In Times Like These (42 page)

“How is Robbie?” I ask. “Have you seen him?”

“Oh yes,” Mr. Cameron says. “He left just a while ago, said he was going to the softball fields. He said that was the most likely place he would find you when you arrived.”

So Robbie beat us back.

“When did he get here?” I ask.

“H
e came over this afternoon and had dinner with me. He was excited of course. Excited to see you.”

“It’s really good to see you,” Francesca says. “You look great.”

“Thank you, Francesca. I know I look like a withered prune, but it’s nice of you to say. You’re the one who is just as beautiful as the day I last saw you, more beautiful even. Where is the other one? The other tall one.”

I wonder if he’s forgotten my name.

“Blake is here too. He’s out walking around right now, but he’ll be by.”

“Good. It will be like old times.” He smiles.

An orange cat emerges from under the bed and hops up next to me. He rubs against my arm briefly and climbs into Mr. Cameron’s lap.

“Hello
, Samwise,” Mr. Cameron scratches the cat’s cheeks. “Have you come out to meet my friends?”

Samwise purrs contentedly and begins kneading the comforter over Mr. Cameron’s stomach with his paws. After a few moments he
crosses the bedspread and head-butts Francesca’s elbow. She brushes his tail away from her face. “He’s no Spartacus, but he seems sweet,” she says.

“Oh p
oor Spartacus.” Mr. Cameron smiles. “He was a good dog. I don’t think he was ever as happy as when he had all of you living in the house though. Once I got too decrepit to go for walks, I had to switch to feline friends. I never could get into small dogs.”

The cat settles down in Mr. Cameron’s lap, still purring.
There’s a knock on the door and I turn, expecting to see Dee returning, but a man enters the room. He’s middle-aged and bald and wearing a still-dripping windbreaker. He breaks into a smile as soon as he sees us.

“I was wondering if I was going to find you here,” he says. “I saw Blake’s Jeep in the driveway.
”

“Oh my God,” Francesca says. “Robbie?”

It takes me a moment but then I realize what she’s saying. I take another look at the man and see the smiling eyes of my friend. Francesca leaps off the bed and wraps her arms around him.

“I can’t believe it!” s
he says.

“It’s
been a long time,” he replies.

It’s only been a few days.

“You’re all mature now!” Francesca says. “Oh wow.”

“I got old
, you mean,” Robbie says.

Francesca picks up his left hand.
“And this?” The gold ring on his finger looks well worn.

“I figured you would catch that pretty quick,” Robbie says.

“Wow, man. This is crazy,” I say. I give Robbie a hug.

He’s spread out a little in the middle.

“What happened?” Francesca says, covering her mouth with her hands. “I mean, look at you. You’re so grown up!”

Robbie leans around us and addresses Mr. Cameron.
“Hey, Grandpa. I’m going to take them downstairs and tell them the story.”

Mr. Cameron nods and extends his arms toward Francesca. “Only if I get a hug first.”

Francesca gives him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He extends a hand to me as well and I hold it for a moment.

“It’s really great to have you back under my roof again.” Mr. Cameron smiles.

“It’s good to be back,” I say.

Robbie leads the way downstairs and we find chairs in the sewing room. Francesca takes the couch.

He looks like a different person, but that’s really my friend.

“You took the slow road to get here
, I guess.” I say as I sit down.

“That’s one way to put it,” Robbie replies. “It’s had its perks though.”

“What is your perk’s name?” Francesca smiles.

“Her name is Amy. We have a couple of little perks too.” He pulls out his wallet and hands a plastic sleeve of photographs to Francesca. “The youngest is Micah, the older one there is Dominic. They’re older than this now.”

“Oh wow. They are precious,” Francesca says. “And is this Amy?” She holds up a photo of a blonde woman with a Rays baseball cap on.

“Yep. That’s her. Guess it shows there’s someone for everyone. Even I found somebody.”

“She’s really pretty, Robbie,” Francesca says. “You did good. I can’t believe this. You’re so grown up!”

“It seems like you
have a pretty great life,” I add.

“I really do. I couldn’t be much happier,” Robbie says. “And Grandpa has been hanging in pretty well. My kids love him.”

“Wow. Is that awkward with the rest of your family?” Francesca says. “What about the younger version of you? He’s grown up now too.”

“Yeah. That is a little weird. I wasn’t really sure how that was going to go. I mean, he’s me, so I’
ve tried to have a pretty hands-off approach to being around him.” Robbie scratches his head. “But . . . he’s not me. The thing is, I don’t know how bad this is, but I know some stuff got changed. He’s had some experiences I don’t remember ever having.” He looks from me to Francesca. “He even had a girlfriend that I obviously know I never dated. I didn’t know what to do. I made sure he still was on the softball team, but that didn’t work out either. I was by there tonight. None of us time traveled. The game got rained out, but everybody just went home. I was freaking out for a bit. I kept thinking any second I was going to get erased or disappear or something.

“
When nothing happened, I waited a while to see if you guys would show up, but when you didn’t, I headed back here. I knew I needed to tell you quick that you’re all still here.”

“I know. We saw the other Blake,” I say. “Have you seen Carson? Where is he?”

Robbie furrows his eyebrows. He exhales slowly and looks me in the eyes. “Carson is dead.”

Francesca
draws her breath in sharply. I look over to her and she has her hands up to her mouth.

His words are slow to register. My chest feels like someone is crushing it.

I must have heard him wrong. We just left Carson. He was smiling in the backyard. He can’t be dead.

“How?” I choke out. “What happened to him?”

“It was about ten years ago,” Robbie begins. “Initially we’d planned to follow you guys like we discussed. Grandpa was a little slow to recover though, so I kept putting it off. Plus, not having had all the training you guys had, I was pretty unsure of myself. Carson was sure he could get me through it, but I wasn’t as confident. We had the planning all laid out, but I procrastinated. I found more and more excuses for not leaving. Carson wasn’t really in a hurry either. He met a girl, started getting some regular music gigs.”

Carson playing the guitar.
That part is true. I can see him. Not dead though. Dead people don’t play guitars
.

Robbie stands up and begins pacing the room as he talks.

Not Robbie. Some old man. Who does this guy think he is? Why am I listening to this?

“One day a guy came into the bar where Carson was playing. He’d found himself some bandmates by then. This guy offered them a recording deal. Carson, and I think her name was Jeanna, they decided to move out to L.A. and pursue the recording offer.”

This guy gestures funny when he talks. Robbie doesn’t gesture like that when he gets agitated. Robbie doesn’t get agitated. He’s always calm. The calm little center of our group.

“After a while, Carson actually made it pretty big. He didn’t record that much himself but he started writing and producing. He’d compiled a huge portfolio of songs. Some of them were actually his. A lot were covers of stuff we all knew growing up, he just always came out with it a couple of years before the original artists did.”

Carson did want to do that
.

I scoot forward to the edge of my seat. “That idea worked?” My voice is not my voice.

Why can’t I breathe? I need to remember to breathe.

“Yeah, some of the stuff was great, maybe even an improvement in
some cases. Some things weren’t too good though. He got into screenwriting too. He totally screwed up
Independence Day
. I don’t think it even had Will Smith in it this time. Or maybe he left out Jeff Goldblum. In any case, it wasn’t very good.” Robbie sits back down and pauses. “Problem was, I wasn’t the only one who noticed the changes.”

“Another time traveler?” Francesca asks.

“Yeah. The worst one who could have noticed,” Robbie says.

“Stenger?” I ask
.

“No one ever caught him after those murders here. I tried finding Malcolm and Quickly to see if they knew anything about him early on, but I never could find them again. The cops never found any sign of him either. But Stenger found Carson. He showed up in L.A. after one of
the albums Carson produced went platinum. I don’t know what he wanted. He never said apparently. He traumatized Carson’s girlfriend at the time pretty bad. She’s still screwed up. He kidnapped her, and when Carson came to save her, he killed him.”

“I can’t believe it,” Francesca says.

“Yeah, it was really messed up. She said he kept ranting about how he was going to be the only one. She didn’t know what he was talking about, but I think he may have meant time travelers. I think maybe he didn’t want any others to find out about him. He knew Carson was a time traveler from meeting him at the lab. I think that was part of why he went looking for him.”

“No. No
no no.” I put my hands on my head.

Carson dead. Two Blakes. Stenger loose. This is just a nightmare. We must not really be here. I’m dreaming. When did I go to sleep?
The ranch house after the stars. Why does that seem so long ago? I just need to wake up.

“What did you do?” Francesca says. Her eyes are tearing up.

“What could I do, really?” Robbie says. “It was three thousand miles away. I flew out there, but there wasn’t a lot to do. Carson made a lot of friends, but no one knew his family. The young Carson was still here, growing up, oblivious to it all. I saw him tonight. Still plays shortstop.”

Our Carson is dead.

“Stenger is still out there?” I say.

I should have shot that monster when I had the chance. This is my fault.

“I don’t know. The cops found very little evidence except the surveillance video showing Stenger entering Carson’s building the night he died. The police showed me the video. That’s how I know it was him. I couldn’t very well tell them anything about the time traveling though. Not if I wanted them to believe anything I said. I told them the same guy killed a bunch of people here in St. Petersburg in the eighties. They did follow up on that. Problem was, they matched those prints to the younger Stenger. The one who never time traveled. He had a pretty good rap sheet by that point anyway. They convicted him of Carson’s murder, along with some other things. He went to prison, but it wasn’t the right guy.”

“They caught the younger Stenger?” Francesca says.

“Yeah. It was no good for me to tell them they had the wrong one though. The guy that killed Carson is still out there. And there’s one more thing.”

He stops altogether for a second and looks at the floor. When he looks back up his jaw clenches.
“He has Carson’s chronometer.”

Chapter 19

“Many erroneously believe that time travel is a way to fix their past mistakes. You can’t undo what’s been done. Revisiting past pain only lets you relive it, not prevent it. One’s time is better served crafting the future. It’s a commodity too valuable to be squandered on repetition.”

-Excerpt from the j
ournal of Harold Quickly, 1980

My mind is on fire. Nothing is connecting anymore. The house, the man who claims to be Robbie, even Francesca. Their mouths are moving but I don’t hear the words. Francesca is in tears
. She shouldn’t cry. None of this is real.

I stand up and move out of the room into the hallway. I pass through the library with its empty birdcage, empty chairs,
empty existence.
Mr. Cameron’s house should be alive. There should be something alive in here. Why is there no Spartacus? No. He wouldn’t belong here now. Not in this dying place.

I veer through the dining area and fumble with the knob on the back door. I finally get m
y hands to do what I want and wrench the door open. The blackness of the backyard yawns out to reach me through the porch.
No. There’s nothing out there for me either. Why bother? There’s nowhere to go
. I lean my head against the doorpost and stare with one eye out into the dark.

Carson was great at everything.
Great at living. How could he be the one to die?

The images in my mind shift and churn till I see Stenger on the floor.
Carson holding him down, and the gun in my hand.
This is my fault. I could have stopped him. I could have ended him right then. I ran.
My vision is blurry from tears but I see movement beyond the screen door.
Who’s out there? Malcolm?