Page 67 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
I run out of the kitchenette into the bedroom and grab my phone.
A quick image search for “female wildlife photographer 1980s” (I figure that would put her in her forties, which would allow for more time to build a career) yields a promising list of names. Then I cross-reference those with another search for “seal family watching Northern Lights,” and—
“Gotcha!”
Avery Drake.
Time to learn everything I can about her.
SEBASTIEN
Helene doesn’t leave the guestsuite for two days. I don’t want to bother her—she should have all the space she wants, even if it’s forever and it nearly kills me—but I also desperately want to know if she’s all right. I keep walking down that hallway, hovering and trying not to eavesdrop, yet at the same time, trying to hear sounds of crying or any other sign she might need me.
I do knock, once, to let her know that I made a fresh batch of Nutella cornetti for her and left the containers outside her door. And that I also brought her a set of my flannel pajamas—too big but at least clean—and if she wanted me to wash her clothes since she’d been stuck in them for a few days, she could leave them in the pajamas’ place.
The next time I go to that part of the house, the containers and pj’s are gone, although there’s no dirty laundry for me to take. At least I know she’s doing okay enough to want to eat the pastries. But I’m disappointed there’s nothing more for me to do. If there were, I could put my attention on consoling Helene.
Instead, I have to face the excruciating fact that the only love of my long, lonely life is here…
And I cannot have her.
HELENE
I bury my face inthe pillows. I have read everything on the internet about Avery Drake. I wish I hadn’t.
Because here are the choices before me:
I am Juliet, I fall in love with Sebastien, and I die soon.
I am Juliet, I walk away from Sebastien, and if Avery’s life is evidence of what happens when Juliet is separated from Romeo, I live for twice as long but it is full of its own ghastly horrors, so much so that I will court death and wish I’d died earlier.
I am not Juliet, and my vignettes and Sebastien’s paintings, artifacts, and journals are all a massive, extremely detailed coincidence. There is no such thing as the curse, no eternal Romeo, no doomed reincarnations of Juliet. Which means I can do whatever I want.
I want the last bullet point to be true. But laying it out like that only emphasizes that it’s almost as unlikely as the other two.
And if, somehow, point threeistrue? Then I am still left with less than I began with when I came to Alaska (which, frankly, wasn’t much), because I couldn’t go forward with writing a book based on the vignettes. There’s too much reality attached to them now. If I want to reject that there’s a reason my stories and Sebastien’s are all connected, then I can’t think about those vignettes ever again.
My dad’s watch is cool against my cheek, and I raise my head from the pillow to look at it.
“How do I be brave enough to move forward?” I ask.
The watch doesn’t respond. But when I shut my eyes, I remember a conversation I heard through the walls of our house late one night when Mom and Dad thought Katy and I were asleep. It was early on after his diagnosis, and Mom was crying. Up till now, I think I’d blocked this memory from my mind.
“What am I going to do, Mike? I can’t survive without you. I can’t raise the girls on my own. I can’t—”
“You can, Beth. I have faith in you.”
