“Kate. Earth to Kate.”
“Oh. Sorry. I’m just beginning to worry about school. I mean, I did okay the last few weeks of school last year, but how much of the history that I remember is history? Or literature, for that matter? Did Shakespeare even write Romeo and Juliet? Did Picasso—”
“Did who write what?”
I just stare at him, and he stares back at me, all wide-eyed and innocent, but he doesn’t even last a full second before cracking a grin.
“So not funny, Dad.”
“Hey, I owed you one for the Alphonse joke.”
“Fine, but I’m being serious here.” I grab the plates and carry them to the dishwasher.
“I can see that,” he says as he clears the rest of the table. “But, Kate—it’s not like there are huge, gaping differences. You’ll be okay. You just might have to study a bit more than usual.”
I roll my eyes and jam one of the plates into the bottom rack. “Yeah. Because I have nothing else to do this year, right?”
Dad takes the last plate out of my hand and puts it into the dishwasher, then comes around to give me a long hug. I sink my head into his chest.
“Kate, I will do everything I can to help you. Both with the school stuff and anything else you need. You know that, right?”
I nod and feel myself relaxing the tiniest bit.
“But,” he adds, “I know you don’t want to hear this, and it pains me as a teacher to even suggest it—but maybe Katherine’s right? Maybe you shouldn’t be worrying about school at all right now? Or anything else. Maybe that would decrease the stress factor?”
And I tense right back up. I give him one last squeeze and pull away, pacing toward the windows. We’ve been over this before.
“Maybe,” I say, my hands clenched at my sides. “Or maybe it would just increase the stress factor. Has anyone thought about that? It’s like she expects me to be some sort of machine that just zips around and collects these damned medallions. And I know it has to be done—especially if billions of lives really are at stake here. I mean, I’m not a monster.”
Dad doesn’t say anything, just watches me pace.
“Did you know—” I pull in a long breath. “Did you know I spent a couple of hours researching Maryland’s handgun laws this week? I was going to sign up for firearms training. But you’d have to buy the gun, since I’m not eighteen yet.”
“You hate guns.”
“Yes. I do hate guns. Especially handguns. The idea of touching one completely creeps me out. But being chased by someone who had a gun when I didn’t also creeped me out.”
I wipe away a tear, but there’s another one right behind it, so I just say screw it, and let them flow. “And who knows what’s coming next, Dad? Do I go into Russia unarmed? And what if I go in with a gun and have to shoot someone, assuming I even could shoot someone, only then I get back and discover that some butterfly effect means World War Three happened in 1960 and none of you were ever born? What about all of the people who never exist because of something that’s my fault?”
I think back to the video clip Trey played the other night and hear Homer saying, “I wish, I wish I hadn’t killed that fish,” and I start laughing. But even to my own ears, the laugh sounds hysterical, and apparently Dad agrees, because he crosses over and wraps his arms around me. He walks me over to the window seat and rocks me back and forth, back and forth, while I cry and laugh at the same time.
A minute or so later, he says, “No, not now,” to someone, his voice sharp. I don’t know if it was to Katherine or Connor. Daphne was with whoever it was, and she ignores the command or maybe just realizes it couldn’t possibly have been meant for her. If someone’s crying, Daphne has to check it out. It’s probably good intuition on her part, because it’s hard to stay quite as upset when she’s nosing at your hand to see what she can do to make you feel better.
I eventually get my act together and sniff back the tears. “Sorry, Dad. I sort of fell apart there.”
“No, I’m sorry,” he says, pulling me close again. “I’m sorry I can’t fix this. No seventeen-year-old should have to deal with this kind of pressure. I’m not sure how you’ve held up as well as you have. And I’m sorry I wasn’t here the first time you were going through all of this.”
“Well, that really wasn’t your fault. You had other obligations, and, even so, you still wanted to help.” He knows the entire story of how I met his other self, happily married and teaching at a school in Delaware. I didn’t mention that he was carrying ten extra pounds or so of happily married chub, but I told him everything I remembered about the two little boys John and Robbie. I don’t know if that was doing him a favor or not, but it was one little thing I could do toward pulling them out of nonexistence.
“Do you ever think about that other life, Dad? I just wish I’d taken the time to find out her last name.”
“What? Whose name?”
“Your Emily in the other timeline. I mean, maybe she’s not married, and maybe—”
“Hey, hey—no. No, Kate. I have Sara in this timeline, and I’m perfectly happy with that.” He gives my shoulder a squeeze. “And I have you in this timeline, and I’m even more happy with that.”
We’re both silent for a minute, and then he says, “To be honest, Kate, I haven’t thought about it much. I mean, what if I told you some story about how you’d decided to stick with the piano lessons when you were nine—”
“That wouldn’t happen in any timeline, Dad.”
“—and you became this seventeen-year-old virtuoso, playing at Carnegie Hall? Would you spend time obsessing over that lost future?”
I don’t even have to think about it. “No, but I wouldn’t want that future. I hated practicing, and I hated recitals, so no. But it’s not the same thing. You seemed really happy.”
“And I’ve been really happy in this timeline, too. I’m not exactly doing the happy dance right now, because my kid is carrying the weight of the world—and I mean that very close to literally—on her shoulders, and I can’t do much to help. But I’m holding out hope that I’ll be really happy again at some point. So no, Kate. I’m not going to sleep at night thinking about that alternate future. If that’s one of the things weighing you down right now, it shouldn’t be.”
I turn around so that I can look him square in the eyes, and I’m pretty sure he’s telling me the truth. “Okay. But to get back to what started this whole meltdown, the thing that got me through the jump to 1893 was knowing that it was the only way to get my life back—or at least to get you, Mom, and Katherine back.”
There’s a pause, and then he says, a bit hesitantly, “And Trey, too?”
“Yeah.” I was thinking exactly that but opted to sidestep the whole talking-with-Dad-about-my-love-life thing. “Three out of four’s not bad. And I’m not giving up on making it four out of four.”
He pulls me forward and plants a kiss on my forehead. “Give it time, Katie.”
“That’s sort of the problem. I want to give it time. I want to spend time with him. I want to see him at school and hang out with him, because there is a connection there. I can feel it just below the surface . . .”
I sigh. It’s hard enough to wrap my head around this, let alone put it in words. “I guess . . . last time, I didn’t have a choice. I had to set the timeline straight in order to get my life back, and there was at least a small chance of getting Trey back as well. And I had a concrete, specific task—save Katherine at the Fair. Not exactly a piece of cake, as it turned out, but at least I could . . . conceptualize it, you know?”
He nods, and I continue. “This time, however, I’m kind of okay with the timeline I see right here and now. Trey and I aren’t where we were, where I want us to be, but I think it could happen eventually. Whatever Saul and the Cyrists are planning is this big, amorphous evil that I can’t pin down. I don’t even know where these other medallions are, and even after we find them, we still have to take on Saul, Prudence, and probably Simon to get their keys. Prudence has warned me not to interfere again, and any little step I take seems like I’m poking the bear, you know? Asking for trouble. Part of me just wants to lay low for a while, live my life, and hope maybe she’ll let her guard down.”