With the founding of Absolom Sciences, Adeline moved to Palo Alto. She bought a small home a block away from her parents’ house and Elliott’s house.
For a while, her life was solely focused on work. At the Queen Anne-style mansion on Cowper, the small team refined the design for the Absolom prototype. They worked late most nights, kicking around ideas and running computer simulations.
Adeline got to see a side of her father and the Absolom founders she had never known—what they were like in those early days, at work, behind closed doors.
Hiro easily logged the most hours. He even slept in his office some nights. When he was in the midst of a technical problem, it dogged him like a ghost haunting his mind. And it was a brilliant mind.
When his work came to a logical stop, he would take two days off. Sometimes it was the weekend. Other times it was the middle of the week. He simply disappeared and returned, not exactly looking refreshed but ready to work again.
Adeline knew where he went. She had seen it in the future.
Sam and Elliott worked closely together, like two physics detectives working a case, sharing notes, and drawing on a whiteboard. Both men looked stressed, and Adeline knew it was not because of the load at work but because of the challenges at home, the problems they couldn’t solve.
Nora and Constance worked together on the machine’s hardware, trying to integrate Sam and Elliott’s theoretical ideas with Hiro’s software. They were the bridge between those two islands, and in a way, they were their own island, working away from the group most of the time.
That was fine with Adeline. Whether it was conscious or not, she had avoided Nora. She knew what would happen to her and that getting close would only make it tougher for Adeline to see that her murder occurred.
One night, at 2 a.m., Adeline’s phone vibrated on her bedside table. She had always been a light sleeper. The stress of starting Absolom and ensuring things happened exactly as they had before had only made her more restless.
She answered the call and heard Hiro’s voice on the line, sounding agitated. “I need an advance on my salary.”
“How much?”
“Twenty thousand.”
“Hiro…”
“I’m at the Bellagio. Ten to pay my marker, and ten so I can win everything back.”
Adeline sat up in bed.
“You know I’m good for it,” Hiro said. “I’ll sell you some of my stock.”
“You’re not selling any stock. I’ll send the money, but promise me: when it’s gone, you’ll come home.”
“If it’s gone.”
“If. And when. Do we have a deal?”
That became a pattern, with Adeline serving as Hiro’s financial firewall and Vegas giving him the release between long work sessions.
Constance periodically left for medical treatment and to visit someone from her past, to notify them of her medical condition and provide any assistance she could, including financial and moral support.
In the days leading up to those trips, Constance always looked stricken, as if the disease was overtaking her. Adeline soon learned that it wasn’t that—it was the anticipation of what was to come, of delivering what might be a death sentence to someone from her past.
Many of the people she came into contact with had already presented with symptoms of the disease. A small number hadn’t. And some tested negative.
Adeline could tell how the visits had gone—the person’s outcome—just from Constance’s demeanor upon her return. HIV was slowly destroying her immune system, leaving her vulnerable to a deadly infection. But it was what Constance had decided to do about her past that was killing her. And Adeline admired that—her courage and her honesty and her sacrifices. In fact, it made Adeline feel guilty for ever suspecting her of murder. Constance was perhaps the most selfless person she had ever met.
*
In the months that followed, Adeline caught glimpses of the other secrets the Absolom Six were keeping.
Outside the door to Elliott’s office, she heard him pacing, talking on the phone, sounding exhausted.
“I don’t care if he hates the counselors. You tell him we moved heaven and earth to get him in there. If he leaves, that’s it—he’s cut off.”
A pause. Elliott sounded even more helpless when he spoke again. “Well, what choice do we have? If we don’t draw the line, he will keep pushing our boundaries, Claire. We talked about this. We’ve got to take a stand. For our sake and his.”
*
One morning, at the team’s weekly check-in, Sam was late.
“I’ll go get him,” Adeline had said, rising and leaving the conference room before anyone could object.
She found the door to his office cracked. Her father was sitting in a desk chair, swiveled toward the window, a phone held to his ear.
“I’m going with you, Sarah. I told you—”
Adeline pushed the door open slowly, but he didn’t see her.
“I’m well aware that I’ve started a new job, and if I get fired, so be it—I’m going. I want to be there to advocate for you.”
He turned suddenly, realizing Adeline was in the room.
She held her hands up, backed out, and closed the door.
He opened it a minute later.
“I’m sorry—”
“No,” Adeline said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have barged in.”
“The meeting slipped my mind.”
“You’ve got a lot on your plate.”
“I need to ask for some time off.”
Adeline stepped into the office and closed the door behind her. “You don’t have to ask for time off. I’m not your boss, Sam. I’m your partner. And partners take care of each other. You need time off. You take time off. I also have something that might help.”
Adeline’s father raised his eyebrows.
“A NetJets card. Traveling with a sick family member is tough enough. This will make it easier. And you can schedule the return flight when you’re ready. Just in case you need to stay longer for more treatment or recovery.”
Adeline realized another thing about time and families then: if you live long enough, the role of who takes care of whom gets reversed.
That wasn’t the only role that had reversed. In Absolom City, after her father had been sent into the past, Adeline had been the one in the dark, racing to try to unravel everyone’s secrets.
Now she was the one with the secrets. She had the power. She was pulling the strings. She was controlling the past. Which led her to a question she hadn’t entertained before: how much the past had already been changed. By someone else. If she was an agent acting on the past, had there been others?
Finding out wouldn’t be easy. But she had all the pieces she needed.
*
A week after he returned, Adeline’s father leaned into her office and said, “Thanks again for the jet.” He laughed and shook his head, as if still in disbelief. “It was amazing.”
“You’re welcome. Glad I could do it.”
“Sarah would like to finally meet you—and say thanks. Are you free for dinner one night soon?”
“I am. Any time.”
Adeline had been expecting the invitation at some point. She had been both looking forward to it and dreading it.
In so many ways, she was finally going home, to the place where she had grown up and where her mother had grown sicker. It was the place where they had become a family and where that family had been shattered.
*
On a Thursday in late November, Adeline stood on the stoop of her childhood home, watching the leaves of the maple trees rattle in the wind, the orange, red, gold, and brown tones mixing together as if the trees were on fire.
The door opened, and Sam ushered Adeline inside. Ryan was sitting on the floor of the living room, playing with magnetic blocks. The boy was about five years old, and at his father’s behest he did a minimalist greeting and returned to building his castle.
As her mother approached, Adeline extended her hand, but the woman held out her arms and hugged her. Adeline thought her mother’s arms felt frail, but her eyes still showed a strength that warmed Adeline’s heart.
Her counterpart was nowhere to be found. Young Adeline was likely at a friend’s house, supposedly doing homework while actually gossiping the night away.
It was an unusually warm night, so they had dinner on the porch, her mother wrapped in a shawl, her father in the V-neck sweater he had worn to work.
When the meal was done, Adeline’s mother rose to clear the plates, but Adeline reached out and gently gripped her mother’s wrist. “Please, let me.”
When the dishes were collected, Adeline’s mother showed her the sewing room. “It used to be a nursery for Ryan. I’ve been working in here since…”
Adeline thought she was going to say, Since I got sick. Instead, she said, “Since I stopped teaching.”
Adeline picked up two pieces of cloth, consulted the pattern her mother had printed off the internet, and held them under the needle at the sewing machine. “Would you mind?”
Her mother smiled. “Not at all.”
A minute later, when the sewing machine whined down to silence, her mother shook her head. “Didn’t know you sewed.”
“My mom taught me.”
“Same here. I’ve been trying to get Adeline into it, but she has zero interest.”
She studied the pieces of cloth. “It’s been good therapy for me. Takes my mind off of everything. And makes me feel like I’m creating something to leave behind… that they’ll remember me by.”
Adeline nodded. She didn’t trust her voice enough to speak. Someone her mother just met wouldn’t be as emotional as she felt then.
“Lately,” her mother said, “I’ve been too tired to make much progress. I mostly sit in here finding patterns for quilts that I will probably never make. But it feels good to have plans.”
Adeline didn’t know if she meant plans for the quilts or a plan to make them—a plan to live that long. She tried as hard as she could steady her own voice. “I could help you.”
“I couldn’t ask you…”
“I’d enjoy it. I lost my mother a long time ago. It would be kind of nice to sew again. It would remind me of her.”
They began that night, and once again, Adeline sensed that it wasn’t just pieces of cloth they were sewing together. For her, she was joining the pieces of the past, and it made her so happy.