by Leila Sales
“It says that closing a lock with your loved one here on the Lovers’ Way is a symbolic gesture of securing your love forever. Like carving your names into a tree used to be, I suppose. Now, was that boring?”
“Yes,” Noah said, squinting his eyes shut.
“Are you going to put on a padlock for you and Rozalia?” asked Jake with delight.
“I don’t know—are you going to put on a padlock for you and nobody?”
I ran my fingers over the metal locks hanging overhead, studying the names and phrases on them. I wondered if Kitty really was here, if she would have left a padlock with our names. I didn’t see one. But that didn’t mean it didn’t exist. We kept walking, slowly, with me inspecting as many of them as I could.
When we saw an opportunity to turn onto a less crowded path, we took it. I could still see the swimmers from here—in fact, it was easier, without so many other tourists getting in my way—but this path was steeper, with long sets of stone stairs leading up into the mountainside. It wasn’t long before all of us were huffing and puffing.
“I don’t know how anyone who lives here manages to carry their groceries home,” Rachel gasped out with a laugh.
I thought maybe that was why so few people did live out here, far from the town center. The only hint of civilization we saw was farmland—until, out of the blue, we saw a sign that said BAR. We climbed the twisty path behind it, and what do you know—there was a bar.
“That’s so random,” Jake said, snapping a photo.
“I’m going to buy a beer,” Noah said.
“No, you are not,” said their mother. Instead she bought us all sparkling waters, and I finished mine in one gulp. The August sun was now high overhead, and the sea breeze wasn’t doing enough to wick away the sweat gathering on my forehead and lower back.
We set back out, but somehow the path was still climbing higher. The swimmers were mere specks in the distance now. “Can we sit down for a while?” Jake asked a few minutes later. “My legs hurt.”
“That’s because you don’t get enough exercise,” his brother told him.
“And you do? Like playing video games all summer has given you just such well-defined muscles?”
In response, Noah held up his arm and made a fist.
“I don’t see anything,” Jake said. “Are you flexing? That can’t be the best muscle you get when you flex.”
“Boys,” their mother said tiredly.
“Hey, look,” Jake said. “There’s another sign ahead. Maybe it’s another bar and maybe this one will have actual chairs in it. And a bathroom.”
We approached the sign, set among the trees, but this one did not say BAR.
It said WILLS TOWER.
“Maybe that’s the name of a restaurant?” Jake suggested.
“I don’t think they have restaurants in the middle of the woods,” Noah said.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t think they had a bar in the middle of the woods, either,” Jake said.
“It’s not a restaurant,” I said. “And it’s not a bar. It’s the next clue.”
They both fell silent.
“Clue?” Noah asked at last.
“To finding Kitty.” I felt like everything about me, even my very skin, was vibrating in anticipation.
“How can you tell?” Jake asked.
“Because this is where we said we’d meet. If the war ever separated us, this was where we would find each other again.”
“What war?” asked Rachel with concern.
“You said you’d find each other here, in the middle of the woods?” Noah asked.
“No,” I said. “At Wills Tower.”
And then I couldn’t discuss it with them anymore. I pounded up the narrow path marked by the sign, up the wooded hill, toward whatever I might find there.
A little house. That’s what I found. A stone house with dark green shutters covering its windows, surrounded by trees on all sides. No one would know it was here if they hadn’t seen the sign.
I started toward the front door, then turned around when I heard the Adlers still behind me. “Please don’t come with me,” I said.
Rachel frowned. “Of course we’re going to come.”
I shook my head.
“Plus,” Jake said, “you promised . . . you know.”
“I will tell you every single thing I find out,” I told him. “But please don’t come with me. I need to do this alone.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Rachel said. “We’ll hang back here while you knock. And if anyone other than your cousin opens the door, we’re going to join you immediately. Fair?”
“Fair.” My chest felt tight, and I was struggling for air. I tried to mop up the perspiration on my face. Then I walked forward, one foot in front of the other, and in all those miles and all those years I had spent separated from Kitty, those last few steps felt like the longest of all.
I banged the door as hard as I could, in the pattern Kitty would know. Slow. Slow. Fast-fast-fast-fast-fast.
A minute passed. Then another. And just when I had started to think this wasn’t right, this was all just a series of coincidences, the Florence postcard and the Manarola anagrams and all of it—the door opened.
It was her.
“Lottie,” she said.
And we fell into each other’s arms.
Chapter 34
“How old are you?” I asked, at the same moment that Kitty asked me, in pretty much the same astonished tone of voice, “How did you ever find me?” We both laughed a little.
“You first,” I said.
“Eighty-six,” Kitty replied. “I’m eighty-six years old. I . . . I’m overwhelmed. How are you here? How is this possible? Is this really happening, or am I dreaming?”
“I’ve dreamt about this so many times,” I said. “This time it’s different. This time it’s real.”
We were still holding each other, as if time and space might once again tear us apart if we let go. Finally Kitty pulled back, her eyes shining, and said, “Here, Lottie, come inside.”
And at hearing her say my name, Lottie, I almost started to bawl. I didn’t know how I’d forgotten for so long who I was, when Kitty always knew.
I waved at the Adlers to let them know that I was safe, then followed Kitty into her house. Her steps were slow and deliberate, her back hunched over. No longer was she three inches taller than I, and her wispy blond hair had turned even wispier, and white. But when she turned to look at me, to soak in my physical appearance in the same way that I was taking in hers, I could see that her eyes were exactly the same. The same as they’d always been, the same as mine.
Eighty-six. “How did you get so old?” I asked.
“The same way everybody gets old,” she replied. “Time passed. I grew up. How did you get here?”
“Oh. That’s a really long story,” I said.
We sat down next to each other on a sofa in her living room. The room was small but cozy, peaceful, with fascinating decorations—woven wall hangings and artsy photographs and carved statuettes. I saw no TV, no computer, no obvious links to the outside world. I thought that Jake would love it in here: It was like a miniature, personal art museum.
Kitty took my hands in hers. “And how old are you?” she asked.
“Thirteen.”
Her eyes widened. “So it’s been only three years since the last time you saw me?”
Only. I never would have said only about those three years. “Yes,” I told her, “but it felt a lot longer than that.”
“Lottie,” she said, the name again sending a thrill down my spine, “I’ve not seen you in seventy-six years. I thought I was never going to see you again.”
“I thought I was never going to see you again! I thought they killed you.”
“I thought you’d time traveled to—well, I had no
idea! The fourteen hundreds or the twenty-third century or goodness knows when. Never did I let myself imagine that you might have gone to a day and an age when I would be alive to see you again.”
I blinked at her. “But if you thought that I’d wound up hundreds of years ago, or hundreds of years in the future, then why did you leave me all those clues to find you?”
She tilted her head to the side. “What clues?”
“Like this postcard.” I pulled it out of my bag and showed it to her. At this point the postcard was looking a little dirty, and a little ragged around the edges, just from how much time I’d spent holding it.
She looked at the photo, then flipped it over to read the message on the back. “Where did you come across this?”
“In the copy of A Little Princess at the Sutton library. Isn’t that where you put it?”
She shook her head slightly. “Sutton. Where is that?”
Kitty was old. Her wrinkled hands trembled as she held the postcard. I wondered whether perhaps she was so old that she had just . . . forgotten. Forgotten about Sutton, forgotten that she had left a series of clues so that I, and no one else, would be able to find her. And the idea devastated me: that I could finally, finally find Kitty again, but she still wasn’t the Kitty I remembered.
“Sutton is a town in Wisconsin, America,” I told her slowly, loudly, as I might speak to any elderly person. “It’s where I live.”
Kitty laughed a little. “Ah. So you’re American now?”
“I guess so. I have an American passport.”
“And you traveled all the way from America to here . . . because of this postcard?”
I wanted to stomp my feet on the floor. I wanted to throw one of her intricately crafted little statues and shatter it against the wall. I wanted to shake my best friend right out of this old, forgetful, confused lady. “Yes! That was the point of it, Kitty. That’s why you put the postcard in the book in the first place, so I could find it and then find you. Remember?”
She was shaking her head again. “I remember many, many things, Lottie, but that is not how it happened.” Her voice was authoritative, and I felt myself relax a tiny bit. “Do you want to know what happened?”
“Of course!”
“Good. But first, I’m going to get us something cold to drink. It’s such a hot day, isn’t it?”
I followed her into her kitchen while she poured us each a glass of sparkling water, and then I followed her back to the sofa. I didn’t want to let her out of my sight for an instant.
“I’ll start right when you left me.” Kitty paused, and I pictured her rewinding the long film of her life all the way back to that day in 1940. “I’ve never discussed this with anybody,” she said, “so forgive me if it comes out wrong.
“We watched you vanish through that portal, and then seconds later the portal vanished, too. It was extraordinary. It was nothing short of magical. Even for Rob—your father, I mean—who had modeled and studied this for so long, who knew every theorem and equation behind what had just happened. . . . Even knowing all that science, it still seemed inexplicable.
“I’ve had that experience many more times in my life. The first time humans traveled into outer space, the first time I sent an e-mail, or even sometimes when I just look at the stars here in Manarola, I think, How can this be possible? But I have never felt that so strongly as the day I watched you disappear into thin air.”
I licked my lips and asked, “Were you mad at me for leaving?”
“In that moment? Absolutely not. Lottie, you saved my life by going through that portal. It was the perfect demonstration to make our captors realize, Yes, time travel really does exist; we have witnessed it with our own eyes. It gave your father the upper hand. He told them that if they let me live, he would study the portal that had just appeared, he would work out where you went and how you got there. Of course they agreed. This was far more important than my little life.”
I scrunched up my face. “That’s not true. Nothing’s more important than your life.”
“Well, I’m just telling you what they thought. It was chaos when you left. Absolute chaos. And those people who had taken us, the people holding us in that room—”
“I remember them.” I shuddered. “I never forget them.”
“Well, they made a grave error in that moment of panic and confusion. They revealed who they really were.”
“What do you mean, ‘who they really were’? Weren’t they Nazis?”
Kitty sighed. “I wish they had been. The entire rest of my life would have been so much simpler. No, Lottie: They were part of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence.”
Chapter 35
I nearly knocked over my water glass. “That woman in the gray coat—those men with the guns—they really were British? Why on earth would they kidnap us? And threaten to kill us?! They were supposed to be the good guys! That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Here’s the thing I’ve realized about war, Lottie,” Kitty said, locking eyes with me. “And I have lived through a lot of wars, so by this point I should know. There may be one side that’s fighting for freedom and democracy and tolerance, while the other side is fighting for oppression and conformity and fear. There may be one side whose values you agree with, and one side whose values you deplore. In that regard, there may well be ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys.’ But both sides, regardless of what they’re fighting for, will fight dirty. Both sides will kill people—lots and lots of people—before a war is won.”
“Even so,” I said, “I don’t understand why the British Military Intelligence department thought that kidnapping two little girls would help them win the war.”
Kitty nodded; she hadn’t understood it at first, either. But, she told me, she and my dad quickly figured out that the British military believed he had discovered the secrets of time travel. They believed that he did know how to create a portal to a specific time and place, and he just wasn’t telling them—maybe for his personal gain, or because he didn’t believe the military should be able to use this information.
It was as if a scientist had figured out how to make the atomic bomb, but was refusing to hand over his work to the United States government, and was feigning ignorance so they would not be able to create one of these bombs and drop it on Japan. That’s what the British military thought was happening with my dad. So they captured me and Kitty in order to try to force the issue.
“Unfortunately for them,” Kitty said, “their plot backfired enormously.”
“What did you do when you realized they weren’t Nazis?”
“Oh, your father was livid, naturally. They really would have murdered us—us, loyal British subjects! And even though they didn’t, thank goodness, we lost you. Your father hoped and prayed that you’d gone someplace where you’d be safe and well cared-for, but he had no way of knowing. He was so worried. He never stopped worrying about you, for the rest of his life.”
I blinked back tears. “I did go someplace safe. I have been cared for—so well cared-for. I didn’t know Daddy would be so concerned. He was always so busy and distracted. He didn’t seem to really care about my safety or who was taking care of me when I lived under his own roof.”
“Once you were gone,” Kitty said, “he realized that. He regretted it deeply. You were his daughter, after all. Like many scientists, he lacked some of the skills for showing his feelings, but he loved you desperately.”
“I wish there’d been some way to let him know that I was safe.”
“I think he sensed it, deep down. Or maybe he just had to believe it, to find any sort of peace.”
“So what did you do?” I asked, leaning forward. “When you discovered that our kidnappers were actually part of Military Intelligence, I mean. Did you tell . . .” I tried to imagine who you should tell, when your own military turns on you. “The prime ministe
r?” I tried.
“We didn’t know who in the government was part of this plot,” Kitty said. “We didn’t know who had authorized the whole scheme, or whom we could trust. And it wasn’t as though we could just waltz out of the building where we were being held. Not only did they intend to keep us there until your father worked out all the science behind time travel, but also they worried that we would tell someone if they released us. Maybe not the prime minister, but the newspapers. Can you imagine how bad that would have looked for Britain’s war efforts, if word got out that they were experimenting in time travel, capturing scientists, and shooting at children?”
“Yes,” I said. “I absolutely can.” Despite the heat, I shivered.
Kitty must have noticed, because she took my hand and held it in hers. Immediately I felt myself relax. “It’s okay,” she soothed me. “We all made it through safely. It’s okay.”
I nodded and let out a deep breath. “How did you make it out?”
“We kept believing that someone would find us, and rescue us. But weeks passed by, and nobody did. We assumed that our families and perhaps the police were searching but having no success, that we’d been too well hidden. We weren’t allowed outside. They put me in a room with a cot and they fed us three times a day, but there were no windows. I was frightened, but I also remember being so bored. One of the guards took pity on me and brought me crossword puzzles, but that hardly made up for a lack of sunlight, fresh air, conversation, other children.
“I started hanging around your father in the laboratory they had set up for him, and he would give me little tasks to do—sorting papers or washing beakers, that sort of thing, just to keep me occupied.
“Much later, after we were free, we learned that the reason why nobody rescued us wasn’t even because we were so well hidden, but probably because they weren’t even searching.”
“Why not?” I demanded. “There’s no way your parents weren’t desperate to find you. They were obsessed with you.”
Kitty laughed, maybe a little sadly. “I love that you remember that,” she said. “I love talking to someone who remembers my parents.” She rubbed her hands over her face. “A statement had been released that your father had taken me and you for an evening stroll, and we’d walked right off the dock and drowned.”