A Shiver of Wonder (25 page)

“Try me,” was the equable response.

David thought about it, trying to wrap his
head around all that had obsessed, bothered, or worried him over
the past several weeks. He decided to start with the big one: “Why
did Todd leave Shady Grove?” he asked. “What happened between him
and Genevieve that ended their engagement?”

The smirk was back, and in full force.
“We’ll get to that, but not yet. Next question.”

David felt his pulse pick up at the prospect
of finally getting to hear a straight fact or two on that subject.
“Would Lydia and I ever be able to make things work?” was his next
query.

A smile. “You two will be close friends for
at least twenty-seven years. Hopefully for another twenty-seven
years as well! I’m not saying anything further than that,
though.”

David found himself wracking his brain. This
was ridiculous! There were a thousand things he’d wanted to know;
why was his head entirely empty right at the moment?

“How about this,” the older David suggested.
His arm rose to lie atop the pew. “I already know that you won’t be
able to come up with anything that I feel I can answer directly, so
why don’t I just tell you a few things. Things that might… well,
reassure you, since I did take such pleasure in quoting my own line
to you about that.”

“Okay,” David agreed. If his elder self was
aware that he hadn’t been able to come up with any legitimate
questions when he was in David’s position, there was little purpose
in continuing to try.

“Dad is dying of cancer right now,” was what
he said next, though. And as David’s stomach began to clutch, he
went on: “Not a reassuring statement, I know. But you need to call
him. And then visit him. He won’t even find out about it himself
for another few days. But it’s something I’ve never regretted,
re-crossing that bridge to see him and Mom.”

“How did you know?” David asked,
comprehending even as the words came out of his mouth that the
answer was obvious.

“Endless loop,” was the humble reply. “I
told you, I told myself. I can’t even fathom how that can work
logically, but there it is. Call them. Soon.”

“I will. How does Mom take it?”

A shrug. “Better than you’d expect. She
became older, wiser. She has a scrapbook that she’ll show you, with
practically every article ever printed about you and Puppy Love ’n
Friends, and… well, all the bad stuff that happened, too.”

“Seriously? Great.” David rolled his eyes.
“I’m looking forward to it already.”

“Try to act pleased. It’ll make her happy.
She’ll surprise you, truly.”

“What about Fran and Nancy?”

And now the older David rolled his eyes.
“You’ll never see them.”

“No more requests for money?”

He chortled. “Nope! One thing about all
those articles, in print or online: when everybody else thinks
you’re broke, don’t ever fill ’em in on the fact that you’re
not!”

“Good advice.”

“I knew I was going to give it.”

David shook his head, chuckling as well.
Surreal as this was, it was fun. No wonder he would remember so
much with such clarity.

“Aishani will contact you in a few
years.”

David’s mirth died away.

“I know you were thinking about her earlier,
when you ate lunch in the amphitheater.”

David blinked. Of course he knew. “Why tell
me this now?” he asked quietly.

“Well, first of all, because I knew I would.
Secondly, because it’s something you need to hear.”

“Why?” David felt small, weak. His body felt
bruised, as though he had been dumped and beaten just this morning,
instead of seventeen years previously.

“She will name her second child after you.
After both of us. After she moved out of Lincoln Heights between
eleventh and twelfth grades, she spent years trying to understand
what had driven her actions during that time period. She will tell
you that she lost herself, and is sorry. She’ll want you to know
that nothing was ever your fault. Ever.”

“Sounds like what happened to me.” Even
David’s voice sounded small at the moment.

“I think her spell of stupidity might have
been a bit briefer than ours,” was his older self’s dry reply. “I’m
just telling you this so you’ll think about it. A little, not a
lot.”

“Okay.” David nodded his head. “Thank
you.”

“So. Are you ready to hear about the four
things yet?”

David wasn’t, but he had a feeling he was
going to be told, whether he liked it or not. “Four things that I
love, I will lose,” he intoned in an exaggerated imitation of
Clair. “But one of them could be mine again.”

“Is your hand warm?”

“Huh?” David said, and then he got it. “Ah.
Clair. Funny.”

“I try. So if you had to guess, what would
those four things be?”

David expelled a puff of air. “Genevieve…”
he began, but then halted as he tried to marshal his thoughts.

“I admit, she’s got at least four sides to
her personality,” quipped the older David, “but if that’s your only
answer…”

“Are you able to come up with anything
original, or is all of this material stolen?” David shot back.

“Is stealing from myself stealing?” was his
reply.

“I guess it’s difficult to be spontaneous if
it’s already been said,” David admitted. “But let me have a minute.
This is still fresh for me. You’ve had years to develop your end of
this.”

A raised eyebrow and a patient smile were
his only response.

David once again enumerated to himself all
that he loved. People: Genevieve, Lydia, Grandpa Wilcott, Abby
Lowell. Things: his freedom, his newfound lease on a better life,
his dog. Until a week ago, he would have counted his home at the
Rainbow Arms as one of those as well.

“No, that dinky apartment at the Rainbow
Arms doesn’t come into this,” stated the older David. “I remember
this moment. I’m not Clair, but if this is what she felt like at
times, I can tell you it’s more than a little bit freaky.”

David couldn’t withhold a smile. “Johnson,”
he said steadily.

“Yes. That’s number one. Don’t worry, it’s a
long way off. Another guess?”

“Grandpa Wilcott.”

“Strike one.”

“Really?” David was taken aback. He loved
him, he was old…

“He always promised that he would try not to
be such a turd, right?”

“About every third time I visit him,” David
answered.

“Well, he couldn’t do it. I won’t tell you
everything, but trust me, there weren’t too many tears at his
service.”

David closed his eyes for a second, trying
not to imagine how bad things could get with his irascible
grandfather. “Will the service be here?” he then asked, looking
about the interior of the church with curiosity.

“Maybe. Or maybe not,” was his reply.
“Another guess?”

“Abby,” was David’s next offering.

A nod. “Yes. That’s number two. And, like
Johnson, it’s not soon.”

“I
have
noticed lately that I’m
spending as much time visiting with her as I am with Grandpa,”
David mused. “I suppose that should have been a clue.”

“The ratio of time you spend with each of
them gets even more imbalanced this summer,” the older man
declared. “We had some good times with him years ago, but if
Grandma could have seen what he became… She wouldn’t have minded
all the girlfriends, but to watch him turn bitter and hateful…”

“Do they bury him in the Barcalounger?”
David couldn’t believe he had just made a joke of it.

A guffaw. “I forgot I said that! No, that
thing probably helped a family stay warm for an entire winter once
he was through with it. Honestly, I never did ask where it went.
Any more guesses?”

David had only two more legitimate
possibilities, but he was afraid to ask again about Genevieve. It
seemed reasonably obvious by now that she was the one he would lose
that could once again be his, but it could always be Lydia, or even
someone of whom he wasn’t thinking.

But come to think of it, he already
had
lost Genevieve, at least temporarily. They hadn’t
communicated even once since the disaster at Longworth House.
Seeing her at Gâteaupia the next afternoon with Janice didn’t
count.

“Bill Lopes,” said the older David
quietly.

“Bill,” David echoed with a frustrated shake
of his head. He hadn’t even thought to include him on his list.

“I know, you weren’t quite sure if you would
still want to spend time with him,” the man said. “But it’s funny,
how something like what the two of you witnessed can bond two
people. Nobody else would understand. Most people wouldn’t even
believe you.”

“I helped him with the sprinklers on
Sunday,” David said thoughtfully.

“I remember.”

“We didn’t talk about it, even once. Does
that change?”

A sly smile appeared. “I don’t know. Does
it?”

David smiled himself. He knew better than to
ask again. “So did Clair make this happen?” he asked. “Did she
arrange all of this, for lack of a better verb?”

The smile had slid away. “I think we both
know that she did,” was his response.

“But how? I mean,
how?
This is huge,
you and I sitting in the same place at different ages. How could
she go about coordinating something like this, let alone figuring
it all out beforehand?”

“Maybe she developed more powers as she
matured. Maybe she figured out how to control and use the powers
she had.”

But this wasn’t enough for David. “How old
is
she, do you think? Right now, in my time. She was in
first grade, but – ”

“She could be any age. She could look
exactly the same in my time.”

“You mean, she could still be a little girl?
That’s impossible!”

“She indicated that she’d been in several
different first grade classes, right? She could have been doing
that for years. Wherever she is right now, I’d bet she’s still
wearing those ridiculous saddle shoes!”

David snorted.

“In any case,” he continued, “she was
obviously far older than she looked. So no matter what, she had a
much slower growth rate than the rest of us.”

“Do you think that she is… that she’s an
agent of…” David pointed upwards, and then swallowed. “I mean,
we’re here. In a church.”

“Possibly,” was his response. “It would seem
logical. But it could also be a cover. This is certainly a
convenient location: quiet, private, no one to bother us. Not many
places like that outside of churches.”

David mulled something over for a minute.
“Does the fact that the pastor who came through saw both of us mean
anything?”

“Only that I’m the visitor here. We both
recognized him. He’s from your time, not mine.”

“Mmm.” David was sifting, sifting. Such an
unbelievable wealth of speculation, yet so few facts upon which one
could hang a hat. “Do you think she was ever able to determine if
she was good or bad?” he asked.

But the elder David had begun to shake his
head even before the question was finished. “I would guess that,
like us, she’ll never know. You remember what she said, right?”

“ ‘Do you know, David? Does anybody?’ ”

“Exactly. Even now, all these decades later,
I can’t answer that question for me, for us. Sure, I’ve done my
best to be a better person. I at least made
damn
sure that I
never headed back in the direction from which I started. But does
that make me good? Do my later actions trump my earlier failures as
a person? Can I be forgiven for all that I did wrong, just because
I eventually cleaned up my act?”

David found himself unsure of what to say.
If his older self hadn’t discovered the answers to the questions,
it was clearly hopeless for him. “Tell me about Todd,” he said in a
low voice. “You said we’d get to it. I’d like to know.”

The older David hesitated. “You realize that
I’m only going to tell you this because I already know I told you,
right?”

“No. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“It’s like Mom’s scrapbook. You’re going to
have to pretend to be surprised when you actually find out. If you
agree, I’ll tell you.”

“I agree.”

“It’s funny how I had a feeling you’d say
that.”

The two Davids smiled at each other, each
liking what they saw. The younger David had nothing but admiration
for the man he would become. And the older David could view his
former self in mid-transition, just past the crossroads but not yet
through the fire. The best was yet to come for him, and both of
them knew it.

“Todd kept a few secrets from Genevieve,”
the older David began. “They aren’t the most horrible secrets I’ve
ever known. But I have to admit, if I’d been in Genevieve’s shoes,
I probably would have thrown him out of the house, too.”

“Throw him out? But they never even lived
together!”

“Genevieve might have held back a secret or
two as well.”

David could feel the knife twisting in his
heart. She had
lied
to him! Over and over during her
‘explorations’. No wonder their relationship had repeatedly
toppled, if the foundations were built on such flimsies!

“Don’t hate her just yet,” was said gently.
“Let me continue. It gets better, not worse.”

David took a deep breath, willing himself to
remain calm. His older self waited until he had stopped biting his
lip, until he had relaxed once more in the pew.

“She came home early one day from the store.
It was a Wednesday, and business was slow. I don’t know, maybe she
got suspicious and did it on purpose. But when she went upstairs to
her bedroom, there was Todd, lying on the bed in a corset, a bra
and a dress. He was… um, taking care of himself, and was so
occupied that he didn’t see or hear her come in.”

David wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.
The image he’d had of the manly, football-loving Todd was
shattering; the antipathy he’d felt just now for Genevieve was
abating.