by S. L. Hawke
“Randall is technically my half-brother. But I’ve known him all my life, so it really doesn’t make much difference. We had the same mom. “ Her eyes got sad for a moment, the sign I felt, of a recent loss.
“My dad was Australian, but Randall’s dad was half Japanese. His mom, my mom, OUR mom was half Hawaiian.” Olivia added this carefully, watching my face. Despite being tall and blond, she had the Polynesian genes which gave her a golden skin tone and extremely delicate facial features. Just like my own daughter. I nodded. “Well you have things to do, just like me, so we’ll introduce you to each other over beer. He really is a nice guy, once you get past the hat.” Olivia winked.
“A hat?”
“He looks like that!” Olive pointed to a recent charcoal drawing I had done of A.J. My mouth hung open.
Myrtle Path
Randall marked the outside wall, the exact dimensions of the window he just bought. Then he turned around and looked down into an overgrown meadow and an oak forest entwined with ivy vines. The only neighbor, directly to the left, had put in a flagstone patio, its gulch side edge a wall of stones preventing one from falling down into the canyon after too many margaritas. There was about fifty feet between the two homes. Randall walked across the weedy yard, past the oak swing, and right onto the flagstone patio. He studied the gulch and then the neighbor’s house.
The house was two stories, just like Olivia’s, but with new bay windows. Suddenly the sliding glass door opened and a woman, about the size of his daughter in height, came out onto her upper deck with a watering can. With her came a young man, much taller, wearing sweat-stained clothing. He could hear them talk about something in an intimate way. She suddenly saw Randall, stared at him for a long moment with a mixture of disbelief, then held up a single hand in acknowledgement. The gesture felt very familiar, but Randall could not place it.
“Hey, can we help you? This is private–” The young man suddenly looked at Randall as if he knew him. Embarrassed and alarmed at Randall’s appearance, the young man also waved to Randall, then quickly left the deck, pulling his mother with him. The sounds of voices talking excitedly inside the neighbor’s house filtered down into the yard. Randall found himself rooted to the spot wishing he could hear what they were saying.
The sliding glass door opened again and Randall looked up at the face of his daughter.
“Ellen?! What the hell?”
“Great way to introduce yourself to the next door neighbor, Dad.” Ellen had a radiant smile on her face. “Aren’t you trespassing?”
Randall crossed the patio, climbed over the lip with a grimace at the stiffness of his old wound, then walked back over to Olivia’s side of the yard. “Is that…him?” Randall pointed up to the place where the young sweaty man had just stood. “And is that his…mother?”
Randall heard a delightful sound as Ellen giggled. She hadn’t giggled since her mother died three years ago. “Yes, Dad, it’s HIM.” she exaggerated. “Look, he’s taking a shower, so we will all, his mother included, meet formally in a bit.”
Randall could feel his mouth was open, closed it, but continued to look up at his daughter who leaned against the railing of that deck as if she had lived there.
Then it hit him. The neighbor’s son had told his mother a long time ago that Ellen and he were dating. My daughter has been staying at this house for how long? Randall took off his hat and sat down. His bullet wounds ached.
The sound of a dog making a single bark and Olive’s scream of delight startled Randall out of his dinner prep. The quiches were in the oven, but he was squeezing an orange over some dark green kale he accepted as it was thrust into his hands from the neighbor across the street who asked if a big police dog was his. “Goddamn cops are everywhere!” the old man grumbled. He was known as Mikhail, Randall had found out from Olive.
Throwing a dish towel over his shoulder Randall came out of the kitchen to the sound of his daughter’s voice and that of a young man’s. Randall wiped his hands off on the towel and hugged his tiny daughter. She giggled again, making it impossible for Randall to stay angry at her. But they would need to talk soon. Randall felt like he was going to burst.
Then he straightened and looked slightly down at the young man, an inch shorter than him, standing with a German Shepherd that sat at attention like a police dog. Olive was hugging the animal mercilessly, laughing as the dog returned her affections without altering his attentive posture.
“Mick, right?” Randall said, but he couldn’t bring himself to smile. Olivia had told him that Mick MacAree had grown up in Santa Cruz, owned the house next door, and installed his mother as a caretaker/tenant until he finished his occupational training. Before Randall could interrogate Olivia any further, Peter showed up with his father, whose clothes reeked of marijuana. This was going to be quite an evening.
“The Goddess of the Moon!” Peter’s father, Bartholomew, cooed, walking right past Randall to greet Mick’s mother, Selene MacAree.
“Bartholomew Beaumont, you are looking…very psychedelic.” Selene embraced the man good-naturedly. She caught Randall’s eye and they shared a moment of “He’s been smoking something”. The look made Randall feel like smiling until Bart spoke to Selene as seductively as a British-accented voice could muster.
“Oh nonsense, Lovely Goddess, you must simply refer to me as ‘B squared’. Just think, if my middle name was Bertram, I would have been known as ‘Be CUBED’.”
“OHKAY Dad, that’s enough flirting for one evening,” Peter gratefully intervened.
Randall found himself simply looking at Mick’s mother as if he had seen her before. He enjoyed the vibrant sunset silk shirt she wore, splashed with shades of purple, orange, pink, and yellow, like a watercolor painting.
“Is something burning?” Selene said to him with a concerned look.
“Oh crap!” Randall ran back into the kitchen. The sauce he was in the middle of preparing had boiled away.
The night was clear. They were all out on the front deck. The dog, whose name was Bodhi, had left the party with Selene, Mick, and Ellen. Mick would come back, he promised, after feeding Bodhi. Randall could not help but feel some pride that Ellen was with a LEO, and yet he worried for her, because the life of a lawman was hard on those around him.
Ellen apologized to Randall and understood that it wasn’t his fault her mother had died. She found a letter, several in fact, that, making a long story short, Randall understood, explained her parents’ divorce and her mother’s risky propensity for adventure.
Mick came back over to the front of the house via his backyard. They were all congregated in the front of the house where Peter was setting up a telescope. The lack of streetlamps, the proximity of greenspace, and the wide unencumbered sky made this place an ideal viewing area for astronomy.
Olive did not have school the next day, but she was already asleep on the outside couch, a small heap of blankets.
“I’m sorry Ellen didn’t introduce us earlier,” Mick said as he accepted a beer from Peter and sat on a stool next to the scope. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I wanted to wait for the right time.”
Randall looked at the young man, his brown eyes, curly hair and careful but calloused hands.
Randall took a deep swig of his beer. “She blames me, Ellen. We talked it through.”
“For her mom, you mean?”
Randall frowned but liked this young man.
“How’d your dad die?”
“Car accident. It was a miracle Mom didn’t die. It was touch and go for a while. She didn’t want to live without him. My sister and I were worried she wouldn’t.”
That I get, Randall thought as he took another swig, only to find the bottle empty. Mick handed him one more.
“You’ve got a reputation at the Agency,” Mick said, watching Randall, waiting for a minute as Randall connected the dots. Randall shook his head.
“You’re THAT MacAree. Shit.”
“Sorry,” Mick said with a
smile and a swig. “Look, she doesn’t blame you. She’s just scared you won’t accept her choices like you did with her mom.”
Randall felt himself get red. My little girl’s heart belongs to another. “She talk at all about Grace – her mother?”
“You mean the plane crash? The fact that she left you for another guy? Yeah.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Look, Ellen blames her mother for not trying hard enough, and she loves you more than anything. I had to keep her from donning a gown and going into surgery with you a few weeks ago.”
Randall held up his bottle and the two banged their necks. “I’m okay with it. With you two. But if you break her heart–”
“I know. I’m a dead man.”
“Goodnight, Mick. Welcome to the family.” Randall offered his hand. Mick shook it, finished his beer, and then said goodnight to Olivia and Peter.
“Mick.” Randall stood up, stiffly but stood up. Mick turned. “Tell your mom I’ll be out on Monday to help clean up that cemetery. Have some questions for her.” Randall shifted his stance a bit to ease some of the pain from the wound. Mick nodded with a grin.
“I’ll tell her,” Mick said as he walked back to his home.
Bartholomew was snoring on the other outdoor couch. Olivia covered him with a blanket.
Peter had a 12 inch Meade telescope set up to look directly above their heads at a concentration, he explained, of Messier objects. Messier objects, he showed, were large celestial phenomenon visible to the naked eye in medieval times by a guy named Messier. Randall enjoyed seeing the dim nebulae and clusters, plus a distant galaxy, through the scope.
“Makes you wonder if we all aren’t cells in some giant body.” Randall took a swig of his now 8% alcohol beer, the good stuff saved for last. Peter laughed. “How is your research going? Aren’t you making some sort of specialized foam?” Randall tried not to slur his words.
Peter, Randall saw, actually squirmed in the lawn chair. “No, it’s a theory. It’s called Quantum Foam.”
“But Liv told me you spent some time at CERN. At the synchrotron there.” Randall had to look it up on the Internet, and the math behind Peter’s work was far beyond him. Peter also had made the federal database as a person who was at risk for kidnapping and terrorist threat. Whatever Peter was working on was simply dangerous and Defense Department bound. “Can you talk about it?” Randall asked quietly.
Peter finished his beer. He leaned forward towards Randall in a gesture of confidence. “I’m telling you this because you’re a federal agent, not because you’re family.”
“Okay.” Randall finished his beer as well. “Something you’re concerned about?” Here Peter hesitated then put his fingers together.
“My last visit was at Stanford synchrotron. I did a simple experiment to lay the ground work for a bigger version on testing for Quantum foam, the idea that time eddies can be created within a confined space.”
“Okay.” Randall could see Peter was worried and perplexed as well.
“Without going into too much detail, let’s just say, something happened we didn’t expect.”
“Which was?” Randall tensed. Images of EMP devastation, his only briefing on weaponized physics, arose.
“There was a small vibration, like a quake, and then our clocks differed.”
“What do mean by ‘differed’?”
“These are atomic clocks, Randall. They can’t run behind unless the fuel is damaged. They can’t slow down like other clocks do when their internal power source weakens.”
“What happened, Peter?”
“150 nanoseconds. Our clock inside the lab, from the one inside the main experiment chamber, differed by 150 nanoseconds.” Peter looked away, far away, and opened another beer.
“What does it mean?” Randall took the second beer Peter offered him. They absently clinked the bottles. Peter leaned in and said softly: “If the theory is right, we just punched a bunch of holes through to 150 years in the past.”
“Past? Why not the future? And is location a factor?” Randall always liked to find holes in theories, ideas, alibis, and the chain of evidence. Here Peter leaned forward again.
“The experiment I was trying to create was to establish an eddy, or a number of small eddies of time displacement. This is based on the assumption that the future isn’t made yet, so the only real movement is backward or across time. Across would simply mean a fracture or sliver into another dimension of space. But we were only interested in trying to create a small eddy of time reversal.”
“Sounds like 150 seconds are those eddies, so you were successful.”
Peter finished his beer. “Nanoseconds. Maybe, maybe I just made a lot of holes or pools, or turbulence. Maybe I just confirmed what we already know, that the universe, that space-time is granular.” Then Peter sat back and shrugged his shoulders. “I think I’m just being paranoid. Most likely it’s nothing to worry about.”
“I’m assuming you checked the clocks.” Randall watched his brother-in-law. There was a lot Peter was NOT telling him. Randall’s years as a LEO told him that. Peter simply nodded an answer. “Is there any way to know what happened?”
Peter nodded to the side. “I’m still analyzing the data. “ Here he swallowed with some difficulty. “Well, a buddy of mine in the same field had a few suggestions, but right now measurements, such as quantum displacement, are what we are going on.”
“What were the other suggestions?”
“You are gonna laugh.”
“I could use a good laugh.” Randall drank up his beer. Peter smiled and laughed.
“A sudden increase in ghost sightings.” Peter said this with all due seriousness, but he was that kind of joker as well. Randall felt suddenly very cold inside. Something was definitely going on.
“Wow, how many beers have been demolished?” Olivia joined them, carrying guacamole and blue corn chips. Peter gave Randall a small shake of his head to say nothing to Olivia, then changed the subject.
“Liv saw a ghost,” Peter said, without teasing. Randall nodded. He already knew. Olivia had called him about it. Too much of a coincidence. Another voice in his head also told him there was nothing to do but wait.
“Did you find out anything?” Olivia asked her brother, pulling her own sweater tight around her.
“I had no idea ghost hunting was part of law enforcement investigation.” Peter opened another beer.
“Come with me.” Olivia got up and started to go down into her back yard. Randall followed, skeptically, and feeling a bit suspicious about his sister’s intentions. They walked back down into the yard and looked across at the dark stone patio belonging to Mick and Selene.
“He was standing right there.” Olivia choked a bit.
“You should have called the cops. Or was it Mick? Maybe he was outside.”
Randall shifted his hat back, then took it off and placed it on a nearby box. “You were saying.”
Olivia nodded then pointed to the back yard. “A man was standing right there.” Olivia paused, looking saddened. Randall hated that look. It made him feel helpless, protective, and frustrated. “He was wearing a long coat, a hat like yours, stood the way you do when you’re–” Olivia waved one of her hands his direction, “like now.” Randall shifted his stance, self-conscious. He frowned.
“Did you call your local police?” Randall asked because, well, who else would it have been?
“He did not have any feet. AT ALL.” Olivia stared at the neighbor’s back yard as if the man were still standing there. Randall could see she was upset but stopped himself from talking when she began to speak again. “I miss Dad, calling him up, telling him about all of this. I honestly thought, Randy, I honestly thought he’d come here, back from the dead to say: ‘How can I help fix this place?’” She dropped her head to her chest and quietly began to sob. Randall went over to her. She straightened and quickly wiped her cheeks clean. “Dad would know what to do,” she added.
“Tell me what i
s really going on.” Randall rubbed his fingers on his sister’s shoulder. “Start at the beginning.”
Olivia turned to face the gulch and took a deep breath. “The night of your shooting, I woke up because I thought I heard someone walking around outside.” She looked up at the deck above them. “I stood up there and looked down there. The neighbor’s patio was new. She’d just put it in. I saw someone standing there.” Olivia’s voice cracked as she pointed to where the mysterious person had stood. She smiled, even though her tears flowed again. “I thought it was Dad, except he was too skinny. Still, it looked like Dad, you know, when he used to put on that hat, and his old oilskin ranch coat, that smelly thing he used to wear when he rode that old horse of his, Mudcake, along the fields?”
“He never liked to drive anywhere if I recall.” Randall wiped a tear from his sister’s cheek. He remembered his stepfather with deep fondness. Alex taught Randall about horses, never once making Randall feel like a stranger in his own home. When Alex had married their mother, he saw to it that Randall was also part of the picture. Randall never called anyone else “Dah” as he liked to be called, after that. It was Alex who encouraged Randall to stay in school, and then join the FBI.
“Anyway I thought it was Dad, that he had come to see us, so I said ‘Dad!’”
“Did he say anything back?”
“I need you to believe me.” Olivia kicked an empty box laying on the cement.
“I’m following the standard investigative protocol, Livie. Just bear with me.” Randall watched his sister’s face. Her eyes were wide and her body shaking. She had, from his years of observing interrogations, seen something that upset her. “Sorry. Go on.”
“All the hairs on my arm stood on end. That’s when I knew it wasn’t Dad.”
“How did you know it wasn’t a human being? I mean, I passed a huge homeless camp just over by that Park and Ride lot behind this place.” He waved in the general direction behind the next-door neighbor’s house.
Olivia simply frowned at Randall. He knew that look. It was the “you know I’m right, just admit it” look.
