It’s nearly dark by the time she gets on the plane, a red-eye back to New York City. She falls asleep almost immediately, wrung out by the day behind her, and wakes hours later to see the sun rising over Manhattan, the rivers on either side of the island set aflame. It was only a week ago that she was here to meet Hugo, and she can’t help thinking how strange it is to travel so long and so far—to crawl across an entire country—only to return again in a single night.
Her dads are waiting at the baggage claim. When she spots them, Mae’s heart gives a little hiccup. They both look uncharacteristically rumpled; there’s a hint of a beard along Pop’s jawline, and Dad’s eyes are red and bleary. Maybe it’s that they had to wake up in the middle of the night to pick her up at this hour, or maybe it’s that they haven’t slept at all, or maybe it’s just the grief, which is still so jagged and raw. It doesn’t matter. They’re here now, and so is she, and when she gets to the bottom of the escalator, she launches herself into their arms like she’s returning from some great voyage.
“I can’t believe I didn’t get to say goodbye,” she says into Dad’s familiar tweed jacket, and they both pull her in tighter. “I wish…”
She can’t finish the sentence; there’s too much she wishes.
“She asked me to give this to you,” Pop says, leaning back to reach into his pocket. He pulls out a small piece of cardboard: an old train ticket from New York City to New Orleans.
It’s then that she finally begins to cry.
Hugo sits in the back of a taxi, his hand clasped around a bluish stone he picked up outside the station. He unzips the front of his rucksack and slips it inside one of the pockets, where it’s safe beside the others he’s collected along the way. It’s not quite as impressive as the building in Chicago, but it’s something. And anyway, they mean a lot more.
As the car crosses into the city, he can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. It’s not just that he misses Mae, though he does. Already he misses her more than makes sense. But there’s something else, the answer just out of reach, a prickly feeling in the back of his skull.
It comes to him as he’s checking into the hotel, which is miraculously willing to change the name on the reservation. As the clerk looks to see if his credit card has arrived, Hugo drums his fingers on the desk, and he realizes all at once that he should’ve offered to go to the airport with her. He rocks back on his heels and groans, because what kind of idiot suggests going all the way to New York for a funeral before thinking about the airport? That would’ve made far more sense. But now she’s there and he’s here, and that’s that.
“For you, sir,” the clerk says, returning with a thin white envelope that has the logo of his credit card company in the corner, and Hugo breathes out a sigh of relief. Finally. “Can I get you anything else?”
“Just a key, thanks.”
The whole place has a nautical theme, the walls covered in paintings of buoys and seagulls, presumably because of the hotel’s proximity to Fisherman’s Wharf. There’s even a captain’s wheel hung over the bed, which is draped with a blanket that says S.O.S. in huge block letters. Hugo drops his rucksack on top of it, then heads out again, too anxious to sit still.
Outside, the air is thick with salt, and he walks straight down to the water, which is dotted with ships. Beyond them, he can see the rocky silhouette of Alcatraz, and in the distance, the faint outline of the Golden Gate Bridge. He should be excited right now; he’s always wanted to see this place. But instead there’s a sour feeling in his stomach because he was supposed to be here with Mae, and everything feels a little bit dimmer in her absence.
It’s not until he’s started to walk down to the pier with the sea lions that he realizes he was actually supposed to be here with Margaret.
He stops to text her back.
Hugo: Coffee tomorrow morning?
Margaret: Brill. I’ll look up some places and let you know?
Hugo: Sounds good.
Nearby two seagulls are squaring off over a crust of bread, and all that squawking reminds Hugo that he needs to text his mum too:
Got the credit card. Thank you for sorting it out.
Love, Paddington
He looks out over the bay again, realizing he’s made it almost all the way across America without any money, which is either hugely impressive or entirely idiotic. His parents would probably choose the latter, and he wonders if maybe they only sent him off and wished him well because they knew all along that he’d come back to them like a boomerang.
He once read a story about a zebra that escaped from a zoo. For a few hours, it had a grand old time, zigzagging down the motorway and dodging the police. But eventually it was captured again, and that was of course considered a happy ending. Because there’s no way it would’ve survived on its own.
Besides, everyone knows zebras are pack animals at heart.
He decides to skip the sea lions.
Instead he walks until the bridge comes into sight—a brilliant shade of red, like something out of a postcard—and then he keeps going until he reaches a small beach that overlooks it. He sits on the cold sand and watches the colors fade, moving from gold to pink to purple and finally to gray. When the sun has slipped away entirely, he gets up and walks back to the hotel in the growing dark, tired and lonely and ready to fall sleep in a bed shaped like a boat.
Somewhere in the middle of the night, he wakes up, the imaginary movement of the train beneath him. He reaches for his phone, hoping for a message from Mae, but there’s nothing. Instead, there’s a text from Alfie.
Alfie: I’ve been elected to find out how it went with Margaret Campbell, Part Two.
Hugo: She left today.
Alfie: Wow. You must’ve really bungled that apology.
Hugo: No, her grandmother passed away.
Alfie: Oh—sorry to hear it.
Hugo: Yeah.
Alfie: So what now?
Hugo: Nothing. She’s gone.
Alfie: Right, but you like her, yeah?
Hugo: Yes. A lot.
Alfie: Then that can’t just be it…
Hugo: I think it is. She’s gone and I’ll be home in a couple of days.
Alfie: Hard luck, mate. I’m really sorry.
Hugo: Thanks. Me too.
Alfie: Did she feel the same way at least? Did anything end up happening?
Hugo pauses, staring at the glowing screen of his phone. After a moment, he writes, Long story.
But what he’s really thinking is Everything.
Everything happened.
They stop at a diner on the way home from the airport, where they all order blueberry pancakes—Nana’s favorite.
“The doctors said she probably didn’t feel anything,” Pop says. “She was taking a nap, and she just didn’t wake up.”
His eyes are damp, but there are no tears. He’s usually the crier of the family, but Mae can tell he’s completely tapped out. He gives her a weak smile, then returns to his pancakes, and Dad picks up the thread. This is what she loves best about them, the way they carry each other, silently and automatically, when the other needs it.
“But I think she knew somehow,” he says, putting a hand over Pop’s, who clasps it back. They exchange a look. “After the first stroke, the way she was talking, it was almost like…”
“Like she was saying goodbye,” Pop says.
Mae puts down her fork. “I wish you’d told me,” she says, her throat tight. “If I’d known, I would’ve been here.”
What she doesn’t say is this: that she should’ve been there.
That the only reason she wasn’t, the reason she was thousands of miles away at the time, was because she lied to them.
“She knew that too,” Dad says. “And that’s not what she wanted. You two had already said your goodbyes.”
“Right, but not for—”
“Mae,” Pop says, looking at her over the bottle of syrup and the napkin dispenser and the mugs of coffee leaving rings on the table. His voice is strangely calm. “That’s the thing. You almost never know when you’re saying goodbye to someone forever.”
Mae nods, lost for words.
“It’s okay,” he says gently. “She knew what was in your heart.”