Page 18 of The Book of Lost Hours

The sections for Switzerland and Ukraine weren’t exactly close together in the time space and he couldn’t imagine this girl, who barely hit his midchest in height, carrying his unconscious form all the way there.

“It’s one of my father’s memories. From the book.”

Ernest’s eyes slid to the railing beside her.

The thick leather-bound book of stolen memories sat just a few inches away from her arm.

For the briefest moment, he remembered that he was a US agent with an objective from his superiors to confiscate the book.

It was right there. All he had to do was reach for it.

But then the breeze lifted Lisavet’s hair away from her face and Ernest noticed the tearstains painted across her cheeks.

She had been crying. He leaned against the railing beside her, using the corner to prop himself up.

“And which memory is it that we’re watching?” he asked softly.

Lisavet pointed down to the street below. Two people sat next to each other at a table in the open air. A waiter was serving them coffee. The man looked nothing like Lisavet with his dark hair and glasses. The woman, however, was the spitting image.

“This is my parents’ first date. They met yesterday outside the watchmakers’ academy down the street.

My mother lives just two blocks in the other direction.

He asked her to dinner, and they had drinks.

” She swallowed and Ernest got the sense that she was holding back more tears.

“They stayed out all night right here in this little square, and now they’re getting breakfast together. ”

Ernest looked back down at the two smiling faces. Full of love, even so soon after meeting. “Do you come here a lot?”

“Sometimes. It’s… the oldest memory I have of his. Everything that came before… his childhood, his life before this moment… It’s all burned.”

Ernest didn’t know what to say. He glanced sidelong at the book.

Lisavet began speaking again but it was like she was talking to herself instead of him.

“My father always told the story of how they met differently. He said my mother’s dress was blue, and that they drank tea.

But in the actual memory, she’s wearing red and they’re drinking coffee.

And my father used to say that the sunrise on that morning was the most beautiful the sky had ever been. But I’m looking at it, and it isn’t.”

Ernest looked at the sunrise again, half hidden behind Lisavet’s golden hair. It was beautiful , he thought. But would he still think that if she weren’t the one standing in it? He shook himself. He really had lost too much blood.

“Maybe it was,” he said. “To him, maybe having your mother there made it that way.”

“That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? People don’t remember things the same way.

Is it even possible for us to remember something as it truly happened?

A memory, once it’s over, is never exactly what it was when it was happening.

Whatever comes later changes the meaning of it.

Even if no timekeepers come along to destroy it. ”

“That’s called nostalgia,” Ernest said, ignoring her commentary about timekeepers. He was already well aware of what she thought of him.

“It’s called misremembering. It’s not the truth.”

“And that bothers you?”

“Yes. I don’t just want to remember things. I want to know what really happened. I want to know what it was like to actually be there. And the only way to do that is to see everything. Everybody’s version of reality. How else will I know what it was really like?”

Ernest chewed on this for a moment. “Is that why you try so hard to stop the timekeepers from burning memories?”

“I guess that’s part of it.”

“And the other part?”

Lisavet placed a hand on top of the book and pulled it toward them, opening it up to show him. Ernest could hear the whispers between the pages, calling out to them both.

“When I first started saving memories, I was mostly taking them from the Nazis. That’s what’s in the first half of the book.

I’ve walked through all of them hundreds of times to see why someone might want to destroy these memories, but I can’t.

So little of what the timekeepers are destroying is anything dangerous.

Little moments. Tiny conversations. Civilian lives that contradicted what the Nazi Party was trying to do.

It made me think… if even simple memories are so important that someone would try to destroy them…

then maybe wasting any of them is a mistake.

Maybe they’re actually the most precious thing we have.

And besides. What gives someone the right to decide what stays? ”

“History is written by the victors,” Ernest quoted, just loud enough for Lisavet to hear him.

She turned her eyes on him. Not angry, but close to it. “You say that now. But what happens if one day someone else wins? What if they decide to erase your father’s memories? Like they tried to erase mine?”

“I suppose I wouldn’t like it.”

Lisavet bit her lip, head shaking. “But that’s just it. You wouldn’t even know it had happened. Your life would rearrange itself around his memory.”

Ernest watched her face, transfixed as she ran one hand over the pages of the book.

How was he supposed to take it from her now?

There was an ache in her eyes, in every part of her being, and he was suddenly struck by the overwhelming desire to pull her into his arms. If it hadn’t been for the hole in his side, he might have.

Lisavet let out a sigh and turned her attention back to the couple as they got up from the table.

“The memory is ending,” she said wistfully as she closed the book. “Are you strong enough to go back?”

Ernest nodded. She started to turn away and he reached for her before she could, taking her hand in his. Her eyes, when she turned them on him, made his knees go weak.

“Thank you,” he said. “For stitching me up.”

She gave him a half smile, the corners of her mouth barely lifting. “Thank you . For taking a bullet for me.”

He noticed that she didn’t thank him for saving her life. She didn’t see it that way. They looked at each other and Ernest wished he could stop time, just for a moment. But the world around them was fading at the edges, blurring back into shadows and darkness.

“Can I see you again?” he asked as the last of the sunrise began to crack. “Like this, I mean.”

Lisavet’s eyes seemed to brighten. More beautiful than ever.

“You know where to find me,” she said.

Their hands slid apart as the memory vanished and Lisavet was gone, walking away from him into the depths of the time space. Ernest stood still, savoring the phantom feeling of her touch long after she had gone from him.