The Day Before Forever (7 page)

“Well, I don't think anyone can really come to terms with family dying. It's not something I've ever learned to come to terms with, at least,” she said.

We walked in silence for a few strides before she spoke again.

“Sorry,” Alanna said. “My own granny died six months ago. It's still a hard subject for me.”

I felt a sudden wave of guilt for the lie Henley and I had told. For though he had come up with it and told it first, I had helped him and elaborated on it.

“I'm sure she was a wonderful woman.”

“Yeah, she was . . . nothing like my mother,” she said. “Anyway, I'm sorry I brought that up. I just wanted to tell you that Henley's lucky to have you by his side at a tough time like this. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't had Peter.”

“It's the least I could do. Henley's been with me through a lot. I can't begin to even the score.”

“How long have you two been together?”

Her question struck me. How could I answer it? Barely a year? Five centuries and counting?

“A while,” I said. “It feels like forever, but also like everything just happened yesterday.”

Alanna smiled. “That's when you know it's serious.”

I laughed. “I suppose you could say that. I can't imagine
being with anyone else.”

“He understands you, doesn't he?”

“More than anyone,” I said.

“So you think he'll put a ring on you soon?”

I stumbled. “Come again?”

“A ring,” she said. “He's so in love with you. Head over heels, in fact. It's obvious.”

I looked ahead to see Henley looking over his shoulder at me. Henley had in fact given me a ring long before. The year was 1904. And though Henley knew me well—better than anyone—he had no idea that I was immortal. No idea that I couldn't stay with him. And he asked for precisely that: Henley had got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I had refused. Instead of telling him I was immortal, I croaked out that I didn't love him. It couldn't be further from the truth. He had insisted I take the ring anyway. “It's not an engagement ring anymore,” he had insisted. I still remembered it like it was yesterday.

I realized I was still staring at Henley, and he was still looking my way.

“You all right?” he called back.

“I'm fine,” I mumbled, though I knew he was most probably too far ahead to hear me. “Just tripped.”

Henley and Peter waited in front of the hostel door for us to catch up.

“I don't know him that well, but even I know that he doesn't look at everybody like that,” Alanna said as we came up to the black door. “It's only a matter of time.” She squeezed my shoulder. “Get lots of rest, and we'll hopefully see you tomorrow.”

Alanna took Peter's hand, and for the first time, as she waved
good-bye, I noticed an oval diamond ring on her ring finger.

“Ready to go in?” Henley said.

“Not quite. We should probably go stock up on some food for the week ahead, don't you think?”

“Oh, we could have asked Alanna and Peter where the closest shop was . . .”

“Grocery store.” I corrected him. “And I didn't want them to come with us. You know them . . . They would have offered to walk us there, and I didn't want them to see us using the credit card,” I said.

“You really think we should use the card there?”

“The grocery store is the perfect place. They won't ask for ID. That'll be the last place we use it. Then we can toss it, and we'll be done with it.” I knew stealing someone's credit card and cash would weigh on my mind a bit even after we were “done with it,” but we needed food. And we couldn't use up all of the cash now.

“Let me pop in and ask Aaron where the nearest grocer is then.”

I waited outside while Henley went in. He didn't take too long.

“It's only three blocks that way.” Henley pointed away from me. “He said it was pretty small—a local little thing—but it sounds like it'll have everything we'll need.”

“We don't need much,” I said, starting to walk in the direction he had pointed out. “We just need enough to sustain ourselves.”

“Naturally.”

We walked quickly through the streets. It was getting late,
and the sun was starting to set. The shadows were growing longer as we hurried.

“Let's make this visit as quick as possible,” I said, once we saw the grocery store in front of us. “It's going to be night soon, and I don't want us to have to walk in the dark on our way back.”

Henley nodded. “Even from the outside it looks bigger than any grocer's shop I've seen.”

“And have you seen many?”

“Well . . . our cook did do most of the food shopping, but I did occasionally pass the food districts,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess, from inside your carriage?”

“That was just how it was done,” he said.

I shook my head, getting back to the task at hand. “This is the last place we're going to use the credit card,” I said. “So we need to make it count. But we can't spend too much, since that'll look more out of place in a small shop like this—not to mention poor Mr. Glazen's credit card statement. We just need enough to get by.”

We stepped up to the doors, and they parted for us.

“Like magic,” Henley whispered.

I didn't know if he was talking about the way the doors seemed to magically open for us or if Henley was talking about the magical food inside.

The cold air blew across our faces as we took our first step.

“My God . . .”

I glanced up at Henley. His lips were parted like he was going to say something more, but nothing was coming out.

“This is wonderful,” he finally managed to utter.

Rows of food greeted us. There was a row just for bread. Another row filled with cereal. A round table just for bananas. Another set up with a mountain of pastries.

“They have everything,” Henley said.

I realized Henley hadn't seen a real grocery store . . . or at least not a modern one like this.

Henley took off running down the first aisle he saw. “What should we get?”

He grabbed a box of children's cereal. “I-it's so colorful,” he said as he stuck it under his arm. He picked up a loaf of french bread, then a frozen box of dumplings. He grabbed a miniature boxed chocolate cake in the dessert section then and moved on.

I would have thought he would be hesitant to try food he hadn't seen in his time, but I think he was so excited now that he could eat again in human form that he seemed to want to try everything immediately.

“Henley! We can't get everything.”

“What?” Henley froze in the middle of the produce aisle with two apples in his hand.

“Put those down.”

Obediently, he put the apples down . . . in the spinach section.

“No, put it back where you found it,” I said.

He slowly took the apples and put them back in the right department.

“Henley, I know this all looks good, but we can't buy it all. We have a limited amount we can spend on food, and no fridge to keep it cool.”

“But this can't cost
that
much,” he said.

“You'd be surprised.” I knew the high cost of food from living in New York. “Now let's go and put most of this back.”

I walked with Henley from section to section until he had put down everything. He was most reluctant to give up his chocolate cake, claiming that “we could use the sugar after all that we've been through.”

“Now let's start from the beginning and carefully pick our foods. We want them to be as cheap as possible and as filling as possible.”

Who knew grocery shopping on a budget was this hard?

We picked up a loaf of wheat bread. It was the most inexpensive brand we could find. Then it was a hunk of cheese and some canned kidney beans. We also found an oat cereal that we could save money on if we bought two boxes, so we took that too.

“Look for sales,” I said.

We ended up getting a jar of peanut butter, some celery, a bag of granola, and a bag of cinnamon rolls.

“That should last us a while, right?” I asked once we were in the checkout line.

Just to be safe, Henley ran and grabbed another loaf of bread.

“I'm sure Mr. Glazen won't mind,” he said, loading it up onto the conveyor belt.

“Cash, debit, or credit?” the cashier asked.

“Um . . . credit,” I said. I inserted the credit card into the machine in front of us.

“PIN number, please.”

Before I opened my mouth, the cashier corrected himself.
“So sorry. I just saw this was an American card. Signature will be fine.”

I nonchalantly turned the credit card over, so I could see how Mr. Glazen signed his name. It had lots of squiggles and flourishes in it, but it didn't look too bad. When I was finished signing his name, I actually thought I had done a moderately good job replicating it.

“Thank you, and have a good day,” the cashier said, handing us the receipt and our paper bags.

We made sure to toss the receipt in the trash on the way out of the store. One less thing we had to worry about leading back to us. Henley and I carried a bag each.

“Wait a second,” Henley said, as soon as we had left the store. He ran back inside.

“What was that about?” I asked when he was back.

“I just threw out the credit card,” he said. “You said we couldn't use it anymore—”

“That's right. We wouldn't want someone tracking us down with it, and I'm sure Mr. Glazen will report it as stolen soon.”

We walked as quickly as we could, lugging the paper bags through the streets. The heaviest things in there were probably the canned kidney beans. I hoped they didn't break through the bottom of the bag.

There were people in the street, a handful of them. They were wearing orange shirts that said something on them and passing trinkets out.

“What do you think that is?” Henley asked.

One of the orange-shirted people came up to us.

“Free beads?” she asked us. She held out plastic orange beads
with a tag that said “Friday Free Beer Nights at Cassoni's.”

“Sure, why not?” Henley grinned.

The girl placed them over our heads.

“Remember to come on Fridays for free beer from four thirty to six thirty!”

“Interesting,” I said as soon as we were out of earshot.

“I wish they did that back home,” Henley said.

I knew he was talking about the early 1900s.

We walked on, lugging the groceries to the hostel. It was the witching hour, and everything was cast in a golden glow.

“It's my favorite time of day,” Henley said. His face looked golden too, emphasizing his—or rather Richard's—honey-colored eyes. “Everything looks ten times more lovely in this light.”

“And magical,” I said.

“And magical.”

There were some instances like this where I would remember that those were Richard's eyes and Richard's hands. These would be sudden moments, and I would catch myself feeling guilty that I didn't mourn Richard more. I did miss him . . . but never like I had missed Henley. The feeling of absence in my life was incomparable to the deep-rooted ache I felt without Henley. I felt terrible about it, but I couldn't help it.

We climbed up the lone step in front of the hostel and brought our bags in through the door.

Inside, the front mini-lobby was empty. We didn't run into Aaron as we made our way to the back of the building and to our room.

I was going to tell Henley about the 1500s letter found in the parking lot and how I thought Juana was the killer, but
something stopped me. Maybe I didn't want to spoil this perfect moment.

“What a couple,” Henley said, sprawling out on the bed.

“You mean Alanna and Peter?”

Henley just nodded.

We both took off our beads and put them on the bedside table.

Not having anyplace else to put them, I put the paper bags on the other side of the bedside table. I wished we had a minifridge, but even I knew that was too much to ask for in a hostel.

I put the backpack with all our valuables, including our cash, the clock, and Richard's vial, under the bed.

“That's beginning to look like your go-to position,” I said.

“What? Lying on the bed? There aren't many seating options here, in case you haven't noticed.”

“We need to remember to eat the celery first to make sure it doesn't go bad,” I said absentmindedly.

I walked over to the window and perched on the narrow sill. We didn't have much of a view, just the sight of the whitewashed brick wall of the next building, but between our window and the wall (probably apartments, I was guessing) was a small side street, and I watched the occasional person stroll past.

“I hope you know what you got us into,” Henley said behind me.

Hearing the suddenly serious tone of his voice, I knew he was talking about the man from earlier.

“What else could we have done?”

I was conscious that we were talking about “we” instead of what
I
had done and what
I
had said.

“Maybe something could have come—”

“We can't just wait. We don't have time.”

Henley was silent.

Time was always the one thing we never seemed to have enough of. It was ironic, considering I had an infinite amount of time.

“Let's not think of that now,” I said, turning from the windowsill. “We have to figure out how to get him the money.”

Henley shook his head. “One step ahead of you there. My grandmother.”

“Your grandmother? You mean the one you created out of the blue and killed just so we had an excuse to have time to ourselves? That was awful, even for this messed-up situation. You know, Alanna told me she recently lost her own grandmother—”