Page 146 of Strangers in Time

“Please don’t. If not there, she would have simply chosen another time, another place. When her mind was made up, well…”

“Yes, she did strike me as being quite formidable in that way.”

“Thank you, Dr. Foyle. Thank you very much.”

Oliver went back outside, walked right to the cliff’s edge, and looked down more than two hundred feet to where the frothing, rocky Channel was but one fatal step away.

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the salty air. In that motion he tried to imagine absorbing the last bits of Imogen’s life as she stood here, making perhaps the most difficult decision a person could make. Or maybe the simplest—he didn’t know, really.

He could see, in her state of mind, how she could have jumped out into nothing, plummeting down, perhaps just staring out at the sky, her very last glimpse of light and life. And then hitting the water and rocks below at such violent velocity that her end would have come before her mind ever had a chance to tell her it was over and done.

Yes, he could see how anyone might do that, given the right circumstances.

Even me, without my Imogen.

But then Oliver took a symbolic step back when the images of Molly and Charlie entered his mind. It was simply a question of being needed, really. Imogen apparently thought that he could get along perfectly well without her. Oh, how she had overestimated him.

But with Molly and Charlie there was no question.

They need me. Imogen chose death. I must choose life. And, truth be known, I need them.

Oliver turned around to find Foyle standing rigidly only a few feet away.

“I didn’t see you there,” said Oliver.

“I just followed along, at a discreet distance.”

Oliver looked back at the cliff for a moment. “You weren’t thinking that…?”

“I was just making sure, that’s all. You see, I didn’t want to commit the same blunder twice. Once was already far too much.”

The men stared across the short distance at each other.

“I appreciate that,” said Oliver.

“I have some prewar Armagnac back in my quarters, if you’re so inclined. Roman grapes, Celtic barrels, and Moorish stills. I find it soothes most of life’s ills, at least for an hour or two. And what more can anyone reasonably expect during times like these?”

The men walked back to the Institute together.

A DREAMGONEMISERABLYAWRY

GEORGEELIOT’S ILLUSTRIOUS NOVELMiddlemarchwas in the Institute’s small library. After her dinner each evening, Molly would go to her mother’s room and read to her from it. Eloise Wakefield would wake occasionally, recognize her daughter, and say quietly, “Molly luv.”

Molly would smile, take her hand, and make soothing sounds to her mother. She would also tell her mother about her time in the country and then in London. She did not tell her of the fate of their old home, or of Mrs. Pride’s death, or of the dire situation with her husband. Molly did not have to be learned in the field of mental illness to know that such revelations would not be beneficial for her mother.

Molly also had looked through the things her mother had brought with her, or more likely the items her father had packed for his wife—he was always inclined to oversee tasks like that. In the bottom of the armoire Molly found a picture of her and her mother that she had forgotten about. It had been taken at Hyde Park before the war. They were on a bench looking happy and content. Although, as Molly peered closer into her mother’s stilled eyes, she saw perhaps a degree of apprehension that she had never before perceived.

Maybe because I didn’t want to see it.

Molly had put the photo in a frame she found and placed it onthe table next to her mother’s bed. If her mother saw it, Molly reasoned, it might make her… remember happier times. It was a simple contrivance, but one never knew. And at this stage Molly would do anything to ease her mother’s final days.

“I think she’s actually getting better,” she told Charlie and Oliver one afternoon. “Do you think it would be possible…?” She halted and looked at them uncertainly.

“What?” said Oliver.

“I was just wondering if it would be completely ridiculous to think about bringing her back to London to spend what time she has left there.”

“But where would she stay, Molly?” said Oliver.

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