Professor Kerr was the first to see her arrive. He straightened up, looked at her happily and gestured with his hand. Evelyn's father was too distracted to examine the nature of the time machine to see it approaching.
“Dad.”
Mr. White tensed; then he stood up suddenly and turned to Evelyn. Her father's face lit up as if a beam of light had hit him squarely in the face. Eve ran to her father and threw herself at him, laughing, crying and fitting her face into the curve of his neck; perceiving his fragrance and the touch of his skin. After a moment, they separated and looked at each other's faces.
Evelyn's father was a tall and imposing man. However, the discomfort of her absence was reflected in his emaciated face. A childish beard covered the chin square. He was much paler—he’d dark circles under his eye sockets and dry lips. His eyes were as she remembered them: dark blue. His smile was feverish.
“We'll leave you a few moments,” said Professor Kerr, who had joined Jim. “I know they have many things to talk about.” He motioned to the boy. “Come on, Jim.”
Once alone, father and daughter looked at each other and smiled; both had their eyes waterlogged in tears and their lips curved along the face in a broad smile. Evelyn could not believe that her father was really there. He cleared his throat. They sat in a pair of chairs next to Sally, uncomfortable as two strangers, and silent as a pair of corpses. Her father leaned forward and took her hand.
“How did you find me?” She asked.
“It is a long story.”
“Oh, please, do not tell me I have many things to do,” Eve said sarcastically, and smiled.
Her father also laughed.
“At least that part of you is still intact,” he said.
“Which part?”
“You are insistent as a corrupt politician, and stubborn as a lost mule.”
Eve laughed.
“Why would it have changed?” She said after laughing.
“I don’t know.” Her father's voice sounded dispassionate, as if all the emotion he had felt a moment ago had suddenly disappeared. He took a deep breath. “You've been in this place for a month and you're changed. Also, the Evelyn that I know would have looked for a way to reassure this poor old man that I am.” Eve opened her mouth to reply but her father raised his voice a little and added, “And the Evelyn that I know would have turned on the alarm.”
“I'm sorry about that,” she said easily. And I regret not having contacted you—and you're not wrong: the Evelyn you know would have done it, and she tried, really.” Then she said she should stop talking in the third person. “I tried. But by doing that I could expose you to the dangers that surround me, and they could hurt you.” She made special emphasis on them. “And the Evelyn you know would not have allowed it.”
“Evelyn, darling, no harm that I suffered could be compared to the frozen pain that filled my chest when I did not know your whereabouts or your survival.” He straightened forward and took both his daughter's hands with his own. “When I got home and saw...” —he paused— “that disaster, I feared the worst, and that fear became a reality. The wave of strange murders and attacks only added to my concern.”
“I'm sorry,” she whispered.
“I know you do.” Her father got up from the chair and hugged her deeply; a warm and familiar hug that she would not receive elsewhere. Eve smelled the scent of his lotion, and could not help but smile. It was him, and she just came to her senses; it was not a dream after all. “But you shouldn’t regret it.”
He returned to his place and this time he just held her hand. Her father's eyes were bloodshot, red and contrite. Eve had never seen him like this before. She felt guilty about that. In spite of everything, her father continued in his insistent duty to tear a smile from him when he winked with pranks.
“Well,” she said, “are you going to tell me how you managed to find me in this place that is presumed to be top-secret?”
Her father adopted a more upright posture and turned back, something that in him was distinguished imperious given his imposing physiognomy and outstanding bearing. Perhaps the three-day beard—which looked more like a month—made him look older than he was, but also quite attractive. After Evelyn's mother left them almost twelve years ago, her father had only had a relationship with a woman named Sharon. His relationship with Sharon had begun two years after his wife's departure, and had lasted four years. That was all the love her father knew, and then there was no place; maybe because he thought that love was equal to pain and abandonment.
Evelyn had heard that no man can be alone for long, that they has certain needs. But had her father renounced those needs and love? She asked himself once, or had he refrained from presenting a worthy woman to his young daughter, who longed to see him happy? Maybe she never knew.
“Robert has fixed everything,” her father explained. “Apparently, this future agency, is not as secret as it’s presumed. The governor and also the president of the nation know of its existence, and also finance it.” He raised an eyebrow and sketched a half-sided smile. “It all came through a member of the CIA who claimed to have seen you with these people.”
“Brian?”
“Yes; that was the name of the agent. Do you know him?”
Evelyn nodded
“Robert Schmidt has so little contact with this organization that he had forgotten that it existed,” his father continued. “But the wave of murders has fanned certain conjectures in his head. That was how the conversation between him and this Brian came about.” He put on a serious expression. “How are you treated here? Are those... agents of the future good to you?”
Evelyn composed a smile.
“Yes,” she said. “They’re all very good. You already knew Professor Kerr...”
“He comes from the future?” interrupted her father.
“No,” she said with a giggle; if her father reacted to that possibility, he did not even want to imagine his face when he met Tadhg and the rest. “Professor Kerr, his wife and the child you've seen with me a moment ago, are people of this Time.”
“I heard that Caleb has been missing for almost a month,” his father said. “Is it possible that he...?”
“Caleb is here.”
Her father did not seem surprised, he just nodded meditatively.
“Not long ago, when the strange incident occurred in the hospital, I learned of the serious condition of his mother.” He looked at Eve. “Did the agents of the future also have to do with what happened that day?”
“Yes. I was there.” Evelyn smiled proudly. “Would it comfort you to know that your insistence that I go to my self-defense lessons had an effect?”
“It depends.” He raised an eyebrow. “How many criminals did you neutralize that day?”
“Criminals?”
“Yes. Criminals of the future,” his father reaffirmed. “Kerr has said that they come to this time to murder people who represent a danger to them in their time.”
“I think Kerr did not know how to explain himself,” Evelyn said. “They are not criminals of the future that agents are in charge of.”
Her father frowned.
“Oh no?” He said. “So, whose?”
Evelyn told him everything she knew about pyxis. And if his father was surprised to hear the nature of those creatures, he gave no sign of it, because he remained impassive at all times; he just blinked once or twice. When she finished telling him, they remained silent. Mr. White looked down, as if trying to fit the pieces of some mental puzzle. Heavy for a minute, he raised it slowly again, but this time, his eyes remained fixed on Evelyn's chest and they frowned slightly.
“Who gave you that?” He asked.
Evelyn put her hand to her neck and felt the cold touch of the reliquary in her palm.
“Oh, no,” she thought terrified. “The reliquary.”
Her father kept looking at her with those implacable blue eyes under black tablets that were his eyebrows.
Evelyn tried to look as natural as possible. It is assumed that the reliquary would not give it to him until the matter of the secret divorce with her mother was duly settled.
“Rhys gave it to me,” she answered, for it was the truth; every good lie must have a little truth, or if not everything ends up falling by its own weight. Besides, no one knew Evelyn better than her father, so if she deliberately lied to him, he would discover her in the same way. “It is an important object for her. She has lent it to me before a mission, the mission in which we rescued Caleb, so that I would have good luck.”
Her father, a little absorbed, made a gesture to lean forward to take it. Evelyn leaned back slightly, adopting a more straight posture.
“I know what it is,” she assured him. “It's a reliquary, and whatever I keep in it, it's only Rhys. Not even your brother knows what's inside. I have not dared to look at it either, out of respect for it.”
He looked up again and showed a hint of a smile, although Eve could sense in her father a bit of bewilderment. She smiled as if her father's expression seemed amusing, which was not half true.
“Why have you put on like that?” He asked.
“How?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head a little. “You have the face of someone who has just seen a ghost.”
Her father smiled in a way that showed his nervousness. He got up and put his hand in the pocket. He pulled out a chain with a reliquary very similar to the one Evelyn had in her neck. Sure, they were not just the same. Mr. White sat down again and lifted the chain with one hand.
“You…?” She heard herself say. Her heart began to shake with sharp shock in her chest.
“It's your mother's,” he said.
“What?” That time Evelyn did not have to act, she was really surprised. She could only think one thing: it was done, they had divorced. “Where did you get it?”
“I know what you will do great things, Evelyn,” his father said softly. He took her hands and handed her the necklace with sweetness. “I know that's how it will be,” he added. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t have separated you from my side.”
* * *
Evelyn and her father were on their way to the elevator. The white hallways gleamed especially that day. Everything had a different brightness since she saw her father for the first time in weeks. But the worst moment of all had come: the farewell.
“Then,” Eve asked, “Will you come here again?”
“It's possible that I can do it,” he said. “If not, I will use my contacts to get an encounter with you. I confess that I feel more relieved, thinking that you are here healthy and safe.” He put his hand on her shoulder, without stopping, and smiled. “I would have liked to meet the agents of the future.”
“Maybe another day.”
“Do they really come from the future?”
“Yes.”
There was a certain amount of disbelief in his father's voice.
“It's amazing,” he said without emotion, apparently. “And what year they come from?”
“Forty-eight years of this century,” she answered. If at that time she added the two that the agents wore at that time, then in their time it was already the fiftieth year.
Eve smiled.
“Do not think too much,” she said to her father. “They come from the future, not from another planet.”
Her father smiled back.
“I do not think much. I only worry.”
“Why?”
“Those things you told me.”
“The pyxis,” she agreed, “will not be a problem for many years to come. Also, here are the agents of the future to prevent terrible things from happening to...”
She was interrupted. They heard voices coming from the central room on the upper floor. Her father had heard them too, Evelyn sensed as she saw the sudden tension in his broad shoulders. She also tensed. A moment later, Tadhg and Rhys emerged, seeming to come out of the freezing room while they were having a loud conversation.
Seeing Evelyn and Mr. White, the brothers were paralyzed. Rhys was not as good hiding her true feelings as her brother, so her state of stupor was evident in her face like a mask. Tadhg looked impassive, yes, but his shoulders were so tense and his eyes so bright, it was easy to crack the cover that he was so determined to build around him. What happened next, was unexpected; seeing it, Evelyn was stunned.
Tadhg had taken a couple of long steps towards Mr. White; afterwards, he had embraced him. Evelyn shared a look of disbelief with Rhys as everything happened. The scene was as disconcerting as it was tender. Eve could not help but find so much similarity between her father and that guy who would one day be her grandson. When the hug was over, Mr. White remained the same as before: undaunted, with a slight frown and arms fell on the sides of his body. Tadhg stepped back from the steps he had taken before and stood beside his sister, eyes downcast and frowning, flushed.
"Dad," Evelyn said quietly, “they are two of the agents of the future.”
The announcement preceded a tense silence.
Rhys came forward too and hugged Mr. White; a brief hug, full of love and happiness, at least on the part of Rhys, who had smiled while doing it. This time, Evelyn's father raised his arm to the girl's back. He threw Eve a troubled look and gave a hint of a smile to the agents.
“My name is Rhys, sir,” Rhys introduced himself with a beaming smile on her lips. She turned to her brother. “And he…”
“My name is Ted,” Tadhg said.
Upon hearing that, Evelyn immediately recalled: “That was the nickname my grandfather had given me. Watch out.”
“Ted,” Mr. White repeated. “It's you who saved my daughter, right?”
Tadhg glanced sideways at Evelyn before answering. How fortunate that she has referred to Tadhg as Rhys's brother during the story she told her father a while ago about her extraction.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “It was not easy, I have to admit. Your daughter has a terrible temper when she proposes it to you.”
The father of the aforementioned let out a laugh, which released the tension a little.
“We agree on that, Ted,” he agreed, giving his daughter a funny look; then he turned to Tadhg. “Thank you.”
Tadhg nodded, undaunted.
As for Rhys, she smiled when Mr. White laid eyes on her. In that moment, more than ever, she looked like a girl yearning for the love of her beloved.
“I participated a little too,” she said.
“And I thank you too, Rhys.” He frowned a bit before adding, “Do I know you from somewhere?”
It was strange that her father said that precisely to her, since Tadhg was a younger replica of him. Evelyn said that detail to the always cold behavior that exists between gentlemen; perhaps her father had not noticed much the resemblance he had with Tadhg because, normally—and Evelyn considered it stupid— it was unmanly to make a prolonged observation of another man. It was an unbreakable heterosexual rule.
“I do not think so, Mr. White,” Rhys said, her eyes downcast and a vague smile.
Evelyn's father knew Caleb's mother, yes, but Rhys was not a replica of Mrs. Goodbrother as Tadhg was of him. In addition, many years ago the Goodbrothers had moved and therefore severed the ties of contact between the two families. Perhaps her father had found in Rhys some kinship with his ex-wife.
Mr. White turned to his daughter.
“It's time to go,” he said, embarrassed.
“Yes...” Eve put her arms around his neck and smoothed her face across her father's chest, so they would not see her cry like a child. Her father wrapped her in his huge arms. Evelyn heard him sigh deeply.
* * *
Later, Evelyn was Caleb's room. She regularly did it every night; but from that first intrinsic moment she had had with Caleb after what had happened in the hospital, their relationship had gone from strength to strength. The fact is that it was day—not night—and Evelyn had the need to tell Cale
b everything that had happened after his departure with Dawit from the training room.
So there she was, with Caleb in his room; she with her head on the hollow of his arm and her cheek on his chest, he with one arm wrapped around her and the other behind the head and the view to the ceiling. Evelyn could hear the faint beat of his heart.
“So your father was here, huh?” Caleb murmured; he was not asking.
Evelyn couldn’t see the expression of the boy, but she could guess: quiet, carefree and a little surprised, and even nostalgic. Eve told him everything she said that afternoon with her father, although she preferred to omit what he had said about Caleb's mother.
“I told him you're here, and he was surprised.”
“I am also a little surprised.”
“Why?”
“That they let him in; I thought it was not allowed to visit family or friends.
“So is.” She turned as hard as he could to see Caleb's face. “And yet, the agents have allowed you to visit your mother every week.”
“But I had to go undercover. And I still have not seen my sister.”
Evelyn raised an eyebrow and laughed lightly.
“”Well, Caleb, the reason you're visiting your mother undercover was very evident, after what happened that night in the hospital,” she said frankly. “It’s for your sake and your mother's; the same goes for Cassie. The pyxis could be watching her, there, where she is with your uncles in Steven Point.”
Caleb sighed.
“That is my only consolation.” And he looked down, gray eyes and blue rings, he fixed them on hers and smiled. “Here my other consolation.”
Eve knew he was referring to her, and blushed.
Caleb cocked his body carefully and turned to her. He smiled, and brought his hands to Evelyn's cheeks. They stared at each other for a moment. The other, Caleb's lips reached hers passionately, besieged them. Eve clung closer to him, placing a hand on the back of his neck and bringing his face closer to hers. She felt a strange tingling in the pit of my stomach every time Caleb put his tongue lightly into her mouth and wrapped her in an ephemeral vortex, as in that moment.
Days of Fury (Future Men Series Book 1) Page 19
