“The past few months have aged both of us, Kate.”
I raise my eyebrows in question and then remember the gray streaks in my hair. “Oh, right. Does it look okay?”
She smiles. “You’d never pass inspection with the CHRONOS makeup team, but I think you’ll do. Although a hat would make more sense. Did the cloche I ordered ever come in?”
It must be clear from my clueless expression that I have absolutely no idea what a cloche is, because she waves me off. “Never mind. I’ll check with Connor. I found it online. A few years out of fashion for 1938, but hey, it’s the Depression. People wore whatever they could find.”
Katherine pours herself some cranberry juice and sits down in the window seat, pulling her robe tighter around her shoulders. “Care to run the game plan past me?”
I’ve gone over everything with Connor several times now, but Katherine’s involvement has been confined to the role of indirect advisor. Connor discusses things with her and then comes back with suggestions, and we tweak. Most of the time, she stays in her room. I don’t know if it’s to shield me from her temper or if she’s just feeling too weak to deal with social interaction. While it’s true that she rubs me the wrong way a lot of the time, I miss talking to her, and I doubt she likes being on the sidelines.
“Sure,” I say, sitting down next to her. “But I’ll have to make it quick. Kiernan will be here soon.”
“You’re still planning for him to shadow you instead of working as a team?”
I nod. “It might be an unnecessary precaution, but I’d rather play it safe. Okay—according to the diary, Delia’s group is interviewing the owner of the Morton Theater. I’m not going to talk to them, but I’ll probably follow them when they leave. The goal is mostly to get a feel for the place. Kiernan will set up some stable points around their hotel, or wherever they’re staying, so that he can observe them from the cabin. Hopefully we can figure out a good place and time to approach them.”
“You look nervous.” Katherine squeezes my hand. “Relax—you’ll do fine.”
I think I like her new meds. “Any insider tips for Georgia 1938?”
She laughs. “You can never say sir or ma’am too often. And that goes double if it’s someone in authority.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, grinning.
“Save it for Georgia.” She gives my knee a squeeze and then gets up to let Daphne in. “I’m going to clear out so that you can get going. I’m feeling . . . okay, but my moods are unpredictable, and Kiernan probably already thinks I’m a harpy from hell.” I start to protest, but she holds up her hand. “It’s okay, Kate, really. I need to get Daphne out before Kiernan pops in anyway, or she’ll be nervous all day. Oh, I almost forgot—have you heard from Harry?”
“Yes. He arrived at the hospital a few hours back. Grandpa’s still in ICU, but he’s stable.”
“That’s good news. Does Deborah know yet?”
“I sent her a text.”
Katherine hesitates and then says, “Connor told me you think Prudence arranged Deborah’s trip. And you’re not worried?”
“I can’t be certain she arranged the trip. And Kiernan said Pru is very erratic, so I could be wrong about Mom being safe. But I don’t think she holds any of this against her.”
A shadow passes over Katherine’s face, and I know I’ve just reminded her of exactly who Prudence does blame, so I shift focus. “Mom sounds happy. She’s leaving next week for the first trip to Bosnia, and she’s made friends with a couple of the graduate students who are working with her. And I really do think she may be safer there than she is here.”
Katherine gives me a tired smile. “You may be right, but that’s a two-edged sword. If Prudence has whisked Deborah thousands of miles away to protect her, that makes me a wee bit concerned about what they might be planning on this side of the Atlantic.”
SOMEWHERE IN GEORGIA
Sometime in 1905
I blink into the location Kiernan set and open my eyes to trees—lots and lots of trees. They seem a bit blurry, however, and I realize it’s because I’m standing inside a screened porch. I step out into the front yard. It’s mostly dirt, probably due to the heavy tree cover, but a few patches of tall, red-tipped grass grow around the house, along with two large bushes. Fragments of white flowers, the edges browned by the summer sun, still cling to the branches.
It’s late morning or early afternoon here, wherever here is. Kiernan was super mysterious when he showed up at Katherine’s, insisting on transferring the stable point into my key rather than giving me the coordinates. He took one rather dismayed look at the streaks of gray in my hair and said that I needed to bring the dye with me if I really wanted to use it. Happy that Katherine wasn’t in the room to remind me when aerosol cans were invented, I stuffed the spray into the bottom of my bag, underneath the cloche hat that Connor finally found under a stack of papers in the library.
The sun is high and bright against a clear sky with only a few feathery wisps of white. One of the trees out front is unusual, with thick, sprawling limbs that hang almost to the ground. A faint breeze ruffles the leaves and the scattered patches of gray moss hanging down from upper branches. I glance back over my shoulder at the little dark green house, with sage-colored trim, and catch a faint whiff of paint. The wire screens are so new that they still reflect the sunlight.
There’s a flash of blue on the porch, with a tall shadow behind it, and then Kiernan steps outside to join me.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“About?”
“The house,” he says. “It’s mine. Do you like it?”
“You bought a house? Where are we?”
“Near Bogart.”
I raise an eyebrow. “The guy from Casablanca?”
“Who?” he asks, then rolls his eyes. “No, we’re in Georgia. About nine miles outside of Athens.”
“When are we?” I realize now that his hair, which was quite short in Boston, is once again shaggy, hanging slightly in his eyes and brushing against his collar. Which is exactly the way I like it, and I really wish my brain would quit going there. “How long has it been since I left you in Boston? While we’re at it, why did you buy a house? For that matter, how did you buy a house?”
He grins. “Again with twenty questions. Let’s see. It’s the third of October 1905, which makes it nine weeks and one day since I saw you last. How did I buy a house? A strategic investment in a sporting venture.”
It takes me a second, and then I say, “You placed a bet.”
“Several of them, actually.” He parks on the middle step, stretching his long, denim-clad legs out in front of him, and breaks off a few pieces of the tall red grass. “If I suggest a trip to New York City or Philadelphia in the next few years, remind me that it would be a very bad idea. And what was your last question?”
I start to repeat it, and he says, “Oh, yes. Why? Well, I need a place to stay, and we need a base of operations, preferably a bit isolated, near Athens. Two birds, one stone.”
“But we need a base of operations in 1938. Not 1905.”
Kiernan kicks the edge of the bottom step with the back of his boot. “Built three years before I was born. It is standing long after 1938—I checked. I have one hundred and twenty-two acres, a little over seventy-five of that arable land, the rest woods. Closest neighbor is about a mile now, maybe a half mile by 1938.”
“And what are you going to do with this place between now and 1938?”
Kiernan shakes his hair out of his eyes, and I get a brief glimpse of a purple bruise a few inches above his brow, with about a half-inch-long cut that looks like it must have been painful a few days ago.