No Less Days

by Amanda G. Stevens

  The flight was turbulent, the terminal was crowded, and his feet were heavy by the time he found his car in the airport lot. As he drove home, oncoming headlights smeared his vision. He left his luggage in his car and trudged up the garage steps into the house. Shower. He’d never gotten a shower.

  First things first. He took a small plastic tub from a shelf in the refrigerator and opened the lid, which was dotted with tiny holes. He gathered up a handful of worms and went to the living room.

  The box turtle wouldn’t be in danger of starvation, not in a few days, but she’d be hungry. David lifted the mesh top from the terrarium, her winter home to which he’d transferred her while he was away. Cold enough outside now that he hadn’t wanted to chance her freezing overnight. He dropped the worms into her food dish. She was hiding under her favorite log, half-burrowed into the cypress mulch, but she would smell the food. Normally he enjoyed watching her as she craned her neck, eyed her prey, chowed down in slow motion. Tonight he left her to a solitary meal and trudged to the shower.

  Finally clean, he tugged on flannel pants and fell into bed. No reserves of energy left. He’d stay holed up here tomorrow. One more day needed to refuel with protein, to rest … A smile found his mouth. To rejuvenate.

  He set no alarm and didn’t stir until after three the next afternoon. No surprise that Tiana had left him two voice mails. He dragged himself upright and shuffled to the living room. The turtle was burrowed with her head visible, and the worms were gone. He smiled.

  The sleep portion of his recovery seemed accomplished. His mind was functioning, and recent memories were sharp—bidding goodbye to Moira and Zac, the flight to Detroit, the drive home. Physically, though, some weakness lingered. He went to the kitchen, grilled chicken and asparagus, and devoured both. Still hungry. He opened the refrigerator and gazed into it without inspiration. Maybe he’d go up to the corner and get a sandwich. He’d not be walking that far today, though. Have to drive. He sighed.

  Someone knocked on his door. Strange. He was expecting no packages. He crossed the living room to open the door.

  Tiana. One hand held a white paper bag from the corner diner, and her eyes were beyond sparking—more like hurling napalm.

  “You’re here.”

  “I am.”

  “And you couldn’t answer your phone? Or better yet, call in to say, ‘Hey, you’ll be manning things one more day, and thanks for bringing in six hundred fifty-three dollars and eighty-nine cents yesterday on your own—’”

  “Tiana,” he said.

  She clasped the restaurant bag in front of her. Her eyebrows arched almost to her hairline.

  “I apologize.”

  “I closed up the store to come over here.”

  Mouthwatering scents were seeping through that bag. “You brought lunch?”

  “In case you were sick.” Her gaze took in the neighbors on either side of him, bungalows not unlike his own, cars in the driveways but no one outside. “I can go if this is … inappropriate?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “Small towns talk.”

  “Because a female entered my house in broad daylight?”

  “The female who works for you. Not like I can be mistaken for any other woman in Harbor Vale, even at a distance.” She gestured to her hair.

  He couldn’t care less about the sort of people who would jump to a critical conclusion, but women were different. “If you prefer, we’ll eat on the porch.”

  Tiana looked past him into the foyer, seemed to weigh something in her mind, then stepped inside. David shut the door, locked it out of habit, and led her to his kitchen.

  She stood a moment, taking in his living space. He let himself see it through new eyes, but nothing was remarkable. Nothing in the kitchen, anyway. Slate-blue walls, black granite counter, faux stone floor, stainless steel appliances. The room had just enough square footage for a small table in the corner across from the fridge and stove.

  “It’s so neat,” Tiana said. “Way to defy bachelor stereotypes.”

  He laughed. “I don’t eat in here.”

  “You cook, though.” She nodded to the skillet in the sink.

  “Only the basics.”

  “And the way you are about your books, I’m really not buying it if you tell me the rest of the house is a mess.” She set the take-out bag on the counter, lifted out two Styrofoam bowls of soup and packaged oyster crackers.

  “Mm.” His stomach seemed to hollow at the promise of more food. His metabolism must still be amped up.

  “I thought asparagus soup might make you gag if you were feeling queasy, but it smells like you’ve been cooking some anyway. Did you just eat?”

  “Not long ago, but I could again.”

  They sat at the table. Tiana handed him one of the soups without checking the flavor. “They’re both chicken noodle.”

  “You didn’t want cream of broccoli?”

  “Well, if I thought asparagus might make you gag, I wasn’t going to force you to smell broccoli.”

  Neither of them spoke again until they’d opened the bowls, stirred them, taken test bites, and warned each other it was still hot. Tiana stirred in a whole package of crackers and offered him the other one.

  A food he wouldn’t eat on its own. For most of his life, a food he wouldn’t eat at all, convinced any hardened white-flour product would taste like hardtack. He used half the package and gave the rest to Tiana.

  “So,” she said, munching them straight out of the little bag. “Have you been sick?”

  Close enough. He nodded.

  “For two days? You didn’t mention it before.”

  “It knocked me down fast.”

  “But it’s not why you were gone the first day.”

  A sigh. “No. Something had come up. Something personal.”

  She studied him and ignored her soup.

  David paused, a bite half raised to his lips. “What?”

  “Thanks for not lying to me.”

  When they finished, his stomach was warm and full, and he could have slept again. He blinked away the drowsiness and threw away their trash as Tiana wandered from kitchen to living room. Nothing there but a couch and love seat, the TV, his movie collection … oh, and—

  “You have a turtle,” she called.

  He joined her. Tiana crouched at the glass and tapped the pad of her finger against the glass without making a sound.

  While the turtle craned her neck toward the movement, David stared too, no longer seeing his place through Tiana’s eyes. Instead, he was now seeing her in it. He shouldn’t. Couldn’t. But the glimpse was captivating.

  “You,” Tiana said. “A pet.”

  “Not exactly. That is, petting isn’t required.”

  “What’s its name?” She didn’t stand up, didn’t look away, as if she’d never seen a live reptile before. Well, maybe she hadn’t.

  “Mostly I call her Turtle.”

  “How do you know she’s a female?”

  “Eye color.”

  Now she did look up, mouth open. “For real?”

  “Males have a bright red eye.”

  “David Galloway, zoologist.”

  His laugh caught on something, but she didn’t seem to notice. She straightened and crossed the room to the entrance of his library. David followed.

  “Oh …” Tiana stepped into the room and turned a full circle, head tilting to see the top shelves near the ten-foot ceiling. “How many?”

  “A few thousand.”

  “Come on, I know you. Exact count.”

  She didn’t know him. But she could—could truly know him. All he had to do was tell her everything. Even now she knew him better than they did, Wilson and the others—she knew David would have an answer for her question, knew he favored cream of asparagus soup, knew he’d rather be digging through a box of old books than serving customers or balancing accounts. This was true knowledge of a person. Personal, not scientific.

  No one person knew all of it. F
or the first time since Ginny left him, he wished someone did.

  Tiana was frowning at him.

  “Three thousand, eight hundred, forty-two.”

  Her lips parted. She looked around the room again. “Including the antiques?” She motioned to the slim bookcase set apart in one corner.

  Right. Antique. That’s what he was. What he would be to her if she knew.

  “No,” David said. “There are one hundred sixty-seven of those.”

  She opened the glass door and bent to read the lower titles. “Oh, these last ones aren’t old at all. So they’re in chronological order?”

  “I buy a first edition every year. Whatever new release I enjoy the most.”

  “Going all the way back to the eighteen hundreds?”

  A cold finger traced his spine, but she’d never figure it out.

  “Wow. Some of these must be worth a lot of money.”

  “Quite a lot.”

  “They’re insured?”

  “Yes, but I doubt I’d be able to replace them all.”

  “Yeah,” Tiana said. She shut the door and walked the perimeter of the room, an Austen heroine putting herself to best advantage, except Tiana didn’t know she was doing it. The wonder in her eyes, the appreciation for his most prized possession, attracted him as much as the lithe movement of her jean-clad legs.

  He didn’t want just any person to know him. He wanted it to be her. The awareness of that wasn’t new, but it had never before made his heart pound or his voice fail.

  “You don’t have any children’s books.” Disappointment lilted in her voice.

  He wished he had a whole case of Caldecott winners so he could watch her plop down cross-legged on the floor and flip their glossy, colorful pages.

  She pulled a few books out randomly, old and new blended on his shelves, hardcovers and paperbacks. “They’re not from library sales. They’re in perfect condition, every single one of them. Even the antiques.”

  He nodded.

  “Did you inherit them or something? Or do you go into debt to collect books?”

  Perhaps not a lie to say he’d inherited them. From one generation to another, lifetimes passing. His own, that’s all.

  It hung in the air around him like an aura—the choice. But he’d already made it.

  She stood in front of him, waiting, one hand hooked on a back pocket of her jeans.

  “I’ve been collecting books a long time,” he said.

  She cocked one eyebrow at him, waiting for more.

  “A … a long time.”

  “Thirty years? You started in kindergarten?”

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Don’t do this. The voice screamed in his head. Experience. Common sense.

  Fear.

  He wouldn’t give in to it.

  NINE

  David.” Tiana crossed the room and stood before him. Close enough to smell her freesia body splash. “It’s okay. Whatever it is.”

  Because she didn’t know what it was. His chest heaved.

  Remember Ginny. Don’t ruin this too.

  No. Ginny was proof he had to do this. Now.

  He motioned with one hand, and Tiana followed him. Halted at the doorway of his bedroom.

  “Um …,” she said. “Wait here.”

  She stood in the doorway while he crouched in front of the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. He unlatched it, lifted the lid, and picked out his proofs. Hands full, he nodded her out of the way, and she trailed him back to the library. Yes. Do this in the company of his books. Their collective age calmed him as he knelt in the center of the room and set everything out on the carpet. Tiana knelt beside him. Silent.

  He held out a handwritten receipt for his first edition of The Silmarillion. Nodded to the first editions case. Tiana took the slip of paper and crouched at the case until she found the book, then looked back at him.

  “So you keep receipts….”

  “Look at the date.” His stomach tensed.

  Tiana looked down. “September 20, 1977. So …?”

  “Look at the purchaser’s signature, Tiana.” She knew his handwriting as well as her own, especially the sweep of the D she teased him about. “People must think your name is O-avid.”

  Her fingers crinkled the edge of the paper. “You bought this book in—wait, that would make you—well, over forty—no, you obviously didn’t buy it the year you were born, so that would make you …” She shook her head. “I give up. This is your adult signature. But you’re not sixty.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “You’re a time traveler?” Her mouth tilted up.

  “I’m …” His every muscle tightened. Resolve didn’t make the words come easier. “I’m older than sixty.”

  Her face flattened. She shook her head. “Your sense of humor needs more work than I thought.”

  “It isn’t a joke.”

  “You’re thirty-five.”

  He reached for another artifact. Handed it over. A bent sepia photograph not much later than the ones scanned into Zac’s hard drive. David and Sarah, and wee Michael perched on her arm. All her lovely hair pinned up, David’s hat in his hand at his side—he’d forgotten to remove it until the last moment.

  Tiana’s hand trembled once. “Who are these people?”

  “My wife, Sarah. My son, Michael, when he was three.”

  She turned over the picture and read the penned date. 1884. She looked up at him, lips parted, eyes too wide.

  “I was thirty-five when I stopped aging. I was badly hurt that year, and a doctor tried to save my life by putting something experimental into my blood. This”—he motioned to his face—“is the result.”

  “You stopped aging. Like Dorian Gray,” Tiana said.

  Ah, how many times he’d read that one. Imagined a painting of himself, of a man stooped and wrinkled with grieving eyes.

  “You believe this,” she said, handing the photograph back to him. “You believe the man in this picture is you.”

  “It is.”

  She scooted closer to the items spread on the floor. “What in the world …?”

  He let her examine each piece. His driver’s license from 1975, a theater ticket from the first time he saw Gone with the Wind. He’d chosen nothing with John Russell’s name on it—no sense now in complicating the explanation. She paused finally at the frayed blue uniform jacket.

  “This is … a Union soldier’s uniform. But it looks too small.”

  “I was a drummer. Only a boy, you see—thirteen.” By the end of the fighting, the cuffs had ended four inches above his wrists and the seams strained at his shoulders.

  “David, where did you get this, really? It should be in a museum.”

  “My ma kept the uniform. When she passed on, I found it and couldn’t make myself discard it.”

  She folded her hands in her lap, studying him. “Why would you discard it?”

  “When I look at it, I …” He shook his head. He’d keep talking as long as she kept listening. Something he said would be the right thing. “I taste hardtack and muddy water and smoke and blood. That iron taste blood leaves in the air. I—I’ve many memories, Tiana, decades of them. Many of them good and pure and right, but many of them …”

  She gathered the things in her hands and set them atop the uniform, then knelt in front of him. “Have you talked to someone about this?”

  An ache filled his chest. “A psychiatrist, you mean?”

  “There are … you know … medications.”

  He stood. “What about the photograph? It’s me, isn’t it?”

  “The resemblance is crazy. I’m sure you’re related.”

  “There’s one man represented by these artifacts, and it’s myself. That’s my signature on the receipts, on the driver’s license. And though I can’t prove it, I wore that uniform when I was a lad and the beat of my drums told our troops the speed of our march.”

  “Okay, listen to me, okay?” Her voice shook. “Given
this person is clearly an ancestor of yours, I’m going to trust you didn’t rip off any of this stuff from a museum or … or anywhere else. I think these are heirlooms, and somehow you’ve, you know, internalized them or something.”

  So blind he’d been to try this. All of it could be explained away. He did a quick inventory of the contents of the cedar chest—documents, mostly, photographs she’d say were of this same ancestor. If these things hadn’t convinced her, those wouldn’t either. And call him a coward, he wasn’t going to bring out a gun from the bedroom cabinet and put a bullet through his heart. Likely he’d pass out and she’d call an ambulance.

  “I have a favor to ask,” he said.

  “I’m not going to tell anyone about this.”

  “That’s not my concern.” Not with her.

  “What then?”

  “Would you stay on, please, until I can find someone to replace you?”

  She blinked. Cocked her head. “Did I say I was quitting?”

  “You said I’m delusional.”

  Tiana pushed up from the floor and stood in front of him, head slightly tilted to meet his gaze. She was sizing him up in a way she’d never done before, but something else lingered behind that look.

  “I need to know something,” she said after a moment.

  “Of course.” Whatever it was, she deserved an answer after this.

  “Why did you tell me this now?”

  “I wanted you to know.”

  “Why?”

  If only he could include the others in his explanation, but that wouldn’t be right; and why should she believe that five people on the earth couldn’t die if she refused to believe in one? David scooped up the things she’d piled and took them back to his room. She didn’t follow this time. He packed them into the chest, ran his palm down the front of his uniform a final time before closing the lid. When he returned to the library, Tiana was sitting in his chair, legs drawn up to one side, scanning his books again from ceiling to floor. David turned the desk chair to face her and took a seat.

  “You thanked me earlier,” he said. “For not lying to you.”

  She met his eyes, pulled her knees up, and nodded.

  “This had been a lie of omission.”

  “Okay. Is there … anything else?”