Dad came down looking comfy in sweatpants and a T-shirt. Dad was in a silly mood and was telling us jokes that I thought were quite dumb. My parents finally got to the real reason for this dinner.
“Paige, since you’re staying with Nana, you can’t stay out really late every night. Nana will be worried sick and wait up until you get home. She has to rest, so please be considerate,” Mom rambled on. Glancing at Daniel, I shook my head. We planned on spending our days together so it’ll be fine to cut our nights short since I also wanted to spend time with my grandparents.
“How are you getting to the airport tomorrow?”
“I have a car service getting me. Can I pick Paige up since we’re on the same flight?”
“That would be great. You’ll be able to help with her luggage. It’ll be hard with one arm. By the way Daniel, where are you staying?” asked Dad.
“With some friends from school.” Lily glanced over, but knew not to say anything. After all the rules were explained and Daniel put on full notice, we were excused. We escaped to the den.
“That was intense,” breathed Lily.
“Yes, even while I’m in London, they’ll be ruling with an iron fist. Are you okay Daniel?”
“I’m fine. They are just being good parents.”
“I know, but it’s really stifling sometimes.”
We all watched TV and waited to hear from Chad. I left my cell in my bedroom, so I ran upstairs to get it and checked Facebook .It was amazing how unimportant it was now.
Daphne and Grace had sent a few messages and from the wording, they were annoyed. They texted that a group of seniors going off to college were throwing a ‘Hello to College Bash’ at a local YMCA and asked if I wanted to go with them. This must be the party that Lily was talking about. I called Daphne and she was happy to hear from me.
“I thought you ditched me,” she confessed.
“I’m sorry, it’s been such a crazy summer. My grandmother, my arm and now my dad, I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
“You left out one other thing… Daniel.”
“Yes, and Daniel.”
We talked for almost twenty minutes. “Come and bring Daniel and Lily. You’ll know a lot of people there. I saw Billy last night and he said that he and Carla were going. Did I tell you that they were dating?” Billy and Carla what a great pair! Since I had no interest in seeing Billy, I wouldn’t be going.
I filled Daphne in on all the details of what happened with Billy.
“That’s crazy.” Daphne was appalled.
“Please be careful around him.”
Promising to call as soon as I was back from London, I ran downstairs.
“Did you get lost?” asked Lily. Daniel looked up from a magazine.
“No. I had to call Daphne and after talking to her, I don’t want to go to that party. She said Billy was going and that he’s dating Carla. Do you believe it?”
“Wow. A match made in heaven.” Lily shook her head.
“Did you ever tell Chad what Billy did to me?”
“No. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to,” Lily answered.
“Please tell him. I don’t like Carla, but nobody deserves that. Maybe he’s different with her.”
“She probably didn’t say no, so there wasn’t a problem,” Lily guessed.
“Let’s stop talking about Billy. I’m so sick of him.
When the doorman called, we went down to the lobby to meet Chad. It was funny how Reed’s name was never brought up.
“Lily text me and tell me what’s going on.”
“Okay. If we get tired of the party, maybe we’ll meet up with you,” said Lily.
“Sounds good. Have fun,” answered Daniel as Lily and Chad took off.
“Can we take a walk and then go to your place?” I asked.
Daniel’s eyebrows rose and he said jokingly, “I might not let you leave.”
“Oh yeah! Maybe I don’t want to leave.”
We wandered around talking and ended up at Lincoln Center.
I saw some military people walk by. “I can’t believe you’re in this crazy program, but eighteen year-olds enlist and go to war, so what’s the difference.”
“It wasn’t that easy to convince them. I first had to meet some stipulations.”
“Like what?”
“I had to go to college first.”
“Are you kidding? You’ve already been to college?” Daniel nodded. “Where?”
“I went to Yale. I’m sorry, but I really forgot to tell you.”
“But how were you able to do that?”
“Let’s get some dessert and talk in my apartment. It’s not a good idea to talk out here.” Daniel dragged me into an ice cream parlor.
The whole way back to the Dakota, I just stared at him and wondered how much more was there that I didn’t know.
As Daniel scooped the ice cream into bowls, he told me all about it. “The agency had me go to the year 1970 to start school. When I finished, it was 1974.
“How was that possible?”
“It was actually very easy. I went in for every four-month semester, left between each semester to go to a different year. I did that for four years and got my degree. After that, I was assigned a partner to learn everything about time travel.”
Just as I was going to ask a question my cell rang and it was Lily. The background noise was so loud that I could barely hear her. What I could make out was that the party was out of control and they wanted to meet us.
“Lily we’re at the Dakota. Do you want to come over and watch a movie with us?”
“Now you’ll be forced to behave,” Daniel said when I hung up.
“Really, what about you?”
“I always behave.”
“Sure you do,” I teased and we started kissing.
They must have been really close because it seemed the bell rang a few minutes later.
When they walked in, they were absolutely shocked by the apartment.
In the kitchen, Lily asked, “Did you hear me when I said the party was raided?”
“No, what happened?”
“It was a good thing you didn’t come. Billy came to the party drunk.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“It gets worse. He got into a fight with somebody over a girl.”
“It was Nick Logan. I spoke to Nick afterwards and he said that Billy approached Josie, his girlfriend, started flirting with her and when she told him she wasn’t interested, he grabbed her breasts,” said Chad. So Nick and Josie are dating! Too bad, I was hoping Reed would date her.
“Did Lily tell you what happened to me?” I asked Chad.
“Yeah, I couldn’t believe it,” said Chad. “I heard that Carla broke up with him right before the party, so that might have set him off tonight.”
I turned and looked at Daniel. “I wonder if our talk had anything to do with this or that I told Daphne.” Daphne or Paul might have told someone and it could’ve spread like wildfire this afternoon on Facebook and Twitter. Carla wouldn’t care that he tried to force me, she’d only be angry that he was with me.
“Let’s be grateful we weren’t there because I would’ve decked him and I would’ve been arrested,” said Daniel. I wonder what happened when an NSA agent got arrested. Probably nothing.
Chad continued, “Somebody called the cops. When they showed up, the fight was over. We snuck out a back door.”
Each couple took a couch and we put on a movie. This time, Lily fell asleep on Chad and when the movie was over, I had to wake her up to go home.
In the morning, I found a note in the kitchen. “Dad and I went to get food for lunch,” I read out loud. “I’m so glad he’s feeling better.”
“Me too,” agreed Lily. Lily started searching for breakfast and suddenly stopped. “Oh...I forgot to tell you. Chad said Reed is dating some girl in Canada.”
“That’s so great,” I shrieked. “But wait, she lives in Canada, that’s not good.”
“No she doesn’t. She’s lives in Connecticut and she’s a figure skater.”
“I thought it’d be a girl hockey player. I’m happy for him, but Carla won’t be.”
While Lily had cereal, I called Daniel. “Good morning, what are you doing?”
“Morning, I’m at the Dakota finishing some last minute arrangements.”
As we were eating strawberries, Mom and Dad returned. Dad sat on the couch and read the papers, while Mom arranged the flowers she purchased in a couple of vases.
“Dad, you look good.”
“Thanks, Honey, I’m fine. I spoke to Nana this morning and I told her what time you’d be in and that Daniel was dropping you off.”
“Thanks. Lily, come upstairs and keep me company while I finish packing,” I said.
An hour later, I heard the doorbell ring. We went downstairs fifteen minutes later and found Aunt Cecile and Uncle Ian munching on grapes in the kitchen.
We sat down for lunch and when we were on dessert, Martin, Marina and Anna arrived. All Anna wanted to do was crawl around after Amber.
I carried Anna to my room and Lily and I danced around with her. When she started getting cranky, I found my bubble blower. That amused her for a little while, but as soon as she started crying, we took her back to Marina.
Marina was in the kitchen getting coffee. “Anna wants you.” Marina reached for her crying child. “Can we talk?” I asked.
“Sure, what’s up?” she asked while she rocked Anna.
“Can you tell me what Martin’s problem is with Daniel? I keep meaning to call you, but things have been so crazy.”
“Yes, I know. I’m hurt that you’ve been so unreachable this summer. I called you a bunch of times this week and you’ve never returned any of my calls.”
“Marina, I swear I didn’t get them. I would’ve called you back.” Daniel had to get my cell phone debugged. This was crazy! Everyone is going to hate me!
“I thought so before, but now I see you’re just too pre-occupied with Daniel.”
“You’re not being fair. I didn’t get your messages. My cell phone is wacky.”
Marina looked at me skeptically, like she didn’t believe me and said, “Then get a new phone. You keep saying there’s a problem with your cell, so why aren’t you getting a new one?”
She had me there.
“Martin and I like Daniel, but we miss you and you need to remember you have a family.”
“I do. It’s just been a crazy summer,” I tried explaining.
“That’s not an excuse. Everybody has things going on. We thought we’d see you more since you were home, but it didn’t happen and the lack of communication was upsetting. You used to call to chat and see how Anna was.”
“I’m sorry.” Marina was right. I got so sucked into this vortex of Daniel that nothing else mattered. I now understood how Eden felt being with Paul.
“Is that why Martin seems mad at me?”
“Martin’s not used to his little sister having a boyfriend, so you’ll have to be patient.”
I went into the living room, got a pastry, sat down next to Martin and talked about nonsense.
Soon enough, it was time to leave. Martin brought my luggage down and the entire family insisted on seeing me off by coming to the lobby. It really was quite comical.
When Daniel arrived, he was greeted with quite a crowd. Amused, he couldn’t help chuckling and when I passed him, he quietly said, “What a send off!”
“Be quiet,” I snickered, embarrassed by the entourage.
“Paige, it’s very nice. I’m joking,” he whispered in my ear
“Daniel, please take care of Paige for us,” Mom said approaching the car.
“You don’t have to worry, Mrs. Devon. I won’t let anything happen to her.”
I could see that Mom had tears in her eyes and I gave her a big hug. We jumped in the car. I was absolutely free until I got to London. As soon as the car was out of sight, I felt Daniel’s arm around me, pulling me close to him.
“Alone at last,” I whispered and leaned in for a kiss. “I missed you today.”
“Hopefully, you won’t be sick of me by the time we get to London.”
“That’s not possible,” I said.
Newark Airport materialized into view. The driver pulled up to departures at British Airways and we exited the car. Boarding passes in hand and luggage checked, Daniel took me to the lounge and we called my parents to tell them that we were at the airport. Then, Daniel called James and asked if there were any new developments.
When he got off the phone, he seemed puzzled.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s crazy, but James said there was never going to be a nuclear attack. We had stopped it a long time ago. He had to go to a meeting and he’d tell me more when I got to London.”
“What?” I asked confused.
“When they started investigating Frank’s death internally, they found a lot of discrepancies with one scientist’s data. They gave Seth the truth serum and found out that he kept the nuclear attack going to keep EMIT busy. He’s been feeding us bogus information. When they pulled him off the case a few days ago, that’s when they found out that there was something wrong. We thought it was the envelope that fixed everything, but today they found out that the event was stopped months ago. He kept altering the data so that the event kept showing up.”
“Why?”
“He was trying to steal and sell the time machine.”
“I don’t understand. What about the terrorists and all that money?
“That part of this was real, but even if they got the money it wouldn’t have worked.”
“I’m so confused.”
“EMIT stopped everything you were personally involved in and saved your life, but whether the terrorists got the envelopes or not, the event had already been stopped. Seth was helping them dodge us daily by giving them information of our whereabouts. That’s also why things kept constantly changing.”
“But why didn’t you know about this if you went in the future?”
“Seth put in a code that covered his tracks. We weren’t able to override it until he gave us the password and that only happened after the truth serum.”
“Who was he going to selling the machine to?”
“The highest bidder, but it was between China and France.” Daniel shook his head. “James was right. It was an inside job. They are still interviewing Seth. James said they’d ask who the fake Laura Burke was and why they put the tracker in Amber. We’ll know more when we get to London.”
“So other countries do know about the machine. How do you handle that?
“We’ll erase Seth’s memory of the machine and he’ll have nothing to sell. The important thing is that we got him and he will no longer work at EMIT. Even with some of the bad things that happened in this case, I met you, so for that I’m thankful.”
While I read magazines, Daniel spent the rest of the time on the phone gathering information and talking to other agents about Seth.
When we got onboard, I turned right, but Daniel grabbed my arm and pulled me left.
“Paige, I upgraded your seat. It’s one of my perks when I fly,” he said winking. “Besides, I still have to watch you, so it’s still business.”
First class was great, but we were sitting in the middle aisle so there was a partition between us from the seat down. I pushed a button and a wall panel rose and Daniel disappeared from view.
“Hey, you’re sick of me already?” he called out.
“I was just playing,” I said as it came down. “I’m so glad that this mess is almost finished.”
“It sure has been a whirlwind.”
“You know since the first time I saw you in the park, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
“Well, I was thinking about you before that day,” he said, trying to one up me.
“But that’s not fair, I didn’t know you existed,” I said making a gloomy face.
Laughing, he leaned over and kissed me. “You’ll have plenty of time to make it up to me.” He bent down and reached inside his bag and pulled out a red box with a white bow. He held it in front of me and said, “Something for you to remember our trip.”
“But we haven’t even been to London yet.”
“Okay, it’s a pre-trip present,” he conceded. “Please open your present.”
As he held the box, I pulled the ribbon off with my right hand and lifted the lid off. I reached in to find a necklace. On a long silver chain, there were three charms. One was an hourglass and as I turned it over, the sand fell from the top to the bottom.
“As I’ve said before, time stops when I’m with you,” Daniel explained.
The next charm was a crystal obelisk. “I love obelisks. Ooh, but you know that!”
Daniel smiled. On closer inspection, in the middle of the center there was a thin piece of blue metal wire running from the point to the base of the obelisk. It looked like the same type of crystal I had seen at Daniel’s library but in a different shape. The third charm was a silver P.
“It’s beautiful, thank you.” As I held the P in my hand, Daniel took it flipped it upside down and twirled it to show a lowercase d. How remarkable! My letter P whether uppercase or lowercase could also be the lower case letter d for Daniel. “That’s unbelievable!”
“I know, I thought the same thing so I got one, too.” Daniel pulled out the identical chain with a lowercase d charm on it that he was wearing under his shirt. He flipped it to show it become a P. “It’s a d for Devon and a p for Paige,” he said smiling.
“No, it’s a d for Daniel,” I corrected him. “This is amazing! I’m never taking it off.”
“That’s good, because neither am I,” Daniel stated. “I saw them and thought of you. Do you know there was a study done in London and it said that it takes a man 8.2 seconds to fall in love? That first day when I spoke to you in the park and looked into your eyes, I knew I was in trouble.” Daniel leaned over, kissed me and everything was absolutely perfect….
Hearing a commotion behind me, I looked around my partition and saw Juliette entering the first class cabin. Because of my audible gasp, Daniel stood up to see what had happened. When I looked over at him, he looked visibly angry.
“I’ll be right back.” Daniel walked straight back, through the galley between First Class and Business Class and reached Juliette on my side of the plane. She was getting situated with her belongings and smiled when she saw him. Daniel whispered as he spoke, but from his facial features I saw that his jaw was clenched during their exchange. Daniel left and Juliette sat down in her window seat. When she noticed me looking at her, she gave me a Cheshire cat smile that made my skin crawl and waved.
EMIT (THE EMIT SAGA) Page 34