Timebound (13 page)

“So why do you think this time-shift thing made your dad and your mom… disappear?” he asked. “You said it happened twice before, and no one vanished. Why this time?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t really stopped to think about that.” I paused for a moment, going over what I knew in my head. “There were two photographs at my grandmother’s house—her friend, Connor, said they used to be identical copies of the same family portrait. One had been kept in a protected area—an area shielded from time shifts by one of these medallions. The other photo wasn’t. When I saw them today, they were portraits of two different families, headed by the same man.”

I took a sip of my coffee before continuing. “Something must have shifted the course of the man in the photograph’s life—two different paths. And yes, Connor and Katherine could be mistaken or lying—one picture might be Photoshopped, or the men could be
twin brothers, I don’t know… But I’m pretty sure the man in both of the portraits is the same man I met on the Metro this morning, just after I was mugged. Only this morning, he was about twenty years younger than when the picture was taken in the 1920s.”

“Wait,” Trey said. “You met the guy in the photos? This morning?”

I nodded. “He warned me that something was about to happen. And I watched him disappear while he was holding a medallion just like this one.”

I gave Trey a weak smile. “All of this sounds just as crazy to me as it does to you. But to answer your question about why my mom and dad have vanished, I think something was changed in the past. Something that affected my family.”

I relayed the story my grandmother had told me, realizing as I spoke that there were huge gaps in what I knew. I explained about CHRONOS and how Katherine had escaped into 1969. “If I had to guess,” I concluded, “I’d say that Saul finally caught up to my grandmother in the past. If she never had my mother, then I was never born and my father…” I shrugged. “There would be no reason for him to be at Briar Hill. Or something else changed and my mom and dad, and maybe me…? I have no idea how this works. Maybe we’re all still in Iowa…”

Trey stood up from his side of the booth and motioned for me to slide over. He squeezed his tall frame into the seat next to me and removed a small laptop from his messenger bag. “Then that sounds like the place to start—let’s find your parents. Is it Debra or Deborah? And how do you spell Pierce?”

I looked at him skeptically. “You
believe
me? You actually believe all of this?”

He took a bite of the muffin, chewing it slowly as he considered his answer. “No,” he said. “Don’t be offended, please. You said yourself, it’s crazy. I don’t believe that reality has shifted and that the medallion around your neck will cause you to disappear.
Although I have to admit that it made me nervous when you were holding it in your hand earlier, so maybe I don’t entirely
dis
believe you, either.”

“So why help me?” I suspected it was, in part, because he found me attractive. Trey was a nice guy, but if not for that little fact, I was pretty sure that he would have decided that his obligation to help ended at the Metro station.

He finished off the muffin and then replied. “The important thing is that I do think
you
believe what you’ve told me. And I’m sure you have parents somewhere and I’d like to try to help you find them. Please eat something, okay—otherwise, I’m going to have to carry you on the way back to the Metro.”

“Why not just take me back to my grandmother?” I asked, a bit defensively, taking a bite out of my muffin. I felt like a lost kitten that he was feeding and keeping out of traffic while he searched for my owner.

“Well, first, you haven’t told me her name or address,” Trey said. “And second, that’s not what you want, right?”

I shook my head. “No. I mean… not until I know.”

“Okay, then—we look for your mom and dad. Let’s start with a Google search…”

Twenty minutes later, we had established that Deborah Pierce did not exist—or, at least, she had never taught history at either of the colleges where she had worked. I knew the login and password to access her university website, because Mom always used the same password for everything. The password was irrelevant anyway, since the system had no record of user dpierce42. We tried a search for several academic articles that she had written, but there was nothing listed.

It was hard to imagine a world in which my mother didn’t exist—had
never
existed. I bit my lower lip and took a few deep breaths, pushing down the fear that was building inside me so that I could focus on searching for Dad. He wasn’t listed among the
faculty at the Briar Hill website, something that didn’t surprise either of us. Then we moved to a general web search. There were a lot of Harry Kellers, including one who had been a movie director back in the 1950s. I asked Trey to narrow the search to Delaware and to include my grandparents, John and Theresa Keller. Their address hadn’t changed and I felt a surge of hope.

“Try adding something called the Math Olympics. My dad was on the team in high school—it’s something he always puts in a bio. I guess it’s to establish his math geek creds.”

“Or maybe to inspire his math geek students,” Trey said with a smile. He adjusted the search criteria and a few minutes later I was staring at Dad’s photograph. He had a beard, which I had seen him wear only in a few pictures from his college days, but it was definitely him. He was teaching at a boarding school about an hour away from my grandparents’ house in Delaware.

I grabbed Trey’s hand and squeezed it hard. “We found him. That’s my dad!” I thumbed through the three pictures I carried in my ID holder. One was of Mom, who didn’t like having her picture taken and therefore looked a bit annoyed. One was of me and Charlayne after a belt ceremony at karate. The last picture was of Dad, taken the previous Christmas with the wok I gave him. I showed the picture to Trey.

He nodded. “Yeah, it’s the same guy. And it’s pretty obvious you’re related, even in the online photo—you have his eyes. And your smile is the same, too.”

I reached over Trey to scroll down and read the rest of the bio, laying the picture on the table beside the laptop. But as soon as I moved my hand away, the picture vanished.

Acting on reflex, I tried to grab what was no longer there, knowing as I did that it would make no difference. One second the photo was there, a splash of color against the polished black marble of the table. And the next, it was gone.

“Son of a—” Trey’s mouth was open, and he pulled away, moving toward the edge of the booth. “Kate, did you see that?”

We were both silent for a moment. “I don’t think I’m going to keep that muffin down,” he mumbled.

Without thinking, I pulled the CHRONOS key from under my shirt and held his hand against my chest so that we were both in full contact with the medallion. After a few moments the color returned to Trey’s face. “Do you remember what just happened?” I asked.

Trey nodded. “Yes. We found your dad. And then his photograph—which was
right there
by the salt shaker—just disappeared.” He looked down at his hand, which I was still holding against my chest. “I’m not complaining or anything—not at all—but why are you holding my hand… there?”

I blushed, but I didn’t move it off my chest. “I’m beginning to think that it could be rather… dangerous… for me to lose contact with this medallion for even a moment, Trey. If my mother doesn’t exist in this… time… then I don’t either, right? But I also remember what it was like when the temporal distortions happened and I didn’t have the medallion. I felt… like you looked, just a few minutes ago. Faint, queasy, panicky?”

“Yeah… it’s getting better now. But there’s a part of me that insists the picture was never there. It’s not just that I don’t think things should be able to vanish like that, but more that I remember two opposite things at the same time, if that makes sense?”

“None of this makes sense,” I said. “What I can’t figure out is why you saw the picture disappear at all. I don’t think you have the CHRONOS gene since the medallion looks ordinary to you… but Connor—that’s my grandmother’s friend—said that anyone who wasn’t wearing a medallion wouldn’t realize that anything had changed, when there was a time shift.”

“Maybe it’s enough to be touching someone who’s wearing a medallion?” Trey suggested. He moved his shoulder and his knee
slightly, which had been brushing against me all along due to the small booth.

“Maybe,” I said. “But… you believe me now, right? That what I’m telling you is real?”

Trey made a slightly sick face. “Yes. I’m going to have to go with Sherlock Holmes on this one—‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.’” He stared at the spot where the picture had been. “I would have said that the things you described earlier
were
impossible, but I’ve just seen an example with my own eyes. I could try to pretend it didn’t happen… I might even make myself believe it… but I know better.”

“That’s why I’m holding your hand on the medallion,” I said. “I’m scared that if you take your hand away, you’ll forget… that you’ll stop believing me.” Tears came to my eyes and I blinked them back. “I know that sounds incredibly selfish, but I really, really need someone to believe me right now.”

His grin was back, just a bit shakier. “Okay, but I think we’re going to find it difficult to finish this search with our hands in this position. And people are going to stare if we try to walk down the street this way. Maybe… if we just sit really close?” He put his left arm around me and very slowly pulled his right hand away, while I watched his face for any changes.

“See?” he said. “I still remember. We’re both fine.” He tapped the touch pad to pull up the rest of my dad’s bio, his arm still around my shoulders. “And I could definitely get used to browsing this way.”

I gave him a sideways glance, but didn’t disagree. My entire body had stiffened when Nolan, Charlayne’s latest matchmaking candidate, had put his arm around me at the movie. Being next to Trey, on the other hand, felt natural.

“Is there an address at the bottom?” I asked.

“I think so. But Kate… maybe you need to finish reading the bio.”

I scanned the three paragraphs quickly. The bio included the same bit that Dad always added about the Math Olympics, the same college data and interests. Some additional facts, however, brought me back to reality—the new reality. “Harry lives with his wife, Emily, and two children, in a faculty house overlooking Eastwick Pond.”

It was just before 4
P.M
. and the traffic was beginning to pick up as we left the coffee shop and turned onto Massachusetts Avenue. We held hands even as Trey collected the laptop and stowed it in his bag, probably looking like a lovesick teenage couple who couldn’t bear to be apart for even a second. And within a few minutes, we looked like a lovesick teenage couple having an argument.

“He will still know me, Trey. He
will.
He’s my dad; how could he not know me?” I had already said this several times, but Trey didn’t seem convinced. I wasn’t entirely convinced myself, but I also wasn’t willing to acknowledge any other possibility.

We waited for the walk signal and Trey pulled me toward a bench that curved around the small park at the center of Dupont Circle. Several people—a few of them homeless, judging from the bags and blankets surrounding them—were seated at the stone chessboards nearby, intent on their games.

“I’m not sure, Kate. I know you want to see him—and I’m more than happy to take you if you really think that’s best.” Trey put his finger on my chin and pulled my face in his direction, forcing me to look at him. “Listen. It’s a ten-, maybe fifteen-minute walk to my house from here. We’re over near Kalorama. And it’s a two-hour drive, give or take, to Delaware. If we leave now, we’d get out of the city before rush hour and we could probably be there before dark.”

He held up one finger as I moved to get up from the bench. “But… hear me out. I have no doubt that, in your timeline, your father loves you dearly. To
this
Harry Keller, however, you’re going to be a stranger. Maybe we should go to your grandmother. Or at least call her before we go? You said that she believes you can somehow… fix… this. Shouldn’t we concentrate on that?”

I sighed. He was being logical, and I knew on some level that he was right, but… “I
can’t
call Katherine. I don’t have her number. It was in my phone, which was in my backpack, which was stolen. The number would be brand-new, and I can guarantee it’s unlisted anyway, since she’s worried about being tracked down by my grandfather.”

As I said this, I pushed away the nagging fear that the CHRONOS keys had, for some reason, not protected Katherine and Connor. I had to focus first on finding Dad. “Maybe we should go there first, but I think she’d try to stop me from contacting Dad. And I need to see him, Trey. Even if he doesn’t know me, I’ll convince him. I need to see that he’s real, that he exists. I can’t… I can’t do that with my mom. She’s not here… I don’t think she’s anywhere.”

Maybe it was the rising panic in my voice. I’m pretty sure I didn’t convince him with the strength of my argument because the reasons didn’t even sound logical to me. All I knew was that I needed my Dad, that he was only two hours away, and Trey had offered to take me to him.