In their first phone call, Elliott was resistant to Adeline’s suggestion that his ideas on quantum entanglement could be commercialized. But Adeline was persistent.
She sent an email the following day.
Dear Dr. Lucas,
Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. I know my ideas might seem far-fetched, but I assure you, we can make them a reality. You wouldn’t be expected to toil on them alone. You can pick your team. And you are certainly not expected to take any risk. That’s why firms like San Andreas exist. We know you have a comfortable teaching position and a well-respected lab at Stanford. If you decide to pursue Absolom, rest assured, there will be funding to compensate you for the risk and help you recruit the best and brightest to make this revolutionary technology a reality.
Imagine this: if we can make instantaneous transportation of parcels from one point to another, anywhere in the world, affordable and accessible, we will change human society. I assure you that it’s possible. In time.
All I ask is that you keep an open mind and call me back if you reconsider.
- Daniele
Emailing Elliott made Adeline think of Charlie. She opened a window and did a search for him. She remembered the shape of what had happened, but not the details. An article on Palo Alto Online filled in those details.
Charlie had been a passenger in the car when it was wrecked late on a Saturday night. The driver died. Charlie’s right leg was shattered in two places, and two of his vertebrae were fractured. He had been a rising senior that summer before the crash—with a full athletic scholarship to USC. The injury had instantly ended his football career. There were doubts about whether he would ever walk again unaided. The college had agreed to honor the scholarship, but Charlie never made it there.
Adeline remembered some of what happened next. She was too young then to have heard the full details—whether it was the pain medications he took for his injuries or the trauma of having his future changed in an instant—but it led him down a dark, spiraling path from which he never returned.
Adeline understood a little of that now—how a life could change in the blink of an eye. She knew there was even more pain ahead for Charlie. And for her.
*
When Nathan had texted and invited Adeline up to Mountain View, she knew something was up.
At their favorite Vietnamese restaurant, he slid a small velvet box across the table. Adeline swallowed and stared at it like it was a venomous snake.
“Relax,” he said. “It’s not what you think. Well, it sort of is, but—look, just open it.”
Inside, Adeline found two very large diamond earrings. Diamond earrings she hadn’t seen in ten years—since she had sold them at a jewelry store the first day she arrived in the past.
She stared at them, her mind reeling. Had he bought them from the store? Did he know she wasn’t from this time? Was this his way of telling her? She had always held Nathan at arm’s length, never letting him get close enough to discover the truth about her. Maybe she had gotten sloppy. If so, what did it mean? Was the present about to shatter as she held the two diamond earrings?
“You hate them,” he said.
“I love them.”
“We sold it.”
Adeline looked up.
“Speed.io. We got the wire transfer yesterday. I couldn’t tell you because of the NDA.”
Adeline nodded. She was starting to breathe again.
“The sale has given me a lot to think about. I’ve spent way too much time on that company in the last few years. I want to change that. I want to spend more time with you. I want to see where things go. Maybe move in together—”
Adeline closed the box and pushed it back across the table. Daniele’s words echoed in her mind: Someone very special gave them to me. Someone who’s no longer in my life.
Since arriving in 2008, Adeline had assumed that the future version of herself had given the stones to her. But that wasn’t the person she was referring to. Nathan was that person.
“I can’t give you what you want.”
He squinted. “What do you mean?”
“The thing is, I’m starting a company of my own now. And like yours, it’s going to take a lot of my time. I think it’s what I’m meant to do at this point in my life.”
Nathan shook his head. “Ships in the night. I get off as you get on.”
Adeline motioned to the velvet box. “Should—”
But she knew what he was going to say: “Keep them. I want you to have them.”
*
The next day, she took the earrings to a jeweler.
“I need to know, is there anything engraved on these stones? In small letters?”
The man put the stone under a microscope and said, without looking up, “No. They’re completely clean. Not even a GIA inscription.”
“I need something engraved on them.” Adeline took a piece of paper and scribbled down the phone number for Shen Photo.
*
Adeline received an email from Elliott the following day.
Dear Daniele,
I actually discussed our meeting with a few colleagues of mine. We’d like to hear more about what you’re proposing. No promises, but I’ll say we’re intrigued.
Elliott
Adeline smiled. She would soon see her father again. And then she would have almost ten years before she lost him again, and in those ten years, she hoped, was the answer to getting him back.