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September 8th, 2012 The Berkshires
VERITY had kept her eyes closed for the journey, not wanting to watch reality disappear around her—what had vanished were Turner’s arms holding her. She’d heard them talk about this phenomenon, being physically separated as they traveled. But they’d assured her that couldn’t happen while her husband held her tight. So much for their promises.
She kept her eyes shut as she felt tears begin to well up behind her eyelids. What a great start to my honeymoon.
From Turner’s sudden proposal to their whirlwind wedding and the reception, and their glorious first night together, Verity had been riding an emotional roller coaster for days. Then there’d been the anticipation of taking her first trip through time and starting her honeymoon properly. She’d shown better control of herself as a teenager. Now, something had certainly gone wrong, but that was no reason to lose her grip.
With her eyes still closed, Verity felt the breeze blowing against her skin and heard it rustling in the leaves of trees around her. She was likely standing in the woods behind the house in Chickadee. Probably they were searching for her even now. She knew these special watches of theirs had some function to track each other, though no one had bothered to explain exactly how that was supposed to work. Matt had just strapped the thing on her wrist and said she needed to wear it to travel with them.
Still, she wasn’t going to just stand around waiting. Opening her eyes wide, Verity turned her head to take a good look at her surroundings. The night was black and moonless—as her eyes began adjusting she could just make out the dark shapes of softly swaying trees. And past them, the rising hulks of gentle peaks. I’m not in Chickadee anymore.
They’d explained that, since it was Matt’s device being used to set the coordinates for their trip, she and Turner might appear a short distance away—so much for what they knew. She wondered if they had even arrived in two thousand twelve.
She recalled stories of lost hikers from the news and the advice that such people should stay put and not wander around. But that was so rescuers might find them. The only ones who’d know she was missing or would be looking for her would also be able to locate her wherever she went. Supposedly. She decided not to rely on that.
Finding her husband began with getting back to the house in Chickadee, but she didn’t know how far that might be, or in what direction. And she had no way to orient herself. All she could see was pristine nature and no sign of anyone, and she had no desire to wait for sunrise to figure out which way was east, when that wouldn’t tell her anything useful anyway. And it was too dark to see the watch to find the time. They had said that they would automatically arrive at the same time of day they were leaving from—that would make it ten in the evening, if they had known what they were talking about, which Verity doubted—and dawn a long way off.
The wind moaned through the trees, and Verity pulled her light jacket more tightly around her. She needed to get in out of this bitter chill before she did anything else, and she needed to get to civilization—wherever that might be. She had to start moving.
It was too dark to walk fast, and she had to take care with each step, so she wasn’t able to give much thought to her dilemma as she slowly made her way across the forest floor. At least she managed not to trip and fall.
It had been a long time since Verity had been in the real outdoors, but she had not always been a city girl. She’d grown up in Central Massachusetts, on a farm—but she’d left as soon as she could after graduating high school and tried to forget. Now she was grateful to find her background hadn’t left her.
Insects chirping and owls hooting and the other sounds of nocturnal activity didn’t disturb her and, after an initial bout of nervousness, she found it was not too tricky, walking across the uneven ground. It helped that she was dressed sensibly—due in part to the thought they might arrive outside the house, but they had also planned, she and Turner, to leave for a proper honeymoon as soon as they landed.
He hadn’t told her where they were heading, or how, so she’d outfitted herself for traveling by boat, plane, or train. It would do for walking through the woods too, provided she didn’t have to walk too far. Turner had wanted to surprise her for their honeymoon—well, this certainly was a shocker—and supposedly all they’d need would be waiting for them in twenty twelve, including their luggage. At least she had her purse with her, so she wasn’t totally without resources, but she would’ve appreciated a change of clothes. With a sigh she realized she’d been a fool to allow her husband to plan everything.
Verity recalled the fall of two thousand one with a shake of her head—Turner had blithely invited her to travel with him, ahead to the following summer. He hadn’t seemed to realize that just picking up and disappearing from her life, her job, for nine months with no explanation, just wasn’t done. Not by her—not without his offering something more than a fun trip.
As she made her way slowly through the forest, an initial, vague sense of familiarity was growing in the back of her mind until she realized she knew the outline of those hills around her. Even then it took a while before she could dredge up the relevant memories, and then she stopped in surprise. I’m back in the Berkshires.
Not the Berkshires proper, where she’d headed right after graduation, but closer to the border with New York State. In the Taconics, she thought. She had gone to work in similar ski resort country to the east of here—it was there she’d worked in the tourist industry and learned a lot about how to keep things running smoothly, while also working on her associate’s degree in office administration at the community college.
With that minimal accreditation in hand, she’d headed straight for New York City and miraculously landed a job as secretary to the manager of the main branch of the American International State Bank in Midtown Manhattan. She’d never looked back until now. It hadn’t been all that long ago, but it felt like a lifetime.
Verity forced herself to focus. This area was not densely populated, but there ought to be a few walking trails around, and if she found one of those, that ought to lead her to people, roads, and shelter. And now that she had some idea where she was and what she was looking for, she found herself concentrating keenly on her surroundings.
With sharpened senses searching for some sign of an established path somewhere, she had no idea how much time passed before she finally found one, but it must’ve been hours. Then she began to enjoy herself, a bit, and make better time. She still had to go fairly slow—it was still dark, and she’d feel a fool if she tripped and sprained her ankle now. But even though a chill remained in the air, she felt refreshed by the cool breeze. That’ll be because I’m sweating so much from all the exercise. She’d expected marriage to bring some challenges, but she hadn’t imagined anything like this—even though she had known she was marrying a man from the future.
She was definitely starting to rue the change in plans that had led to this disaster. Originally, they’d only been going to take a short hop through time to the summer of two thousand three—and then take a more normal honeymoon. Or so Turner had promised. And the idea of time-traveling had been exciting enough. She should have insisted they stay with that plan, or even on the so-called slow path, which sounded quite nice.
What Verity had wanted was to spend time with her new husband—alone, not on a peculiar double date with Matt and Page, who were taking an experimental and risky journey to ten years in the future. She shouldn’t have allowed herself to be persuaded. Not that resisting Turner was easy.
She let herself dwell on more pleasant thoughts until she caught her first sight of civilization, just as the first feeble shafts of sunlight were slipping over the horizon. Stopping to catch her breath, she cast her gaze past the unpaved parking area at the end of the trail to the highway and across to a proper parking lot, where a few tall light posts still shone dimly and a number of semi-trucks sat in rows. Her eyes fixed for a moment on a diner beyond.
Then she looked down at her watches. Her regular watch and the other agreed that it was six thirty in the morning—so she could likely trust the future watch’s display that said it was the ninth of September, twenty twelve. They were meant to have landed on June first, but considering they had traveled ten years, she didn’t think three months was too far off. The thing also displayed her latitude and longitude. If she’d been able to see that earlier, it would’ve given her a general sense of her location, but she had a more specific idea of that now anyway.
Hopefully the thing would somehow inform the others where she was, but Verity didn’t know how to use it to search for them—and since she looked silly wearing two watches, she took the Travel device off and stuffed it in her bag. Then she had a disturbing thought. What if everyone else landed like we were supposed to, on the first of June? In which case, she would’ve been missing for over three months now—would the others have stopped looking for her? Not Turner, surely.
Shaking her head to stop such silly speculation, Verity started walking again, across the empty road with its eerie quiet and between the giant trucks toward the diner. She needed to find her way back to Chickadee, but first she needed food.
She considered what options she would have after she ate. She didn’t want to hitch a ride with one of the truck drivers she was sure to find inside, and it might be difficult to call a cab to come pick her up out here in the middle of nowhere. There should be a phone at least, and her first call should be to Turner. Unfortunately, they’d both had to give up their cell phones because they were skipping the next ten years. She would try the house in Chickadee first.
Pulling open the wide glass door, she walked into the large vestibule. On the far side sat an ancient cash register on top of a cheap plastic counter, with no one behind it. But she was reassured by the hum of human conversation from beyond. She was even happier to see an old-fashioned pay phone, hanging on the wall past a rack of raincoats.
With a sigh of relief, she dug into her purse and found some change. She slid quarters into the slot, dialed a number she’d memorized, and waited—and continued to wait as the phone kept ringing.
Next she tried their permanent suite at the hotel in Midtown. No answer there, either—but she left a message for Turner with the hotel switchboard.
Shaking her head, Verity replaced the receiver. She wouldn’t give up that easy—Anya and Tate were early risers who might already be up, outside working in the garden or bicycling around the neighborhood. She’d have to find a way to make her own way there.
Before she flipped through that ratty old phone book to try to find a taxi or a car service that would come out here to pick her up though, she decided to eat breakfast and restore her energy. It was going to be a long day, and she’d already had a long and difficult night.
Verity scanned the assorted characters awaiting her as she walked into the dining room—over a dozen truckers in plaid, a harried-looking waitress in a faded blue uniform, and a person who stuck out like a sore thumb among the rest. Half-sitting on a stool at the counter, a very pregnant woman seemed to be in danger of slipping off her seat at any minute.
Seeing someone else outside their natural environment, Verity went up to the stool next to her and smiled. “Do you mind if I sit here?”
The woman smiled back and nodded before returning to an examination of the money in her billfold, or the relative lack thereof.
Verity glanced at the laminated menus littering the counter, then waved to the waitress.
Her piled-high hair trying to escape its pins, the woman walked up with a pad in her hand. “What’ll you have?”
“Two Saturday Specials, please. And I’d like the eggs sunny-side up.” Verity turned to the pregnant lady beside her. “And what can I get for you?”
The woman blushed but didn’t demur from accepting the offer. “The same, please.” She turned to the waitress. “But I’ll take mine scrambled.” Then she returned her billfold to her purse as the waitress scribbled the orders down and took off.
Verity and her new friend watched as the woman circled round the counter, ripped off their order slip, and handed it back to a barely seen cook in the kitchen. The waitress grabbed a half-full pot of coffee then, and came back to turn their mugs over before asking peremptorily, “Coffee?”
Verity grinned. “Yes. Please.”
Her pregnant companion turned to talk as soon as the waitress had taken off again. “Thank you for that. Normally I’d balk at accepting charity, but it’s rather rough at the moment. My situation.”
“Yes, I can see your situation.” Her grin still in place, Verity nodded across the room at the rows of padded benches lined against the windows. “Surely you’d be more comfortable sitting somewhere else. More stable too.”
“I’m sure, but I’m afraid that once I wedged myself in I might not be able to get back out. I’m Karat by the way. Karat with a K.”
Verity blinked. “Your parents named you after a root vegetable?”
The woman grinned. “No, silly. My father was a jeweler. So he named me after the measurement of purity for precious metals. Like gold.”
“My name’s Verity, so I’m in no position to cast stones.”
She noticed the wedding ring on Karat’s finger and decided that was a topic she’d best avoid—she had assumed the woman was a single mother when she first saw her sitting alone in a place like this. I don’t get the impression her husband’s just stepped out to the men’s room. Karat had to have an interesting story to tell there, but Verity wasn’t going to pry into something that wasn’t her business.
The waitress returned and slid four hot plates in front of them, and the women abandoned conversation to tuck into their eggs, bacon, and sausages—as well as their hash browns and toast with jam. Verity wasn’t sure whether to be mortified or gratified that she managed to keep up with the pregnant woman’s appetite. But after a full night of exercise, she wasn’t worried about the calories.
After they’d both cleaned their plates and started on their third mugs of coffee, Karat revived their dialogue with a question. “Are you from these parts or just passing through like me?”
Verity shook her head. “Somehow I doubt that the locals eat here. I’m trying to get somewhere, but I needed fortification first. What about you?”
The woman cast an anxious look around the diner, then spoke in a low voice as if she were afraid of being overheard. “I’m on my way to New York City. Looking for someone.”
Verity couldn’t resist. “Your husband? So am I. Looking for my own husband, not yours. And not in New York City.” Though it might come to that—the Travelers’ Trust had purchased a hotel in Midtown Manhattan, and the time-travelers all had their own rooms there. She’d have to check it out if she didn’t find anyone at the house in Chickadee.
Distracted by her own thoughts, she hadn’t noticed Karat’s eyes were welling up with tears. “My husband is dead.” The woman hastily brushed tears from the corners of her eyes and tried to smile. “I’m hoping to track down an old friend of my husband’s who can help me with my situation.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Karat sniffed. “No reason you should’ve. Now, if it’s not New York you’re headed for, then where?”
Verity shook her head. “Chickadee County. In New York State.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”
“It’s a tiny place between Westchester and Putnam counties, between Mahopac and Katonah. I’m just not sure how I’m going to get there.”
Karat managed to smile at that. “On the way to New York City. I could give you a ride, since I’ll be passing not far from there anyway. We can call it a trade for my breakfast. That way neither of us has to accept any charity.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
Karat blushed. “My car’s a little compact hatchback, and I have a hard time fitting into the driver’s seat. If you wouldn’t mind driving, I could put the passenger seat back for myself.”
Verity thought about how long it had been since she’d driven a car. “You’d be a good deal more comfortable. Alright. When do we leave?”
“After I freshen up. And I’m afraid I might be a while.” She sat down her cup and slid off the stool. “I shouldn’t have had that third mug of coffee.”
As she watched the woman waddle away toward the restroom, Verity felt a swell of hope—she would get to Chickadee sooner than she’d expected. Then she became aware that she’d been playing with the wedding band on her ring finger. It still felt strange there, but she’d get used to it after she found Turner and they had their honeymoon.
If she found him. Thinking about Karat, Verity realized that until she’d discovered what happened, she couldn’t be sure her husband was still alive—she might be just as much a widow as her new companion, only not know it.