Quinn's Way

by Rebecca Flanders

  “Who’s the guy?”

  “His name is Sam. He was a good friend of mine.”

  Mark studied the picture a moment longer, then seemed to remember his manners and returned the wallet. But he was quiet as they left the store, and all the way home.

  HOUSTON KEPT GLANCING out the window as she prepared dinner, wondering if Quinn would join them. She had tried to be mature, had made no demands, had tried to understand. But it hurt. How could it not hurt, when the man she had made love with, the man with whom she had made herself most vulnerable and trusting, lived fifty feet away and had barely spoken to her in two days?

  They had agreed, she knew. He had made her no promises, and she had promised no regrets. And in truth they had had no time to be alone; a woman with a full-time job and a young son could hardly play the femme fatale whenever the fancy struck her. Still, she had expected…something. A smile, a word, a look, something to acknowledge that they had shared the most basic and important act two people could know.

  It was possible he had been working, as he had claimed, in order to spend more time with her. She wanted to believe it even though she knew the truth was that he was just trying to make the final separation easier. She did not blame him. She had known what she was doing and she was prepared to accept the consequences.

  She was.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  Houston moved guiltily away from the window and to the counter, where she sprinkled cheese over the casserole she was making for dinner. She glanced at Mark. “I thought you had some kind of computer conference. Is it over?”

  “I didn’t log on. Mom, what’s this?”

  He had a photograph album that Houston had inherited from her grandmother. It was the only link Houston had with any semblance of a “real” family, and Mark took almost as much pleasure as she did looking through the photographs that represented their heritage.

  She came over to him, looking over his shoulder at the photograph he was indicating. “That’s Grandpa Sam in front of the Hoover Dam,” she said. “You know that. He helped build it.”

  But even as she spoke, her words began to dry up in her throat. Shock and a horrible, impossible certainty twisted in her stomach, lodged in her chest.

  Mark asked, “Who’s that with him?”

  It was Quinn. It couldn’t be, but…

  “It must be…coincidence,” she managed to say. Her voice was breathless. “Quinn…couldn’t have a relative who knew Grandpa. He would have said something….”

  And her head was whirling with questions. What did this mean? If there was a relationship between Quinn’s family and hers, why hadn’t he said something? God, she had looked at that photograph a hundred times and had never realized, had never put it together…. What could any of this mean?

  Mark’s face was sober, his eyes enormous behind the glasses. “Mom,” he said, “Quinn has a picture just like this in his wallet. I asked him about it and he said it was a picture of him—and his friend Sam.”

  She stared at Mark. It was becoming harder to breathe. She said, “He was teasing you, Mark.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She couldn’t even think of anything else to say. She stared at the faded black-and-white photograph, trying to think of an explanation. It was as though her mind was swathed in cotton; her thought processes were muffled, muted and indistinct.

  “Mom, why would he carry a copy of this picture in his wallet? Why would he even think of a joke like that?”

  With an effort, Houston drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Why don’t we go ask him?”

  She picked up the photograph album and led the way across the lawn, up the steps to the garage apartment.

  Under ordinary circumstances, it would never had occurred to her to enter a man’s quarters without knocking. These were not ordinary circumstances, it was true, but perhaps she had an ulterior motive. Perhaps she wanted to see for herself what Quinn really did up there all by himself, the mysterious “work” that he couldn’t explain to her or tear himself away from….

  So she burst through the door, with Mark close behind, and she saw.

  There was so much that the mind couldn’t take it in all at once. Mark hadn’t exaggerated when he said Quinn’s room looked like the control center for the space shuttle. There were blinking lights and glowing panels, snaking cables and crisscrossing wires. There were computer monitors and televisions, all of them showing a different picture but only one of them including sound.

  It was that one television, with picture and sound, that froze Houston in place, her attention riveted to the screen as a familiar wake-up show host said, “Good morning, America, it’s Tuesday, July 2, 1996, and we’re live from the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia…”

  Quinn stood up immediately and turned the television off, his startled expression quickly smoothing out into blankness. He stood facing Houston, his body partially hiding the equipment behind him, and said nothing.

  “It’s Tuesday, July 2, 1996…”

  She said hoarsely, “How did you do that?”

  “Good morning, America, it’s Tuesday, July 2…”

  “It’s a tape, right?” She was trembling inside, and she didn’t know why. Of course it was a tape. It had to be. “A recording.”

  Mark said, “How could he record something that hasn’t happened yet?”

  The strain of keeping her voice steady actually hurt her throat and deep into her chest. “It’s some kind of trick,” she insisted. “How did you do that?” And how did you manage to have your picture taken with my grandfather sixty years ago and who are you and what are you doing here and why won’t you answer me?

  Because she didn’t want to hear the answers. He knew that, and so did she.

  Mark said quietly, “I don’t think it’s a trick, Mom.”

  Quinn looked at Mark. For the first time he spoke, and his voice was gentle and resigned. “What do you think it is, Mark?”

  “I think it’s real,” her son answered, with a quiet conviction that chilled Houston’s soul. “I think you’ve come here from the future through some kind of time travel we don’t know about yet, and you brought that tape with you. And I think that this isn’t the first time you’ve come back, and that once you went all the way to 1934 and had your picture taken in front of Hoover Dam with a man named Sam. That’s what I think.”

  Despite the apparent calmness with which Mark had reached this conclusion, he was breathing fast by the end of his speech. His eyes met Quinn’s challengingly. “Am I right?”

  Quinn’s eyes met Houston’s, and she could not believe what she saw there. She simply couldn’t. Then he looked at Mark, and smiled tiredly.

  “Yes, Mark,” he said. “You’re right.”

  Chapter Nine

  Houston said, without expression, “That’s crazy.”

  “I was right,” Mark said. “I knew it.” His voice was soft and full of wonder. “From the very first minute I knew there was something strange about you, about all this…”

  And then his tone sharpened, became more animated. “That silver suit you were wearing and the helmet—some kind of time-machine gear, right?”

  Quinn moved away from the computers to sit on the edge of the bed. “It’s not a machine, actually. But time travel does involve a considerable change in atmospheric pressure, and the suit keeps the body functioning normally during the change.”

  Mark nodded enthusiastically. “Makes sense. Like deep-sea diving. If you go down too fast, you explode.”

  Quinn nodded. Though he spoke to Mark, his eyes were on Houston. “Something like that.”

  Houston didn’t seem to be able to move, or think, or feel very much at all. She stood there frozen in the doorway, staring at this man she thought she knew, this man she might even have loved, and it was all she could do to keep breathing.

  She said hoarsely, “Stop it. Stop telling lies to my son.”

  She saw the hurt cross Quinn’s face, though it barely regis
tered with her. But she heard Mark say, “He’s not lying, Mom. Don’t you see it all makes sense? This explains everything! The only thing I can’t figure out is…” A small frown creased his brow. “Why now, why us? Unless…”

  Mark’s eyes grew round with excitement. “Something’s going to happen, isn’t it? To me, or Mom, or someone we know—something that changes history, and you’re here to stop it!”

  Quinn smiled faintly. He seemed relaxed now, relieved to have it all out in the open. “Only in books and movies, Mark. The truth is, we’ve found that it’s impossible to interfere in any measurable way with history—it’s a very complicated theory that you will actually study in college physics, but that won’t be proven for a couple of hundred years.”

  Mark obviously didn’t like that. “But then why time travel at all? When we first met you, you said you had a project—so what is it?”

  “I already told you. I’m a field historian, and my mission is to observe and record what life was really like in the twentieth century.”

  “That’s all?” He seemed disappointed.

  “In my century, history is the most valuable thing we learn, and historians are heroes. To contribute in some way to the reconstruction of our past is the most important mission a man can undertake.”

  Mark’s tone was still skeptical. “Yeah, but how much can you learn in a place like Carsonville?”

  Quinn’s answer was wry. “The truth is, I didn’t intend to land in Carsonville—or your apple tree, for that matter. There was a malfunction in my equipment. I was supposed to be in Chicago in 1984.”

  Mark said softly, “Man.” Then, “And so how did you end up at Hoover Dam in 1934?”

  “The building of the dam was a history-making event, and I was there to record it—or as much of it as I could. I actually worked on the dam for several months…” And then he stopped, and inquired curiously, “How did you know about that, anyway?”

  “That picture you have,” Mark explained, “the one of you and Sam. We have one just like it. Sam was my great-grandfather.”

  Quinn stood up slowly, shock draining through his face. “What?”

  “Sure.” Mark turned to Houston, who was still clutching the photograph album. “Show him, Mom.”

  Mark reached for the album, but Houston grabbed his arm, pulling him close to her in a protective gesture, then shoving him behind her. “Get out of here, Mark,” she said, breathing hard.

  “But—”

  “Mark, I mean it! Get out of here!” Her voice had taken on the high thin edge of hysteria, and she knew it but she didn’t care. It frightened Mark enough to obey her without question, and that was all that mattered.

  Mark moved away from her, hesitantly at first, and then she heard his footsteps moving down the stairs. She took a backward step toward the door, holding the photograph album tight against her chest like a shield. She looked at Quinn, and she felt such a wave of horror and revulsion that she could hardly catch her breath to speak.

  “I want you out of here.” Her voice was quavering. She was shaking. “Today. You and all this—” she made a small tight gesture toward the equipment that surrounded them “—junk.” “It’s Tuesday, July 2, 1996.” “Don’t ever bother me or my son, again. You’re a crazy person. You lied. I want you out.”

  The hurt that crossed his face tore at her heart. Even as it terrified her.

  “I’m not lying, Houston,” he said. “I promised you I wouldn’t lie unless I had to and I haven’t. I’m tired of the secrets. There’s no point, anyway. Accuse me of anything else but not of lying.”

  He took a small, entreating step toward her, and that was more than she could bear. The photograph album slipped from her hands as she turned, with a small cry, for the door. Quinn called after her, but she plunged recklessly down the stairs and did not look back.

  HOUSTON WAS vaguely aware of Mark as she rushed across the lawn, but she sent him to the house with a harsh order. She didn’t know where she was going or why; she only knew that she had to get away—from this place, from Mark, from Quinn, from the insanity. So she walked blindly and she kept on walking, across the drive, down the slope, over the meadow, until she found herself at the apple tree. There she leaned her cheek against the cool smooth bark and shook with sobs of frustration and confusion.

  This couldn’t be happening to her, not again. She couldn’t have chosen the wrong man again; she couldn’t have been taken in by another con artist. She was the sensible one, the careful one; she had done one impulsive, reckless thing in her whole life and look what it had gotten her. A raving lunatic, a certifiable madman…. She had tried so hard to build a safe, secure world for Mark, to give him the sane, orderly home life she had never had. Things like this didn’t happen to her. She guarded against things like this.

  And she had failed.

  She didn’t hear him come up behind her, but she felt the weight of his hand on her shoulder. She jerked away violently and spun around to confront him.

  “Go away!” she cried hoarsely. As hard as she tried to prevent it, the hot tears spilled over, tears of anger and fear, sorrow and disappointment. “Stay away from me, I mean it! Just stay away.”

  “Houston.” His eyes were dark with pain, and he half-lifted one hand in entreaty. “I’m not lying to you, I swear it. You’ve stood beside me through so much. You’ve given me so many chances. Don’t give up on me now! I wanted to tell you—I didn’t even realize how much I wanted to tell you until now. And by telling you the truth I’ve broken the last and most important rule of my time, but it is the truth. By all that you call holy, Houston, you have to believe me. It is the truth.

  “Don’t you think I know that?” she cried.

  The horror of her own words and the certainty behind them swirled around her and threatened to overwhelm her. She pressed her fingers into her hot, wet face as though to blot them out. She sensed, rather than saw, Quinn take a step toward her, but she staggered back, crying, “No! Just leave me alone!”

  He said quietly, “I can’t do that, Houston. If I could do that, none of this would have happened.”

  Houston dragged in one last sobbing breath and abruptly squared her shoulders, scrubbing away tears with the palms of her hands. Bracing her hands against the trunk of the tree behind her, she faced him. She said, as steadily as she could, “I don’t need this. I can’t deal with this. I don’t want to know any of this.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She gulped in another wet breath, dashed away another handful of tears. “I have a son to raise. He’s not going to grow up with leprechauns and crystal balls and magic castles and…and spacemen! He’s not going to grow up thinking a magic wand can make dreams come true or that a man who falls out of an apple tree can tell the future. Do you understand that? I want better than that for him, for us! I’ve spent my life trying to make sure he had better…. Oh, God, why did you have to pick us?”

  And with that all the strength seemed to leave her and all the need for it. With her back against the tree trunk she sank to the ground and buried her face in her updrawn knees.

  Quinn sat beside her and drew her into his arms, holding her, gently rocking back and forth. “I know,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I know.”

  “I hate you for this,” she sobbed. “Why did you have to do this, why?”

  And he just said, “I know.”

  And he held her until, a long time later, weary with crying and too numb to think anymore, she pushed him away.

  She ran a shaking hand over her face, pushing back her damp hair. She took a couple of deep breaths. Twilight was falling, lending its soft romantic glow to the countryside around them. Beneath the low-hanging branches of the apple tree the shadows were even deeper, sealing her in with him, separate from the world. Yet the world went on as usual, just beyond the tree, just outside her reach.

  She said, without much expression at all, “I can’t deal with this now, Quinn. I have to get back to the house. Mark will be worried.
I can’t deal with this.”

  He said quietly, “I don’t know how to get back, Houston.”

  She turned slowly and looked at him. She saw the same face that had caused her breath to catch in her throat more than once. The same scarred eyebrow, the same firm chin, the same hazel eyes. The crisp sandy hair, the gentle lines around his eyes, the same firm mouth…a little sadder now, a little more tired. But it was the face she had wanted to love, had not been able to stop herself from loving…

  “That’s how it all started,” he continued. “I’m here by accident—and I can’t get back. I never meant to hurt you.”

  Houston swallowed hard, giving a little shake of her head as though to ground herself in reality. “I have to go,” she said. Somehow she managed to get to her feet. “I have to make dinner.”

  He stood, too, but he said nothing.

  She walked toward the house on legs that were only slightly wobbly. She had only gone a few steps before she stopped. She did not turn around. “Come by. After dinner. We’ll talk.”

  SHE SAT on one of the rocking chairs on the front porch, listening to the crickets and the night birds, rocking back and forth. The glow from the house illuminated the porch, but the driveway and yard were in shadows. Occasionally she could hear the whoosh of tires from the highway and see the flash of headlights. Except for that she could have been all alone on an alien planet.

  Lost. Stranded.

  She kept thinking back over everything that had happened since she had met Quinn, all the clues she had missed, all the questions she had never asked. Her ten-year-old son had known something was wrong, but she hadn’t.

  Maybe she hadn’t asked the questions because somewhere deep inside she had known she would not be able to accept the answers.

  He had told her he was stranded. He had told her he was a field historian. He had told her his job involved studying and recording human events. Everything else she had made up, a deliberate smoke screen to satisfy her questing mind before it asked a question he could not answer. Never once had she asked about the shiny suit. All those televisions, his extraordinary interest in current events, his extraordinary ignorance about certain common, everyday things—the clues had been there. Quinn had not made a deliberate effort to conceal anything from her. How could she be angry with him? His only crime had been to come into her life at all, to say yes when she invited him to stay.