Page 57 of I Know How This Ends

“And that’s it?” I collapse back in the chair. “That’s all you’ve learned? That it might in some way be an ancient family trait? What about Dad?”

“Oh, no.” Grandad shakes his head. “Your father is blissfully bound to the laws of time and space, and for that I am eternally

grateful. It must have skipped a generation, bless him.”

All I can think about now are the thousands and thousands of hours I’ve spent with my grandfather. How long has he lived like this? A long time, I suddenly realize. He’s always known so much. Too much.

“Have you ever tried to stop it?” I try to sound casual. “And does it work?”

There’s a sudden lump in my throat.

“Ah.” Grandad coughs awkwardly. “I once saw that one of your grandmother’s figurines was smashed, and she was absolutely devastated.

A little shepherdess, it was. With a crook and a lamb under her arm. Not expensive, but she’d had it since she was a little

girl and it meant a lot to her.”

He gazes out of the window again.

“So I tried to save it. I took that little figurine and I wrapped it in bubble wrap and I took it up to the attic, put it

in a box, covered it in a blanket.”

“And what happened?” My breath is held. “Did you save it?”

I don’t think I’m asking about a shepherdess figurine, if we’re being totally honest.

“No. I didn’t. There was a storm and a tree broke through the attic. Smashed that little china girl to pieces. If I hadn’t

had the vision and put her up there—”

“—she wouldn’t have broken.”

“For me, there was nothing I could do. But it might be different for you, Meg. I suspect you are full of abilities I don’t

have. You helped me try to fix that figurine, do you remember?”

A sudden memory: me, aged around six, sitting with my grandfather at the kitchen table as we desperately tried to stick together

the pieces with superglue.

Unsuccessfully, as my grandmother spicily pointed out later.

“But... what do you do ?” This is the question I really want to ask: the only one that matters. “When you can see everything? How do you just...

live? How do you live your life, when you know what’s coming?”

“I don’t .” My grandfather looks at me in surprise. “I don’t know what’s coming, Meg. Where on earth did you get that idea?”

“What do you mean? I thought—”

“I see glimpses, that’s all. Tiny moments, out of order, scattered in fragments. I don’t see all the time in between. I don’t

see context. I don’t know how I get from one to another. I don’t know how I’ll feel, not fully. I don’t know what the whole

story is. I’ve just been given a couple of pages, here and there. The rest is for me to fill in. So that’s the bit I focus

on. It’s the only thing I can focus on.”

My eyes are suddenly wet. “But what if...”

I hesitate and Grandad looks at me: his bright, misty eyes seeing so little but so much.

“What if you make a mistake?” I’m speaking too quickly now. “What if you spend your time in the wrong place, with the wrong

person? What if it’s all just a waste? How can you start something when you know it will end?”

He gazes at me in silence for a few seconds.

“Ah.” A tiny nod. “I see. That’s what happened with Henry. I didn’t know.”

My throat catches. “Yes.”

“Sweetheart,” he says softly. “Do you love me?”

“Bloody stupid question,” I mutter crossly. “But yeah. I guess. You’re alright.”

“Even though you know that one day very soon I’ll be gone?”

I stare at him. How much does he know? “Of course.”

“Do you regret any of the time we have spent together, just because one day we won’t have any more time left?”

I try to say no and it comes out as a desperate little squeak.

“There’s your answer, then. Life ends, but it’s no reason not to live. Not a very tricky riddle, as it happens. Alexa could

have answered it for you in ten seconds. Honestly, Margot. I thought you were more logical than this. I’m surprised at you.”

I laugh wetly, rubbing my face.

“We don’t know , darling.” He takes my hand and pats it. “Even you and I, we still don’t know. We don’t know where the rain is going to fall, or when. So we can’t carry an umbrella our entire lives. We just have to let ourselves get wet.”

That’s exactly what Henry said too.

Henry.

Oh, God. What the hell was I playing at?

I thought I’d grown so much—developed, matured—but I hadn’t. I was just scared, again. Scared of losing him, scared of loving

him, scared of one day being without him. I don’t care if it ends, I don’t care if I “waste” the next fifteen years: I want

to waste them all with Henry, every second of them. I want the wedding and the birthday party and the beach and the attempts to get pregnant and the failure: I want

the hours, the days, the weeks in between, that I still haven’t seen.

“Grandad...” I say slowly. “I...”

“Go get him,” he says firmly, reaching into the cabinet next to him. “I’ll still be here when you’re done. I’ve not met him

yet. And I meet him. Henry, and his little girl. Likes purple. Very straight-talking. Reminds me a lot of you as a little

girl. I got her this as a gift, but maybe you’ve seen it before?”

My grandfather hands me a small, familiar toy panda—still bright white and black, both eyes attached—and I nod with an enormous

lump in my throat. It feels as if he’s restarting my future for me. That little toy is going to be loved so hard, its colors

will change, yet it will be no less precious for it.

“You give it to her,” I say, standing up and kissing his cheek. “When I see you again.”

My grandfather meets them: there’s still time left.

Time with him; time to resurrect my future and put it all back on course. But I still don’t know if I can. That depends entirely

on Henry. I’m not the only person with a choice here. He has to make a decision too.

“It’s a connection, I think,” my grandfather says as I reach the doorway.

I turn back. “Huh?”

“You asked me what my theory is, Meg. It’s a connection.

Something so powerful that it tethers us to another person, pulls us forward in time for a few minutes at a time.

A kind of touchstone, just as long as they’re there.

Maybe sometimes even when they’re gone. Like a magical amulet, except it’s made from another person. ”

My eyes fill, because that vision—the one with the broken shepherdess.

My grandfather saw that.

But I was the only person there with him.

“You’re going to be so happy.” He smiles as if he knows what I’m thinking, always. “And I know that, because all of mine have

been about you.”