Here’s the thing about endings. Caitlynn Hightower knew this. Mo knows it, too. Even after you finish a book, things go on happening, no matter whether or not you plan to write them down. But romance novels have to end while everyone is happy enough with only the prospect of more happiness and only minor disappointments ahead. Poor Lavender Glass! Every time Maryanne Gorch sat down to write another chapter, another book, it meant more trouble for her heroine. More kidnappings, more misunderstandings, more sea voyages, more wickedness, bad luck, and suffering. Is a handsome man with an impressive dick and a good heart really worth all of the attendant misery? Lavender Glass appeared to think so, but who knows exactly what Maryanne Gorch thought. Natalie’s boyfriend was cheating on her, it turns out. But the next guy she goes out with is actually perfect. He really is. And not now, but in a couple of years, Theo is going to discover polyamory. Sure, it’s a lot of work, but when has Theo ever been afraid of work? Why not have your cake and share it, too? Mo says to Thomas, “What was in the fortune cookie you gave me?” “What?” Thomas says. “In the restaurant, when Malo Mogge was tormenting us. You gave me a fortune cookie.” “You didn’t open it?” Thomas asks. Mo says, “I didn’t feel like it at the time. So I left it at my grandmother’s grave. But you could just tell me. What was in it?” “Come here,” Thomas says. “I’ll whisper it in your ear.” Everything we do is music. There are many kinds of love, and not all of them are built to last past the span of one romance novel, let alone a thousand years. But let’s imagine a rose garden, winter, the sky clear and bright. Snow can’t keep falling forever. In the garden, two men. “What happens now?” one man says to the other. Sometimes two lovers meet in a movie theater after the lights have gone down. Imagine them right in front of you. They’re tall enough it’s annoying, but the theater is mostly empty and you could always move. They never talk, never turn to look at each other, but they are holding hands. There are always workarounds. You can text or write down a message while the other person watches. I love you, you asshole. Oh, I love you still. Can you bear it? I can bear it still. Oh, the world is a terrible place and getting worse. Laura would like to fix things. She may yet fix things, once she’s sure the best way to proceed. Not every act of Malo Mogge can be undone. Three of the karaoke singers from the night of the benefit at the Cliff Hangar are never seen again. Hannah Santos remains a tiger for the rest of her life. She’s happy enough in the sanctuary where a photo of her splendid stripy self ends up on a souvenir postcard. Some of the citizens of Lovesend still dream some nights of being a statue. Standing on a plinth, strange and still and silent as snow falls and others walk past them, gaze up at them in wonder. Some of them want to know what this dream might portend. Will they be famous? Do some notable deed? Be remembered long after they’re dead and gone? There are no statues of Malo Mogge in Lovesend. Some nights, when Rosamel Walker is asleep in her cinder-block dorm room, on her narrow bed, the moon comes and sits in her window. The moon comes to Ohio on certain nights. This is what the moon says: “Wake up, wake up! Come with me. Oh, come with me and I’ll show you marvelous things. I’ll give you whatever you want. We could be together and never grow old. Oh, won’t you come with me?” And Rosamel, asleep and dreaming, always says the same thing. “Maybe someday,” she tells the moon. “Not today. There are things I need to do! But someday, oh someday, maybe I will.” In the rose garden one man is humming a song, a very old song. Carousel is teaching herself to play the Harmony. There is so much magic in her! What she will do, who she will be—all of that lies ahead, in a room so big it contains the whole world and other worlds besides. Every door will open for her. “I figured out how they got out of Bogomil’s realm,” Carousel says to her guitar. “You let them out, didn’t you?” Her guitar doesn’t say anything back, but it doesn’t have to. It and Carousel have something like a perfect understanding. “Play me something you wrote,” Thomas says. He is lying across Mo’s bed. And because Mo loves him, and because eventually if you keep on writing music you’ll have to play it for someone, Mo does. He plays Thomas a song on his keyboard, gathers up his courage and sings what he has on paper. Before he’s finished, he stops. He says, “That was terrible.” Thomas says, “It wasn’t ever going to be perfect the first time, Mo. Try it again.” One day there will be an opera called The Book of Love. It will be about Maryanne Gorch, Caitlynn Hightower, Lavender Glass, the two Jenny Pings. On opening night you might recognize some members of the audience if you’re lucky enough to be in attendance. Genevieve Cabral, for one, who recently was performing sold-out shows at Bar Thalia. Mo and Thomas don’t live in Maryanne Gorch’s house beside the sea, but they visit now and then. Thomas is suspicious of the children of Lovesend, the ones of a certain age. Avelot may yet make herself or himself or themselves known one day, and what would he do then? He doesn’t know. But the house isn’t empty. Occupants come and go. In the house there are marks on the floors where heavy feet have trod. Sometimes in summer, voices can be heard in the overgrown rose garden. Someone tends the rose garden. Imagine it was possible, under cover of night, to climb the cliff face from the rocks beside the shore up to the wall where Maryanne Gorch’s roses trail over. Imagine you made a house, too, with many rooms on the floor of the ocean from the tumbled green stones of Malo Mogge’s temple. Imagine no one on land or sea ever bothered you or kept you from where you wanted to be or what you wanted to do. Imagine once you stood still as stone but now you move as you please and do only as you please. There are no statues of Malo Mogge in Lovesend, or anywhere else for that matter, but eventually, in the end, there are three statues of Maryanne Gorch in Lovesend because Mo can’t choose among the finalists when he and the Committee for the Beautification of Lovesend must make their choice. And, after all, Mo is supplying the funds. He can put up as many statues of Maryanne Gorch as he wants. I Don’t Want You to Worship Me I Just Want You to See What I Can Do. That’s the name of Laura Hand’s first EP. By the time her first full-length album comes out, she’s playing concert halls. Sometimes she comes back to Lovesend and plays the Cliff Hangar. The band gets back together. Susannah sings with Laura, Daniel turns his back. The audience doesn’t particularly care. It doesn’t affect the sound. And so on. We may not know every ending, but let us imagine Maryanne Gorch has a hand in it, and every love, though there may be ups and downs to keep our interest, is true and living. Every ending happy when the time must come at last for endings. Two men are kissing in a garden; the snow begins to fall again. Open the door, a voice says, and let them come in!