THIRTEEN

 

 

August 4th, 2018

Boise, Idaho

 

DUSTER KENDAL DROPPED the map off on a table in the massive preparation cavern under the Warm Springs institute buildings and went out into what they all called the Living Room.

He knew that his wife Bonnie and Dawn Edwards would be there, since from this time he had only been gone the ten minutes it took him to prepare, the slightly over two minutes to live the nine years in the past, and the few minutes to walk back to the Living Room area of the cavern under the mansion.

Bonnie and Dawn were both sitting at a long kitchen counter, talking. A fire was burning lightly in the huge stone fireplace that dominated the far wall, and no one was using the dozen couches and chair arrangements that filled the area between the fireplace and the kitchen with its long, granite-topped counter.

The Living Room area just seemed to be the center hub of everything under the institute and for the going and coming of travelers to other dimensions. They had built it for that purpose, actually, back in 1880. Duster liked the area, felt comfortable here.

Bonnie and Dawn both glanced up at him and Bonnie smiled.

Bonnie was as stunning as ever, in her light summer blue blouse, long brown hair that was pulled back and tied, and jeans. She was about two inchers shorter than his six-foot height and she carried herself with a force. She had been his partner for more centuries than he wanted to imagine and he loved everything about her. Even with all the time they had lived in other timelines, both of them were in their mid-thirties in this time.

“Any luck?” Dawn asked.

She was shorter than Bonnie, but also had long brown hair like Bonnie. Dawn and her husband Madison had been the first two Bonnie and Duster had taken back into the past with them. The two of them were major historians and had written many books from their research trips into the past.

Dawn and Madison loved the Monumental Lodge and always stayed and ran the lodge every time they went to a different timeline and built it in 1902. In fact, he had just said goodbye to Dawn and Madison when he left the lodge in the past.

They usually had a number of children and raised them in the lodge, not vanishing from that timeline until the kids were up and out, and leaving their share of the lodge to their kids.

But saying goodbye to Dawn in the other timeline and seeing her sitting here now sometimes felt odd. Jumping through time into varied timelines got complicated like that.

Damn, he had missed Bonnie, her wonderful smile, her beautiful brown hair, and those eyes that kept him intrigued all the time. Even after thousands of years together, he couldn’t believe he was still madly in love with her.

He knew that to her, he had only been gone twenty minutes or so. To him, he hadn’t seen her in years.

He walked over and kissed her, then pointed to the showers. “It was a long ride from the lodge. I’ll take a shower and tell you all about what I found.”

“Good plan,” Bonnie said, smiling and pretending to wave her hand at his smell.

He laughed and turned away.

“How many years?” she asked.

“Nine,” he said without turning around.

Again he heard her wonderful laugh.

“Denver poker games that good?” she asked.

“Wonderful,” he said, as he walked to the showers. “Just wonderful.”

After his shower, Duster told them about his trip, mostly focusing on the Grapevine Valley and how absolutely nothing was there.

Nothing.

As he expected it would, that got both Dawn and Bonnie even more interested, especially since Bonnie had gone with him to the condo at the Grapevine Springs Resort and they had really enjoyed it.

And they had enjoyed learning about the history of the old town in the museum there, even though they had never visited it in the past.

“I have some contacts at the Idaho Historical Society,” Dawn said after they had talked for a while. “I’ll get them and two of our researchers upstairs working on this and bring what I find to our meeting in a month or so at the lodge. We should be able to find out exactly where and when the information was planted. And maybe who did it.”

Duster could only nod to that. He hated when someone made up history. Real history was wonderful enough on its own without people fabricating it just to make money off a ski resort.