“You have a daughter?” she asked with surprise.
“Yes,” he said, a simple word filled with emotion. “I do. She lives up there on Howth Summit. That’s why I’m there in the car every evening. I just like to keep an eye on her. Even if she doesn’t know it.”
They stared at each other for a while, knowing that something strange had overcome them that morning, something strange that had changed them forever.
“I had a husband,” she said suddenly. “Car crash. I was there. Holding his hand. Just like this morning.” She swallowed and lowered her voice. “I always said I’d have done anything to give him at least a few more hours.” There, she’d said it. “I gave Lou a pill, Raphie,” she said firmly, looking him straight in the eye now. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I gave him a pill. I don’t know if all that stuff about the pills is true or not—but if I helped Lou have a few more hours with his family, I’m glad, and I’d do it again, if anyone asks.”
Raphie simply nodded, acknowledging her two confessions. He’d put it in their statement, but he didn’t need to tell her that; she knew.
They just looked at each other, staring but not seeing. Their minds were elsewhere, thinking about the times gone by, the lost time that could never return.
“Where’s my son?” A woman’s urgent voice broke their silence. As she had opened the door, a burst of cold air filled the station. Snowflakes were trapped in the woman’s hair and clothes and fell from her boots as she stamped them on the ground. “He’s only a boy.” She swallowed. “A fourteen-year-old boy.” Her voice shook. “I sent him out to get gravy granules. And the turkey’s missing now.” She spoke as though delirious.
“I’ll take care of this.” Jessica nodded at Raphie. “You go home now.”
And so he did.
ONE THING OF GREAT IMPORTANCE can affect a small number of people. Equally so, a thing of little importance can affect a multitude. Either way, a happening—big or small—can affect an entire string of people. Occurrences can join us all together. You see, we’re all made up of the same stuff. When something happens, it triggers something inside us that connects us to a situation, connects us to other people, lighting us up and linking us like little lights on a Christmas tree, twisted and turned but still connected on a wire. Some go out, others flicker, others burn strong and bright, yet we’re all on the same line.
I said at the beginning of this story that this was about people who find out who they are. About people who are unraveled and whose cores are revealed to all who count. And that all that count are revealed to them. You thought I was talking about Lou Suffern and the Turkey Boy, about Raphie, Jessica, and Ruth, didn’t you? Wrong. I was talking about each of us.
A lesson finds the common denominator and links us all together, like a chain. At the end of that chain dangles a clock, and on the face of the clock registers the passing of time. We see it and we hear it, the hushed tick-tock, but often we don’t feel it. Each second makes its mark on every single person’s life—comes and then goes, quietly disappearing without fanfare, evaporating into air like steam from a piping hot Christmas pudding. Enough time leaves us warm; when our time is gone, it leaves us cold. Time is more precious than gold, more precious than diamonds, more precious than oil or any valuable treasures. It is time of which we do not have enough; it is time that causes the war within our hearts, and so we must spend it wisely. Time cannot be packaged and ribboned and left under trees for Christmas morning.
Time can’t be given. But it can be shared.
THE GIFT. Copyright © 2009 by Cecelia Ahern. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition September 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-194390-4
Thanks for the Memories
There’s No Place Like Here
If You Could See Me Now
Love, Rosie
P.S. I Love You
Before she embarked on her writing career, CECELIA AHERN completed a degree in journalism and media communications. At twenty-one she wrote her first novel, P.S. I Love You, which became an international bestseller and was adapted into a major motion picture starring Hilary Swank. Her successive novels—Love, Rosie; If You Could See Me Now; There’s No Place Like Here; and Thanks for the Memories—were also international bestsellers. Her books are published in forty-six countries and have collectively sold more than eleven million copies. The daughter of Ireland’s former prime minister, Ahern lives in Dublin, Ireland.
www.cecelia-ahern.com
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