Chapter 33

The ribs still hurt, and it would take a while before Finn felt like his old self. Overall, a few days of sleep and rest had helped. He stared up at his bedroom ceiling and tried to believe in a world where he could make a huge difference. Everything he had experienced in the last few days was scientifically implausible, but he knew it was real. If he could believe in time travel, making the leap to believing in himself shouldn’t be all that hard.

Still, it was. Infinitely hard.

He heard the doorbell chime and Dad’s quick footsteps as he left his paper-strewn office to answer it. Soft muffled voices followed and then a knock on his bedroom door.

“You have a visitor, Finn.”

For a split second he hoped it was Gabi, but it was far too soon. She wouldn’t be up and about for at least another week.

“I came in by way of the front door this time.” It was Aunt Ev, smiling ear to ear. She was less bundled up than when he’d seen her last, and there was no shimmer around her. This put Finn at ease. One Aunt Ev was more than enough.

She pulled his desk chair out and took a seat. “I’m not here to ask any questions.” She nodded at Dad, who was leaning against the doorjamb with his arms crossed and a matching grin on his face. “I don’t even want to know. I’ve always preferred conjecture. I’m just here to say, if you ever need me, for anything”—she opened her eyes wide for emphasis—“I’ll be there. No questions asked. Understand?”

“Yes, I do.” Finn smiled.

Dad excused himself with an offer to whip up lunch. Aunt Ev thanked him and watched him go.

“Good. Now that we’re alone, let me tell you some stories I’ve been dying to tell all these years.”

She went on for at least an hour. Finn had to stop her several times because he was laughing so hard, it made his ribs hurt even more. It was so good to laugh, though—he almost didn’t mind the pain. She told him about her Travels within her own lifespan and even further back. Unlike Gran and Mom, she couldn’t move forward in time, so she made the most of her trips backward. She fired up his tablet and showed him how she’d been caught on film in a Charlie Chaplin movie talking into a cell phone. “That was stupid of me. I accidentally wandered into the shot. I wasn’t actually speaking to anyone of course, just recording some personal notes.” He looked at the grainy video carefully, and sure enough, there was Aunt Ev pausing in the background and speaking into what looked like an early model mobile phone. “Easy enough to explain away as an archaic hearing device and a mumbling old lady, but geez, was your gran mad at me!”

He knew what she was doing. She was showing him the lighter side of what they were. That it wasn’t all the horrors of reliving your family’s worst days over and over again.

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll change things?” he asked. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be avoiding?”

“I’ve been around long enough to know that there’s a persistence to it, Finn. I’m not sure why, but it’s awfully hard to shift the overall arc of time. You make a change and things have a way of working out pretty much the same. Not always, mind you, but I’d say nine out of ten.”

Finn did not like those odds. He had to agree with what Doc said: Aunt Ev seemed a little reckless. Still, she certainly made it sound fun.

“How do you even know it’s turned out the same?”

“Excellent question! Changing the past, it’s supposed to be the perfect crime, isn’t it? There are no witnesses. Once the past is changed, everyone accepts that as true history, right?”

That sounded logical. Finn nodded.

“Except your mother could see where things were altered from the prime imprint. She never would’ve let me get away with doing any lasting damage. She didn’t hesitate to sound the alarm when someone was changing the timeline—namely, Doc, Billie, and the Others. Most of ISTA didn’t believe her. That’s when your parents retreated into themselves. They became quiet and secretive, didn’t trust anyone.”

“How much did they trust you with?”

“Not much at all. But I like it that way. It makes for a much more comfortable existence.”

“So what’s your opinion on—Faith?”

“All I can say is, it’d be a shame for her talent to be put to the wrong use. The daughter . . .” She paused here and corrected herself with a knowing grin. “The child usually has what talents the mother had, and then some. My mother couldn’t travel backward beyond her own time of birth. I can. And your gran was the first one to go forward in time, only it was very sparingly. It cost her dearly, health-wise.”

They both sat quietly for a moment, missing Gran.

Then Ev looked around the room, clearly searching for a distraction, and fixed her gaze on the periodic table of elements on the wall behind him. “You know, I think they’re missing marble.”

“Marble isn’t an element.”

“Well, I can’t claim to know science the way you do. All I’m saying is maybe they should be studying it more closely.”

Finn didn’t want to sound disrespectful, but he knew that marble was made up of ordinary elements like calcium and carbon. Aunt Ev must have read his mind, because she gave him a sly grin.

“Did it help you at all? The grounding stone?”

“I don’t know, maybe . . .” He thought about the pain of being thrown off the node completely. How he thought about the stone . . . but no. It was Gabi. He said her name over and over and somehow there was this great big ball of light . . . Gabi’s dream! It was Gabi’s dream in third grade that brought him home!

“Well, I still say there’s no Traveling without Dorset marble. Where do you think it all went to back in the day, all that stone from the quarry?”

Finn tried to focus. “Well, they sold it.”

“Yep, up and down the east coast. Buildings that still stand till this day.”

Now that he thought about it, Faith had mentioned it too—how in one timeline, she’d been far away from home but had used Dorset marble to Travel. “The Others! That would explain why they can Travel even though they’re not in Dorset.”

“That’s my, what do you call it . . . hypothesis? That’s it.”

So many new ideas floating around in his head—he could only half-grasp them at best. “It can’t be magic stone, Aunt Ev.”

“Magic, science. Call it what you wish. You agree that there is still a lot that humans don’t know about the natural world?”

“Sure . . . I think you may be on to something—”

“Of course I am! Science may not be able to prove that magic exists, but I’m going to guess that it can’t prove it doesn’t.”

“You know, that’s the kind of stuff Gabi says all the time.”

She grinned. “Well now, I’m beginning to like that squawky little bird more and more.”

°°°

The next few days went by in a comforting blur of playing video games, reading, and sleeping. Finn’s thirteenth birthday was a quiet one, but he didn’t mind. He was used to it. Dad got him a cake and Aunt Ev stopped by to help celebrate. She gave Finn some new books on physics and his own vintage watch. Finn raised an eyebrow at her and she immediately put both hands up in surrender. “Got it online. I swear!”

The best part of the day was chatting with Gabi online. She wasn’t able to visit yet, but she was doing much better. Finn kept the conversation light—they talked about books she was reading, and she poked fun at him for being a teenager. He was going back to school before her and promised to fill her in on what happened each day. It was as if they’d both agreed to discuss more important matters in person.

Finn tried several times to Travel. He concentrated and hoped to see the threads of time, the glowing nodes. Each attempt was more disappointing than the last. He had somehow expected everything to fall into place after his birthday, but it didn’t. He kept this piece of information to himself.

Dad barely left the house and continued his work researching Dorset residents in the late 1800s, looking for any other signs of Mom and Faith. He had already found a mention of a widow with a small child who was teaching at the one-room schoolhouse. Their name was one that he and Mom had agreed upon as a code if the worst were ever to happen. That was the only clue so far, though, and Dad was tirelessly searching for more.

Dad didn’t tell Finn specifically what he was trying to find, but Finn saw the pages and pages of old Dorset death records. If Mom stayed and never came back, there would be a record of her death.

Finn comforted himself with logic. She could still find a way out and come visit them, even if she had to return to the past. She could show up here any minute.

She couldn’t ever be truly gone. Could she?

He peeked in on Dad and asked how it was going. The office was still in shambles. Dad saw the look on Finn’s face and assured him he knew what was in each and every teetering pile.

“Over there is information on the cheese factories. They were big in the late 1800s. In that pile is correspondence of summering residents. Dorset had already become a summer boarding resort. Your mother picked a fine time to take up residence. Business booming! She’ll be okay.”

Something about his tone told Finn he was trying to reassure himself more than Finn.

Finn looked up at the shelf behind him for the photo. “Where’s the other picture you had?”

“What picture?”

“Um, never mind.” He wouldn’t press now. Maybe in this altered timeline it caused Dad too much pain to have it there. Finn’s head was beginning to throb.

“You feeling okay? Can I get you something?”

Finn couldn’t help but notice that Dad was making a huge effort. It took a lot to make Dad come out from behind the books, and now Finn understood why. It wasn’t history to him. It never was. Once you lived with a Traveler, everything was now.

The concerned look on Dad’s face reminded him of the day at the quarry. How Dad had called him a man.

Finn had been so wrong about Dad. His father loved him, loved him with his whole heart. Finn wanted to apologize for the way he’d acted, but he knew it would come out as a choked sob. He wasn’t ready to cry yet. He didn’t want to make Dad cry either. The air in the room became even more oppressive.

“I just need some air. I’ll be fine.” He made for the door, pretending to feel much better than he actually did.

“Okay then, I’ll stop and make us some dinner in a bit,” Dad called after him.

“Yep.” Finn held on to the walls for support and made his way to the back door. He needed air, that was it.