“I don’t really know.”
He shook his head. “Just like your grandfather.” Millard ran tap water into a glass and brought it to him, and Dad reached out and took it, as though floating glasses weren’t at all unusual. I guess he really thought he was dreaming. “Well, goodnight,” he said and then stood up, steadied himself on the chair, and stumbled back into his bedroom. Stopping at the door, he turned to face me.
“Jake?”
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Be careful, okay?”
I nodded. He closed the door. A moment later I heard him fall into bed.
I sat down and rubbed my face. I didn’t know how to feel.
“Did we help?” Olive asked from her perch on the ceiling.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t think so. He’ll just wake up later thinking he dreamed all of you.”
“You could write a letter,” Millard suggested. “Tell him anything you like—it’s not as if he’ll be able to follow us.”
“I did write a letter. But it’s not proof.”
“Ah,” he replied. “Yes, I see your problem.”
“Nice problem to have,” said Olive. “Wish my mum and dad had loved me enough to worry when I left home.”
Emma reached up and squeezed her hand. Then she said, “I might have proof.”
She pulled a small wallet from the waistband of her dress and took out a snapshot. She handed it to me. It was a picture of her and my grandfather when my grandfather was young. All her attention was focused on him, but he seemed elsewhere. It was sad and beautiful and encapsulated what little I knew about their relationship.
“It was taken just before Abe left for the war,” Emma said. “Your dad’ll recognize me, won’t he?”
I smiled at her. “You look like you haven’t aged a day.”
“Marvelous!” said Millard. “There’s your proof.”
“Do you always keep this with you?” I asked, handing it back to her.
“Yes. But I don’t need it anymore.” She went to the table and took my pen and began to write on the back of the photo. “What’s your father’s name?”
“Franklin.”
When she finished writing, she gave it to me. I looked at both sides and then fished my letter from the trash, smoothed it, and left it on the table with the photo.
“Ready to go?” I said.
My friends were standing in the doorway, waiting for me.
“Only if you are,” Emma replied.
We set out for the ridge. At the spot near the crest where I always stopped to see how far I’d come, this time I kept walking. Sometimes it’s better not to look back.
When we reached the cairn, Olive patted the stones like a beloved old pet. “Goodbye, old loop,” she said. “You’ve been such a good loop, and we’ll miss you ever so much.” Emma squeezed her shoulder, and they both crouched down and went inside.
In the rear chamber, Emma held her flame to the wall and showed me something I’d never noticed before: a long list of dates and initials carved into the rocks. “It’s all the other times people have used this loop,” she explained. “All the other days the loop’s been looped.”
Peering at it, I made out a P.M. 3-2-1853 and a J.R.R. 1-4-1797 and a barely-legible X.J. 1580. Near the bottom were some strange markings I couldn’t decipher.
“Runic inscriptions,” Emma said. “Quite ancient.”
Millard searched through the gravel until he found a sharpened stone, and, using another stone as a hammer, he chipped an inscription of his own below the others. It read A.P. 3-9-1940.
“Who’s AP?” asked Olive.
“Alma Peregrine,” said Millard, and then he sighed. “It should be her carving this, not me.”
Olive ran her hand over the rough markings. “Do you think another ymbryne will come along to make a loop here someday?”
“I hope so,” he said. “I dearly hope so.”
*
We buried Victor. Bronwyn lifted his whole bed and carried it outside with Victor still in it, and with all the children assembled on the grass she pulled back the sheets and tucked him in, planting one last kiss on his forehead. We boys lifted the corners of his bed like pallbearers and walked him down into the crater that the bomb had made. Then all of us climbed out but Enoch, who took a clay man from his pocket and laid it gently on the boy’s chest.
“This is my very best man,” he said. “To keep you company.” The clay man sat up and Enoch pushed it back down with his thumb. The man rolled over with one arm under his head and seemed to go to sleep.