“Of course,” said Bob.
The word landed with the calm certainty of someone finding an expected object exactly where he had left it.
Missy looked at him. Then at the gull.
The gull closed the small notebook, leaving the seashell bookmark between its pages. Ocean wind lifted the feathers along their wings and carried the smell of salt across the beach.
Behind them, the Atlantic continued folding itself onto the shore.
Each wave arrived with something to say.
Each withdrew before explaining it.
“How do you know each other?” Missy asked.
“We have overlapping jurisdictions,” said the gull.
“That explains nothing.”
“Most jurisdictions don’t.”
Bob sat beside Missy in the sand. For a moment, no one spoke.
Ocean City was waking behind them, but the sea appeared untouched by the hour.
She had come because she needed the ocean—perhaps to return a thought she had misplaced.
Instead, it had given her an official gull and a new occupational verb.
This was not what she had planned. It was, however, difficult to argue with.
Bob watched her.
“We need to go.”
Missy did not look away from the water.
“Go where?”
“Back.”
Only then did she turn.
“I’ve only just arrived.”
“The Head Librarian wants to meet you.”
The words altered the morning.
The gull tucked the notebook beneath one wing. Bob’s tail rested motionless upon the sand.
Even the ocean seemed to pause, although oceans are very good at creating that impression without making any actual commitments.
“The Head Librarian?” Missy asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I wasn’t informed.”
“Is that good news?”
“It is news,” said Bob.
This did not improve it.
Missy looked once more toward the horizon. Order, she decided, had been pleasant while it lasted.
The gull had already begun walking away.
“Wait,” Missy called. “Will I see you again?”
The gull turned.
They appeared to consider several possible answers before selecting the least useful one.
“I am frequently Returning.”
Then they spread their wings and lifted into the air.
Missy watched them circle once above the shore before turning north, where sea and sky had agreed to become almost indistinguishable.
The gull grew smaller. For a while, Missy could still follow the movement of their wings. Then there was only distance.
Bob had already started toward the dunes.
“Come on,” he said. “The train will not wait forever.”
“I thought it existed outside conventional time.”
“It does.”
“Then why are we hurrying?”
“It dislikes being taken for granted.”
Missy brushed the sand from her red skirt and followed him.
The Train to Elsewhere waited beyond the boardwalk.
Its dark carriages stood among the cheerful buildings of Ocean City like a sentence written in another language. Steam drifted along its roof. Brass fittings caught the morning light. Its windows reflected the sea without suggesting that the sea had ever been invited inside.
Missy stopped at the carriage door and looked back.
The boardwalk stretched along the bright edge of the water. Somewhere beyond it, the gull was Elsewhering.
Somewhere ahead, the Head Librarian was waiting.
Bob stepped aboard. Missy followed.
The door closed behind her with the quiet finality of a decision she did not remember making.
Inside, the air smelled of velvet, polished wood, and distant rain. The train began to move.
Missy carried sand in her shoes, salt in her hair, and more questions than she had brought with her.
The train car was almost exactly as she remembered it. The suitcase stood closed beside the seat, and one of her books rested upon the small brass table.
The teaspoon was gone.
And on the burgundy velvet lay the Black Top Hat.
Missy stopped.
Bob jumped onto the seat beside it.
It appeared perfectly composed, as though it had arranged the entire train car for the purpose of being discovered.
Missy sat down.
She did not touch it immediately.
Outside the window, Ocean City glided past in blue and gold.
Cool light entered through the glass and met the amber glow of the carriage lamps.
Missy leaned closer to the hat.
“You’re still here,” she said.
Bob looked at her.
“Were you expecting it to leave?”
“I wasn’t expecting anything.”
“That is rarely true.”
Missy reached for the brim.
The moment her fingers touched it, something moved through her.
Not a vision. Not yet.
It was closer to hearing the first few notes of a forgotten song and discovering that the body still remembered when to breathe.
Her hand became still.
She knew this hat.
The recognition arrived before the memory.
It carried no date, no place, no convenient explanation. Only familiarity.
Missy lifted the hat from the velvet.
It sat easily between her hands. She knew the texture of its crown, the smooth curve of its brim, and the particular angle at which it preferred to be worn.
None of this made sense. Yet holding it did not feel like borrowing something that belonged to Bob.
It felt like having something returned.
Missy’s eyes brightened, and she smiled.
“Well,” she said softly. “Of course you’re my hat.”
Bob’s ears lifted.
Missy turned it carefully in her hands.
“How could I have forgotten you?”
The hat gave no answer. It did not need to.
Bob moved closer, one whisker nearly touching the brim.
“What kind of hat is it?” Missy asked.
“Sunday.”
“That is a day.”
“Not in Bob’s Hat Dictionary.”
“You have a hat dictionary?”
“Naturally.”
Bob looked at the hat.
“In the dictionary, Sunday is listed under Someday.”
“Why?”
“Because Sunday stands between what has ended and what has not yet begun. It keeps what you postpone until you finally find the time.”
Missy glanced into the crown.
“What sort of things?”
“Unrealized selves.”
The words quieted the train car.
Missy traced the brim with one finger. “Someday I will become the person I keep meeting in my imagination.”
She looked up. “And the hat keeps that person?”
“If there is still a chance.”
“For how long?”
“Until Someday becomes now.”
The train carried them farther from Ocean City.
The buildings fell away. The ocean remained visible through the window, blue beneath the morning sky.
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