I reached into the plastic holder and showed him my school ID—Prudence Katherine Pierce-Keller. Then I pulled out Mom’s picture. “This… this was my mom.” He clearly noticed the past tense, because his eyes softened.
Dad looked down at the photo for several moments before raising his eyes to meet mine again. His tone was gentle when he replied. “I’m very sorry for your loss… Kate? Is that it?” He glanced over at Trey. “And who is this?”
Trey turned toward him and put out his hand. “Trey Coleman, sir. I’m a friend of Kate’s—I drove her here from DC.”
Dad leaned forward and shook Trey’s hand. “Hello, Trey. I’m sorry you came so far to be disappointed. If you had called, I could have saved you the…” He trailed off as the youngest of the two boys came running over and propped his foot up on the bench of the table.
“Daddy, fix my shoe, please. The sticky part came loose again…”
He reattached the frayed Velcro on the tiny shoe and pulled up the sock. “You need new sneakers, don’t you, Robbie?”
“Mm-hmm.” Robbie nodded, looking shyly at the two people talking to his father. His eyes were the same deep green as my own. I could tell from Dad’s expression, as he glanced at me and then back at the boy, that he had also noticed the similarity.
My father ran his hand through his son’s light brown curls and I drew in a sharp breath. The gesture was so familiar, but the hand was always on my head, the smile was always for me. “Go play with your brother, okay?” he said. “Your mom will be home soon and we’ll have pizza.”
“Yum!” Robbie cried as he ran off. “Pizza!”
When Dad turned back toward me, I pushed Mom’s picture forward. “This is the only photo I have of my mother.” I pulled my hand away, hoping fervently that my grandmother had at least a few pictures of Mom. The photograph vanished, just as Dad’s picture had earlier, in the café. I felt Trey’s body tense up and wished I’d had the forethought to tell him to look away.
Dad was staring at the spot where the picture had been, a stunned expression on his face. I reached out and took his hand. “I’m sorry. I know this is hard, but I need to make you understand.”
I spent the next several minutes telling him everything that had happened to me over the past few days. I told him about living with him in the cottage at Briar Hill, adding little details about his life and personality that I hoped hadn’t changed with a new marriage and a new family. I told him everything Katherine had said about his real parents and the accident, about my grandparents, and I explained Katherine’s theory on what was happening with the temporal shifts. Dad didn’t speak until I finished.
Finally, he met my eyes, his expression sad and distant. “I’m sorry… but I don’t know what you expect me to say or do. I can’t explain how you know the things you know. And I can’t deny what I just saw here. And seeing your eyes—it’s like looking in the mirror.”
“You believe me?” My voice was unsteady.
“I guess. I don’t really know, to tell you the truth.” His voice shifted, becoming a bit angry. “But either way, this timeline you’ve told me about… that’s not my world, Kate. You are a lovely young lady and I do not want to hurt you. In whatever reality you know, you could well be the center of my universe.” He stopped and nodded toward the kids, who were now chasing after something in the grass. “But those two little boys, and their mother, who will be home any minute now with pizza and groceries—they are my life. I can only assume that, in your world, John and Robbie do not exist and Emily—well, who knows if I ever meet Emily?”
My lower lip began to tremble and I bit down hard to steady it. Trey put a protective arm around me.
“I would like to be able to say that I wish you luck in… whatever this is that you are planning to do,” Dad said. “But that would be a lie. How can I look at my two kids over there and do anything other than hope you fail?”
8
I don’t really remember going back to the car. Trey helped me inside and pulled the seat belt over me, snapping it into place. “I’m sorry, Kate. I’m so sorry.” There were tears in his eyes. He gave me a soft kiss on the forehead and drew me into his arms. At that point, I broke down, sobbing against his shoulder. I held on to him tightly. As much as I hated to seem needy or weak, after a day in which I had lost my mother, my father, and in every way that mattered, my own existence, I desperately needed the human contact.
He held me for several minutes and then I pulled away. I was still crying, but I said, “I’m okay. We need to go.”
“You don’t sound okay, but yeah… let’s get out of here.” He rummaged around in the console and found some napkins from a fast-food place. “Sorry, I don’t have any Kleenex,” he said. I took the napkins, dabbing at my eyes and nose.
I glanced back at the picnic table. The youngest boy was in Dad’s lap trying to get his attention, but Dad continued to stare at the car as we drove away. He looked miserable and I felt a surge of guilt for putting him through what was, in the end, very unnecessary pain.
I was glad Trey wasn’t the type to say I told you so, but I acknowledged the fact anyway. “You warned me. I should have listened.”
We drove, without saying much, toward DC. Somehow I dozed off, my head against Trey’s shoulder. When I awoke we were on the Beltway, a few miles from the turnoff to Bethesda. Trey was singing softly to an old Belle and Sebastian song. He had a nice baritone voice, and the car was dark, except for the dashboard lights and headlights on the highway. I had the urge to close my eyes and stay in the moment, not thinking about anything else that had happened.
“I’m sorry, Trey,” I said, sitting up. “You’ve been wonderful to chauffeur me all over two states, and I thank you by falling asleep.” I noticed that his sleeve was damp—had I been crying in my sleep? Or yuck—drooling?
“No apology necessary,” he said. “I think you needed to shut down for a while. I was going to have to wake you pretty soon, though. I don’t know where your grandmother lives, except that you said it’s near school.”
At the thought of Katherine, I felt another wave of guilt. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was nearly nine o’clock. I knew my grandmother had to be frantic, and although I was still a bit angry, it was less at Katherine than at this faceless, future grandfather who had reached out from someplace I couldn’t even imagine and snatched away my entire life.
I should have gone back to Katherine’s house, rather than trying to pull Dad into this. Brief images flashed through my mind—the two boys running by the pond, Robbie crawling into Dad’s lap—and suddenly I felt protective of them.
“Trey, what if he’s right?”
“What if who is right?”
“My dad… Harry. I mean, I’m going back to my grandmother’s and she says that I’m the only one who can set this straight—who can fix the timeline. I don’t know what that means, what she wants me to do, or if I even can do it—but what if I succeed and those little boys don’t exist when I’m done? How can that be a good thing? Maybe Harry is better off there—with Emily, with that family. And who else exists in this timeline but not in the other? Who has the right to say that the other timeline is better?”
Trey thought for a long time before he answered. “I don’t know, Kate. But someone—apparently your grandfather—is going to a lot of trouble to change things, and he sounds like he doesn’t much care who ceases to exist in the process. You, on the other hand, are actually bothering to ask that question, even though you didn’t create this problem. So I’d trust your judgment more than I would his if someone has to pick and choose between timelines—do you follow my meaning?”
“I guess so, but…”
“No, let me finish. You told me earlier that you’re pretty sure that you don’t exist in this timeline. And based on what we’ve both seen, I think you’re correct. Sooner or later, something will separate you from that medallion and I think you’ll pop out of existence just like those photographs.” He reached ove
r and took my hand. “And if that’s true—well, I’ve decided I don’t really like this timeline.”
That nearly made me cry again, a clear sign that the day had pushed me well over my emotional limits. I cleared my throat and nodded toward the windshield. “We’re almost there. Turn right at the next intersection.”
I looked ahead nervously as he turned onto Katherine’s street. Although I didn’t want to mention it to Trey, I was very worried that we would round the corner and there would be a For Sale sign in front of the greystone house, with no evidence that my grandmother or Connor had ever been there.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I saw the lights on in the house both downstairs and upstairs. I could see the many shelves of books that lined the library through the upper windows and the pale blue glow of the CHRONOS equipment. It seemed like days since I had stood in that room. “Thank God they’re still here.”
Trey pulled the car up next to the curb. “You were worried?” he asked as we got out. “I thought you said the medallions were protecting them.”
Daphne began barking from the backyard as we approached the house. “I did, but yes, I was worried. You could put everything I understand about all of this into a thimble and still have room left over. And, with the exception of meeting you, anything that could go wrong today has, so…”
I had just raised my hand to ring the bell when the door opened in front of me and Katherine pulled me into a hug.
“Oh my God. Kate! Where have you been? We thought…”
“I’m sorry, Katherine. I had to see if—Mom, she’s gone. I can’t find any trace of her, now or in the past. And Dad…”
Katherine led me inside. “I know. We felt it, too.” I saw a slight mental guard go up on Katherine’s face as she saw Trey, who was just behind me in the shadows of the porch. “Who is this with you?”
I reached for Trey’s arm and pulled him forward. “Trey, this is my grandmother, Katherine Shaw. Katherine, this is Trey Coleman.” I can never remember whether the older person is introduced first or last, but formalities seemed a minor point given the situation. “Trey has been… wonderful today. I’m not sure I would be here without his help.”
We walked into the living room and I collapsed onto the couch, tugging Trey down beside me. “Trey knows everything—well, he knows as much as I do. I don’t know if that’s a problem for you, but it was kind of unavoidable.”
Katherine sighed and sat down in the armchair across from us. “I tried your cell phone, but…”
I gave a wry laugh. “Did you get a message saying the person you’re calling is outside the service area? The phone was in my backpack this morning.” I patted the sides of my skirt. “No pockets. Your number was in the phone—I didn’t have it written down. And since the phone was on Mom’s plan, I doubt there’s any record now of that account.”
“What took you so long? We had almost given up hope.”
I glanced at Trey. “He drove me to see Dad. Who is now in Delaware.”
“Oh, Kate. I wish you had just come back here. What happened? You didn’t try to explain to Harry, did you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And?”
“Disappearing photographs are pretty convincing.”
Trey nodded. “It worked for me.”
Katherine gave Trey a skeptical look. It was clear she thought there might be other reasons he was easy to convince.
“Dad believed me,” I said. “But it didn’t matter. He has a life. A family. Kids.”
I stopped, realizing how bitter my voice sounded, and waited a moment before going on. “Could you please tell me exactly what happened today that changed my entire life to the point that my own father doesn’t know who I am? To the point where my mother simply doesn’t exist?”
Katherine nodded. “I will do that, Kate. But I expect your friend needs to be getting home. It’s a school night, correct? We can talk about this afterward.”
“We can talk in front of Trey—” I began.
“No,” said Trey. “It’s okay, Kate—really. I do have school tomorrow and my dad will be looking for me.” I started to object, but I knew he was right. I just didn’t want to be alone. And I knew that I would feel very alone after he left, even with my grandmother and Connor nearby.
Katherine stood up, moving toward the kitchen. “It was nice to meet you, Trey. If you’d wait here a moment… I’m sure you incurred expenses driving to Delaware.”
“Not necessary, Mrs. Shaw. It was my pleasure.”
“You have my thanks then, Trey. Kate, I’ll go make you a cup of tea. You look like you could use it.”
“Walk me to the door?” Trey asked when Katherine had left the room.
I nodded and we stepped outside, onto the front porch. Trey pulled me into a hug, then stepped back and studied me closely. “Don’t look so glum.” He tucked a stray piece of hair back behind my ear and gave me a soft, quick kiss on the side of the mouth. “You get some sleep, okay? I have to go home and finish my trig homework.” He smiled. “Hey, there’s a bright side for you—no homework.”
“I don’t actually mind homework. Well, most homework.”
“Really?” he asked. “How do you feel about other people’s homework? I’m seeing great possibilities in this relationship.” I laughed and sat down on the wooden porch swing as Trey started down the steps. “Oh, wait… I don’t have your number. Will your grandmother sic the dog on me if I just come back to see you tomorrow?”
“If she does, I’m pretty sure the worst Daphne would do is lick you to death. I’m just… I guess I’m worried that something will happen—another shift—and you’ll forget I exist.” I could feel myself blushing. “I mean… I quite literally do not have another friend in the world right now.”
“Not a problem,” he said. “If your grandfather changes the world again, just find me at the school and take off a sock or something. I’ll see it vanish and you’ll have me eating out of your hand again in five minutes flat.”
And then he was gone. I stood on the porch and watched as his taillights receded down the street, thinking that, if he had to go home, it was actually quite nice to have someone exit in the normal, gradual way.
Katherine was waiting in the kitchen with a cup of herbal tea brewing on the table. “Are you hungry? There’s a pie in the fridge… cherry, I think… or I could make you a sandwich.”
I shook my head and sank into one of the chairs in the breakfast nook. I glanced around at the big kitchen where Dad had looked forward to cooking and was almost in tears again.
“I don’t think it’s entirely safe for us to be outside the house for the time being, at least not for an extended period.” She sat down opposite me. “I sent Connor out to the store, however, as soon as we realized what had happened. I can’t guarantee his taste, but there’s a nightgown and a change of clothes in your room that should fit you, along with a toothbrush and other necessities.”
I gave her a weak smile. “Thanks. It occurred to me on the way back from Delaware that I don’t even own a hairbrush.”
“We also placed one of the laptops in your room. It will take a few days to get all of the other financial details back in order, but the credit accounts are all in Connor’s name and they are apparently still active, so you can go online and have whatever you need delivered.”
I stared down at my tea. The scents of chamomile and lavender drifted up from the cup. “How did you know? I mean, I know you felt the temporal shift, but how did you know that Mom… Dad?”
“Connor has a program that monitors relevant information on the internet. He checked, as he’s done after every temporal shift, and Deborah…” Katherine paused for a moment, and her voice was soft when she continued. “Saul has taken both my daughters from me now, although I’m quite sure that Deborah just… doesn’t exist in this timeline. I can only hope that Prudence, wherever she is, is protected by a CHRONOS key.”
I took a sip of the tea, which was still quite hot. “So h
e’s killed you, right? At some point in time?”
“That’s the assumption we’re going on,” Katherine said, nodding. “The question, of course, is when and where?”
“That’s what Trey and I were saying in the car—”
Katherine broke in. “Do you really think it was wise to pull that young man into this problem, Kate?”
I waited a moment, measuring my words before I spoke. “Maybe not. But I didn’t have much time to stop and think today. I just met him, but to be honest, I trust him more than anyone else I know right now… including you.” I could tell Katherine was hurt by my words, but if we were going to make this work I had to be truthful.
My elbows were propped up on the table and I put my forehead into my hands, rubbing my closed eyes. Despite the nap in the car, I couldn’t remember ever feeling so utterly exhausted.
“I love you, Katherine,” I said as I looked back up at her. “I do. You’re the only family I have left now. Whatever you say I have to do; I’ll do it. I don’t see that I have an option, really. But… Mom’s gone. Dad… well, he’s someone else’s dad now. Charlayne… my other friends… I’m guessing they’ve never met me. I need a friend right now, if you want me to keep my sanity.”
Katherine’s lips tightened, but she nodded. “If you trust him, that’s enough for me.” She got to her feet. “Connor is in the library. Shall we go up and—”
“No,” I said. Katherine looked surprised, and I continued. “Tomorrow, first thing, I want to know the why behind all of this. And then we can move on to how you believe I can change it. But for now, I’m going to finish my tea and then I’m going up to bed. I can’t think anymore.”
I fell onto the bed immediately, hoping exhaustion would take me away as it had in the car. It was soon clear, however, that it would be a while before I could sleep.
To my amazement, Connor had picked out pajamas, jeans, shorts, a few shirts, and even underwear that I actually might have bought on my own. The jeans were a bit too large, but that was better than a pair that I couldn’t get into. The pajamas were a soft green flannel that might have been too warm in Dad’s poorly air-conditioned cottage, but they were just right in this new room. There was a selection of toiletries in a drugstore bag, along with a brush, toothbrush, and disposable razor. Also a bottle of Tylenol PM. The shampoo wasn’t my usual brand, but it smelled nice and he’d bought conditioner as well. Either Katherine had given Connor a list, or he had aspects to his personality that I wouldn’t have imagined.