Then he hears her say it: “Fifty years later, so did I.”
He hits Pause, wondering if he could have imagined this. He rewinds to watch that part again. “Once upon a time, my grandmother fell in love on a train,” she says, her eyes so sad he wishes he could be there with her right now. (Though hasn’t he been wishing that all day?) She looks straight into the camera when she says it: “Fifty years later, so did I.”
Hugo lowers the phone and stares wide-eyed into the darkness of the hotel room, trying to absorb this. He waits for it to happen: that scuttling feeling in his chest that occurred the first time Margaret said a set of similar words, like an animal trying to hide in plain sight.
But it doesn’t.
To his surprise, he finds himself laughing instead. Not because it’s funny. And not because it’s absurd, though it is. It’s completely and utterly absurd. They’ve known each other only a week. But no: he’s laughing—he realizes—because he’s happy.
And because he loves her too.
It’s a joy that moves through him like helium, filling every corner of his body until it feels as if he could float away. He sits very still for a few seconds, thunderstruck, and then remembers that he needs to watch the rest of the film.
Nothing about it is what he imagined it would be, yet every inch of it feels exactly right. The interviews aren’t shown as a whole; they’re cut into smaller soundbites, and it jumps around so that it feels like all these various people—himself included—are having one big conversation about what it means to be a person in the world. And even more than that, what it means to love.
It’s brilliant. It’s moving. It’s funny and unique and inspiring.
It is, in the end, just like Mae.
When it’s over, there are tears in his eyes. He wipes at them, thinking that if he hadn’t already bought a train ticket, he’d surely be buying one now.
But since he did, he just sits there in the darkness and starts the film again.
Out the window of the plane, the clouds are piled up like bath bubbles, and the middle of the country is spread out below in checkered squares of green and gold.
Mae doesn’t notice any of it, though; her eyes are closed, her mind elsewhere.
She’s thinking about Nana, and how happy she’d be right now to know that Mae is off to college, something that got a bit lost in everything else this week.
She’s thinking about saying goodbye to her dads again (“Take two,” said Pop as he hugged her), and also Priyanka, who had pulled up in the driveway early this morning (“One last time”) before getting on the road.
She’s thinking about the text she sent Garrett (Okay, okay—it’s possible you were right) and the way the film turned out, the quiet pride she felt when she watched the final cut. In her pocket, there’s a flash drive that she’ll give to the dean of admissions after she lands this afternoon, and it feels strange to carry it around like that, like a portable heart.
Mostly, though, she’s thinking about Hugo and the fact that he still hasn’t responded, which must mean he hated the film or was scared off by what she said.
Either way, it can’t be good.
Maybe they were just never meant to have a happy ending. Maybe it’s not that kind of movie.
She’s determined not to let this stop her. If the meeting with the dean doesn’t go well, she’ll be back again first thing tomorrow. And if that doesn’t work, she’ll try again the next day. And the next.
She’ll keep trying. But she’s also not worried anymore. It used to be that the thought of spending the next two years taking classes in literature and religion and science felt like missing out. She’d be stuck learning about ancient Greece or the geopolitical situation in Tibet or the poetry of W. B. Yeats while, across campus, the film students would be pulling ahead of her.
But now she’s not so sure.
Maybe Hugo has the right idea after all. Maybe it’s not the worst thing to take a few detours along the way. She loves the film she made this week, loves it as much as anything she’s ever done, and it never would’ve existed if she hadn’t gotten on that train.
No matter what happens next, she’ll always be glad she did.
The ocean appears all at once, a blue so bright it looks fake. Hugo has seen so many incredible sights this past week, so many mountains and rivers and fields, that it seems unlikely there’s any room left for him to be this moved. But it turns out there is.
Even in his dreams, the Pacific Ocean was never quite this color.
The dusty hillsides and rows of fruit trees have given way to sand dunes, the water flashing into view every now and then until, at last, they’re clear of anything but the shore. He wishes he could open a window and breathe it in, wishes he could run down to the surf and let the water rush over his toes, wishes the person beside him wasn’t a grim-faced executive with a laptop who keeps swearing every time he loses service.
He wishes it were Mae.
They come to a stop along the coast, and the conductor announces they have to wait here for another train to pass. The executive gets up and carries his laptop into the observation car, and Hugo yawns and shifts in his seat. This is the first time the trip has felt long, which is a bit silly, since it’s only twelve hours, and they’ve done much more than that in a day. But there are still seven hours to go, and he can’t help feeling restless.
It’s like the laws of physics are different now. Twelve hours with Mae is somehow shorter than twelve hours without her. Especially when that time is spent on the way to find her.
He supposes he should have some sort of plan for when he gets there, though he doesn’t know a single thing about Los Angeles aside from what he’s seen in films. But plenty of them are about showing up with nothing but a suitcase and a dream, so he figures at least he’s not the first idiot to try it.
All he knows is that Mae has a meeting with the dean of admissions at four o’clock on the first day of classes.
Which is today.
The train begins to move again, haltingly this time, and Hugo leans to look out over the cliffs. His phone jitters on the tray in front of him, a message from Alfie that says Miracles do happen. There’s a link attached, and when he opens it, Hugo finds himself looking at his mum’s blog, something that he usually tries to avoid.
Across the top, there’s the old sketch of the six of them, Hugo bringing up the rear. But he doesn’t mind it so much anymore. Not now that he’s found himself so far from the group. In fact, it makes him smile, seeing these younger versions of the six of them.
He skips down to the most recent post, which is dated from this morning: Those of you who have been following this blog for a long time know that we used to compare Hugo—our sixth out of six—to Paddington Bear.
It started because of a coat he had, the kind with little toggles on it, and when he wore it with wellies, he looked just like the bear. But as the years went on and it became clear that Hugo needed a bit more looking after than some of the others—he was always getting lost or losing things, always lagging behind and daydreaming—the joke became even more apt.
This past week, Hugo has been traveling across America by train. It’s the farthest anyone in our family has ever wandered, and now, it seems, he might be about to venture even farther.