CHAPTER FIFTEEN: June 18, 2005

I Extract back to 2005, after ensuring that Cass is settled in a 1915 hotel room with a ticket for an ocean liner that leaves the next morning—an ocean liner which is not in any danger of being destroyed by German U-boats—and catch a few winks on the plane ride back to New York. There, I get an earful from Dr. Wells about my idiocy, followed by another earful from Nell about the same.

Once I’ve gotten a few hours of sleep, we order some take-out and Nell and I start working on our plan to settle into life in that era. I know Dr. Wells doesn’t succeed in making a DeLorean box that’s capable of Jumping forward in time until 2012, so until then, we’re stuck here, and it may be a long time before we’re rescued. Fortunately, we don’t have as long to wait as we think.

That evening, there’s a thump in the storage room, and when I open the door, who’s standing there but Mum, looking half-frantic, and clutching not only her own Wormhole Device, but ones for Nell and me as well.

“How’d you know?” I ask, pulling her in close.

“After our last conversation, your father and I were worried about you,” she says in a tone I recognize from when she used to scold me about staying out past curfew. “Dr. Wells—a much older version—dropped by to see us yesterday, and when he heard what you did at the TUB headquarters, he offered to check up on you, since it’d been weeks since we’d heard from you. Apparently, there’s another man at PITTA who’s been missing as well, and when someone showed Dr. Wells a picture of him, he said he’d met him once, long ago.”

Of course. Dr. Wells would’ve remembered all of this from when he was much younger, and seeing the picture of Taylor, would have realized where I was—that this was the point in my life where I’d gotten stuck in 2005.

“So he sent you back to Retrieve us?”

“There’s already a version of him in this time, as well as your father, so neither of them could come to your rescue,” Mum says, “but since TUB is no longer a threat, they sent me instead. Dr. Wells had to help us break into PITTA. It was really quite thrilling.”

“And are we ever glad to see you.” Nell turns over the shiny black orb in her hands. “So these Wormholes will bring us back to 2134?”

“That they will,” Mum says. “Are you two ready to go?”

“Let me just say goodbye first.” I slip out of the room and nearly run head-first into Dr. Wells. I wrap him in a big bear hug, and while my face is close to his ear, I whisper a single word. “Thanks.”

***

June 28, 1915

We meet Cass at the harbor: Dad, Mum, me, and Oliver McIntire, the guy she’s decided to marry. It’s meant to be a surprise, all of us here, together. Dad and Mum clutch their suitcases, which are stuffed with everything they’ll need to live out the rest of their lives in this era. Dad says it’ll take some getting used to and that I’ll have to smuggle some Punch-In food from the future whenever I visit them, but there’s no doubt in my mind that they’ll be happier here, with Cass and her eventual children and grandchildren, even if they do have to live under assumed names to keep the historical records accurate.

It turns out we’re not the only ones with a surprise, though, because when Cass steps off the ship, she’s not alone.

“Is that…?” I whisper in her ear as I pull her into a hug.

“It is.” She pulls away and gestures to the small boy standing beside her. “Dodge, I’d like you to officially meet Abe Taylor. Abe, this is my family. Your family now, too.”

“You can’t be serious.” I pull her aside as Mum and Dad greet the boy with handshakes and whatever candies Dad had tucked away in his coat pockets. “How did you find him? I thought Taylor had kidnapped him.”

“After you left, I went back to the baron’s mansion,” Cass says, “on a hunch that turned out to be right. Taylor realized that he had to save the boy from the fire in order to keep his family line intact, but that hadn’t been his intention that day. He hadn’t known what to do with him afterward, so he just left the boy. I found poor Abelard sitting on the curb across from his ruined home, dirty and tear-stained and miserable. I had to do something.”

“So you’ve… adopted him?”

“Not officially,” she says. “Not yet, anyway, but that’s the intention.”

“But he’s—”

“He’s just a boy. Regardless of what his father did, regardless of what his descendent will one day do, he’s just a boy who needs a home. Who needs someone to care for him. Surely you know how that feels.”

I glance down at the boy, who can’t be much older than seven or eight years old, and think of another thin, dark-haired boy, years ago and centuries into the future, who was once scared and alone as well.

And as my parents gather Cass’s luggage and we all head for the carriage—laughing and smiling and holding one another tightly—I place a hand on the boy’s shoulder. He looks up at me, his eyes wide with uncertainty, and I let my face relax into a smile.

“Welcome to the family, Abe.”