“Are you going to bed?” I asked him.
“Not for a while, yet,” he said. “I thought I’d wait up. The weather report said it might snow tonight.”
“Really?”
“Really. There’s a cold front moving in around midnight. Want to wait up with me?”
Staying up late at night in our pajamas to see if it would snow overnight was a grand family tradition in the Bellows household. It didn’t snow very much in D.C. anymore, and it had always been a cause of great rejoicing (and freedom from school) when it did.
“Let me go put my pajamas on,” I said. “I’ll be back down.”
“I’ll come to your room,” he said. “There’s a balcony. We can watch from there.”
“Which room is mine?” I said, grabbing my bag from the dining room table where I’d left it during Calliope’s operation.
“Second on the left,” he said. “Calliope is next door to you, and Carter and I are across the hall next to the bathroom.”
He followed me up the stairs to my room (helpfully labeled with a sign hanging from the doorknob that said “REGGIE’S ROOM!” in Carter’s handwriting, surrounded by drawings of candy canes) and watched as I opened the door.
The room was huge and white and airy, with a wall of windows to the left and French doors to the right that opened out onto a balcony with two comfortable-looking chairs. There was a big, soft-looking bed, an antique dresser and a plush, cozy carpet underfoot. But I didn’t notice any of those things until much later, because I was transfixed by the sight right in front of me.
It was my evidence wall.
“We did the best we could,” said Leo behind me, apologetically, as I ran my fingers in wonderment over the neatly-organized collection of documents with which they had covered the entire wall opposite the door. “Carter told me that you liked things on paper because it helped you to think. We found some stuff at Mom’s house, and Calliope had your field notes on her handheld with all your reports. And then Carter rewrote everything he remembered. It’s only about half of it, maybe three-quarters, but we thought it might help.”
“This is incredible,” I said. “Thank you. I was beginning to feel naked without it.”
He watched me in silence for a few moments as I immersed myself in the wall, feeling a little more grounded, a little more confident of myself, now that I had it back.
“I helped them hang everything,” he said after a moment. ”They talked me through the whole thing. They were very patient with me. Calliope told me all about your job at the Bureau, how you saved your boss, how you were the one who spotted the Chronomaly before anyone else. And Carter told me all about Gemstone.”
“I spent the past year following your mission. I read every piece of paper on this wall a hundred times – I would come up here and sit on the bed and just stare at it. I just kept thinking, ‘That’s your sister. Running from enemy agents, going undercover in the White House, spying on burglars, trying to stop a war and save fifty-six million people. That’s your sister.’ And it made me feel like I don’t even really know you at all.”
I put my arms around him and buried my face in shoulder.
“Come on,” I said. “You know me. We shared a uterus.”
“That’s a good point,” he kissed the top of my head. “I’m proud of you, sis,” he said.
“Thank you for my evidence wall,” I said. “I love it.”
He left me alone to change my clothes then, and returned a few minutes later with two glasses and a bottle of brandy.
“I don’t know why you always waste the good stuff on me,” I said. “You remember the Chrono-Imported whiskey incident.”
“I keep telling myself that someday I’ll train your barbarian palate to tell the difference,” he said, opening the French doors to the balcony and ushering me outside. “But for now, we’re just getting drunk.”
“Excellent,” I said, following him outside and closing the door behind me.
We sat in silence for awhile, sipping our brandy and looking out. The balcony faced away from the street over a marshy, bracken-filled old swamp. “The security fence runs a scan every ninety seconds for vital signs and surveillance equipment,” said Leo, answering my question. “Yes, we’re safe out here.”
“Twenty-four hours ago, my brother was making scallop risotto in Croatia,” I said. “I guess I don’t know you that well either. I would never have guessed that the person who showed up to rescue me from that building would have been my brother, the chef.”
“Your job’s a lot more dramatic than mine.”
“I know,” I said. “I miss when it used to be boring.”
I looked over at him and felt my heart contract a little at seeing so much of Leo Carstairs in his profile. “Mom would be proud of you,” I said. “So would Dad.”
“You talk about him like he was a real person,” he said. “I mean, like a person that you knew. You always have. I never had that. I know nothing about him.”
“Yes, you do. You know everything that I know.”
“He’s not real to me though, not in the same way he’s real to you. Like, just now, what you said. That Dad would be proud of me. You said it like you knew it was true. I couldn’t say something like that. It’s – I don’t know – it’s hard to explain.”
“Try,” I said. “We have all night.”
“It’s like history class,” he said. “Or, it’s like history class is for the rest of us who don’t actually go inside of history. I feel like . . . I believe in Leo Carstairs the way I believe in Abraham Lincoln. Does that make sense? I know he existed, I know he was important, I know about the things that he did because I’ve heard about them and read about them, but I don’t have a relationship with Leo Carstairs. We were never in the world at the same time. He was gone before we were even born. But it’s not like that for you.”
“No,” I said, “it’s not. Because every day I go to work and I’m a celebrity’s kid. Everywhere I go, everyone knows that my mother is Her Majesty the famous Katie Bellows, and everyone knows that my father’s death was a national tragedy, and nobody can separate me from those things. You just get to go to work and be you, Leo Bellows, a person with a job and a life. I’m Katie Bellows’ daughter. That’s my whole identity. And Carstairs is tied up in it too.”
“You call him Carstairs as much as you call him Dad,” Leo said.
“Because ‘Carstairs’ is how I know him,” I said. “Everyone I work with, they also worked with him. I know more about what his life must have been like than you do. Everywhere I go I’m Leo Carstairs and Katie Bellows’ daughter. But that’s as much a burden as it is a gift, don’t you see that? I’m constantly tripping over his work, Mom’s work, every day. All I have to do is click on my computer screen a couple of times and there he is, all over the 20th century. I can’t separate him from my life.”
“Still,” said Leo, “you knew. When they told you he might have been a traitor, that there was a chance he had been the one that caused all this, you knew it was wrong. You knew he would never have done that. You knew him well enough to be absolutely sure. I don’t know that. I have only your word, and Mom’s, that our dad wasn’t a traitor. It’s not like I don’t trust you,” he added. “But it would be nice. It would be nice to be sure.”
“I’m sure enough for both of us,” I said. “I promise.”
“You’re always sure enough for both of us, Reggie,” he said. “That doesn’t guarantee you’re right.”
“I’m right about this,” I said, and we sat in silence for a long time, wrapped in our own thoughts, both thinking about Leo Carstairs.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said finally. “We learned a little bit in school about the founding of the Time Travel Bureau. I’ve been trying to remember. The scientists, the ones who invented it – what were their names?”
“Li Chidong and Martina Garcia Lopez,” I said. “The first scientists to successfully master Chrono-Transit.”
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br /> “Right,” he said. “And they met in college. In New Washington.”
“That’s right,” I said. New Washington was an American outpost built on the site of what had once been the northeastern corner of Beijing. It was one of the many towns in postwar China that began life as a hastily-cobbled-together heap of concrete bunkers to house the American defense contractors the government hired to rebuild the country once we annexed it.
“And without World War III,” he said, “New Washington wouldn’t exist. Which means they’d never meet.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Hang on – because if they never meet,” he said, “and they never invent time travel, then there’s no Time Travel Bureau. Which means no Carstairs and Bellows. Which means—”
“No us,” I said slowly.
“Exactly,” he said. “Aren’t we, maybe, fighting to save a world where we don’t even exist?”
“We might be,” I said. “There’s no way to know.”
“How can you be so calm about that?”
“Because that’s what we do,” I said. “That’s our job. We don’t fix the Timeline to make it the way we want it. We fix it to make it right. The war isn’t supposed to happen, which means I have to stop it.”
“Even if what’s really supposed to happen is worse?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Even so.”
“Even if it means you don’t exist?”
“I mean, I definitely want to keep existing,” I said. “I’m really holding out for that to be part of the plan. And I’d also very much like for you to keep existing.”
“What if I don’t?” he said. “What if after everything gets fixed, there’s still a you but there isn’t a me?”
“You’ll still be my brother,” I said.
“You won’t even know I existed,” he said.
“I promise you,” I said to him firmly, with more confidence than I actually possessed. “We’re going to stick together. We’re going to get through this and we’re going to find Mom. I promise, Leo. It’s going to be okay.”
“Look,” said Leo suddenly, pointing out at the night sky. “It’s snowing.”
It was.
I took his hand.
* * *
I slept like the dead, and woke ten hours later feeling almost human again. Calliope’s stitches had worked like magic; they itched, and if I wasn’t careful in moving my shoulder they pulled tight, causing me to wince, but the wound was healing clean, with no redness or swelling.
I pulled on the only clean clothes I had – my favorite cotton pants and shirt that I had illegally smuggled back to 1972 with me against Mark and Mrs. Graham’s wardrobe regulations – and followed the smell of nutmeg downstairs to find that everyone else was already awake. Calliope was curled up on the sofa with coffee and her handheld, while Leo and Carter made breakfast.
“She’s up!” said Carter triumphantly as soon as I came into view. “You have to put it away now.”
“You said I could work until breakfast,” protested Calliope.
“Breakfast is ready,” said Leo.
“Coffee,” I mumbled at him, and he waved a hand towards the counter behind him where a fresh, steaming carafe of coffee was waiting next to a bowl of sugar and a pitcher of real cream. I poured myself a huge cup and held it up to my nose, inhaling the magical smell, and watched Carter and Leo.
They had clearly established a familiar chef/sous-chef routine, and moved comfortably around each other in the kitchen like people who were used to sharing space. It was like choreography, watching Leo pour pancake batter onto the griddle in perfect circles, move aside to let Carter move in underneath him and pull a tray of sausages out of the oven, then step back to the griddle in time to flip the pancakes.
“Calliope, put the computer away,” said Carter, and she sighed, but obeyed. We sat down at the table, coffee in hand, while Leo and Carter served us gingerbread pancakes, apple-sage sausage, and berries with cream. We ate in contented silence for awhile. Carter was the only one of us who was particularly convivial in the mornings, but he respectfully restrained himself until the last dish was cleared before he forcibly shoved us over to the couch.
“Presents!” he announced, handing each of us our stockings.
“I feel like a jerk, I didn’t get you guys anything,” I said, but Carter waved me into silence.
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “You’re the guest of honor. You owe us nothing.”
I felt around in my stocking and pulled out three small bundles, wrapped in colorful paper. The first was from Leo, a small paper box of madeleines he’d made himself.
“These are my favorite!” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“I got oatmeal walnut,” said Carter happily.
“Whose favorite cookie is oatmeal walnut?” I said, staring at him.
“Don’t,” said Calliope, “don’t get him started, for the love of God.”
“What did Leo make you?” I asked her.
“Pfeffernüsse,” she said, and she smiled at him. “My grandmother used to make these for me.”
“Do Calliope’s next!” exclaimed Carter.
“Well, they’re not as exciting as oatmeal walnut cookies,” she said dryly. “But I generally prefer to give practical gifts.”
We each pulled out a small tissue paper bundle.
“You might as well do it at the same time,” she said. “They’re all the same.”
“It’s a key,” said Carter, who had torn through his first.
“What’s this for?” Leo asked curiously, looking down at his key, and she pointed to the corner of the room, where a large, ornately-carved chinoiserie sideboard stood.
“It’s for all of us,” she said, “but let Reggie have the honors.”
I took my key over to the iron lock, and turned it until I heard its heavy click, then gently pulled open the double doors.
Inside the cupboard were four shelves, stacked high with neat rows of the Bureau-issue disaster-proof metal boxes agents stored tech devices in. There were boxes of all shapes and sizes.
“Your dad was a hoarder,” she said. “This place was full of good stuff. We have weapons, emergency rations, Comms, Microcams, Short-Hops, scanners, everything. It’s all a couple decades out of date and needed the Calliope touch, but it works.”
“All of it,” I said. “All of this works.”
“Yep.”
I turned back to her. “Just so we’re clear,” I said in a low voice. “When you say it needed ‘the Calliope touch,’ are you saying you took an entire arsenal of thirty-year-old Bureau equipment and retrofitted every single piece so we could use it?”
“Merry Christmas,” she said.
“I can’t believe you did all this,” I said in wonderment. She shrugged.
“I got bored stuck in the house with these two all day, I needed something to do.”
“Calliope—”
“Don’t get all squishy on me,” she said. “I just did my job.”
“I love you, Calliope.”
“Shut up.”
“My turn! My turn!” exclaimed Carter, who had obviously saved himself for last on purpose. Calliope pulled a sparkling, misshapen bundle out of her stocking and Leo and I watched her open it. She delicately peeled back layers of paper to reveal a wooden square, painted white, about the size of the palm of her hand, with a ribbon running through the top of it.
“I found some wood in the basement that was still usable,” he said. “I made Christmas ornaments. That’s for the tree.”
Leo and I peered over Calliope’s shoulder and saw a delicate, remarkably skillful drawing of the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Did you draw that?” said Leo, awestruck. “That’s amazing.”
“She’s from San Francisco,” said Carter, pleased with himself. “I wanted to give everybody a little piece of home.”
Calliope hugged him, quickly and fiercely and almost as though she was as surprised at it as we were, but
Carter beamed. Leo opened his next, and I saw him tear up a little.
“It’s the Old Harbour in Dubrovnik,” he said. “This is like three streets from my apartment. Carter, thank you. This is incredible.”
“Now you, Reggie,” Carter said, and he watched me intently as I untied the ribbon and lifted the layers of paper away.
It was the Lincoln Memorial.
I looked at Carter.
Carter looked at me.
“To remind you,” he said. “When you get scared. When you lose faith. This is so that you remember who you are.”
“And who am I?” I said softly.
“You’re a hero,” he said. “You just don’t know it yet.”
Nineteen
Omelettes, Among Other Things
After much negotiation, Calliope convinced Carter to waive the no-work rule for the rest of the day, and we had our first meeting of what Leo dubbed the Un-War Council. They all knew each other’s stories, of course – but I didn’t know theirs and they didn’t know mine.
Sitting around the dining room table with a pot of coffee and our handhelds, we began the process of filling in all the rest of the blanks. I told every detail of my sojourn through the eerily desolate Bureau, and they told me everything they had learned in my absence. Carter’s powers of observation and Calliope’s meticulous research were gold mines of information, but it didn’t get us any closer to formulating a real plan.
“All right,” I said, after we’d been discussing for hours and our brains were beginning to melt. “Let’s lay our facts out. What are the things that we know?”
“We know that Gemstone was real,” said Carter, “and that all or some parts of it really occurred in the General Timeline. But it was covered up, artificially, to protect Richard Nixon and ensure that he served two full terms and ended on a high note.”
The Rewind Files Page 29
