Time After Time (40 page)

"Obviously. She was my
great-great-grandmother just as —"

"—I am your
great-great-grandfather!" he cried, as it dawned on him for the
first time. A look of utter amazement seemed to pass over the hazy
features of his face as he considered Liz in this new
light.

"There
is your answer as to why I stand before you!" he said,
astonished. "You are
my
flesh and blood as well as Ophelia's. You are the
product, however distant, of a love
so ...
so ...."

The memory of that love
seemed to bring home to him, again, how carelessly he'd thrown it
all away. He seemed unable to trust himself to speak for a
while.

Then he said, in the
softest, most melancholy voice, "I wish I knew where she is
now."

Trying to comfort him, Liz
splayed one hand over the other on her breast. "Here, Christopher.
Ophelia is here. At least you know that."

For one brief second he
came into crisp focus for her. She saw his face as clearly as she'd
seen Jack's the night before. He was not Jack: his chin was less
square, his eyes a much paler blue. His hair was browner, finer,
the sideburns thick, as the fashion dictated. But there was Eastman
in him, and Liz responded to it in a way so complex, so
unfathomable, that it made her heart hurt.

He said nothing, only
continued to stare at her, as if he'd just seen her for the first
time.

Liz felt the blood rush up
as she said, "We should have had this talk several apparitions
ago."

He smiled bleakly and
shrugged. "Last night I did everything I could to provoke you. I
was waiting for you to say, just once, 'What are you doing
here?'

"And instead I just
ranted. I remember it well. But at least now that's all behind us.
We simply have to agree to a system for communicating
that's—"

Behind her, she heard
voices on the path; they were raised in anger, and one of them she
knew as well as her own.

"Judy Maroney is
dead,
Ben! She died in a
car crash with her husband and two children! Accept it!"

Liz swung around and saw
Victoria racing ahead of her Dr. Ben, gesturing vehemently with her
hands. Victoria was in a state of high agitation. She didn't see
Ben, she didn't see Liz, she certainly didn't see the ghost of
Christopher Eastman. She was completely intent on making her point.
"I am not
Judy Maroney. Stop trying
to
make
me Judy
Maroney!"

"Tori, you're being
unfair!" said Ben behind her. "All I said was, I've met a
psychiatrist in Boston who's extremely interested in your
case."

"I am not a case!" she
tossed back angrily.

"Fine! Neither are the
Cambodian women with healthy eyes who became blind after watching
the horrors of the Khmer Rouge! There's nothing wrong with any of
you! You're all fine!"

She rounded on him. "Stop
it! Stop lumping me in with clinical hysterics! Stop
it!"

She burst into tears,
turned, and ran away from them on a narrow footpath toward Bellevue
Avenue, leaving Ben standing alone and frustrated just a little way
from where Liz had been conversing calmly with her
ghost.

Liz jerked her head
around: Christopher was gone. She turned back to Ben and greeted
him, confident that he'd been too caught up in his own trauma to
eavesdrop on hers.

"Hi," he said glumly,
coming up to Liz. "Who were
you
talking to?"

Reddening, she said, "Just
thinking aloud. This is a good place to do it." None of which,
strictly speaking, was actually a lie.

Ben jerked his head in the
direction of Victoria's flight. "I've pushed her too far again.
Hell, what do
I
know?" he said remorsefully. "I repair bodies, not
souls."

"Tori's not really crazy,
you know," said Liz with a last glance where Christopher had been.
"Any more than I am," she added. That was for Christopher's
amusement, just in case he was still hanging around.

Ben, still upset by the
argument, said, "I left my car at the beach. Are you going that
way?"

He wanted to talk; they
fell in together on the path. Ben rubbed his dark beard with a
slender hand; his brown eyes settled into their usual thoughtful,
slightly cynical expression.

"What a fey little
creature she is," he said, hopelessly bewildered. "I remember the
day they brought her into emergency. She was just a bundle of
broken bones, so fragile, so near death. No one thought she'd make
it. And yet look at her today: leading me on this merry damned
chase."

Liz smiled and said, "You
two do seem meant for each other. In your own strange
way."

"I love her madly," Ben
confessed. "But this fixation of hers: needless to say, we can't
seem to get past it."

There were quiet for a bit
as they strolled along the path, and then Liz said, "I have a
question for you."

She had a personal reason
for asking it. "What if Victoria
never
gets over her ... situation?
What if she refuses to — or can't — be any different for the rest
of her life? Can a man accept a woman like that completely on her
terms?"

Ben thought about it.
"Some men can. I can, if I have to," he said quietly. "Not that it
matters," he added in a sad-sack voice. "She won't even listen to
talk of marriage until she's done her fateful deed."

"Which would
be—?"

"Sneaking the pin back
into East Gate."

"There's a certain order?
I didn't know that."

"Yeah," Ben said, plunging
his hands into the pockets of his shorts. "She won't commit to me
because she's afraid Victoria St. Onge may only be using Judy
Maroney's body temporarily. It's something called a walk-in. After
the deed is done, Victoria St. Onge supposedly returns to some
plane — fifth or sixth, I don't remember," he said dryly. "Anyway,
that's where Tori's a little fuzzy. Apparently this isn't a
textbook walk-in. Tori assumes that she'll return to this plane of
existence, leaving, well, the broken remains of Judy
Maroney."

"Tori thinks she
may
die
if she
sneaks the pin back?" said Liz, shocked.

"She's convinced Judy
Maroney's already dead — or if not dead, then just a heartbeat away
from it. I guess that's because Judy and Victoria haven't been
communicating in the usual way for a walk-in."

He laughed a pained,
skeptical laugh. "I can't believe I listened carefully enough to
repeat this stuff."

"Ben, is she in danger? I
mean, judging from what you know about cases like these? If she
really returns the pin ... if she really believes she's fulfilled
some kind of karma—"

Ben stroked his beard
nervously. "Stranger things have happened," he admitted in a
hapless tone. "The mind is a powerful instrument."

"Yes," said Liz. She felt
the blood drain from her face. Her mind — the small part of it that
was still rational — was telling her that she was afraid. Afraid
for Victoria. Afraid for herself. Afraid for all of
them.

****

Christopher wasn't waiting
for Liz when she returned home. She had to remind herself that he
wasn't a homing pigeon but a form of energy: a ghost, an angel, or
— for all she knew — a projection of her own theories about Ophelia
and Christopher. Maybe Jack was right. After all, she'd learned
virtually nothing from her encounter with Christopher on Cliff Walk
that she didn't know or couldn't easily imagine.

As for the ghost's stated
purpose — to make sure that she and Jack didn't blow it the way he
had with Ophelia — well, that could easily be chalked up to wishful
thinking on her part. When you came right down to it, what the heck
was he appearing to her for, anyway?
Jack
was the one who could use a
swift little kick in the psyche.

Convinced that she was as
deluded as Victoria and the Cambodian women Ben spoke of, Liz
changed and drove to her office. It was time, past time, to focus
on the task at hand, the benefit for Anne's Place. It wasn't that
hard to throw a fund-raiser. The hard part was throwing a
fund-raiser that actually raised funds.

Jack had promised to come
up with a stellar honorary committee, which left Liz with the task
of appointing the working committees. By nine o'clock she had
roughed out the working-committee list:

Decorations:
me

Entertainment:
me

Ticket sales:
Victoria'?

Publicity:
me

Invitations:
me

Food:
Who?

Program book:
Yowch.

Check-in:
Mom and Dad?

There it was before her,
in plain black and white: Elizabeth Coppersmith was in over her
head. The committee for the program book alone would have to be
substantial. Someone would have to be savvy enough to sell the ads,
write the copy, look after the printing, and collect the money from
the advertisers. The trouble was, she didn't know the someones who
could do that. She simply did not move in that kind of
circle.

Unless...? There was
always Mikey. A fellow graduate at Rogers High, Mikey was an
insurance agent nowadays; Liz had bought her house insurance
through him and had thrown in her car for the extra discount. Mikey
could sell sand to a Sultan.

It was a start. She got
out her Rolodex.

****

Her office phone rang as
soon as it was free. Jack, sounding pleasantly frantic, said,
"Godamighty, I've been trying to call you for two and a half hours.
Was your phone off the hook?"

Liz laughed and said in an
intimate voice, "You could say that. It's been glued to my ear
since I got in, and all because of your fund-raiser."

"Our
fund-raiser."

"Whatever. I'm pleased to
report that things are moving right along," she said in a gross
exaggeration. "The director was thrilled that you're willing to
underwrite the event, though she seemed skeptical that we could
pull it off in time.''

"So she's in. Good. Make
her head a committee."

"I already have: as it
happens, Katherine is married to a computer wizard who's willing to
produce something smart in an invitation and may even produce the
program itself. He the equipment for it. Three cheers for
geeks.

"Great. Nor have I been
idle, m'dear. I've got Meredith Kinney to jump in and chair the
honorary committee. In fact, she's damned enthusiastic about the
idea."

He was waiting,
apparently, for applause. "Oh, how very nice," said Liz. All she
knew about Meredith Kinney was what she'd read in the social
column: big house, big parties. Presumably, big guest
list.

"It
is
nice," Jack said a little dryly.
"She's a woman of some standing, and if she wants people to come —
they'll come."

"Exactly what we need,
then," Liz chirped, feigning enthusiasm. But would this social
lioness stay out of Liz's way?

Jack dropped the subject
of the honorary committee, and they chatted awhile about the search
for worker bees to staff the real committees. After that, Jack
seemed to hesitate before he said casually, "So what's new on the
metaphysical front?"

Liz had absolutely no idea
how — or even whether — to answer that. So she stalled by saying,
"Oh, nothing that can't wait."

"Tonight, then. Same time,
same place?" he said in a voice rich with meaning.

"Um ... I guess." And if
Christopher decided to crash the party again?

"Gee, I was hoping for
something like enthusiasm," said Jack, disappointed.

"I am — it's just that —
anyway, don't compare me, please. I don't like being
compared."

"To what? To whom, for
chrissake? All I said was —"

"I
am
enthusiastic, Jack. I just show
it differently from your ... Merediths."

"Aw, I knew it. I could
hear it in your voice. Here we go again."

"No, you're misreading
me," she said hurriedly. "I just — someone just walked in, that's
all," she lied. "I'll see you later," she said, and rang
off.

Okay,
she thought.
No need to panic.
Tonight can
't
possibly resemble last night's train wreck.
Christopher said he didn't speak unless he was
spoken to. So: mum would be the word this evening. If he decided to
show up and provoke her by acting goofy, well, she'd ignore him,
that's all.

She could do
that.

Her first date with
planned sex in over a decade: Liz had forgotten what it was like to
feel single and sexy. She decided that she liked it. A lot. The
feeling stayed with her as she rummaged through her drawer for a
bra with a little more lace and a top with a little more
plunge.