The scene in the final drawing is more familiar. It’s Kiernan’s room back in Boston. The girl in the picture is curled on her side, asleep, her hair fanned out against the sheets. One arm is under the pillow, and the other rests on top, in an arc above her head, her hand near her face.
If you watch me sleeping on any given night, this is probably what you’d see. What you wouldn’t see is the ring she’s wearing.
Just a simple band. Ring finger, left hand.
∞20∞
ATHENS, GEORGIA
August 11, 1938, 2:47 p.m.
Delia waits in a chair in the hallway, a large white bandage over the center of her face. Her blouse is still spattered, but the blood has dried, and they’ve washed her up a bit, so she looks less like a victim from a slasher film than when we brought her in.
Grant and I follow the nurse over to the reception desk. She leans toward us, her eyes troubled.
“Miss Morrell insists on being released, but the doctor thinks we should keep her overnight. We’re concerned she may have a concussion. Did she fall as well?”
“No. Just the one blow to the face,” Grant says, and then looks like he’s remembered something. “But she may have bumped her head getting into the car. She was . . . upset.”
The nurse jots something down on the clipboard. “We only found a small bump, but some of the things she’s been saying are . . . odd. Does she have a history of psychiatric problems?”
Grant and I exchange a look.
“Not that I know of,” I say. “I think all of this has just been a bit of a shock for her.”
The nurse’s expression is far from convinced, making me wonder exactly what Delia said back there. “I see. Does she have family in the area?”
She has a husband in a nearby jail. It won’t help to note that, however, so I just shake my head.
She responds with a tsking sound and then shoots an uneasy look at Grant before glancing back at me. “And you say they caught the person who did this?”
We both catch her implication, and Grant’s mouth tightens. I’m pretty sure he’s about to explain, in no uncertain terms, that he’s not the one who messed up Delia’s face, so I jump in before he can begin.
“Yes, Sister. They have him in custody over in Oconee County.”
Another shake of her head and another tsk. “Well then, I guess there’s nothing to be done but to release her into your care.”
To be honest, I kind of like the idea of Delia staying here overnight, sedated. I’m not sure how emotionally stable she is—not that I blame her, given everything that’s happened. But my long-term goal is getting her to give up her CHRONOS key, which means getting her trust, and that’s far less likely to happen if she thinks I had anything to do with keeping her here.
The nurse hands me a sheet of paper and says, “She needs to keep still and avoid activity. Even talking is ill-advised, otherwise those stitches may not hold. We gave her laudanum for the pain, and I’ll send a few doses home with her. Just keep a careful eye on her. The doctor wants to see her again in a few days, after the swelling goes down, because we’re pretty sure that nose needs to be reset.”
Grant pays the bill, which I’m stunned to see is less than I’ve paid for a T-shirt—a cheap T-shirt—and then we walk Delia out to the car. I’m not sure what laudanum is, but it seems to have taken the edge off Delia’s panic. Grant helps her into the backseat, and I sit up front with him, something I suspect she’d have balked at before her brief stay at St. Mary’s. She leans her cheek against the seat, the purplish-black circles under her eyes vivid next to the white bandage.
As he pulls away from the curb, Grant whispers, “Do you think she’s going to be able to talk to a judge or whatever in this condition?”
“She is awake,” Delia says, “and would appreciate being included in the conversation.”
“Sorry, Delia.” Grant shoots me a look, because even though her brain seems engaged, the words are slurred.
I shrug, and he continues. “While you were seeing the doctor, I drove to the university library and did a little research on these Cyrists. Kate’s story checks out, at least concerning their existence and early history. There were some images of paintings that show this Cyrus, and he looks a lot like Saul to me.”
Before Delia was released, Grant told me that he also pulled up information on Six Bridges, but he doesn’t mention that. And that’s fine with me, since it would raise issues I don’t think we need to get into right now.
“I also bought this.” Grant reaches into his pocket, pulls out a small copy of the Book of Cyrus, and tosses it onto the backseat.
Delia looks at the cover for a few seconds, then drops it back on the seat, closing her eyes again. “Did you read it?”
“The entire thing? No. I thumbed through it. It’s boring. Repetitive. Some parts are a bit creepy, if you ask me.”
Their boardinghouse is about ten blocks from the hospital. I help Delia inside and up the stairs so that she can change, while Grant stays downstairs to fend off questions from the landlady.
Several minutes pass, and I’m still waiting, so I tap on her door. No response. I knock again and then check the handle. It’s not locked, so I ease it open.
“Delia? Are you okay?”
She’s sitting sideways across the narrow bed, eyes closed, her back propped against the wall. “I’d have to say no. Why are you here?”
“Grant and I were worried that—”
“No,” she says, opening her eyes to look directly at me. “Why are you here?”
“Like Katherine said in the video, I need to collect your CHRONOS keys so that Saul’s people—”
“So why don’t you pull out that gun and take it?”
I take a deep breath, annoyed both that she spotted the gun and that she keeps interrupting me. And then she interrupts me again, before I can even start to answer.
“We were unarmed,” she says, once again closing her eyes. “You could have snatched the keys the minute we arrived. We might have fought you, but you’d have won, given the gun and the element of surprise. So why’d you wait?”
I sit down in the wicker chair across from the bed and consider my answer. At this point, I don’t see what harm can come from leveling with her. “We tried that once, in a different timeline. Snatching your keys. There were . . . repercussions.”
“For you or for us?”
“Both. Shortly after, someone snatched my key. Apparently Katherine’s as well. Then Saul’s people made some rather major shifts to the timeline.”
“But you’re still here.”
“It was a different version of me, if that makes any sense. Different Katherine as well. But I have the diary the other Kate kept. I know some of what happened to you and Abel in that timeline. And what happens in this one, if we don’t find a way to prevent it.”
“So? I’m supposed to avoid talking, remember? Stop making me ask questions.”
“Oh. Okay. Sorry. You end up teaching at a school up in New England.” I glance down at my hands, dreading my next words. But there’s no way to sugarcoat this, so I just spill it. “Abel doesn’t make it out of Georgia. I don’t have the details, but he’s killed sometime within the next day or so.”
Delia doesn’t react. Either she was expecting this, which could well be the case, given the events earlier today, or that laudanum stuff is very potent. “Grant?”
“No clue. Katherine couldn’t find any record of him, and you either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell her when she tracked you down in the 1970s.”
“The same thing happened to Abel in both timelines?”
I nod. “To the best of my knowledge, yes. Except we’re going to change it this time around.”