Set in Stone

by David James Warren

  “I wanted to see if I could love someone else.”

  She what? I look at her, and she has my gaze in her grip. “You did the same.” A long sigh. “It’s a small world, Rem. I know you dated other women.”

  How could she not?

  I’m holding the truth is in my hands, and now I hate young, stupid me. I might have been better off not knowing. I have nothing of response but the truth. “My heart was broken.” And then, just because I want her to be sure, “There’s never been anyone for me but you, Eve.”

  Her eyes glisten. “Me too.”

  I don’t need to read the rest of the journal. So Eve took up with someone else. The important part is that she came back to me, right?

  I touch her face. “I don’t know how I got so lucky, really.”

  She captures my hand, leans against it.

  I take a breath. “After Mickey was taken, I spent every night for years—years—replaying it in my head. Wishing I’d turned around and gone back for him.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s the thing, though. I’ve spent my entire life looking back. Wishing I’d done something differently. And…I just keep screwing it up.”

  She’s sitting quietly, just listening.

  But there’s more, and somehow…she has to know what I know. “Eve, I keep having dreams of Ashley of…well, she’s seven years old. And she has this golden blonde hair, and she’s swinging on a swing set I made her and…” My eyes are filling. “I wish you could see that dream.”

  She touches my cheek. “I do, sometimes, Rem. I have the same dream. I really do. Maybe it’s real, somewhere.”

  It is.

  “Like heaven.”

  I nod again. “Probably.”

  She takes my hand. “I felt the same way after Ashley was born. Wishing I could go back and do something differently. She was so little. I remember her entire hand folded around my fingers. Four pounds, three ounces. I was so scared.”

  I breathe in deep, imagining it.

  “But she lived, and I thought…we’re going to be fine, right? After three miscarriages, we finally had our child.” Her eyes are full. “I remember her first full out asthma attack. You were so calm. You held her, nebulized her, and I thought…he can do anything.”

  Asthma. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save her,” I say, and I know that sounds crazy, but it feels like the right thing.

  “I know you do. But you couldn’t have done anything, Rem. By the time you got there, she was gone.”

  I couldn’t have done anything.

  “Neither could you. Why do you think I blame you?” I ask softly.

  She meets my eyes. “Because I blame myself.”

  “Eve.”

  She doesn’t look at me.

  “I don’t want to keep looking back and wishing. It’s time to move forward. To grab hold of what I have.” I reach over and touch her hand. “You. Me. Us. That’s enough.”

  She meets my eyes and weaves her hands into mine. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” I let out a breath. “Without question.”

  And I don’t know what she thinks she did to cause Ashley’s death, but I don’t care. “I love you, Eve.”

  She grabs my shirt and leans in, touching her head to my chest. “Can you forgive me?”

  “I will forgive you of anything,” I say. “I just wish I’d come after you sooner.”

  For the first time, I get a smile. “Oh, Val would have loved that.”

  Val. Her partner, maybe. I’m about to ask, but she kisses me.

  And when Eve kisses me, I stop thinking.

  She tastes of the summer breeze that’s filtering into the window, the night soft around us. When she leans back, she whispers, “Remember when we sneaked into my house to get Asher’s help on a case?”

  I nod.

  “Let’s sneak out.”

  “We’re adults, we don’t have to—”

  But she puts her finger on my lips and we’re in some kind of fantasy, apparently. She takes my hand and opens her door.

  It’s late. I didn’t realize how late until now. Her parent’s door is closed, and outside, the lake laps the shore in rhythmic, soft hushes.

  She tiptoes down the hallway, and into Asher’s room.

  “Eve—”

  “The ladder is still up.”

  Twenty-four years later? And then I realize. She put it there. My crazy, beautiful, danger-loving wife planned our escape. Her eyes are shining, and I shake my head, despite my smile. She opens the window. Puts her foot out on the roof.

  “Eve—”

  “Shh.” Then she disappears out the window.

  For crying out loud, we’re way too old for this. But hello, what am I going to do? I climb out after her. She already on the ladder and making her way down.

  It’s a sacrifice, but I follow her. Someone has to protect her from herself.

  The grass is cool and soft on our bare feet as she takes my hand and pulls me toward the lake.

  At the dock she runs ahead and it’s only as I step out under the glistening reflection of the lake that I realize she’s taken off her shirt.

  Oh boy.

  The rest of her clothing is dropped on the dock and she dives in before I can catch up.

  But I do.

  I follow the lure of moonlight and find her warm body.

  She laughs, and then, in the cool baptismal waters, we let the past go.

  11

  The past is like a jilted lover, showing up to boil my rabbit.

  Maybe it knows I’m not playing fate’s game anymore, that I’m moving on, but it doesn’t play fair.

  I’m in the CityPerk coffee shop, flashes of memory at first—me, sitting in the car on stakeout in the early morning hours. The light is dim, shadows long across the street.

  The smell of roasting coffee reaches out and lures me in.

  It’s a dream, I know it is, but I can’t stop myself from getting out of my car and going inside, past the planter filled with geraniums, past the menu board advertising homemade butterscotch scones, all the way to the counter.

  Maybe I’m just hungry.

  Inside, the room is cozy—wicker chairs, slipcovered sofas, pipes in the ceiling. A blackboard with specials hangs behind the counter.

  I’m standing outside myself, watching, like I would a crime scene, analyzing it. I see myself order coffee. My gaze lands on the thermoses.

  One of them contains a bomb.

  The barista is blonde, and she hands me, the other me, a cup of coffee. Next to her is a biker with long dreadlocks. He’s laughing.

  Near the door is the lawyer, nursing his cup at the bar along the window.

  And another man.

  He’s wearing track pants and running shoes. Short blonde hair. A tattoo on his arm.

  He looks at me and my heartbeat kicks up, thundering.

  There’s a breath, a heartbeat of recognition inside my dream.

  Leo Fitzgerald.

  I gasp, and the sound of it—as if I might have been holding my breath—jerks me out of the dream. Light floods my room, cutting through the slatted blinds and across the tumble of sheets and blankets. I drag in another lungful of air, the image still behind my eyes, and maybe it’s this second gasp that makes Eve wake up.

  She opens her eyes and lifts herself up on one elbow. “Rem?” She has eighties hair, big and crazy, and then I remember she went to bed with it wet.

  There are other memories, but they scatter when she puts her hand on my chest. “You’re breathing funny.”

  “I saw him.” I weave my fingers through hers on my bare chest. “I saw Leo Fitzgerald at the coffee shop.”

  Her frown tells me she’s trying to place my words. “The CityPerk shop? You remember him from twenty-four years ago?”

  “I remember him from my dream.” Which seemed so real, didn’t it?

  “He’s not in the report,” she says and sits up. She’s wearing my T-shirt, and I’m trying to remember if we retrie
ved her clothes from the dock last night.

  I know we’re married, but I feel suddenly seventeen, afraid of what Eve’s father might say. Do we, do I, ever grow out of that?

  “He was there, Eve. I’m sure of it. Maybe he left before the police got there, but I saw him.”

  “You dreamed him.” She’s trying to tame her hair by pulling it back. “You want this guy, I get that. But I don’t understand why you think he’s associated with the attempted bombing of CityPerk. He just wasn’t there, Rem.”

  She pulls on a pair of jeans and then heads out of the room, probably for the bathroom.

  I get up and find my jeans, too, and then wait in the hall until she’s finished. “I know what you’re saying, Eve, but it felt a lot more like a memory than a dream.”

  She opens the door, her toothbrush in her mouth. After she spits, she says, “If you want, I’ll pull all the interviews of witnesses. Maybe someone saw something from one of the nearby shops.” She rinses her mouth and wipes it.

  I lean in to kiss her, but she dodges me and moves aside to let me in, and heads to the bedroom to change.

  We need our own place, yesterday.

  Ten minutes later, I’m out of the shower, my hair wet. I change into dress pants and an oxford, grab my suit coat, then go downstairs and pull up a stool in the kitchen. I don’t look out at the dock, although the sun is turning the water a deep platinum.

  Eve’s made coffee, her auburn hair pulled back in a tight bun, and she’s wearing a pair of dress pants and a blouse. I think she must have raided her mom’s closet.

  Danny is up too, and drinking a cup of coffee, reading the morning paper. He’s old school—believes in paper journalism rather than getting his news from morning TV.

  Eve pours me a mug full as Danny closes the paper.

  “What were you thinking?”

  I look over at him (Eve does too) and he slides the paper down to me.

  The front-page headline is brutal. Serial Killer Haunting City.

  Great. Mayor Vega is going to have my head.

  The article reads close to the information I gave Frankie, although she hints that the killer has stalked the city for two decades.

  Zeke has been talking, maybe. She did say he knew about the case.

  “You’re going to have copycats,” Danny says. “And you just scared the stuffing out of every woman in Minneapolis.”

  “Good,” Eve says, rising to my defense. “Women should be afraid. And careful. Armed, even.”

  Her father looks at her. She raises an eyebrow.

  Danny purses his lips.

  Well, I wouldn’t argue with her either.

  “Eggs?” she says and turns to the stove.

  I say nothing as she murders a dozen eggs, whipping them into a froth and pouring them into a sizzling pan.

  “Did Shelby okay this?” Danny says as the eggs crackle.

  “I’m the chief.”

  “For now.”

  “I don’t want more women dying on my watch.” I turn in my chair. “It should have happened sooner.”

  Danny’s mouth tightens. “You mean on my watch.”

  “That’s not what I said.” And of course, not what I mean. I know who’s to blame here.

  “Here are your eggs,” Eve says, putting a plate down in front of me. It includes bacon.

  She gives her father the same. Then leans against the counter, eating a piece of bacon. “Did you unearth anything about the killer from your journal? Anything we missed?”

  I should’ve been a little more direct about what he-slash-me should keep track of. “I have notes about Burke and me tracking down his address, but just that the place belonged to his mother, and that she’d already moved to Florida.”

  She’s studying me. “Florida? Maybe we should—”

  My cell phone vibrates on the counter and I snag it. “Chief Stone.”

  “Don’t let that go to your head,” Burke says into my right ear.

  “I thought you were on paternity leave.”

  “It’s over. We have a survivor.”

  For a moment, I haven’t a clue what he means. “A survivor.”

  “Looks like your announcement might have worked. It hit the ten o’clock news last night, and not long after, a woman was leaving her shift at an all-night diner got attacked.”

  “But she survived.”

  “She was roughed up, but yes, she’s alive. Used pepper spray. The St. Paul police got the case, but after they interviewed her, they called me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the perp had a tattoo. And he’d been at the diner earlier that night and handed her a twenty-dollar bill.”

  I slide off the bench my blood raging. “Was it marked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she see her attacker?” I head to the door to grab my shoes. Eve is on my tail, her satchel over her shoulder. “Did she get a description?”

  “She did.”

  Grabbing Danny’s keys to his truck, I head outside. “What’s her name?”

  “Just a sec.”

  I glance at Eve as I toss her the keys. “We have a witness. A survivor. Because of the article.”

  “You’re a genius,” she says.

  Hopefully it’s enough to keep Vega from tar and feathering me.

  I slide into the passenger seat.

  We’re pulling out of the driveway when Burke comes back on the line. “Her name is Meggie. Meggie Fox. She’s in her mid-twenties, and lives—”

  In Stillwater.

  “—in Stillwater.”

  I can’t breathe.

  “Rem?” Eve glances at me, concerned. “You okay?”

  I nod.

  But you know I’m not okay. Because I know Meggie Fox.

  She’s the daughter of Arthur Fox, my watch repairman.

  She’s the one who helped me understand my time travel rewrites.

  And in the last go ’round, she died. In the annals of my memories, I can still hear her father’s anguished words. “You could go back. You could stop him.”

  I feel a little like weeping.

  Because, in a way, I did.

  “Tell her to stay put. I want to talk to her.”

  “You got it, Chief.”

  You think I’d be used to the curve balls by now. But they’re not curve balls. They’re boomerangs, that keep circling around behind me and smacking in the back of the head.

  I look out the window as Eve drives. You might not remember him, but Arthur Fox is a friend, of sorts. I met him two weeks, and decades ago, when John Booker’s watch landed in my possession.

  When this insane time-travel business began.

  Poor Art. I remember Meggie and her lemonade. It’s funny how time knits us all together. And, I probably owe Art an apology because I can’t help but believe I somehow got him tangled in this mess, even if this time, Meggie is alive.

  “You’re scaring me, Rem,” Eve says into my thoughts. “You know this girl?”

  “I know her father. He used to, um, consult for me.”

  “Are you sure it’s the Jackson killer?”

  I nod. Because the past isn’t letting go that easily.

  We pull into St. Joseph’s Hospital, off 10th Street in downtown St. Paul. It’s a sleek mirror and wood building that overlooks the capital building, in the heart of downtown. We park in the ramp and head into the building, to the main floor receptionist. I show my badge and ask for Meggie Fox’s room.

  I find her on the third floor, at the end of the hall.

  A uniform stands guard outside her room. I show my badge again, and then knock on the door.

  Burke opens it, and I enter, bracing myself.

  It’s bad, but she’s alive. Sleeping, maybe, because her eyes are closed. Meggie is in her mid-twenties, with shorter blonde hair than I remember, although it’s covered in a bandage. She’s pretty, but that’s from memory because her face is bruised and swollen, a cut on her right cheek is stitched but left unbandaged.
r />   Her arm is in a sling, her wrist cast, and she has ligature marks around her neck.

  I’ve seen plenty of crime scenes, of course, but seeing Meggie like this—I don’t know why but my gorge wants to rise. Maybe it’s the fact that this is final, this timeline is the one that will take.

  She’ll forever have this terrible memory, and I can’t change it.

  “She’s been sleeping for about an hour,” Burke says quietly. “But I wanted to stick around until you got here.”

  “Inspector Stone?” The voice comes from a man standing at the window. I recognize him—this version of Art is the one I remember from our last meeting. He’s in his mid-sixties, and has dark, graying hair. He’s always struck me a little like an earnest yet wild-eyed professor. His brown-eyed gaze widens as he holds out his hand. “I remember you.”

  I walk over and shake his hand. “It’s a been while.” Four days, at least. Okay, I’m just being funny, but we time travelers have to at least try to have a sense of humor. Former time travelers.

  He looks at Eve and Burke conversing near the door, then back to me and leans close. “How is the watch working?”

  Full disclosure, I’ve met Art a number of times. The first time, I brought him my broken watch and he shut the door on my face and told me it was working just fine, thank you. Which, as it turns out, it was. Then I visited him in the past, with the same question and I blurted out the truth.

  It’s this memory he has of me now, probably, although we also met when I saved him from a deadly car accident.

  So, just to divert any crazy questions he might pose, I say, “How’s your wife?”

  Sheila.

  “She’s distressed. Down at the chapel, I believe. But—” He looks at Meggie. “It could have been much worse.”

  My mouth tightens and his eyes widen. His voice lowers. “Was it much worse?”

  I know what he’s referring to. He knows I travel. That I change things.

  That those things touch him. So, I give him a small, imperceptible nod.

  He’s released my hand, but now glances at my wrist. I have a crazy urge to cover up my naked wrist, as if embarrassed. Frowning, he meets my eyes.

  “I don’t have it,” I say before he can ask. “It’s lost.”