3. Chapter 3
Chapter 3
A s soon as Fabienne returned to the house that afternoon, she went exploring. In the company of thrumming rain from the storm that broke outside, she checked the downstairs: a cozy family sitting room with reclining chairs and a games table, a dining room, a stuffy formal parlor with an impressive fireplace, topped with an ornate mantel clock, small statues—and photographs.
She inspected them carefully, but none jogged her memory. One was of an older, distinguished man in a military uniform; next to it was a hand-painted oval portrait of a woman with a soft face and golden hair. Another photo showed three young men, two standing, one kneeling, in front of a tree. Was he—her husband—one of them? Growing more agitated, Fabienne turned to leave when a glimmer of a silver frame caught her eye. She pulled out another photo, hidden behind the rest.
Her own face stared back. The full-body portrait captured her in a tasteful light gown adorned with lace, with a lower neckline and long sleeves. With one hand, she leaned on a waist-high pillar; the curtained background was clearly that of a photo studio.
Holding it, even just seeing it, felt surreal. Fabienne still half-expected all this to be a fever dream, to wake up at any moment in that stinky backyard, still wounded. But seconds trickled away, and away, and away… and she remained here, and the photograph in her hand reminded her there was a very real part of her life she’d entirely forgotten.
She explored more. A study down the hallway had shelves full of books, and a desk with an upholstered swivel chair. A sanctuary for a man to retreat, drink some whiskey and smoke a cigar while pondering life’s greatest problems. The desk held nothing of particular character—unless the character was tidiness. Fabienne ran her fingers across the spines of the neatly lined books. The Woman in White. Flowers in the Mirror. A fair share of scientific titles— Mechanical Arts. Experimental Researches in Electricity. The Elements of Clock and Watch-Work. She paused at the last one, and automatically reached for her pocket, still devoid of her watch.
How could she have done this, married a Yankee soldier? From the conversations of others, she’d gathered he was away, doing his patriotic duty. A small mercy, not having to deal with him as well. As she walked upstairs, she turned the matter over and over in her mind. Marriage explained why Antoine and Marion were long gone, returned to France so Antoine could take care of their wine-making business. Had she married to get money for their return? To save them from a dire situation?
The thought sickened her, but it was a sickening curiosity—the kind that made her anxious to find out more, but also made her dread the information she might uncover.
His bedroom was next to hers. He must’ve been absent for a while. No dust, but the shaving supplies on the washstand had dried, and the neatly pressed clothes in the drawers had the smell of sitting there for a good long time, along with a hint of something herbal. Fabienne felt a twinge in her chest. Maman used to store little bags of dried lavender in the closets to keep their clothes smelling good. She always said a house reflected the character of its mistress—to which, Papa had once dryly remarked, “And the rambunctiousness of her children.” Thanks to Fabienne—and Antoine, even though somehow he got caught less—there’d be dirty footprints on the terracotta tiles in the entrance hall, cloaks and coats thrown across chairs, books left open on sofas… a cricket Fabienne definitely did not put into a vase on the hallway in the hopes of scaring the housekeeper.
If a house reflected its mistress, this cold, tidy house held nothing of Fabienne.
She tore herself away from the memories and rushed to her room. She needed two things to reclaim some semblance of peace—her watch and any sign of Antoine and Marion. Correspondence . She rifled through the drawers of her escritoire. Empty paper, empty paper, more stacks of empty paper— maudit , where were any letters? Surely, they’d have written to her, and she wouldn’t throw away the only connection to home. Would someone else have gotten rid of the letters? A servant? Her husband, not wanting her to remain in contact?
She searched the vanity table.
The drawers.
The wardrobe closet.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
She returned to the escritoire and tossed out paper after paper, inspecting each inch. She was just about to toss away another card when she turned it and spotted writing.
I can help. R
And beneath, in the same writing, but more haphazard:
Meet me at the cottage, Friday 2nd. Set out when the rain stops at ten past two. Go down the forest path.
That had to be today; how many other Fridays 2nd were there in the near future? But it made no sense. What was the time earlier? A bit past one, when she was downstairs checking the mantel clock.
This strange message, either a prank or an indecent invitation, couldn’t be all. She stuck it into her pocket and scanned the room again. She had to stop thinking like a crazed woman and think like herself. This was her life, wasn’t it? And in her life, she’d hide things… in the birdcage.
At home, she’d keep her secret things—silly things, really—in a secret compartment in the base. Fabienne twisted the cage, fingers passing over the delicately designed scrollwork until she spotted the lock of the secret drawer. No key, but she could get around that.
A few minutes later, Fabienne had brought up a box of sewing supplies. In the wide assortment of sewing and knitting needles, pins and crochet hooks, she found one to use as a wrench and another she could bend to set the pins. She kneeled beside the lock. Welcoming peace washed over her. In the silence, the gentle clicking was an old, familiar tune. Click… and done . She pulled the drawer open, and like a little golden treasure, there it was: her watch. Breathing a sigh of relief, she clutched it to her chest like a long-lost friend. It looked the same as ever, except for… the joint of the back and front casing was filled, on one side, with something dark blue, as if a liquid had dried there.
She was about to close the drawer when she caught sight of a yellowed newspaper article, folded at the bottom. Bold letters proclaimed, More Violence in New York . She skimmed the contents, stopping when she got to “another incident occurred last morning, the victims a young man and a woman, French citizens. The commissioner blames the recent surges of criminal activity…”
Something cracked by her hip; she’d leaned on the open drawer, and must’ve broken a mechanism. But Fabienne cared little about it as she stared at the article, the words blurring in front of her eyes. No, that wouldn’t be Marion and Antoine. It couldn’t be. There must’ve been other French citizens—even if the date matched, even if there had to be a reason for her to have this article—
The thin paper trembled and slipped out of her hands. One last thing awaited her in the drawer, previously hidden under the article. Fabienne raised a silk handkerchief, and the light from the window shone through the fine material, stopping at the embroidery of a flower in the corner. A black iris. Staggering back, she hit the bedpost. Maman’s side of the family passed down a tradition where, upon a family member's death, the women would embroider a black iris onto a handkerchief. She recognized this flower, this embroidery—it was imprecise, a bit wonky, as Fabienne never quite had the patience or love for the art. It was like the flower she’d embroidered a few years ago, when her parents died. But that handkerchief was left in France.
This was for somebody else.
“Ma’am?” A series of rapid knocks interrupted her thoughts, and the maid from before entered. “Shall we get dinner ready?”
Fabienne stared at the woman, waiting for her to blink out of existence, for the room to start swirling, for herself to wake up.
“Ma’am?”
“N-no.” She pocketed the handkerchief and slipped past the maid. “I need to go. I need to…” Out. She needed out. She had to walk, feel the mud under her feet, a breeze on her cheeks. Walking had always helped, and so would now—it would get her away from this house where people watched but couldn’t understand, and help her find reason.
She changed into a pair of sturdy leather boots and hurried outside, catching the last few drops of rain. The clouds had torn apart in places, painting strips of light across the vast grass fields. She followed one of those until she reached the forest, then walked along its edge.
Phantom voices chased after her. Marion’s laugh. Antoine’s teasing. Images of them running through the vineyards back at home—young, carefree—turned into flashes of the morning in New York. Laughter turned to screaming. No. Something glinted in the dark—the buttons on Slick’s coat, the barrel of a gun— no!
Fabienne didn’t know when she’d stopped, but she was staring at the forest—at the beginning of a path. It was overgrown, and the branches of the trees collided above it, forming a tunnel. A few stray sunbeams shone through, tickling the ground, inviting her in.
She blinked and checked the crumpled note in her pocket. Go down the forest path. The rain stops… ten past two.
Hadn’t it been that time exactly when she left the house—when the rain stopped?
She looked from the note to the path, and back. Impossible. She’d done what the note had said, but she hadn’t sought out the path intentionally. And she certainly didn’t have the power to control the weather.
I can help.
Under no normal circumstances would she follow such mysterious, possibly dangerous instructions. But no part of her felt normal at the moment.
Her legs steered her onto the path. The tunnel cleared, and she followed the trail for half a mile until the dark shape of a log cabin came into view among the trees. The ramshackle construction lay at the edge of a small meadow. The note said nothing about it, but the path had led here.
This is insane.
Fabienne ignored the warning at the back of her mind, clenched her fists for courage, strode to the cabin and threw the door open. Motes floated in the dim light of the single room, carrying a damp, musty smell. A man bent over the table, cleaning it with a rag, and looked up as she entered.
Fabienne froze. She’d half-expected no one would be here. Her instincts urged her to flee, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate.
“Mrs. Marshall.” The man took off his hat, revealing a head of receding brown hair, paired with generous whiskers extending halfway down his jaw. He was in his mid-thirties, and dressed in a fine woolen suit. “I’m glad you came. Won’t you sit down?” His tone matched the words—kind, welcoming.
The paralysis faded, and Fabienne made a step forward. “Mr.—uh—”
“Robbins.” He smiled. “That’s alright. I’m not one of those people who get upset if others forget their name. Here, let us begin again.” He offered her a hand; she hesitated for a moment before shaking it. “Won’t you sit?” he invited.
They must not be well-acquainted, if at all. She relaxed; at least, here was somebody she didn’t have to pretend with. She sat, folding her hands in her lap.
Robbins sat on the other end of the table, his smile reminiscent of a happy puppy.
Fabienne cleared her throat. “You said you can offer help.”
“Quite so. With saving your brother and sister.”
The chair screeched as she drew back. “What?”
“I know what happened to them. You had a disagreement with a gang. You escaped, but the thugs caught them. Killed them.”
The words sliced into her soul, but she shook her head. “No. They’re not… they wouldn’t be… they can’t be.” There had to be a different explanation. After everything that had happened, the ordeal they’d gone through just to get back home, she wouldn’t lose Antoine and Marion. She couldn’t.
“I apologize for invoking sad memories.” He sounded sincere, inspecting her face with care. “But we can fix it.”
“I… no. No.” She stood up. “This isn’t what you think it is. My brother and sister aren’t dead. You’re wrong.” She tossed him the note and headed for the door.
“Oh. Oh, how clever of me!” Robbins scurried after her and blocked the door, but he looked more excited than threatening as he waved the note. “I wrote this!”
“Yes, I know.” Did he think himself amusing? Fabienne resisted the urge to stomp her foot. Her one lead had turned out to be a man, even more confused than she was.
“No, no, you don’t understand. I added the bit below after this meeting. This must mean I’d convinced you.”
“Let me pass.”
“I belong to a secret group,” he said. “We deal in temporal corporeal displacement.”
“I don’t care what you deal in!”
Robbins jumped aside as she hurled the door open, but before she got far, he added, “It’s time travel.”
She turned back to face him.
“You think I’ve gone mad,” he said.
“I haven’t known you for long enough to make that assumption. For all I know, you could’ve been born that way.”
Robbins smiled apologetically. “You don’t believe me. I wouldn’t expect you to. But then, tell me how this message came to be?”
Fabienne lowered her gaze to the note. True, it was unexplainable, but so was everything else today. And she certainly wasn’t taking explanations from a man who claimed Antoine and Marion were dead.
“We can go back and remedy the deaths of your siblings. Change the past,” Robbins said. “All you’d have to do is fulfill a small mission for us in return.”
He must’ve taken Fabienne's silence—she simply didn’t know what to say—as a sign of encouragement, since he rattled on. “Very simple. I’d teach you time travel. We'd meet every few weeks at this cottage. In the meantime, you continue your life as it is.”
Teach her time travel. Did he hear himself?
“Mrs. Marshall?” Robbins waited for her to look at him. “I have overwhelmed you, haven’t I? My apologies. I’ll let you think this through.”
“I won’t—”
“You needn’t worry. I won’t contact you again. But I will be here, exactly a week from now, if you want to contact me . Remember, I can help you.” He reached for the doorknob. “And if you do come, bring your watch. The one with the floral engraving on the lid.” He bobbed his head and left.
It took a few seconds for his last words to register. Her watch. He knew of her porte-bonheur . Engulfed in her thoughts, Fabienne sat and stared blankly at the worn wood of the table.
The article. The handkerchief. Her new life—an unexplainable life, unless something so horrific had happened in the past it forced her onto this new path.
They were still so vivid in her mind. Marion, with her big, scared eyes, braving through the trouble because she had to show them she wasn’t a baby anymore. Antoine, giving her a kiss on the forehead, the one he always did, the one that said, Take care, Sis, and don’t get into trouble. The one she’d always brushed off.
She took out the handkerchief and caressed the little black flower. Thoughts coalesced into one conclusion, quickening her breath, burning her eyes, until she bent over the handkerchief, and cried.