“I…” She looked at the men around the table. Ralph, her oldest friend, was beaming at her. Johns Hopkins gave her thumbs up. Then there was Theo, his eyes glowing with love and admiration.
She lifted her pint. “To Rover One, wherever you may be. You cleared the path for us so we could follow in your footsteps.”
And paid the ultimate price.
When the cheers died down, she turned to the Memorial section. “To Christopher Stone and all the others who’ve died on this journey. A Rover is eternal, forever traveling through time. Someday we’ll all be there with him. Until then…” She blinked away tears. “We miss you, Chris.”
There was absolute silence for a few seconds.
“Tales!” someone called. “Tell us a tale!”
It was tradition. No one was truly gone if there was a story to be told.
A man stood. “I remember my first trip with Defoe. He kept me from being speared by a tribesman in New Guinea and becoming a shrunken head. He never let me forget it.”
The tables were pounded in approval.
Another rose, a young fellow with sideburns. “My first run was with Chris Stone. He taught me how not to get mugged in 1970 New York.”
So it went, tale after tale, like a verbal wake. Cynda sank into her seat, a myriad of emotions flowing through her.
Theo looked wistful. He leaned close. “Just remember, I will be waiting for you at the end of every journey.”
He was saying he understood what it meant to be a Rover and would not deny her that freedom.
Cynda’s heart melted and she leaned over and kissed him again, touching his cheek fondly. “Even better, come with me.”
“What?”
“Why not? You’re in First Place. You don’t want some youngster like Hopkins kicking you out of that. Come with me. There’s a lot to see.”
“I can’t, not with the—”
“Fulham will watch over things. He’s very good at it.”
“But—”
“You could go anywhere and meet anyone,” she said, throwing bait under his nose. “Well, I’d skip the lunatics and the dictators. They’re never any fun.”
He looked up to his name on the board. She could hear the wheels turning. “Anyone?”
She unveiled the ultimate prize. “Even…da Vinci.”
His mouth fell open.
“Oh, that’s not playing fair,” her blue delusion complained, crawling out from underneath a bar napkin. “You know he’s nuts about Leo.”
All is fair in love and war.
She’d seen the books in Theo’s library, the drawings on his office walls that competed for room with all the Oriental watercolors. Every man had a soft spot and Leonardo was evidently his.
“I hear he’s a blast,” she added, upping the ante. “Before we go, we’ll have to work on your Latin.”
There was a lengthy pause. “We’ll study together,” Theo decided. “We can start now.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, earning them some harassment from both the spider and Ralph.
Then he whispered into her ear, “Te amo.”
That one she did know.