He checks the knots and stands. If it weren’t for the fact I know otherwise, I would start wondering if he was deaf.
As he walks to the door, I say, “Lidia is going to take everything from you. Everything.”
Looking back, he says, “Good,” then turns off the light and closes the door.
I test my bindings, but the giant has been thorough and has left no slack for me to work with. There’s no chance I’ll be able to slip them off. I could probably twist and wiggle my way out of the tub, but even if I manage it, I’d still be tied up. There’s not even a cabinet in the room that might contain something I could use to cut myself loose — just a pedestal sink, a toilet, and the tub.
For a while, I hear creaking in the hallway and the occasional muffled voice, but soon enough, silence descends. My mind spins as it throws out idea after idea on how I can turn things around. Each plan I come up with is more outlandish than the last, and even the tamest is not something I’ll likely be able to pull off.
I don’t mean to fall asleep, but other than the sporadic naps I had on the bus, I’ve been awake for going on twenty-four hours. I’m deep in a dark dreamless nowhere when someone shakes me. My eyes shoot open, and for a moment I think I’m in my bed in San Diego. But why can’t I move my hands?
Right.
Kane.
Nineteen fifty-two.
Echo Park.
The tub.
While the bathroom lights are still off, a glow of a twenty-first-century smartphone illuminates Kane sitting on the edge of the bath.
“Time to get up already?” I try to sound tough and disinterested, but doubt that I pull it off.
“Tell me about where you’re from,” he says.
Though my eyes might be open, my brain is still working at half speed. “From? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Where you and my grandmother grew up.”
I hesitate. “She didn’t tell you already?”
He nods with his chin toward somewhere else in the house. “She didn’t. My… other grandma — is that how you say it? — she told me. But I want to hear it from you.”
I should have made the connection before, but life has been running at light speed since Kane stole my chaser and lured us to Los Angeles. The few moments I’ve had to think, I’ve used to look ahead, not back, as I tried to figure out what to do.
The old woman who looked back at me from her chair in the front yard of this very house sixty-three years from now.
The one who wanted more sugar in her lemonade.
Lidia. Though the half dozen decades she lived through rendered her otherwise unrecognizable, that’s why I saw something familiar in her eyes.
From Kane’s tone it’s obvious that the Lidia here in 1952 is nothing like the grandmother he knows.
“All right,” I say. I take a few seconds to gather my thoughts, then as concisely as I can, I describe what life was like in Lidia’s and my original time line. I talk about the monarchy and about the institute and the caste system and the crumbling edges of our society.
He listens intently throughout, and says nothing until I’m done.
“I’ve been hearing the stories since I was a little boy, but the way you describe it doesn’t make it sound anywhere near as nice as the way Grandma did.”
“That’s because she’s from a privileged caste.”
“And you’re not?”
“Not even close.”
He’s silent for a moment, then asks, “Is that why you changed things?”
“Believe it or not, it was an accident.”
His brow creases. “She told me you did it on purpose.”
“The first time, no. The second time, yes.”
“Second time? I don’t understand.”
I tell him the story of the twelve seconds, and how I then used it to bring my dead sister back to life.
When I finish, he sits quietly for nearly a minute before saying, “I believed her stories when I was young, but as I grew up, I tried to convince myself it was all make-believe. But every once in a while, I’d start wondering again. What if the stories were real?” He pauses, seemingly lost in a memory, before going on. “Then I found her journal when I moved in to take care of her. I read her plan for her own rescue. I still didn’t want to believe that she’d been telling the truth all along, but it was hard not to. I thought, I’ll just go to where she wrote that you would be. I’ll see for myself that you didn’t really exist, then I could just move on.”
“April 4,” I say, thinking about the circled date on his calendar.
He nods.
“Where were you?”
He closes his eyes for a second as if he doesn’t want to remember, then lets out a quick, humorless laugh. “On the boardwalk near the pier. I saw you running, but I still didn’t believe it was you. Then suddenly she was there, rushing at you, and the moment she grabbed you, you both disappeared. I could hardly believe it. All her stories had been true.” Another pause. “When I went back to LA, I showed Grandma the journal, and told her what I’d seen. You know what she told me?”
“What?”
He stares at his hand, saying nothing for a moment, then, “She told me it was just stories. That I should forget it. That it wasn’t important.” He looks over at me. “She said that she loved me.”
It’s easy enough to connect the dots from there. For weeks, he did nothing, but then his own love for his grandmother and his desire to give her a second chance finally drove him to return to San Diego, to find me, and to initiate the plan a much younger and — though I don’t think he realized it until he got here — vengeful Lidia had thought up.
As he stands, I say, “She’s going to leave you here.”
He frowns and turns for the door.
“The moment she disappears and undoes what I’ve done, we’ll all be erased. This time line will have never been. Your mother will never have been. And unless she takes you with her, you will never have been.”
He opens the door and leaves.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Pale sunlight streams through the bathroom window when I open my eyes again, but it’s the sound of raised voices that wakens me.
The confines of the tub make it hard to tell exactly where the noise is coming from. One of the voices is Lidia’s so I assume the other is Kane’s, though I guess it could be the near-silent giant.
The distance makes it almost impossible to tell what’s being said. Words here and there are all I get at first, but then Lidia moves closer to the bottom of the stairs.
“Which one of us knows how this works?” she says, annoyed. “I do. So you need to trust I know what I’m doing.”
“But—” Kane begins.
“But nothing! It’ll all be fine. You’ll see for yourself. I’m hurt that you even doubt me.”
Whatever Kane says next is too low for me to hear.
“Good,” Lidia says. “Now help Leonard bring them down.”
Seconds later, two sets of steps pound up the stairs.
They come for me first. Leonard removes the rope from my ankles, but leaves my wrists tied. As I’m jerked up, I’m able to get my good leg under me, but my injured one takes considerable effort to extend.
After I awkwardly climb out of the tub, Leonard manhandles me out of the bathroom and shoves me against the wall, then glances at Kane. “Get the girl.”
Kane enters the room across the hall and returns several moments later with Iffy. She looks scared but otherwise unharmed.
Still, I ask, “Are you okay?”
As she nods, Leonard yanks me off the wall and pushes me toward the stairs.
“Wait!” Iffy says. “His leg. We need to take a look at it!”
“Later,” Leonard says, and gives me another push to keep me moving.
I stumble forward, nearly tripping, but save myself from tumbling down the stairs by quickly leaning into the wall.