Kiernan moves to the outer edge of the narrow sidewalk, which is raised slightly above the muddy roadway. He takes my arm, leading me toward an intersection with a larger, paved road a few storefronts ahead. A dozen or so horse-drawn carts, a few bicycles, and a lone car move cautiously along the brick road in front of us, going only slightly faster than we’re walking.
“The story Jess has,” Kiernan replies, “is that your uncle is a druggist in New York with this proprietary blend for arthritis. You packed some generic Advil in an old tin box, and Jess has been feeling a lot better since then.”
“Wow. Katherine would totally flip.”
“Katherine doesn’t need to know. Or at least that’s what you said before . . .”
Kiernan trails off, probably in response to my expression. I’m growing a little weary of being lumped with Other-Kate. I just met Jess, so I’ve clearly never said anything about any of this before. But I doubt it will do much good to remind Kiernan again that I’m not her, that she doesn’t even exist in this timeline. He knows that better than anyone.
“Wait—” I pull him to a stop. “How does Jess remember the other . . . me? He doesn’t have a CHRONOS key.”
“Uh, no. But I was at his place when the timeline changed. The one that . . . took you. The temporal shifts make me kind of dizzy, you know?”
I nod. Even thinking about the three times I’ve felt those shifts is disorienting. When the last one hit, I collapsed to the floor as trig class morphed around me into a brand-new reality.
“Well,” Kiernan continues, “Jess saw the look on my face and grabbed my shoulder when I stumbled. And the poor guy has been balancing two sets of memories ever since—one where there were few Cyrists and one where his middle daughter is a member. There’s a grandkid he remembers that no one else does. His family thinks he’s had a stroke or he’s going senile, even though in all other ways he’s sharp as a tack.”
“That’s sad.” I take another tentative sip from the ginger ale and glance back over my shoulder at the storefront—John Jessup, Fine Tobaccos and Sundries—and wonder how many other people have accidentally come in contact with a medallion or someone wearing one. And how many of them are in mental institutions? “I hate that he was drawn into all of this. But he seems to be handling it pretty well, all things considered.”
Kiernan flashes me a grin. “He’s convinced they’re the crazy ones.” He bites off a chunk of the candy stick, and a strange, sickly sweet smell fills the air.
I wrinkle my nose. “What is that stuff?”
“Hoarhound candy,” he says, crunching off another bite. “Want some?” He waves the other stick under my nose.
“No.” I push it away. “It smells awful. I don’t like it.”
A teasing smile, just this side of a smirk, crosses his face. “Of course not, love. You never have.”
His place is actually a bit farther away than I’d imagined, although I guess the phrase “short walk” might have a different meaning in 1905. Kiernan deftly steers me away from the edges of the buildings, where puddles of waste decay in the summer sun. I know the tenants have little choice, given the general lack of plumbing, but it still makes for an unpleasant walk.
When we reach his building, a group of thin, dirty children crouch in the entryway, playing jacks, and a few others sit in the stairwells as we climb to the fifth floor. Kiernan stops on the last landing to chat with a blond tyke who is maybe six. “Manners quiz, Gabe. I have an extra stick of candy. Would you like it, or should I offer it to the lady first?”
“You should offer it to her,” the boy says, appraising me with big blue eyes. “But I’ll take it if she don’ want it.”
I smile at the boy and give Kiernan’s shoulder a nudge. “Stop picking on him. You know I don’t want that nasty thing.”
Kiernan grins and pulls the candy stick from his pocket. There’s a bit of lint stuck to it, but the kid doesn’t bother to inspect it.
“And what do you say, Gabe?” Kiernan asks. The boy responds with something that could be thank you, but it’s impossible to tell with his mouth full of candy.
We cross the hallway, and Kiernan unlocks a door with “#411” scrawled on the wall next to it. His room is neat, small, and hot. A white powder of some sort is on the floor in front of the door, which makes me suspect the ceiling is crumbling. A twin bed with a worn quilt is squeezed into the right rear corner, next to an old tobacco crate that serves as a nightstand, and a rope is tacked to the walls, with a piece of red fabric strung up to form a curtain blocking the opposite corner from view. Books are stacked everywhere.
The ceiling slopes downward to the only window, which faces an alley. At first, I think that’s why the room reminds me of my own space at Mom’s townhouse. I’ve cracked my head more than once on my low ceiling, and I’m only a few inches above five feet, so this has to be a bit of a squeeze for someone as tall as Kiernan.
Then I see the other reason it looks familiar. Kiernan’s ceiling is covered with glow-in-the-dark stars, just like the ones in my room.
Kiernan closes the door behind us, tosses the bag with my shoes and sweater onto the bed, and opens the window. He sits cross-legged on the floor, moving a large book beneath the bed frame. “Have a seat. There’s no chair, so it’s the bed or the floor I’m afraid.” His expression is a bit strained, and he seems to be avoiding my eyes as he hunts for something.
I sit down on the edge of the small bed and look around the room again. I don’t want to ask, but I blurt it out anyway.
“Is this where you lived . . . before? I mean, when . . . ?”
“Yes.”
I feel a blush creeping to my cheeks. From everything Kiernan has said, another version of my body—a few years older, but my body, nevertheless—spent many hours here with him. In this bed. I bite my lip and shift a bit closer to the footboard.
“I thought about moving somewhere else, maybe closer to work, out near Newton,” he says, still not looking at me, “but I want to stay close to Jess for a bit longer. He needs to talk to someone who doesn’t think he’s lost his marbles. And this is close to the train, so . . .”
“You aren’t still working for Jess?”
He shakes his head. “I still help him out occasionally, but he can’t really afford to keep me on full-time. And I have something else going. Something we were . . . something I was working on, from before.” Kiernan takes a penknife from the nightstand, flips open the thin blade, and starts to pry at one of the floorboards. “This stupid board is stuck again,” he says. “The heat always makes the floorboards swell up.”
“So . . . where do you work now?”
“I guess you’d call it an amusement park.” He looks up for a moment and flashes me that grin. “Come back on Saturday, and you can watch me in action.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. He just yanks on the board, pulling it loose and also banging his knuckles on the underside of the bed. I expect him to hand me an actual list, written on paper, but it’s a CHRONOS diary.
“Didn’t know you had one of these.”
“I do,” he says, examining his skinned knuckle. “But this isn’t mine. This one is y—”
He pauses and takes a deep breath before he continues. “Hers. It was Kate’s. You can take it. You’ll need it more than I will.”
I open the slim book, which is probably best described as a twenty-fourth-century version of an iPad stuck inside an old book cover. It has pages, only they’re more like touch screens. Aside from the cover, I don’t think this device would have fooled anyone who inspected it carefully in the eighteenth century or whenever Other-Kate happened to be traveling, but it was probably a better option than flipping open a high-tech gadget right under their noses.