The Night Mark

by Tiffany Reisz

  “I have your prayer book,” Faye said. “Pat gave it to me. In my time, I mean.”

  “Prayer book?”

  “A red prayer book. There’s a prayer in it you wrote asking for forgiveness for killing someone. Now I know what you were praying about.”

  Carrick pushed a hand through his hair. He looked as dazed as she’d felt when she’d woken up in this world. “To think I spent my whole life believing time only went in one direction,” he said. “Thought it was a river. Turns out it’s an ocean. Waves come in. Waves go out. Sometimes those waves take us with them.”

  “I didn’t plan to come here, I promise. I got caught in one of those waves.”

  “Pat says you coming here was an accident—the first time. But the second time you came by choice. Why?”

  Faye looked at him even though he couldn’t seem to meet her eyes.

  “Because I’m in love with you.”

  Carrick exhaled heavily. That wasn’t the reaction she’d hoped for.

  Faye wrapped both hands around her mug of tea, clinging to it for warmth.

  “I should have told you,” she said. “Told you who I really am. I was too cowardly to say, ‘Hey, Carrick, I know I look exactly like Faith, but I’m not her. I’m from the future.’” Faye poured her cold tea out on the lawn. “I saw Terminator 2 as a kid. I remember what they did to Sarah Connor in that mental hospital. And that was the early ’90s. I don’t want to know what they’d do to me in an insane asylum in 1921.”

  “You’re speaking in tongues, love. Who’s Sarah Connor?”

  “If you live to be ninety-eight years old, I’ll introduce you to her. She’s a badass like you are. Except she kills robots, not alligators.”

  “Tell me about this Will of yours,” Carrick said. “You were married to him?”

  “Yes. We were together a year, a beautiful year. Then he was killed in 2011. I could tell you the exact date and the exact time they called it, but I’ll spare you the details. I don’t even want to know.”

  “That’s ninety years from now.”

  “And four years in the past for me.”

  “You hope...” Carrick sighed. “I suppose everyone hopes that in the future that doesn’t happen, that it’s better, safer, that we finally start getting it right.”

  “The future isn’t heaven, and it isn’t utopia, either. It’s just like now. Only, you know, with air-conditioning. Don’t ask what it is. Just know I’d rather have you than it.”

  “Because I look like the man you were married to.”

  “You do look like Will. Enough that I mistook you for him that night you pulled me out of the water the first time. I wouldn’t have...” She paused, rethought her words. “I thought I was dreaming. I thought I was dreaming of Will. It was the only explanation that made sense at the time. But that’s not why I love you. I loved Will’s face, but I didn’t love him for his face. I don’t love you for yours, either.”

  “Do you wish you hadn’t come back here? Hadn’t seen me?”

  “Not at all. Not for one second. Not for ninety-four years of seconds. But I do regret hurting you. I woke up in Faith’s body, in her life. And you were in love with her, not me. Do you love me because I look like her?”

  “Faith,” Carrick said. “Before you...she...before she showed up here, she and I may have exchanged ten words. The day we met, and the day before the wedding when I saw her crying on the balcony of Marsh’s house.”

  “They must have been ten damn good words.”

  “Let’s see... It was ‘Well, hello there.’ That was me when she landed in front of me and I caught her. And she said—”

  “‘My hero.’”

  “And when I saw her crying on her wedding day, I said, ‘What’s wrong, love?’ She said, ‘I’ve made a mistake.’ And then I said, ‘If you ever need me...’”

  “What else?” Faye asked.

  “That was it,” Carrick said. “I said ‘If you ever need me...’ and Marshall’s sister walked into the room to fetch you. Faith. To fetch Faith. I didn’t even get to finish my last sentence. I was trying to say, ‘If you ever need me, I’ll help you. Find me. Write me. Come away with me.’ I shouldn’t have said that. You don’t say that to a woman about to marry the man who used to be your closest friend. But I said it. And she must have believed me.”

  “She did. She came here because she believed you’d help her.”

  “Or she thought Marshall would never bother to look for her here. I don’t fool myself for one second she was in love with me after those ten words.”

  “She was, though.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because she wrote you a letter. Hartwell found it, gave it to Marshall, and I read it. You want to know what it says?”

  “It says she killed herself, didn’t it?”

  Faye nodded. “She did.”

  “Ah... I was afraid that was it.” He looked up at the sky, and when he closed his eyes for a second two tears fell from his face to the floor.

  “She killed herself because after she came here, she realized she was pregnant with his baby. And she couldn’t be unmarried and living with you and pregnant if she was pretending to be your daughter. And she couldn’t go back to Marshall. And she couldn’t go anywhere else. In her letter she said she hoped she would be reborn in another life where you were her husband and it was your children she had.”

  Carrick looked at her in surprise. “She really wrote that?”

  “She did.”

  Carrick leaned back against the porch post and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

  “Faith? Yes, she’s gone somewhere,” Faye said. “Who knows? Maybe she’s living my old life. But I’d like to think she’s with Will, wherever he is, since I’m with you.”

  “And the baby? Gone, too?”

  Faye took a long, slow breath, shook her head no.

  “Mother of God, you’re pregnant,” Carrick said.

  “I can’t say for certain. In 2015 we have these easy pregnancy tests. I’d know in ten minutes. But I think I am. Feels like I am.”

  They were silent for a long time. Faye knew what she had to say but didn’t want to say it, but she loved Carrick enough to make the offer.

  “I’ll go back,” Faye said. “I won’t stay if you don’t want me to. I’m not Faith, not really. I’m pregnant with another man’s child. And God knows I’m not the girl you fell in love with—”

  “I’m in love with you,” Carrick said. His voice was stern and strong, unwavering, unflinching. He meant it. “I’m in love with the girl I pulled out of the water, the girl who kissed me and cried on my shoulder. I’m in love with the girl who can’t milk a goat to save her life. I’m in love with the girl who didn’t think to check for alligators before weeding her garden. I’m in love with the girl who put iodine on my cuts this morning. The girl who’s making me quit smoking. The girl who brings me coffee before she goes to bed. The girl who says things that I didn’t know girls knew how to say to a man. And I’m in love with the girl standing here, and Marshall’s dead and gone, and good riddance. The baby you’re carrying is yours, and since I love you, I love that baby. What I need to know is...are you really in love with me? Or are you in love with the man I happen to look like?”

  Faye turned to Carrick, narrowed her eyes at him, smiled.

  “Do you know what the infield fly rule is?” she asked.

  Carrick shrugged and shook his head.

  “Neither do I,” Faye said. “But Will knew. If there’s anything he knew, it was baseball. When Will was hanging out with his friends and they’d had one too many beers, they would fall all over themselves trying to explain it to me. One time they went into the backyard behind our apartment building and tried to act it out. I still didn’t get it. But, God, we laughed so hard that evening I pulled a muscle in my stomach. So if you don’t know what the infield fly rule is and you don’t feel an overwhelming urge to explain it to me when you
’re drinking, then you aren’t William Jacob Fielding.”

  “I guess I’m not William Jacob Fielding, then.”

  Faye took a step closer to Carrick, so close she could stand on her toes to kiss him if she wanted.

  “I know you aren’t,” she said softly. “And yet...I love you.”

  “I want to believe that. But...”

  Carrick stepped away from her and sat in the one rocking chair that she’d managed to put back into working order. Faye sat on the porch railing opposite the chair, the wind and the ocean at her back, her feet on Carrick’s knees. He wrapped his hands around her ankles, held them gently.

  “I can’t ask you to stay here for me,” he said. “I can’t ask you and I can’t let you. You tell me you were born in 1985... I won’t even be alive anymore in 1985. How could you possibly be happy here? It must be like living... I don’t know, on the moon?”

  “I’ve never been to the moon,” she said. “But humans do go to the moon. Not until 1969, though.”

  “Men on the moon. I can’t...” Carrick glanced up at the sky. “It’s too wonderful to believe. But I know you’re telling me the truth.”

  “It’s science fiction to you. It’s just a chapter in a high school history book to me.”

  “So you weren’t...you weren’t happy in your time? Even with men on the moon?”

  She shrugged. “Makes me sound like a terrible person, doesn’t it? In 2015, women can hold any job men can. We still don’t get paid quite as much, but we have access to a lot of power. Although men do still try to keep us out. Sexism is alive and well in 2015, but some things are better. Much better than they are now. The secretary of state was a woman for several years until she resigned. Now she’s running for president.”

  “A woman president?” Carrick laughed heartily. “You’re joking.”

  “Not joking, I swear. And this will blow your mind. Our current president? The man who is president in 2015 and has been for seven years? He’s black.”

  Carrick’s eyes nearly fell out of his head.

  “That’s...” he breathed. “Are you pulling my leg?”

  Faye grinned. “No, I swear it’s true. His father was a black man from Kenya who came to the United States for school, and he married a white woman and lived in Hawaii. And their only child is our president. Two-term president. Very popular, too, especially around the world. I voted for him twice.”

  Carrick rocked back in the chair, put his hands behind his head and interlocked his fingers. He looked utterly flabbergasted.

  “It’s not even legal,” he said.

  “What?” she asked. “A black president?”

  “A black man and a white woman marrying.”

  “Not now,” she said. In 1921 there were certainly laws against mixed-race marriages. She would hold off telling Carrick about same-sex marriage in 2015 lest he have a stroke. “But it’s legal in 2015 and has been since the 1970s, I think. Maybe the 1960s. The laws varied by state. But in my time, there are a lot of interracial marriages. A lot of people don’t even get married. They just live together. You know, like we’re doing.”

  He ignored that comment.

  “You know you couldn’t be president if you stayed here,” he said. “Maybe in your time, but now?”

  “Honestly, I don’t think I could be president in my time,” she said. In 2015, Faye’s own husband didn’t want her working. “But I don’t want to be president.”

  “What do you want to do, Faith?” He closed his eyes, wincing. “Faye,” he said.

  “Victoria Faye Barlow. That’s my name. I always went by Faye since Vicky was my mom.”

  “Barlow? Not Fielding?”

  “I didn’t take Will’s last name when we were married. Does that shock you?”

  “Why wouldn’t you take his name?”

  “A lot of women don’t anymore. I had already established a pretty successful freelance career as a photographer under my maiden name when Will and I got married. It would have been a pain to change it.” She decided not to tell Carrick about websites. She wouldn’t even know where to begin with the internet. “We’d decided our kids would be Fieldings. But we didn’t have any kids.”

  “You would take my last name.”

  “Carrick, I already have. Remember?”

  “Don’t remind me,” he said. He leaned forward and buried his head in his hands for a moment before looking up at her.

  “There’s something else you should know,” Faye said.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re from Mars.”

  She laughed. “No. We haven’t sent people to Mars yet in 2015, only robots.” Carrick started to open his mouth. She held up her hand to stop the question. She’d explain robots another day. “Did Pat tell you about Hagen?”

  “No. He didn’t tell me much about you, said he should leave it to you. Who’s Hagen?”

  “My other husband.”

  She had to give Carrick credit. He didn’t gasp or swear or anything at all. He simply looked at her and waited.

  Faye told Carrick everything—about Will, the baby, Hagen, the miscarriages, the failed infertility treatments, her divorce, everything. No more secrets. No more lies. She wanted him to love her, as Faye and not Faith, the way she loved him, as Carrick and not Will.

  “You lost two?” Carrick asked, and the compassion in his voice nearly undid her.

  Faye tried to answer but couldn’t, not with the rock in her throat.

  “I’m sorry,” Carrick said. “Love, I’m so sorry.”

  She tried to smile as she wiped her tears.

  “Anyway, that’s it for my deep, dark secrets. Except for one—I’m thirty, not twenty. Although I like looking twenty again, and I’m shallow enough to admit that.”

  “Do you look like Faith? In your own time, I mean?”

  “I do, a little. When I look in the mirror, I see me looking back. This body feels like my body. This life feels like my life. I feel like I belong here, which is why... I mean, I know I should have told you before this. I just didn’t know how to tell you to make you believe me. I was terrified to tell you at first. I thought you’d haul me off to an asylum. Do you hate me yet? I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

  “No,” he said simply. “Although I wouldn’t mind going a couple rounds with your husband.”

  “Will or Hagen? Or Marshall? I have too many damn husbands.”

  “Hagen. God’s already taken care of Marshall.”

  “Hagen’s not an evil man. He just wanted something I couldn’t give him.”

  “Children?”

  “Love. I think he thought if I had his children, I would love him through them. But it wasn’t meant to be.”

  “Is this meant to be?” Carrick asked. “You and me, I mean?”

  “Seems like someone out there is trying very hard to get you and I together.”

  “If I didn’t look like him...would you still want to stay?”

  “If you didn’t look like him, I wouldn’t have stuck around long enough to find a reason to stay,” she admitted. “If I’d woken up in this house with a total stranger, I would have run screaming from here as far and as fast as I could. And if I’d made it back to 2015, I would have stayed there and never looked back. That you looked like Will... It gave me a reason to stay until...you know. Until I had other reasons to want to stay. Now...that you look like Will is the least of those reasons.”

  “I must be bait, then,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bait. Bait on a fishhook. I look like the man you loved, and that got the hook in you. And now whoever wants you here is reeling you in.”

  “I’m hooked,” she admitted. “Hooked so hard I don’t even want to get unhooked.”

  “That’s hooked, all right. But won’t you miss your time? You can’t say you won’t miss something.”

  Would she miss anything? Cell phones? Netflix? Cars with seat belts? Air-conditioning? The Lilly Ledbetter Act? Fluoride?

  “Pe
nicillin, maybe?” Pat said.

  Faye turned and saw Pat standing in the front yard looking up