“Did you see him?” Max asked excitedly.
“See who?” said Dr. McKenna.
“Albert Einstein! He was right here. Standing against that wall. Near the suitcase.”
She didn’t seem fazed by Max’s wild statements. “Ah, yes. The suitcase.”
“Was I hallucinating? Maybe I was having a dream while I was wide awake?”
Dr. McKenna grinned. “Those are the best kind of dreams, aren’t they? The wide-awake ones. That’s what imagination is, Max. Allowing yourself to dream with your eyes open. To create things that aren’t really there. But, remember this, nothing in this world—not that window, or door, or even these floorboards—came into existence until somebody imagined that it could.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge,” mumbled Max, reciting her favorite Einstein quote.
“Indeed.”
“So, why did you call me Dorothy?” Max asked. “When you came into the room, you said, ‘Hello, Dorothy.’ Why?”
“Because, Max,” said Dr. McKenna, “I believe that’s who you really are. I believe you are the daughter of the young professors Susan and Timothy. The little girl they, very accidentally, transported into the future during their 1921 experiments, which, of course, were done while Albert Einstein was visiting the Princeton campus.”
She walked over to the suitcase.
“I have been researching what went on in this house for decades, Max. In your visits to this place, have you discovered any other furniture? Any other objects from the past?”
Max shook her head. “No. Just the suitcase. And the photo that was tucked inside. I took the photo.”
Dr. McKenna nodded. “As I imagined you might if you ever returned to what, in 1921, was your home. Why do you think we left one single piece of luggage locked up in an abandoned building? It was a sentinel. A guard keeping watch. Sitting there, waiting for the appearance of a Dorothy at some point in the future. Because the only one who would seek out this antique piece of luggage would be the one who left this house in 1921 with a matching piece.”
“So you knew when I came here that first time?”
“Yes.” She gestured toward a miniature security camera in a smoky dome hidden in a corner of the plaster molding where the walls met the ceiling. “I’m just glad you showed up before the bulldozers. The town and university have grown tired of my insistence that this house could help us prove that time travel is possible.”
“Can you tell me more about my parents?” Max could hardly contain herself. Finally, she would get answers to the questions she had her whole life.
“They were true geniuses. Engineers who could take the theoretical and make it practical. I was going to write my doctoral dissertation about them and what they had been rumored to have achieved. But my committee steered me away from the subject. Until you showed up, I lacked proof that they had done anything except generate a good deal of gossip.” She reached into her coat. “I do have a photograph of them. And you, Dorothy.”
She showed Max a fading portrait of an intense couple from the 1920s proudly posing with their infant daughter.
“I’ll make you a copy,” said Dr. McKenna.