Time Stranger

by Elyse Douglas

  Anne slowly raised her eyes. “You’ve been so kind to me, Constance. What would I have done without you?”

  Constance straightened with pride. “The important thing is that we found each other, and now it’s time to return home so you can rest and recover, while you decide what you want to do with your life. Whatever that decision is, Anne, I hope you’ll let me be a part of it.”

  Anne stared, her body filling with anxiety.

  Constance patted her hand. “Forgive me for bringing you here. I’m so sorry you had to go through this… this awful experience. It’s unforgiveable what this woman has done to you. Completely and utterly unforgiveable.”

  Melly was too tired to lift her head in protest.

  Jon slowly got to his feet, wanting to help in some way, but not knowing what to say or do.

  Anne’s eyes softened on Constance. “You don’t understand, do you, Constance? You and Miles don’t understand, and how could you? How could anyone understand it?”

  “Understand what, Anne? Tell me. I want to help,” Constance said, her head inclined forward. “I’ll help you any way I can.”

  Anne’s face took on strength and there was a force in her eyes that Constance had never seen.

  “What is it, Anne?”

  Anne lowered her eyes. “I want to go home.”

  “Yes, yes. We’ll leave right now.”

  “I want to go home to England, Constance. I want to return to my life in 1944.”

  Constance’s face fell.

  Jon’s lips parted in surprise.

  Melly’s head lifted. “My dear, Anne,” she said weakly. “You can’t go back. What happened to you was an impossible accident that will never happen again. You must know that. You can never go back to 1944.”

  In a sudden, swift motion, Anne was on her feet, face determined. “I can go back, and I will go back! I will find a way. You said that it was a mistake, that I shouldn’t be here. Well, if it is a mistake, then maybe the fates, or God, or whoever, will find a way to get me back to my own time. My little boy is back there; my life is back there, and I will find a way to return, even if it kills me.”

  The room filled with an icy, startled silence.

  CHAPTER 15

  “She won’t talk to me,” Constance said, obviously upset. She was stalking back and forth in the living room, while Jon stood watching her, a heaviness all about him.

  “She said she doesn’t want to talk to anyone, including you, Jon—or Miles—or whatever she calls you. How many times have you phoned her? Six, seven?”

  After a considered amount of time he said, “Many times. No, she won’t talk to me, either.”

  Constance brought a worried knuckle to her lips as she paced. “I gave her a laptop and showed her how to use the thing, and she’s been in her room for two days, ever since we returned from Hudson, New York. She hardly eats, and I don’t think she’s sleeping all that much. I suggested she see another doctor, but she won’t hear of it. She says she wants to be alone. Then she clams up and says nothing. She just stares out the window. I’m worried sick about her.”

  Constance stopped pacing and faced Jon. “She’s much worse than she was, and I can’t shake the conversation we had in the car on the way back home the other day. She just kept repeating some version of ‘I know who I am, and I shouldn’t be here.’ And ‘I have to get back home.’”

  Constance glared at Jon. “I’ll never forgive you for sending her to that crazy woman. Never.”

  Jon released a long exhalation. “Is that why you asked me over? To keep scolding me?”

  He glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly seven. I still have rounds to make at the hospital and I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I’m here because you said it was important. Okay, so tell me, what is so important, besides what I already know?”

  Constance’s gaze strayed to the windows, and she forced a change of mood. “There are three reasons I asked you to come. The first… I need support. You’re the only person who knows and understands what’s going on with Anne. I can’t talk to any of my friends, although some have been calling, wanting to meet her.”

  Constance hesitated. She went to the couch and sat, her thoughts circling.

  “Okay, Constance. What are the second and third?” Jon asked.

  She didn’t look at him. “I’ve been reading articles on the internet about schizophrenia, and I talked to an old friend of my husband’s, Dr. Magnus Richardson. He’s a psychiatrist who saw Charles during a time when he was struggling with depression and alcohol. I explained Anne’s situation as best I could, and he said he’d be happy to meet and talk with her. I told Anne about my conversation, but she refused to see him. ‘No more doctors,’ she said.”

  Constance closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, taking a pause to gather herself before resuming. “I asked Dr. Richardson directly if he thought Anne was schizophrenic. You know how you doctors are, you never give an opinion until you’ve performed so many tests that you can bankroll a new yacht.”

  Jon didn’t take the bait and defend himself or his fellow doctors. “But you pressed the good doctor, didn’t you, Constance?”

  Constance’s eyes popped open. “You bet I did. I’m worried sick about Anne. She’s not the woman she was. She’s really changed.”

  Jon eased down in a chair opposite Constance. “Of course, it’s possible Anne has schizophrenia, or maybe even DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder. That’s the new term for multiple personality disorder, in case you didn’t know. But I think…”

  Constance cut in. “… Yes, Dr. Richardson suggested both conditions as a possibility, but then he stressed that Anne would have to undergo a battery of tests.”

  Jon leaned forward. “I’ve also been doing some research. I spoke to a psych doctor and a neuropsychologist at the hospital.”

  Constance listened, absorbed. “And…?”

  “The problem with DID is that it’s hard to diagnose and challenging to treat. All they know is that it usually develops in childhood as a result of exposure to severe trauma or abuse. The traumatic experience could start as early as infancy or occur later in childhood, but usually before the age of six. No one is born with DID, and it seems to develop over time.”

  Constance pondered. “Well, since we don’t know anything about Anne’s childhood, we can only speculate, can’t we?”

  Jon continued. “But none of these explain away all the mysteries. We’re right back where we were. Why hasn’t anyone come forward to identify Anne? Why doesn’t she have any identification whatsoever, and why doesn’t she pop up anywhere on the internet or social media? At her age, that’s nearly impossible. When she was found, why was she wearing those retro clothes and why did she present to the ER with injuries consistent with the trauma of war, including small pieces of shrapnel in her left leg? Under hypnosis with Dr. Weiss, Anne said, without hesitation, that she recalled 1942 and 1944. After Melly recounted her vision of the bombing in London in 1944, Anne corroborated it. She remembered details about her son. All of this points to something other than DID or schizophrenia.”

  Constance jumped to her feet, made a haughty, dismissive gesture, and walked to the windows, keeping her back to him. “I am never going to believe that Anne Billings has time traveled from 1944. It’s preposterous, and it is insane, not to mention impossible. It’s the wild imaginings of silly movies and popular novels.”

  Jon took a sip of the single malt Scotch that Constance had handed him when he’d arrived. He swirled it, the ice clinking against the glass. “What’s the third reason you asked me over, Constance?”

  She turned back to him, meeting his piercing gaze. Jon watched the changing expressions on Constance’s face: worry, anger, and finally resignation. She moved back to the couch and sat, staring down. “I told you about Leon Fogle, didn’t I?”

  “The computer whiz kid who was using Anne’s photo to search the internet, hoping for a photo match?”

  “Yes, that’s him. He contact
ed me this afternoon. He said he has information. Definite information. And, as he put it, the data is ‘awesome and wild.’ He’ll be here any minute, between seven and eight.”

  “Does Anne know he’s coming? Did you tell her?”

  Constance shook her head. “No. I don’t think it’s wise. If it’s disturbing news, she could have a breakdown.”

  Jon stared into his glass of amber-colored whiskey, then held it to his nose and inhaled its rich and luscious aromas. “And what about you, Constance? If the truth is awesome and wild, as our computer whiz friend says, will you have a breakdown?”

  She aimed her steely eyes at him. “You know me better than that. I can take whatever life throws at me and I will fight back.”

  NOT LONG AFTER, Leon Fogel came slouching into the living room, bearing a backpack, presenting a sideways smile and his usual tousled hair. Constance introduced him to Jon, who quickly sized him up as a bright, young, and distracted scientist type, who read books on string theory and quantum mechanics, and lived in the worlds of numbers, video games and Shake Shack hamburgers.

  Leon shrugged off his backpack, removed his laptop and settled into an elegant chair near the coffee table.

  Jon kept his keen eyes on Constance, who was all controlled nerves and blinking eyes, her mouth tight, her jaw tight, her hands squeezed together tightly in her lap.

  She cleared her throat. “So what do you have for me, Leon?”

  Leon booted up his laptop and logged on. “Well… It’s pretty cool… okay, well, maybe not cool, but it’s awesome.”

  Constance relaxed her shoulders. “Yes, Leon, so you said on the phone.”

  “You remember I told you about my uncle who works for the CIA? They have these powerful computers that can access databases that reach all the way back to the 1940s, and even further.”

  “I remember, Leon. Please, just tell me what you found.”

  Leon looked up eagerly. “It helped that you called and told me that Anne’s last name was Billings. Well, they plugged in her photo and… it was a wow. There was a match.”

  Constance’s left eye twitched and her mouth moved, but she didn’t speak. She couldn’t. Jon sat up straight, trying to swallow away a mounting anxiety.

  Leon adjusted his glasses. “It was a match to an obscure photo and an article in a local paper in Stratford, England, in 1944. The photo matched Anne Billing’s photo that you gave me. It was within a 98.8 percentile, which means it was a definite match.”

  Jon kept his startled eyes on Constance. She was breathing fast, staring, not seeing anything.

  When neither Constance nor Jon commented, Leon continued. “And what is like, wild and really cool, is that Anne Billings worked for a while at Bletchley Park.”

  Jon took a generous drink of his Scotch, swallowing it slowly, looking down at his shaky hands. “What is that? What is Bletchley Park?”

  Leon’s smile was laced with the pride of knowledge. “Bletchley Park was the central site for British cryptanalysis during World War Two. It housed the Government Code and Cypher School or (GC&CS), which regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powers—mostly the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers.”

  Jon’s eyes cleared. “Yes, of course. Bletchley Park was where the code breakers worked to break the German codes.”

  “Not all who worked there were code breakers,” Leon said. “There were about ten thousand people who worked in the wider Bletchley Park organization, and about eight thousand were women. They worked as administrators, card index compilers, dispatch riders and code-breaking specialists.”

  Constance still couldn’t let the truth in. She opened her mouth to speak but failed to push out any words. She cleared her tight throat and tried again. “What does all this have to do with Anne?”

  Leon scratched his head. “Remember when I said the information was awesome and wild? Well, my uncle analyzed Anne’s photo and the information he’d collected. He grilled me like I was some criminal or something. He kept asking the same questions over and over. He didn’t believe me when I told him about Anne. He thought I was playing a joke on them. Finally, I said, I think it’s obvious. Anne Billings is a time traveler. A real, actual, incarnate time traveler.”

  Constance shot up and walked aimlessly, her face flushed with anger. “Don’t be ridiculous! It’s pure and utter nonsense, and I won’t hear another word about it.”

  Leon shrank back a little. “But… there’s more.”

  Constance glowered at him. “What do you mean, more?”

  “Go ahead, Leon. Tell us,” Jon said.

  “I have the article my uncle found, including Anne’s 1944 photo, on my laptop. Should I read it?”

  Constance went rigid, her features beginning to fall apart. In a kind of trance, she found her way back to the couch and sat.

  Jon said, calmly, “Yes, Leon, please read the article.”

  “It’s short. Okay, here goes.”

  He nosed into the screen. “Anne Billings, daughter of Nigel and Rose Billings, along with her son, Tommy, were reported missing after a German air raid struck East London Saturday last, killing hundreds and leaving many homeless and wounded. Anne Billing’s handbag was found, containing her identification, which included her home address here in Stratford, and an old identity card from Bletchley Park, dated 1943.”

  At that moment, Anne Billings entered, her face impassive and pale, her posture erect. She swept the room with her eyes, her jaw set.

  In the stunned silence, no one stirred.

  As Anne spoke, she trembled. “Would you like to know what job I held at Bletchley Park? We were sworn to secrecy, but I can tell you now, now that World War Two ended so many years ago. I remember everything as if it were only a few months ago… and, for me, it was only months ago, wasn’t it?”

  CHAPTER 16

  Anne looked at Constance and spoke frankly. “Leon is right, Constance. As strange and impossible as it seems, I am a time traveler, and I am very far from my home.”

  The color drained from Constance’s face, and she broke out into a cold sweat. She tried to stand but failed. She tried to speak but failed. Her beliefs and opinions had been smashed, and she felt naked, exposed and wounded, as if she’d been punched in the gut.

  Jon’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. His eyes widened on Anne as an unnamed terror rose in him. Nothing in his medical training or life experience had prepared him for the stark impossibility of the moment, or for the gnawing dread that paced inside his gut.

  Leon removed his glasses and grinned—a mischievous grin of satisfaction.

  Anne spoke in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. “Bletchley Park was a mansion in Buckinghamshire, England. It was home to the British government’s Code and Cypher School, where code-breakers cracked the Nazi’s Enigma cypher. The women who work there came from a variety of backgrounds. I was not a code-breaker. My job was simple. I was a card index compiler, a job that called for a focused, detailed mind and long hours of work.”

  Constance, Jon and Leon sat still as statues, unaware of the rain striking the windows and the howling wind circling the building, making a sound like a wild animal.

  Anne continued. “Some of the women were secretarial college graduates, others were from universities, while others came straight from school at the age of fourteen. High society debutantes were among the first brought to Bletchley. They had the best connections, and they were considered the most trustworthy. In the end, it didn’t matter so much where we came from. We were all looking for a job that would make a difference to the war effort, so we worked together. I started at Bletchley in 1941 and left in late 1943, when I could no longer tolerate being without my son, Tommy. I’d gone home frequently to see him, but it wasn’t enough. Even though my parents were there, and they loved him, he was growing up fast; he was already three years old.”

  Anne stared into the middle distance, and her eyes said something bleak. “Did my sweet boy, Tommy, die in that air raid, or was he tossed into
another time as well? Did he survive the air raid and go looking for his mommy? What happened to him? Where is he? Why have I left him for so long?”

  No one spoke, and the silence hurt.

  Anne turned her head away, and her eyes spilled tears. “I have to find out, don’t I? I’ve been searching all over that laptop in there. Searching for Tommy. Searching for me. I didn’t find anything. I must not be handling the thing just right. We must be in that machine somewhere. I mean, isn’t everything, history and libraries and universal knowledge in that box of a thing? Isn’t all the information about people for all time in that… little computer?”

  Anne’s pleading eyes came to Leon. “I heard you read that article. It’s about me and Tommy. I’m from Stratford. My parents live there. I heard what you read. It was me, and it was Tommy. You were reading about us and the air raid that somehow blasted me into this time, just as Melly Pasternak said. Can you please use your box or laptop, or whatever you call it, and help me find Tommy?”

  Leon twisted up his lips, moving them left and right, while he worked on a thought. “Well, actually, it was the CIA who found you.”

  “What is this CIA? Can I talk to them? Can they help me find Tommy?”

  Constance sat rigid, blunted and dazed by the truth.

  Jon drained his glass and held onto it with both hands.

  Leon scratched his head, again searching for words. “It’s kind of difficult to…”

  Constance cut in. “… The CIA will spy on you, Anne,” she said in a shaky, fearful voice. “They will watch you.”

  Leon spoke up. “Well, actually, Mrs. Crowne, CIA officers can’t spy on U.S. citizens on American soil. The FBI is the domestic spy agency. The CIA has to operate on foreign soil. They do human intelligence.”