For a few seconds, Grace considered rushing into John's arms and resuming the life they had built. God had dealt her a hand, called 1919, and she had a moral obligation to play it. She grabbed the back of the aisle seat to keep from falling.
"Grace?" Lucy asked. "What's wrong?"
Grace snapped out of her daze and remembered her mission. She had come to save one part of her family and return to another. She had to follow through.
"I'm sorry," Grace said to John. "I'm so sorry."
She reclaimed the hand of her would-be mother.
"Come with me," Grace said.
Grace pulled Lucy and Lucy pulled Bill up the aisle and out the doors to the lobby. She led them a few steps farther, toward the restrooms, when Bill stopped and pulled Lucy back.
"I won't take another step until you tell me what this is about," Bill said.
"I don't have time!" Grace snapped. "Now, come with me."
Grace again pulled Lucy who again pulled Bill and led them to the restrooms. The entrance to the room on the right still sported a Braille sign.
"Go in," Grace said to both. "Go into the ladies' room – or I'll push you in."
"I'm not going in there," Bill said.
"Yes, you are, Dad, or I'll never speak to you again!"
Bill looked at Lucy.
"Did she just call me Dad?"
"She's probably not feeling well," Lucy replied. "Just do as she says."
Grace didn't wait for her parents to weigh the pros and cons. She put her hands on their backs and guided them toward the women's room. They eventually got the message and entered on their own. Grace began to follow them in when she heard a familiar voice in the lobby.
"Sweetheart, what are you doing?" John asked.
Grace threw her hands to her forehead, sighed, and walked out of the ladies' room. She met John in the nook between the restrooms.
"What are you doing, Grace? Where did Bill and Lucy go?"
Grace sank. She couldn't begin to answer his questions.
"I have to go, John. I'm sorry. But I have to go."
"Go where?" John asked. "Let me come with you."
Grace wiped a tear.
"You can't come," Grace said. "You can't."
Grace stepped toward John, took his hands, and gave him a tender kiss.
"I love you. I do. I really do. But I must go. I'm sorry. Goodbye."
"Grace?"
The time traveler released John's hands and turned toward the ladies' room. She glanced at the wall, saw the brown sign, and walked into the facility. She moved quickly past the sinks to the far wall but did not see what she had hoped to see.
She did not see William Vandenberg or Lucille Green or any evidence of change. She did not see a diaper-changing station or a hand dryer on the wall.
When Grace ran out of the restroom, she did see John Walker. She also saw dozens of others leave the auditorium and spill into the lobby. Something was not right.
She ran back into the ladies' room and called out for Bill and Lucy. She heard no reply. When she opened the doors to the stalls, she found nothing but unoccupied toilets.
Grace looked again at the walls in the room but saw no changing station or hand dryer. Panic and nausea set in as she raced out the door. The lobby was filled with people in transition. Stella Maris had ended. She looked at John with terrified eyes.
"What is happening?" Grace asked. "What is happening?"
John stared at her with wide eyes but did not answer.
Grace ran to the unmanned information counter and then to the front doors. She saw people in 1919 attire. She did not see modern vehicles parked in front or two fast-food restaurants across the street. She saw the world much as she had seen it for five months.
She ran back across the lobby, looked at John, and then returned to the entrance of the ladies' room, where she saw the sum of all her fears in one wall. The Braille sign was gone. So were her parents and her last sliver of hope.
With nothing to do but fall apart, Grace Smith did just that. She put her hands on her head, gave a blood-curdling scream, and fell to the floor like a crumpled doll.
CHAPTER 66: GRACE
Sunday, March 2, 1919
Grace heard the first of many expected sounds at noon. A car door slammed, then another, and then two more. She heard voices and shuffling and finally silence as four people she knew and loved entered the residence and settled in.
Grace awaited, but did not anticipate, another sound. She knew it would only be a matter of time before Alistair approached his den and knocked on the door. He would have questions, she knew, a lot of questions. She could only hope she could offer satisfactory answers.
She pushed away a pen, leaned back in a rigid chair, and put a hand to her stomach. If there was one good thing to come of Saturday night, it was that the trauma of losing her parents had not caused her to lose her baby. That would have been too much.
Grace had risen at five, after a sleepless night, and gone right to work dissecting the most horrible experience of her life. She had gone over what she had seen and done, considered possible answers to a vexing mystery, and finally settled on an answer and a course that made sense.
She hoped they made sense, anyway. She hoped the remedy worked, because she knew now that she would never again have the chance to try something else.
Grace picked up her pen, wrote a few lines on a sheet of Alistair's stationery, and then folded the sheet in thirds. She slipped the letter in an envelope, sealed it, and placed it on a mahogany desk next to a candlestick telephone she had used twice that morning. She was about to get up from the chair when she heard a knock on the door.
"Grace?"
"Come in, Uncle."
"What are you doing in here?" Alistair asked as he stepped inside.
"I'm waiting for you," Grace said. "Please pull up a chair. We have to talk."
Alistair grabbed a nearby chair, dragged it across the floor, and placed it near the side of his desk. He sat down and looked at Grace.
"I just came from Lucy's room," Alistair said. "I saw three full suitcases and a new dress spread out on her bed. What's going on?"
Grace got out of her chair, turned it toward her uncle, and sat down. She took a breath and braced herself for a conversation she wanted to complete without dissolving into tears. She knew this was a time for straight talk and conviction, not weepy regrets or pleas for forgiveness.
"We went to the movies last night, all four of us, just as we had planned, and arrived at the Palladium during the showing of the first film. The first film, as you know, was supposed to be Little Women. What you don't know, and what I didn't know until eight fifteen, is that the theater showed Stella Maris instead. I believe I once explained the significance of that movie."
Alistair closed his eyes.
"You did."
"When I discovered that Stella Maris was playing and nearing its end, I panicked," Grace said. "I literally dragged Bill and Lucy to the ladies' room and pushed them through a portal to another time – my time. Or at least I hope I did. I have considered the possibility that I did not send them to the future at all but rather to a horrible death. I have wrestled all morning with the knowledge that I may have killed my parents a second time."
Alistair sank in his chair. He dropped his head and stared at the floor for more than a minute, as if pondering all of the possible dire consequences of Grace's actions. When he finally lifted his head and looked again at Grace, he did so with defeated eyes.
"Why are you still here?" Alistair asked in a barely audible voice.
"I'm here because something went wrong last night. I intended to follow Bill and Lucy into the restroom. I intended to follow them to the future, but I was sidetracked when John called out to me at the last second. He understandably wanted to know what I was doing."
"Did you tell him?"
"No. I told him only that I had to leave him," Grace said. "I didn't have time to explain my actions. I barely had time to say good
bye."
"What happened then?"
"I entered the ladies' room, but I didn't find what I had expected to find. I didn't find any amenities from 2002. I didn't find Bill or Lucy. I found a restroom that was just a restroom, not a portal to another time. When I ran back into the lobby and saw that I was still in 1919, I screamed and fainted. John took me home when I finally came to."
"Did you give him an explanation?"
Grace shook her head.
"No. I gave him a lie instead. When he asked where Bill and Lucy had gone, I told him they had run off to do other things and would take a taxi home. I didn't know what else to say. I was scared and confused and needed to buy some time."
"So what do you plan to do now?" Alistair asked.
"I plan to meet John this afternoon and tell him the truth. I called him this morning, shortly after I called a woman I met a few weeks ago. She figures into this as well. John and I are going to the matinee today. He will come for me at one."
"You're going back?"
"I'm going back," Grace said. "Stella Maris is playing at two, followed by Virtuous Wives. They are the last movies that will ever play at the Palladium Theater."
"I don't understand," Alistair said.
"You will."
Grace grabbed the envelope on the desk and handed it to Alistair.
"What is this?" he asked.
"It's a letter that contains the answers to many questions. Please remember the information, Uncle. Your life and the lives of people you love may depend on it."
"What kind of information? Please tell me," Alistair said.
"I don't have time to get into it now. I explain everything in the letter."
Alistair looked at Grace with pleading eyes.
"Please tell me, Grace."
Grace took a breath and brought her hands together under her chin. She gazed at a small window and watched raindrops hit the glass. A moment later, she returned to her uncle.
"All right. I'll tell you a few things – things that are important now, things I don't want on my conscience when I leave."
"What things?"
"One is the fate of the Palladium," Grace said. "Sometime tonight, shortly after midnight, when the theater is free of people and the streets are quiet, an electrical circuit will fail. A spark from that circuit will start a fire. The fire will destroy the building and everything in it. It will destroy the very portal that brought me to this time and sent Bill and Lucy to another."
"Dear God."
"What you do with that information, Alistair, is up to you. You must now decide whether the loss of a great building is worth the loss, or at least the serious disruption, of human lives. I can live with the loss of a theater. I cannot live with the knowledge that I allowed someone else to experience the kind of pain I have suffered since leaving my family."
"What else can you tell me?" Alistair asked.
Grace sighed.
"I wrote down what I believe to be the secrets of the portal. I did not want to share them. I do not want people from this time to follow me. But I could not in good conscience sit on this knowledge. If, for some reason, the theater does not burn tonight, only you will be able to prevent innocent people from accidentally traveling through time."
"Are there other things in the letter?"
"There are many other things," Grace said. "I'm leaving you with a lot, Uncle, but perhaps nothing more important than the details of another fire to come."
"Please continue."
"When I traveled from Montana to Seattle in the year 2000, I met a woman on a bus. She was a kind woman, an elderly woman who gave me a home and helped me get on my feet at a time when I had few acquaintances and even fewer friends."
Grace paused for a moment.
"While getting to know this woman, I learned that we had many things in common. Like me, she had lost her parents as a teenager," Grace said. "Like me, she had lived in this area in the late thirties and early forties. Like me, she was related to you."
Grace saw shock fill Alistair's eyes. She continued.
"The woman's name was Penelope Price, Penelope Green Price. She had lost her parents in a house fire in 1926. The particulars, as I know them, are contained in the letter. Please take care of the letter, Uncle, and take care of your family."
"I'm so sorry, Grace. I can only imagine the burden you carry," Alistair said. "Is there anything I can do for you? There must be something."
"There is," Grace said. "There is. You can assemble the others in the living room and help me explain something that defies explanation. It's time for me to come clean with all of them. It's time for me to say goodbye."
CHAPTER 67: GRACE
The trip to the theater went mercifully fast. Few cars plied the Red Brick Road and even fewer clogged the streets leading to the Palladium. Seattleites, it seemed, had better things to do this Sunday than go for a drive in the city.
Grace counted that as a small blessing. She wanted the experience over as quickly as possible, even if it meant cutting short her remaining time with a man she had come to love.
John helped her out of his Cadillac and offered her an arm as they began a two-block walk down Pike Street to the movie house. He pulled her close as a light drizzle turned into a soft rain.
"Are you ever going to tell me what happened last night?"
"I will," Grace said. "I will a little later, once we get inside."
Grace looked at his reaction to her answer and saw puzzlement, disappointment, and more than a little hurt. It was clear that he interpreted her lack of communication as a lack of trust. He no doubt wondered why a woman who had agreed to marry him seemed determined to keep her thoughts to herself and perhaps some secrets too.
Grace regretted not being more honest and forthright with John Walker. She had not given him the truth that he deserved and the truth when he deserved it. She had instead kept him in the dark for weeks as she tried to determine whether life with him was something she wanted.
She knew, of course, that the truth now would provide no comfort, just as it had not provided comfort to Margaret, Penny, and Edith when she had told them she was leaving them forever. Margaret cried but said she understood. Penny cried and ran to her room. Edith sat in silence as she considered losing not only Grace but also the only sibling she had ever had.
Grace tried to convince herself that this was the way life worked. You were born into the world, you lived, you loved, and you died. Parting with loved ones was simply part of a normal process that had started long before she'd been born and would continue long after she had died.
The pep talk, however, only went so far. There was nothing normal about stepping into a time portal and plunging eighty-four years into the past. There was nothing normal about meeting your parents before your time or being torn from the husband and daughters you loved and had planned your life around. There was nothing normal about that at all.
Grace thought of these and other things when John led her down an aisle to center seats and again when she settled in. She thought of them when Stella Maris hit the screen and when silent tears began to flow, tears that continued through the first thirty minutes of the film.
"What's the matter, darling?" John asked. "You haven't stopped crying since we arrived. Surely it's not the movie."
Grace looked at him with a wet face and shook her head but said nothing. She instead grabbed his hand and held it and kissed it as if it were the most precious thing on the planet. In a sense, it was. It was a hand that she had grown accustomed to holding, a hand that she would soon have to give up in exchange for another.
She didn't expect the parting to be this difficult. Even though she loved John Walker dearly, she knew she really didn't have a choice. She had an opportunity, her last opportunity, to return to a husband and two daughters that she loved even more. What fool of a woman would pass up that? Yet as the minutes passed, doubt began to take hold.
What if she was not about to trade John for Joel and her present
for her past? What if she was instead about to trade a comfortable life with a man she loved for instant death or a trip eighty-four more years into the past? Did Seattle even exist in 1835? She didn't think so.
Then there was the other outcome. What if the portal shot her too far into the future? What if she arrived in Seattle after Joel had moved on, remarried, and perhaps had more children with another woman? The possibilities could make one sick.
Grace knew, in the end, she would have to take a leap of faith, just as she had taken a leap when she had picked Joel over Paul McEwan and later entered a cold Montana mine. She knew she could not live with herself if she did not at least try, so try she would.
A moment later, she dried her eyes, smiled at John, and looked again at the screen. When she saw Mary Pickford bathed in a purple tint, she grabbed her purse, and got out of her seat. It was time.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to the lobby. I want you to come with me."
Grace grabbed John's hand and led him past several people in their row. When they reached the aisle, she kissed him on the cheek, retrieved his hand, and guided him to the door. She did her best to maintain a smile she felt he deserved.
When they entered the lobby, Grace stopped for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the brighter lights and then proceeded directly to the nook between the restrooms. Seconds later she eyed the entrance to the women's room and saw a Braille sign she had expected to see.
Grace returned her attention to John, smiled sadly, and wiped away the last of her tears. She grabbed both of his hands and pulled herself together for the toughest speech of her life.
"This is where I say goodbye."
"Goodbye? I don't understand."
"I know you don't. You don't understand because I haven't been honest with you. I haven't told you who I am or how I got here, but now I must."
John stared at Grace with a face that betrayed not only confusion and concern but also fear. He seemed to realize that something permanent was taking place.
The Show (Northwest Passage Book 3) Page 27