Chapter 53
FIFTY-THREE
Gabe
The house was quiet, the children in bed.
Gabe suspected Quinn was still awake, the earring loosely clasped in her hand as she slipped into another vision.
Unable to settle, he stepped outside and lowered himself into a deckchair.
The lake mirrored the night sky, the moon and stars reflected in its dark surface.
On any other evening, he would have found the sight beautiful and welcomed a few moments of solitude, but tonight he was thrumming with tension.
He had not smoked since his early twenties, yet he found himself craving a cigarette, imagining it might steady his nerves.
It wouldn’t. Neither nicotine nor alcohol could fix what ailed him.
When Quinn had first confessed her gift to him, he had felt a flicker of envy.
For a historian, the chance to bear witness—to truly see the past—was the greatest gift nature could bestow.
But after what had happened that night, Gabe wanted no part of his wife’s Besson legacy, passed down through the centuries from Quinn’s Trinidadian ancestors.
Watching Alex gasp for breath, clutching his chest, had been more than he could bear.
If there were any way to strip his son of this unwanted inheritance, he would do it without hesitation, provided it caused Alex no pain or harm. But there was nothing to be done.
When they had first realized that Alex could see into the past, Gabe had conducted discreet research, hoping to stumble upon a specialist or a neuro-blocker that might target the visual cortex and extinguish the visions.
What had surprised him most was not that there was no cure but how incontrovertible the science was.
Controlled studies of alleged psychic phenomena had failed to produce replicable results.
Brain imaging of people claiming such abilities showed entirely normal activity, and no structure had ever been identified that could receive information from the past or future, access hidden knowledge, or circumvent the senses.
There was nothing Gabe could do for his son beyond impressing upon him that he must never touch anything whose origins he did not know.
But Alex was only eight. Like most boys his age, he explored the world with his hands.
Gabe remembered the thrill of being allowed to hold a Civil War flintlock pistol that had belonged to some long-dead ancestor, or playing chess with his grandfather, using an antique board with pieces carved from bone.
The knights, bishops, and kings had been so lifelike, he had been almost able to see them as real people as he held him in his hands and ran a gentle finger over their features.
Gabe had never once hesitated to handle the artifacts uncovered during his own digs.
It was instinctive to pick something up, examine it, date it, and record its story.
For Alex, every unknown object was as dangerous as an unexploded mine.
What would have happened if they had not reached him in time?
What if the visions manifested physically in the present?
And how was a child meant to process repeated encounters with death—people who, in the moment, would feel utterly real?
No child psychologist would take them seriously, nor would they be equipped to help even if they did.
Instead, they might recommend anti-anxiety medication or some experimental drug that might harm Alex in different ways.
Gabe supposed he should be grateful that Mia had been spared. But Alex was such a sweet, sensitive boy. Gabe was terrified that this might break his son before he learned to control his impulses and avoid anything that might cause him real pain.