The Time Travel Chronicles (12 page)

Out in the garage, the air was cool. He could feel the chill of the concrete floor through his slippers. He stopped for a moment, hands on his hips, and surveyed the room. Shelf upon shelf of junk that they needed to get rid of, boxes overflowing with clothes and knickknacks that they hadn’t seen in years.

At least one shelf had to be emptied. Some of Lucy’s things would be coming out here soon. Jess had finally convinced him—said it hurt too much to walk past the abandoned bedroom with its pretty pink paint, flowery bedspread, and toys that had collected dust, hadn’t been touched since. Toys that were scattered all over the carpet in Dutton’s unjust dreams of Lucy alive and playing with them. Tea parties with the stuffed animals, house with the dolls.

The thought of putting Lucy’s things out here felt as if they were burying what remained of the light she had brought to their lives. Like they were making room for future possibilities, for hope, and it felt wrong to have that without Lucy.

He stepped over to the shelving and reached up, pausing with his hands on the cool cardboard. Removing the first box to make room was like jamming a shovel in unbroken earth for a grave waiting to be dug. He pulled it down, held it there, feeling the weight and wondering how much force it would take to throw it through a wall.

Behind him, the side door to the garage banged open. He turned, the heavy case of used books in his arms, and saw Jess sprinting toward him, frantic and excited.

“Whoa, what’s—”

“Put that down. Come with me,” she said, grabbing his wrist. Her fingers were icy on his skin. She pulled hard. Dutton dropped the box and skipped to the side, the falling books narrowly missing his toes.

“What happened? Are you okay?” he asked, their earlier transgressions momentarily forgotten.

“Hurry. I need to show you something.”

“What is it?”

“Just come,
please
,” she insisted, already turning back toward the house.

“It’s freezing,” he said. “At least let me go put on some clothes. I’m pretty sure the neighbors don’t want—”

“We may not have time,” she insisted.

“Seriously. Pajamas here.”

“Doesn’t matter. Let’s go!”

“Talk to me,” he said. “You’re freaking me out.”

“It’s—I don’t even know how to describe it. Just
hurry
.”

“I—okay, whatever.” Dutton chased after her, down the hallway, past the living room, through the kitchen, and into the mudroom. She paced eagerly while he slipped on a pair of sneakers and yanked a jacket down from a peg. “Where are we going?”

“Down the trail. We have to hurry before it’s gone.”

“Before what’s gone?”

Jess didn’t answer. Dutton followed her through the open door, jogging into the chilly morning, the cold air finding a way through his thin plaid pajama bottoms, blowing against exposed ankles.

The neighborhood was too serene for a Sunday morning. Dutton put one foot in front of the other, chasing his wife as he studied the surrounding houses, each structure similar and familiar in layout and design. The contractor had an unimaginative mold, the only difference being the shade of white, brown, or gray on the exterior.

Odd that things were so quiet.

With the threat of snow, the locals often raided the grocery stores and hunkered down with popcorn and movies, hot chocolate and books. Dutton glanced up at the sky. Snowflakes fell, yet it wasn’t enough to cause a dusting, let alone accumulate. The bulk of the storm was hours away.

The absence of activity was almost surreal, magical, on their busy street.

Jess ran effortlessly while he struggled to keep up, the breaths he took coagulating in his lungs like thick maple syrup. His chest burned and his thighs ached even though they had only gone a quarter of a mile. It was no surprise how much his body had deteriorated. He hadn’t exercised since the day after the funeral.

“Down this way,” Jess said, making a sharp left.

Dutton knew the trail well. It had been his favorite place to run.

A worn, hard-packed dirt path cut through the dense forest of pine, maple, and oak, winding along for a mile before it sidled up against the river. The path widened there, leaving enough room to run two abreast as it followed the peaks and valleys of the hillside, the river crawling along below.

They didn’t make it that far. Another half mile into the forest, with Dutton heaving for air, his chest feeling tight and compressed as if he was buried with Lucy six feet under the topsoil, Jess stopped and pointed toward a small cluster of rhododendrons.

“It’s still there,” she said.

Between gasps, Dutton asked, “What… what’s down there?”

“Can’t you see it?”

“Jess, I… No. What am I looking for?” He suspected she was going to show him a dead person. Hikers and joggers were always on the news, forever stumbling across bodies in the woods. Just last week, some woman in upstate New York had been hiking with her golden retriever and found that young mother who had disappeared in August. National news. He wondered if the same had happened to Jess. Had she found something?

Or, for a dark, horrid moment, he considered the possibility that Jess had grown tired of his shit and planned to leave
his
body here for someone else to find.

“Just there,” she said. “Next to the biggest rhododendron.”

Dutton squinted, trying to see anything out of the ordinary. “The biggest rho—wait. Right there?” He pointed.

“Yeah, right there. I
told
you. I just happened to look over and there it was.”

Dutton watched again as the air in front of the largest rhododendron shimmered and rippled in a wide circle. “What the… What
is
that?”

“You tell me.”

Stunned, he repeated the question.

Jess answered, “I have no clue but it’s... magical.”

Magical
, he thought.
Or freaky.

They stood in silence, watching in disbelief.

Jess started to speak, the words catching in her throat.

“What?”

She said, “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I feel like it’s a sign from her. I feel
something
but I can’t explain it, like… sort of like a warm aura. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, maybe.” His tone was cautious, questioning.

“Dutt, don’t take this away from me.”

“No, no, sorry. I don’t mean to, it’s just that…” Whatever this was, there had to be some scientific explanation for it, and yet he truly didn’t want to ruin the moment for Jess. For the first time in a year, there was light in her eyes. And just as he had done with Lucy, he thought,
Let her have this one
. “It looks like… You know when you drop a pebble in water and then the little waves spread out?”

“Exactly.” Jess moved closer to him. He could smell the detergent on her clothes. She hadn’t been close enough for him to feel her body heat in months. “What’s she trying to tell us?”

“I wish I knew.” Dutton leaned forward for a better look. “We’re awake, right? I’m not dreaming?” He turned to her. “Are
you
dreaming?”

“Nope.”

“Should we go check it out?”

“I-I’m scared. I think. I don’t know. Like I want it to be a sign from her but—but what if it…”

“What?”

“What if it swallows us? Or… something.”

Dutton chuckled. “Swallows us?”

“I don’t know, okay?”

“If it’s a sign from Lucy then it would never be something that would hurt us, right? I swear to God, Jess, I’m not trying to steal the warm fuzzies from you but it’s probably just… maybe it’s some sort of new hunting device? That’s all I can think of.”

“A
hunting device,” she said flatly.

“Like maybe it’s for squirrels.”

Jess raised an eyebrow. No words were needed to question his sanity.

“Like a trap. A giant sheet of sticky tape, and it’s humane.” He added a small lie, maybe to make her feel better, maybe to bail himself out of his ridiculous suggestion. Save some face. “I’ve seen that before. On Animal Planet.”

Without her usual malevolence, Jess said, “The brilliant doctor should probably stick to the hospital.”

It felt good to hear her joke with him. A fleeting reprieve from their typical vitriolic interactions.

A ray of sunshine on a gloomy day.

On a gloomy life.

She shook her head, ponytail swaying. “I hate to admit it, but you’re probably right. I got caught up in the moment. We were talking about her and then… this unexplained
thing
shows up.”

“I know. It’s easy to do.” He put his arm around her waist, silently thanking her for allowing him to keep it there. “But now I’m curious. Let’s go look.”

“You go first.”

“Chicken.”

She slapped his shoulder playfully. Yet another reminder of the old Jess, the one who had yet to watch their daughter waste away, taken too early by fate and chance, that wicked pair of dice—sometimes kind, often cruel.

“Fine, but I’m blaming you if I get caught up in a giant squirrel trap.”

Dutton stepped off the dirt path and carefully picked his way over the forest floor, crossing over downed limbs, listening to his shoes crunch against dry leaves that would soften with the coming snowfall. Wind whispered through the boughs above, the mountain maples and ancient oaks creaking as they swayed. He kept his eyes on the rippling circle, surveying the area around it, expecting to see guide wires attaching this thing to the nearby oaks and maples. Could it be some sort of optical illusion? A trick of the dim light reflecting off a massive spider web?

His rational mind, the one that operated on science and facts, reason and rationale, cycled through possibilities as it searched for a logical explanation. Jess was right; he was brilliant, though not arrogant or overtly confident about it. His intelligence was a talent he possessed, not something to flaunt. Babe Ruth could swing a bat and launch a baseball hundreds of feet. Dutton Quinn ingested information and immediately understood it. That’s the way things had always been.

Yet now, as they crept closer to this thing in the woods, his talent failed him, leaving him confused about the possibilities.

He saw no strands of silky web holding it in place. No filament line. It wasn’t a sheet of cellophane, nor was it a giant strand of tape like he had jokingly suggested. His logical and technical mind was at a loss.

It was what it appeared to be: a flat, floating disc of undulating, pulsing air. He told Jess to stay back as he sidestepped around it, mouth agape, thoroughly mystified. It looked the same from the back as it did from the front.

“Well?” Jess asked. A slight edge of anxiety had crept into her voice, the lifted mood from earlier replaced by apprehension. “Don’t get too close.”

“I’m not. It’s just—I can’t even begin to guess what this might be, Jess. I mean, good God, it’s amazing. Did you bring your phone?”

“No.”

“Damn. Neither did I.”

“Why? To call the cops?”

“Pictures. Proof.” Hands on his hips, Dutton backed away, shaking his head. The wonder and excitement warmed his stomach, raised the hair on his arms. He could no longer feel the nip of the wintry morning. He giggled. Pure child-like joy and disbelief. “If we could get some pictures, maybe I could send it to Jeff Parker. He might know.”

“He’s the meteorologist?” Jess asked.

“Yeah.” Dutton had successfully brought Jeff Parker, local meteorologist and television personality, back to a healthy life after an eighteen-month fight against thyroid cancer. There were rumors of viewers crying when he went back on air for the first time and it didn’t surprise Dutton in the slightest. Parker was a wonderful human being that had never let the light dim on the future.

Exactly the opposite of he and Jess after Lucy lost her battle.

“Do you want to go back and get yours?”

Dutton shook his head. His breathing had returned to normal but his legs felt flimsy and weak. “Nah, I’ll pass out. Do you mind? I’ll stay here and make sure it—uh, doesn’t… evaporate?”

Jess frowned and bit her bottom lip. Reluctantly, she obliged, and told him to be careful, to stay away from it until she returned. “I’ll be quick. Ten minutes, tops,” she said, then kissed him on the cheek.

Dutton softened with her touch, the first sign of true affection from her in months.

And all it took was an unexplainable miracle.

He began calling it
the vertical pond
in his mind as he tried to rationalize the scenario. He pinched his arm—he was definitely awake. He touched limbs, bushes, and bent to scoop up soft earth underneath dead leaves. Tangible. Authentic. His visceral reaction said this was as real as the snowflakes that landed on his cheeks and bare neck, caressing the breeze as they drifted along. If it wasn’t reality, this was the most corporeal dream he had ever experienced. Unnaturally so.