The Time Travelers: Volume One
Page 31
Only memory.
“Annie?” whispered her father. He seemed afraid of her. His expression was exactly that of Charlie’s manservant.
She was pretty sure that Dad was not going to want details on where she had been, or how she had gotten there and back.
Strat. In that syllable lay a hundred years of pain and loss. But love, too. She still loved him. Love had crossed Time with her.
But the part of Annie that had become a daughter of the ninteenth century vanished. In the twentieth century, you looked at things a little more harshly. Love is better, thought Annie, when there’s a person to share it with.
A terrible, twentieth-century anger seized her: anger that she had not gotten her way.
From across Time came a vision of other people who had not gotten their way either: Harriett, Strat, Katie, Devonny, Florinda.
“We could have a snowball fight, Dad,” said Annie at last. “Or fall backward and make snow angels. Which do you want?”
Her father swallowed. He swallowed a second time. He said, “It’s probably my only chance to qualify for angel.” He went first, trusting the snow to pillow him. In the thick white blanket, he waved his arms until the wings of angels appeared at his sides.
So Annie fell backward too. Their wings overlapped.
She thought of the lives she had invaded on the other side of Time. And for what?
So that others would have love.
For just the shortest moment in Time, but one she could hold, and remember, Annie knew that she really had been an angel: she had brought peace and safety and release.
She tried to reconcile her twentieth-century anger with her nineteenth-century courage. I want love. I want love of my own! Here, in my Time. But it’s Strat I want and he will be always, forever, in his Time.
“I’m pretty confused, Dad,” she said, after they had made a whole row of angels.
He said he was pretty confused too.
“But you’re here, Daddy,” she said, and suddenly she knew that that was a wonderful, wonderful thing: just to be here. She even loved him, which was a nice change from last year.
They got up from the snow.
How had Time done that: taken her from the Adirondacks to a New England beach to drop her down in front of her own father?
They linked arms and walked slowly back to the car, and she thought of the heater that would be in that car, and the cold, cold sleigh in which Strat had disappeared, and she put her arms around her father and sobbed.
“It’s okay, honey,” he said desperately. “Everything’s going to be okay. Whatever went wrong, it’ll be okay, I’m sure of it.”
Annie was touched, that anybody could be sure that everything would be okay. Let it be okay with Strat, she prayed. Let it be okay for us too.
“Show me the telegram,” demanded Devonny. She could not get over the amount of sunshine they had here in California! It was delicious. You could almost taste it. It was unbearable to be swathed in New York layers when sand and palms and orange groves beckoned.
Florinda showed her the telegram.
“They made it,” whispered Devonny. “Do you think we shall ever hear from them again?”
“Of course we shall. Your brother won’t ignore his inheritance.”
Devonny wondered.
“Anyway, there are other things to think of, Devonny.” Florinda gave a little happy bounce. “I want to introduce you to a darling young man who was actually born here! In California!”
“One doesn’t think of people as starting here,” agreed Devonny.
“He’s very civilized,” said Florinda in a tone of surprise. “Eats with a fork and everything.”
“Well!” said Devonny, laughing. “We’d better ask him over.”
“But what is that?” whispered Katie. She was getting used to the wonderful clothing now. The hat didn’t fall off every time she moved, and the scarf didn’t tug away, and she had finally trained Douglass to hang all over Strat instead of all over her. She was becoming quite judgmental of fashions. Hers were better than anybody’s.
Katie loved the veil. Behind it, she could think clearly, with no interruptions from friend or foe who thought she was hideous. Inside the veil was safety.
“That,” said Strat, “is our steamship.”
Katie was awestruck by the size of it. A man-made transport that large? Surely Noah’s Ark had not been so immense!
They had even seen Doctor at the train station. But he had not seen them, for Strat was a gentleman tilting a beaver hat to keep the sleet from his face, and Katie was a lady with a veil, and Douglass was a stumbling adolescent being a pain. Strat had bought a private room and from the safety of their very own room, they had watched Doctor pace the platform.
They left him there, looking for a lone young man in clothes that were too big.
How Douglass and Katie had loved the train! You each had your own red velvet chair, and your view of an astounding world, and meals that came on trays. Hot, delicious, exciting, impossible meals. Wonderful new things like Coca-Cola and candy bars. And wonderfully, it was Strat who told the stories during their train ride. Stories to be locked up by, in Katie’s opinion. Vehicles that flew in the sky, vehicles that needed no horses, vehicles that used no wheels, vehicles that did not even need roads!
Every night, instead of prayers, Katie thanked two girls she would never meet, for one was dead and one was Out of Time. Dear Harriett: I thank you for everything. Dear Annie: I thank you most of all, for courage, for Strat, for a chance.
“That ship will take us to Spain,” said Strat.
“Spain?” It wasn’t very close to Egypt. There were maps in Katie’s Bible—she knew where these places were. There was the whole Mediterranean Ocean still to cross beyond Spain.
“That’s all the ticket I could afford for three of us,” said Strat, grinning and shrugging. “So in Spain we get off the boat—and, hey, who knows?” He was laughing now. “I’ll have my sister and brother to support and I’ll think of something.” He stared at the Atlantic Ocean, and he was twenty-one years old and saw nothing but waves of adventure and challenge.
She looked at Strat, who had come back. Who had saved her. Who was kind, and believed in kindness.
And Katie knew that she was afraid of nothing. Spain, Egypt, who cared? There was not a hole in the world that could compare to the hole over which she and Douglass and Strat had triumphed.
The ship’s whistle blew long and strong.
Time to board.
Time, thought Katie, stunned by the beauty of good times. My time.
Strat saw Katie and Douglass safely into their stateroom. Then he returned to the deck, and from a flower vendor rushing from dock to deck, he bought roses. Lovely soft pink roses. It was silly. He had no money to waste.
But it was not a waste.
The boat pulled away from America. From his history. From every footprint on the land where he and Annie had walked together. One by one, he threw the roses into the leaping winter waves. Good-bye, Annie, he said in his heart. Please love me anyway. I will always love you.
It was summer before Annie Lockwood looked in the library again. The old room was hot and dusty, the scent of Time gone by.
The Egyptian collection was large. Everybody loves tombs and King Tut and mummies and the Nile. She checked every index of every book, and every reference in every article. No Hiram Stratton, Jr., ever appeared.
But Hiram Stratton, Sr., did. The century had changed, and in the year 1915, Hiram Stratton, Sr., died.
Annie finally stumbled on his obituary in the yellowing old newspaper pages: the long detailed column of his long cruel life. A successful life, for he had triumphed in money and land, invention and investment.
He was survived by his beloved daughter. There was no mention of a son.
So Strat had accomplished it, whatever that secret goal of his had been. He had stepped out of his own Time, as well as hers.
Annie Lockwood shut the last volume of newsprint, he
r final hope of seeing Strat’s name in print once more.
Time kept all its secrets.
Except one.
The secret that she had loved him, each Time, enough to give him up.
About the Author
Caroline B. Cooney is the author of the following books for young people: The Lost Songs; Three Black Swans; They Never Came Back; If the Witness Lied; Diamonds in the Shadow; A Friend at Midnight; Hit the Road; Code Orange; The Girl Who Invented Romance; Family Reunion; Goddess of Yesterday (an ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book); The Ransom of Mercy Carter; Tune In Anytime; Burning Up; The Face on the Milk Carton (an IRA-CBC Children’s Choice) and its companions, Whatever Happened to Janie? and The Voice on the Radio (each of them an ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults), What Janie Found, What Janie Saw (an ebook original short story), and Janie Face to Face; What Child Is This? (an ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults); Driver’s Ed (an ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults and a Booklist Editors’ Choice); Among Friends; Twenty Pageants Later; and the Time Travel Quartet: Both Sides of Time, Out of Time, Prisoner of Time, and For All Time, which are also available as The Time Travelers, Volumes I and II.
Caroline B. Cooney lives in South Carolina.
Caroline B. Cooney’s riveting
TIME TRAVEL QUARTET
—now available in two volumes!
Time has kept them apart—
love will bring them together.
808 RandomHouse.com/teens