A Knight in Central Park (32 page)

How could he leave her? And yet, how could she ever think of using guilt to keep Sir Joe in her world?

As a faint sickness swept through her middle, Alexandra held her stomach. But this time she did not panic, for she knew she was sick with child. Sir Joe would not be leaving her alone after all; a part of him would always be with her.

Even before she realized she was carrying Sir Joe’s child, she knew she had forgiven him. But would he forgive her when she told him of the babe she carried?

“It’s your sister you’re thinking about, isn’t it?” he asked.

She smiled inwardly, for she knew he thought he could read her mind. “Aye,” she replied. “I pray she does not come to regret her decision.”

“She seemed very happy.”

The hoot of an owl and the sounds of the horses in the stables filled the silence between them.

She turned toward Sir Joe. He had bathed. His familiar scent of pine and rosewater filled her with longing.

“I gave the candlestick to Lydia and Ari,” he said, struggling to say goodbye.

She put a hand to her chest. “Why ever so? Was the candlestick not your reason for agreeing to come with me?”

“I have the sword.” He gestured toward his things piled nearby. “Ari and Lydia could use some new window coverings and new bedding.”

She looked at his briefcase. Their final moments together were truly upon them. She needed to tell him about the baby. Would he stay then? Out of duty?

“I don’t know what to say,” he said before she could speak, his voice choked with emotion. “Tonight’s the night and yet the thought of leaving you is turning my insides to mush.”

“You must follow your heart,” she told him.

He raised a hand to her cheek and softly brushed the pad of his thumb over her chin. “It would be selfish of me to ask all of you to return with me. This is your home.”

She opened her mouth to speak, to tell him she was with child, but she heard voices. Somebody was quickly approaching.

They both turned to see Rebecca heading their way, tears in her eyes as she ran toward them. “Fiona!” she cried out.

Alexandra gasped at hearing Rebecca speak. Alexandra fell to bended knee, but it was Sir Joe her little sister ran to. He, too, bent low and swept Rebecca into his arms, holding her tight.

“Fiona!” she said again, holding up her rag doll.

“Fiona?” he said, clearly puzzled.

“Fiona,” she repeated breathlessly, her small voice hoarse and unused. “Her name is Fiona. She wants t-to go with you. To watch over you.”

“Oh, God,” Joe said, his chest tightening. “You’re really talking. I knew you could do it! I’m so proud of you.”

Tears streaked Rebecca’s small dirty cheek. She just stared at him, unblinking, gifting him with her treasured doll.

“How can I ever make any of you understand?” he asked.

Rebecca tucked her doll safely under Joe’s arm and then reached for Alexandra. Joe placed the child in Alexandra’s arms, releasing a long drawn out breath before moving to gather his things. He picked up his briefcase in one hand and his sword in the other. Except for a few papers, Joe’s briefcase was empty. But it felt heavy nonetheless. Perhaps the heaviness he felt was not his briefcase at all...but his conscience. All his reasons for leaving this world seemed suddenly dim and illogical.

He gave Susan a hug when she, too, came forward. He noticed Garrett then, leaning nonchalantly against an old oak, as he often did, taking their goodbyes in stride.

Joe set down his things and headed Garrett’s way. He took the boy’s stiff frame into his arms. “I’ll miss you kid,” he said, his voice strangled with emotion. “You take care of them, okay?”

He felt Garrett’s body relax slightly.

It was another moment before Joe let him go. Garrett looked at him with red bloodshot eyes and nodded.

Joe picked up his possessions again and gave them all one last nod. Then he turned to gaze out at the wide open fields, breathing in the fresh earthy smells of a fifteenth century farm for the last time. The moon shone white and fully round, casting shadows against the tall wheat.

He had traveled through time...a dream and a nightmare all at once. An incredible urge to stay struck him. And yet the moon beckoned him, told him to return home while he still could. Joe didn’t belong in this world and yet for the first time since he’d come, he wasn’t so sure that was true.

He glanced over his shoulder toward Alexandra. His throat tightened and his heart did a flip-flop as a wave of panic spread through his body.

He pulled the stone from his pocket, felt its cold smoothness against his palm. The thought that Alexandra loved him popped into his mind. She didn’t love him because of what they had been through or because of the cataclysmic experience they shared.

She loved him for who he was.

She didn’t care if he could hardly lift a sword or make shapes out of clouds. She had three children to take care of. Nothing short of a hurricane could take them away from her. She didn’t need him. She had enough love for them and for him. She loved him more than he deserved to be loved. If he were lucky, she would love him for the rest of his life.

He looked back at her, felt a lifting of his very soul as if a huge incredible burden had been hefted from inside him.

And that’s what love was all about, wasn’t it?

For the first time in Joe’s life he felt as if he knew what love entailed. Love made breathing that much easier. Love made the moon brighter and made the water taste fresher. All those love songs suddenly made sense.

Love was like oxygen.

Love lifted you higher.

He felt downright giddy. It was all true.

Love had somehow eluded him all of these years because he had been looking for scientific jargon or a theory. Love could not be described in any sort of accurate, logical, specific way. His love for Alexandra was far from ordinary.

It came to him as an epiphany. As long as he was with her he would always be home.

He couldn’t leave her if he wanted to.

He pulled his arm back to toss the stone into the air, fling it toward the heavens and out of his grasp. But the moment he clutched the rock tightly within his palm, everything changed. His surroundings became a hazy fog of darkness. It was as if the moon’s gravitational force was pulling him, energy formed between earth and moon, sweeping him ashore like an ocean’s tide.

“Alexandra!” he called before disappearing completely. “I love you.”

New York, Present Day

T
he time had finally come for Joe to stand before the Academy. His dreams, his wishes, his goals, all tied up in this one glorious moment.

And he was miserable.

His crisp white shirt beneath a dark gray vest and tuxedo felt confining. He tugged at the collar, tried to breathe. His jaw was cleanly shaven, but he hadn’t the heart to cut his hair, as if it were his last connection to Alexandra, and so it was tied back instead.

He wasn’t listening to a word Jared Katz was saying. The President of the Academy spoke about the Academy’s mission and how they needed to expand understanding and appreciation of humanity’s past through systematic investigation. They needed to promote research, stewardship of new members...and so on and so on.

None of it mattered any more, at least not to Joe.

His father sat to his left, while Jared Katz droned on behind the podium to his right. On the other side of the podium sat last year’s president and the one before that. Before him, sitting at round tables that glittered with polished silver and crystal glasses, were the rest of the members. Most looking bored senseless.

Not his father though.

As if enraptured by every word, his father sat tall and rigid. The Academy was indeed his father’s life’s blood, providing him constant nourishment, for his body as well as his soul.

Twice, Joe had tried to pull his father aside, tell him he had amazing news. During his first attempt his father had been called away before Joe could get two words out. The second time Joe cornered him his father suggested they wait until after the ceremony to talk. Without waiting for a reply his father had walked away. Always walking away.

Just like Joe had walked away from Alexandra.

His stomach knotted. One week ago he’d returned to Central Park. He hadn’t slept since.

He hadn’t wanted to return, dammit!

He had changed his mind, tried to throw the damn stone as far away as he could, but it had been too late. A moment too late.

A day late, a dollar short.

Who the hell said “better late than never?” Never was much better than later. Why hadn’t he seen it all along? Why did he have to be so damn blind? How many times had Alexandra tried to tell him that people had become stilted in his world, blind to that which mattered most? Nothing would blind Alexandra. She knew what was important: Family, love, honor, loyalty. She knew.

And now he knew.

And it was too late. “...too bad, too late, the ship had sailed...”

“And with each new finding,” Mr. Katz rambled on, “we serve the public interest, seeking the widest possible engagement with governments, educators, and indigenous peoples, in advancing knowledge and enhancing awareness of the past.”

The members applauded.

Joe realized he was clapping, too. Like a robot, programmed to react without any thought. His father, though, applauded with great vigor. He pushed his chair back and came to his feet, his eyes bright with excitement.

Joe had already accepted membership. Less than two hours ago he had accomplished his supposed life’s dream. But the saddest part of it was that it wasn’t his dream after all.

It was his father’s dream.

All this time he’d wanted his father’s approval and acceptance. And for what? Joe had a piece of paper, nicely framed, ready to be hung on his well-textured wall back home. What now? The Academy’s elite lined up to shake his father’s hand, and his. Before arriving at the luncheon, Joe had decided not to share the sword he’d brought back with the Academy, deciding it would raise too many questions. Questions he was not willing to answer.

The King of England bestowed it as a gift to me for saving his life, using its sharp blade to dub me The Black Knight.

What would they say to that?

The Black Knight had always been Joe’s enemy, an invisible nemesis, which in retrospect, was exactly what he was. Had he not, in the end, proven to be his own worst enemy?

All the questions going round and round within his mind were making his head ache.

His father walked toward Joe now. His face well-lined from the years spent in the sun, searching, digging. It was as if Joe were looking at an enigma instead of directly into the eyes of his own father. Standing before the King of England had been less awkward.

“So what is it you wished to talk to me about?” his father asked.

No hug, no pat on the back. Joe peered into the deep blue of his father’s eyes, endless in their enormity and mystery...cold and vast, and never still.

His father might not be the man Joe wanted him to be, but he was a man with a calling, perhaps a man with dreams and goals not unlike himself. The man before him reached his same height. Joe guessed his father to be in his sixties, but he had no idea when or where his father was born. His father’s hair was still thick and fairly dark, his temples silver. His posture no longer held the vitality of moments before when his eyes had been filled with life.

Joe snapped out of his trance. “Nothing,” he said. “It was nothing.”

His father looked at him then, curious perhaps. Maybe, maybe not. It was hard to tell.

For as long as Joe could remember his father had been searching for the Black Knight. That thought kept coming back to the forefront of his mind. I am the Black Knight. He almost said the words, almost told his father the truth. Inwardly, Joe became amused at the irony of it.

I am the one you have been searching for your entire life. I am he, he is I. Your son. I am the Black Knight.

Who would have guessed that the one thing his father had spent a lifetime searching for was right before his eyes, waiting desperately for him to find him.

Alexandra was right when she’d said people were blind.

As he watched his father turn to walk away, he sighed. No pat on the back, no handshake. Nothing. “Wait,” Joe called out.

His father waved off a young man who had been patiently waiting to talk with him and turned back to face Joe instead.

Joe went to him, took his father in his arms, embraced him fully. He held him for a moment longer than appropriate being that they were in public before his father’s string of elite and prestigious friends. His father’s cheeks pinkened as he gaped at Joe in stunned silence. Probably the most emotion he’d ever seen on the man’s face. Joe smiled. “I’ve got to go. It was good seeing you.”

And then before his father could turn away, he turned away first. And then he just walked away.

“Look in the mirror for God’s sake!” Shelly said. “You look like shit!”

“Doesn’t anyone know how to say hello anymore?” Joe asked before taking another swill of gin or beer or whatever the hell was in his cup. “And don’t use God’s name in vain. It’s not nice.”

Shelly ignored him as she picked up some of the clothes scattered across the floor. “How long have you been back?”

“Let’s see.” Reaching back into the crack of the chair, he grimaced. Then he pulled out a wrinkled calendar. His eyes narrowed and his lips moved as he counted the days. “Twenty-nine days, give or take a few hours.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I did. I think.” He pushed his hair out of his face, then leaned his head back against the padded cushions of his Lazy Boy. “Yeah, I did call you. I talked to a Katy.”

“No wonder I didn’t get the message.”

“Hmmm, yes, you can’t trust anyone named Katy.” He took another swallow.

“Professor,” she said, dumping the pile of dirty clothes she’d collected on the couch. “What has happened to you? Did you really go back in time? Did it happen?”