“Don’t be silly,” Kate says. “I’m having a lovely time.” She sits down on the chair next to London’s, suddenly feeling dizzy. Maybe having a glass of wine before breakfast was not exactly the best idea. “Do you want to go get lunch somewhere? If I remember correctly, there’s a nice restaurant down in Canal Park, right on the water.” The words come out of her mouth unforced, naturally, and she is surprised to find herself completely clear-headed. She can see Canal Park, see the restaurant, the streets, the bridge – and more importantly, she remembers the words restaurant, street, bridge. “We could walk across the lift bridge after, if you want,” she says, smiling. Bridge. She wants to say it over and over before she loses it again, before this moment of clarity disappears. Bridge. Bridge. Bridge.

“Okay,” says London. But she doesn’t get up. Kate realizes that, in her relief over finally finding her granddaughter, she hasn’t noticed the way she is sitting, with her shoulders slumped and her arms crossed over her chest. It reminds Kate of the way she looked getting off the school bus. Defeated.

“Are you okay, sweetheart?”

London is quiet for a moment. “I really wanted to save it,” she says finally.

Save what? For the love of god, just say it! “Yes,” says Kate, carefully. “Me, too.”

“I mean, I also wanted other things. But it was the shark that was the most important thing, you know?”

With that word, shark, it all comes back to her like a sudden downpour – their conversation at the grocery store, the hospital, all of it. Kate wants to leap up and cheer for her own small victory, but one look at London and her triumph seems insignificant in the face of her granddaughter’s obvious heartbreak. “I know how much it meant to you,” she says. “What happened?”

“They cancelled the show, and Adam Pelley is leaving. It’s over. The shark is going to die, and there’s nothing I can do to change things.”

Kate’s breath catches in her throat. She presses her fingers against her palm, closing it off. No, London, she thinks. You can’t change destiny, no matter what you do. In Paris she had believed that, so she hadn’t tried. But when she came home, she had tried – and, well, that line never diverged into two, did it? It had been Kate’s destiny to lose her true love, just as it had been Lydia’s destiny to die young – their destinies had intertwined, the way their hands had refused to let go of each other that morning.