Jack Crawford is the one to call and tell her the man who tried to kill her and Wally is dead. She can’t quite bring herself to ask about Will, but Crawford eventually gets around to it. Will is gone. So is Lecter. He doesn’t know if they’re alive. There’s a lot of blood and it probably doesn’t all belong to the other guy.
She’s still in the hospital and Crawford says he’s sending guards for her room. They’ll go with her to the house when she’s discharged, but he recommends not staying there. The FBI can set her up somewhere else for the time being. She thanks him and he says she doesn’t sound surprised.
“Retrospect,” she explains. “That feeling like you should’ve known better, it turns out it is kind of like time travel after all.”
“Are you sure you don’t want anything fancier?” she asks. “Have friends over, rent a banquet room at a nice restaurant…”
Will smiles at her. “You know I’m not a fancy guy. I’d barely know what to do with myself in a nice restaurant.” His smile turns to a look of worry. “But if you want to wait and plan something bigger—”
“No, not at all!” She takes his hand and gives it a squeeze. “My stepmother always said it was tacky to have a big second wedding anyway. An excuse to get free gifts, she said. I was just thinking of you, this being your first.”
He gives her hand a squeeze in return. “I just want us to be married.”
The door to the judge’s office opens. A man peers at them over his glasses. “Graham and Foster? You’re up.”
“We should get married,” Will says between bites of his breakfast. The notebook is on the table in front of him, half its pages torn out. “Will you marry me?”
Molly almost drops her coffee cup and has to steady it with both hands. “That’s a bit sudden! I-I just moved in last night!”
“Yes!” she hurries to say. “I mean, no it’s not a ‘no,’ because it’s a yes!”
His brows go up. His face breaks into one of those room-brightening smiles she hardly ever sees. “Really? Do you mean it?”
She nods so hard her ponytail almost comes undone. “I have to talk to Wally—”
“Oh of course,” Will agrees.
“But he’s crazy about you,” she says. “I’m sure he’ll be as happy as I am!”
He gets up from his seat and pulls her into a hug that has her toes barely touching the floor. He keeps whispering something as he peppers the top of her head with kisses. She’s laughing and crying so hard it takes her a few seconds to realize it’s just “thank you” over and over again.
Will is still clearing out some of his dresser space when she comes in with the last box of her clothes.
“We’re going to have to get a bigger place,” she says.
He snorts. “Or at least a bigger dresser.”
He tosses an armful of shirts onto the bed. A notebook lands with them and falls open to a page of calculations.
“I didn’t know you were into physics,” she says. She picks up the book; there are actually many pages of calculations. “Will, have you been trying to figure out actual, honest-to-goodness time travel? What are you trying to go back in time to change?”
He glances over his shoulder. “Th-that’s not mine. It’s from an old case. Jack Crawford sent it to me, said it didn’t seem to have any bearing on the case.”
She can’t stop poring over the numbers. “This is amazing. Did the case involve H.G. Wells or something? You know I was a physics major for almost three years, right?”
He comes over and plucks the notebook from her hands. He tosses it to the floor. When she makes a sound of protest, he takes her hands and puts them on his shoulders. “There’s no such thing as time travel,” he says.
He cuts her off. “It’s all just… retrospect,” he says. “Which isn’t the same thing as time travel at all.”
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