I bent down to stroke the cat’s ears and he purred in response, rubbing against my legs.
“Hmm. Estella’s usually here. She must have stepped out to the market. Probably just as well, since she would have a thousand questions about you, even if I just said we were going to the movies. She’s a bit… overprotective.” Trey left a note on the desk for his father, telling him he was helping out a friend, and attached another note to the fridge, explaining to Estella that he wouldn’t be home for dinner.
At Trey’s suggestion, we found my dad’s number through directory assistance and called to be sure he wasn’t away on vacation or something. It was Dad’s voice that answered the phone, and it was all I could do to keep from talking to him, but Trey pulled the phone from my hand and said he’d dialed the wrong number.
Trey’s car was parked in a garage behind the house. It was an older model Lexus, dark blue, parked next to a much newer, similar Lexus in black. “This one is Mom’s hand-me-down,” he explained, “but Dad added the Bluetooth for my phone and music.” He grinned. “I convinced him that it was a safety issue—so that I can focus on the road and still call home—but I really wanted it because this car only had a CD player. It needed a serious music upgrade.”
The ride to Delaware was uneventful. Traffic wasn’t bad once we got out of the city. I kept my hand on Trey’s shoulder, so he could have both hands free to drive. Although my seventeenth birthday was fast approaching, I hadn’t yet gotten my own license—there seemed little need since the Metro went most places I wanted to go and the only car to which I had access was an old clunker that Dad used almost exclusively for trips to the grocery. Trey had apparently been driving for a while, however, and seemed very comfortable behind the wheel.
He was hungry, so we stopped to grab some food at a McDonald’s near Annapolis. We were through the door and halfway to the counter before we realized, simultaneously, that Trey had dropped my hand to open the door.
“Trey?” I said. No response. He was looking at me quizzically, his head tipped to the side.
I waited a moment and then grabbed his hand again, and practically screamed his name. “Trey?”
“Exactly who are you?” he said. “And why are you holding my hand?”
He broke into a grin before the last words were out, and squeezed my hand. “Joking!” I tried to pull my hand away, but he wouldn’t let go. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.”
I punched his arm with my free hand.
“Ow! Okay, that hurt, but I guess I asked for it.” Trey pulled me around the corner, holding my wrists together to avoid another punch. “I’m sorry, really. I didn’t intend to drop your hand… but I was thinking about it earlier, and it doesn’t make sense that I would forget. I mean, unless there is another temporal shift, or whatever you call it, I don’t think my memory would be affected.”
I glared. “Then why didn’t you say that earlier?”
Another grin. “Would you have held my hand for the past three hours if I had? Really, Kate—I was going to suggest that we test the theory after we sat down to eat.”
“Test it how?”
“Well, if I had forgotten, the worst that could have happened is that you had to pull out your Metro pass so I could watch that vanish, right? Or one of your earrings? I mean, if the picture disappeared, those things should, too. And if a disappearing photograph convinced me in DC, I think a disappearing Metro card would do it in Annapolis.”
I shrugged, and then nodded. I was still annoyed, but it was hard to stay mad at Trey.
“Also,” he said, “judging from the way you’ve been shifting around in the car seat the past twenty-five miles or so, I suspect you need to use the facilities as badly as I do. And a joint trip to the bathroom might have been pushing the limits of familiarity for both of us.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
I spent most of the next hour staring out the window and trying to decide what I was going to say to Dad when I saw him. The area looked a lot like Iowa—flat patches of farmland, broken up by the occasional small town. Chaplin Academy was just outside one of those towns and I wasn’t any closer to figuring out what I was going to say when we arrived.
There was a security gate at the entrance, and I leaned over Trey, holding up my school ID for the guard’s inspection. “I’m Kate Pierce-Keller. My… my uncle, Harry Keller, teaches here. We’re driving through, so I wanted to tell him hello.” I was terrified that the guard would try to take the ID from me to inspect it—at which point I had no idea what I would have done. I couldn’t risk everything in the ID holder disappearing. The guard, however, was a friendly sort who leaned in the window to glance at the ID and then gave us directions to the faculty housing area.
I had worried that it would be difficult to find Dad. We didn’t have an exact address and I thought we might have to go door-to-door until we found a helpful neighbor. But I saw him before we even located a place to park. He sat at a wooden picnic table near the pond, a book in his hand, watching two boys—one around five and the other a few years younger—who were riding Big Wheels across the grass. The area was green and lush, with a large willow near the pond. I could see the back entrances to several small, neat-looking houses fifty yards or so behind the table, most with grills on the patio and a few with sandboxes or plastic playhouses.
I sat motionless, just staring at him. After a minute or two, Trey came around to the passenger side and opened the door, kneeling down to look at my face. “Do you want me to wait here at the car or come with?”
I thought for a moment. “Would you mind going with me?” I asked in a small voice. It would undoubtedly be a more personal conversation than anyone should have to witness on such short acquaintance, but I could feel my knees shaking and I hadn’t even stood up yet.
“Not at all,” Trey said. He reached out his hand to help me from the car and continued to hold it as we walked toward the picnic table. “For moral support,” he said, squeezing my fingers gently.
I gave him a grateful smile. I had never felt so vulnerable.
“Mr. Keller?” I said. Dad looked up and closed the book, holding his place with his finger. The cover of the paperback was an autumn mélange of yellow, orange, and brown, with the image of a rabbit in front—Watership Down, a book that he had read to me years ago. One of our favorites.
“Yes?” He furrowed his brow a bit and glanced at our school uniforms. I realized they probably weren’t the same on this campus, if uniforms were even required. “Do I know you?” he asked.
I sat down on the other side of the picnic table, with Trey beside me. “I hope so.” I had rehearsed twenty different ways to start this conversation during the ride and now the only thing I could think to say was, “I’m your daughter. I’m Kate.”
His look of utter shock made me instantly wish that I had taken a different track. “I’m sorry! That’s not how I wanted to begin this… I mean…”
Dad shook his head adamantly. “That’s not possible. I’m married… only for the past ten years, but… Who is your mother?”
“Deborah,” I answered. “Deborah Pierce.”
“No.” Again, he shook his head. “I never dated anyone by that name. I’m sorry, but your mother was mistaken.”
“Oh, no, it’s not like that,” I said emphatically. “I’m… I already know you…” I did the only thing I could think of—I pulled the CHRONOS key from inside my shirt. “Have you seen this before? What color is it?”
Dad looked at me now as though I were stark-raving mad, and possibly dangerous. He glanced at Trey, although it wasn’t clear whether he was looking for a possible ally or sizing him up as a threat. “No, I haven’t… and it’s sort of pink.” He glanced again at the medallion. “It’s an unusual object—I’d remember if I had seen it.”
I reached into the plastic holder and showed him my school ID—Prudence Katherine Pierce-Keller. Then I pulled out Mom’s picture. “This… this was my mom.” He clearly noticed the past tense, because his eyes softened.
Dad looked down at the photo for several moments before raising his eyes to meet mine again. His tone was gentle when he replied. “I’m very sorry for your loss… Kate? Is that it?” He glanced over at Trey. “And who is this?”
Trey turned toward him and put out his hand. “Trey Coleman, sir. I’m a friend of Kate’s—I drove her here from DC.”
Dad leaned forward and shook Trey’s hand. “Hello, Trey. I’m sorry you came so far to be disappointed. If you had called, I could have saved you the…” He trailed off as the youngest of the two boys came running over and propped his foot up on the bench of the table.
“Daddy, fix my shoe, please. The sticky part came loose again…”
He reattached the frayed Velcro on the tiny shoe and pulled up the sock. “You need new sneakers, don’t you, Robbie?”
“Mm-hmm.” Robbie nodded, looking shyly at the two people talking to his father. His eyes were the same deep green as my own. I could tell from Dad’s expression, as he glanced at me and then back at the boy, that he had also noticed the similarity.
My father ran his hand through his son’s light brown curls and I drew in a sharp breath. The gesture was so familiar, but the hand was always on my head, the smile was always for me. “Go play with your brother, okay?” he said. “Your mom will be home soon and we’ll have pizza.”
“Yum!” Robbie cried as he ran off. “Pizza!”
When Dad turned back toward me, I pushed Mom’s picture forward. “This is the only photo I have of my mother.” I pulled my hand away, hoping fervently that my grandmother had at least a few pictures of Mom. The photograph vanished, just as Dad’s picture had earlier, in the café. I felt Trey’s body tense up and wished I’d had the forethought to tell him to look away.
Dad was staring at the spot where the picture had been, a stunned expression on his face. I reached out and took his hand. “I’m sorry. I know this is hard, but I need to make you understand.”
I spent the next several minutes telling him everything that had happened to me over the past few days. I told him about living with him in the cottage at Briar Hill, adding little details about his life and personality that I hoped hadn’t changed with a new marriage and a new family. I told him everything Katherine had said about his real parents and the accident, about my grandparents, and I explained Katherine’s theory on what was happening with the temporal shifts. Dad didn’t speak until I finished.
Finally, he met my eyes, his expression sad and distant. “I’m sorry… but I don’t know what you expect me to say or do. I can’t explain how you know the things you know. And I can’t deny what I just saw here. And seeing your eyes—it’s like looking in the mirror.”