P.S. Don’t let your pop eat too much bacon. And make sure your dad gets those silly tweed jackets taken out a little. He can’t button them, and we all know he’s never going to lose those last few pounds. And make sure they both come visit you in California. They could use an adventure too. (Who couldn’t?) P.P.S. Wouldn’t it be just like me to write this note and then not die after all? If I forget about it and you find this when you’re home for Thanksgiving and it turns out I’m still kicking, please disregard all of the above and redeem this note for a hug instead.
Mae is still crying when she walks over to the desk to get her camera. And when she turns it on and sets it carefully on a stack of books. She’s still crying when she sits down on the edge of the bed, the black dress—which she’ll need to wear to the funeral in a few short hours—scrunched in her lap like a blanket. It’s only when she begins to speak that the tears finally stop. Her eyes are probably red and her voice is a little shaky, but she doesn’t care. It’s not about how she looks. It’s about the words.
“Once upon a time,” she says, looking straight into the camera, “my grandmother fell in love on a train.” She hesitates, taking a sharp breath. “Fifty years later, so did I.”
Hugo is sitting at the bar of a Mexican restaurant, polishing off a basket of tortilla chips, when he gets the email.
He sent the letter off the night before. It had taken him all day to write, which should probably be embarrassing. But it isn’t. In fact, he’s never been prouder of anything. He left it all on the table, and that was the only thing he could do.
Afterward, he thought about sending it to Mae, but he didn’t. What he told himself was that she had more important things on her mind. Which is why he shouldn’t bother her. And why she hadn’t been in touch. But the truth was that the past week felt to him like a dream, and Hugo still wasn’t sure he’d woken up yet.
His worry was that maybe she had.
Instead, he sent it only to Alfie, with a note that said, If this doesn’t work, I’m with you guys. But I had to try one more time.
Now, as he sees the name Nigel Griffith-Jones pop up on his phone, he fumbles it, knocking his glass over in the process so that the fizzy drink goes spilling all over the bar.
“Sorry,” he says to the bartender, who shakes his head as he reaches for a rag. “I’m so…”
But he doesn’t finish the sentence. He’s too busy reading the email, his eyes skipping over the words.
Dear Mr. Wilkinson,
Thank you for your follow-up letter. While we were looking forward to having all six of you with us for the start of our autumn term—have in fact been looking forward to it for quite some time now—we appreciate the case that you’ve made. We recognize that university might not be the right path for everyone and that—as you pointed out in your letter—you are, of course, six different people and not a single unit.
As such, we’d like to offer a compromise. We’re willing to defer the scholarship as long as you’re willing to join us for a few days to take part in the publicity we’ve arranged for the start of term. The idea would be for you to talk about your upcoming gap year and how you’ll be joining us next autumn instead. We feel certain the late Mr. Kelly would approve, so if that sounds acceptable, then we’ll see you next month. And we’ll be excited to hear more about your travels when you join us the following year!
Sincerely,
Nigel Griffith-Jones
Chair of Council University of Surrey
Hugo throws his arms up and lets out a whoop, knocking over the basket of chips. The bartender groans.
“Sorry,” Hugo says again, jumping off his stool to start sweeping them up. But he’s barely paying attention. His mind is going in a million different directions. He should tell his brothers and sisters. He should start narrowing down where he’ll go. He should tell his parents. He should book a flight. He should tell Mae.
More than anything, he wants to tell Mae.
A little boy has wandered over from a nearby table, and he stares at Hugo as he picks up the chips. Hugo looks up at him with a grin, practically bursting.
“Guess what?” he says. “I’m going to travel the world.”
“Well, I’m going to eat a taco,” the boy says, then runs back over to his table.
Hugo lifts a chip in his direction. “Cheers to that.”
As he stands up again—feeling light-headed and a little dizzy—his eyes land on a map of California on the wall near the cash register. There’s a blue star toward the bottom, the words printed neatly beside it: Los Angeles.
And just like that, he realizes he already knows what his first stop will be.
Later, once all the guests are gone, the three of them collapse onto the couch amid a sea of empty wineglasses and dirty plates.
“Well,” says Pop, putting an arm around Dad, who leans against him, “I guess that’s it, then.”
Dad sighs. “She would’ve hated those crab puffs.”
“Yeah, but she would’ve loved the petits fours.”
“And your eulogy.”
“Yours too,” Pop says, giving him a kiss. “Though she would’ve killed you for telling that story about the donkey.”
“It’s a great story,” Mae says, and they both look over as if they forgot she was there.
“Didn’t we already send you off to college?” Dad asks with a grin.
Mae laughs. “Yeah, but it didn’t take.”
Her phone buzzes in her hand, and when she sees that it’s an email from Hugo, she sits up, feeling the steady drumbeat of her heart pick up speed.
Dad raises his eyebrows. “Is that him?”
“About time,” Pop says. “What’d he say?”
“Yeah, what’s going on?”
Mae looks up, still smiling an alarmingly stupid smile, to find them both watching her expectantly. “I’m, uh…gonna go upstairs for a bit.”
“Say cheerio for us,” Dad teases, waving as she hurries out of the room. But Mae barely notices. She’s already opening Hugo’s email.
All it says is this: How can I ever thank you?
Below that, he’s forwarded a note from someone at the University of Surrey, and her heart lifts as she reads it.
He actually did it.
She laughs, filled with a sudden joy, because she knows how much he wanted this, how much it means to him. And she wishes more than anything that they were together. (Though hasn’t she been wishing that all day?) She moves on to the letter he sent, the one she’d pushed him to write, feeling giddy that it worked. Near the end, he wrote:
Someone recently told me that if you want something badly enough, you have to make your own magic. You have to lay it all on the line. And most of all, you have to be brave. When you grow up as one of six, it can be hard to say what you want. But that person was right. Which is why, no matter what ends up happening, I had to write this letter. Because some things are worth fighting for—and this is one of them.
It’s not exactly a love letter, but it still makes her cry.
When she’s done reading, she reaches for her computer and pulls up the rough cut of her film, including the part she recorded this morning. And then, before she can think better of it, she sends it off to him, because it seems that the very least she can do is try taking her own advice.
The note she includes is short, just a simple answer to his simple question: You already have.
Hugo is still awake—his head far too crowded for sleep—when the video arrives. He reads her message with a grin, then opens it up, expecting to see Ida and Ludovic and Katherine and everyone else they’d interviewed last week. Expecting the sort of straightforward documentary he thought they’d been shooting all that time.
But instead, it starts with Mae.
He sits up in bed, clutching the glowing screen a bit tighter.
She actually did it, he thinks, shaking his head in wonder.