Page 29 of The Book of Lost Hours

Lisavet nodded and took his hand. He clung to her more tightly than usual, as if she might slip away.

She took them straight to the hotel in Switzerland.

Ernest didn’t flinch when she took them there without using a book.

Didn’t even notice. He let go of her hand and began pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace.

“What’s going on?” Lisavet asked.

“If I asked you to leave the time space with me, would you do it?”

Lisavet took a step back in surprise. “Leave the time space? And go where? Out into America with you?”

“No. God no. Not there. Somewhere else. Anywhere else. Anywhere you want to go.”

“But… I thought you said I couldn’t leave?”

“I don’t know if you can or not. I’ve been trying to figure that out.

I spent all day today looking into it. And I think it’s possible.

You were born outside of this place. You have memories outside of it as well as inside, so in theory, you should be able to readjust. Now, I’m not one hundred percent certain, and it might take some time for you to return to normal but… ”

“Whoa, whoa. Slow down. Where is this coming from?”

Ernest’s eyes were full of fear, something she’d never seen in him before. “Just tell me you’ll consider it.”

“But… why now? And why can’t we go back to America? Where would we live?”

“Together,” Ernest said at once. He came forward and took her hands, raising one to his lips. “We’d be together. We could start a life together. You and me. It’s all I want, Lisavet. A life with you, always with you. God… I’m not doing this right, am I?”

“I don’t understand.”

Ernest shut his eyes. Drew a deep breath. “I’m asking you to marry me, Lisavet. To leave this place and marry me.”

Her heart skipped a beat. But there was something he wasn’t saying.

“Ernest… what about your job? What about your life?”

“Forget about that. We can’t go back there.”

“Did something happen?”

“No. No. Nothing happened. Everything’s fine.”

“Then why all this talk of leaving? Why do you suddenly want to run away?”

There was a long, aching pause.

“I can’t tell you,” Ernest said.

“Why not?”

“Because I screwed up. I thought I had this under control. I thought I’d taken care of the problem but… I was wrong.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“Yes,” he said in a tense exhale. “And so are you.”

Lisavet withdrew her hands in alarm. “Me?”

“We both are. I’m sorry, Lisavet. I didn’t mean for this to happen. But it isn’t safe here anymore. You’re not safe here.”

“This is the safest place there is for me, Ernest. I can’t leave.”

“I know you’re afraid,” Ernest said, stepping closer. “Believe me, I do. But we can’t stay here, and we can’t go back to America, either. They’ll come for you. For both of us. We have to go somewhere they won’t think to look.”

Lisavet studied his face, taking in the desperation in his eyes.

“Please, Lisavet,” he whispered.

“How long do I have to think about it?”

Ernest didn’t answer right away, and she understood it then.

They didn’t have time. He needed her answer tonight.

Lisavet wished she could stop time, to give herself more of it so she could think.

She realized bitterly that Ernest was probably right about her being able to leave.

Time hadn’t completely forgotten her. It still went by too quickly for her, same as everyone else.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded.

“Okay,” she said, eyes stinging with tears. “Okay, I’ll leave with you.”

Ernest exhaled in relief, his shoulders slumping. “Thank god.”

“But… not yet. Give me a few hours. Please.”

Time to say goodbye. To the time space. To Azrael. To these memories of her parents she might never see again.

Ernest nodded. “Of course. Yes, of course.”

He kissed her very softly and she pulled him closer, hand reaching for the buttons of his shirt.

Now she was the one who was frantic. She was the one whose kisses were desperate.

They folded into each other and Lisavet held on to him tightly, trying to find solace in the now familiar contours of his body.

He held her close and buried his face in her neck, whispering over and over again.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

I love you, I love you, I love you , she chanted silently in response.

When he finally fell asleep, exhausted from two straight days with no sleep, Lisavet went onto the balcony.

She gazed up at the moon, then down at the streets below, where her parents were dancing the night away together.

If she left, she would lose this. She would lose all of it, possibly forever.

There was no time walking in the real world.

There was no past at all. Only the present and ceaseless forward march of Time.

Suddenly, Lisavet felt eleven years old again and realized that eleven was the last time she had ever been so frightened.

How could she leave? How could she walk away when there were still timekeepers who burned memories without remorse, erasing all the best parts of the past?

How could she lose this to spend the rest of her life staring down the barrel of an unknown future?

All of history was susceptible to the whims of timekeepers, every memory she held dear under duress, able to be altered at any moment.

Panic began to creep in, and she suddenly wished she had never agreed to any of it.

In the next room, Ernest breathed fitfully, and she turned to see the outpouring of memories, traveling like stardust into the sky.

She went over to him and reached for them, wanting to relive each moment they’d spent together this past year and a half.

But instead, she saw something else. Other memories, not of her, but of Ernest’s life outside of the time space.

That was what he was remembering now. Not her and their future together, but his past without her.

The life he was leaving behind. She saw his mother smiling with adoring eyes at her only son.

She saw his wayward sister. His cousins.

The colleagues he liked and those he didn’t.

She saw all the quiet moments she hadn’t gotten to be a part of.

Newspapers over breakfast with his sister.

Autumn leaves on his walk to work. Flowers blooming in the back garden at his mother’s house.

They were painful to see, not because they were sad, but because he was going to lose them.

Those quiet, familiar moments wouldn’t exist if he left with her.

His mother. His sister. They would never know what happened to him.

Lisavet pulled out of the memories. She realized she was crying and wiped the tears away.

His life without her was so much fuller than hers was without him.

And he was willing to lose all of that. For her.

What would their future even be? Two fugitives, nameless, placeless, untethered, not just from time but from the whole world.

Such an existence was fine for her. But she didn’t want that for Ernest. Ernest who had a mother and sister and so much left to lose.

Suddenly she knew what she needed to do.

She took out the most recent book of poetry he had given her from her bag.

Wincing, she tore a set of pages from the back.

Thick enough to cover one year and six months of time.

She turned to look at Ernest, pausing to brush the copper curls back from his face. He stirred, eyes opening halfway.

“Lisavet?”

She shushed him, smiling in spite of the tears. “It’s all right. Go back to sleep.”

His tired eyes trailed across her face. “You really are the moon,” he whispered.

She leaned forward and kissed his lips gently. I love you, I love you, I love you.

He fell into slumber once more. Lisavet forced herself to look away from him.

To focus. She reached out again, one hand on the pages, doing what she had seen so many timekeepers do over the years.

In his memories, she looked for all the ones that had her in them, pulling them out one by one and depositing them onto the pages.

Their dance in New York. The kiss in the field.

A red rose offered and then taken away. There were certain things she couldn’t erase completely.

He would still know how to time walk. But she would not be in any of the places he visited.

She removed her face, her name, her very existence from his mind.

They couldn’t condemn him if he couldn’t remember her.

They couldn’t tear them apart if she never existed at all.

When she was finished, she held the pages in both hands, amazed and heartbroken at how little space they occupied between her thumb and forefinger.

A year and a half was nothing at all compared to a lifetime of memories, and yet it felt like she was holding her whole world.

She tucked them safely in the book of memories, giving them a special place toward the beginning, close to the memories of her father where all this had first begun.

Ernest lay sleeping in the dark room, breathing more easily now that all his reasons for worrying had been erased from his mind.

Lisavet stood over him for a moment longer, knowing she should leave before he woke up.

Knowing she was nothing to him now. Not even a ghost. She took her bag off the floor and pulled herself out of the memory, back into the lonely silence of the time space.

When Ernest woke up the next day, he would assume he’d fallen asleep while time walking.

He would be groggy and confused. He would get up.

Maybe he’d spend another few moments inside the memory.

Perhaps he’d watch the couple having coffee at the café across from the balcony.

Eventually he would leave. He would go to work where he was sure to encounter a bit of trouble; Lisavet had seen the memory of his confrontation with his boss and had taken that too.

There would be some awkwardness. Some anger perhaps.

But if Jack Dillinger was smart, and Lisavet assumed he must be for Ernest to be so afraid of what he might do, eventually he would figure out that Ernest truly didn’t remember.

That a timekeeper, a man who dealt in the keeping and erasing of memories, had been sent to capture a girl who lived untethered from Time and had come out missing a few memories of his own.

He would piece it together. He would stop asking questions that Ernest couldn’t answer.

They would move on. Ernest would move on, his life continuing as it always had. Without her.

And she would go on as she had, too, carrying the pages of their memories in secret. Remembering him far longer than she’d ever known him. Forever whispering to him whenever she saw him passing through the time space.

I love you, I love you, I love you.