“You know this isn’t about me, Julia,” Dylan said. “You’re the one avoiding my calls.”
“You’re right! I don’t think I have the energy for this anymore. Good night, Dylan.”
“Goodbye, Julia.”
Her hands were shaking. Her apartment was humid and hot. She needed time to think, to refocus, to figure out where to take her life next. She hadn’t counted on Dylan taking her at her word.
========
This wasn’t working, Dylan thought. He couldn’t go on like this; not sleeping, perpetually holding his breath, indefinitely postponing the looming task of sorting through the rooms of his uncle’s house.
Since his uncle’s death, Dylan hadn’t been able to bring himself to enter the place that was like a second home to him. The abrupt ending with Julia and the lawyer’s letters about the estate, had finally forced his hand.
He wore his oldest jeans and a faded t-shirt. He was sweaty and grimy from hours of sorting through his uncle’s personal effects in the Beacon Hill townhouse; a place now stripped bare of the presence of the man who had stood watch over his life.
On the mahogany roll-top desk, everything lay in precise order: a worn leather-bound journal, a pair of reading spectacles, and a small pocket watch that caught the afternoon light streaming through the study’s windows. Slowly, methodically, Dylan had started sorting everything out, creating piles on the Persian rug beneath his feet: keep, donate, discard. For the most part, his uncle received business correspondence at The Black Tulip. Here, at his home, were his personal belongings. In the bottom right cubby, alongside a stick of red sealing wax and a brass seal, Dylan noticed an envelope.
His own name written in his uncle’s precise handwriting, with a notation in the corner: To be opened after my death.
Dylan took a deep breath and turned the envelope over. He broke the seal carefully and unfolded two sheets of cream-colored stationary.
My dear Dylan,
If you are reading this, then I finally ran out of borrowed time. A few months ago, Dr. Morrison had warned me about my weak heart. I chose not to burden you with that knowledge. Perhaps this makes me a coward. You see, I have spent my entire life being cautious, afraid of getting close to anything too personal.
Dylan sat on one of the leather chairs beside the desk. He felt suddenly unsteady.
You knew all about my quest for that first edition, about my plans to go to Istanbul – a man chasing a shadow across an ocean for a book that may not have existed.
On the day you lost your father, I lost my brother to a heart condition that became my life’s condition. I also lost my nerve. I was too afraid to die like him.
So I spent sixty-two years searching for the perfect thing—the perfect antique, the perfect bottle of wine, the perfect moment to take a real risk. Distractions are a marvelous way to avoid life. It is shockingly easy to distract yourself, my boy. I told myself I was building something important, preserving history, creating a legacy. But the truth pokes holes in this mythology of mine. I spent my life hiding behind beautiful objects. Objects don’t talk back. Objects don’t protest. They could never disappoint me the way people might.
I was madly, irrevocably, helplessly in love with Cecila Barnes. But did I ever tell her? Did I ever invite her to dinner? The risk of her laughing in my face was more than I could bear. A couple of times we went into my cellar and I gave her a bottle. One time, she looked me in the eye and joked: “Tobias, perhaps I should just move in!” You can say that I died without finding the right words for Cecilia.
The Black Tulip became my obsession, not because of its rarity, but because it represented everything I thought I needed to finally start living – one last perfect acquisition to justify a lifetime of waiting for the perfect moment.
But there is no perfect moment. There is no perfect love, no perfect opportunity – life is the opportunity!
The shop . . . the building . . . my house . . . and a wine cellar that could drown a small village —these are all yours now. Use what I have left you to build something real. And if you spot a Cecilia anywhere, push the limits of hope and courage. Don’t chase a phantom flower when a real one is blooming in front of your eyes.
The doctors will tell you that I died of a heart condition. And this would be true. My heart gave out from so much regret. And from realizing, too late, that the most valuable things are usually the most fragile.
Please give my love to Cecilia when you see her next. On second thought, what could she do with that information now?
All my love,
Uncle Tobias
Dylan read the letter twice before setting it down on the desk and walked up to the window. The sun was getting ready to call it a day. What wouldn’t he give to hear his uncle’s voice again in the stillness of his study.
A coward.Uncle Tobias called himself a coward. He stood still, trying to reconcile this letter with the man he had known—the tall antiquarian with the mop of silver hair who held people rapt with stories of Revolutionary War currency and Victorian mourning jewelry. His uncle was someone Dylan had admired for his knowledge of history, of wine, for his certainty about the world. That he had been as lost as Dylan felt right now, was hard to believe.
The late afternoon light shifted, casting longer shadows across the Persian rug. Dylan’s chest felt tight. He could see himself in parts of that letter—the careful calculations, the endless postponements. He pressed his palms against his eyes and let out the longest breath. This was a lot to absorb—four months of questions answered, at last. But replaced by harder truths about courage, about the cost of playing it safe.
He stayed at the house until it grew dark. It was a wretched feeling, sitting alone with the resident ghosts. Cecilia Barnes. He couldn’t believe it. He knew what he had to do
Chapter 10
