By the Bay (23 page)

At first they walked on streets where they had to be careful to stay out of the way of noisy vehicles, honking their horns and growling their motors, as everyone seemed to try to go somewhere at the same time. Philippe, accustomed as he was to the quiet of the sea interrupted only by the shouts of his men as they worked, this
cacophony
was brash and nerve-jangling. He wondered how anybody held on to his sanity in such a setting.

Of course New Orleans could be loud too, but it was a combined music of various soft accents and of animals and carriages moving down its twisting, colorful streets. It gave off the sounds of home.

But they were both strangers in this jangling border town, softened only by the
voices
of its Mexican population. Truly, these Americans were a blunt and harsh people, too direct for his taste.

And then he looked into the face of the woman moving along at his side and smiled. Some things he liked very much about them, these Americans. Jillian was open and honest and cleanly beautiful in a fresh natural way like a flower freshly blooming in the dew of the early morning.

He would trade all his familiar world just to be at her side.

After they walked a few blocks, he saw Jillian give a little shiver. As for himself, he felt no other warning when the setting changed and they were walking, not on a hard surface with automobiles racing past them, but alone in a tangled jungle of a wilderness with brightly colored birds calling from the trees around them.
They were forced
to slow down because of the tangled growth.

“This is either way back,” Jillian said, “or far ahead. It might be much the same.”

It took him an instant to take in what she said, than he nodded. He wondered where all those people
on the streets only a flash ago
had gone and said a little internal prayer for their souls. He was not a man easily frightened, but something about this was so strange that he was struck with awe.

“Jillian,” he said.

She put a finger to her lips as though to hush him. “I’m trying to work my way through it. There is someplace we must go.”

Then she glanced ahead and whispered. “There he is. We
have to
catch up.”

He looked ahead but s
aw
no other person. Still when she took off at a faster stride, he hurried to stay up with her and within minutes he too saw a tall, lean man with pale reddish hair moving rapidly away from them. She broke into a run and since his legs were longer, he quickly caught up, though panting a little more than he would have if he had not so recently been injured.

Finally the man they were chasing turned around. Somehow he was not at all surprised to see it was Davis Blake.
He did not seem pleased to see them.

“I’m busy,” he said. “I’m in a hurry. We can talk later.”

Jillian grabbed hold of his wrist and even though it was clear that her slender
hand did not have enough force
to keep him in place, still he allowed himself to be restrained.

“Where is your family?” she asked.

“I don’t know. They could be anywhere . . .or nowhere.” A big grown man, yet he looked close to tears, Philippe thought.

“Everything is so mixed up, Jillian. We never intended this. We had only the best intentions.”

“Let’s try to fix it.”

“Damn you, girl. Don’t you think if I knew how I would have done that long ago. But they’ve all bailed out on me, all of them who knew
things
, the scientists. I’m just a talent, a chess piece moved around on a board, and there’s no one left who knows what to do.”

This time Philippe felt the ripple and things changed around them again. He kept his eyes fixed on Jillian the whole time willing her not  to leave him.

He was able to breathe a little easier when the ripple passed and they were all three still in place.

Rage piled up inside him that this man and his friends had put them all in such danger, that a few had brought disaster to so many. “It would have been better if you were never born,” he said. “Better if you’d never had the chance to perform your maladroit experiments.”

Davis ignored him, looking around as though seeking something or someone. Probably his lost family, Philippe thought.

He was determined to be heard. “You were like the infants playing with the fire. You have burned your own house down.”

He was suddenly conscious that his own beautiful Jillian was staring at him as though she’d never seen him before. Perhaps she was angry that he said these things about the man who was almost her father. He didn’t care. This man could only do harm to her and as her husband, he must protect her.

“Say that again,” she demanded. Davis walked on while they stood
confronting
each other.

He frowned. “Say that about the fire?”

“No, before that.”

“That it would be better that he was never born?”

“That it would be better if they’d never started the time experiments!” She turned, calling, “Davis!”

“No,” he shouted without looking around. “You’re asking me to give up everything I’ve accomplished in my life. You want me just to wipe the years clean.”

She took Philippe’s hand, tugging him along with her as she closed the gap between them and the older man. “You have to do it, Davis. This whole world could just go away at any minute.”

“No!” he shouted.

“Think about your wife and daughter and the team at the center and all yours friends. Consider everybody you know.”

He stopped and, after a brief hesitation, turned around. “There’s plenty of people I wouldn’t miss.” He had tears in his eyes.

She looked up at him with appeal in her
face
. “I want to go home, Davis.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand, Jillian, you can’t have what you want. It isn’t like that. And as for me, things with that first Timing team ended badly. They’re not friendly toward me. They’ll try to stop me from changing anything.”

Philippe kept very still, watching the drama between the two play out before him. He felt that at this moment Davis had forgotten that this Jillian wasn’t his daughter. He was a broken man.

He had no doubt that whatever she wanted from Davis, Jillian was going to get it.

The rippling began again and though Philippe had  totally missed the last pass, he saw this one as it began to unwind. They were standing by the bay again
and out in the Gulf he could see the great sails of a ship. His heart yearned for the Belle Fleur and the free life he had known.

Still he could feel in his very bones that he was not home, that they were still in that strange world that Davis and the scientists had created with their efforts. This was not
his
home.

Davis looked around eagerly, seeking, but not finding. Philippe guessed he had some instinct that helped him to find his family and when he looked sadly down at the ground, knew he had not sensed their presence.

All the people in the world and only a few truly mattered to a man. Philippe looked at Jillian and knew he would give up everything he knew for her. As long as she was alive, he had a reason to go on living.

Chapter Thirty Two

Florence
was beginning to wonder if her sister was deliberately injuring herself. She’d found Christine this morning with bruises all over both arms and a dark smudge under her left eye. She looked as though someone had beaten her, but nobody had been in the house with her during the night but
Florence
and
Owen
. And neither of them would harm a hair on her head.

When asked about the injuries she shook her head and murmured that she’d tried to fight and “he hit me.” When asked who ‘he’ was, she would only look vague and talk about something else.
Florence
called the caretaker for the day to not come and stayed with Chris herself. Chris crept around the house all day and when night came, it was only after
Owen
came that she was willing to retire to her bed.

“If anybody bothers you, Chris, just yell and I’ll be there to help you.”

Laughter sparkled in her eyes. “
Owen
,” she said, “You’re old. You can’t fight him.”

Still she seemed reassured by
the two of them and, kissing
Florence
goodnight, allowed herself to be tucked in for the night like a child needing a bedtime story.

“
Florence
,” she said when they were alone. “I don’t think Davis is coming anymore.”

“Why would you say that, honey?”
Florence
tried to soothe her, afraid one of her sister’s hysterical moods was coming on.

“Because he’s dead,
Florence
. You know that. You were here and saw what happened.”

Florence
shook her head. “I was in the next room.” She would say no more. It never did Chris any good to remember the long ago tragedy.

“That’s right. I forget. You were bathing the baby.” She smiled. “Dear Jillian, do you think she will be back soon. I want to meet her new husband.”

“Soon, I’m sure,”
Florence
said, feeling a shard of pain in her heart. She only hoped what she was saying was true.

“It was
Owen
who was there,” Chris went on dreamily.

That wasn’t right.
Owen
had just started his café, having moved to Port Isabel with his wife and daughter. He’d been a family friend, though it would be years before the relationship between the two of them had beg
u
n to develop. In between, he would lose his wife and daughter to the drinking that troubled his middle years and she would marry, have a child, lose the child and the marriage.

“
Owen
wasn’t there either,
Florence
. If I remember right, he’d gone outside for something.”

Florence
nodded, th
a
n frowned. “Then who was there in the kitchen with us
?
I remember someone was there.”

Florence
remembered well enough that only her sister and Davis had been in the kitchen. She’d heard the shot and then her sister’s keening and had run, a naked baby in her arms, into the room to see her brother-in-law on the floor, dying, and Chris with a gun in her hand. It was a scene she would never forget.

But there was no point arguing with Christine. In her attempts to deal mentally with the impossible, she had many false memories. Sadly
Florence
supposed she was trying to find one more acceptable than the one that had actually happened.

“No use thinking about that now,” she said. “It’ll only keep you awake.”

Christine settled back on her pillow. “I’ll think about when we were all children together,” she decided. “
T
he good times. Remember how we would make fudge and popcorn some evenings and play games. The good times,” she said again.

Florence
pulled the string to turn off the overhead light bulb, blinking away tears. Poor Christine, she had only been a girl herself when she’d taken over the job of looking after them all. She’d been cheated of her childhood
.

Back in the living room, she found
Owen
dozing on the sofa. It had been a particularly hard day for him. Not only
Florence
had been out, but  one of the waitresses failed to show up for her shift. She looked at him thoughtfully. There were smudges under his eyes, he was unhealthily over weight, and she had to admit Christine was right. He was getting old.

She’d tried to talk him into retiring for the last five years, but he’d refused, saying he intended to die in the saddle. “I like our life, working together, I’d die sooner if I was left sitting in a rocking chair.”

She recognized the truth of that, but with each year, had to work harder to dismiss the idea of life without
Owen
. She hadn’t even been conscious at first how much she’d come to depend on his company after she’d lost her son and her marriage ended. She straightened her shoulders. She was
strong
. She would go on even if left alone. Besides,
even though she was younger, she might go first.  Though s
he couldn’t even wish that because it would be so
lonely
for
Owen
.

Settled in the chair opposite him with a book in her hands, she contemplated the nature of human character. Why did some people crash so hard with life’s tragedies that they couldn’t get up again, while others facing equal disasters just kept trudging on
?

She sighed. No credit to her because she was one of the trudgers. It would have been so much easier to give up then to keep walking, meeting day by day with excruciating pain after her boy died. Immediately her brain began reliving that awful night when she’d found him in his crib hot with fever.