Robert reached Section 59 of the cemetery and instructed his car to pull to the side of the road. As he got out, he scanned the area and saw no one in sight. Without the movement of the car, the breeze was gone, and he could feel the full force of the afternoon sun as he began to scan the numbers lining the grave markers.
As he walked, he thought of O’Neill’s recollection of how she, long before she’d become a U.S. Senator, and as she’d run for just her first term as Congresswoman, had been approached by Reilly out of nowhere, and had not only had the intuition to hear the truth in his words, but the foresight to rely upon them. Reilly had ultimately guided her toward a solution that would take place within a 30-minute window decades into the future, and he’d felt so strongly about what he was doing that he’d cast himself 40 years into the past without hope of rescue to make it happen. Amazingly, given time’s propensity to change with only the smallest of circumstantial adjustments, the Senator had been able to carry out her destined political career as planned, and positioned herself precisely to complete the mission that his friend had given her.
At SATP, when Robert had finally caught up to her, O’Neill had told him that she and Reilly had maintained a confidential correspondence for nearly a decade. She’d never asked him how he’d reintegrated himself back into society before in the ten years before he’d approached her – though she’d told Robert she deduced that Reilly had bided his time living in Canada – but after he did she’d assisted him in creating a comfortable life for himself, using her office and her clout to secure his military pension without questions asked from the VA. She’d arranged an alternate personal identity for him with new numbers and appropriate documentation. He’d settled in South Florida, and, as she described it, spent his days on the golf course and his nights overcoming the urge to contact the younger version of himself. Robert smiled as he pictured her telling the story. She hadn’t related everything she’d done for Reilly to him to beat her own chest, but almost as if she was giving a report in her Senate committee. All business.
Eleven years after Reilly had first approached O’Neill, he’d passed away. The Senator had arranged for him to have a military burial at this cemetery, where Robert now stood in front of the gravestone reading his name. On the ground, a plaque read “119,” and the marker, indistinguishable from a distance from the others, read, “GENERAL ANDREW DAVID REILLY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2046 – APRIL 27, 2088.” He imagined that anyone who happened to see Reilly’s gravestone would marvel at a man who rose to the rank of general by the age of 42. Robert felt incredibly fortunate to be among the very few who knew the truth.
“It makes me sad that our last moments together were… Not the best,” Robert said, addressing both the man he’d seen a week earlier and the stone that had been sitting in that spot for 20 years. “I’m sorry for that. I never should’ve doubted you.” He laughed. “Though you did have the gun with you, so you didn’t leave me much room for flexibility. I can’t believe the plan was to change history so that man’s original sin was murder. It doesn’t get any crazier than that.”
The smile left his face. There was sadness in him, certainly, but also pride. Pride that he’d had the chance to know and share important, historic moments with a true hero. Inside, he wished things could’ve gone differently, but a legacy had to be earned. And that generally came with sacrifice.
He leaned down and patted Reilly’s headstone twice. “Thanks, Andrew, for everything that you did. For me and for the program. I hope that I can make you proud.” They were big shoes to fill. There would be no way of counting how many people he had saved by doing what he did. Robert knew that as director of SATP, Reilly’s kind of heroism was what he should be aspiring to.
Satisfied with his secret eulogy, Robert took out his phone and snapped a picture of Reilly’s grave site, then turned and headed back toward his car. Even in the short time he’d been away, the heat had taken over the inside, and this time he opted for air conditioning. Before pulling back into the street, he took a glance back toward Reilly’s plot, which had now re-disappeared into the sea of monuments honoring America’s military heroes. He waved subtly in his friend’s direction, and then the car turned around to leave the cemetery toward his hotel, where he had three nights booked to sit on a beach with a bottle of Spotted Bass Bourbon, a gift from a good friend, and do nothing, before jumping back into the organized chaos that had characterized his life to date.
There had been a changing of the guard at SATP – Andrew to him, him to Keegan. Claire leaving. The arrival of Landon, the new wonder kid. Even that old curmudgeon Chester Davies had told Robert at one of the get-togethers during the week that he, too, was thinking about hanging up his spikes. It stood to reason, though, that SATP’s ambitions could only reach so far, and that the Eden trip had pushed the envelope in a way that the program’s sense of discovery – the need for time travel, in fact – was in question. Robert knew it was up to him to keep it alive.
And he had ideas on how to do just that.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THE GARDEN was released on October 26, 2018, a day that has significance not only to the time travel genre, but to me, personally. Fans of Back to the Future will recognize 10/26 as the day that Marty McFly left 1985 in a DeLorean to head to 1955 – making it a banner day in time travel history. It’s also the day that my father passed away. I felt “Bootstrap Bill” Turner’s influence the entire time I wrote the manuscript – in fact, the veterans’ cemetery mentioned at the end of the story is the actual cemetery where he’s buried. I am honored to dedicate this book to him.
My mother, Barbara, and step-father, Peter, deserve thanks, as well, since without them no way would I have the fascination with the Garden of Eden that I do. Indeed, some of the debates my main characters had through THE GARDEN may very well have come verbatim from our dinner table conversations while I was growing up.
Special thanks to my beautiful wife, Nadine, for her support of my writing and especially her understanding, since time spent pursuing a career as an author comes on top of the time spent at the day job. Thanks to my wonderful children, as well, for always inspiring me to think bigger.
After the WILTON’S GOLD series, I told myself my next novel would not be about time travel. And here I am. It’s just too fascinating. Thanks to the likes of Marty McFly, The Terminator, Looper and Hiro Nakamura for making it unavoidable.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Craig Turner has worked in government, politics, PR, media and economic development in Western New York for more than 20 years. He is the author of the time travel trilogy, WILTON'S GOLD, and founder of The Campaign Coach program. Craig lives in Wheatfield, New York (near Niagara Falls) with his wife, Nadine, and their four children. While it is an aspiration of his, he has never actually traveled through time.
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