Wendy opened her eyes, startled to find Morris staring intently at her.
“You did it! You actually disappeared right before my eyeballs.”
Wendy nodded, looking around for signs that she’d altered Zachary’s destiny. The house seemed the same. She saw no wedding ring on her finger. Disappointment settled into her bones. Maybe it didn’t mean anything.
“What happened?” Morris continued, almost dancing in his glee. “Tell me everything.” Morris helped her to her feet. “Your hands were still in mine when you disappeared. Oh, how I wanted to go with you.”
“I know. I wanted you to go with me, too.”
“Wendy, you’ve only been gone a couple of minutes. How long were you there? Where did you go? What did you do?”
She held up her hand. “Give me a few seconds to reassemble my thoughts. And check something.” She went into the parlor and searched the collection of pictures on the mantel. Her heart sank. Zachary and Ramona’s wedding picture still sat at the end. “Noooo.” She returned to Morris, who was watching her curiously. “It didn’t work.”
“I’m sorry, m’dear. Do you want to scream and rail?”
“No, but I may cry for a few seconds. He promised he wouldn’t marry her to buy into the business.”
“Then that’s probably not why he married her.”
Wendy blew out a breath. “No, it’s not.” She wanted to cry and rail and scream, but she could hardly make Morris wait any longer. “I was there for about four hours. I landed in the sailboat shop where Zachary—and Ramona—work. Five years ago, September.”
“Five years? That’s…amazing. Tell me more.”
“I’ll tell you everything.” Well, not everything. “But before I go on, tell me something.”
“Tell you something?”
“Yeah.” Wendy smiled. “How’s Betzi?”
“Betzi? That’s a strange question to ask.”
Wendy couldn’t believe it. After all that, Betzi hadn’t found Morris. Wait. Oh, no. She’d left before giving Betzi Morris’s phone number. “Dammit.”
Morris crossed his arms in front of him, a thoroughly perplexed look on his face. “Wendy, why are you asking me about my wife when I’ve a million questions for you?”
She felt as though her face—no, her whole body—glowed. “Oh, Morris,” she cried, wrapping her arms around him.
His confused expression remained. “Are you always a bit delirious when you return?”
She giggled. “Yeah, I guess so. It was my birthday. Coincidentally, or not, it’s his birthday, too. I’d spent my twenty-third birthday on vacation with Todd, so I couldn’t connect Zachary and my younger self. I thought I’d taken care of the Ramona situation, but I’m not sure I did. I would be wearing his ring if I had.” She slumped down on the stairs. “I think I messed up.”
His gray eyebrows knitted together like two fuzzy gray slugs. “What do you mean?”
“I had planned to find my father.”
“Uh oh.”
“It happened again. Just as we were about to find Dad, I was zapped back to the present. Morris, how can destiny not let me help my father when I can do things other than interceding in Zachary’s and my fate? It’s not fair.”
Her emotions had already been riding on the tip of a tidal wave. Now they crashed down on her hopes and dreams. She had done nothing to further Zachary’s dilemma, nothing to save her father. All she had done was to make Betzi and Morris happy. Seeing the contentment in his gray eyes, though, she couldn’t deny that she’d done the right thing. After all, it seemed she could go back again and again. Her gaze went to the cupid statue and the crystal heart.
“Oh, no,” she muttered, stumbling over to the statue. “The crystal heart is gone.” As she neared it, she realized with little relief that the heart still dangled on the gold chain, but it was now the size of a half-carat diamond. “Not gone, but look how small it is. It’s…shrinking. It must shrink every time I go back. It was this big when I first saw it.” She gestured with her thumb and finger.
Morris studied the heart, then the cherub, as though they might give him a clue. “I wondered.”
“Wondered what?”
“If there was a limit to the number of times you could go back. If this crystal has shrunk that much both times you’ve gone back, my guess is that you’ve only one more trip into the past, m’dear.”
Her heart fell. “What if I can’t fix it on my next trip? What if I fail again?”
Morris looked at the crystal. “You cannot fail. Destiny has given you three chances to go back and intercede where Ramona has wronged it. No matter what, you must succeed.”
Wendy paced in front of the staircase. “I haven’t had any luck fixing anything with Zachary, or even finding out what needs fixing.”
“You haven’t had any luck in fixing what you’re not supposed to fix either.”
She wanted to prove him wrong by pointing out that she’d fixed his and Betzi’s dilemma, but she and Morris never talked about Betzi being lost to him. Once Wendy changed the past, he’d found and married Betzi before that conversation. She now remembered the intimate wedding they’d had, the visits to the hospital after Betzi’s surgery. All Morris would have contributed about Betzi was the fact that he had, or at least thought he had, gone into the past to connect with her earlier. Wendy was already too frustrated to get into that with him.
Morris was facing the window by the stairs, measuring imaginary lines with his hands. “I may have figured out the delay in your going back this time. If the time travel process depends on the position of the sun hitting the crystal heart, then each day, as we head into summer, the sun takes a little longer to reach the same angle. The first day, it happened to be four o’clock.”
“I see. Tomorrow it will hit a few minutes later than today.”
“Correct. I only hope the crystal doesn’t have to be a certain size to create the effect.”
“Oh, Morris, don’t say that.” She sighed. “Let’s go home. It’s been a long day. I’ll fill you in on the details on the way home.”
Emotionally and mentally exhausted, she skipped dinner and planted herself in front of the television. She only had enough energy to stroke Sam and scoop up spoonful after spoonful of rocky road ice cream as she watched TV. How nice it would be to solve problems in an hour. Forty-eight minutes without commercials.
Suddenly, a light glowed in the dark pit of frustration. She smiled. In fact, she felt almost delirious. A memory sprang to mind, a new splash added to an insignificant event.
A pizza parlor in Miami. While Todd had gone to the restroom, always at the time payment was due for a meal, another man had paid for their pizza. And told her to dump Todd. Thinking back, she’d considered the man out of line despite his kind act. It had been almost five years since that episode, and the man had faded somewhat in her mind. But there was absolutely no doubt that he was Zachary.
He had tried to be her hero and save her from her disastrous relationship, much the same as she was trying to do for him. He’d gone down to Miami to find her younger self. She squealed, rocking back and forth. When she caught her breath, she sagged against the cushions.
“Damn. We were right there, together. Why didn’t I just take his advice and fall into his arms? This would have been solved.” She looked up. “But no, that would be too easy apparently. What are you up to?”
As soon as Wendy walked into her office the next morning, she was already thinking about what she needed to accomplish before she left at three o’clock.
“I can’t believe I haven’t heard from my favorite bitch on wheels,” she mumbled to herself. Even as she sifted through her phone messages from the previous day, Ramona’s name didn’t appear. “Very strange.”
A soft rap sounded on her door before Ted peered inside. “Morning, Wendy. Got a minute?”
“Sure, come on in.”
Behind Ted Johnson’s usual solemn expression, she detected something else. A ridge of tension existed between them ever since her father’s death. Undoubtedly, he had heard news that her father was making someone a partner and expected to step into that position. It was Wendy’s name on those papers that were drawn up and never signed, and Ted clearly felt slighted. His attitude had mellowed, but the tension never dissipated.
“Mrs. Van Buren phoned this morning and wants to take her business elsewhere. Her reason for doing so, well, she says you’re coming on to her husband.”
Wendy wanted to laugh and scream at the same time. “I can’t believe that bit—that woman would say such a crazy thing. Wait a minute. Why did she tell you this?”
Ted shrugged hesitantly. “She asked for the person in charge, and when you’re out of the office, as you’ve been quite a bit lately, I consider myself in charge since I’ve been here the longest.”
“Oh, I see.”
Ted continued, “Honestly, I can’t believe that you’d try to hustle a client’s husband.”
“I hope you told her that. This was a case of personality clash. She didn’t like me, for whatever reason, right from the start. Zachary—Mr. Van Buren and I did hit it off, but not in the way she thinks. She walked in on us at the house one day, and although we stood a few feet apart, I could see her distrust. According to a conversation I accidentally overheard, she sees every woman as a threat.”
“You don’t need to explain.”
“But I do. I don’t want rumors going around my office that I—”
“Wendy, Mrs. Van Buren’s and my conversation stays in this office. I hope you’re not suggesting I’d send some unfounded story to the grapevine.”
“Not at all. But I know that woman, and it would be just like her to spread rumors that I’m a husband-stealing hussy.”
“Mrs. Van Buren did sound almost pleased to pull the job and especially to tell me why. I suggested another architect here, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”
“She has a lovely personality, doesn’t she?”
He chuckled. “Makes my wife look like an angel.”
As he turned to go, the word angel tripped her heartbeat. When he turned around to add something else, he stopped at the sight of her expression.
“Are you all right?”
“I guess I’m a bit thrown by the accusation.”
“I forgot to mention that she’s going to stop by this afternoon to get her house key and file. She asked that you leave them and our bill at the front desk.” He closed the door behind him.
The initial panic at losing her connection to the house subsided. She only had one more trip back and—the key. She had to make a copy of that key. Her future depended on it. And Zachary’s. Ramona would be stopping by in the afternoon, so Wendy could get the copy made on her lunch hour. She looked down to discover she’d mangled her stress ball. After dumping it into the trash bin, she went to work on another project.
At eleven, she gathered her purse and keys, not wanting to chance Ramona stopping by early. When Wendy walked into the lobby, Ramona stepped through the front door.
If looks could freeze, Wendy would be an ice sculpture. Ramona slid her gaze to the receptionist. “I’m Ramona Van Buren. I’m here to pick up my folder and key.”
As Beth looked around her desk, Wendy stepped forward. She had to find a way to keep that key.
“I haven’t had a chance to bring them up yet. Can we talk?” Wendy knew she was risking the woman blurting out her accusations right there.
“There’s nothing to discuss.”
“Does Mr. Van Buren know you’re pulling the project?” Wendy was sure he didn’t, and wouldn’t until he returned.
“It’s none of your business whether he knows or not. As of now, he and our home are none of your business. The file, Miss Jordan?”
“I’ll get it,” Wendy said, even though she gripped it in her hand.
Ramona crossed her arms over her chest, and Wendy could feel black eyes watching as she headed to her office. She pulled out her key ring, and the brass key with the script V.B. engraved into it was the first one she saw. Her only option was to give Ramona another key, then make a copy and return it under the pretense of giving her the wrong one.
She handed Ramona the file and started to walk out the door.
“Hold on, Miss Jordan. You gave me the wrong key.”
Wendy tried to cover her frustration with an innocent look. Damn, she had been so close. “Excuse me?”
She held up the key as though it were a dead rodent. “This is not mine. My key has my initials engraved into it.” She narrowed her eyes. “But you should know that. You’ve been over to the house enough times.”
Wendy fiddled around with her key ring, then held up the precious brass key. “Is this it?”
“Yes, it is.”
Slowly, agonizingly, she wound the key around the ring, freed it, and handed it to Ramona, who shoved the false key at her. “Isn’t it strange, Miss Jordan, how you keep popping into Zachary’s life every so often? Why don’t you disappear again?” Ramona walked out the door without another word.
“Ooh. Such a sweetie,” Beth said.
“Yeah.” Wendy felt languid, defeated. With slumped shoulders, she returned to her office.
It was while she was moping that she got an idea. Ramona would likely take the file to another firm since she was in a hurry. Wendy could still use the ‘I gave you the wrong key’ trick, only it would work much better with the new architect on the project. All she had to do was find out who he was. And it would probably be a him.
With renewed hope, she began dialing the number of every architectural firm in town. Many closed for lunch, and the ones she did reach hadn’t heard of the Van Burens. After lunch, Wendy dove in again, going down the list. She struck gold on her eighth call.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Van Buren just dropped off the file for Mr. Breckinridge.”
“Oh, great. Is she still there?”
“No. He didn’t have time to talk to her, so they have an appointment for tomorrow.”
I’ll bet she loved that, Wendy thought with an inner chuckle. “I need to speak with Mr. Breckinridge for a moment. It’s important.”
“This is Paul Breckinridge. May I help you?” a kind voice asked a moment later.
“I hope so. My name’s Wendy Jordan. I’m an archi—”
“Sure, I know who you are. I worked for your father some years back. Good man. What can I do for you?”
“I did some preliminary work on the project Mrs. Van Buren just dropped off. I gave her the wrong key. Would it be possible to exchange the keys right away? As it happens, I need the key you have this afternoon.”
“Sure. Everything’s still at the front desk, and I’ll leave word with our receptionist that you’ll be by.”
“Thank you so much.”
She was glad that he hadn’t seen the key yet. It would be hard to explain away the coincidence that the key Ramona had dropped off had V.B. engraved on it.
She headed right down to Mr. Breckinridge’s office, a twenty-minute drive in midday traffic. The girl at the front desk handed her the key, the precious key, and Wendy scooted down to the nearest hardware store. Copy in hand, now came the embarrassing part. She had to return to the office and explain that she had not given Ramona the wrong key after all.
When she spotted the file still sitting on the receptionist’s desk, Wendy felt some relief. She would only have to explain it to the girl at the desk, not Breckinridge. She didn’t have to feign the embarrassed grin as she approached the desk.
“You’re going to think I’m a mental klutz, but that key I picked up earlier was the key for the Van Buren house. I—”
“Well, Miss Jordan.” A well-dressed man stepped into the lobby. “Nice to meet you. I’m Paul Breckinridge Is there a problem?”
Wendy laughed nervously and tapped her temple. “Only with the ole’ thinker up here. I had given you the right key after all. It’s been one of those weeks.”
Scott looked at the key she’d just handed him. “Ah, yes. I see the initials engraved on it.”
“The man who owns the house I thought it belonged to is Vincent Borealous. Just one of those strange coincidences. Sorry about the confusion,” she called as she sailed out the door. She glanced at her watch. Oh my. I have to get going.