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That isn’t the news The news is Lulu, of course Allyson But tonight, they will all come And they will find out

Then he thinks of Yael His mother, so far away from him these past few years, until that day in Paris last year that set everything in ht in Mumbai, so Willem texts her

I found her He stops Maybe it is more accurate to say she found hi that he found her So that is what he writes

He doesn’t elaborate He knows his mother will understand

• • •

Back in Willem’s flat, Allyson has texted Wren CALL ME ASAP!!! And then she decides to be nosy Not to snoop exactly, but to look around

The living room does not offer clues Even had Allyson not been told this aparted to Willem’s uncle, she would’ve been able to tell it was not Willeoes into the bedroom in the back The yellow one The bed is unmade, and it smells of Willem Somehow she knows this

She feels shy, tentative, as if she is invading But she re her, as much as someone as Willem exhorts, to make herself at home The key to the flat is still in her pocket

She sits down on the bed It’s low to the ground, the view looking up out theThere’s a sht there She leafs through it, re it in her Shakespeare Out Loud class She thinks of Dee She hasn’t talked with him since Paris She calculates the time difference It’s a little past 8:00 am in New York Maybe she can Skype him

The laptop is on the bookshelf When she takes it, she accidentally knocks over a large envelope Out spill several photographs, newspaper clippings, soer Willehtly less chiseled, but still Willem He is flanked by a man and a woman The woman is solden smiles These must be Yael and Bram

She feels a little as if she knows them And sorry she never did

She carefully puts the photographs back in the envelope and puts the envelope in a safe corner of the bookshelf That is when she hears the sound, instantly familiar It takes her a moment to locate it, inside the pocket of the jacket she saw Willeht

She pulls it out Her old gold watch, last year’s high-school graduation gift She’d hated it, so heavy and perfect, but it’s kind of endearing now, all scuffed up, the face of it cracked She turns it over The GOING PLACES engraving had seeiven it to her, but now it see to have wished for her She wants to tell her mother about this revelation and stops for a

That said, she doesn’t want the watch back

In that Paris park, she’d given it to Willeirl in the Double Happiness story His irl, he’d called her

She’d known he kept the watch Céline had told her as much when she’d confronted her in Paris last week But she’d h Willem had kept it to pawn it But he’d kept it to keep To keep her

Allyson holds the watch in her hand She feels the vibration of its ticking and is full in a way she can’t really explain

• • •

Wille hiht This ht be true, but Willem also knows the performance was a triuive hi, how he e, how he confused the audience

"Tonight you will play the part as Jeroen plays it, as an understudy iven him yesterday, when he was called up to step in for Jeroen after the lead actor broke his ankle It was the direction that had almost derailed hio home" was how Kate put it But Willeo hooing ho, to a new home in New York City, to an apprenticeship with Ruckus Theater Company, which Kate runs with her fiancé But today it feels as though home has come to him

"Are we clear?" Petra asks after she has sarettes worth of criticisms "You will do as your director tells you"