we fall in love if we met today? Had I really fallen in love with him in the first place? Or was it just infatuation fueled by mystery?
But I’m also starting to wonder something else. If maybe the point of this crazy quest I’m on wasn’t to help me find Willem. Maybe it was to help me find someone else entirely.
_ _ _
I’m getting dressed when Wren opens the door, clutching a paper bag. “Hi, sleepyhead. I made you some breakfast. Or rather Winston did. He said it’s very Dutch.”
I take the bag. “Thanks.” I look Wren, who’s grinning like crazy. “Winston, huh?”
Now she’s blushing. “He just got off work and he’s going to take me for a bike ride and introduce me to his cobbler friend as soon as you leave,” she says, her grin now threatening to split her face. “And tomorrow he says I have to go to an Ajax football game with him.” She pauses to consider. “It wasn’t on my list, but you never know.”
“No, you don’t. Well, I should go soon. Let you get to your, um, cobbling.”
“But your flight’s not for ages yet.”
“That’s okay. I want to leave enough time, and I hear the airport is amazing.”
I pack up the rest of my things and go downstairs with Wren. Winston points me toward the train station.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you to the station or the airport?” Wren asks.
I shake my head. I want to see Wren ride away on the pink bike as if I’ll see her again tomorrow. She hugs me tight and then kisses me three times like the Dutch do.
I hoist my backpack up and make the short walk to the train station. There are trains every fifteen minutes or so to Schiphol, and I buy a ticket and a cup of tea and go sit under the clattering destination board to eat my breakfast. When I see what’s inside, I have to laugh. Because Winston has made me a
I take a bite. The
All at once, I finally understand what it means for time to be fluid. Because suddenly the entire last year flows before me, condensing and expanding, so that I’m here in Amsterdam eating
The destination board shuffles, and I look up at it, and as I do, imagine a different version of time. One in which
And that’s when I understand that I
Maybe accident isn’t the right word after all. Maybe miracle is.
Or maybe it’s not a miracle. Maybe this is just life. When you open yourself up to it. When you put yourself in the path of it. When you say yes.
How can I come this far and not tell him—he, who would understand it best—that by giving me the that flyer, by inviting me to skip
How can I come this far and not be brave?
“Excuse me,” I say to a woman in a polka-dot dress and cowboy boots. “Is there a street in Amsterdam named after a belt?”
“Ceintuurbaan,” she answers. “Tram line twenty-five. Right outside the station.”
I race out of the train station and jump onto the tram, asking the driver where to get off for Ceintuurbaan number one eighty-nine. “Near Sarphatipark,” he replies. “I’ll show you.”
Twenty minutes later, I get off at the park. Inside, there’s a small playground with a large sandpit, and I go sit down under a tree to summon my bravery. A couple of children are putting the finishing touches on an elaborate sand castle, several feet high, with towers and turrets and moats.
I stand up and make my way to the building. I don’t even know for sure that he lives here, except that the feeling of rightness, it has never been stronger. There are three bells. I ring the bottom one. An intercom squawks with a woman’s voice.
“Hello,” I call. Before I say anything else, the door clicks open.
I walk inside the dark, musty hallway. A door swings open, and my heart skips a beat, but it’s not him. It’s an older woman with a yappy dog at her heels.
“Willem?” I ask her. She points a thumb up and shuts her door.
I climb the steep stairs to the second floor. There are two other flats in the building, so this could be his, or the one upstairs. So I just stand there on the doorstep for a moment, listening for sounds inside. It is quiet, save for the faint strains of music. But my heart is beating fast and strong, like a radar pinging:
My hand shakes a little bit as I knock, and at first the sound is faint, as if I’m knocking on a hollowed-out log. But then I tighten my grip, and I knock again. I hear his footsteps. I remember the scar on his foot. Was it on the right foot or the left? The footsteps come closer. I feel my heart speed up, in double time to those footsteps.
And then the door swings open, and he’s there.
Willem.
His tall body casts a shadow over me, just like it did that first day, that only other day, really, when we met. His eyes, those dark, dark eyes, hiding a spectrum of hidden things, they widen, and his mouth drops. I hear his gasp of breath, the shock of it all.
He just stands there, his body taking up the doorway, looking at me like I am a ghost, which I suppose I am. But if he knows anything at all about Shakespeare, it’s that the ghosts always come haunting.
I look at him as the questions and answers collide all over his face. There is so much I want to tell him. Where do I even begin?
“Hi, Willem,” I say. “My name is Allyson.”
He says nothing in response. He just stays there for a minute, looking at me. And then he steps to the side, opens the door wider, wide enough for me to walk through.
And so I do.
COMING SOON!
Their story continues with Willem’s journey in
On my wrist is a watch, small and delicate, bright and gold. It’s not mine. And for the quickest moment, I see the watch on a girl’s wrist. I travel up the hand to a slender arm, a strong shoulder, a swan’s neck. When I get to the face, I expect it to be blank, like the faces in my dreams. But it’s not.
Black hair. Pale skin. Dancing eyes.
I look at the watch again. The crystal is cracked but it’s still ticking. It reads nine o‘clock and again, I begin to suspect what it is that I’ve forgotten.