Chapter Eight
A long, piercing scream jolted Leah wake. Had she fallen asleep again? She hadn’t meant to. Where was she? It was dark. Who screamed? The gentle purr of Theodora reassured her, along with the glowing red numerals of her clock radio. The sound of tire wheels screeching and her brother shouting, “Floor it, they’re getting away!” emphasized it was a normal Thursday with her father and brother indulging in their love of crime dramas.
Who would have thought such things would offer comfort? Occasionally, the local paper would run stories about teens helping in Third World countries or after natural disasters. The central theme was how grateful they’d become for what they had after such an experience. Usually, they joked about things like cell phones, hair dryers, or the Internet. There was so much more to miss, such as basic laws to prevent your neighbor from burning your house down and trying to do likewise to you.
Pushing up in her bed, she gathered a few pillows to plump behind her back and placed Theodora in her lap. The cat promptly curled herself into a circle and began purring. Scratching the feline’s head, Leah tried to figure out what made people act in horrific ways.
Some experts would say it was because the villagers were uneducated and easily manipulated by their fear, which was true to an extent. Leah had experienced enough mean-girl spite to want to avoid it, but she certainly didn’t consider herself ignorant. Centuries later, people still resorted to genocide, while ethnic groups had been living in harmony, often intermarrying, until one charismatic and driven individual decided it was wrong.
Miss Santiago had explained how throughout history there seemed to be a need for an enemy for people to hate. Politicians, ministers, and advertisers capitalized on it. The enemy kept changing. Americans used to hate the Brits. Now, they were übercool, especially their accents. Before she’d been born, the Russians were bad news. They, too, had morphed into some sort of distant neighbor who was both mysterious and intriguing.
Depending on which group you belonged to, you hated the Jews, the gays, the Democrats, or anyone who didn’t claim to be a Christian. The general impression was that different was bad and dangerous. Leah sighed. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. In a high school of more than three thousand students, the majority of them tried to be the same.
The school did its part by issuing uniforms. Even if it hadn’t, a uniform policy would have happened in a more insidious fashion. The popular crowd would have set the fashion tone, and those who could copy it would. Those who chose not to or couldn’t afford the brands, would earn sly insults that sometimes sounded like compliments, but everyone would know better. Without fashions to comment on, the popular crowd liked to ridicule the actual bodies wearing the clothing. No one ever came out well, either.
The door cracked, letting in some hall light as her mother peeped in. “You’re awake.”
“Yeah.”
Leah’s sister, Nora, always joked that their mother stated the obvious, which was often true. The obvious wasn’t that bad. Her mother slipped into the room, leaving the door slightly ajar. Yellow light spilled in, a slice highlighting her wood floor, leaving the rest of the room in shadows.
Her mother smoothed out a place on her bed before perching on the edge. “Could you use some company?”
Nora would have pointed out to their mother that she’d already taken a seat before she asked the question. “Yes, I could use some company.” It would be nice to have conversations that made sense instead of cryptic inferences to a past she did not remember.
Her mother patted her leg under the cover. “I miss talking to you. I know part of it is my fault because I am gone so much, working and trying to go to school, but I do remember when we used to sit and talk.”
“Me, too.” The image of them sitting around the kitchen table preparing a meal and chatting came to mind. They used to work together to prepare supper. Even Ethan had contributed. Somehow, that had slipped away as their schedules changed, and they’d started eating more sandwiches and pizza. “When did that stop?”
“I’d say about four years ago. The same time I decided I wanted to be a nurse. I knew there would be sacrifices to get there, but I didn’t realize it would mean cutting out our time.” Her voice stumbled on the last two words.
The darkness made it hard to distinguish whether her mother was close to tears or just tired. “It’s still our time. Anything you want to talk about?”
Her mother forced a laugh. “Tons. What were you thinking about when I came in?”
Leah’s hand stilling on Theodora caused the feline to turn her head into her palm, her way of insisting the petting continue. Message noted, she continued to stroke the cat. “I was trying to figure out why people tend to hate people that are different. Why the kids in our school are so anxious to conform to whatever is the accepted norm even if they think it is BS? Why does it matter if someone is different?”
Her mother’s hand tightened on her leg for a second. “It really doesn’t matter if people are different. It is preferable. Can you imagine if everyone were pianists? There’d be no one to play the violin, fix your car, or examine your sick child. Currently, there is a perception that to be different is wrong. The people who resist being different have some strange agenda that usually makes sense only to them. Think about ancient times, when people worshipped several deities at once. You might have been friends with a person who followed Zeus, while you were an Artemis devotee.”
The image of Stella and a few other friends in togas amused her. “It’s like that with music. A few friends like country, others jazz, and still others classical, and yet we can still talk. I probably wouldn’t want to go to a concert with them. Then again, maybe I would just for the experience.”
“It does my heart good to hear you say such a thing. Makes me think your father and I did something right.” Her voice had started low and melodious. It grew a little thin at the end, as if she were fighting back emotions.
Pushing Theodora out of her lap, Leah bent toward her mother and opened her arms. They embraced, with Leah resting her head on her mother’s shoulder. “You guys did a lot right. The fact I don’t feel the need to hate any group is a major point in your favor.”
Her mother tightened the hug. It didn’t hurt. Leah stretched her fingers and toes and flexed her muscles, causing her mother to ask, “What are you doing?”
“Just checking. Nothing hurts anymore. I think I’m well enough to go to school tomorrow.” Leah knew she was weird. She actually wanted to go to school. For the most part, she liked it. What else was she going to do? Hanging around watching daytime television was not an option. Thinking of school reminded her of her friend. “What happened to Stella?”
Her mother released her and leaned back on her hands. “Oh, your father had to drive her home.” In the dim light, her exaggerated expression of rolled eyes and wry smile were visible. “I imagine he debriefed her about jumping centuries, magickal healing elixirs, and such. He has a way of making the oddest things sound believable. He convinced me, right? A witch married to a Bible-thumper.”
Leah never thought of her father as being persuasive. He certainly was intelligent and rational. Hard to imagine what types of conversations her parents had had. Still harder for her to understand was why her father had knowingly dated a witch. “Maybe he thought he’d convert you.”
“I doubt that.” Her mother shook her head. “We never talked of religion, his or mine. We never even…”
“Hold that thought,” Leah warned. “I want to think of you as my parents, not some rebellious, wild college students who did things I don’t want to hear about.”
Her mother’s laughter washed over her, light and lilting. “Leah, Leah, you’re being silly. You don’t want to hear about how your father and I were crazy mad in love? All we could think of was when we’d be together next. When we were together, we made love so passionate the Love Goddesses applauded us.”
“Mom,” Leah pretended to complain. “Please, you are traumatizing me.”
Her mother bounced on the bed a little, overcome with mirth. Leaning forward, she touched Leah’s shoulder. “You know, we still do.”
“Argh.” Leah covered her ears. This wasn’t news to her, since it was a small house, but she pretended to be astounded. “Years of therapy in my future.”
Her mother pried her hands off her ears. “Listen, sweetie. I want the same for you. It could happen.”
“Yeah, but there is this issue with staying in the same century. What if I meet someone when I’m in the past?” Not like that was going to happen, since most of them weren’t big on bathing. They also had all those rules about what women couldn’t do, which was pretty much everything except cooking, keeping house, and having babies.
“I’ve thought about this. This jumping back and forth in time is new to me. I’ve never known anyone doing it, but I’ve read about it. You have a mission to accomplish. Most of us get to work out our destiny in our own century, but you’re special.”
“Yay special,” Leah mock cheered.
“It makes me wonder if there is something only you can do. No one in that time will suffice. Could be there is someone you’re supposed to meet. If so, I would prefer they’d be here in a new version in this century, too. That’s the mother in me talking. I’ve heard of people passing into other times and staying.”
Leah’s heart leaped. She even pinched herself with her ragged fingernails to make sure she was not dreaming. It would have to be a dream if her mother spoke utter nonsense. “What? Are you kidding me?”
“While you were sleeping, darling, I’ve been doing some research. It is difficult. There is the issue of, if a person stays in the past, they will never be born in the future, which means people won’t remember they existed.”
The words tumbled out in a rush, as if she were anxious to push them out or run them by her fast enough she’d not make sense of them, but Leah understood perfectly. She speared one hand through her hair, which felt dirty and greasy, as if she hadn’t washed it for days. Yuk, somehow she was already going medieval. “Wait. You think other people disappeared into time, but we don’t have any records of it because no one remembered them once they disappeared? Is that about it?”
“Pretty much. Still, the universe places us where we are needed, and right now, it needs you in the past.”
Her mother spoke the statement with a mixture of acceptance and bafflement. Probably the same way the ancient Mayan sacrifices had spoken of knowing they were about to be killed and considered it an honor? Wait a minute. She would be the sacrifice, not her mother. That would make her mother…the mother of the sacrifice.
“I don’t want to go in the past or serve a purpose.”
Wrapping her fingers around hers, her mother squeezed her hand. “I don’t want you to go, either. So far, there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop it.”
That’s what she’d thought. Didn’t parents rush in and save their children from things that might hurt them? Goddess knows, her family had tried. Her father had disassembled their metal swing set after she’d taken a header from the sliding board. The swing set hadn’t caused the accident. She had. What she had really tried to do was fly.
All the cartoon witches could fly. She’d figured she should have been able to fly, too. She’d never confessed why she’d fallen. She hadn’t wanted her family to know she’d failed at being a witch. Often, she’d wondered if she were their natural child. Failure to fly had confirmed her adoption status. “You know I used to think I was adopted, just some ordinary child without parents you picked up one day.”
“Really?” Her mother’s voice reflected surprise. “You resembled Nora, and were little like me, but you are the mirror image of your grandmother when she was sixteen.”
“I never saw any photos of Nana when she was young.”
There had been a few in the last ten years. Nana would commandeer the camera and shoot photos, but seldom, if ever, would she be in them. In some ways, she resembled some suspicious tribesman convinced the camera would steal her soul. Her grandmother might have been on the run from the law, too.
Her mother fingered the covers. “I think your grandmother stopped appearing in pictures about the same time my father disappeared.”
Her grandfather had vanished? She’d always assumed he’d died. There was an understanding among all of them that no mention was ever made of his name. Early on, when she’d started kindergarten and the other children had had grandfathers show up for Grandparents’ Day, she had made the mistake of asking where hers was. Nana had locked herself in her room for the duration of the day with a brandy bottle. The sound of soft sobbing had slipped under the door, which had confused Leah. Nana never cried. Her mother had explained that her grandfather was gone, which she assumed was a euphemism for dead.
Among the other students, a few divorced grandmas had used words like horn-dog and old codger to refer to the missing grandfather. Her mother had shushed her, asking her to never repeat the words. If her grandparents had divorced, she had no doubt Nana would have had even more colorful names for her grandfather. All she really knew was his name had been Buell. Her mother’s voice interrupted her musings, making her wonder how long she’d been talking.
“Before he disappeared, your grandfather was the love of your grandmother’s life. Of course, I always thought of them as old since they were my parents, but they weren’t, not really. He was as old as your father is now when he went missing. Before that, they were always laughing, playing, even dancing around the house. Nana loved to take photos. Ironically, it was usually her and Dad mugging for the camera. She called him her soul mate, swore she’d searched lifetimes to find him, and to lose him again devastated her. For a few years, I worried she’d never snap out of her depression, but then Nora was born, which started her living again.”
A man disappearing off the face of the earth without a sign was a bit bizarre. It sounded like one of those crime shows, except Grandpa would not have been a sexy young woman trusting the wrong people in her effort to be a star. “Didn’t you look for him?”
“We did. Called the police, for all the good it did us. They implied he was a grown man who could go where he pleased, and it pleased him to be elsewhere. Nana called in the pagan community. We did physical searches, posted missing signs, ran ads in the newspaper and on the Internet. Several times that year, Nana went down to the coroner to look at unclaimed bodies fitting my father’s description. They never were he. The search took its toll on her. Eventually she took down all the pictures of him around the house and packed up his clothes.” Her mother’s voice grew hoarse as she wiped a tear away.
Such a disappearance smelled of foul play or even magick. “Do you think he could have been the victim of a hex or magick gone wrong?”
Sniffling, she shook her head, coughed, and then cleared her throat. “You never knew my father, but there was no one he wouldn’t help. He was a jolly fellow, joking with the men, complimenting the women, and playing with the children. He had to be one of the best-loved men in town. No one would have wanted to hurt him. No one.”
“Do you think,” Leah hesitated not wanting to give false hope to an old sorrow, “he fell into a time portal?”
Twisting her hair around her finger, she sat, saying nothing for a few seconds. “Maybe.”
“If so, what about your theory that no one would remember you if you went back in time?” Leah feared she might have raised hope only to dash it down again.
“Well, uh,” her mother started, then looked off to the dark corner. She spoke slowly, more as if she were thinking aloud as opposed to talking to Leah. “I’ve never known anyone who traveled to the past, except for you. My theory isn’t much of a theory, because it hasn’t been tested.”
Actually, it had. Leah realized she was the official time-traveling guinea pig. “It has been tested. I tested it in the last forty-eight hours. Did you ever think you only had two children?” The concept of a person vanishing in a second from the memories of everyone who knew her was staggering. What if for a few moments, her mother really did forget her? Then again, if she came back, wouldn’t she bring back the memory of herself to all who knew her?
The sound of another car chase carried down the hall and into her room. She couldn’t accuse the males in her family of having intellectual television choices. Steepling her fingers, her mother continued to stare at the dark corner. “I can’t remember thinking I only had two kids. Could this be because you keep coming back?”
It was the same thought she’d had, but it didn’t answer anything. “I don’t know what it means. I wonder if it’s like a movie I saw once where all those who died went to a city to live, not unlike any other city, with stores, restaurants, and apartments. As long as people remembered them, they continued to exist, but when people forgot them, they began to fade until they were no more. Your father is like that. He exists because you remember him.”
Theodora bumped against her, signaling she was tired of people ignoring her. Leah picked up the feline and cuddled her a little. Too bad people couldn’t be more like cats and demanded simply what they needed. When someone ignored them, they went to someone else. Eventually, they got what they wanted.
The slice of light on the floor widened as Nana pushed the door open. “What are you girls doing sitting in the dark?”
Leah’s mother turned to the door and motioned her in. “Come in. We are thinking and theorizing. We’ve come up with something to consider.”
Nana entered the room, using her cane to sweep in front of her as if she were blind. Leah realized the low light must have made it difficult for her to see, but then she decided her grandmother was mocking her lack of tidiness. “It’s not that messy.”
Nana reached her bed and eased down on the foot of it. “I never said it was. Makes me wonder why you are so touchy.”
It was better not to debate with Nana. The woman was smarter than anyone she’d ever met, which humbled her, since Nana had never finished high school. The school of hard knocks and an internship at the University of Experience taught Nana all she needed to know. All the same, she had a feeling her grandmother would not enjoy their sudden insight into what may have happened to her husband.
“Mother, Leah and I were talking about her sojourns into another century. While she was gone, none of us had a sense of her being gone or not with us. We didn’t forget her when she physically left us.” Her speech slowed as if she wasn’t sure of her thoughts or was afraid of mentioning her father.
Nana nodded. “I agree. Never forget my Leah.” She reached out to pat her legs outlined by the covers. “Maura, what is your point? I know you must have one, or you wouldn’t have bothered with this long, rambling introduction.”
“I do.” Her mother’s answer was concise. Her head swung to Leah, who nodded a little to encourage her mother to continue. “What if father slipped into another time?”
“Maura.” Nana’s voice grew stronger as she pushed herself up from the bed. “You know better than to speak of your father. You’re just being cruel.”
“Wait,” Leah called, surprised that she would be the one to try to make her headstrong grandmother listen. “I know it hurts, but what if Grandfather somehow fell into a different time? I’ve proved it’s possible.”
Nana swayed a little as she planted her cane for support. “It could be possible. If so, why doesn’t he come back?”
Her mother shrugged. Her grandmother seemed to deflate in front of her. It was up to her to do something. “Maybe he can’t. It’s not a problem of wanting. I never try to go, but then I’m there. When I’m there, I’m usually talking to someone when I disappear again. Guess that won’t do much for my witch reputation.”
Nana appeared to think about what she’d said and made two halting steps to the bed, where she eased herself down again. “I assume there was another you there, which allows you to join and leave at will. For Buell, there is only one him, which keeps him there.”
Her mother reached for her grandmother’s hand. “Dad used to be able to predict better than you.”
“Oh yes,” she agreed. “All he had to do is touch someone’s hand, and he could tell their future. Other times, just their name was enough.”
Leah watched the exchange between the two. She thought she knew where her mother was going.
“What if Dad fell through a portal? He even sought it out because he knew it was part of his destiny,” her mother suggested matter-of-factly.
Yep, only in her family did people casually pass through centuries and regard it as fate. Did non-magickal people pass through time and slowly lose their minds due to their inability to accept such a transition? She accepted it, but it was far from easy, especially knowing she could disappear into the past at any time. It sucked, since she almost had things worked out in this century. Not perfect, but she was getting there.
Emotions shifted across her grandmother’s face in such a rapid sequence it was hard to catalog them all, but the last one appeared to be hope. “It would be like Buell not to tell me, afraid I might stop him, which I would have, if only to keep him selfishly to myself.”
Leah had never seen such vulnerability before, at least on Nana’s face. This woman put fear into high school administrators. “He could have gone ahead to be in place to help me.”
“That’s it.” Nana stamped her cane in agitation. “That’s exactly what Buell did.”
What had she done? The only reason she’d suggested it was because her grandmother had suddenly appeared as fragile as a glass vase teetering on the edge of the table. She didn’t think she’d take her seriously. Her mother’s contented smile signaled she, too, believed her off-the-wall suggestion.
Great, now everyone believed her. When had she graduated to fortune-teller? Wasn’t it enough to try to find a way to convince Lionel she was not the girl who’d jilted him? Now she had to bring Grandfather back with her, or everyone would be disappointed. She’d never ever seen a picture of him. How would she recognize him if she did stumble across him?
A long, piercing scream jolted Leah wake. Had she fallen asleep again? She hadn’t meant to. Where was she? It was dark. Who screamed? The gentle purr of Theodora reassured her, along with the glowing red numerals of her clock radio. The sound of tire wheels screeching and her brother shouting, “Floor it, they’re getting away!” emphasized it was a normal Thursday with her father and brother indulging in their love of crime dramas.
Who would have thought such things would offer comfort? Occasionally, the local paper would run stories about teens helping in Third World countries or after natural disasters. The central theme was how grateful they’d become for what they had after such an experience. Usually, they joked about things like cell phones, hair dryers, or the Internet. There was so much more to miss, such as basic laws to prevent your neighbor from burning your house down and trying to do likewise to you.
Pushing up in her bed, she gathered a few pillows to plump behind her back and placed Theodora in her lap. The cat promptly curled herself into a circle and began purring. Scratching the feline’s head, Leah tried to figure out what made people act in horrific ways.
Some experts would say it was because the villagers were uneducated and easily manipulated by their fear, which was true to an extent. Leah had experienced enough mean-girl spite to want to avoid it, but she certainly didn’t consider herself ignorant. Centuries later, people still resorted to genocide, while ethnic groups had been living in harmony, often intermarrying, until one charismatic and driven individual decided it was wrong.
Miss Santiago had explained how throughout history there seemed to be a need for an enemy for people to hate. Politicians, ministers, and advertisers capitalized on it. The enemy kept changing. Americans used to hate the Brits. Now, they were übercool, especially their accents. Before she’d been born, the Russians were bad news. They, too, had morphed into some sort of distant neighbor who was both mysterious and intriguing.
Depending on which group you belonged to, you hated the Jews, the gays, the Democrats, or anyone who didn’t claim to be a Christian. The general impression was that different was bad and dangerous. Leah sighed. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. In a high school of more than three thousand students, the majority of them tried to be the same.
The school did its part by issuing uniforms. Even if it hadn’t, a uniform policy would have happened in a more insidious fashion. The popular crowd would have set the fashion tone, and those who could copy it would. Those who chose not to or couldn’t afford the brands, would earn sly insults that sometimes sounded like compliments, but everyone would know better. Without fashions to comment on, the popular crowd liked to ridicule the actual bodies wearing the clothing. No one ever came out well, either.
The door cracked, letting in some hall light as her mother peeped in. “You’re awake.”
“Yeah.”
Leah’s sister, Nora, always joked that their mother stated the obvious, which was often true. The obvious wasn’t that bad. Her mother slipped into the room, leaving the door slightly ajar. Yellow light spilled in, a slice highlighting her wood floor, leaving the rest of the room in shadows.
Her mother smoothed out a place on her bed before perching on the edge. “Could you use some company?”
Nora would have pointed out to their mother that she’d already taken a seat before she asked the question. “Yes, I could use some company.” It would be nice to have conversations that made sense instead of cryptic inferences to a past she did not remember.
Her mother patted her leg under the cover. “I miss talking to you. I know part of it is my fault because I am gone so much, working and trying to go to school, but I do remember when we used to sit and talk.”
“Me, too.” The image of them sitting around the kitchen table preparing a meal and chatting came to mind. They used to work together to prepare supper. Even Ethan had contributed. Somehow, that had slipped away as their schedules changed, and they’d started eating more sandwiches and pizza. “When did that stop?”
“I’d say about four years ago. The same time I decided I wanted to be a nurse. I knew there would be sacrifices to get there, but I didn’t realize it would mean cutting out our time.” Her voice stumbled on the last two words.
The darkness made it hard to distinguish whether her mother was close to tears or just tired. “It’s still our time. Anything you want to talk about?”
Her mother forced a laugh. “Tons. What were you thinking about when I came in?”
Leah’s hand stilling on Theodora caused the feline to turn her head into her palm, her way of insisting the petting continue. Message noted, she continued to stroke the cat. “I was trying to figure out why people tend to hate people that are different. Why the kids in our school are so anxious to conform to whatever is the accepted norm even if they think it is BS? Why does it matter if someone is different?”
Her mother’s hand tightened on her leg for a second. “It really doesn’t matter if people are different. It is preferable. Can you imagine if everyone were pianists? There’d be no one to play the violin, fix your car, or examine your sick child. Currently, there is a perception that to be different is wrong. The people who resist being different have some strange agenda that usually makes sense only to them. Think about ancient times, when people worshipped several deities at once. You might have been friends with a person who followed Zeus, while you were an Artemis devotee.”
The image of Stella and a few other friends in togas amused her. “It’s like that with music. A few friends like country, others jazz, and still others classical, and yet we can still talk. I probably wouldn’t want to go to a concert with them. Then again, maybe I would just for the experience.”
“It does my heart good to hear you say such a thing. Makes me think your father and I did something right.” Her voice had started low and melodious. It grew a little thin at the end, as if she were fighting back emotions.
Pushing Theodora out of her lap, Leah bent toward her mother and opened her arms. They embraced, with Leah resting her head on her mother’s shoulder. “You guys did a lot right. The fact I don’t feel the need to hate any group is a major point in your favor.”
Her mother tightened the hug. It didn’t hurt. Leah stretched her fingers and toes and flexed her muscles, causing her mother to ask, “What are you doing?”
“Just checking. Nothing hurts anymore. I think I’m well enough to go to school tomorrow.” Leah knew she was weird. She actually wanted to go to school. For the most part, she liked it. What else was she going to do? Hanging around watching daytime television was not an option. Thinking of school reminded her of her friend. “What happened to Stella?”
Her mother released her and leaned back on her hands. “Oh, your father had to drive her home.” In the dim light, her exaggerated expression of rolled eyes and wry smile were visible. “I imagine he debriefed her about jumping centuries, magickal healing elixirs, and such. He has a way of making the oddest things sound believable. He convinced me, right? A witch married to a Bible-thumper.”
Leah never thought of her father as being persuasive. He certainly was intelligent and rational. Hard to imagine what types of conversations her parents had had. Still harder for her to understand was why her father had knowingly dated a witch. “Maybe he thought he’d convert you.”
“I doubt that.” Her mother shook her head. “We never talked of religion, his or mine. We never even…”
“Hold that thought,” Leah warned. “I want to think of you as my parents, not some rebellious, wild college students who did things I don’t want to hear about.”
Her mother’s laughter washed over her, light and lilting. “Leah, Leah, you’re being silly. You don’t want to hear about how your father and I were crazy mad in love? All we could think of was when we’d be together next. When we were together, we made love so passionate the Love Goddesses applauded us.”
“Mom,” Leah pretended to complain. “Please, you are traumatizing me.”
Her mother bounced on the bed a little, overcome with mirth. Leaning forward, she touched Leah’s shoulder. “You know, we still do.”
“Argh.” Leah covered her ears. This wasn’t news to her, since it was a small house, but she pretended to be astounded. “Years of therapy in my future.”
Her mother pried her hands off her ears. “Listen, sweetie. I want the same for you. It could happen.”
“Yeah, but there is this issue with staying in the same century. What if I meet someone when I’m in the past?” Not like that was going to happen, since most of them weren’t big on bathing. They also had all those rules about what women couldn’t do, which was pretty much everything except cooking, keeping house, and having babies.
“I’ve thought about this. This jumping back and forth in time is new to me. I’ve never known anyone doing it, but I’ve read about it. You have a mission to accomplish. Most of us get to work out our destiny in our own century, but you’re special.”
“Yay special,” Leah mock cheered.
“It makes me wonder if there is something only you can do. No one in that time will suffice. Could be there is someone you’re supposed to meet. If so, I would prefer they’d be here in a new version in this century, too. That’s the mother in me talking. I’ve heard of people passing into other times and staying.”
Leah’s heart leaped. She even pinched herself with her ragged fingernails to make sure she was not dreaming. It would have to be a dream if her mother spoke utter nonsense. “What? Are you kidding me?”
“While you were sleeping, darling, I’ve been doing some research. It is difficult. There is the issue of, if a person stays in the past, they will never be born in the future, which means people won’t remember they existed.”
The words tumbled out in a rush, as if she were anxious to push them out or run them by her fast enough she’d not make sense of them, but Leah understood perfectly. She speared one hand through her hair, which felt dirty and greasy, as if she hadn’t washed it for days. Yuk, somehow she was already going medieval. “Wait. You think other people disappeared into time, but we don’t have any records of it because no one remembered them once they disappeared? Is that about it?”
“Pretty much. Still, the universe places us where we are needed, and right now, it needs you in the past.”
Her mother spoke the statement with a mixture of acceptance and bafflement. Probably the same way the ancient Mayan sacrifices had spoken of knowing they were about to be killed and considered it an honor? Wait a minute. She would be the sacrifice, not her mother. That would make her mother…the mother of the sacrifice.
“I don’t want to go in the past or serve a purpose.”
Wrapping her fingers around hers, her mother squeezed her hand. “I don’t want you to go, either. So far, there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop it.”
That’s what she’d thought. Didn’t parents rush in and save their children from things that might hurt them? Goddess knows, her family had tried. Her father had disassembled their metal swing set after she’d taken a header from the sliding board. The swing set hadn’t caused the accident. She had. What she had really tried to do was fly.
All the cartoon witches could fly. She’d figured she should have been able to fly, too. She’d never confessed why she’d fallen. She hadn’t wanted her family to know she’d failed at being a witch. Often, she’d wondered if she were their natural child. Failure to fly had confirmed her adoption status. “You know I used to think I was adopted, just some ordinary child without parents you picked up one day.”
“Really?” Her mother’s voice reflected surprise. “You resembled Nora, and were little like me, but you are the mirror image of your grandmother when she was sixteen.”
“I never saw any photos of Nana when she was young.”
There had been a few in the last ten years. Nana would commandeer the camera and shoot photos, but seldom, if ever, would she be in them. In some ways, she resembled some suspicious tribesman convinced the camera would steal her soul. Her grandmother might have been on the run from the law, too.
Her mother fingered the covers. “I think your grandmother stopped appearing in pictures about the same time my father disappeared.”
Her grandfather had vanished? She’d always assumed he’d died. There was an understanding among all of them that no mention was ever made of his name. Early on, when she’d started kindergarten and the other children had had grandfathers show up for Grandparents’ Day, she had made the mistake of asking where hers was. Nana had locked herself in her room for the duration of the day with a brandy bottle. The sound of soft sobbing had slipped under the door, which had confused Leah. Nana never cried. Her mother had explained that her grandfather was gone, which she assumed was a euphemism for dead.
Among the other students, a few divorced grandmas had used words like horn-dog and old codger to refer to the missing grandfather. Her mother had shushed her, asking her to never repeat the words. If her grandparents had divorced, she had no doubt Nana would have had even more colorful names for her grandfather. All she really knew was his name had been Buell. Her mother’s voice interrupted her musings, making her wonder how long she’d been talking.
“Before he disappeared, your grandfather was the love of your grandmother’s life. Of course, I always thought of them as old since they were my parents, but they weren’t, not really. He was as old as your father is now when he went missing. Before that, they were always laughing, playing, even dancing around the house. Nana loved to take photos. Ironically, it was usually her and Dad mugging for the camera. She called him her soul mate, swore she’d searched lifetimes to find him, and to lose him again devastated her. For a few years, I worried she’d never snap out of her depression, but then Nora was born, which started her living again.”
A man disappearing off the face of the earth without a sign was a bit bizarre. It sounded like one of those crime shows, except Grandpa would not have been a sexy young woman trusting the wrong people in her effort to be a star. “Didn’t you look for him?”
“We did. Called the police, for all the good it did us. They implied he was a grown man who could go where he pleased, and it pleased him to be elsewhere. Nana called in the pagan community. We did physical searches, posted missing signs, ran ads in the newspaper and on the Internet. Several times that year, Nana went down to the coroner to look at unclaimed bodies fitting my father’s description. They never were he. The search took its toll on her. Eventually she took down all the pictures of him around the house and packed up his clothes.” Her mother’s voice grew hoarse as she wiped a tear away.
Such a disappearance smelled of foul play or even magick. “Do you think he could have been the victim of a hex or magick gone wrong?”
Sniffling, she shook her head, coughed, and then cleared her throat. “You never knew my father, but there was no one he wouldn’t help. He was a jolly fellow, joking with the men, complimenting the women, and playing with the children. He had to be one of the best-loved men in town. No one would have wanted to hurt him. No one.”
“Do you think,” Leah hesitated not wanting to give false hope to an old sorrow, “he fell into a time portal?”
Twisting her hair around her finger, she sat, saying nothing for a few seconds. “Maybe.”
“If so, what about your theory that no one would remember you if you went back in time?” Leah feared she might have raised hope only to dash it down again.
“Well, uh,” her mother started, then looked off to the dark corner. She spoke slowly, more as if she were thinking aloud as opposed to talking to Leah. “I’ve never known anyone who traveled to the past, except for you. My theory isn’t much of a theory, because it hasn’t been tested.”
Actually, it had. Leah realized she was the official time-traveling guinea pig. “It has been tested. I tested it in the last forty-eight hours. Did you ever think you only had two children?” The concept of a person vanishing in a second from the memories of everyone who knew her was staggering. What if for a few moments, her mother really did forget her? Then again, if she came back, wouldn’t she bring back the memory of herself to all who knew her?
The sound of another car chase carried down the hall and into her room. She couldn’t accuse the males in her family of having intellectual television choices. Steepling her fingers, her mother continued to stare at the dark corner. “I can’t remember thinking I only had two kids. Could this be because you keep coming back?”
It was the same thought she’d had, but it didn’t answer anything. “I don’t know what it means. I wonder if it’s like a movie I saw once where all those who died went to a city to live, not unlike any other city, with stores, restaurants, and apartments. As long as people remembered them, they continued to exist, but when people forgot them, they began to fade until they were no more. Your father is like that. He exists because you remember him.”
Theodora bumped against her, signaling she was tired of people ignoring her. Leah picked up the feline and cuddled her a little. Too bad people couldn’t be more like cats and demanded simply what they needed. When someone ignored them, they went to someone else. Eventually, they got what they wanted.
The slice of light on the floor widened as Nana pushed the door open. “What are you girls doing sitting in the dark?”
Leah’s mother turned to the door and motioned her in. “Come in. We are thinking and theorizing. We’ve come up with something to consider.”
Nana entered the room, using her cane to sweep in front of her as if she were blind. Leah realized the low light must have made it difficult for her to see, but then she decided her grandmother was mocking her lack of tidiness. “It’s not that messy.”
Nana reached her bed and eased down on the foot of it. “I never said it was. Makes me wonder why you are so touchy.”
It was better not to debate with Nana. The woman was smarter than anyone she’d ever met, which humbled her, since Nana had never finished high school. The school of hard knocks and an internship at the University of Experience taught Nana all she needed to know. All the same, she had a feeling her grandmother would not enjoy their sudden insight into what may have happened to her husband.
“Mother, Leah and I were talking about her sojourns into another century. While she was gone, none of us had a sense of her being gone or not with us. We didn’t forget her when she physically left us.” Her speech slowed as if she wasn’t sure of her thoughts or was afraid of mentioning her father.
Nana nodded. “I agree. Never forget my Leah.” She reached out to pat her legs outlined by the covers. “Maura, what is your point? I know you must have one, or you wouldn’t have bothered with this long, rambling introduction.”
“I do.” Her mother’s answer was concise. Her head swung to Leah, who nodded a little to encourage her mother to continue. “What if father slipped into another time?”
“Maura.” Nana’s voice grew stronger as she pushed herself up from the bed. “You know better than to speak of your father. You’re just being cruel.”
“Wait,” Leah called, surprised that she would be the one to try to make her headstrong grandmother listen. “I know it hurts, but what if Grandfather somehow fell into a different time? I’ve proved it’s possible.”
Nana swayed a little as she planted her cane for support. “It could be possible. If so, why doesn’t he come back?”
Her mother shrugged. Her grandmother seemed to deflate in front of her. It was up to her to do something. “Maybe he can’t. It’s not a problem of wanting. I never try to go, but then I’m there. When I’m there, I’m usually talking to someone when I disappear again. Guess that won’t do much for my witch reputation.”
Nana appeared to think about what she’d said and made two halting steps to the bed, where she eased herself down again. “I assume there was another you there, which allows you to join and leave at will. For Buell, there is only one him, which keeps him there.”
Her mother reached for her grandmother’s hand. “Dad used to be able to predict better than you.”
“Oh yes,” she agreed. “All he had to do is touch someone’s hand, and he could tell their future. Other times, just their name was enough.”
Leah watched the exchange between the two. She thought she knew where her mother was going.
“What if Dad fell through a portal? He even sought it out because he knew it was part of his destiny,” her mother suggested matter-of-factly.
Yep, only in her family did people casually pass through centuries and regard it as fate. Did non-magickal people pass through time and slowly lose their minds due to their inability to accept such a transition? She accepted it, but it was far from easy, especially knowing she could disappear into the past at any time. It sucked, since she almost had things worked out in this century. Not perfect, but she was getting there.
Emotions shifted across her grandmother’s face in such a rapid sequence it was hard to catalog them all, but the last one appeared to be hope. “It would be like Buell not to tell me, afraid I might stop him, which I would have, if only to keep him selfishly to myself.”
Leah had never seen such vulnerability before, at least on Nana’s face. This woman put fear into high school administrators. “He could have gone ahead to be in place to help me.”
“That’s it.” Nana stamped her cane in agitation. “That’s exactly what Buell did.”
What had she done? The only reason she’d suggested it was because her grandmother had suddenly appeared as fragile as a glass vase teetering on the edge of the table. She didn’t think she’d take her seriously. Her mother’s contented smile signaled she, too, believed her off-the-wall suggestion.
Great, now everyone believed her. When had she graduated to fortune-teller? Wasn’t it enough to try to find a way to convince Lionel she was not the girl who’d jilted him? Now she had to bring Grandfather back with her, or everyone would be disappointed. She’d never ever seen a picture of him. How would she recognize him if she did stumble across him?