As it turned out, she didn’t need to know the exact words. She only needed to write what came to her—because that’s what had already happened.
She placed the note in a small envelope and sealed it. She didn’t worry about DNA or fingerprints because she knew her father wouldn’t turn it over to the police. He loved his daughter too much.
SIXTY-FIVE
In the police holding cell, Adeline had lunch with her father, Elliott, Hiro, and Constance.
In her pocket, she kept the short note instructing her father to look under the table. She would deposit that under one of the plates, in the center of the table, just before leaving.
Halfway through lunch, she reached beneath the table and taped the small envelope to the underside. It was a tiny action that would have a huge impact, a gavel slamming on the judge’s bench, the sentence as much as certain.
What hurt her the most was the hope she saw in him. Here, during lunch, he was a wrongfully accused man searching for the truth that would set him and his daughter free and identify the person who had killed the woman he loved.
By the end of the day, he would be a confessed murderer, disgraced and destined to be separated from his family forever.
*
After lunch, Adeline waited for the call she knew was coming.
It was mid-afternoon when her phone rang. It was Elliott, and he was drunk and hysterical.
His long-time friend’s confession had rattled him. He cursed, threw accusations, and finally, descended into crying.
To Adeline, it seemed as if the world was breaking. The people around her were breaking. Nora was gone. Her father was in prison. Elliott was shattered. Hiro was battling his demons. Constance was clinging to life.
Adeline knew it was up to her now.
*
A few hours later, she was back in the police holding room with her father. His demeanor was different now. He was a man defeated. Confused. Scared.
And in that room, she was to him what he had been to her back then: a lighthouse in the darkness, a beacon of hope and steadfast support.
“Are you going to ask me if I actually did it?”
“I don’t need to. I already know the answer.”
*
Adeline made her way to the other holding room, where she had spent the day nineteen years ago. Her younger counterpart was waiting there, and as she opened the door, she saw the young woman she had once been, a person who was about to have a huge hole blown in her life.
At home, Adeline showed her to the guest bedroom, which her counterpart eyed wearily before turning to her.
“I want answers.”
“You should sit down, Adeline.”
“I don’t want to sit down.”
Adeline placed a hand on her counterpart’s shoulder, guided her to the bed, and sat beside her.
“What I’m about to say is going to be hard to hear.”
“What is?”
“It’s going to hurt, but I promise you, it’s going to get better. You just have to give it some time.”
Her eyes filled with tears. Adeline saw the hurt she had once felt in her younger self. And she knew that fear was giving way to rage.
“Everyone keeps telling me everything is going to get better. But things just keep getting worse.”
“They always do,” Daniele said. “Before they get better.”
*
In her home office, Adeline entered her father’s weight in the Absolom destination algorithm and stared at the predicted arrival date.
The Late Triassic.
It was very nearly the worst possible outcome. Just the thought of him trying to survive there made her nervous.
To distract herself, she spent the rest of the night researching the epoch. There were pictures of dinosaurs and large reptiles—which were at the top of the food chain at that time. There were jungles and volcanic explosions burying those jungles in lava and simulations of the giant continent of Pangea separating and the world never being whole again. In a way, it was a strange symbol of her life. Two halves breaking apart. Now she was trying to bring them back together. Upstairs, her younger self was trying to pull away. And like the Triassic, she knew how it ended.
*
Adeline woke to an app notification on her phone. Tesseract had found more matches.
She bounded out of the bedroom and down the stairs. In the basement, she closed the door to the server room and logged in to the terminal.
She wasn’t prepared for what she saw. Dozens of matches. She didn’t understand it. It was wrong somehow. It had to be.
But it was all right there. In black-and-white photos. And color photos. And videos. A tapestry that laid a mystery written across time.
Adeline felt as if she was looking at a photomosaic, one that formed a bigger picture. An answer. But it was still missing a piece.
What was happening here was stranger than she ever imagined. And much larger than one woman’s murder.
SIXTY-SIX
B efore she left the next morning, Adeline cracked the door to the guest room and peered in at her younger self. The girl had slept in her clothes, with only a quilt drawn over her. Adeline recognized the quilt. It was one of the three photomosaics her mother had made. Her mother and Adeline had made.
*
In the Absolom holding cell, Adeline showed her father his predicted arrival date. He barely reacted, as if she had told him the weather tomorrow.
“Get your head in the game, Sam. This is a survival exercise now. Don’t just blindly march through this. You need to be studying survival techniques while you’re waiting for departure—and those strategies will vary based on the destination environment.”
It was so strange for her, almost being the parent now. Adeline couldn’t help wondering if that was the way of life: things coming full circle. They certainly were for her.
*
At home, Adeline found her counterpart in the bedroom writing in a notebook. She knew what she was writing. And that her younger self was hurting more than she ever had in her whole life at that moment. She knew what she needed: a firm hand to guide her.
“Don’t you knock?”
“I did knock,” Adeline said.
“But apparently you didn’t wait to barge in here.”
She nodded to the notebook. “Working on something?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“On the contrary. What you’re working on is my only business now.”
Adeline took a step closer and spoke again, her voice steady and calm.
“You’re making a list of the people who might have killed Nora and framed your father.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“True. Nor do I want to. I’m going to help you, Adeline. We’re going to figure it out. Together. And we’re going to get him back.”
Adeline turned and strode out, pausing at the doorway. “But right now, we’re going to have dinner. And we’re going to be civil.”
*
When Adeline’s counterpart left to visit Sam, she texted Elliott, Hiro, and Constance, requesting that they come over.
They met in her basement.
“Let’s start with who killed Nora,” Elliott said. He seemed to be in a perpetual state of being either hungover or slightly inebriated.
“We don’t have time for that right now,” Adeline said.
Elliott stared at her. “I’d say there’s always time to figure out who killed your friend and colleague.”
“We need to focus all of our energy on saving the one friend we can. His name is Sam Anderson, and very shortly, he will be sent back to the Triassic. The only question that matters is how do we get him back?”
Constance squinted. “Well, frankly, forgive me if I’m missing something, but what will we do when we get him back? I mean, he’ll be a wanted fugitive.”
Adeline had never told the group about Absolom Island. She wasn’t about to now. If one of them was the killer, it might be the only place in the world she and her father could escape to.