17
But nothing happened. Trey reached down and yanked my medallion out of Simon’s hand. “Are you okay?” he asked. He wedged the tire iron under his foot and leaned forward to put the medallion back around my neck. “Kate?”
I nodded, still unable to pull in a full breath, much less speak. Simon groaned as Trey scooped me into his arms and carried me to the porch. His jaw was tight as he turned back toward Simon and, from his expression, I’m pretty sure that the game plan was to grab the tire iron and finish the bastard off. If that was Trey’s intent, however, he never got the chance. Simon was still sprawled on the lawn, but his hand reached up for his medallion and before Trey had moved more than a few steps, he was gone.
Trey stared at the spot where Simon had been for several seconds and then turned back to me. He looked stunned. “Did he hurt you?”
I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes. Trey sat down beside me, pulling me close. I breathed in his scent as I tried to fight back the tears. “Katherine…”
“I know. I remembered my lit book was on the coffee table—I was just getting out of the car, when she…” He paused, shaking his head in disbelief. “That’s when I went back for the tire iron.”
I glanced toward the curb. The bumper of Trey’s car was just visible beyond the hedge. “I didn’t even hear you pull up.”
Trey shrugged. “Daphne’s racket provided good cover. Thankfully he didn’t hear me either.” He pressed his lips against my hair and we sat there for a moment, trying to process the past few minutes. “I just don’t understand why Katherine didn’t wait—I know she saw me drive up.”
The porch light dimmed again, then brightened briefly just before the bulb popped, causing both of us to jump to our feet. “Remind me to ask Connor where the lightbulbs are,” I said in a small voice.
Trey nodded. “Yeah. And now that you mention it, where exactly is Connor?”
I don’t know. I saw Katherine signal to him as she was coming out the door. Maybe we should go and check on him?”
I opened the door and immediately saw Daphne and Connor sitting at the top of the stairs. Connor’s head was in his hands and Daphne’s nose lay between her paws—a perfect study in dejection. They both looked up at the sound of the door, a confused expression spreading over Connor’s face. “Kate? I thought—oh, thank God! I thought both of you—I mean, I saw Katherine… go… and when I looked back through the library window you were gone, too.”
“If you saw Kate trying to fight that guy off, why didn’t you try to help her?” Trey asked. Connor had started down the stairs but paused at the anger in Trey’s voice. “Or Katherine? Where the hell were you?”
I put my hand on Trey’s arm, shaking my head softly. “It’s all right, Trey. Katherine told him to go up to the library. Right, Connor?”
Connor nodded, continuing down the stairs with Daphne beside him. “We could see through the peephole that you were outside the perimeter. She thought that trying to expand the safe zone with the third medallion was our best chance. But it didn’t work. I still haven’t figured out how to keep the damned thing from overloading the system.”
I remembered the porch light dimming as I fought with Simon, then the surge popping the bulb a few minutes later. I gave Connor a sad smile. “It did work, briefly. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here. It just wasn’t in time for Katherine…”
We sat down in the living room. I curled against Trey on the sofa. I was suddenly freezing and guessed that it was probably from shock. All of us, even Daphne, seemed dazed and the room was still for several minutes.
Finally, I broke the silence. “Can I fix this? I mean, if I succeed in stopping her murder at the fair, will Katherine be here when I get back?”
Connor gave me an uncertain look, but he nodded. “I think so. I mean, if she makes it to 1969, to New York, then everything from that point unfolds as it did before. She’d still exist in this timeline, so it really wouldn’t matter whether she was holding the CHRONOS key.”
“Then we do this. As soon as possible. There are just a few other things we need to figure out—it shouldn’t take more than a couple hours.”
To my surprise, Connor agreed. “You’re probably right. I think the tricky part for you will be getting Katherine’s attention without tipping her off about Saul.”
“But why shouldn’t Kate tell her about Saul?” Trey interjected. “Isn’t he the one trying to kill her?”
“Not directly,” Connor said. “Someone else will be doing the dirty work for him. Saul can’t use the medallion any more than Katherine could. The version of Saul that’s there with her in 1893… he’s rotten to the core, I’m sure, but he hasn’t decided to kill her yet. And how inclined do you think Katherine is going to be to continue a relationship with him if she finds out his true nature?”
“It bugs me, too,” I said. “Even though I know I have to keep quiet, part of me wants to warn her to run away, fast—I saw what Saul did to her face that night.” Connor looked up, surprise and anger in his eyes, and I realized that Katherine might not have told him exactly how abusive Saul could be. “But if I do that,” I continued, “it increases the chance that everything changes. No Mom—at least not one born in 1970—no me. And a lot of other differences in the timeline, too. So I can’t tell her the full truth—just enough to prevent her murder.”
“And then what?” Trey said. “Don’t you think he’ll try again—some other trip, some other day?”
“One step at a time,” I said. “We need Katherine back. Eventually, we’ll have to find a way to stop Saul—to prevent the rise of Cyrist International—and I’ll be looking for any clues I can find on how to do it on this trip. But if I think too much about that, I’ll never be able to focus on what’s in front of me right this minute.”
“So even when this is over, you’re still in danger. How am I supposed to be okay with that?”
It was pretty clear that our conversation was headed down a more personal path, so I took Trey’s hand and motioned toward the stairs. Connor’s eyes were also red and watery, and he was running his hand through Daphne’s fur in an absentminded way. I suspected that he would appreciate some personal space to deal with his own emotions. He was closer to Katherine than I was and he was even more alone now. My heart went out to him and I squeezed his shoulder as we walked past. “Get some rest, okay, Connor? We’ll get up early tomorrow and start with clear heads.”
Trey and I went upstairs to my room and sat down on the couch by the window. The moon, nearly full, was just visible through the leaves. I flipped my legs across Trey’s lap, propping my bare feet on the sofa so that I could look at him, and traced the line of his clenched jaw with my fingers. Then I moved closer and kissed the side of his neck, tracing a small circle with my tongue—something that I knew, from recent experience, drove him just a little bit crazy. His arm tightened around me.
“I don’t have a choice here, Trey,” I said softly. “You know that, right? I’ll be as careful as I can be—I promise.”
He was silent for a moment. “I just feel… trapped, Kate. Not by you, no, just the whole damned situation. You’re doing something impossibly dangerous and I can’t help you.”
I gave a slightly exasperated sigh. “Trey, you just cracked Simon’s skull with a tire iron.” I glanced down at my Self-Rescuing Princess T-shirt. “I didn’t exactly live up to the title this time, did I? If you hadn’t been there, I’d either be dead, or worse, he’d still have his smelly hands all over me.” Thinking about Simon’s arm against my bare skin made me shudder, and I felt Trey’s body stiffen as well.
I reached up and kissed him again, a long, slow kiss to wipe away that memory for both of us. “Thank you.”
Trey relaxed a bit, and then shook his head. His right hand was resting on my feet, and his thumb traced a nervous pattern across my toenails, which were painted a deep crimson. “The thing that’s really killing me, Kate, is that I’m not going to know whether you fail or succeed. Tomorrow, when you make the jump, this… us… we’re over, right?” He gave a bitter laugh. “Whether you save Katherine or you’re both killed in the process, I’ll just return to some version of my life before. At Briar Hill or someplace else, but either way, I won’t remember you—I won’t remember that I love you.”
Neither of us had said it before, and my heart surged—despite everything, it was wonderful to have it out there, in the open, confessed. “I love you, too, Trey.” He broke into a huge smile and then misery washed over his face again.
“When did you figure it out?” I asked. “I mean, not that you… love me, but…”
He shrugged. “Something in Katherine’s expression the other night, at your birthday party, kept eating at me. Then today, as I was driving away, it sort of clicked into place. I turned the car around before I even remembered the stupid textbook.”
“I wasn’t as sharp,” I said. “Katherine had to spell it out for me in big block letters. And I still tried to argue with her—why couldn’t you be here? Why couldn’t we let you remember?”
“And why can’t I?” he asked, a bit of hope in his voice. “I can help Connor—you’re one person short now.”
I shook my head. “CHRONOS regulations, for one thing. We’re trying to fix the timeline and that would be yet another alteration.”
“Yeah, well, screw CHRONOS regulations.”
“That’s what I said,” I continued, keenly aware of the role reversal. Here I was repeating Katherine’s arguments with Trey’s face and voice reflecting the very same emotions I’d felt—anger, denial, defiance.
“But the bigger issue is that it could… hurt you, Trey.” I stared down at his hand, fingers laced through my own. “You remember when you saw the pictures disappear, right? That was your brain trying to reconcile two very small conflicting versions of reality. Multiply that thousands of times over if you stayed here tomorrow. You’d have to leave the protective barrier at some point, and Katherine doesn’t know what it might do to you—mentally, emotionally.”
“I don’t care,” he said.
“Maybe not. But I do.”
We stared at each other for a while, seeing whose stubborn look would last the longest. Mine broke first, and I began crying. “I can’t focus on what I have to do, Trey, if I’m worried that you’re going to be hurt.”
“And now you know how I feel. Damn it, Kate…” Tears were in his eyes and he held me for a long moment before speaking again. “Will you answer one question for me?”
I nodded.
“Who is Kiernan?” My face flushed, and I didn’t respond. “I mean, I know he’s Connor’s great-granddad or whatever—the guy he showed me in the two photographs. But Simon was saying something to Katherine when I first pulled up—and then again when he was… on top of you. Exactly who is Kiernan to you, Kate?”
“He’s no one to me, Trey.” A small voice inside called me a liar, but I continued. I was determined to tell Trey as much of the truth as I could—as much as I understood, at any rate. “Kiernan told me to run that day on the Metro. He almost certainly saved my life when he did. And I’ve… seen his image in the medallion. He says we knew each other, in some other timeline.”
Oh, and he kissed me, I thought, but didn’t add, since that fact seemed likely to make Trey feel worse, rather than better. And I hadn’t asked Kiernan to kiss me. Enjoyed, yes. Requested, no.
“He knew you well enough to stake a claim, from the sound of it.” Trey’s voice was bitter and hurt. “Simon said Saul would never let Kiernan have you now…”
I pulled his face toward mine and stared hard into his eyes. “Whoever Kiernan knew in that version of the timeline, Trey, it wasn’t me. Neither Saul Rand nor Simon will be deciding who has me. I make that choice. I decide the person I love, the person I want. No one else.”
I pulled my body closer to his and slipped my fingers inside his shirt, running my hand against his chest. “And I love you, Trey. I want you.” I hesitated, looking for the right words. “I’ve never… with anyone… but I want you…”
Then his mouth was on mine, hard and hungry. His hands moved up the side of my body and I arched reflexively toward him. For several minutes, there was nothing else in the world, just the two of us, his body against mine—and then he broke away and sat up, staring down at the carpet.
“What’s wrong?” I tried to pull him back toward me, but he shook his head.
I gave him a weak little smile. “Daphne’s not here. No chaperone, see?”
He didn’t respond. I was now thoroughly embarrassed and kicking myself for not letting him make the all-important first move. Biting my lower lip to keep it from shaking, I pulled away to the far end of the sofa and hugged my knees, staring at a different spot on the carpet.
After a moment, I felt his hand running gently down the side of my leg. I didn’t look up.
“Kate. Kate? Look at me. Please.” A tear was making its way down my cheek, the cheek he couldn’t see. I closed my eyes tight, hoping my other eye wouldn’t turn traitor as well. He got off the couch and knelt on the floor in front of me, brushing the tear away with the pad of his thumb. “Would you just look at me, please?”
I glanced up and he continued. “You have to know beyond any doubt how badly I want you.” He chuckled softly. “I mean, really Kate, could it be any more obvious?”
I didn’t answer, even though I knew he was right.
“At this very minute,” he said, staring into my eyes, “there is nothing on this earth that I want more than you. But we both know that tomorrow or the next day, my memory of this night will be gone. You might remember, but I won’t. And when we make love for the first time, Kate, that’s a memory I want to keep.”
Trey didn’t leave until nearly midnight. I don’t know if he ever managed to write the Huxley essay. Probably not. He skipped most of his classes the next day, arriving on the doorstep just after noon with lunch from O’Malley’s—lots of onion rings and three obscenely large sandwiches. He hadn’t shaved and he didn’t look like he had slept any more than I had.
“Ditching school again, Mr. Coleman?” I asked with a soft smile.
“My girlfriend is about to change this entire timeline. I can’t imagine any scenario in which it actually matters that I left after my first class.”
He had a point.
“What about your parents? Estella?”
“I told them that your grandmother took a turn for the worse yesterday, and that I needed to be with you. Neither of which is a lie,” he added. “I expect the flowers my dad asked me to order will be here shortly.”
We sat down to eat with Connor, who, despite his great love for corned beef on rye, didn’t seem to have much appetite. The three of us reviewed the game plan as we finished lunch. “Try your best to follow her,” Connor said, “but you also need to keep plan B as an option, in case Katherine disappears into the crowd. Because she probably will.”
Connor was right. The fair attracted an average of 120,000 visitors per day between the time it opened in May and the time it closed at the end of October. That’s about three times as many people as Disney World handles each day, and the Exposition was held on a much smaller plot of land. The odds of me being able to keep her in sight were pretty slim.
“I’ll try to keep up with her,” I said. “If I can’t, she’ll be with the mayor’s group at the Ferris wheel at ten fifteen, and after lunch she’ll be downtown at the place where they held all the big meetings during the Expo—the one that’s the Art Institute now.”
“Right,” Connor said. “They called it the Auxiliary Building. But that’s going to mean navigating Chicago’s public transit. I know you’ve read CHRONOS notes on the era, but I’d feel a lot better if you stayed close to a stable point. If worse comes to worst, you can come back here and then take another stab at it.”
He was right—we could roll the dice more than once. If I lost sight of Katherine entirely and simply couldn’t find her, I could always return to the stable point and give it another try. A second jump would, however, mean multiple versions of myself walking around the fair, which would complicate things. I had a bad gut feeling about taking too long to accomplish this anyway, and both Connor and Trey felt the same. Katherine’s house was relatively well protected by an alarm service, but we were totally unarmed. As much as I hate guns, it wasn’t too comforting that Simon and whatever other minions of Saul’s had weapons and we didn’t. And, as Trey’s dad had noted, Cyrists now had friends in very high places.
Connor and I had spent the better part of the morning going over Katherine’s diary entries for the October 28th jump, gathering what details we could about her hotel and her itinerary on that trip. By the time Trey arrived, we’d had to admit defeat on one count—Katherine had failed to mention the hotel specifically, other than noting that it was near the fair. She had stayed at the Palmer House on the first jump for those dates, but that information wasn’t much help since it was the slightly later version of Katherine who was targeted. There were several other bits of info that would have been really nice to know, and I mentally kicked myself for not having asked these obvious questions when Katherine was around to answer.
As I picked at my pastrami, it occurred to me that I could just make a jump back to the previous day and ask Katherine, but Connor quickly nixed that plan. “Can you honestly tell me you won’t warn her?” he asked. “That you won’t do something to ensure she doesn’t walk out that door when Simon grabs you?”
I considered lying, but I finally went with the truth. “No, Connor—but so what? Why shouldn’t I warn her? Or warn myself not to go outside? It’s not like this is such a wonderful version of the timeline that it couldn’t do with a bit of alteration, and I’m willing to risk having some out-of-sync memories.”
Connor shook his head angrily. “Why in hell do you think she sent me upstairs, Kate? Our first priority has to be protecting you. No matter what. As much as it tore me apart to see Katherine vanish, at least I knew it was reversible—well, I knew it was reversible once you walked in the door, at any rate,” he continued, his voice softening. “That’s my point. Say we stop what happened yesterday—they’ll almost certainly just attack the house at that point. If we change something and Katherine survives, but you don’t—well, there are no mulligans without you, Kate. Then Katherine dies, Rand wins, and we just get to sit back and see what he does with the world.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what a mulligan was, but Trey was nodding. “Okay—that explains why she gave Simon the medallion even though she clearly saw me driving up. There was still a risk that he would pull your CHRONOS key before I could reach him. She was buying Connor some extra time to extend the barrier.”
“And buying you some extra time to grab a weapon, although I don’t know if she realized that,” Connor added. “I just hope that slimy bastard is in a world of pain today.”
The floral arrangement from Trey’s dad arrived later in the afternoon. It was beautiful—white lilies, lavender roses, and purple alstroemeria, with clusters of tiny white baby’s breath. I hoped Katherine would eventually see it, and I was glad that there would, at least within this house, be some reminders of my relationship with Trey. Even though every little memento would hurt like hell, that still seemed better than what he was facing—no memories at all.
The flowers were followed within minutes by the delivery of a large hatbox. It contained a rather elaborate green bonnet, which I’d quite liked the idea of traveling without. So with the last of my costume in hand, we set a firm departure time of 6 P.M. and the three of us began final preparations for my jump.
An emerald-green parasol lay on the bed, next to the black handbag that Katherine had carried on her last CHRONOS trip. The bag was about forty years out of fashion for a trip to 1893, but it would have to do, as it contained several hidden pockets that would come in handy. I couldn’t carry luggage, since I would emerge within the fairgrounds and there were no hotels on the premises. So the purse was stuffed with my spending money (all pre-1893, a coin collector’s dream), one of the diaries, a vintage map of the Exposition, a hairbrush, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a tiny first-aid kit, a flask of water, and four energy bars.
Connor’s inner Katherine had balked at several items in the bag, noting correctly that they were not historically appropriate, but this wasn’t a typical research mission and I might not be able to stand in line for hours to get food or drink. I cut several paper bags from Whole Foods into rectangles so that I could wrap the energy bars in plain brown paper—they’d probably get hard, but at least I wouldn’t starve. And I wasn’t traveling without a toothbrush if I might have to stay overnight, even if that toothbrush was made of sparkly pink plastic.
At a few minutes after five, I went into the bathroom to change into my undergarments. Trey waited outside so that he could help me lace the corset. I felt a bit awkward when I walked back into the bedroom, even though far more of my body was exposed by the shorts and tank tops I usually wore than by the yards of white silk and lace in which I was now enveloped.
He raised an appreciative eyebrow and smiled as he took me by the shoulders, then turned me around to begin pulling the laces together. He didn’t cinch it as tightly as Katherine had, but I thought it was tight enough that the dress would fit. When he was done with the laces, he lifted my hair and pushed it over one shoulder, pressing his lips against the nape of my neck and adding several more very gentle kisses down my back until he reached the lace edge of the camisole. His breath was warm against my skin and I locked my knees to keep from melting into a gooey puddle on the floor.
“Promise me,” Trey said, very softly, as he turned me around to face him, “that one day, I will have the pleasure of unlacing this contraption. I can see why you’re not too happy with it, but there is something to be said for opening a gift very slowly.”
I smiled up at him with a hopeful look. “You could just unlace it now?”
“No can do, pretty girl,” he said, shaking his head. He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled me onto his lap. “You have a job to finish. First, you’re going to stay away from tall, dark strangers at the fair, especially ones who time travel.” I blushed a bit at the veiled reference to Kiernan, but nodded. “I’d also prefer that you stay away from the guy who ran that World’s Fair Hotel.”
“No worries there,” I said. “I’m going to have enough on my hands trying to prevent one murder, without taking on a serial killer. If I have to stay overnight, I’ll follow Katherine’s lead and catch a cab to the Palmer House.”
“Okay—next, you’re going to save Katherine and come right back here. And finally, you’re going to find me. That shouldn’t be too hard, even if I’m not at Briar Hill.”
I held back the tears that were burning my eyes. “It won’t matter, Trey. You won’t know me.”
“Correct,” he said, and then flashed me a big grin.
“Then why are you smiling?”
“Because I know somethin’ you don’ know.”
“And what is that?” My lips twitched, both at the Princess Bride reference and at the fact that I’d walked straight into his joke. “I already know you’re not left-handed.”
“It comes to this,” he continued, the smile fading but never quite leaving his eyes. “I’ve been thinking pretty hard about the weeks since we met and I’m almost certain that I fell in love with you the moment you opened your eyes, right there on the floor in trig class. So does it really matter? You do what you have to do in 1893—I’m not even going to think about the possibility of you failing, because you won’t fail—and then you find me.”
“And exactly what am I supposed to say when I find you, Trey Coleman?”
He laughed. “Don’t say anything. Or say, ‘Wrong class,’ like you did the first time. It won’t make a bit of difference what you say. Smile at me, flip me onto my back with one of your wicked ninja moves, and then kiss me—even if I forget every single thing about you, I’m a guy, Kate. Believe me, I’m not going to push you away.”
“Maybe not… but you’ll think I’m crazy.”
He shrugged and kissed my nose. “Thought you were crazy that first day, too, but I’m still here, right?”
I couldn’t argue with that, and even if I’d had a viable argument, I couldn’t bear the thought of taking the little glimmer of hope from his eyes.
The spare CHRONOS medallion was shining, bright and blue, on the nightstand. I tucked it into the lined, hidden pocket near the bottom of my petticoat, and then Trey helped me into the dark green dress and the annoying boots. We even managed to get my hair into an orderly, if not ornate, chignon and I arranged the bonnet on top.
It looked a bit ridiculous to me.
Trey, of course, said that I looked perfect—although something in his eyes told me he was still envisioning me in the white corset and petticoats that he knew were underneath. He fastened the bracelet that Katherine had given me around my wrist. The charm matched the dress perfectly—the ivory lace and green silk echoing the hues of the pearls and jade that formed the hourglass.
Connor was sitting in the kitchen when we came downstairs. He had been looking more and more uneasy about the entire jump as the day progressed. Judging from his expression when we walked in, I suspected that he had a full list of last-minute concerns to tick off. He glanced at the outfit and nodded once, however, which seemed to mean that I passed inspection, and then he turned toward Trey.
“Do you mind if Kate and I talk… privately? For just a moment? I hate to ask, but…”
Trey shook his head, although he looked a bit concerned. “No problem, Connor. Daphne’s on the patio. We’ll toss the Frisbee for a while.” He leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and then headed out the back door.
Connor watched him as he walked out. “He seems in a better mood than last night.”
“I guess. What’s up?” Connor didn’t answer for a moment. I don’t know if he expected some private confession from me about why Trey’s mood had improved, but I just raised an eyebrow and waited until he finally spoke.
“You don’t have to do this, Kate. We’ll find another way. You’re taking an awful risk and it just doesn’t seem… right, to let you go.”
I smiled at him and walked over to the coffeepot. It was still warm, so I poured the remainder into a mug. “If you were going to go all protective on me, Connor, couldn’t you have done it before we buttoned up these horrid shoes? And the hair? And—”
“I’m serious, Kate.”
I sat down beside him and squeezed his hand. “I know you are, Connor. But what choice do we have, really? I’m not willing to give up my entire family.”
He motioned toward the backyard with his head. “And what about Trey? It’s pretty obvious how you feel, Kate—and he’s been head over heels since the first day you dragged him in the door. Are you willing to give him up?”
Having spent half the day either crying or fighting down tears, I wasn’t a bit surprised to feel them rising to the surface again. “Again, do I have a choice, Connor? And maybe Trey is right. He’s convinced himself that this won’t matter—that I’ll find him and we’ll be together. I’ll just have a few memories that he doesn’t.”
“I’m not trying to make things harder on you, Kate, it’s just—” He broke off and looked down at the table, his thumbnail tracing a groove in the wood along the edge. “Katherine tell you about my kids?”
I nodded.
“I’ve always wished I had known what was coming—even if I couldn’t prevent it, I could have prepared, said good-bye, you know?” He gave me a rueful smile. “But I didn’t get the option.”
He sighed and pulled an envelope out of his pocket. “Don’t get mad at Trey—all he did was give him the address—he doesn’t even know this arrived. It was Katherine’s decision not to show it to you—said she didn’t see the point in upsetting you. She was probably right, but… maybe you should know…” He pushed the letter toward me.
It was typewritten, but I recognized the signature at the bottom instantly.
Kate,
I remembered the name Briar Hill from the ID you showed me. I didn’t remember your friend’s last name, but fortunately there was only one Trey and one of the math teachers at Briar Hill located him for me. Trey gave me your address, but made it crystal clear that I’d better not hurt you again.
I never meant to hurt you at all, Kate. I hope you can understand my reaction. A lot of what you told me seems too incredible to believe, but I am convinced that you’re my daughter or at least the daughter I would have had, if I’d ever known your mother.
If you decide that this timeline is where you belong, please call me. Do you need help? Do you need money, a place to stay? I want to know you—at the very least, maybe we can be friends?
Please call. Or write. I don’t know how I’ll explain this to Emily or the boys, but we’ll find a way to make it work.
By the time I reached the end, tears were pouring down my face in a steady stream. At the bottom, I could see where he’d started to sign Harry, but he’d crossed it out. Instead, he had added the same signature I’d seen at the bottom of every birthday card, postcard, and note he’d ever written to me—Dad.
Connor looked uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Kate. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to show you… I just…”
I could hear Trey laughing in the backyard, telling Daphne she’d made a good catch. Part of me wanted to view the letter as an omen, a sign that I should reconsider. But I shook my head.
“No, Connor, you were right to show me. Thank you. It makes me feel good to know for certain that my dad is a good person in any timeline. I kind of knew it already—I could tell he wasn’t trying to hurt me—but it’s nice to see that he wants to… be there for me, at least as much as he can be.”
I leaned back in my chair and shook my head. “But this letter doesn’t change anything, Connor—we both know that. Even if Saul were to back off and wasn’t actively trying to kill me, I’d have to wear a medallion every time I walked out the door. So would you. My mom would still be gone and Katherine—your kids, too. And Harry still wouldn’t be my dad. My biological father, yeah—but not my dad. I’ll have all of my memories, but he…”
Connor glanced toward the door, and then quickly looked down at his feet. He didn’t say anything, but I could follow his train of thought—the same would be true of my relationship with Trey.
“I know, Connor—but I’ve had a month with Trey and nearly seventeen years with Dad. And Trey seems convinced that all I have to do is kiss him and we’ll magically be… us again.”
“Princess Charming, I presume?” He gave me a halfhearted grin. “The only problem is that you seem less convinced on that point than Trey.”
“Yeah, but letting him know that isn’t going to make it any easier on either of us, is it?” I glanced at the clock. Five-forty-eight. The six o’clock deadline was obviously fluid—I’d be arriving early on the morning of October 28th, 1893, no matter what time it happened to be when I left the library. But every minute I waited made it more likely that I would lose my nerve.
“I’ll meet you in the library in ten minutes, okay?” I gave him a shaky smile and walked to the back door, tucking the letter into my pocket.
Trey was seated on the low stone wall surrounding the patio, with his back to me. Daphne lay at his feet, happily chewing on the edge of her neon green Frisbee. The late-afternoon sun was low in the sky, and combined with the few remaining tears in my eyes, it created a soft golden aura around him. I stood there for a minute, just looking at him, wanting to cement this in my memory. He turned toward me and smiled, and I had to fight back a fresh wave of tears.
I bent down and called Daphne to me, delaying the moment when I’d need to look up at Trey. “You take care of Connor for a little while, okay, girl? I’m going to go get Katherine.” The good-bye was more for me than for Daphne, since from her perspective, if everything worked out as planned, I’d only be gone a matter of minutes. She lifted her head and sniffed at my cheeks where the tears had been, giving me a soft lick before she went back to gnawing on the toy.
“What was that about?” Trey said, motioning his head toward the kitchen.
I sat down beside him and pulled the letter out of my pocket. He started to speak when he finished reading, but I smiled gently at him and shook my head. “It’s okay, Trey. I’m glad I read it, although I’m still sorry that I interrupted his life. He seemed so happy there—but you know, he’s happy with Sara, too. And with me.”
I took his hand and laced my fingers through his. “And we don’t know how any of this works; Katherine said that even in her era there was this huge debate about whether changing something would just spin off a new timeline… whether there could be an infinite number of different timelines all coexisting on separate planes. She said that maybe this timeline goes on, too, somehow, and some version of my dad will still be—”
“No,” Trey interrupted, his voice resolute. “No. I don’t believe that. This timeline ends.” I realized with a pang that while the infinite-planes-of-existence theory had sounded pretty good to me, since this version of Dad and my two little half brothers might still exist in some cosmic sense, it had a very different meaning for Trey.
He shook his head, squeezing my hand tightly. “I don’t want an infinite number of lives on different planes if even one of them means I’m not with you. You’re going back to fix this reality, to make it right again so that we can be together. And it will be okay. Estella always tells me that you have to have faith to get through life—and I’m not sure I have the type of faith she’s talking about, but I have faith in you. In us.”
He pulled me to my feet and held me a few inches away, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “What was it Westley said to Buttercup? ‘This is true love—you think this happens every day?’”
“I just wish you were going to be there with me in this particular Fire Swamp.”
“Me too,” he admitted. “But you can do this. I know you can.”
His optimism wavered a bit when we were saying a final good-bye at the front door. There were tears in his eyes when he kissed me. “I love you, Kate. Just find me, okay?” And then he was gone. I rested my forehead against the door, half hoping he would open it again and give me an excuse to change my mind.
After a moment, I heard his car start and pull away. Connor came up behind me and squeezed my shoulders. “Come on, girl. If we’re going to do this thing, might as well get it over with.”
I gave him a shaky grin. “Easy for you to say. Two minutes after I leave, you’ll know if I succeeded. I’m the one who’s going to have to chase Katherine around Chicago all day.”
“You know I’d switch places…” he began.
“I know, Connor,” I said. “Just teasing. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be…”
So at exactly 5:58 P.M. I was in the library, my parasol and handbag in one hand and the CHRONOS key in the other. Daphne was barking downstairs in the kitchen, probably at her nemesis the squirrel, and Trey was in his car, headed home. Connor was in front of me, looking like he was about to change his mind again and tell me we’d find some other way. I leaned forward and gave him a kiss on the cheek and then, without pausing to think further, locked in the destination and closed my eyes.