By the Bay (17 page)

As they always did in bad weather,
Owen
and
Florence
were spending the night at the cottage with Christine.

Florence
made hot chocolate and served it with
snicker doodles
she’d made earlier in the day. “Real cozy being inside tonight,” she said as she settled on the sofa next to
Owen
. Candles flickered on the end tables, replacing the electricity which might be out for hours or days, depending on the amount of damage the storm was doing.

Christine, wearing a night gown and housecoat, stirred uneasily in her big chair. “I do wish Jillian would get home. She shouldn’t be out in weather like this.”

“Jillian isn’t here, Chris. Remember?”
Florence
soothed. “She’s off honeymooning in New Orleans with her new husband.”

“That’s right. I forgot. Do you think I’ll like him? Her husband, I mean.”

“Seems like a real nice young man,”
Owen
contributed. He and
Florence
exchanged glances. They were growing increasingly anxious at not hearing from Jillian, but neither of them wanted to pass on that fear to Christine.

Chris smiled dreamily. “She was always such a sweet little girl. I felt so bad that she had to grow up without a father and it was all my fault. That was the one thing I couldn’t bear, couldn’t stop thinking about, that it was my fault that she didn’t have her daddy.”

“It was an accident, “ Chris insisted, as she had so often since Davis’ shooting. “
T
he last thing in the world Davis would want is for you to feel guilty about it for the rest of your life.”

Christine leaned back in her chair. “I’d rather have been the one who died than the one who had to live with that moment for the rest of her life.
It’s there with me always,
Florence
, playing over and over ‘til I can’t think of anything else. Right there as though it just happened. Promise me,
Florence
, promise me, both of you that you’ll never tell my child that I killed her daddy.”

As she had many times before,
Florence
promised
even though she was well are that Jillian must know the truth by now.
Owen
nodded his head in agreement. “Though I can’t help thinking it would be better if everything were out in the open. It’s not like Jillian is a little girl. She’s a grown woman and capable of understanding what happened.”

“Well anyway, Davis has forgiven me. He said so last time he came by.”

Florence
sighed. Chris was slipping out again to that world where Jillian might be any age from an infant on and her dead husband dropped by to visit the two of them.

“Have another cookie.”  She passed the plate around, th
a
n picked up her latest Dorothy Sayers mystery that she’d just gotten from the library. Somehow she didn’t like to imagine
going
through the day without her latest puzzler. She didn’t know how people managed to get by without an occasional bypass of reality.

Owen
sipped his hot chocolate, looking thoughtful and she wondered whether his mind was taking him, perhaps back to the old days when he’d lived most unhappily with a wife who hated him. After a while his face relaxed and she hoped he’d been able to leave the past behind him and knew he had when his head began to droop as he dozed.

Christine got up without explanation and
Florence
heard the sounds of her sister in her room getting ready for bed. As for herself, she wasn’t sure she could sleep with the night sounding so wild outside. Not that the sounds of the storm frightened her, they just made her blood stir restlessly so that she wanted to do impossible things like running in the wind the way horses did when the weather began to change.

Finally she laid down the story of Lord Peter and his Harriet Vane and let her own thoughts drift to the past. She remembered again the day when she’d come over to the cottage to visit her sister, well, more to visit the fascinating six-month-old niece who had quickly become her favorite person in the world.

It had been a lovely summer evening when the scent of
bougainvilleas
in the air and, just off work from her job at the drugstore, her boyfriend, soon to be her husband, at work himself, she’d decided to spend an hour playing with the baby. Already she was thinking about the days in the near future when she might have a baby of her own.

She’d heard the baby’s loud and unceasing crying as though she were terrified out of her little wits and ran the last few steps, pushing open the unlocked door to a scene that permanently imprinted on her brain.

The lean form of her brother-in-law lay crumpled on the floor, his head covered in blood. Her sister bent over him, white and weeping, begging him to wake up, to be all right.

After one look at that bloody face,
Florence
knew Davis would never be all right again. The gun he kept always on his person as a police officer lay nearby, abandoned, its damage done.

The baby continued to wail, ignored in her crib.
Florence ran to grab her up.

Not until later when she’d gone to bed in Jillian’s room, leaving
Owen
the living room couch that she once again lived through an episode in the continuing nightmare that was the worst in her life.

She was in the little apartment downtown where she had lived with her husband and baby. Gerry was at work and she and two-year-old Mitch were getting ready for bed.

She told him a story. The curly-haired toddler demanded another the minute she finished.

“Three bears,” he said.

She gave in easily, feeling a little guilt
il
y that she should insist he go to bed in a timely fashion. But Gerry would be hours yet and she was lonely, so lonely in her own first grownup home. “Once upon a time,” she began as the little boy chortled at his victory.

She was so proud of him, so amazed that she and Gerry with their rather imperfect marriage had produced this amazing child. Handsome, bright and so lovable, she’d never loved anyone, not even Jillian, the way she loved this little boy.

It always made her shiver the way Christine would stare at him and
say gloomily that the child was almost too beautiful to live.

He wanted a third story and she told it to him as he cuddled in her arms, finally falling asleep.

She’d never been so happy.

The worst kind of nightmare was when everything was all right again and you were happy and your child was in your arms because when you woke up the sick feeling
in your stomach was the worst thing you ever felt. Once again
she
had to remember that Mitch had died on Christmas Eve when he was three of a sudden virulent illness and that nothing would ever be all right again.

She sat up in bed abruptly, knowing there would be no more sleep tonight. Tiptoeing so as not to awaken
Owen
, she went through the living room into the kitchen where she could turn on the light without disturbing anyone.

Her hands were shaking as she opened her book once more, the sound of the storm banging at the boarded windows like a beast trying to get inside.

“Worrying about Jillian?”
Owen
’s voice startled her. So she’d awakened him after all.

He was a big man and he didn’t look well, but she couldn’t get him to take better care of himself. She didn’t know his age, but guessed he was a good many years older than
she was.

They didn’t confide in each other, didn’t talk about their mutual pasts, but she knew without words that his own background was as dark and empty as her own. He’d told her bluntly in their early days that because of something that had happened before they met, he could not enter into a physical relation with a woman. Because of that, he felt she should be free each day to choose her own life, though he loved her and would always love her.

Over the years she had briefly entertained other suitors, but
she loved him, this over-weight, aging, often silent man who had so much to give.

He came over to pull her from her chair and into his arms.

“Yes,” she said because she never, ever mentioned Mitch, not even to him. His name had not passed her lips since the day he died and yet she’d found life and a reason to go on in
work and in
looking after her sister and mothering her niece. And with
Owen
.  “I was worrying about Jillian.”

Chapter Twenty
Four

There were three of them and she supposed she must be old enough to be their great-grandmother. Davis told her they were now in the year 2021 and the three people standing before her were in charge of the time travel experiment, now a corporate project with peaceful intent and no longer a part of military endeavor.

They were young these three, two women and a man. She supposed they might be in their late twenties or early thirties and all were surprisingly attractive.

He introduced her as Jillian, his ‘other’ daughter from 1942, the one with the talent. Their names were Sherlynn, Roderick and Karyen. No last names
given
, one was dark-skinned, one was olive and the man looked to be Asian. Still, Davis said, they were all Americans and they looked at her with open curiosity as though she were the strange one.

“These days we’re calling ‘Timing,” Roderick told her. “Catchy, isn’t it?”

She nodded, hardly taking in what he said. They dressed oddly too, these three
‘
in charge
’
young people,
in what she supposed was some sort of uniform. She only supposed that because they all looked alike, white loose fitting pants and long-hanging white, short sleeved shirts. Not like any uniform she’d ever seen before.

“You are scientists?” she questioned hesitantly.

“Oh, no, Jillian, we’re public relations. We’re the
front
people. The scientists like it best when they work behind the scenes.”

“Or so we like to think,” the dark-skinned one named Sherlynn answered.

“Because we like being out
front
,” the other woman, Karyen told her.

Jillian didn’t much think she would like living in 2021 if these three were examples of its people, but then she reminded herself that they seemed to
find her something of a curiosity.

You didn’t just hop across decades without feeling a little out of place. She turned to Davis, who had been waiting patiently throughout the rather meaningless exchange. “Why have you brought me here?”

He looked thoughtfully at the three of them and their exuberance seemed to dim a little. “Perhaps you will explain,” he said.

Roderick nodded. “Just as you say, sir.”

All their informality faded when they addressed Davis Blake, she noticed.  It was as if he commanded levels of respect they didn’t normally show. Her so-called father seemed to be a big wheel here in 2021.

“We had you brought here because we want to offer you employment,” Sherlynn said.

“Employment?” Jillian couldn’t believe this. Philippe was terribl
y
injured back in New Orleans and Davis had brought her here for this nonsense. “You want to talk about a job?”

“Not just any job, Jillian,” Davis himself interrupted to explain. “You’re desperately needed in research.”

“Hey, I have a history degree. I’m no scientist.”

“It isn’t a matter of degrees or study, Jillian, it’s a matter of talent.”

Suddenly she understood just a little. “You think I’ve inherited my father’s talent for time travel!”

The three nodded together. “An ability so few have
and our need is desperate . . .”

“No,” she said. “Send me back.”

“But you haven’t heard . . .” Roderick protested.

“Our offer,” Sherylynn chimed in.

“Yet,” concluded Karyen.

“Not interested.” Her need to get back to Philippe exploding inside her, she couldn’t afford to be patient with this nonsense.

“Money, power, whatever you want,” Roderick took up the conversation
again. “Whatever you want. Whatever you
can imagine or dream
.”

She looked around for the machines with the flashing lights. This room was bare and polished with places for seating and work tables. No machines.

“Dad, please take me back,” she said in a very small voice, feeling helpless for the first time
and trying to appeal to the supposed relationship
. She didn’t like this future place, didn’t like these people who were as polished and characterless as their furniture.

“It’s all right, dear.”

“Don’t worry.”

“He wants to show you around first.”