Mirror, The (45 page)

"Yes, you can," Ginny said.

"No."

"Do I need to remind you of Marta's warning? She said we'd have only one shot at this – not two, not three, but one. If we don't leave now, we may never see home again. Are you willing to take that chance? Are you?"

"Yes. I am."

"No. You're not. I know you. You're not willing to take that chance. You
do
want to see our family again," Ginny said. "Now, get your butt in Nana's car. We're leaving now."

"No!"

"What's the matter with you?"

"I'm pregnant!"

Ginny closed her eyes as clarity swept over her. She could see now that this wasn't about a life nearing an end but rather a life nearing a beginning. She had no answer to this wildest of wildcards but knew that she had to stand her ground.

"That doesn't change a thing, Katie. We have to go. We have to go now."

Katie wiped the tears from her face and stared at her sister with the saddest eyes Ginny had ever seen. She stepped forward and gave her twin a long hug. The anger was gone.

"No, Gin.
You
have to go," Katie said softly. "I know what I'm giving up. I know I'll regret it the rest of my life, but it's what I have to do. I will not leave the man I love. I will not keep him from his child."

Katie put her hands on Ginny's shoulders.

"I don't have a choice now, Ginny. I can't go."

Ginny fought off tears of her own as she stared at her sibling and realized that Katie would not budge. She could see that Katie had not made a rash decision but rather a cold calculation. She had undoubtedly given the matter a lifetime of thought and concluded that happiness could be found only by keeping her family – her new family – intact.

"Well, I guess that settles it then," Ginny said. "If you can't go, then you can't go."

Ginny wiped her eyes and then grabbed her sister's hands.

"And if you can't go, then neither can I."

CHAPTER 79: GRACE

Sunday, May 2, 2021

Grace Smith dusted the hutch for the second time in as many hours and proceeded from there to a wall of framed photos. She hated dusting, sweeping, and mopping but found the chores to be useful diversions. They kept her mind off her crushing losses.

She had often considered taking some of the photos off the wall. What was the point, she thought, in tormenting herself on a daily basis? In the end, though, she had left the gallery in place, just as she had left the bedroom in the basement untouched. As painful as these things could be, they were also reminders of two vibrant, meaningful, beautiful lives.

Grace finished dusting the photos and walked to a cushioned bench near a bay window that provided a glorious view of Lake Washington. The nook was her favorite place, a corner of the world that offered a temporary escape from the burdens of life.

When she sat on the bench and gazed at the water, she thought again of the night that had brought her world to a screeching halt. She replayed the events in her mind, hoping as she always hoped that reflection might bring acceptance and peace.

Even the most thoughtful reflection, of course, could not alter the facts. On the night of September 11, 2020, Virginia and Katherine Smith, twin daughters of Joel and Grace Smith, had disappeared without a trace from a country fair in Maple Valley, Washington.

For nearly nine months, local, state, and federal officials had investigated a case that baffled everyone from family and friends to fair organizers and the hosts of cable-television programs. Despite repeated searches of the fairgrounds and statements from more than a hundred people, no new light had been shed on the matter.

Police knew only that the nineteen-year-olds had visited the tent of a divorced, forty-eight-year-old fortune-teller named Marta Robinson between 9:20 and 9:40 p.m. and that each had communicated with family members by phone around ten o'clock. Katie had spoken briefly with her mother. Ginny had sent text messages to her parents and siblings. None of the communications had even hinted of trouble.

The lone clue in the case was pulled from an interview of Ms. Robinson on September 15. "Marta the Magnificent" had told the FBI that she had warned the twins that they would soon go on a "strange, mysterious journey" and have only one opportunity to return from that trip.

Grace wanted desperately to believe that the girls had gone on an impromptu journey of discovery to Thailand or France, but she knew the truth was probably something terrible and far more predictable. She knew that they would be found near a trail or a pond or some other remote location, if in fact they were found at all.

As she gazed at the lake from her favorite place, Grace tried to take comfort in what she still had. She had her husband, of course, and her four younger children, not to mention the support of other relatives and dozens of friends.

Joel had been her rock from the beginning, a seemingly indestructible soul who had single-handedly taken charge of the family financially and emotionally from the very first day. He had insisted on taking the family to Hawaii at Christmas, as they had planned, and taking the kids on as many outings and adventures as he possibly could.

He had not let up. Driven to keep the family functioning no matter what, he had rearranged his priorities to meet the needs of his wife and children. Even today he had rejected Grace's plea that he take some time for himself and had instead taken the children to a baseball game.

Grace turned away from the window and eyed a book in the corner of the nook. She picked it up and saw that it was a copy of
Lord of the Flies
, a novel that Tom, her now oldest child and a senior at Westlake High, had been assigned to read for a literature class.

She got up from the bench and started toward Tom's room. She would put the book on his dresser, perhaps straighten the spread on his typically unmade bed, and do this, that, and the other thing, just as she had done for two hundred and thirty-three days.

Grace got as far as the hallway when she heard a car door slam. Deciding to investigate, she walked to the front door and peered through the door's window to the street beyond. She could see a taxi parked next to the curb and at least three people inside the vehicle but little else.

Grace opened the door, stepped outside, and tried to get a better look at the cab. She could not recognize the occupants through the taxi's tinted windows, but she could see that they were looking at her. She closed the door and moved briskly toward the lawn and the street but stopped when she heard someone approach from the side.

When she turned to her right, Grace Vandenberg Smith, mother of six, beheld a lovely ghost in a bright yellow dress. When the ghost said, "Momma," she fell to the ground.

CHAPTER 80: GINNY

The news spread with lightning speed. Shortly after paramedics treated Grace for shock, phone calls were made, texts were sent, and social media messages were posted.

By the time Joel and the kids arrived with a police escort at two, more than fifty friends, neighbors, and onlookers had gathered outside a yellow-tape barrier that had been thrown up at the request of the family. By four thirty the crowd outside the door had grown to two hundred.

Ginny sighed as she stared out a window at the throng. She was only now beginning to realize what the family would face in the coming days and weeks.

"Are the police going to stick around?" Ginny asked.

"I think so, honey. I've asked them to," Joel said. He put an arm around his daughter and pulled her close. "How are you holding up?"

"I'm exhausted, Dad. I don't think I've slept in twenty-four hours. It was nighttime when we left and morning when we arrived."

"Then go take a nap. Nothing's going to happen for a while. Get some rest."

Ginny nodded.

"OK. I will."

Ginny slipped out of Joel's embrace and started toward her room but stopped when she saw her adorable pest of a brother stand in the doorway. She could see from the grin on his face that twelve-year-old Joe had something to say.

"Mom wants to see both of you in the living room," Joe said.

"What for?" Ginny asked.

"She said the baby's awake. You have to come now."

Ginny glanced at her father.

"Are you ready to meet your grandson?"

Joel smiled warmly.

"I'm more than ready. Let's go."

Ginny followed Joe and Joel into the living room, where the immediate family, Mike Hayes, Grandpa and Grandma Smith, and Vince and Edith Pearson waited. Vince and Edith, Ginny's great-uncle and great-aunt, had been in Seattle on business when the story broke. Grandparents William and Lucille Vandenberg and their children were on their way from Boise.

When she saw the assembly in the room, Ginny couldn't help but get teary. She had not expected to see most of these people again. Most had changed in at least one noticeable way. Brothers Tom and Patrick had grown taller and more handsome. Joe now wore braces. Joel and Grace looked older and Grandpa Frank less steady. He had suffered a mild stroke in April.

Even Frank Smith, however, hadn't changed as much as his twin granddaughters. Ginny had become older, wiser, and more jaded in the sixteen months she'd been away from home. Katie had acquired a husband and a son. The girls had done a lifetime of growing up between May 2, 1964, and September 11, 1965. They had become women.

Ginny reviewed that time in her head as the relatives waited for fourteen-year-old Cindy Smith to carry out the baby. The last twelve months, in particular, had been transforming. The day Katie had refused to go back to the future was the day the time travelers had been forced to restructure their lives and rearrange their priorities.

Finding housing had not been a problem. Joe and Nana had allowed Ginny, Katie, and Mike to live in the duplex rent-free the entire year. The couple became the teenagers' surrogate parents, protectors, and mentors and helped Katie with her prenatal and hospital bills.

Finding employment had been more of a challenge. Because Wade Greer had filled one of the two vacancies, he had been able to rehire only one of the twins. After talking to each of the candidates, he picked the one who wasn't pregnant. Working forty hours a week each, Mike and Ginny were able to make enough to support themselves and Katie.

Katie, for her part, had focused on taking care of her unborn child and Mary Hayes, who became her mother-in-law on September 18, 1964. She served as Mary's full-time care provider, cook, and frequent companion until the older woman succumbed to her cancer seven weeks later.

Mike and Katie had wasted little time tying the knot. Their marriage, in a civil ceremony, legitimized their relationship in the eyes of those who cared and also spared Mike from a likely trip to Vietnam. Because of an executive order that exempted married men between the ages of nineteen and twenty-six from conscription, he had not been required to serve.

Though Ginny had faced fewer trials than Katie and Mike, she had not had an easy year. She had broken her arm in an accident at the store, missed a week of work because of the flu, and lost a battle to keep the man she loved out of the Army.

James Green had refused Ginny's impassioned pleas to seek an educational deferment and reported for his draft physical on July 15, 1965. The two said their tearful goodbyes the same day at an induction station in downtown Seattle.

Ginny had more success talking her way into a delivery room at Sound View Hospital. She had helped Katie through a difficult pregnancy and insisted on being at her side when she gave birth to her first child on May 2, 1965. Doctors and nurses, initially opposed, granted the request.

Ginny stayed in the hospital with Katie through twelve hours of labor and four days of postnatal care. She cheered the arrival of her healthy, eight-pound nephew, who had been blessed with his parents' good looks and mellow temperaments.

She had also cheered a decision by the Cedar River Country Fair in early 1965 to bring back the House of Mirrors. Officials had closed the attraction on September 6, 1964, hours before the fair opened to the public. Vandals had punched holes in the walls and destroyed much of the maze, rendering the facility unusable. Thankfully, they had left the oval mirror intact.

Sensing that her long-awaited chance to go home had finally come, Ginny had arranged for three adults and an infant to travel to 2020. After five attempts and five failures, the four finally succeeded in passing through the portal on September 11, 1965. For reasons that remained unclear, the time-traveling process appeared firmly tied to two seemingly unrelated dates.

The travelers had exited an empty House of Mirrors shortly after 11 a.m. on May 2, 2021. When Ginny saw a fairgrounds parking lot that was free of 2018 Toyotas, she used her still-functional cell phone to call a cab. Ninety minutes later she greeted her mother and brought her "strange, mysterious journey" to a close.

Returning to the here and now, Ginny looked at her joyous relatives for another moment and then directed her attention to the other end of the living room, where her beaming younger sister approached with her nephew. Cindy gave the baby to Katie and stepped to the side of the room.

Ginny braced herself for yet another emotional moment as Katie rewrapped the blanket around her son and walked slowly toward Joel and Grace. She had seen her twin with the infant hundreds of times but never like this. A photo op of the first order was coming up.

"This is my son, Daddy," Katie said. She handed Joel the baby. "We named him Joel."

Ginny had never seen her father cry, but she knew there was a first time for everything. Joel made no attempt to hide a trickle of tears as he celebrated not only the return of two beloved daughters but also the arrival of his first grandchild.

"He's beautiful, Katie. Thank you."

Joel held the infant against his chest and whispered sweet nothings – probably baseball scores – in his ear as the others looked on. He bonded with his namesake for a few minutes, handed the baby to his smiling wife, and wrapped Katie in his arms. Then he warmly welcomed his new son-in-law to the family and invited the others to gather around.