TWENTY-SIX

 

Jenny put the last of the dishes into the dishwasher. Her dad had invited Ben to stay for dinner, but he’d had to pick up his mom from Books, so it had just been Jenny and her father.

She’d been tense as they ate the take-out Chinese her dad had picked up on the way home. When he asked what was wrong, she’d said that she was just tired.

But that wasn’t it. She wanted to know about her mother. The questions loomed even larger in Jenny’s mind since her visit to Marist. She couldn’t help wondering if Morgan wasn’t the only one hiding something. Was her dad really as clueless about her mom’s past as he seemed? Did he really think being a complex, moody artist was reason enough for all her mother’s strange behavior?

Jenny didn’t have the answers, but her resentment was building to a crescendo. She shouldn’t have to beg for answers about her own mother.

Finished with the dishes, Jenny walked toward her dad’s office and paused at the door. He was leaning back in his desk chair, staring at the computer with single-minded concentration. He looked lost, his loneliness a dark cloak hanging off his shoulders. Jenny wondered if he was lonely. If maybe their quiet little life—a life with no questions but no answers, either—  wasn’t enough for him.

Go in, she urged herself. Ask him your questions. All eleven years of them.

He looked up at her, sensing her presence. “Hey, you.” His eyes were tired behind his smile. “What’s up?”

She couldn’t get the words out. Inwardly, she urged herself to get a grip. He was her dad. He’d tell her what he knew if she asked. She knew he would.

But then she would have to know. She would have to know, for better or worse, who her mother really was—or how little her dad had really known about her.

“Honey?” Her dad’s voice got her attention. “You okay?”

She nodded, trying to make her smile genuine. “Yeah. Like I said, I’m just beat. I think I’m going to read for a bit and go to bed early.”

He nodded. “I might do the same. This deadline’s stressing me out.”

“Okay, get some sleep,” she said. “Good night.”

“Night, honey.”

She’d almost cleared the doorframe when she turned back. “I love you, Dad.”

He smiled, surprise mixed with pleasure. “I love you, too, Jenny.”

She made excuses all the way to her room. It wasn’t the right time. He was busy. Talking about her mom would make him sad.

They were all lies.

The truth was simple. She was afraid. Learning about her mother would mean learning about herself, too. And once she knew the truth, there would be no going back.

 

* * *

 

Jenny woke up knowing what she had to do. She wanted to know the truth about her mother, but more than that, she wanted to know what Morgan knew about the Book of Time.

Because if she and Nikolai didn’t find it by tonight, he could be gone by tomorrow.

And that was something Jenny couldn’t live with.

She was surprised by the anger simmering underneath her skin. She didn’t get angry often. Frustrated, sad, even depressed. All of those things. But she wasn’t an angry person by nature.

Now fury backed up behind her eyes when she thought about Morgan. She must think Jenny was an idiot. How long did Morgan expect her to swallow the lies without realizing that there were so many missing pieces?

She slipped behind the wheel of the Honda, making her way down the driveway and turning down the main road. Crossing town, she headed for the far side of Stony Creek where Morgan rented a cottage from old Mrs. Van Kueren. Questions moved through Jenny’s mind like a whirlwind, but when she stopped to think about it, there were only two that really mattered.

Had her mother had been a part of the Order? And if so, what had happened to the book she’d been holding in the picture?

Morgan’s house was at the edge of a field that had grown wheat before Mr. Van Kueren became too old to farm it. Jenny had always felt at peace there, but now, she had to calm the butterflies in her stomach as she turned down the tiny gravel driveway.

She pulled around to the side of the house, her heart sinking when she saw the empty space in front of the old garage. Morgan’s gas-efficient hybrid wasn’t there.

Jenny pulled up next to it, putting it into park and letting the engine idle. She could wait for Morgan to come home … or not.

She looked down at the keys, swinging in the ignition. Then she cut the engine and stepped out of the car.

Sticking to the rear of the house, she grabbed the blue-capped key on her ring and climbed the stairs to the back deck. Morgan had given Jenny the extra key so she could water the plants when Morgan was away on one of her research trips. Morgan had told her to use it anytime, but Jenny was pretty sure this wasn’t what Morgan had in mind.

Jenny didn’t care. Now that she’d shrugged off the apathy of the past few years, she was determined to get answers. She was going to get them, one way or another.

She put the key into the lock on one of the glass doors that opened onto the deck. The lock disengaged, and Jenny stepped inside the house.

It felt different without Morgan there. The faint smell of cold coffee scented the air, mixing with something spicier that Jenny recognized as residual odor from the incense Morgan burned almost constantly when she was home.

It took Jenny a minute to decide where to start looking. There was no guarantee that Morgan had the book. In fact, the odds were probably against it. But Morgan had been her mother’s best friend. Jenny was certain of that much. Whatever lies Morgan had told, there had to be some kind of information about Jenny’s mother hidden in Morgan’s house. That and even a remote possibility that Morgan had the book meant that she had to look. Had to try.

She started with Morgan’s office, opening the filing cabinets and riffling through the rows of folders.

The files on the right contained work stuff—research on the runes, printouts of online articles pertaining to them, and photographs. At first glance, Jenny thought the cabinet to the left of the desk was more personal. But a half an hour later, she’d gone through every scrap of paper only to find copies of old bills, tax returns, automobile service receipts, and medical bills. Continuing with the office, she went through its one closet and looked behind all the books on ancient languages and markings before giving up on the room.

Morgan’s house wasn’t very big. Other than the office, there was a bedroom, a bathroom, and the joint kitchen/dining/living room. Jenny could have been wrong, but she didn’t really see Morgan as the hide-important-stuff-in-a-coffee-can type.

She moved to the bedroom.

She started with the nightstands, pulling open their drawers, even removing them to make sure nothing was taped underneath or behind them. As time passed, Jenny became more nervous, her searching less methodical. She looked under the bed and quickly moved to search the closet. It wasn’t fear of discovery that drove her but fear of not knowing. Fear of a continuation of the lie she’d already been living. Fear of losing Nikolai.

She started with the top of the closet, pulling down boxes and clear plastic bins, searching them through and through, no longer caring if Morgan knew she’d been snooping. She had nothing to hide. Nothing to be ashamed of. Morgan was the one who should be ashamed.

Finding nothing on the top shelf, Jenny moved to the shoes lining the bottom, her hope beginning to fail. She was almost done with the bedroom, and the odds of discovering something in the rest of the house were slim.

She pulled the shoes out a pair at a time, feeling a little stupid as she looked inside them. She knew the book couldn’t be hidden in such a small place, but something else might be. Something that would tell her more about her mother.

She came across it as she pulled the final pair of shoes from the back of the closet. They were black heels, simple but sexy, something she’d never seen Morgan wear, couldn’t imagine her wearing. Jenny gave them a cursory glance, already resigned to her failure, when she saw something glitter in the pointed toe of the shoe. She shoved her hand inside, her fingers first touching something stiff and thin, followed by a small, cold object. She grabbed it all and pulled.

There was an unsealed envelope, and on top of it, a ring identical to the one she’d found in her mother’s things.

Jenny opened the envelope, pulling from it a stack of photographs. They were pictures of Morgan and her mother, obviously taken around the same time as the picture in Jenny’s room. Jenny flipped through them. Morgan and her mother sitting at a long wooden table, smiling with food in front of them. Morgan and her mother clutching shovels and rakes, tending a garden that looked suspiciously like the one surrounding the pond at the retreat center. Morgan and her mother in long, green robes, lying on the grass, the bell tower of the monastery rising behind them.

Jenny was still staring at the last one when she heard the front door open.

“Jenny? You here?” Morgan’s voice called to her. “I saw your car out front.”

Jenny was paralyzed, her eyes still glued to the picture when Morgan came into the bedroom.

“What are you … ” She stopped, taking in the shoe-strewn floor, Jenny sitting on the carpet with the ring at her side, the photographs in her hand. “Jenny … ”

She didn’t complete her thought. For a minute, all Jenny could do was look at her. Then she stood up, still clutching the pictures.

“How could you?” She was so angry she was shaking, surprised to feel tears well up in her eyes when rage was what blinded her.

“Jenny … ” Morgan held out one hand, like she was trying to calm a wild animal. “Let me explain.”

“Unless you’re going to explain that you haven’t been lying all of these years, that you’ve been totally straight with me about my mother, I don’t want to hear your excuses.”

Morgan hesitated, dropping her hand. “I’m not going to say that. I have been lying, but I have my reasons. Good reasons.”

Jenny strangled out a bitter laugh. “Reasons? Nice. I’ll have to remember that. Whatever happened to the truth? Integrity? All the things you told me that my mother stood for? All the things you said you stood for and wanted me to stand for? Or was that all a lie, too?”

Morgan’s eyes flashed. “You can bash me all you want, but your mother was the most honest person I knew. It killed her to do what she did.”

“So, what? It was noble, what she put my dad through?”

“In its own way, yes. It was,” Morgan said softly.

“I don’t see how running away all the time, sneaking off and keeping all of this a secret is noble or honest.”

“If you just let me explain … ”

Jenny bent down to pick up the ring that had been hidden in the shoe. “Were you and my mother part of the Celestial Retreat Center? The Order?” Surprise passed over Morgan’s face. “Yeah. I know about that part already.”

Morgan’s nod was slow. “I suppose you do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m guessing the traveler told you.”

The term threw Jenny for a minute. “The traveler?”

“The Order knows that he’s here, Jenny. They’ve been watching you. It’s only a matter of time before they find him and send him to the bardo.”

Nikolai. Morgan was talking about Nikolai.

“How do you know he wouldn’t go back to his own time?” she asked, trying to gauge how much Morgan knew. How much the Order knew.

Morgan smiled sadly. “In my experience, if one is willing to risk the bardo to be with a soulmate, that person is not going to go quietly.” She moved into the room, sitting wearily on the edge of the bed. “Which is why your mother was doing what she did. Why at the end, she was an enemy of the Order.”

Jenny shook her head. “I don’t understand. I thought you said she was one of them.”

“She was. We both were. But your mother broke the most important rule of all.”

“What rule?” Jenny asked, fascinated in spite of her earlier anger.

“She fell in love.”

“With my dad?”

Morgan nodded. “It started out as friendship, but, well, I’m sure you know by now how these things go.”

Jenny thought about Nikolai. They hadn’t had a chance to be friends first. Not in this lifetime. Then she thought about Ben. In another life, another situation … Yes, Jenny could see how it could happen.

“Why is it against the rules to fall in love?” she asked.

“We’re here to keep time in order, not to meddle with it,” Morgan said. “Why do you think I live alone? Have never dated anyone?” She continued, “We’re not of this time, Jenny. It wouldn’t be right to leave a mark here. And yet your mother did.”

It took Jenny a few seconds, but then she understood. “With me. My mother left a mark with me.”

Morgan nodded. “It’s forbidden to have a relationship with a mortal. Imagine the reaction among those in the Order when they found out about you.”

“Wait a minute … ” Jenny had a hard time getting the next words out. “Did they kill her? Did they kill my mother?”

Morgan’s face whitened. “Of course not. They’re not killers. But they were trying to get ahold of her.”

“They were right here, in the same town, the whole time. Couldn’t they have taken her at any time if they really wanted to?”

“Let me be more specific,” Morgan said. “They wanted something your mother had, and they were always following her, always trying to figure out where she’d hidden it.” Morgan turned her eyes on Jenny. “Your mother knew all about love, Jenny. Her love for your father, for you, changed her. Which is why she stole the Book of Time.”