by Jenny Lykins
Callen looked at the picture and gasped.
“Oh, my heavens!” She took the plate of copper and glanced up at Ty. “When did you find this?”
He shrugged. “The first time I traveled back. It was on the floor of the chamber. I happened to see it when the flashlight beam hit it.”
Callen smiled, tears springing anew to her eyes.
“Dear Mr. Chalmers. That dear, dear man. You had this with you every time you passed through the chamber, didn’t you?”
Ty nodded. “Sure. I always carry my wallet,” he said, not seeing the connection.
“When we…Tylar and I were children, Mr. Chalmers traveled around the countryside taking family photographs. Because he was free-colored, most people wouldn’t do business with him. When he stopped at Windsor, Mother and Father were visiting in Natchez, but Tylar and I brought him a glass of lemonade before he went to the next plantation. He insisted on taking our photograph,” – she held up the image of the little boy and girl – “and told us to put it in a safe place, because it would keep us together forever. We thought he meant we’d be together forever in the picture.” She gazed at the image with a faraway look. “Being children, we loved the drama, so we hid it in the column because no one ever used that passage.” She smiled, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “Do you not see? This was the key. This brought us together, kept us together, and when you lost it, we lost each other.”
Ty’s heart raced in his chest as he took the small metal photograph and really studied it.
So this was what he’d looked like as a boy. Theirs had not been the kind of family to take pictures around the Christmas tree or in front of a birthday cake with glowing candles. Ty couldn’t remember ever even seeing a camera in the house when he was growing up, and the old man had been too tight to even buy the school pictures that were taken every year. Other than a handful of baby pictures his mother had insisted on, Ty didn’t have a picture of himself in the house until he was a high school senior.
He folded Callen into his arms and buried his face in her silky hair.
“When we get back to Memphis,” he said, “This picture is going into a safety deposit box. Today!”
“Today!” Stephen echoed. “Are you insane? It will take at least…” He stopped, looked around once more, at the columns, the cow pasture, the dirt drive circling to a parking lot at the side of the house. “Today?” he said again in awe.
Ty laughed, hooked his arm around his brother-in-law’s neck, his other arm around Callen’s waist, as he led them toward the woods. Oh, he was going to enjoy the next few hours, years, decades.
“Remember me telling you about cars?” he said with an evil grin.
*******
With Daniel and Stephen at the movies and Connor sound asleep, the first of his surgeries behind him, Ty and Callen lay curled up together on their bed in the room that now had Callen’s touch throughout, wrapped in each other’s arms, their fingers twined as they stared at the little stick in Callen’s hand. Ty’s stomach clenched and she held her breath while the seconds ticked by, and then slowly, as they watched, a plus sign formed in the little window. He stared at it in awe, then turned his gaze to the woman he would die a thousand deaths for. The woman who would bear his child. Not once, in his thirty-one years, had he dreamed that he would feel this sense of euphoria, of immortality, of absolute, paralyzing terror.
A grin, mischievous, sensual, beckoning, crept across her lips as she tossed the test results aside and pressed her mouth to his, pulling his hand down to lay low across her stomach.
“Well, my wandering husband,” she whispered against his lips, “say hello to your son or daughter.”
He did as he was told, using his imagination and welcoming that tiny person thoroughly, until they both fell back, a smile on her face to match his own.
“We’ll name him Garrett, if it’s a boy,” Callen mused, her voice wistful.
Ty could only sigh in agreement.
“Oh, I have something for you,” she said, leaning over and pulling some papers from the nightstand drawer. “From Daniel. He and Connor worked on this while we waited for you at the ruins, then told me to give it to you when the time was right. He said you’d need it.” She grinned. “Did he know something we didn’t?.”
Ty took the sheaf of papers, handwritten and bound together with three copper brads. His brow lowered in question, and then he burst into a belly laugh at the sight of the two words on the cover:
OWNER’S MANUAL
EPILOGUE
Pierre Chalmers stopped at the war-ravaged house on his way home from his visit with Garrett Windsor. The orphanage housed children left homeless by the war.
“Stand very still,” he told the little boy and girl who had offered to share their precious cookie with him. “This will be a magic picture, to keep you together forever.”
###
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenny Lykins lives in west Tennessee with her husband, along with a cranky old cat who thinks she’s the Goddess of the Universe, and two Samoyeds named Czar and Lexxie, aka Trouble and Chaos. She is a best-selling author of five other time travel novels and a “haunted” novella. Titles of her printed published works are now available on this site in electronic format.
OTHER BOOKS BY JENNY LYKINS:
Lost Yesterday
Echoes of Tomorrow
Waiting for Yesterday
Distant Dreams
River of Dreams
The Ghost of Christmas Present
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