It was infuriating that everyone knew more about his family than he did. “Yeah, she’s always been that way. Gran told me Aunt Billie was in love with my Grandpa Jack, way back when they were young. But this . . .”
“Maybe she still wants whatever her sister has.”
Finn remembered the notebooks Aunt Billie obsessively kept and wondered if it was possible that she was still the same jealous girl.
“Did they see you?”
“I’m very good at not being seen when I don’t want to be.” Gabi picked up the blue thread again and this time wound it around her pinkie. She looked embarrassed. “Listen, it’s not like I told this story to anyone else. I just told my mom, and she’s not part of the Dorset gossip machine. You know that.”
“It’s just I thought I knew all the gossip about us. I guess I didn’t.”
“Ugh. Why would you want to? It’s better not to listen.”
He wasn’t so sure about that. If he’d known all the rumors, he might’ve at least asked the right questions. “It doesn’t make sense, though. Why would Doc be interested in Aunt Billie? She’s nothing at all like Gran.”
“Who knows? Maybe he just liked the extra attention.”
“Well, I think Doc is hiding something more than just Aunt Billie.” He went back to his prime objective. “And I think you need to stay behind when I go to the mountain. There’s no way of knowing what will happen. And if I’m not back by a certain time, you can send help.”
Gabi leaned toward him, her eyes locked on his. “Don’t you dare try to do this without me. You need me along. You don’t know the first thing about hiking.”
She was right, of course. He never hiked. It was his parents’ thing. He wasn’t exactly an outdoorsy kind of guy, but he wasn’t going to let that stand in his way now.
“How hard can it be? You follow a trail up and then you come back down.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Gabi geared up for one of her lectures. “It’s easy to get lost on those trails. I know what to do. I’ve been up the Equinox a couple of times with Mr. Schuman’s outdoors club. I even have telescoping poles.” She had her arms folded in front of her, her face daring him to ask what telescoping poles were. He had no idea and she knew it. She offered the answer without prompting.
“They’re like professional metal walking sticks. Mom won them at the Founder’s Day picnic. They come in real handy on steep climbs. See? You need me. You know nothing.”
“I know that a broken branch can probably do the same thing and that three hikes with Mr. Schuman does not make you an expert.”
“Stop arguing. We need to find a trail map.”
Hiking with a partner did make more sense. And he had to admit, if only to himself, he’d feel better if she was with him. It was a selfish want. He wasn’t proud of it.
They spent the next twenty minutes online looking for maps or trail guides.
“Dorset Peak must be a boring hike. All I’m finding are a few peakbagger blogs saying it’s nothing special,” Finn said.
“What’s a peakbagger?”
“Oh, so now I get to teach you something about hiking!” He raised an eyebrow at her, but thought better of it when he saw her face. When Gabi got annoyed she was like a puffed-up little sparrow. It was fun to watch her hop around angrily at first, but he’d pay for it later. There was no time for that.
“They’re hikers who want to bag every peak. They’re not in it for the hike itself or the view, they just have a checklist of mountains they want to conquer.”
“You just learned that online, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he admitted, smiling for the first time in ages.
She scooted up closer to him and looked at his screen. “Any maps? Hints about the trail?” she asked.
“Nothing. Can’t we just get on the trail and continue in the direction of up?”
“That’s the fastest way to get lost. Those trails always overlap.”
Finn continued to click and scroll, desperately looking for something resembling a map. If they didn’t have to be so secretive they could just walk over to the Inn and grab one from the front desk, but they couldn’t risk someone noticing them. Then it hit him: they were making this more difficult than it needed to be.
“Hang on! My Dad probably has a guide book in his office!”
That burst of confidence dissipated when he opened the door and saw the state of his father’s usually pristine workplace. It looked like someone had ransacked it, only he knew that someone was Dad. He had been sloppier lately, but Finn had no idea it had gotten this bad.
“How can he find anything in here?” Gabi stepped gingerly over stacks of books, trying not to topple them onto the carpet. At least, Finn thought he remembered a carpet. He pushed some paper aside with his toes. Yep, the maroon oriental rug was still there.
“It’s always been so neat I was afraid to come in here. Things must be a lot worse than I thought.”
Finn waded over to the desk, where printouts of newspaper articles from the 1800s were at least four inches deep across the whole surface. This was typical; that was Dad’s favorite century, and he loved having physical copies of research materials.
Finn turned around to scan the shelves. Their contents weren’t new to him. Mostly old books, a few paperweights and academic awards, a snow globe, and the framed photograph of the quarry. Why his father would keep a picture of that horrible place was beyond him. But now, as he studied it up close, he realized that there were two tiny far-off people in the quarry picture. He never noticed them before. Two small children, sitting on one of the marble slabs with their backs to the camera. A boy and a girl.
Finn picked up the photo and studied it carefully. It was Faith that gave them away. Her massive head of red hair was unmistakable. Her curls were catching the sun and Finn could almost touch the memory of them. He wondered if this was the last picture taken of them together. How could he have never noticed they were in it before? His eyes drifted to the small orange digital numbers on the bottom right. A timestamp made by the camera, dated more than a year after Faith’s death. Dad probably couldn’t bear to develop the film until then.
“What’s that?” Gabi asked from her lookout point near the doorway.
“Just a picture my dad took.” Finn placed the frame back on the shelf and with it, the memory. It would hold till later.
He found what he was looking for on the bottom dust-covered shelf: a trail guide for southern Vermont. “This should have what we need.” He held it up for Gabi to see.
“My mom’s coming! Hide it!”
Mrs. Rand entered and looked around. “I hope your father is more organized in his head than he is in here!”
Finn forced a chuckle. The thick paperback was painfully wedged between his waistband and lower back.
“What are you two looking for?” Mrs. Rand asked.
“Finn thought we might find information about another library his dad might have gone to.”
Mrs. Rand looked instantly hopeful. “Any luck?”
“No,” Finn replied. It wasn’t truly a lie.
“Well then,” Mrs. Rand sighed, “I’m afraid we just have to trust he’ll be home when he said he would. I’m sure he’ll be here tomorrow night. Meanwhile, I’m going into town to talk to Mr. Abernathy. Maybe he can help me find a legal way to delay Dr. Lovell.”
She was doing her best to sound positive but her voice was full of defeat.
°°°
Finn and Gabi made a plan. They’d meet in the hallway at four a.m., leave through the French doors in Dad’s office, walk to Gabi’s house, get the equipment they needed, and pack some food and water from her fridge. Then they would walk in the dark to the main trailhead next to Gran’s house, where they’d wait for the sun to come up. As soon as it was light enough, they could begin the climb.
“What about my mom?” Gabi asked as they sat in Finn’s room. “She’ll freak out when she realizes we’re missing. And reception is terrible on
the mountain, so we won’t even be able to text her once we’re up there.”
There was a long silence. They had never been risk takers. Well, maybe Gabi took a few more than he did, but they both tended to be cautious. It was what remainders did. He stole a sidewise glance at her. She was a remainder, too.
Finn and Gabi never spoke about what they had in common, but they both knew how important it was to stay safe. You live an extra careful life, never wanting to make your parents relive the pain. Remainders aren’t whole numbers, but they are better than negatives. You could never become a negative. Another negative would destroy the whole equation.
Gabi shifted her gaze over Finn’s head, looking skeptically at the Periodic Table of Elements he had tacked to the wall. He wondered for a moment if she was also thinking about them in terms of unstable equations. No, of course not. It was his weird Finn way of understanding it. Gabi wasn’t about science. Her explanations were always something mystical, something not grounded in reality at all. Something he wished he could believe in as much as she did. Maybe now he could. Why not? He believed in time travel now. Who knew what he’d believe in tomorrow.
“I’m sure your mom won’t be that worried,” Finn said, though the words rang hollow. He tried not to imagine Dad coming home early after all and finding Finn gone. He didn’t want to think about Dad being all alone. The last few weeks had changed him enough.
“You aren’t supposed to hike without telling someone,” she countered. “What if—something happens—and we need help and no one knows where we’ve gone?”
“Good point,” Finn said. Then he had an idea. “We could time an email to be delivered later. We could set it up tonight and have it send tomorrow around dinnertime. We should be back by then, but if we’re not the email will explain where we’ve gone.”
Gabi nodded, looking reassured. “Yeah, we should be covered that way. If we do get in trouble on the mountain, someone will know where we are.”
“Right,” Finn agreed with false confidence. Inside his head a small doubting voice added, Even if it might be too late.
Chapter 11
The rest of the evening passed with Mrs. Rand hovering over them, offering a neverending supply of snacks. Everything still tasted like wet newspaper to Finn, but he nibbled at whatever she gave him anyway. He didn’t want to disappoint her, and the guilt over what they were about to put her through rested heavy on his conscience. Come tomorrow afternoon, she was going to be sick with worry and it would be all his fault.
She had the Inn deliver dinner. They sat around making small talk, with Mrs. Rand watching him carefully. Finn felt like he was between specimen glass on a microscope. He wanted to assure her he wasn’t going to disappear inside himself again, though he couldn’t be sure if that was true. Whenever he remembered Gran lying there, lifeless, it made him want to go back and hide. But he only needed to look out the nearest window to snap himself out of it. The peak was there, waiting for him.
Alone in his room that night, he knew he should be sleeping, but instead he was staring at the familiar web of shadows the tree branches made on his ceiling. He always slept with the blinds open. He liked the moon shadows and he preferred to be woken by daylight.
An entire mountain covered in thousands of trees, and he was going to find one specific one. His mother must have made it clear somehow. He had to trust her.
He gave up the pretense of sleep and rolled over, reaching under the mattress where he had stowed the trail guide. There was enough moonlight to read by—his favorite kind of night. Based on the map and the trail description, the hike didn’t sound too difficult. There were a few places where the trail split, but the guide said it was all well marked.
His eyelids began to feel heavy. In only a few hours his phone alarm would wake him, long before the sun would. The moonlit branches trembled in the wind, occasionally pawing against his window with a light scratching noise. These were soothing sounds to Finn, sounds of home.
It was the sudden quick pounding that was different. Like a large bird hitting the window—or the muffled smack of a hand against the window pane.
He sat up in bed and stared at his window, waiting for it to happen again. Then he saw the shadow. It was hunched over, a bulky human form that went by too quickly, in an unnatural kind of stutter-step.
Finn jumped out of bed and pushed his back up to the far wall in terror.
Thud. Then the shadow. Then gone.
Finn approached the window cautiously and mustered up enough courage to look outside.
On the slate patio, a good twenty feet away, someone was pacing back and forth. The movement was all wrong though. It wasn’t a normal walk; it was a disconcerting lurch, the way something in a horror movie moves when it’s only pretending to be human.
The figure stopped. Its head turned slowly, directly toward the window.
Finn jumped backward on pure instinct and fell over his desk chair with a thud. Sprawled on his bedroom carpet, he looked up at the window and realized the face staring at him was slowly resolving into a known entity.
Aunt Ev motioned for him to open the window.
He instinctively obeyed, hurrying to his feet and throwing up the sash.
“It took you long enough! Get dressed. We have work to do!”
She was wearing layers and layers of coats and what looked like at least five pairs of gloves. It made her look like a giant boulder on feet.
“Well? Do as I say, boy! I know you’ve learned how to respect your elders. Get out here before someone sees me!”
He pulled on the same pair of jeans he’d been wearing for the last few days and felt the crinkle of Gran’s note in his pocket. He considered leaving it behind, but thought it would be safer with him than left in the room. He couldn’t afford to lose it. It was still the only proof he had.
Aunt Ev was waiting for him in the shadows beyond the patio. “Come on. We don’t have a lot of time.” With that, she began striding into the woods.
“Where are we going?” Finn demanded, eyes wide.
“You’re going to have to trust me. We’ll be right back. I promise.”
Finn looked back at the house. “I need to get Gabi.”
“What?”
“I’m not going anywhere without Gabi.”
“Really?” She didn’t sound angry, just confused. She muttered something under her breath that sounded like “This is new.” Finn couldn’t be sure. After a moment she nodded. “Fine. Hurry up about it! Don’t go through the house. Go to the window.”
°°°
“Where is she taking us?” Gabi was still rubbing her eyes as she pulled the chair closer to the window.
“I don’t know.” Finn held his hand out to steady her.
“And you trust her?”
“Yeah, I mean no. I guess I don’t know, but I want to know more about my family’s secrets and this might be one way to find out.”
The look on Gabi’s face was a mixture of annoyance and resignation. “You realize we’re supposed to climb a whole mountain in five hours? Sleep is usually a good idea beforehand.”
“I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t sleeping. And we can’t start the hike until sunup. Do you want to stay here?”
“I’m coming.” She continued her climb down to the patio. “But if my mother finds out I’ll be grounded till I’m thirty.”
They padded across the slate as silently as they could, past the window of the guest room Gabi’s mother was sleeping in.
Aunt Ev was flapping her arms in agitation. “Hurry! No talking now, follow me.”
“Not till you tell us where we’re going.” Finn wasn’t about to lose control of the situation.
“Oh for the love of Pete! You’re determined to make this difficult for me, aren’t you? Don’t be coy, boy! I know you know. There’s no way my sister, accomplished Future Traveler that she was, would leave this mortal coil without saying good-bye to her one and only grandson.”
Finn folded his arms,
refusing to confirm her hypothesis. “Where. Are. We. Going?”
“To a very important meeting. One you should’ve been to a long time ago.” She was angry and defiant, like she was righting a longstanding wrong.
“Who meets at one o’clock in the morning?” Gabi asked.
She glared at Gabi. “You’ve never been here before, little bird girl. You sure you want a part of this?”
Gabi’s shoulders stiffened. Finn recognized that stance. Gabi was pulling herself up to her full height, which wasn’t much at all. If you knew her, you knew what was coming next, a speech that would likely make you think twice about calling her “little” ever again. Finn stepped between them.
“Yes, she wants a part of this.” He turned back to Gabi. “You do, right?”
Gabi peered out from behind Finn and looked Aunt Ev in the eye. “Tell the old lady I’m in.”
“You still didn’t answer her question. Who meets at one in the morning?”
“Iztah. That’s who.”
“Iztah?” He said it hesitantly, testing the name on his tongue. He’d never heard it before in his life.
“I-S-T-A. The International Society for Temporal Adherence, currently devoid of competent leadership, thanks to my fool sister!”
Finn looked at Gabi, half expecting her to say she’d heard of it. She shook her head.
“If you two are done wasting my valuable seconds, will you please follow me?”
Aunt Ev walked impossibly fast for a woman in her sixties, or was it her seventies? Finn wasn’t exactly sure how old she was, only that she was Gran’s youngest sister. She was leading them through the woods and out toward town. The moonlight gave the forest trail enough light for him to see where her feet landed. Finn made sure to follow closely, and Gabi was directly behind him.
“Why International?” he asked Aunt Ev.
“Oh, I insisted on it when I moved to Italy for a few years in the seventies. Beth added it mostly to placate me.”
He ran over their conversation in his mind as they walked. “Why did you call Gran a Future Traveler?”
A Time Traveler's Theory of Relativity Page 7
