by Alex Myers
“Well, isn’t that the shit?” Robbie asked and smiled. He leaned forward and filled everyone’s pewter shot glass from the bottle of Slivovitz. The drink was a Christmas Eve tradition.
“All wrapped up nice and neat in a Christmas bow, I would say,” Sam said.
Jack felt this was where and when he should be. He literally could walk up and hug everyone in the room. He had history with them, had shared laughter and spent tears, earned trust in them. He felt safe in their shared presence. He realized, maybe for the first time ever in his life, how important this union was to him.
Jack knew things were never wrapped up nice and neat in his life, so many times it looked like the perfect picture was being created only to have something swoop in and paint it black. He wanted to freeze time in this exact moment and stay here in the now—stay here and be this happy forever. He needed to change his way of thinking. He deserved to be happy—everyone did. He even had confirmation from Brent saying his future was bright, yet something was nagging him.
There was a knock on the door. It was a hard, sharp urgent knock, like unfinished business.
Everyone stopped what he or she was doing and froze.
The knock came again, this time even louder.
Everyone looked at Jack. He looked back at each one of them.
“I have a gun,” Kazmer said.
“What?” Jack asked. “There aren’t any bad guys left. Hold off on the gun for the time being.”
“It’s one thirty in the morning, there’s nothing but trouble out this late,” Frances said, looking concerned. She looked troubled enough to possibly feel what Jack was feeling. Don’t let this good feeling go away. Don’t let this joy, comfort, and fulfillment be tainted.
Jack walked slowly toward the door. He wasn’t scared, but he was ready for anything.
He opened the door and it was Frances looking back at him—but wait, it was Frances’ face, but his eyes. Those bottomless blue eyes made him feel like he was staring into a mirror. The young woman, even under a heavy coat, looked four or five months pregnant.
The young woman seemed clearly startled, “Excuse me, I believe my mother is here?”
“Emily!” Frances yelled and started across the room.
“Mother! Emily ran past Jack, once more looking deeply into his eyes as she passed.
Jack held the door, looking around the porch to see if she was alone, and then he turned back to the room and the women were hugging each other.
“Are you by yourself?” Frances asked.
“William’s at home with the girls. I came as soon as I heard you were home.”
“And where did you hear that I was home?” Frances asked.
“Robbie called about a half hour ago.”
Jack and Frances both turned to Robbie.
“Hey, I didn’t want her to go all the way to New York when you were here,” Robbie said and smiled.
With her head over Emily’s shoulder, Frances widened her eyes at Jack.
Without releasing her embrace Emily said, “I heard you had been shot, that you were in a coma, and we were coming up there tomorrow morning.”
“See,” Robbie said, “good thing I called.”
Emily let up on her hug, pulled back slightly, and looked at her mother from arm’s length. “What is wrong with your face?”
“My face?” Frances asked. She rubbed her hand over her cheek. “Oh, you mean all the wrinkles? That’s your father’s doing.”
“Father?” Emily asked and without being told, she turned to Jack. She let go of her mother and walked over to Jack. He hadn’t moved and was still holding the front door open.
He watched her cross the room toward him. He was frozen; he couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak. All he could do was watch her approach.
“You can shut the door. No one else is coming in and all the warmth is going out.”
Without thinking and without taking his eyes off her, Jack swung the door shut.
She was only about five foot five or six, but her presence filled the room. “My name is Emily.”
“My name is Jack.”
“Do you love my mother?” She swallowed hard, lifted her chin, and boldly met his eyes without flinching.
Without breaking her gaze he said, “Yes—yes I do. Very much.”
“Do you know what she has been through for you?” Her face was full of strength, shining with a steadfast determination.
“No, I don’t have any idea. I have no idea what it is like to wait so long for someone, not knowing if they are coming back or not. It’s a kind of faith, dedication, and trust that I didn’t know anything about before I met your mom. She made it faithfully twenty-four years and I couldn’t make it four months. I’m not good enough for your mom, but she makes me want to be better. When I’m around her, I am better.” Jack broke his stare with Emily and looked to Frances who seemed as if her heart was swelling.
“I see,” Emily said, bringing Jack’s attention back to her. “I see that you love my mom, and that’s wonderful, but I heard you have a problem with me?” There was fierceness in her eyes. “Something about you not thinking that I’m your daughter?”
Jack looked away. Did Robbie tell her this over the phone? Everyone in the room had stopped what they were doing and were focused on her and Emily. He looked back to Emily whose eyes were blazing into him, hands resting on her hips.
“There may have been a time where I doubted if you were mine.”
“Me, your two granddaughters, another on the way.” She put her hands on her pregnant belly, but never lost eye contact. “The times in my life where I’ve heard that ‘I look just like you’ or ‘that was something your father would do’ are too numerous to say. I’ve heard about you, read about you, and thought of you nearly every day of my life. Somehow, I thought you’d be…”
“Better?” Jack asked.
Emily took a long time to answer, finally looking away. “No, somehow I thought you’d love me more. You would have missed me or needed me like I missed and needed you.”
Jack started to answer but realized everything he was going to say sounded like an excuse. “Just because I’m the one who did the time traveling doesn’t mean that I understand it, or that I was even prepared for it. It was my wedding day, I found out my new wife was pregnant, and twenty minutes later, I was basically killed. I got thrown back into a world I didn’t know or understand. There was no hope of ever getting back.” The harder he tried to make it not sound like an excuse, the more it did.
“So you didn’t know anything about me?”
“I’ve read about you.”
“Read about me? Like about my hopes and dreams?”
“No.” Jack answered. He could feel his cheeks burning.
“About my accomplishments and life?”
He shook his head.
“Then what?”
“I read your name in a letter your mom wrote.” His cheeks, which had flushed earlier, deepened to crimson with guilt.
“And this is a father?” Emily clenched her teeth in anger.
She began to turn away when Jack said, “Stop!” She turned to face him again. “I didn’t reject you, I didn’t know you. You were a name on a piece of paper who lived a hundred and fifty years in my past. I never picked you up or held your hand; I never tucked you in at night or hugged you when one of us needed it. You were a name on a piece of paper who I was never going to see no matter how hard I tried. I did miss your mother—I missed her horribly. I missed her and the life I could have had with her and with you in it.”
He walked up to her and grabbed his daughter’s hands. Her confidence looked shaken. It looked as if all the words she had planned to say to him had slipped away from her.
“Emily, I can’t go back and be there for little girl that once was. My time traveling days are over. I’ve come home. I can be here for your mom, and you, your husband William, and is it Valier and Terry Lynn and this little girl, Carla?” Jack gestured at her belly.
Emily put her hands on her baby bump and said, “Hey, you’re not supposed to be telling me things like that. I’m having another girl? We were trying so hard for a boy.”
“You all act like there is some code of time travel silence I’m supposed to follow. Aren’t you impressed that I knew everyone’s name?”
She looked back at Jack. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-five.”
She seemed to take a minute to process this information. “You are only eleven years older than me? That is, unless you’ve lived another lifetime or your time travel has made you younger.”
“No, nothing like that, thirty-five contiguous years.”
“And what about my mom?” Emily indicated back over her shoulder at Frances. “What happened to her?”
“That was just a beneficial side effect of something I gave her to help her recover from her gunshot wound. She’s still the same person, just her body is younger.”
“How young?”
“Probably about your age.”
“Great, I have a handsome father the same age as my husband and a mom young enough to be my sister.”
“Twin sister.” Frances interjected and everyone laughed. The heaviness had been lifted. People went back to talking. Frances, Emily, and Jack all moved together.
“Can I have my first hug?” Emily asked, moving closer to Jack.
“Come here. I can promise you it won’t be your last,” Jack said. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged like he was never going to let go. His daughter was so strong.
The talking in the room had stopped again. Jack released his grip from Emily and said, “We were going to have a Christmas toast. Since you’re pregnant, you’re not supposed to drink, but maybe Kazmer can get you some nonalcoholic juice or something.”
“I’ve known you for twenty minutes and you’re already trying to run my life?” Emily asked with a smile as they all walked into the living room.
“No, it’s just common twenty-first century knowledge that you are not supposed to drink if you are preggers,” Jack said.
“Preggers?”
“Yeah, pregnant,” Jack said.
“You time travelers are a hard bunch to figure out,” Emily said.
“Your father would be hard to figure out even if he was from this century,” Frances said.
They gathered around the brightly lit Christmas tree and Kazmer came around with a glass for Emily.
“Sorry, all I have to drink without the alcohol in it is beer.”
“That has it too, Kaz,” Jack said.
“It has very little. Just one sip maybe?” Kaz looked over the top of his glasses at Jack.
“Okay, but just this once and just a taste,” Jack said.
Emily took the glass and said, “Yes, sir!”
Frances, Sam, Robbie, and Emily all gave Jack a mock salute.
“Okay, I can see that I’m the Christmas Piñata,” Jack said.
“I don’t know about that,” Sam said. “Maybe our Christmas ham.”
“Or the Christmas turkey,” Robbie said.
Everyone laughed hard with the exception of Kazmer, who looked around the room and said, “Ham and turkey? We are supposed to have fish and duck.”
Again, the release of tension and exhaustion made everyone roar with laughter and poor Kazmer looked as if he wondered what was so funny about his menu for Christmas dinner.
Jack spoke; his voice low, resonant, and had a slight echo reverberating back from the rest of the house. “People search their entire lives to be in the right place at the right time, and I’m luckier than most because I had a big hand in choosing were I ended up. I believe we are always exactly where we need to be, whether it’s good or bad. We need to be there in the moment, not longing for the other side and the greener grass. Living in the past or longing for future is its own form of time travel. As enticing as it may seem, you miss out on the here and now. ” Jack raised his glass. “Thank you all for the times that we’ve spent, and our promised future endeavors, but here’s to the only time that matters, the only one that’s real, the only one we can affect, the present moment—the right now.”
Everyone raised their glasses and took a sip, except Emily who only had half a sip.
“Kazmer, why don’t you lead us in that long-life song you sang at Jack and Frances’ wedding all those years ago?” Sam Clemens asked, his eyes sparkling. “I, for one, feel like singing a little.”
“I don’t know if that is good idea,” Kazmer said, looking around. “Last time I sang it, people started shooting.”
“Do not take it as commentary on your singing prowess,” Sam said.
“I have good memories of that song,” Frances said.
“I do too,” Jack said, pulling Frances close and hugging her. “That’s when your mother told me about you,” Jack said to Emily.
“Come on Dad, I’ll help you, the rest of you all follow our lead,” Robbie said.
Kazmer and Robbie, with their voices deep and powerful sang:
“Zivio! Zivio! Zivio! Mnoga lieta, Mnoga lieta, Mnoga lieta!”
They all joined Kazmer and Robbie as they poured out the words again. “Zivio! Zivio! Zivio! Mnoga lieta, Mnoga lieta, Mnoga lieta!”
Everyone belted out at the top of their voices the last “ZIVIO!”
Then they toasted the rest of their drinks.
There was an urgent pounding at the door. Everyone looked at each wondering who it could be.
“I guess I’ll get it,” Jack said. He knew this wasn’t going to be good. As he got closer to the door he could see there were two people, one larger and one smaller. I can’t believe he doesn’t have a porch light.
Jack opened the door and it was his father. “Jack.”
His sister, Payton, nearly pushed their father out of the way, stepped around, and hugged Jack. “Looks like you’re having a party. I love parties.” She let go of Jack and peered into the house. “Anybody in here I should meet?”
“Jack, I figured out how to time travel, you need to back to 9600 BC with us,” Martin said.
Jack turned and Frances shook her head. “Dad, sis, why don’t you come on in out of the cold and we can talk about it, but first I have this great drink called Slivovitz…
THE END
A few words . . .
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for being part of the Time Change Trilogy. This is not what Book Three was going to be.
I was 50,000 pages into writing the third book when people in book clubs and emails kept asking about Jack and Frances and how I left things for them hanging. They were right. A couple of folks even brought up what I thought the world would be like without a Civil War. I couldn’t let it go.
So I put the story—about Jack’s cool new boat (Wally boats actually exist, check out what I envisioned Jack’s boat to be here: http://www.wally.com/wally-50m/), St Lucia, the Puerto Rico Trench and the 28,373 foot deep Milwaukee Deep, Jack’s sister and the why and how of the time travel people—in a secret drawer in my desk
There was an incredible amount of prejudice alive at the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s. Even two presidents who I admired said and did things that would blow our twenty-first century minds. I imagined that even without a Civil War that pots would still boil over, bigots would, unfortunately, still be heard and things could have turned out worse.
Woodrow Wilson did sing in the UVA Glee Club, the concert that Jack attended that night really did happen. There is no proof that Henry David Thoreau and Lidian Emerson and Ralph Waldo and Margaret Fuller actually had affairs, but people have thought it possible. Lidian Emerson did have her name changed by her husband and until his death in 1882 called him “Mr. Emerson”.
Figuring that Jack’s tinkering with the timeline in 1857 would move technology ahead forty or fifty years, I based the airplane used in chapter 33 on aviation technology of the late 1920’s (and thanks to my tennis partners/pilots Steve Vidal and Steve Harris who helped me with al
l the flying stuff). The places are all real, the lighthouses are or were really there flashing the way they would have back in 1881. And there really is a Great Machipongo Clam Shack and while the food is great, they weren’t around when Frances, Sam and Robbie made their Christmas Flight.
There is a whole bunch of other stuff that is true, except of course the stuff that’s not and comes from pure speculation.
I’m going to keep the story that was going to be book three on the back burner and revisit it later, but first I have to get to a nearly finished novel and has been begging me to complete it (I might dare say haunting me).
Thanks for your support,
Alex Myers
[email protected]
December 9, 2013
Austin, Texas
Table of Contents
Book One Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
BOOK 1 BEFORE
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 1
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 2
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 3
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 4
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 5
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 6
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 7
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 8
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 9
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 10
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 11
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 12
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 13
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 14
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 15
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 16
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 17
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 18
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 19
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 20
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 21
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 22
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 23
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 24
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 25
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 26
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 27
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 28
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 29
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 30
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 31
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 32
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 33
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 34
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 35
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 36
BOOK 1 CHAPTER 37
