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“Not at all,” he says.

He takes the camera and then waits as the family lines up in front of the candle shop. Chris is staring back at him with a curious expression on his face, as though he recognizes him but can’t quite remember from when. It causes Hobbes’s heart to break; he misses him very much. But the boy is happy right now, and that has to be enough.

He takes the photograph.

It is October 4, 2017, again.

Hobbes can feel that Chris has returned from the other room and is now standing beside the bed. A part of Hobbes aches to say something to his son, but the time for that has passed, and it won’t help. He has already said goodbye to Chris, and the sadness of seeing someone for the last time will always be the what and why of it, not the when.

He hears Chris walk away.

And now—finally—it is an hour earlier.

Hobbes wraps Jack Lock’s notebook in the cover he has torn from Laplace’s book and then slips it into the protective sleeve. Perhaps there is still knowledge within it that his son might use, for good or for ill. If so, he hopes Chris chooses wisely. But regardless, the choice must be his. His son must find his own path.

Hobbes takes the photograph of himself and Charlotte out of the frame and places it facedown on the desk.

Then he picks up the pen.

I love you so much, he writes on the back.

Do your best.