Chapter 13
There wasn’t much in the side room, aside from a few chairs and some lopsided bookcases that were laden with tomes.
Adeline ushered Nancy into the nearest chair before sitting down and scooting closer.
“Did you use an Epi-Pen on the baby?” Adeline whispered as she slowly removed her mask, her accent now more noticeably American.
Perhaps it was the familiarity of having a fellow citizen to speak to, or perhaps her other, mixed accent was put on for her Scottish patients, so they wouldn’t be too suspicious of her.
Nancy nodded and took another sip of water, already feeling calmer.
“I did. About a third of a dose. I’m allergic to bees, so I always have one on me.
” She paused. “And you’re… here. You’re really here.
I can’t believe it. I’d cuss at the top of my lungs if I didn’t think it would wake the poor baby. ”
Adeline Clark looked just like in the pictures that Nancy had studied for hours and hours.
She had plucked whatever she could from the internet: a few social media posts, a staff picture from the hospital she’d worked at, an older photograph from the news article about her former mentor being put on trial, photos from her college alumni page, and a few more from Jane’s various digital footprints.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” Nancy murmured, mostly to herself.
Unease moved across Adeline’s face like a shadow. “Who are you? How do you know about me?”
“I’m a reporter. I’m working on a missing persons case,” Nancy replied, perhaps too eagerly.
“You. You and your sister. See, I’m from New Jersey, and about a year ago, I was reporting at the hospital you used to work at.
Some nurse there told me about you, that you’d just upped and vanished on Christmas two years before.
Didn’t come in for your shift, which wasn’t like you.
She thought your former mentor had done something to you, but she couldn’t get anyone to take her seriously, and he was already on trial for sexual misconduct. That was why I was there, reporting.
“Anyway, it got me curious, so I started investigating, and then I realized that your sister was also missing. It’s the…
kind of case that’s close to my heart, so I kept on digging.
And I guess it paid off, though… I never expected to have to time travel to find you.
Honestly, it’s way better than what I was dreading.
Most of those cases don’t end well, if you know what I mean. ”
Adeline seemed to need a moment to process what she’d just heard, as she sat back in her chair and pulled her headscarf off her head, letting the rest of her dark locks tumble down.
It was the only difference, Nancy noticed, to the pictures she’d seen of this woman. In every photo, the ends of Adeline’s hair had been a different shade: purple, blue, green, pink, white. Now, it was all one shade of beautiful, glossy brunette.
“But I’m not missing,” Adeline said, at last. “Jane and I told my friend, Emma, to tell everyone we were just traveling. Indefinitely.”
“Jane is here, too?” Nancy could feel her eyes about to bulge out of her head.
A faint smile graced Adeline’s lips, her head tipping in a shy nod.
“We both fell in love. Fell so hard, in fact, that we barely miss hot water and electricity and modern music and, God, modern medicine… and the snacks. Not having faster travel kind of sucks, too, especially when I want to go and see her. Then again, boats are boats.”
“Jane lives on an island?”
Adeline shook her head. “I do, usually, but I was asked to come here a few months ago to help with the wounded from the war. I’m slowly making my way through the villages, but it’s not so easy when you haven’t got a world of technology and medicine at your fingertips.
Sometimes, I think I’d risk darting back to the future just to clear out a whole pharmacy. ”
“Can you go back?” Nancy asked, her heart hardly daring to beat.
Adeline nodded. “It’s not a simple thing to do, and you can’t just…
zip back and forth. I went back once when my life was in danger.
That’s when I told Emma everything. But I wouldn’t dare go back again, in case I got stuck.
Jane knows of a way to do it, but she hasn’t tried it.
She just sends messages to Emma through Hellen. ”
Jane knows of a way to do it…
It was the breakthrough that Nancy had been waiting for, a concrete sign that she wasn’t stuck here forever.
There were a million things she wanted to ask about this ‘method,’ but she figured it could wait, now that they were getting acquainted.
Besides, she still had about five days of the week that Hunter had permitted her.
“Hellen?” she said instead.
“A fellow archaeologist,” Adeline explained. “There’s a sea cave where my sister lives. Jane puts things in a box in a hole there, and Hellen picks them up and sends any messages on to Emma. It’s surprisingly efficient… or I assume it is.”
Nancy thought of the notes in Adeline’s apartment. Was Emma the one who’d put them in the copy of Gray’s Anatomy? For safekeeping? But then, how had that note about the Hawk got into the mix?
Unless…
Her head began to pound afresh at the physics of it all. Perhaps the note was in the copy of Gray’s Anatomy because Nancy herself had asked for it to be placed there, now that she knew there was a very slow, very ancient message delivery service.
“Sorry, did you mention my former mentor was on trial for sexual misconduct?” Adeline asked, shaking her head as if the thought had just dropped back into her skull.
“Dr. Platt,” Nancy confirmed. “Nasty piece of work. Got ten years. About a year after you went missing, he attacked a junior doctor in a supply closet. More women came forward. I don’t think ten years is long enough, personally, but at least he’ll be locked up for a decade and won’t be able to practice medicine when he gets out. ”
Adeline puffed out a breath. “That’s good. That’s very good. I hated that asshole.” She paused. “But I can’t believe people think I’m missing. Do you know about Emma? Do you think something might have happened to her? Is that why she didn’t spread the word?”
“I think she’s okay,” Nancy replied hesitantly.
“There were notes in your apartment. Sorry, I may or may not have broken in. I suppose it’s no mean feat to tell everyone that you’ve gone traveling.
Maybe she just missed some people. I mean, there was no trace of you vanishing, which was suspicious to me but probably wouldn’t be to those who know you’re ‘traveling.’”
Adeline nodded slowly, her posture relaxing a little. “That’s a fair point.”
“Honestly, I was worried you were dead,” Nancy said with a smile that quickly faded. “Which you are, I guess, in a way. Man, this time travel stuff doesn’t half make your head hurt.”
Adeline laughed softly, a warm sound that soothed Nancy’s spirits.
Or maybe that was just the certainty that there was a way home, not back to an Emma but an Emily.
It might have been a foolish way to think, but nothing seemed quite as frightening anymore, now that her main concern had been struck off the list.
I might’ve enjoyed myself a little if Hunter hadn’t put a pin in that.
Her cheeks warmed at the memory, squirming a bit in her chair as her center pulsed in pleasant recollection. She might not have had too much experience with men, but she knew extraordinary proportions when they were pushed up against her, teasing her, leaving her in a particular kind of torment.
“It gets better,” Adeline promised. “I’d prescribe you something, but you won’t like the taste. I’ve had to relearn everything I knew about medicine here. Now, I’m as much a potion and lotion maker as I am a doctor.”
“Sounds nice,” Nancy said, meaning it.
Adeline nodded and turned her gaze toward the window, where a light rain pattered on the pane.
“It can be. It can be desperately sad, too, knowing that if we were just three hundred years in the future, I could help someone that I can’t help here.
” She seemed to shake off the thought and glanced back at Nancy.
“I arrived by snowglobe, my sister got here through a tunnel. How did you get here?”
“Snowglobe?” Nancy cocked her head, suddenly feeling less silly about her own method of time travel. “I came by tapestry.”
“Tapestry?” Adeline frowned and shook her head, like that didn’t make sense.
With a breath and a blush, Nancy explained what had happened in the Scottish Heritage Museum, before circling back to the notes she’d found in Adeline’s apartment and the research that Emily had been doing.
“That makes more sense.” Adeline nodded.
“There seems to be a proper method to this time travel thing. You need something from the past and a strong wish to be somewhere. My guess is, you had one of Jane’s sea cave notes on you, and when you called for help and grabbed the tapestry, it acted like a wish.
You might not have meant to, but you wished to be where the tapestry was made. ”
“But I didn’t wish for it,” Nancy replied defensively, drinking down the last of her water.
“You said, ‘Help! Help, someone!’ Wishes are tricky things. Sometimes, they misunderstand,” Adeline replied in a doctorly voice. “That note is probably charged with the sea cave energy.”
Nancy thought of her leather jacket, still upstairs in her bedchamber. The notes had been moved to the pocket. If they were her way back, then she needed to make sure they stayed safe.
“Maybe you came back here to save that baby,” Adeline added with a warm smile. “Maybe Freya is the person you were sent to help.”