Jean stepped through the doorway eagerly, hopeful that now that Mrs. Blake had done her work in showing Jean the memory of love, and the potential for love close at hand, Jean might at last be allowed to rest, but the doorway led her instead to a small sitting room she'd never seen before.
Furious and heartsick she spun on her heel, and found the doorway gone, Mrs. Blake watching her with sorrow in her eyes.
"I want to go home," Jean told her crossly. "I've seen enough. I understand now, Mrs. Blake, I do. Lucien asked for your help. He told you what he had planned, and when I didn't...when I wouldn't let him kiss me, you decided to do something about it, yes? I appreciate your assistance, and you've given me a great deal to think about, but I really must insist you take me home."
Mrs. Blake only frowned, and pointed imperiously to the room at Jean's back. Apparently Genevieve felt there was more yet for Jean to see, but Jean couldn't thank her for this, for taking her away from her life and refusing to let her go home. After everything she'd seen and heard this night Jean's head was spinning, and she wasn't sure she was ready to face any further heartbreak. But looking at Mrs. Blake was painful, too; Lucien's words at the graveside were still echoing in Jean's mind, and the implications of them left her reeling. Had Genevieve really heard her son's desperate plea? Had she hovered in the air of the parlor that night, hopeful for him as he was hopeful for himself, wanting to see how it all unfolded? Was she cross with Jean, for turning down his final overture, though Jean had never known it was the last at all? And what did Genevieve Blake know, anyhow, Jean thought crossly; she knew what Lucien had told her, but what could she know of Jean's heart, of her fears and her doubts? How dare she presume to know better than Jean what Jean herself needed; Genevieve wasn't even alive!
No human form appeared in the sitting room, as they had done in her previous visions, and so Jean began to pace slowly through the room, searching for some evidence as to why Mrs. Blake had brought her here. The sitting room boasted one small sofa and armchair, a matching set that had seen better days. There were a few prints hung on the wall, reproductions of paintings of flowers, inexpensive and unremarkable. One low bookshelf, half-filled, one old wireless, and no television. There was a white blanket thrown over the sofa that looked as if it had been knitted by hand. A newspaper on the sidetable indicated that it had been published in Adelaide, and bore the date 24 December 1964, and so Jean supposed she had been transported to the future, though she could not say how. And why Adelaide? Christopher's family lived there in Jean's own time; were they still there five years later? It seemed unlikely; the army often moved its soldiers round, and she doubted he could have stayed in any one place for such a long time.
There was precious little of any use in the sitting room, and so Jean went next to one of the two doors leading out from that place. She swung it wide, and found herself facing a corridor that led to a stairwell, and other doors just like this one. One door at the end of the hall said lavatory. She supposed she must have been in some sort of boarding house, then; retreating back to the sitting room where she'd begun, she raced to the window and peered out. It was night, beyond the window, but she could tell she was on the second story of the building, and she could see a city street, and other nondescript buildings just like this one. There was another door in the sitting room, and so Jean went there next, opened it cautiously, her heart full of questions, Mrs. Blake close behind her.
She found herself in a bedroom, as sparsely decorated as the sitting room had been. Some effort had been taken to make the place cheery; the furniture, while old and nondescript, all matched, and there were more floral prints hanging on the walls. The curtains were neat and soft, and there was a white coverlet on the bed. Jean did not explore this room as she had the sitting room, however, for she was pulled up short by the sight of a body lying on the bed.
Her body. It was Jean herself, alone in that pitiful bedroom on Christmas Eve, her hair gone mostly grey, the lines on her face more pronounced. A book lay beside her on the bed, untouched; the strange, sorrowful future Jean was curled on her side, weeping.
"I don't understand," Jean said softly to Mrs. Blake. "What is this place?"
She did not expect an answer; Mrs. Blake had not spoken to her once, and Jean had begun to suspect she never would. But Jean had to ask; she had to know how she had come to be in this terrible place, with nothing but two small rooms to call her own, and no love to fill them. Why was she in Adelaide? Why was she weeping? And where was her family? Five years into the future, Christopher might well have had a second child, and surely Jack would have settled down by then. What cause could she have had for such sorrow?
Mrs. Blake did not speak, and so Jean was left to stare at this vision of herself, lonesome and cold on Christmas. Fear simmered low in her belly; she had never dreamed of living in such a place as this. Even when she'd been no more than a poor farmer's wife, in perilous financial circumstances, she'd had a home, a kitchen of her own, green grass beneath her feet. She'd been proud of what little she had, and found beauty in it. There was no beauty in this, living cheek-by-jowl with strangers, no garden of her own, her home so modest as to be almost pitiful. It was pitiful, she realized, not just because the furnishings were poor, but because it was so dreadfully lonesome.
How long she stood there, watching herself weep, she could not say; she wanted to go and sit on the bed, to take her own hand, to ask herself how she had come to be in this place, to offer her some piece of hope, but this Jean did not see her, no more than her past self had done, and there was no way for Jean to reach herself. Eventually, though, Mrs. Blake took her hand, and Jean accepted it readily, eager to be free of this troubling vision, eager for answers. They stepped through the doorway together, but did not emerge into the sitting room; this time they were once again in the graveyard at Sacred Heart, standing by Genevieve's stone, though Lucien was nowhere in sight and the sky above was grey, not cheerful and bright as it had been in 1959.
"Please," Jean said to Genevieve, desperate now. How long was this meant to go on? How much more would she see? And why would Genevieve not speak? Perhaps she couldn't, Jean thought; perhaps there were limits to what she could do, though she had done so very much already it seemed ludicrous that she would not be granted the ability to speak. "Please, tell me, what this means."
Genevieve pointed in silence to the gravestone, and Jean looked, and the breath caught in her throat, for another stone stood beside it now, a stone that had not been there when last she'd stood upon that patch of earth.
Lucien Radcliffe Blake, it read. 22 March 1909 - 17 April 1962. May he find in death the answers he sought in life.
"No," Jean whispered, horror filling her until there was no space left for breath, or thought. "No, it can't be."
It couldn't be. Lucien, dead, not three full years after that Christmas Eve they'd shared in the sitting room. Lucien, dead, and Jean alone in Adelaide; how could this tragedy have come to pass? Was this what the future held in store for them, nothing but grief and misery?
Choking on a new wave of tears Jean reached for the stone, and as her fingers touched it a window in her mind seemed to open, flinging her through time and space, a film reel playing on the backs of her eyelids, showing all that she had not understood. Showing her how after she declined his kiss, Lucien retreated into himself. Showing her how young Christopher had asked his mother to come to Adelaide to help with his new baby, and how, believing there was nothing for her in Ballarat, Jean had gone. How she had set up her new home in those modest lodgings, thinking to move on, but found herself trapped, instead. How Christopher's family had been moved elsewhere, and Jean had been too poor to follow, had been left behind in Adelaide. How on that Christmas in 1964 he had been stationed overseas, and Ruby had taken the children to her mother's, and Jean had been left all alone on Christmas, with neither friends nor family to shelter her. But more than that, she saw Lucien. Saw how after she departed he grew more and more despondent, drank more and more. She saw him throwing things, howling in the dead of night, breaking the piano, and she saw no one coming to save him. She saw how without her there to guide him he lost his way, grew combative and hopeless, how Mattie spread her wings and flew away to London, how Charlie went to become a detective in Melbourne, how Lucien, utterly alone, fell into darkness. She saw him shouting at Matthew, his tie askew and his eyes bloodshot, saw how he lost his job with the police, and how his practice failed, when he could not find a receptionist to stay more than a few months, and his patients grew mistrustful of him. How he began to take cases as a private detective, desperate for answers, and how with nothing to go home to he became even more reckless. How it all ended, on a bridge in Sydney, how they found his body half-decomposed in the mud months later.
"No!" Jean cried, her hands clutching at his stone, watching as he plummeted down, and down, watching as grim-faced policemen dragged his body up from the filth, as Matthew Lawson stood alone at Lucien's graveside while they lowered his body down, her heart breaking in her chest. She wrenched her eyes open, desperate to make this horror stop, and found Mrs. Blake looking on with sorrow in her eyes.
"No," she said again, tears spilling down her cheeks. "This can't be. It can't."
"You have a decision to make, Jean," Genevieve said then, and Jean's whole body began to tremble at the sound of that voice. It was soft, and sweet, still faintly accented from Mrs. Blake's French upbringing, but it was a voice Jean was never meant to hear at all, and it shocked her to her very core to hear it now. "You fear what will happen, should you take his hand. I cannot show you this, even I do not know what lies at the end of that path. But if you are not brave, if you do not choose him, this is what will be. It will be the end of him, and you will be left with nothing."
It will be the end of him, and you will be left with nothing.
No life could remain in stasis forever, Jean knew. She feared losing the comfort of her present circumstances, but she could not live as his housekeeper and his friend for all the rest of their days, not when both their hearts were full of longing and questions, when both of them were aching for companionship, and love. No matter what choice she made, their situation must surely change, one day. Mrs. Blake had shown her one path; the other lay hidden in shadow, but surely, Jean thought, anything would be better than this. Better than Lucien living out his days in sorrow, never again finding joy, better than Jean withering away to nothing, with no one to care for, no reason to carry on.
"You want to love him, do you not?" Genevieve asked her gently.
"Yes," Jean breathed. She did not have to ponder her answer; she knew it already. She wanted to love him, wanted him to love her, wanted his hands, his smile, his warmth beside her, wanted to believe that they could build a life together, that they could find happiness in one another. She had wanted that for months now, though she had been too afraid to admit it.
"He loves you already," Genevieve said, and Jean knew that was true, as well, for she had heard the words he spoke to his mother's stone, had seen the hope and the affection in his eyes, had marked well the way he reached for her, and listened to her, and treasured her, in every way that he could.
"Love is an unpredictable thing," Genevieve said. "You do not know what your love will bring you. But without it, you will find only grief."
Jean's shoulders began to shake with silent tears; she could not find the breath to answer, but Mrs. Blake did not push. Instead she only reached out, and laid a gentle hand on Jean's shoulders, and as she did all the world went dark, and Jean's mind went dark with it, her consciousness floating away, insubstantial as a wisp of smoke.