Page 27 of The Invisible Hour

“He can wish all he wants,” Elizabeth said bitterly. “That will never come to be.”

They walked along until they came to the cottage.

“You live here?” Elizabeth said, shocked.

“For the time being. Why? Do you know it?”

“It’s a foul place, one filled with bad fortune. People say those roses grow in December, in the snow, in remembrance of all that never came to be. You shouldn’t stay here.” Elizabeth’s expression had changed, and she appeared to be filled with emotion. “You should go home, Mia, if you know what’s good for you.”

Elizabeth revealed the story that not long ago, a woman named Lyddie had come to live here, not out of choice, but because her family had cast her out. She’d had a child and no husband, and she vowed she would manage to live on her own. She never said who the father of the child was, and he never helped her with her burden. Once or twice, Elizabeth had brought out jars of jam and tea. Nathaniel had known nothing of Lyddie’s existence.

“Some things are best spoken about only among women,” Elizabeth said.

The last time Elizabeth had come was after a snowstorm. She’d had a basket of blankets and food, but no one answered the door. There was eight feet of snow on the ground that winter, and the wind was bone chilling.

“I think I knew before I opened the door,” Elizabeth went on. They were sitting outside in what was left of the garden Lyddie had planted. There was rosemary and parsley growing wild. That winter day, Elizabeth had found the woman and her baby frozen to death. She had left a note at the sheriff’s office and had never spoken of it to anyone, not even to Louisa, until now.

“If you think you can do as you please you will surely suffer,” Elizabeth told Mia. “What you do for love will come back to haunt you.”

“That story can change,” Mia said.

“It’s not a story,” Elizabeth said. “It’s real life. Do you intend to marry my brother?”

Mia knew that Nathaniel Hawthorne was fated to marry Sophia Peabody, and they would have three children; it was history and fate, and if Mia dared to change it, everything else might change, including the book that saved her life. “I’m only here for a brief time.”

“And then I will have to deal with the aftermath should he fall apart, and I can guarantee he will. He’s a tender person.”

“I knew that as soon as I read his novel.”

“Fanshawe?” Elizabeth said with a worried look. Even her brother knew it was not the best work he was capable of. It was then that Elizabeth spied the book under the mattress. “What is that?” she said.

“Nothing but a book.” Mia felt a fool not to have hidden the volume in a safer place. She, more than anyone, should know how to keep a book from sight.

Elizabeth recognized some letters on the spine and took up the volume before Mia could stop her. She looked at the brown cover with its gold letters. “Nathaniel Hawthorne?” Elizabeth said, her voice breaking.

Mia seized the book from her hands. “It’s my personal belonging.”

“Is it?” Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. She wasn’t certain she believed a word that Mia said. “It has his name on it so it appears that it belongs to my brother.”

Mia sat beside Nathaniel’s sister. She had little choice but to trust her. “It will be. When it’s published in 1850.”

“Don’t tell me any more,” Elizabeth said, distraught. “If I’m going mad, I prefer not to know. Once a woman lands in an asylum she never gets out. I’d leap from a window anyway.”

“You’re not mad, Elizabeth. I’m not from here.”

“So you’ve been to 1850? Or do you just know what will come to be? Can you tell my fortune as well?” Elizabeth had never believed in witches; she assumed men had created such figures out of their twisted dreams and their fear of a woman’s innate power.

“All I can say is that Nathaniel will write great novels, and this is one of them.”

“Whatever you do, don’t show it to him,” Elizabeth warned. “It will influence him, and he’ll change things, he’ll rewrite and refigure. Whatever this is”—she nodded to the book—“it should be what he meant for it to be.”

Mia swore she would not show him the book, but she herself didn’t know if that was the truth, for inside was the inscription he’d written to her, the one she had first seen when she was fifteen. It was there still, and she was grateful that Elizabeth had not opened the volume to see it.

“Eventually he’ll find it unless you leave,” Elizabeth warned. “And if you do come from another place or time, you surely must know any life with my brother cannot come to be. A fish and a sparrow cannot live in the same world. One will gasp for air and the other will drown.”

“So I go back and I lose him?”

“Was he ever yours?”