The Mirror (Northwest Passage Book 5)

by John A. Heldt

  James Green had refused Ginny's impassioned pleas to seek an educational deferment and reported for his draft physical on July 15, 1965. The two said their tearful goodbyes the same day at an induction station in downtown Seattle.

  Ginny had more success talking her way into a delivery room at Sound View Hospital. She had helped Katie through a difficult pregnancy and insisted on being at her side when she gave birth to her first child on May 2, 1965. Doctors and nurses, initially opposed, granted the request.

  Ginny stayed in the hospital with Katie through twelve hours of labor and four days of postnatal care. She cheered the arrival of her healthy, eight-pound nephew, who had been blessed with his parents' good looks and mellow temperaments.

  She had also cheered a decision by the Cedar River Country Fair in early 1965 to bring back the House of Mirrors. Officials had closed the attraction on September 6, 1964, hours before the fair opened to the public. Vandals had punched holes in the walls and destroyed much of the maze, rendering the facility unusable. Thankfully, they had left the oval mirror intact.

  Sensing that her long-awaited chance to go home had finally come, Ginny had arranged for three adults and an infant to travel to 2020. After five attempts and five failures, the four finally succeeded in passing through the portal on September 11, 1965. For reasons that remained unclear, the time-traveling process appeared firmly tied to two seemingly unrelated dates.

  The travelers had exited an empty House of Mirrors shortly after 11 a.m. on May 2, 2021. When Ginny saw a fairgrounds parking lot that was free of 2018 Toyotas, she used her still-functional cell phone to call a cab. Ninety minutes later she greeted her mother and brought her "strange, mysterious journey" to a close.

  Returning to the here and now, Ginny looked at her joyous relatives for another moment and then directed her attention to the other end of the living room, where her beaming younger sister approached with her nephew. Cindy gave the baby to Katie and stepped to the side of the room.

  Ginny braced herself for yet another emotional moment as Katie rewrapped the blanket around her son and walked slowly toward Joel and Grace. She had seen her twin with the infant hundreds of times but never like this. A photo op of the first order was coming up.

  "This is my son, Daddy," Katie said. She handed Joel the baby. "We named him Joel."

  Ginny had never seen her father cry, but she knew there was a first time for everything. Joel made no attempt to hide a trickle of tears as he celebrated not only the return of two beloved daughters but also the arrival of his first grandchild.

  "He's beautiful, Katie. Thank you."

  Joel held the infant against his chest and whispered sweet nothings – probably baseball scores – in his ear as the others looked on. He bonded with his namesake for a few minutes, handed the baby to his smiling wife, and wrapped Katie in his arms. Then he warmly welcomed his new son-in-law to the family and invited the others to gather around.

  Ginny used the moment to slip out of the living room and walk to the kitchen. She picked up the manila envelope Nana had given her more than a year earlier, pulled out an eight-by-ten photograph, and returned to the family reunion. When she looked for her parents, she found them talking to each other in the back of the room.

  "I have something for you too," Ginny said. She held the photo behind her back. "It's not a husband or a baby, but I think you'll like it. It was given to me by a very special lady."

  "What is it?" Grace asked.

  "It's a picture of that special lady with Katie and me."

  Ginny pulled the photo from its hiding place and handed it to her mother, who held it so that Joel could see it. She watched with delight as her parents' eyes lit up.

  "She asked about you often, Mom. She missed you more than you can imagine."

  Joel looked at Ginny closely.

  "You spent time with her?"

  "She was our landlord, Dad, and our great-grandma and one of the best friends we had. She and Joe made it work for us there."

  "That's amazing," Joel said.

  Ginny smiled.

  "The back of the picture's pretty nice too."

  Grace flipped the photograph over. She put her hand on her mouth and turned away in tears after reading its message:

  Thanks for the memories, ladies. My life is complete. – Nana

  Joel had a different reaction. He smiled and pulled Ginny in for another hug.

  "It's more than nice, honey," he said. "It's the frosting on a perfect day."

  CHAPTER 81: GINNY

  Wednesday, May 5, 2021

  Day four of the hostage crisis started no better than the first three. The captors set up their cameras and microphones on the front lawn, grabbed their pens and pads, and waited for their captives to pop through the door and carry out a normal life.

  Sometimes they let a hostage leave as a goodwill gesture, such as when they let the younger kids go to school or Grace go to the market, but mostly they just occupied property that wasn't theirs and shouted questions they had no right to ask.

  "Are you sure you're up for this, honey?" Joel asked. "You don't have to be out here."

  "Yes, I do, Dad," Ginny said. "I have to show them I won't be intimidated. If I hide inside the house, the terrorists win."

  Joel laughed and gave his daughter a hug.

  "I missed you," he said.

  "I missed you too."

  Ginny did too. If there was one person she missed most during her side trip to 1964, it was the man who had raised her and passed on his sense of humor, intellectual curiosity, and unquenchable thirst for life.

  She answered his hug with one of her own and then returned her attention to the hyenas on the lawn, who included reporters and cameramen from the broadcast networks as well as a few from the cable news stations, tabloid TV programs, and local affiliates. Most, thankfully, stood out of earshot on the other side of the barricade tape.

  "Why are the media still here?" Ginny asked. "Don't they have better things to do?"

  "I'm afraid not," Joel said.

  She knew he was right. News organizations feasted on stories like this. When daughters of popular college professors vanished without a trace, journalists saw heartbreak, drama, and tears at eleven! When the daughters happened to be attractive, blue-eyed blondes, they saw sex, scandal, and ratings bonanzas.

  Ginny frowned when she saw a reporter from a British network push his way past a counterpart from Canada and exchange words with a cameraman from Japan. This was nuts.

  She hoped that this press conference would do much to satisfy the insatiable appetite of those who traded on the sensational, but she had her doubts. She knew that most reporters would not be satisfied with the explanation that the girls had had a falling out with their family and gone on a soul-searching journey in the mountains.

  Ginny also knew that the family could not tell the truth. To even suggest that time travel was part of the mix would invite ridicule and scorn and turn an otherwise sympathetic public against them overnight. She wanted Joel to be able to continue teaching at the university and her siblings to be able to attend school with their heads held high.

  Maintaining credibility was the biggest challenge. It was one thing to say the girls had gone on an eight-month walkabout. It was another to say they had picked up a boyfriend and an infant along the way. The family would eventually have to explain Mike and baby Joel.

  The tabloids, of course, hadn't wasted a minute in creating their own narrative. Those that hadn't beat the "mystery man" and "love child" drums had tried to tie the disappearances to aliens, drug rehab, and the witness protection program. One suggested that the girls had engaged in a promotional stunt for an upcoming reality TV program.

  One person who did not engage in speculation was Marta Robinson, who had paid a visit on Tuesday. She had apologized profusely for not doing more to spare the girls from a harrowing experience or speaking more candidly with investigators. Like those in the Smith family who knew the full story, she promised to k
eep the truth to herself.

  Ginny glanced back at the house and saw Katie peek through the kitchen window. Of all the people around her, none occupied her thoughts more than her twin. Katie had the most to explain and the least experience in dealing with difficult questions. Ginny wondered whether her sister would ever have the opportunity to lead a normal life with her beautiful new family.

  She also worried about Mike. He had no experience with modern technology, no job, and no identity that might help him find the kind of work he would need to support a wife and a child. She worried about his ability to adjust to a time fifty-six years past his own.

  Ginny wondered as well if readjusting to the modern world and dealing with a ravenous media would be their only challenges. She needed only to look to her left to see another potential problem. Two policemen discussed how they would clear the crowd after the press conference.

  Though Ginny gave law enforcement high marks for keeping the media at bay and helping the family with a variety of problems, she knew it was only a matter of time before the relationship turned adversarial. Police and prosecutors continued to investigate whether the twins had committed fraud or obstructed justice, while state and county officials pondered lawsuits to recover some of the half million dollars spent trying to find them.

  Ginny pondered these and other matters as Carson Emerson, the family attorney, stepped up to a microphone and responded to reports that the twins had fled to escape abusive boyfriends. Part of Ginny wanted to let that rumor linger. It might teach Cody Williamson a thing or two about taking girlfriends for granted.

  At eleven o'clock Grace came out of the house and joined her husband and daughter on the edge of the lawn. Ginny greatly admired her mother's courage in overcoming numerous tragedies and traumas in forty-plus years but wondered how much more she could take. She was human, after all, and even the strongest of humans could handle only so much.

  Ginny grabbed Grace's hand and gave her a smile. When Emerson finished his comments and summoned Joel to the microphone, she did the same for her father.

  She wanted her parents to know that no matter how ugly things got in the coming days and weeks, she would get through it. They would get through it. They would return to the life they missed and conquer new mountains, just as soon as they took care of business.

  It was time to feed the hyenas.

  CHAPTER 82: KATIE

  Port Townsend, Washington – Friday, May 7, 2021

  Katie watched in awe as the improbable meeting unfolded. She had seen and participated in several emotional reunions in the past week but none topped the one in the Victorian mansion that overlooked the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Nothing brought a tear to the eye faster than watching your twenty-year-old husband embrace his seventy-nine-year-old sister.

  "Please come in," Patricia Hayes Anderson said. "I've made some tea."

  Katie repositioned Joel in his baby sling and followed Patsy and Mike through the door and into the stately residence, which looked like it had been built in the 1880s or 1890s. When asked to make herself comfortable, she sat on a couch in the living room. A large grandfather clock, numerous antiques, and a crackling fire in a brick fireplace gave the space a cozy feel.

  A moment later, Patsy, a widow and mother of three, carried a ceramic teapot into the room and placed it next to three mugs on a coffee table in front of the sofa. She sat on one end of the couch, next to Mike, and smiled at Joel as he squirmed on a blanket a few feet away.

  "You're as handsome as the last time I saw you. I've missed you, little man," Patsy said. She turned to face Mike and Katie. "I've missed all of you. It's been a long time."

  Katie smiled sadly.

  "It has been a long time – for you. It's been fifty-six years," Katie said. She took a breath. "For us, it hasn't been even a week."

  Patsy shook her head.

  "I never looked at it that way, but you're right," she said. "I'm still trying to get used to the idea that all this is real. I didn't believe the time-travel story when you left."

  "What did you think?" Mike asked.

  "I thought you ran off, of course. I thought you went to another state to find a better job or maybe to another country to escape the draft in case Mr. Johnson started rescinding executive orders. Then, when I hadn't heard from you, I assumed you had died. I was convinced of that until you called yesterday. I thought I would never see you again."

  Mike put an arm around his sister and kissed her on the cheek.

  "Well, now you have us back."

  Patsy turned and put a hand on Mike's knee.

  "I suppose the past week has taken a terrible toll on the both of you. I've been following the news closely," she said. "Most people seem to think you're lying about hiding in the mountains."

  "We are lying about hiding in the mountains," Katie said. "In this case, though, lying is our only option. If we told the truth, the same people who want to sue us or put us in jail would try to put us in an asylum."

  "Have the reporters gone away?" Patsy asked.

  "Most of them have, but some are settling in for the long haul. Several yelled questions at us this morning when we left the house."

  Patsy shook her head.

  "I think it's just awful how the media act these days. They should respect your privacy. They should leave you alone."

  "They should, but they won't until we give them answers that make sense. They know Ginny and I are lying. They just don't know why we're lying. That alone is going to keep us in the news for at least a few more weeks."

  "What about you?" Patsy asked as she glanced at her brother. "What do they think about you?"

  "They think I'm some drifter Katie ran off with," Mike said. "They don't have the slightest idea of who I really am. I kind of want to keep it that way."

  Katie smiled sadly at Mike. She admired his conviction, but she knew he would not be able to maintain his anonymity indefinitely. He would have to develop a new identity, obtain new documents, and perhaps adopt a new attitude. He was not the Mike Hayes who was born at the end of World War II but rather a Mike Hayes who was born at the start of a new century.

  "Well, your secret is safe with me," Patsy said.

  Mike smiled, pulled Patsy close, and stared at the fireplace for more than a minute. When he returned his attention to his sister, he did so with thoughtful eyes.

  "How is your family, Patsy?" Mike asked. "I know you said Eddie died a few years ago, but how are your children? Where do they live? What do they do?"

  Patsy responded like a person who hadn't been asked those questions in a long time. She took a breath, gazed at Mike for a moment, and patted him on the knee.

  "Erin is no longer with us. She and her husband Mark died in a car accident last year. They left four children. Three still live in this area. One is in California."

  "I'm sorry," Mike said. "What about the others? How are they?"

  Patsy did not respond immediately. She instead glanced at Joel, who sucked on his toes, and waved a finger at him before answering the question.

  "Kimberly is fine. You don't remember her, of course. I had her the year after you left. She's an artist who lives in New Mexico with her second husband."

  "Does she have any kids?" Katie asked.

  "No. She was childless by choice."

  "What about your son?" Mike asked. "You told me yesterday that you had a son."

  Patsy sighed.

  "I did. I named him Michael."

  "You named him Michael?" Katie asked.

  "I did," Patsy said. "I never considered another name. I wanted to honor my grandfather and the brother I was sure was dead."

  Katie felt a strange sense of unease.

  "What happened to him?"

  Patsy winced.

  "He died of bacterial meningitis in 2001."

  Mike pulled the older woman close.

  "I don't know what to say. I'm so sorry," Mike said. "That's just sad."

  Katie thought it was sad and unsettling. She thought
about this new Michael and the year he had died as she braced herself for answers to questions she knew she had to ask.

  "Patsy?" Katie asked.

  "Yes."

  "What day was your son born?"

  "It was May 2, 1970," Patsy said. "It was twenty-five years to the day that Michael – your Michael – was born. It was also just two days before that awful shooting at Kent State."

  Katie glanced at Joel, who continued to chew on his digits, and then at the fireplace. She wanted to clear her mind but couldn't. She could see a trend.

  "Do you remember the day that Michael died?" Katie asked.

  "Yes, dear. I do. That was even more memorable. It was the day the towers came down. It was September 11, 2001. Michael died at Sound View Hospital in Seattle."

  Katie closed her eyes. This simply wasn't possible. She got up from the couch, stepped around the table, and picked up Joel. She paced back and forth between the window and the entry while patting her baby on the back.

  "Is something wrong, Katie?"

  "I don't know," Katie truthfully answered. "There's something nagging at me. Can I ask you some more questions?"

  "Certainly."

  "Did your son ever marry?"

  "No. He was engaged at the time of his death, but he never married the girl."

  "Do you remember the name of his fiancée?"

  "Of course. She would have been my daughter-in-law. Her name was Katherine – Katherine Munson. She went by Katie, just as you do."

  Katie didn't know what to make of the incredible string of coincidences, but she suspected that the string would grow before the day was out. She returned Joel to his blanket.

  "I know this is a crazy thing to ask, but can you tell me when your grandfather Michael was born and when he died? Can you tell me when he was married?"

  "I believe I can. I'm sure the information is in the family Bible," Patsy said. "I can get it if you'd like. It's in the other room."