As quietly as possible, Adeline returned to her room and lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Why did Daniele want to operate on the Absolom convicts? What would that accomplish? Was she trying to send them to her father’s timeline? If so, why? The people sentenced to Absolom—besides her father—were dangerous individuals. Killers. Mass murderers. Psychopaths. If one came into contact with her father—even if they were the last two people on Earth—what would happen?
The larger question was why Daniele would even want to send them there? There was only one rational explanation: to kill Adeline’s father.
THIRTY-THREE
Outside the cave, Sam crouched, a spear in his hand, waiting as the ground shook.
The earthquake came in waves. Every time Sam thought it was over, the ground rumbled again.
By morning, the world was quiet again, as though the disturbance had simply been night terrors. But the damage was real.
In the forest, the canopy was broken. Trees were felled as though a giant bowling ball had rolled through. Sam’s small cave was also wrecked, the entrance nearly covered in crumbled rock.
The world around him popped and creaked as fallen trees and branches surrendered to gravity.
Sam set about gathering his morning meal of earthworms, but in the forest he found the fern fronds dry, the rainwater from yesterday’s storm shaken to the ground. The dinosaur skull rain barrel had also capsized in the night.
One thing was abundant: wood. In short order, Sam had a fire going. Using a tooth from a seelo skeleton, he sharpened another spear, replacing the one that had impaled the crazy man (and was still buried inside him). Sam hadn’t mustered the courage to check on his body. He had bigger fish to fry. And frying fish was exactly the thing on his mind. The thought of it made his mouth water.
The man’s attack—and the Earthquake—had taught him how dangerous being trapped here was.
He needed to make a new camp, one by the stream, where he had access to fresh water at all times, and food, assuming he could learn to fish.
He needed to move. The thought of moving brought back a memory, of moving from San Francisco to Absolom City, of taking a risk, of moving on with his life.
In the memory, he stood in Nora’s office, staring at the posters on the walclass="underline" one of Einstein, his hair standing on end, the other with a UFO hanging in the air and the words I WANT TO BELIEVE printed in white across the trees under it.
“I hate moving,” Nora said.
“Same,” Sam replied.
Nora began chewing the end of a pen. “It’s Dave’s stuff. Even after all these years, I can’t bring myself to get rid of it.”
“I know what you mean. Sarah’s things are still in boxes. I tried to give some to her sister, but she didn’t want them. Sarah would want me to donate them to Goodwill or a women’s shelter, but I can’t bring myself to do it.”
“It feels like you’re getting rid of them, the memories too.”
Sam nodded. “Yes. It feels wrong. I keep telling myself Adeline will want those clothes—because her mother made some of them—but deep down…”
“You’re hanging on to her.”
“I am.”
“Me too. I can’t throw Dave’s things away. Or sell them. I donated his guitar and video games, but I regretted it that night. I was sick over it. But I also can’t take them to the new house in A-City. It’s like bringing his ghost with me or something. And I can’t imagine packing his stuff up. Going through it again.”
“Let’s make a deal.”
Nora looked up at him. “I warn you: I’m a weak negotiator.”
“Luckily, so am I. Tell you what: we’ll do it together. I’ll come over and help you pack. We’ll take everything to A-City. But not to our houses. We’ll rent a storage unit. Two of them. So that they’ll be with us, there when we’re ready to sort it out.”
“I like that plan.”
That night, they packed Nora’s deceased husband’s things into boxes. They made two groups—those bound for the storage unit and those Nora couldn’t bear to part with, even if they were locked up a few blocks away. The box that would go to her new home was filled with pictures and notebooks with songs Dave had written, a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses he had once bought on vacation, scanned boarding passes from their honeymoon, and a hundred other things that, taken together, wouldn’t bring a nickel at a pawn shop. But as she packed the items in the small box, they brought a slow release of tears from her.
Sam thought that separating the things that represented Dave from the items he had merely owned was cathartic for Nora. She was getting rid of her husband’s things, but she was keeping him in her heart, holding on to things that were so uniquely him.
They ordered Chinese and drank wine from a box, and despite working for hours, Sam thought they had probably said only a dozen words that night. It wasn’t awkward, though sorting through the boxes was a difficult, emotional task. It was simply that it was that easy for the two of them to be together. They were good at working together. Sam knew that. Absolom had proved that. But as the night wore on, he realized they were good at simply being together, when the work was simply their lives—and their lives shared a common thread, a painful, rare one, that few would understand. They were linked. That night, for the first time, Sam felt that link. He wondered if she did too.
In the living room, they sat on pillows on the floor at the coffee table, the plastic cartons of Chinese food and half-filled wine glasses between them. Music from Pandora filled the room, a station seeded with Natalie Merchant. “Fade into You” by Mazzy Star was just starting up.
Nora took a sip of wine. “For months after Dave passed, I was in denial about what happened. It was so sudden. It wasn’t real. Not for a long time. And then it was and life hasn’t really been the same since. Not really. People talk about their greatest fears being public speaking or heights or snakes. For me, it’s none of those things. It’s something like Dave’s death happening again.” She tipped the wine glass up again and swallowed hard. “He would be irate if he knew that.”
Sam reached over and took her hand. He had done it to comfort her, but when she turned and looked at him, he knew she was feeling what he had felt earlier. Half of him wanted to hang on to that because he hadn’t felt it in a long time. The other half of him felt guilty. Because of Sarah. Because, like Nora, he was still holding on. It was the guilty half that let go of Nora’s hand. And he knew Sarah, like Dave, would have been irate about that.
Sam knew he was still a wreck. He couldn’t bring Nora into that. At least, that’s what he had told himself that night. That’s how he had rationalized his pulling away.
Back then, he was a lot like the Triassic looked now: battered but still alive, ready for another day.
With the spear in one hand and a burning torch in the other, Sam set out from the ruined camp. At the tree line, he stopped and decided to take one last look at the prisoner who had tried to kill him, just in case he saw something in the light of day that had been shrouded in the darkness of night. The crazy man’s presence here was still a mystery to Sam.
He walked across the rocky ground, weaving through the green pod bushes to where he had left the other prisoner. His body hadn’t been picked clean, but something—perhaps several somethings—had taken bites out of him. Bugs were already making camp around the corpse, digging in.
Sam was about to turn away when a glint of metal caught his eye. He leaned in, the torch held out, sending the bugs scurrying away. Attached to the prisoner’s femur were three small pieces of metal, like toothpicks. Sam didn’t think they were pins that might have supported his weight. They were too small.
Using the spear, Sam pried the metal pins loose. Tiny letters were printed on each, starting with “ASI.” As in Absolom Sciences Inc. Were they some sort of quantum tracking tag? To make sure the prisoner arrived in the right universe? If so, it had seemed to malfunction. Or, if the intention had been to send him here, it had worked perfectly.