She didn’t know anything. She really didn’t.
“Etta…” he began. “That came out harsher than I meant it to be. I can see it in your face that you truly didn’t know—but it’s all I’ve ever known. I’ve had to live by it my whole life. If there’s a way around it, I want to hear what you think it is. Can you not see it? Can you not feel how badly I want you? I’m a selfish bastard, I’m worse than you’ll ever know, but I’ll answer to God or anyone else who tries to stand in our way so long as I know you’re safe. Tell me how to keep this—tell me the path forward. I beg you.”
She felt the tears thick in her throat, warm on her face. “You could come with me. I won’t lie to you and say my time is perfect, or that the country doesn’t get worse before it gets better, but those laws are gone.”
He seemed to consider this, rubbing his jaw. “What would I do there? How would I support myself? The one thing that I know, that I’ve worked for, would be unrecognizable. And is there a way to prove or earn citizenship?”
God—how would he? No Social Security number, no birth certificate…no passport. How had Mom done it? She could help him establish an identity, couldn’t she?
“Or would you, your mother, and I all have to keep traveling, struggling to stay one step ahead of the old man?”
“I’m not dismissing those questions, because they’re real and I’m not totally sure how to get around them,” she said, “but I’m willing to try. My mom did it. Travelers have clearly figured out some system. I feel like all you’re willing to see are the problems, and none of the benefits—medicine, for one thing. Education. You could attend school, choose a job for yourself.” She took a breath. “I’m not trying to play down how terrifying it would be to start over in a new era—”
“I’m not frightened,” he interrupted, only to soften his voice as he continued. “How could I be, knowing I had you there? I know you think I’m being obstinate.…I keep asking myself, what sort of joke is this that we’ve found one another, but all the while there’s no true way forward? There’s something unnatural in what we can do as travelers, and maybe this is a punishment for it.”
“Don’t say that,” she begged. “It’s complicated, I know, but it’s not impossible.”
“But what if it doesn’t work? What if we can’t sort everything out in your time? Your era is one small sliver of time compared to all eternity—there is only one small place you and I can be safe together. But even so, how long would it be before missing home and our loved ones became unbearable to one of us? It all ends the same way, with us breaking apart. Isn’t it better to have it done with now?”
“No,” she said stubbornly. “We could find a place. We could make our own.”
“I knew you’d say that. If you can’t accept those terms, then can you understand…I realize this may sound foolish to you, but I have my pride, Etta. I’ve bled and sweated and given myself to the making of my life. I could not bear being a burden to you. I want the whole of you, and would never give you less of me.”
Nicholas held her face, smoothing away the tears. The small smile he offered was meant to steal one from her, she thought, but it only broke her heart a little more.
“We have done the impossible,” he said, bringing his lips to the shell of her ear. “We have stolen what time we could, and it won’t ever be taken from us.”
“It’s not enough,” she whispered.
“I know, Etta, I know,” he said, already stepping back. “But this cannot be forever.”
His words continued to ring in her mind over and over again as she lay on her side on the bed and stared through the curtains, past the dust drifting down from the heavy canopy. One candle was left burning near where he had stretched out across the floor, his back to her; the flickering glow illuminated the long, strong lines of his silhouette. She knew by the cadence of his breathing that he wasn’t asleep, either.
They were afraid of what could happen; their sights were set on the future. And there would be time for that. There was work they had to do to maintain the timeline, and one last riddle to solve. But she wondered if, in moving outside of the natural flow of time, they had forgotten the most crucial point of life—that it wasn’t meant to be lived for the past, or even the future, but for each present moment.
Etta had lived through a sea battle. She’d survived the scheming of old, power-hungry men; the Blitz; a tiger; a cobra; and a gunshot—and she was denying herself this, out of fear that it might hurt later?
What would hurt worse: the regret that she tried, or the regret that she didn’t?