Chapter 3
We waited, the three of us, around the kitchen table. Lyle and Amy sat across from me. I sat with my back to the window, the blinds pulled shut.
The headache was there again, behind my eyes. I hadn’t slept much the night before. I stopped myself from rubbing my eyes. No need to worry Amy even more.
Amy put her arm around Lyle, her face drawn. “What do we do if—”
“I’ll come back. Even if I disappear, I’ll come back. I have before.”
She looked away.
I turned to Lyle. “Whatever you see, buddy, just remember I love you, and I’ll always come back to you.” I had to stop twice to get the words out. Lyle nodded without blinking.
It was 7:51.
I blew out a long breath. I looked at Amy, drawing her eyes back to my own.
“Wait for…”
The world slipped.
“… me.” I jerked, but I was still sitting in the chair, behind the breakfast table, in the kitchen.
Across from me, in different clothes and standing, rather than sitting, Amy and Lyle gaped at me.
Then Amy burst into tears and ran from the room.
Lyle turned to watch his mother go. My phone had come with me, just as it had the last two times, just as my clothing had.
I held the phone up and watched the date change through the cracked face as it rejoined the network.
Wednesday, April 22. It had been Saturday the 18th.
I looked up. Lyle watched me. “Four days?”
He walked around the table and put his arms around me, a motion that might have been awkward if not for its pure innocence. “We didn’t know if you were coming back.”
I put my cheek against his head and held him. “What did you see?”
“You just vanished. Poof. Well, except, not really any poof. We left the chair in the same spot. We checked every day. Seven fifty-two. We waited every day for you. Then you came back.”
“Four days. It’s getting longer.”
“It’s doubling.”
I blinked. “You’re right. It’s doubling.”
“What are you going to do, Dad?”
I didn’t say anything for several seconds. I took a breath and stood. “First, let’s go check on your mom. Then, I guess I’ll try to find someone.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know yet, bud. Someone who can help.”
We found Amy in Lyle’s bedroom. She sat on his bed, holding Leo the Lion, the only stuffed animal Lyle kept out of the closet. She looked up when we came into the room, sniffed, and wiped at her tears. “I’m sorry.”
I sat next to her on the bed. Lyle climbed on her lap, and she hugged him, squeezing Leo between them. “It’s okay,” I said.
“No. I shouldn’t have run out like that. I just don’t know how to handle this.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“You vanished. You were gone, like that.” She snapped her fingers, the motion distant, almost unconscious.
“Four days, Scott. Then, like you never left, you’re there.
You’re back.” She put her cheek against the top of Lyle’s head.
“I don’t—I’m not sure what would’ve been easier.
If you had been lying to me, I mean, versus that. ”
“I get it. I do.” I squeezed her shoulder.
“So, what now? It’s going to keep happening, isn’t it? And it’s getting longer.”
“We’ve got to figure it out. We need help.”
“What kind of help? Who could help with something like this?”
I met Lyle’s eyes. “A wise man seeks wise counsel, right? So, when in doubt, go to the smartest people you can for advice.”
Lyle nodded as if I’d gifted him a valuable pearl of wisdom.
“And who would that be?” Amy asked.
“How about someone who thinks for a living?”
A graduate student in the UW physics department took my call, and, when I said I had a novel theoretical research question, he suggested I go to the chair of the department, Professor Beck, in person.
Beck was constitutionally incapable of email and never answered the phone.
He did, however, hold open office hours.
Beck’s office in Chamberlin Hall was a study in contrasts.
The shelves were neat and clean, lined with books alphabetically ordered by the author’s last name.
The floor was sparkling, the walls covered with framed diplomas and academic awards.
Then there was the desk. It was a mess. Papers covered every inch, tossed here and there, partially obscuring the keyboard and blocking part of the monitor.
Beck was a thin man with graying hair and bright blue eyes.
Right now, those eyes darted back and forth between Amy and me with the look of someone expecting to find out he was on the receiving end of a practical joke.
Lyle sat cross-legged on the floor behind us, absorbed in a book pulled from Beck’s shelves.
“Okay…” Beck said, drawing the word out.
“I know it’s hard to believe,” I said.
“Oh, yes. Hard to believe indeed. I think you have wasted your time here, Mr. and Mrs. Treder, and my own.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Amy said, speaking for the first time since we’d arrived. “I—we—my son and I, we saw it happen, right in front of us.”
I gripped Amy’s hand.
Beck sat back in his aging leather chair. He scrutinized my face. I met his gaze without flinching. “Can I observe this phenomenon?” he asked.
“I was hoping you would. Maybe with some kind of equipment on hand, something that might help explain … this.”
“Maybe. I don’t have ready access to much equipment, not since I turned completely to theory.
But I still have plenty of friends at the lab.
” He leaned forward. “You aren’t bullsh—” He cut off, his eyes darting to Lyle behind us, and back to my face.
“You aren’t mocking me here, are you, Mr. Treder? Making fun?”
“No, no, Professor Beck, not at all.”
“We don’t have any idea what’s happening,” Amy said.
He pursed his lips and shook his head. “All right. I guess it can’t hurt to have you come in early tomorrow, Mr. Treder, and I can see this for myself.”
“Thank you, Professor.”
“I will be very displeased if you are making all this up. I won’t hesitate to contact campus security. In fact, I will warn them this afternoon that you will be coming.”
“Mom and Dad aren’t lying,” Lyle said. We all turned and looked at him. “I saw it happen, too.”
Beck’s eyes flicked to mine. “How old is he?”
“Seven.”
“Really.”
“Yes.”
Beck motioned toward Lyle. “Are you enjoying that book, son?”
“So far. I’ve only just started.”
“Kaku has some interesting ideas. And that’s an appropriate book, I suppose, if what your parents are saying is true. You go ahead and borrow it. See how you like it.”
“Thank you, sir.” I caught the name of the book before Lyle put it back in his lap: Physics of the Impossible.
I looked back at Beck.
“Seven fifty-two in the morning,” Beck said.
“That’s right.”
“Each morning, three times in a row.”
“Yes. And the … the time skip, or whatever you want to call it, it’s getting longer each time.”
“Well, Mr. and Mrs. Treder, you certainly have me intrigued. I will … I will look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning.”
“You can’t tell us anything?” Amy asked. “You’ve never heard of anything like this before? You can’t give us something?”
Beck straightened in his seat. “Ma’am, I deal with grand ideas and out-of-this-world concepts on a daily basis.
I spend my life thinking and teaching about things that seem to us impossible or even magical.
” He looked back and forth between us. “But I’m afraid I need to see this firsthand before I’m willing to devote any time or energy to figuring it out. ”
“That will have to do,” I said, standing and pulling Amy with me. “Thank you, Professor. I’ll be here tomorrow morning. Half past seven?”
“I’ll be waiting.”
I nodded, and, tugging Amy’s hand, collected Lyle and left Beck’s office.
We walked down the front steps of Chamberlin Hall, Amy simmering next to me. She held it until we got into the minivan. “He doesn’t know jack,” she said, her voice low and fierce.
I glanced up in the rearview mirror as I backed out of the parking spot. Lyle watched us. “He’s the best I could come up with.”
“We need something—someone—better.”
“Like who?”
Amy put her head against the seat. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t think anyone knows. I thought about doing some more digging online today, but…”
“What?”
“I’d rather spend it with you and Lyle.”
There must have been something in my voice. Amy gripped my hand. She kept hold of me for the entire drive home.
It was a good day. Amy and I both tried hard to keep the atmosphere upbeat.
It was obvious how fake we both were, and I knew Lyle could see through it, but he seemed to appreciate we were making the effort and went along.
He smiled and laughed, especially when we went out for pizza and got a large in his favorite flavor: chicken cordon bleu.
Prior to coming to Madison, I’d never heard of chicken cordon bleu pizza.
It seemed like two things that should not go together, and certainly not as well as they did.
But the pizza wasn’t for me or Amy. It was for Lyle.
He ate so much so quickly he had dribbles of sauce and cheese running down his chin.
That night, Amy and I made love, slowly and tenderly, as if both afraid we would hurt one another. It was the first time in months. Afterward, lying together in the darkness, we were silent for a long time. Eventually Amy spoke, barely above a whisper. “Scott?”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember our honeymoon?”
“Of course.”
“The beach. That drafty old cabin. I loved it there. I loved being there with you. Sometimes I wish we could have stayed there forever, never getting old, never having to do anything else. I feel like, sometimes, if not for Lyle, those four or five days were the…”
“… What?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. It was a good time, that’s all. A beautiful place in the tropics, all to ourselves. Swimming. Making love.” She sniffed in the darkness, and I held her more tightly. “A good time, that’s all.” She fell silent. I held her and pretended not to notice she was crying.