When Jack got back to the beach house, Pandora was sitting quietly on the couch.
The dead men had never happened, the raid had never happened, and Pandora was not dead.
Pandora smiled at him.
“So. Jack. You’re finally back.”
“So I am.”
“What were you doing?”
“Looking for Selena D’Arcy.”
“Did you find her?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“On the bridge at Matanzas Inlet.”
“Was it Christmas Eve?”
“Yes.”
“Were you able to stop the accident?”
“Yes.”
Pandora’s face grew solemn, seeing the loss that was about to come upon her. Jack would have his wife and child back, and she would lose him forever.
“So Barbara is alive? And Katy?”
“Yes. They are.”
“Oh, Jack...how wonderful? Where is she?”
Jack was quiet for a while. And then he told her that Barbara hadn’t recognized him, that she was alive, but the world had changed.
“How? How can it change?”
“I think, when we travel, we make a different world. This one is just a little different from the one we left.”
“But Barbara is still your wife?”
“No. She’s someone’s wife. Just not mine.”
A long silence.
“But, Jack, if it’s true, that’s terrible.”
“Yes. It is.”
“You can’t let that stand. You have to do something.”
“I know.”
“So what can you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Why not?”
He was silent for a very long time. She let him be silent.
“When I was back there...”
“Back where?”
“Back in...back in your time.”
“Yes.”
“There were things I couldn’t control. My badge, my gun...even how I dressed. It was as if there was...someone...making the Rules.”
“The Rules?”
“Yes. The Rules about what could and couldn’t happen in time.”
She took that in. “A Rule Maker?”
“Yes. That’s what it felt like.”
“You don’t really think there’s someone in charge of...all of this, do you?”
He smiled. “No. But maybe there used to be. Like we were an ant farm or something, and that power set up the ant farm Rules, and then it lost interest, and it wandered away, other worlds, better worlds, to attend to, but the Rules still applied back here, like the glass walls on an ant farm box.”
“So, not to put too fine a point on it, you have just reduced the entire sweep of our ideas of justice and truth and the value of the human soul from Hammurabi to Plato to Thomas Aquinas down to an ant farm analogy. Yes?”
He smiled and looked at her. “Looks like it.”
“Which means?”
“Which means that if Selena was going to be stopped, a price had to be paid.”
“And Barbara and Katy were the price?”
A very long silence, so long that they both realized they were not breathing at all.
“Yes. I think so. They’re still alive. They just don’t belong to me anymore.”
“But are you going to be able to live with that?”
“I have been living with that, one way or another, for months. She was dead, but now she’s not, and that is the way it will always be. So I have two choices.”
“Which are?”
“Find a way to be happy in the face of all that.”
“Or?”
“There is no other choice. I live with it.”
There was no answer for that, and Pandora didn’t try to find one. Sometimes a loving silence is the only useful thing you can offer.
They sat there together for a very long time. The wind died away and there was moonlight on the water. The palm shadows lay on the window. Morning was on the doorstep, but not yet knocking.
Jack turned to her, smiled at her. “Did you meet Annabelle? Or did you meet Pandora?”
“Both. We got along beautifully.”
“Where did she go?”
“Nowhere. She’s right here.”
Another silence, but now of a different kind.
Pandora moved into him, put her arm across his chest, moved in much closer, breathing him in.
“So. In this world, do you love her, or do you love me?”
“Well, which one are you? Are you Pandora, or are you Annabelle?”
“Ask me what my favorite dessert is?”
“I know that one. Chocolate parfait?”
She kissed him, a long lingering kiss. “That was a very good answer.”