I climb to the edge of the bed with the sheet wrapped around my chest. “How can you still be so suspicious? I’m healed.”
He sighs. “Look, it’s not that I don’t trust Sarah. But I don’t trust what we’ll find there. I don’t trust that there isn’t some new fucked-up thing that’s going to make shit go haywire.”
“Like what?”
His raises his hands, exasperated. “I don’t know! That’s the problem. What if she’s got some magic portal to the future you don’t even know you’re walking into?”
I laugh so hard that I collapse back on the bed. “Did you really just say you’re worried about magical portals?” I glance down at my stomach. “I’m so sorry to tell you this, little embryos, but your father is a total dork.”
“How is that any more unlikely than time travel?” he argues. “Just wait. I’ll try to come home for lunch and we can go then. But just so we’re clear, if there is a magical portal that pulls you away forever, I’m going to be very annoyed.”
“If that happens you can say I told you so all you want.”
He glares at me. “If you’re pulled away forever you won’t be able to hear me say it.”
I grin at him over my shoulder as I head to the bathroom. “Precisely.”
* * *
After he leaves I finish unpacking, carefully placing the knickknacks I bought Darcy on the kitchen table so I don’t forget to bring them to her this weekend. I hold the Eiffel Tower snow globe in my hand, watching the flakes settle along the banks of the Seine. She’s never going to see that. All my dreams came true in one fell swoop, while not a single one of hers will. She’s never going to travel, or fall in love, or have children. I understand Nick’s point about the dangers, but it’s just so fucking wrong that I’m not even going to try to help.
I walk to the store, but once I’ve done my shopping and returned home, the silence of the house eats at me. No—not silence—guilt. Because maybe our caution is for no reason whatsoever. We don’t know what Grosbaum’s wife was really doing when she disappeared. Maybe she decided to go to medieval England during a vicious bout of the plague. Maybe she met some real-life version of Lord Darcy and decided to stay. And maybe if I took baby steps I could build up to jumping a few months, back to the day I saw Rose. How badly could I possibly mess things up? I’m not even sure I’m capable of doing it outside of really extreme situations.
I should at least see how hard it is.
Am I breaking a promise to Nick if I just try it? One tiny jump, an hour back in time? Yes, probably. But if it was up to him, I’d go through the rest of my life encased in bubble wrap, and while I agree that any major attempts at time travel should be avoided for the time being, I just don’t see how much harm this could possibly do.
I ignore the twinge of guilt I feel, and try to remember what I did in Sarah’s basement. I close my eyes, just like I did then, and picture the upstairs hallway, maybe an hour earlier. I squeeze my eyes tight, clench my fists, try to make my mind go there.
My eyes open to discover I’m still standing downstairs like an idiot. Absolutely nothing has happened. So perhaps all my angst over not helping Darcy is unnecessary, and finding a friend of my mother’s is our best bet.
I’ve finished unpacking the groceries and started a load of laundry before I decide I should try again, once more. A smaller jump. Maybe five minutes.
I picture the hallway, focusing on it as if nothing else exists. I picture the divots in the hardwood, the way the balusters are slightly loose and in need of paint. At last I feel the rush of air in the darkness, see a night sky flecked with light. Fear and triumph twine together in my stomach, but I ignore them both, and I land exactly as I pictured—naked in the upstairs hallway. The clock in the bedroom says I’ve gone back only a few minutes, just as I planned.
“Now to see if I can return,” I say quietly. I’m slightly unnerved by the idea of jumping down a floor, but I ignore it. I close my eyes and think of the kitchen.
Nothing happens. I’m just standing naked in the upstairs hallway, five minutes back in time. How does this even work if I’m unable to return? Does Nick come home to an empty house, or am I here, just five minutes behind? I don’t want to find out.
I close my eyes and try harder. I imagine the smell of bananas starting to ripen, freshly ground coffee beans on the counter, empty Gatorade bottles in the recycling bin. I hold onto it and don’t let it go, and at last there’s a rush of wind. I land precisely where I pictured, with a ridiculous smile on my face. It’s hardly going to change the world, my ability to go up and down the stairs this way or move forward in time by a whole five minutes—but it’s a start. I could build up to a week, and then two weeks, then three. I’ll tell Nick so it’s not as if I’ll be lying, and maybe if I get good enough at it, if it starts to come as easily as it did long ago—the prospect of going back a few months to find Rose won’t seem so terrifying to either of us.
I try it twice more. It comes to me more effortlessly, and though I’m tempted to keep going, I decide I’ve pushed it far enough for now. I get my clothes on and make a smoothie. I’m about to take it into the garden when I hear my phone ringing in the bedroom. I turn toward the stairs, wishing I could just jump for it. It would certainly make getting around here a lot more efficient. With my luck, I think, I’d end up going back a year and give the old tenants a heart attack. I laugh to myself as I picture landing naked upstairs on a summer night in a different year.
By the time I realize the air is rushing around me, it’s too late to take it back.
38
NICK
I move through my morning rounds, wishing I could have gotten the day off. Quinn starts school Tuesday, and even though we have the weekend, I wanted just one idyllic day with her after the upheaval of Paris.
My first stop is Darcy’s room, which I enter with a heavy heart. She went into a coma while we were in France—a fact I haven’t shared with Quinn—and while it’s always hard for me to lose a patient, this one hits harder than most. I can’t believe she’s never going to open her eyes again. She’s never going to correct me when I try to discuss Teen Titans with her or crush every opponent at Connect Four.
I know I should have told Quinn when I heard, but she’d been through so much with Sarah that I decided to give it a day or two. I suppose, selfishly, I also didn’t want to tell her anything that might encourage her to time travel. But I cringed, watching her buy souvenirs for someone who will never be able to see them.
Christy’s face as I enter the room is blank. I’ve seen this look from patients’ families too many times before. Exhaustion and distress, at a certain point, don’t just weaken you. They empty you. “There’s not much longer, is there?” she asks, her voice flat.
My lips press together. “I don’t think so, no.”
She looks at her lap, and when she speaks again her voice is choked. “Her father’s on a plane home…I just wish he could have seen her while she was still conscious.”
I flinch. I know it’s selfish, what I’m asking Quinn to do. And standing here, I’m no longer certain I’ve made the right call. She has a gift, and maybe it’s meant to be used. If it were anyone but Quinn, I’d probably insist it should be. Except I just got her back. I can’t stand to lose her all over again.
* * *
I finish my rounds and call Quinn to suggest we meet at her mom’s house. Mostly it’s to appease my guilty conscience, but who knows? Maybe we’ll find something there. Sarah must have known someone else who time travels. As thoroughly as she seems to have planned for various outcomes, I have a hard time imagining she didn’t leave Quinn with some backup.
The phone rings but goes to voicemail, and I have to force myself not to panic. She no longer has a tumor. I can’t freak out every time she doesn’t answer her phone. I go see my next few patients, but I’m only half here. The other part of me is wondering where the hell she is and why she hasn’t called me back.
An hour passes. I ca
ll again. She still doesn’t answer.
39
QUINN
I land in my upstairs hallway, but it’s nighttime, and the bass is so loud downstairs that the floorboards vibrate beneath my feet.
Oh shit.
From where I stand I can hear people outside in the garden. A girl is shouting something about beer I can’t quite make out.
I want to be wrong. Please God, let me be wrong. Let me open our bedroom door and find Nick there, asleep.
He’s not. Instead I find a mattress on the floor and two beanbag chairs where our beautiful king-size bed should rest. There are clothes everywhere, as if three suitcases exploded at once.
The air conditioning tells me it’s summer. Aside from that I have no idea how far back I’ve gone, although I hear Rihanna’s voice coming through the speakers, a song that’s only a few years old, so it couldn’t be far.
I’ve got to get home. What if I can’t? My heart pounds in terror at the thought and I force it out of my head. Right now, I’m naked inside a stranger’s home. First things first.
I grab a pair of denim shorts and a flannel shirt off the floor and throw them on quickly. Rihanna stops singing and Bruno Mars takes her place, a song I think only came out last summer. If I’m right, it’s just 2017.
Which means I could, potentially, save Darcy.
I know what I promised Nick, but this was an accident, and the opportunity to save her has basically fallen into my lap. I can’t not try. For most of my life I blindly did what my father told me. When he died, I let Jeff assume that role. I love Nick, and I trust his opinion more than I did either of theirs, but I’m done letting someone else make my most important decisions.
I creep down the stairs, though with the volume of the music, it’s not as if anyone could possibly hear me. Avoiding eye contact, I push through a wall of bodies toward the front door. I’m almost there when someone grabs my arm.
I’ve begun to mount a defense about the stolen clothes when my eyes go to the tatted-up college kid who’s grabbed me. I seriously doubt it’s his shorts I’m wearing…these things barely cover my ass.
“Hey,” he says, as if we’re friends. “Where are you going?”
“Home,” I reply, pulling my arm from his grip. I take two large strides and get out the front door with him on my heels.
“Slow down,” he says. “I just want to chat.” I keep walking, fully intending to ignore him and possibly run if he keeps following, when it occurs to me I have no fucking idea where Darcy even lives.
I whirl around so fast he’s forced to take a step backward. “Can I borrow your phone for a second?” I ask. “I left mine at home. I just need to look something up.”
He unlocks his phone and hands it to me. “It’s an iPhone 7?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, smirking. “Why? Would an iPhone 6 not be fancy enough to borrow?”
I laugh out of relief more than anything else. An iPhone 7 means it’s definitely 2017, because the house wasn’t occupied in 2018 until we moved in, and the iPhone 7 didn’t exist in the summer of 2016. “I’m not that picky. Just curious.”
Christine Whitley, Washington DC, I tap out on the keyboard. Safari returns a gazillion listings for Christine Whitleys who live nowhere around here.
Shit. With a heavy heart I start to return the phone, and then one more possibility occurs to me. Her candle company—I close my eyes to picture the business card she gave me. Heart in Hand Candles, it said. I type the name and an address comes up immediately. Thank God.
They live in Cleveland Park, just a few miles from here. I could walk, but I want to get this done as fast as possible so I can get home to Nick. I hand Skinny College Boy his phone. It’s annoying that he stopped me and even more annoying that he followed me, but he does not look dangerous.
“You go to Georgetown?” I ask.
He nods. “Business major. You?”
I make a split-second decision. “Do you have a car? Can you give me a ride? I need to get to the Giant in Cleveland Park.”
“I have a motorcycle,” he offers. “Just to warn you though, I don’t have helmets.” I shrug and follow him, already imagining how I will explain this to Nick later: Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t jump but I did. And then I stole some clothes and got on the back of a motorcycle with a stranger who followed me out of a party. Oh, and—fun fact—we didn’t wear helmets. How ironic would it have been if I’d died of a head injury right after recovering from a brain tumor?!
I doubt he’d find it as amusing as I do.
I climb on the bike behind him, not allowing myself to dwell on the stupidity of this venture. He takes off so fast that I’m forced to cling—intentionally no doubt. My nose is pressed to the back of his shirt, which smells like weed. So this terrible idea just got worse, something I didn’t realize was possible.
We arrive in Cleveland Park a few minutes later. If I’d realized just how close we were and just how poorly he drives, I’d have walked. “We still have all of our limbs,” I say with a shaky laugh as I climb off. “What a pleasant surprise.”
“You want to get a drink before you go?” he asks.
I flash him a smile. “I’d love to but I’m pregnant, so I probably shouldn’t.”
He’s still staring at me, jaw gaping, as I turn and walk into the store.
* * *
Five minutes later I’m walking back out with a note clutched in my hand. Customer Service lent me pen and paper. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to consult with them on how best to explain to someone that I’ve traveled back in time to warn her about her daughter’s brain tumor. As badly as I longed for subtlety—a casual mention of a case similar to Darcy’s, a newspaper clipping—there just wasn’t time. I went for candor instead and I pray it will work:
Your daughter’s headaches are more serious than your doctor realizes. She needs an MRI ASAP. Go see Nick Reilly at Georgetown.
I leave the store, my feet stinging as they slap against the rough pavement. I wish I’d stolen shoes, because God only knows what I could catch. I cross Wisconsin Avenue, narrowly avoiding broken glass, and turn onto Porter. Darcy’s house is two blocks down the road, a tiny Cape Cod. There’s a purple bike dumped in the yard, chalk fading on the sidewalk in front. It takes a second to realize the bike is Darcy’s. I’ve only known the version of her that exists in 2018—pale and bald and far too thin. I’d almost forgotten she wasn’t always that way. Please let this work, I pray, hand pressed to the mail slot for only a moment before I push the paper through.
One job done.
Now I’ve just got to figure out how to get home to Nick.
* * *
I sit in the grass a few blocks away, hidden by darkness, attempting to focus. I think of our little house, our bed. I think of Nick mowing the lawn on a Saturday morning, shirtless. Small flecks of grass clinging to his skin. There’s a flutter in my belly but it’s cut off by a thought—Am I going to wind up back in the house on Saturday morning instead? What then?
What if I can’t get home? Just considering the possibility is enough to make my stomach bottom out. My muscles go stiff, my heart starts to race. Like test anxiety, but with much higher stakes.
I close my eyes and try to focus again. When I open them, nothing has happened. I’m still sitting in the grass, in the oppressive summer heat, the screech of crickets almost painfully loud.
Our house. Go back to our house. I try again. I picture Nick lying in bed, his profile sharp in the morning light. The sound of birds outside, the twitch of his mouth as he starts to wake, his hand curving around my hip the way it does, as if discovering a lost favorite toy. Even if I wind up there a few days off, it’ll be close enough. Go.
But the air remains still and stagnant, clinging to my skin like something tangible. The tightness in my chest threatens to strangle me. How long have I been gone? Is Nick back from work? Is he worried?
I try again, but all I can see is him—brooding, desperate. When he finds my clothes in a pile,
the glass I was holding shattered, he’s going to panic. He’s going to sit there thinking how unlikely it is I will find my way back. Which introduces another terrible question: What if I get home too late? What if it’s two years from now and he’s with someone else?
I bury my head in my hands, realizing how right he was when he begged me not to jump. This is no longer about just me—it’s three of us he loses now if I can’t make it back. And then what??
I try to focus, I try to make myself jump again and again, ignoring my terror. Hours pass and nothing works. I try small steps, like I did this morning: five minutes later, a minute earlier, and my repeated failures make desperation tighten in my gut. If I knew my mother’s address in Georgetown I could ask her what to do. But I don’t. How could I have let this happen? How could I have been so unprepared for it?
Daylight is now only an hour or two away. I pull my knees to my chest and press my forehead against them, thinking. I’m not sure how long I can walk around D.C. barefoot and filthy and penniless, before this whole thing gets worse. I could go see Caroline and pray last year’s Quinn doesn’t show up at her door at the same time, but it won’t solve the real problem. And how would I ever explain the problem to her anyway? I can’t tell her the truth. I don’t remember how to time travel, but some sort of ancient knowledge now rests in my gut—telling people you’re not related to has consequences. Terrifying ones. I would die before I’d do that to her.
The inky black of the sky has begun to soften to the east. Daylight right around the corner. I just wish I could rest. I wish I could lean on Nick for a minute, feel his chin against the top of my head while he tells me things will be fine, that he’s going to fix this somehow. Nick is my wall—but I can’t lean on a wall that hasn’t been built yet.
Intersect: The Parallel Duet, Book 2 Page 22
