“Stop,” I said, because he was too far away, and soon he would be farther. “Do you see my bag? There, on the chair. There’s a folder in there for you.”
It was an account of the last few years. I had been working on it at night, in my hospital bed, when I couldn’t sleep. It was ugly, and at times deeply pathetic, and full of the occasional Watson-style simile, and truth be told, I had no idea how to spell the word “necessary,” and he would think far less of me after he had read it. Still I could feel the pages staring at me at night, almost as though the act of writing it down had given it flesh.
He knew it for what it was in moments, the pages flashing in his hands as he flipped through them. “Are you sure?” he asked, finally.
“It’s our story,” I said to him.
“No,” he said, and he was smiling. “No, it’s not. It’s yours.”
Epilogue
JANUARY
FROM: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
TO: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Leander
I thought you should know that I’ve been discharged from the rehabilitation center, and that I’ve been back in London a week now. Uncle Leander does not currently have an occupation, save for parenting me. The results have been varied. And awful. When he is not making me pancakes in the shape of mice or rabbits, he is dragging me to pubs to eavesdrop on perfectly innocent people. For fun, he says. Never mind the fact that I am still in three separate plaster casts and about as inconspicuous as an elephant. Neither is Leander, who spends these expeditions noisily eating crisps and grinning at me.
I told him he had to find a new hobby. This morning I awoke to a poster of Harry Styles he had affixed to my ceiling. In said poster, he is wearing very tight leather trousers, and glitter. So much glitter.
He badly needs a case. Leander, that is.
Please go murder someone or rob a nearby bank. Please. I beg you.
FROM: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
TO: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Perhaps
Is it in poor taste for me to be joking about murder?
FROM: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
TO: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Re: Perhaps
I assume that’s why you haven’t yet responded. Though it’s unlike you to be offended. Or rather, it’s like you to be offended while also enjoying feeling offended.
FROM: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
TO: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Re: re: Perhaps
Watson. I can’t make any deductions from across the pond. Not good ones, anyway. If you’re upset with me you’re going to have to spell it out. Is this part of your needing “distance”? I assumed two thousand miles would do the trick.
FROM: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] > TO: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Re: re: re: Perhaps
C,
You do know that you sent all four of those emails over the course of like twenty minutes, right? I was in class. Some of us still have classes to go to, if they want to do things like graduate and not go crawling home to one of two Broken Homes afterward. Which, by the way, I’m officially making jokes about, because (a) my mother is still not speaking to me and (b) my dad and Abigail are fighting so often that I can’t take more than ten minutes of being in their house, and it’s all so awful that it’s almost funny. So college = important.
What are you doing for school, anyway? Have you thought any more about whether you’re going on to uni? Is the total sum of your education right now Leander dragging you down to the Dog’s Arms or the East Sider or (God help us) the Sherlock Holmes pub and ordering you fried food?
Also, if that’s the case, can I come too?
I’m back in my room over lunch hour. By the way, Lena says hi, and that you and I should switch to texting like “normal people” because someone needs to teach you how to use an emoji and anyway only “adults” send “emails.” I’m not sure if anyone’s disputing whether or not an email’s called an email, but when I told her that, she called me a pedant and stole my brownie, and Elizabeth laughed so hard that she started coughing, and then Tom made a joke about her choking on a diamond, and Elizabeth choked but for real, I think you actually have some competition in the Offending People category.
I miss you, you nut. Tell Leander hi for me.
J xx
FEBRUARY
FROM: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
TO: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Perhaps All I am saying is that it is a completely acceptable act to eat alone in the cafeteria and I don’t understand your fear of it. You don’t need to have someone along with you every time (i.e., Elizabeth or similar) in order to eat your meal. They’ll serve you either way, I guarantee it.
FROM: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] > TO: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Look
You can just ask if I’m dating her again. (I’m not.) (Also I only eat with her with everybody else, so your “or similar” means “Lena Tom Randall Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s boyfriend Kittredge.”) FROM: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
TO: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Re: Look
I suppose it is nice to have someone keep you company while you eat.
Which is, coincidentally, something I’ve been speaking to my therapist about. She is the thirteenth therapist I’ve seen, which is both shameful and slightly invigorating. She’s also the first to speak any kind of language I understand. (Though she keeps referencing someone named the godfather when I talk about Moriartys and Moriarty-adjacent events.) Anyway, I like her quite a lot, which is surprising. Currently we are spending some time discussing my eating habits, and you, and outpatient programs, and the doctor that Leander keeps bringing in to see me, who is very handsome.
My uncle is still refusing to take cases, by the by, because I “need some proper looking-after.” He has thrown himself headfirst into my “education,” where we at first worked through the syllabi for several graduate-level humanities courses, reading a number of quite interesting nonfiction texts and novels and some poetry and of course the relevant associated cultural criticism, but after a week or so of this my uncle chucked the whole thing over to make me watch television with him at night. Bad television. According to Leander, my father entirely overlooked my “social and emotional education” in favor of his “uselessly specific curriculum,” making me into some kind of “automaton who actually enjoys reading Heidegger—Good God, Charlotte, who enjoys that? Or Camus? Were you just reading Camus and laughing?”
Apparently the only way to rectify this is to watch loads of old Doctor Who while eating Thai peanut chicken crisps on the couch.
I am working through the Heidegger on my own.
FROM: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
TO: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Re: re: Look
C,
That’s great about your therapist, that it’s working out. Less great about the Heidegger. Medium great about the Doctor Who.
Is there a particular reason that you’re talking about the doctor? The handsome one?
J xx
P.S. Please tell me I can make you a whole list of TV shows and films for you to try out . . . maybe you should start with Coppola. Like, The Godfather?
MARCH
FROM: C. Holmes < [email protected] >
TO: James Watson Jr. < [email protected] >
SUBJECT LINE: Re: re: re: re: re: Spring break
Really, why on earth would I invite you to stay at our flat unless I did in fact want you there? Leander does too. He told you to stop being a numpty (Scottish for “a stupid,” I had to look it up and am now getting very strange ads on my phone) and to “get here already,” although he knows as well as I do that your break doesn’t begin until next week.