“Hush now, all of you,” she said, and doused the lamp the rest of the way. “I’ll duck around and come up from the creek, but there’s going to be words for me in there.” In the thin moonlight, I could see her turn to Anthony. “Buck up, AC. This was going to happen sooner or later.”
We stood and waited, silent and uncomfortable, until Peggy made her way around to the far side of the house and apologized to her furious father. When the door slammed, Wald spoke up. “I’ll hie out,” he said. “’Tis a fine night for walking. Goodnight to all.”
Lilly relit the lamp, but kept it shrouded.
“Did you know about this?” said Anthony, more to her, I guess, than me.
Lilly sat down. I couldn’t see her face from this angle, but I could imagine her sympathetic expression. She was always the one who wanted to make things okay. “Peg never told me anything,” she said. “But that’s not what you mean, is it? Oh, Anthony, didn’t you know there was something coming? She was getting cool, wasn’t she? I haven’t seen her let you hold her hand in weeks.”
“I thought … I thought it was just her dad and mom and all that,” he said.
“Maybe she’ll change her mind,” I put in. “Maybe if you … give her time.” The words sounded stupid the moment they came out of my mouth. I don’t know what I had been thinking. I didn’t know about how girls made up their minds in the first place, much less about how they changed them.
He stood up. “Forget it,” he said. “I’m finished. Why should I keep sneaking out for you people? You know how much trouble I got in when I came back muddy and half starved from a week in that madman’s stupid cave? But did any of you ask? Time? I’m taking some time, all right,” he said. “I’m taking it all. I’m going home and getting rid of that stupid mirror.” He turned to me. “Better figure out something to do, pal, because you’ve been hanging around long enough.”
“That’s hardly fair,” said Lilly. “Kenny is trapped with us. You can’t—”
“You’re right, he’s trapped.” He turned to me. “You’re trapped, Kenny. Might as well face it. They’re not saying it, but they’re tired of nursemaiding you here and there. If I were you, I’d just pick a decade. You’re an orphan boy now, kid, a hobo. Better get used to it.”
He stomped upstairs and thrust himself into the mirror.
“Oh, Kenny,” said Lilly after a few breaths of stunned silence. “It’s not true, what he said. We feel for you very much, Peg and I. And Anthony. He just isn’t himself right now.”
“He’s kind of right, though,” I said. “I can’t go on this way. I have to get home or—something.”
She didn’t have much to say to that, and just stood for a moment pursing her lips. “I suppose I’d better be going. It’s late. You should sleep, Kenny. Everything will seem different in the morning.”
Despite her advice, I didn’t get much sleep, but she was right. In the morning, everything was different.
Two
That night, I stayed up late and killed two sets of flashlight batteries finishing my letter to Luka.
At five in the morning in the predawn light, I wrote my last line and began to pack up. I don’t know where I thought I was going. Wald’s lean-to? Ten years on? Ten years back? As I folded up the few extra clothes I had come with, and which I had been rotating through as Peggy sneaked them into her laundry, I tried to run through my choices. Lilly’s family sounded the nicest. In the middle of the Great Depression, they didn’t have much, but of all the mirror kids, she seemed the happiest. She was an only child whose parents had always wanted another. Maybe they’d adopt me.
Stupid. Never work. And I didn’t think I could keep going without television.
Staying with Peggy was out. Even without Anthony’s blow-up I had sensed my welcome wearing thin. Her mother and father had been in a constant battle ever since the war, each skirmish usually resulting in her mother taking off for her sister’s place for a week, leaving her father to drink, shout, and punch the wall.
Hanging out in Anthony’s time was the least appealing idea of all, but at least I’d be closest to home. I could keep checking out the mirror and hope that it would end up on dry land before my year was over.
My watch showed almost six by the time I had erased all signs of my presence. I had twenty minutes before Lilly poked her head through the mirror to see me on her way to her morning chores. I headed out across Manse Creek with a shovel borrowed from the carriage house and found the place where I was supposed to bury the box. Maybe when Luka found it in 1987, she could look up my parents and tell them. Not that they’d believe her. Hi, remember your son that disappeared ten years ago? He and I used to time travel through a mirror in your old house. He’s not dead, but he’s in his forties or fifties by now.
I lay the box in its hole next to a midsized tree that would be a gnarled giant in thirty years, and looked at it for a long time before covering it up.
It was only when I had patted down the loose dirt on top that I realized I wasn’t finished digging yet. It’s funny when I look back at this now, just a year later, and think about all the things I didn’t realize then, the questions I didn’t ask. Why didn’t I find out more about Lilly? Why didn’t I try to figure out how Peggy was going to disappear, or how a newspaper from 1947 was going to end up wrapping a dead baby that might be from many years before? Why didn’t I wonder how Luka’s initials were already carved into a piece of wood that I found not long after arriving in this time?
That last one I did finally start wondering about. Took me long enough.
The initials. She had carved them. We saw them when we dug the tabletop up in 1977. I saw them again in this year. So she had been back further.
Trembling with anticipation, I walked to where I remembered her July box was supposed to be, next to a large, half-buried rock, and without another moment’s thought, began to dig with mad energy. It was impossible that the box would be there. Wasn’t it? But I knew it was there in 1977, which meant she had buried it further in the past than my home time. Surely that meant that sooner or later, sometime before the year was over, she was going to travel again. And if she was traveling back, why stop at 1967? Why not go back far enough that I could actually use whatever it was she had to tell me?
“Hi.”
Startled, I almost dropped the shovel.
A tall, slim man in neat clothing had climbed up from the creek bed. I didn’t recognize him, but that wasn’t saying much. The area was a lot less populated than it would be in my time, and I had tried to avoid the few farmhands and landowners I saw. Kingston Road wasn’t far, and there were a lot more houses and people there, but in the forties Manse Valley had more cornfields than commuters.
“I, ah … ” The man gestured behind him. “I thought I’d take a walk. It’s nice around here. Not a lot of people.” He looked down at the hole I had been digging. “Treasure hunt?” His clothes didn’t look like what you’d wear if you were going to take a walk along a creek. White shirt, pressed grey suit, jacket slung across his arm, yellow tie, and a fedora.
“Kind of a time capsule,” I said, hoping they had such things back in the forties.
He grinned. “Oh, like at the World’s Fair? That’s keen. When did you bury it?”
“A couple of years ago.” I dug my shovel into the dirt again. Its weight felt reassuring.
“Oh, yeah? Isn’t it a little early to dig it up? Don’t you want to wait a few years?” He held up his jacket and took out a cigarette case and a lighter.
I continued digging, but kept my eyes on him. What was he doing here? “We’re moving soon,” I said. “My dad bought a house in the city. I don’t want to leave it here.”