Chapter 16 #4
I could feel it, how long she’d been holding this in, waiting to apologize to me.
Maybe this was really what Lyle had meant when he’d told me to steel myself.
I took a moment to think, to pull the words together in my head, conscious of how important this was to her, and to Lyle.
They watched me. Waited. I let out a long breath.
“Amy. It’s okay. It is. I never—I never blamed you.
Anyone would have done the same, in your shoes. I couldn’t expect you to wait for me.”
A tear ran down from the corner of her eye. She squeezed my hand again. “Thank you,” she whispered, the word coming out like a sigh.
My world split. Riven in twain by the depths in that sigh.
Two weeks for me. Forty-five years for her.
I focused on Amy and tried to see her as I remembered, tried to place this version of her alongside the one in my memories.
The past wasn’t the past for me. It wasn’t that long ago for me that we’d had our honeymoon on the beach in that dumpy, wonderful old cabin.
We’d made love and whispered promises and laughed at one another, at our youth and vigor. We’d been immortal.
But then, after a few heartbeats, I let the image go. I allowed this aged, but somehow beautiful, version of my wife to replace the one I’d known.
“How have you been?” I asked.
She gave a quiet laugh. “I’m fine.” She took a breath. “How long has it been for you, Scott?”
“Since we last saw each other?”
“Yes. For … for you.”
“About a week since you handed me the papers.”
Amy took a shuddering breath, and I regretted the words. I started to reach out for her hand again, but Lyle beat me to it. She smiled at him and patted his hand. “So long ago. For me, at least.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s all right, Scott.” Amy took a slow, measured sip of her drink.
A question came on its own, from somewhere deep inside me. “Were you happy?”
“You mean, was I happy with you?”
I couldn’t trust myself to speak. I nodded.
“Yes,” she said, as if the answer was obvious.
My vision blurred with tears.
“I loved you,” she said. “You were all I wanted. You and Lyle. That’s what made it so hard. That’s why I ran away the way I did.”
“Did you have a good life, after?” I had to talk around the lump in my throat.
“After leaving you?”
“Yes.”
“Happy enough, I suppose. I had a great son, and two wonderful stepchildren. That made up for the sadness.”
Lyle ducked his head a little, reddening. But when he looked up, something behind me caught his eye, and his expression shifted. “We need to go.”
“What is it?” Amy asked.
“I think we just made the news,” Lyle said. “Hold on.” His eyes defocused as he looked at the image on his glasses. I couldn’t see what he was using to control the device. “Yep, we definitely need to go.”
He stood and helped Amy up. As I pushed back my chair, I turned enough to look behind me, trying to see what drew Lyle’s attention.
The woman behind the counter frowned in our direction.
There was no television or display anywhere in the café, but Lyle had his glasses, and he’d mentioned something about implants.
I glanced around. There were only six other people in the café with us, but all of them were looking our way.
“Excuse me,” a man said to my right. “Are you that—”
“Let’s go,” Lyle said. He gripped my shoulder and tugged, enough to get me started toward the door.
We made it outside the café without incident. The sky was brighter, and there were more people on the sidewalk. The three of us stopped beneath the awning.
“Damnit,” Lyle said. His eyes flicked to Amy. “I’m sorry.”
“How bad?” Amy asked, her voice quavering.
“It hit national. I knew it would, but I thought it would take longer.”
“Wait,” I said. “We’re on national news?”
“We’re going to need to go to the safe house a little sooner than I wanted.”
“Safe house?” I asked.
“Figure of speech,” he said, although it was not convincing. He turned to Amy. “Mom, will you be okay?”
“I know my part, honey,” she said. She straightened. “I can still handle myself.”
“Wait, what? What’s going on?”
Lyle gave me a long look. “Dad.”
I met his eyes and had the bizarre, mind-twisting sensation I was staring at my father instead of my son, even though Lyle looked nothing like his grandfather. The feeling was disconcerting on so many levels that the world tilted around me. “Yes?”
“I need you to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Reality. The world.”
“Listen to him, Scott,” Amy said. “He’s lived his life thinking this through. As hard as I worked to get him to forget about you, he wouldn’t.”
The words felt like slaps, but there was no malice on Amy’s face, just sadness, and resolve. I licked my lips. “So … what?”
“We have to start thinking differently,” Lyle said.
“How?”
“We need to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
“Everything,” Amy said.
“The future,” Lyle said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Look around you, Dad. You’re almost forty-five years outside your time. You were there. You saw it, that quasi-religious group. Your name and face are on the national news. You’re famous. You have devotees, a movement. You’re the Traveler.”
I shook my head. “I—I just don’t—I don’t…”
“I’ll explain. I will. As best as I can. But right now, we have to go.”
“Where?” I asked, looking at Amy.
“I can’t know,” Amy said. “I’m the diversion.”
“What?”
Lyle shut his eyes. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, lifting his glasses up.
“That sounded wrong,” Amy said.
“Mom’s going to make a bit of a to-do,” Lyle said.
“We set up a thing on campus. Like a press conference. She’s supposed to show up and present with you.
Talk about what you meant to each other after all these years.
Very showy, very romantic. Tug on the heartstrings.
But you won’t show. She’ll stall for a while, pretend to be upset at you for not coming, and then leave. ”
“I’m just a confused old lady, aren’t I?” Amy asked, smiling.
Lyle pressed his lips together. “This was Mom’s idea, by the way.” Lyle saw the expression on my face. “It’s to mislead people who might try to follow us.”
“Follow us?”
Amy and Lyle exchanged a look, coming to a silent, mutual decision.
“Thank you for your forgiveness, Scott,” Amy said. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me. Her thin arms gripped me tightly.
Feeling lost, I hugged her back, careful not to squeeze her too hard. Her body was birdlike.
She pulled away. “Listen to our son. And stay safe.” Then she turned, gripped Lyle’s arm, and started off down the sidewalk with a slight limp. Purposeful. Full of more energy than I might have expected from an eighty-two-year-old.
I made to follow her, but Lyle grabbed my arm. “Dad. We need to go.”
I looked at him. Then I looked at Amy’s retreating form.
She didn’t turn back, and I knew she wasn’t going to.
That’s when I felt it hit, deep in my chest, the hollow realization.
I understood. Finally, I understood. This was real, this was happening.
I would never see Amy again. Ever. I was going to jump forward through time the next morning and the moment I did, Amy would be long dead.
It was the first time I truly comprehended it, on a basic, almost animal level—that primal part of my brain ticking away beneath all the higher thoughts and sophisticated emotions.
I sagged forward and almost threw up on the sidewalk.
“Come on,” Lyle said, his tone gentle, as if he’d read my thoughts.
He propped me up, took my shoulders, and steered me in the opposite direction of Amy, guiding me with one hand on my arm as if I were blind.
My vision tunneled, a crawling blackness tinged with blue and purple bursts of color gathering around the edges of my sight.
“Shit,” I whispered. “Oh, shit.”
“I know, Dad, I know,” Lyle said. He squeezed my shoulder. “My car’s close. Stay with me.”
The block passed in a blur and we were there, next to a sleek little vehicle.
Lyle touched something on the exterior and a hatch slid up.
I collapsed into the seat and the hatch slid shut again, leaving me alone.
Then the hatch on the opposite side of the car opened, and Lyle stepped in. “Car, D-day route one.”
The two-seat vehicle hummed to life and we were moving, merging into the light morning traffic.
Lyle sat back. “Are you okay?”
With effort, I forced myself to nod. “I’ll be all right. No wheel?”
“Automated, remember? It’s illegal to manually drive on public roads now.”
“Yeah. Yeah, right. D-day?”
“Dad-day.”
“‘Dad-day’?”
“I’ve been calling them that since they started. Once they started getting far apart. Dad-day, the day I get to see my dad.”
“Christ, Lyle. What this has done to you, to your life—”
“Dad. It wasn’t your fault. It’s okay.”
“There’s nothing okay about it. Nothing.”
“I would give anything, Dad, to make it so this never started. But my life is mine to live. And I’ve taken advantage of it, of your jumps. I’m basically the preeminent theoretical physicist of my generation, you know?”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. And now that Donald has retired, I may be the most famous active theoretical physicist in the country.”
“Donald?”
“Rhineland.”
“Right.” I looked out the window. The city passed, a sprawling mixture of bizarrely new and ultramodern buildings mixed with the old and familiar. “What happened, Lyle? The last time?”
“The last jump?”
“Yes.”