The Day Before Forever

by Anna Caltabiano

  I would have thought he would be hesitant to try food he hadn’t seen in his time, but I think he was so excited now that he could eat again in human form that he seemed to want to try everything immediately.

  “Henley! We can’t get everything.”

  “What?” Henley froze in the middle of the produce aisle with two apples in his hand.

  “Put those down.”

  Obediently, he put the apples down . . . in the spinach section.

  “No, put it back where you found it,” I said.

  He slowly took the apples and put them back in the right department.

  “Henley, I know this all looks good, but we can’t buy it all. We have a limited amount we can spend on food, and no fridge to keep it cool.”

  “But this can’t cost that much,” he said.

  “You’d be surprised.” I knew the high cost of food from living in New York. “Now let’s go and put most of this back.”

  I walked with Henley from section to section until he had put down everything. He was most reluctant to give up his chocolate cake, claiming that “we could use the sugar after all that we’ve been through.”

  “Now let’s start from the beginning and carefully pick our foods. We want them to be as cheap as possible and as filling as possible.”

  Who knew grocery shopping on a budget was this hard?

  We picked up a loaf of wheat bread. It was the most inexpensive brand we could find. Then it was a hunk of cheese and some canned kidney beans. We also found an oat cereal that we could save money on if we bought two boxes, so we took that too.

  “Look for sales,” I said.

  We ended up getting a jar of peanut butter, some celery, a bag of granola, and a bag of cinnamon rolls.

  “That should last us a while, right?” I asked once we were in the checkout line.

  Just to be safe, Henley ran and grabbed another loaf of bread.

  “I’m sure Mr. Glazen won’t mind,” he said, loading it up onto the conveyor belt.

  “Cash, debit, or credit?” the cashier asked.

  “Um . . . credit,” I said. I inserted the credit card into the machine in front of us.

  “PIN number, please.”

  Before I opened my mouth, the cashier corrected himself. “So sorry. I just saw this was an American card. Signature will be fine.”

  I nonchalantly turned the credit card over, so I could see how Mr. Glazen signed his name. It had lots of squiggles and flourishes in it, but it didn’t look too bad. When I was finished signing his name, I actually thought I had done a moderately good job replicating it.

  “Thank you, and have a good day,” the cashier said, handing us the receipt and our paper bags.

  We made sure to toss the receipt in the trash on the way out of the store. One less thing we had to worry about leading back to us. Henley and I carried a bag each.

  “Wait a second,” Henley said, as soon as we had left the store. He ran back inside.

  “What was that about?” I asked when he was back.

  “I just threw out the credit card,” he said. “You said we couldn’t use it anymore—”

  “That’s right. We wouldn’t want someone tracking us down with it, and I’m sure Mr. Glazen will report it as stolen soon.”

  We walked as quickly as we could, lugging the paper bags through the streets. The heaviest things in there were probably the canned kidney beans. I hoped they didn’t break through the bottom of the bag.

  There were people in the street, a handful of them. They were wearing orange shirts that said something on them and passing trinkets out.

  “What do you think that is?” Henley asked.

  One of the orange-shirted people came up to us.

  “Free beads?” she asked us. She held out plastic orange beads with a tag that said “Friday Free Beer Nights at Cassoni’s.”

  “Sure, why not?” Henley grinned.

  The girl placed them over our heads.

  “Remember to come on Fridays for free beer from four thirty to six thirty!”

  “Interesting,” I said as soon as we were out of earshot.

  “I wish they did that back home,” Henley said.

  I knew he was talking about the early 1900s.

  We walked on, lugging the groceries to the hostel. It was the witching hour, and everything was cast in a golden glow.

  “It’s my favorite time of day,” Henley said. His face looked golden too, emphasizing his—or rather Richard’s—honey-colored eyes. “Everything looks ten times more lovely in this light.”

  “And magical,” I said.

  “And magical.”

  There were some instances like this where I would remember that those were Richard’s eyes and Richard’s hands. These would be sudden moments, and I would catch myself feeling guilty that I didn’t mourn Richard more. I did miss him . . . but never like I had missed Henley. The feeling of absence in my life was incomparable to the deep-rooted ache I felt without Henley. I felt terrible about it, but I couldn’t help it.

  We climbed up the lone step in front of the hostel and brought our bags in through the door.

  Inside, the front mini-lobby was empty. We didn’t run into Aaron as we made our way to the back of the building and to our room.

  I was going to tell Henley about the 1500s letter found in the parking lot and how I thought Juana was the killer, but something stopped me. Maybe I didn’t want to spoil this perfect moment.

  “What a couple,” Henley said, sprawling out on the bed.

  “You mean Alanna and Peter?”

  Henley just nodded.

  We both took off our beads and put them on the bedside table.

  Not having anyplace else to put them, I put the paper bags on the other side of the bedside table. I wished we had a minifridge, but even I knew that was too much to ask for in a hostel.

  I put the backpack with all our valuables, including our cash, the clock, and Richard’s vial, under the bed.

  “That’s beginning to look like your go-to position,” I said.

  “What? Lying on the bed? There aren’t many seating options here, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “We need to remember to eat the celery first to make sure it doesn’t go bad,” I said absentmindedly.

  I walked over to the window and perched on the narrow sill. We didn’t have much of a view, just the sight of the whitewashed brick wall of the next building, but between our window and the wall (probably apartments, I was guessing) was a small side street, and I watched the occasional person stroll past.

  “I hope you know what you got us into,” Henley said behind me.

  Hearing the suddenly serious tone of his voice, I knew he was talking about the man from earlier.

  “What else could we have done?”

  I was conscious that we were talking about “we” instead of what I had done and what I had said.

  “Maybe something could have come—”

  “We can’t just wait. We don’t have time.”

  Henley was silent.

  Time was always the one thing we never seemed to have enough of. It was ironic, considering I had an infinite amount of time.

  “Let’s not think of that now,” I said, turning from the windowsill. “We have to figure out how to get him the money.”

  Henley shook his head. “One step ahead of you there. My grandmother.”

  “Your grandmother? You mean the one you created out of the blue and killed just so we had an excuse to have time to ourselves? That was awful, even for this messed-up situation. You know, Alanna told me she recently lost her own grandmother—”

  “We could say that my grandmother—God rest her soul—left me a great amount of things when she passed, including her treasured Tudor jewelry passed down for generations. How simple is that? No need for problematic paperwork on how the jewelry was bought or acquired if it was passed down in a family long enough.”

  “Nice and simple . . .”

  “No holes,” he sai
d. “We get the man his money. We get IDs—”

  “And passports,” I said.

  “And passports,” Henley repeated. “And we’re out. And then?”

  “New York.”

  FOUR

  THE WOMAN STOOD in front of me in a haze of white. I couldn’t see where she was—I could only concentrate on her. She was dressed in white, with only the faintest rose color in her cheeks. She was pure. She was good. She looked like some sort of immovable Roman statue. She had marble eyes and frozen lips. Her hair fell gently down her back.

  I reached out—I didn’t know if it was to comfort her or to somehow unfreeze her—but try as I did, I could never reach her.

  The woman smiled, suddenly unfrozen, and both our gazes traveled down. A red flower bloomed from her body. As its bright petals unfurled, the red seemed to engulf her.

  I looked back at her face, and all at once she looked terrified. How could I have mistaken that grimace for a smile? She was horrified at what was happening to her. She was in pain. She started to scream.

  I tried to reach her, but I couldn’t move. I tried to cry out, but there was only silence. All I could do was watch her die.

  I woke up, blinking into the dark. My breath was coming in ragged bursts from crying in my sleep. Everything’s okay. Just breathe.

  I sat up slowly. The room was ink black, and though my eyes strained against the darkness, I couldn’t see a thing.

  I felt Henley next to me. The side of his body pressed into me, and he felt warm.

  Moving to swing my legs off the side, I suddenly brushed over something cold with my hand. I recoiled. What exactly is that? It felt smooth and chilled. Something on Henley’s side.

  I frowned. My hands fumbled to get the light switch. I thought it was above the bedside table. When the lights flickered on, I choked.

  Henley was on the bed, lying straight on his back. His hands were clasped together and wrapped around them . . . the plastic beads we had gotten on the streets yesterday.

  So that was what had felt cold to the touch.

  He looked like a corpse.

  “Rebecca . . . What time is it?” Henley’s eyes fluttered open.

  He looked from me to his hands. The color drained from his face.

  “You didn’t do this, did you?” his voice wavered.

  I shook my head, unable to speak.

  He sat up with the beads still around his hands. “If you didn’t do this . . .”

  “Someone was here.”

  I immediately dove for the backpack under the bed. I pulled it out and unzipped it, emptying its contents. The clock was there. Thank goodness. Richard’s vial was there. And the cash too. Nothing important was missing.

  “It’s all here,” I said.

  I looked to the bedside table. The other set of beads we had been given remained untouched.

  Henley was already walking around the room, taking a look at everything else. “It doesn’t look like anything’s been touched . . . Maybe I grabbed the beads in my sleep,” Henley said, but we both knew that wasn’t true.

  My hands shook, but I managed to repack the backpack and slip it under the bed again.

  “But what’s the meaning of this?” Henley said.

  I bit my lip. I didn’t know. “Whoever this is—he linked your hands together. Was it supposed to invoke chains? Or be a signal to me somehow?” Was it supposed to mean something to me?

  “The man on the street yesterday . . . ,” Henley started.

  “No. He doesn’t have any reason to do this.”

  There was a chill in the room.

  “He found us,” Henley said. “The killer.”

  I sank back into the bed in disbelief.

  He couldn’t have. Of all the time periods he could be in, he had managed to find ours.

  “He tracked us down,” Henley said.

  This was a person on a mission. He wanted me—and maybe Henley too—dead. That was his goal, I was sure of it, but now I started to wonder . . .

  Henley rushed over and grabbed the backpack from under the bed again. I watched as he began throwing our clothes into it.

  “What are you doing?” I asked slowly.

  “What do you think I’m doing?” he snapped. “Someone’s toying with us. I’m packing to get us out of here.”

  “Out of here and to where?”

  “Somewhere. Does it matter as long as it’s not here?”

  “Henley,” I said, not moving from my spot on the bed. “We have no place to go.”

  He still continued packing, even grabbing the clock to bundle it up.

  “Henley, are you listening?” I asked, but he didn’t stop. “We have no place to go and no immediate money. We can get money but that’ll take time, and we need to stay in one place for that.”

  Henley dropped the backpack in front of me. “My God, Rebecca, he’ll kill you. He’ll kill you, you know that?”

  I shook my head. “We were asleep last night, and he didn’t kill us then. He had the opportunity, but he didn’t take it.”

  Henley roughly pushed back his hair. “And what makes you so sure that he won’t take the next opportunity he gets?”

  “I can never be sure,” I said. “But I can guess. And my gut feeling—”

  “This isn’t the damn time for gut feelings.” Henley’s cheeks were red. “This is someone who tried to smother you in your sleep. Who killed my mother!”

  “He’s grown since then. I can’t explain it, but he’s different. He doesn’t just want me dead. He wants me . . . to understand.”

  “Understand what? There isn’t time for understanding.”

  “It’s hard to explain,” I repeated. “I just know. He would have killed us last night. There was nothing stopping him. But he didn’t. There’s something more he wants.”

  “So you expect me to just let you stay here?”

  “I want you to trust me,” I said.

  “What? Trust that you’re right, and when you’re not, simply watch you die?” Henley was breathing heavily, trying to keep his voice down. “You can’t ask that of me,” he said. He didn’t say it, but he had to have been worried for himself too.

  “That’s the one thing I ask,” I said. “There’s no other way. We can’t go far without passports. Say we switch from here to a different hostel or hotel. Or say we traveled to a different time. What then? If he could track us down to this specific place and time, wouldn’t he do it again? What’s stopping him?”

  “At least by traveling to a different time we could buy us some breathing space.” Henley was pleading now.

  “Not enough. It would cost us additional time to get set up in the new period—money, a place to stay, a background story . . . And the toll on your body—your new body . . . ,” I said. “You almost died this last time.”

  That finally got Henley to at least sit down. “You need to time travel without me.”

  I sputtered. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I know you don’t want me to bring it up, but we both know you need to time travel soon,” Henley said. “It’s been on my mind . . . I mean, how could it not be? Every moment you’re here is a greater strain on you. You need to time travel—”

  “So I don’t go insane,” I finished for him.

  “So you don’t suffer the side effects of immortality,” he put more tactfully.

  “You know I can’t leave you.”

  “You can—” Henley started to say.

  “I can’t. I don’t want to. After all that’s happened . . . you think I could leave you just like that?”

  “You need to. There’s a killer here, and you’re not safe.”

  I was about to argue with him when I thought of the letter from the 1500s in the parking lot again.

  “Okay . . . ,” I said slowly. “I will.”

  “You’ll get out of this time?” Henley said.

  “I will.”

  I started telling Henley about the article I had read on Alanna’s phone.

>   “So you think Juana’s the killer?” Henley surmised.

  “I think that’s a safe bet. Our only bet, in fact.”

  “And you want to travel back in time to the same year in the Regency period as the chest they found just to see what this letter says?”

  “Well, wouldn’t it help me not go insane from staying in one time period for too long?” I said.

  “But what if Juana’s there?”

  “Juana could be anywhere,” I said. “If she is the killer. He—I mean she was obviously here last night.”

  “I don’t like this . . . ,” Henley said.

  I didn’t tell him the fact that I thought the killer would follow me and therefore I could protect Henley by keeping away from him for a little bit.

  “We’re doing the best we can,” I said.

  “What if that’s not good enough?”

  I couldn’t answer that.

  I moved to the edge of the bed where Henley was seated and placed my hand on his shoulder. “I could go tomorrow. We can find the parking lot. It won’t take long.”

  FIVE

  THE NEXT MORNING, we grabbed the clock and went straight to Aaron to ask for the quickest way to get to the address mentioned in the article.

  “Oh, are you going to the shopping center there? It’s quite nice,” he said.

  Neither Henley nor I corrected him, as Aaron pointed out the location on our map. I guessed it was the parking lot to the shopping center.

  The walk there wasn’t as long as it looked to be on the map. Henley had put the clock in the bag he carried. On our way there I had enough time to wonder what the scene would look like once we arrived. It was an excavation of some sort, so was it just a hole in the ground? Would there be a crowd of onlookers since this was in the news? Would it be difficult to get in there with barriers and lots of yellow tape?

  But once we arrived, I was surprised to see that there were very few onlookers. Occasionally someone would stop on their way to glance at the gaping hole in the ground, but that was pretty much it. There was only caution tape around the site of the dig.

  The dig itself was bigger than I had imagined. The hole in the ground looked to be the size of the foundation of a house.