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After the third question in one week, River is sure he has forgotten. There is no turning back.
Her gaze drifts to the calendar hanging in her room. She always liked it more than people; it lets her count without asking questions, without the need to correct any of her thoughts. Objects are better friends sometimes.
She counts again, despite knowing it by heart. Eleven years, four months, seventeen days. It is more than enough for everyone else to forget things; she has surrendered to the fact, time and time again, until she came to understand she would always be the one to remember it all.
Isabelle, maybe. But she doesn’t talk about that anymore.
Johnny is like the others. He forgets. Of that night, the one moment of her life in which she truly connected to someone else, he has nothing left.
And she decides, in the numb flood of pain from within, that she must find a way to tell him.
*
She says it, five times a day at least. She just cannot find the words. It would be so easy to go ahead, with the confident look people always seem to have.
It is all spoken through signs — pretty evident, at least in River’s opinion. She writes the truth in colours, plain for him to see — the two hair bands she wears every day, in alternate order, then the ring, then the fabric of her wedding dress. For years, she wears her unspoken plead in yellow and blue. Johnny never notices.
But it is after that — after he uses certain words, the same words so hard to bend to her will — that she breaks down.
He has mentioned their first meeting for the first time, and, just as she imagined, it is not the right meeting.
She chooses a blue sheet of paper first.
*
After two years, her origami are perfect.
No hesitation is to be found in a single one of the forty-two folds — no more, no less. They are regular, methodic. At some point in her life, she is making much more than one a day, and it hurts ever so slightly to think that Johnny always worries for the wrong reasons.
Every new sheet is the beginning of a rite, every finished rabbit a vow to herself. The fact that it is constantly fruitless doesn’t change much; the pain is constant, a single note that never varies in tune and intensity. What a striking contrast to Johnny’s soft playing, to the touch of his fingers.
Everything in her life is misplaced.
One night she lies awake, caressing the only paper rabbit that shares yellow and blue. It was harder than the others to make.
It is still perfect, but it didn’t work.
She decides never to make another one like this again.
*
As the illness brings her closer to the end, she starts considering never telling him.
It is not much of a choice, in any case. River does not know how else to remind him anymore. Thousands of times, thousands of days, just weren’t enough — at this point, her only regret is that she will never be able to even ask why.
Out of the windows of their house, a light chant taps against the glass; the sounds of the storm melt into the notes of the piano.
Johnny is playing, again. She guesses he needs it somehow, just like she cannot do without counting her paper rabbits.
She has been happy with him by her side. There is no point in ignoring the layer of sadness that covered the whole time of their life together — it was like that soft rain, cold but bearable.
It was part of her, in any case. Hadn’t Johnny forgotten, there would have been something else to foster that rain.
She soothes the heartache with the beautiful sights outside, holding her platypus tight to her chest. Anya’s bright windows look like a smile.
She will miss all of this, no matter what. Years upon years of sending messages to him, ever unheard, were not enough to make her stop loving him; they had a life, a home, befriended a lighthouse. For that, she is glad.
She smells her freshly changed sheets, and cries softly. They used too much soap — the smell would be so good if it didn’t sting her nostrils.
Bitter and sweet, in all things. She has learnt.
River closes her eyes, waiting. After all, she has a chance of going to the place they always wanted to reach together; all she has to do is make herself believe.
She focuses on the memory of that night — heir first meeting, the true one. She chants the same thought to herself, falling asleep.
In the end, they will always have the moon.