She wondered, what if she or Blake could warn them of what would happen next, and change the course of their destinies? Could one do that a century later? They were meeting in a neutral space in time. And did Josiah have a choice then? What if he didn’t go to war? His family would have been proud of him when he went. And he would have been considered a coward and a disgrace if he had shirked his responsibility and stayed home. There seemed to be no way to alter the course fate had designed for them, but it was so painful knowing what would come and the losses that would occur. And a hundred years later, no matter what Sybil tried to warn them of, they would all be dead anyway. As far as Sybil knew, the only one who could be alive now was Samuel Saint Martin, Lili’s son, and any children he might have. The Butterfields by name had all died out, and their bloodline had continued somewhere in France.
Sybil was still thinking about it when she decided to try to dine with the Butterfields again that night. Blake and the children came home to find their evening clothes laid out on their beds, where Sybil had left them that afternoon, and when she walked into Charlie’s room to find something for him to wear to dinner, like a blazer and gray slacks, she saw Magnus there, playing marbles with her son. She gave a start, and then all three of them laughed. She was happy to meet Magnus again, despite his dirty face and grimy hands. He looked like he’d been playing in the garden all afternoon.
“What are you two up to?” she asked, smiling at both boys and sitting down on Charlie’s bed, as though Magnus were any ordinary friend.
“He’s teaching me to play marbles,” Charlie said happily, delighted with the promised visit. Magnus had said the night before at dinner that he would come to play with him the next day, and Sybil was pleased to see that he had. There was a bond between the two families now that even time could not displace. “I’m going to show him my videogames after this.” Sybil couldn’t help wondering how that would work. How would Magnus adapt to games that were a hundred years ahead of his time? It was an interesting turn of events.
Alicia wandered into the room with milk and cookies for Charlie, while Sybil watched them, and she asked her for a glass of milk and cookies for herself as well. Alicia looked surprised and returned with them a few minutes later. As soon as she left the room, Sybil handed them to Magnus, and he guzzled the milk and ate the cookies like any normal playmate of Charlie’s. There was nothing ghostly about him. But Alicia had been totally unaware of him and didn’t see him, which Sybil found interesting too.
Charlie asked him about the secret passages in the house, but Magnus said he didn’t know where they were, if there were any.
She took out Charlie’s blazer, gray slacks, and a shirt and navy tie and laid them on the bed, as the boys looked at her quizzically.
“What’s that for?” Charlie asked her. It wasn’t Christmas or Thanksgiving. “Why do I have to get dressed up?”
“I thought we’d try to have dinner with Magnus’s family tonight,” she said easily, and Magnus grinned happily.
“My grandma’s in a really bad mood, though,” he warned them. “Uncle Angus’s dog, Rupert, ate her embroidery this morning, and she said she was going to boil him for dinner. I don’t think she really will, though. She usually likes him, but she was really mad about her embroidery. She was making napkins for my mother, and he ate them all. And she said Uncle Angus playing the bagpipes gave her a sick headache.” He used the terms of his time to refer to common ailments, and it reminded Sybil of Victorian novels she had loved to read when she was young. “He plays really bad,” he said about his great-uncle, and all three of them laughed. “My mother says he gives her a headache too.”
Sybil left them to their games then, as Charlie started to introduce Magnus to his PlayStation, and Magnus was fascinated by the intricacy of it. The two boys were squealing with excitement and shouting when she moved on to Caroline’s room, and ran into Alicia in the hall.
“Is he all right?” She looked concerned about the violent noises emanating from his room. She didn’t know the children yet, but it didn’t sound right to her.
“He’s fine. He just gets a little overexcited when he plays with his PlayStation. He just got a new one for Christmas.” She wondered if she should tell her that he had an imaginary friend, in case she heard him talking to Magnus, but she decided not to mention it yet.
She laid Caroline’s only long dress out on her bed, they had bought the dress when her best friend’s mother remarried in New York six months before. Sybil wanted her family to look respectable for the Butterfields that night, to make up for how unsuitably dressed they’d been the night before. She didn’t want them to think they were savages, and she hoped they’d reappear since they had invited the Gregorys to join them again that night. She hoped they’d meant it. She thought about renting tails for Blake and Andy, so they could be dressed as the Butterfield men were, but instead she took their dinner jackets out and laid them on their beds, with their cummerbunds, suspenders, dress shirts, and black satin bow ties. Andy had just gotten his first tuxedo for a deb ball he’d gone to before Christmas, for the sister of one of his friends. Sybil was sure their dinner jackets would be enough to satisfy even Augusta.
And then she dove into her own closet and came out with a black velvet dress with a big white satin ruffle and a low back. She’d had it for a year and she loved it. She had been saving it for a special occasion, and this was it. She felt a little crazy getting everything ready, and Blake looked at her in confusion when he saw his dinner jacket on the bed when he got home from the office.
“Are we going to something black tie tonight? You didn’t tell me.”
“I thought we’d dress for dinner with them tonight, so they know we’re respectable.”
“Them?”
“The Butterfields,” she said cautiously, wondering how Blake would react to wearing black tie for no special reason, and her acting as though dressing up for a family of ghosts was normal. But maybe it was for them now. She wasn’t quite sure how to react to it herself.
“Oh,” Blake said, and then sat down on their bed, next to his tuxedo. He didn’t object, he just looked confused. “Are we going to do this every night now?” He couldn’t imagine wearing a tuxedo on a daily basis, and didn’t want to, even though the previous evening with them had been fascinating and enjoyable.
“I don’t know. This is new for me too. Magnus came to play with Charlie today. They had a good time together. He said his grandmother was in a bad mood because Uncle Angus’s dog ate her embroidery.” Blake didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he listened.
“I think I need a drink. Have we gone crazy? Are we in The Twilight Zone here? This is beginning to feel like a weird movie.” And yet when he’d been with the Butterfields it felt totally comfortable, and even pleasant. He had liked talking to Bert on a variety of subjects. Their ideas and their opinions were not so different, although times had changed radically since Bert had been a banker a hundred years before. But good economic principles still held up over time. “What if we get all dressed up and they don’t show up?”
“Then we’ll look great having pizza in the kitchen,” she said, smiling at him. “But I think they will. They invited us to dinner tonight. And we were all dressed like such a mess last night.”