Vaguely, as if from a great distance, Chrissie felt Ian’s hands on her shoulders. In the back of her mind, she appreciated the support, because her grandfather’s note pressed down on her with the weight of a mountain range.
She breathed in a long inhale. Air. She needed air. Space. Air and space. Distance. Everything she’d had before she’d come back to Yatesville.
There had to be thirty of those damn journals stacked on her bed. She knew exactly what was in them; incomprehensible notes and ramblings and theories and doodles.
“What is it?” Ian’s voice rumbled from above her head. His body was warm and solid at her back. Surprisingly so. She felt hard muscle and not a bit of fat. He probably kept himself in great shape for his marathon surgeries. That was what he saved his hands for, and what he trained his body for. He was all about his work. But what about that body?
And now she was just thinking random thoughts because she didn’t want to face what her grandfather had just dumped in her lap. Focus.
“That would be my grandfather’s life’s work. He filled those journals with all of his inventions and ideas and whatever else came into his head. They were the most important thing in the world to him. I used to hate those books. Every time I saw him writing, I knew some new and crazy idea was about to upend my life. And whenever I actually needed his attention for something, those books got in the way.”
She should move out of the doorway, into her old bedroom. The faint scent of Nag Champa incense and lemon body spray teased her senses. Was it a memory or did it still linger after eleven years? She’d used lots of body spray back then. Since showers involved hauling water and boiling it on the woodstove, she rarely had a shower more than once a week. As a teenager, she’d been incredibly freaked out about smelling bad. She used to douse herself in body sprays and deodorant. Lemon always seemed best for masking smells.
Now, that lemon fragrance brought back a rush of familiar anxiety. She was tempted to sniff her armpits and make sure she didn’t stink right now.
But she didn’t know Ian that well, and besides, as an adult, she was obsessive about showering and bathing.
She couldn’t deal with any of this right now.
“Let’s go,” she said abruptly. She turned around and pushed past him, suddenly desperate to get away. “I’ll show you the rest of the property. The lighthouse, the smokehouse, the greenhouse, the well house, the outhouse, whatever you want.”
Ian didn’t object, for which she was beyond grateful. How amazing that he was the perfect companion for this journey back in time. She never would have guessed that he would be; mostly she’d picked the nearest warm body that belonged to a relative stranger. But he’d really come through for her.
Halfway to the platform, he paused and put a hand on her arm. “This might sound strange, but I’d like the chance to look at those journals sometime.”
She whirled around to see if he was laughing, or mocking somehow. But his striking features revealed nothing but sincerity. This man doesn’t play games, she reminded herself. If he says something, he means it. “Why?”
“I know he was a difficult man in person, but he obviously had a lot of fascinating ideas. I find him intriguing. Not as some kind of neurological specimen,” he added quickly.
“Are you sure about that? He would have been a fascinating subject.”
“I’m sure. I can’t examine him in that way since he’s passed on. Reading those journals is the closest I could ever come. I’d like to see how his mind worked, to the extent that his journals would reveal that.”
She chewed on her bottom lip as she thought it over. Would Gramps consider that an invasion of his privacy? Or would he be thrilled at the thought of someone of Ian’s brilliance reading his work? And did any of that matter? He was gone. He’d left those journals to her. If she wanted to read them on YouTube, she could. If she wanted to scan them and beam them into space, she could do that. He’d said he trusted her.
But if he’d trusted her so much, why had he kicked her out? She hadn’t been all that rebellious, had she? A familiar pain knotted her stomach.
“Go ahead, take one. Just don’t blame me if it gives you a migraine or an eye twitch or a general sense that the world is going mad.”
“I promise,” he said in that endearingly grave way of his. Then he gave her the sweetest damn smile she’d ever seen in her life. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
At which point, she burst into tears.
Not the kind in which crystal drops of water glided down her cheeks. These were the gasping, snorting, runaway-train kind of tears. Once they started, there was no stopping them.
She spun away from Ian, completely mortified that she was losing it like this in front of a virtual stranger.
“Just go,” she managed to gasp. “I’ll meet you outside.”
But either he didn’t hear, or he didn’t listen. A firm hand settled in the small of her back and guided her across the room toward a mustard velour loveseat that Gramps had inherited from a neighbor. Everyone knew he was a recycler, so he always ended up with people’s castoffs. He’d kept this one for her, because she’d loved curling up on it to read.
The sight of it made her sob all the harder. Ian helped her sit down amid a puff of dust. The couch cushions embraced her with their familiar give. It felt better to be sitting down; Ian was right. She rested her elbows on her knees and shielded her face from him. Shudders kept ripping through her body.
“I’ll be right back,” he murmured.
A moment later she heard the creak of the pulleys transporting him downstairs—and for the first time, she was alone.
Except not really. The ghost of her past self was all over this place. Slamming the door of her bedroom and knocking the bamboo screen off kilter. Working on the angsty opera she decided to write at the age of thirteen. Reading the complete Lord of the Rings series on this very love seat. Sneaking texts to her friends behind her gramps’ back—which was strictly forbidden. Her mom had sent her the phone so they could keep in better touch. But she mostly used it to reach out to her friends.
One time her grandfather had caught her sending a text to Maya. She’d braced herself from some kind of alarmist response—cell phones are sending alien signals directly into your brain, or they can cause epileptic seizures, something like that. But instead he’d given her a rare look of understanding.
“Do you feel isolated here, Chrysanthemum? Is that why you need to text your friends?”
Cautious, because she was never sure if he was really present with her, or locked in his own head, she’d said, “Sometimes. Everyone else is going to school, and I’m scared they’ll forget about me. I have to keep sending them things to remind them. Funny things, mostly.”
He’d sighed heavily. “Okay then. You can keep communicating that way. But my dear child, no one could ever forget about you. Remember that.”
“Um…you don’t know that, Gramps.”
But already his gaze was going unfocussed. “What if there were a way to communicate ethereally, with no need for any equipment whatsoever? All humans have the capacity for telepathy, I’ve always believed. If we could simply harness it…” And he’d wandered off, entranced by that new train of thought.
Those moments of love from him had meant so much. That was why she was crying right now. Because despite his maddening, frustrating, bewildering ways…she’d loved him fiercely. And now he was gone. And she’d never understand why he’d banished her. She’d never understand him.