn't count down the days and years until I was an old woman, waiting to see you. That we would find each other just as we always did."
She paused and closed her eyes for a moment. She seemed even more tired than before. And she told me what it was I wanted, was my beautiful daughter happy, did she find a way to stay stuck in the here and now, did she recognize how precious that was. Did Clare regret me, the years I kept her waiting?
"Kendrick did it, you know; he found a cure for Alba. She waited until she was twenty-two to take it, she said that she saw herself with her family and that she knew she couldn't risk leaving her daughter, she couldn't put her family through the that grief. She told me then that it didn't feel like a burden, she was grateful for her gift, she called it. Because it gave her time with you, she went back one last time to see you, she said she went to one of your show and tells at the Newberry, you even spoke to her, but didn't recognize her. She saw us at home, laughing, happy."
I felt her soft hand wipe the tears that had fallen, unknown from my eyes. I leaned into her touch. And not for the first time did I wonder if somehow after everything that we could stop time. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to mine, it was a soft kiss, sweet and sad.
"Hold me," she demanded.
I put my arm around her she was small and frail. She nestled into my side resting her head against my shoulder. We watched the water, in silence. I rested my head against the top of hers and simply held Clare. She smelled the same as she always had, pure, and innocent, and Clare. My breath caught as I remembered all the time that we had sat like this, when she was a girl, a young woman wanting to run into adulthood head first, when she was a woman mourning the loss of yet another child, wanting nothing more that to make some kind of mixture of the best of us. And now I hold the old woman who is running head first into the unknown.
It was the one thing, I realize; that I didn't know about my future. While I had put lots of thought into whether or not God existed deciding that if he did he didn't care, I believed that time was a constant stream all existing at once, I knew that for a fact I had seen Clare as a small child not long ago, left Clare the woman in bed just a few moments ago, and now I sit next to Clare the old woman. If that wasn't proof that all time existed at once I didn't know what was, but was there a place outside of time. That I wasn't sure of.
"I think there must be a god, after all," Her voice coming from far away, "He brought you back to me so that you could say good bye and now he's brought you here so that you could do the same."
I didn't understand this, and yet it thrilled and frightened me.
"It's time"
I knew then what had brought me here, what Clare was saying, I was here to be with her as she left this world as she left time. My heart broke, I've always known that this would happen, at some point everyone passes. I just never thought that I would be here holding this woman who made my life worth living, that I would see the light leave her eyes and wake up tomorrow to see the Clare of my present once more.
"No, Clare," I choked on the words, even though I knew that I had left her, that I had always known that she would leave this world, I couldn't face the idea that she would be gone, that she would die.
"Henry do you think that there's a place were time doesn't exist, where, we simply are free."
And in that moment I knew that yes, Clare had always had a fascination with birds with escaping the constraints of this world, of flying free. She had made sculptures of birds, paintings, sketches of them they were a sign, one that was there all along. That yes, we couldn't stop time, but we could escape it. That some where, I waited for Clare at all times and at a place were time had no meaning. My life proved that time meant nothing, this, holding Clare, loving Clare; that meant everything.
"Yes, Clare; I love you, and I'll see you soon." I whispered to her
I could feel her breaths become shorter and fewer.
She smiled and I could see Clare, every Clare I had ever seen in her eyes.
"I love you, Henry."
And she was gone, for once it was she who vanished left me holding the only tangible reminder that she had existed at all.
I carried her back toward the house, I looked up to the porch and saw a middle aged woman with dark hair standing and staring.
She had tears in her eyes, "Mama," she whispered, "Daddy"
I sat holding Clare and being held by Alba and then I too was gone.