Time Change B2
Page 19
“Listen, I might be able to come up with a plausible lie, but I really don’t have the energy to get that creative. I know about it because I’m the one that put it there.”
“Nonsense. When we found it in 1960, the box looked like it had been there for 75, 100 years, definitely before you were even born.”
“The box is black with silver trim with ‘Chicago Box Works’ written on the back in white letters. The lock is a ‘Scottie’ lock with the place for the key on the side verses the bottom…”
“But, how can you know this?”
“I told you, I was the one who put it there. I bought the box, and I bought the lock, and spent many nights pondering it.”
“As have I lately.”
“Why have you?” Jack asked.
“Because of the disturbing things written in the letter.”
“Like what?”
“It gives a lot of family history, but the part that’s confusing is that she implies that Jack Riggs was a time traveler from 2013.”
“Dr. Hopwood, it’s true.”
CHAPTER 43
Thursday, August 23, 2013
After telling Doctor Hopwood the whole story in his office, he silently handed Jack the letter out of his top desk drawer.
“I’ll be back,” Jack said. He held the letter as if it was made of glass.
“I understand. Where will you go?”
“The beach. I just need some fresh air, a little time alone.”
“You know the beach starts here, right?”
“Yes, I’ve been here many times. I’ve got a rental, can I leave it in the lot?”
“As long as you’d like.” Dr. Hopwood said and watched Jack leave his office, the man’s face a knot of confusion.
Jack wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be disturbed, so he walked to the nearby beach. He looked down at the yellowed letter in his hands for the first time. It had his name on it in Frances’s handwriting. He put the letter into his pocket, unread, and sat on a breaker looking out over the Chesapeake. Jack couldn’t tell whether it had been one hour or four hours, or how many self-doubts crashed into the waves, but the aged envelope had been in his hands for a while. He looked at the writing on the letter until his eyes blurred, until the letters that formed the words ceased to have meaning. He saw his first and last name in the place where an address would normally be, and under it he saw the words “My Love”.
In the upper right hand corner of the envelope, he saw the name “Frances Riggs” written in black ink in her unmistakable elegant handwriting.
A part of him wanted to throw the letter into the bay, fearful of the hurt that the words might say, fearful of the confirmation from her of the fool that he had been, but he just had to know. With shaking hands, he tentatively opened the letter. His heart beat wildly. Careful not to rip a part of the envelope with her handwriting on it, he eased his finger in the tucked back flap and opened it.
The first words he read caused a lump in his throat nearly big enough to cut off his flow of oxygen.
Dear Jack,
I write this letter to you as a very old woman who not once in the seventy-four years since you have been gone has ever stopped loving you. I have never remarried in hopes that one day you would return and we would pick up where we left off.
I felt so cheated when God stole you away from me, when you traded your life for mine. There were so many things we still had not done, so many wonderful things yet to accomplish. There were so many words I was never able to say.
When someone dies, there are always so many words you wished you would have said. You would sell your soul for the chance just to tell them one more time how much you cared. It is my hope that this letter finds its way to you someday, somehow.
Every year on your birthday, I have made the trip to this chapel and have placed an updated correspondence in this box for you, replacing the one from the year before.
On the evening that you were shot, our wedding night, I told you the news that I was pregnant with what would be our daughter—Emily. She was a fine woman and lived a good life until the Lord called her away 10 years ago, at age 63. She married an admirable man named William Gleich, and together they had three girls, all of which are extraordinary people. They range in age from baby Carla at 30, Terry Lynn at 35, to the oldest, Valier, at 38. Valier and I are the closest; she and her husband John live with me, helping me with my affairs. They themselves had two children, now 12-year-old Louis and a now 18-year-old named Martha that is set to marry an able man named Phillip come next spring.
He had to pause for a second. Jack’s whole being shook. His grandfather and grandmother’s names were Phillip and Martha, and he had a great-uncle Louis. He remembered stories that his great-grandmother’s name was Valier and always thought how beautiful and unusual a name it was. The coincidences were too high; he knew what this meant. Mustering all his strength and wiping his tears, he continued.
I know you have figured this out as I have that this life, our lives, travel in some strange circle. That perhaps the only way you could travel to your future was by confronting a demon from your past.
So, you see my love, you have left behind quite a legacy, and you have touched people you never were able to meet.
I fear that this year will be the last for me to make the pilgrimage to our little church. My health is failing, and the pain in my joints makes it impossible to walk without my wheelchair. I feel like I’ve lived long enough.
I always held out hope that somehow you would find a way to come back to me, but now I’m afraid that the next time I see you, it will be in another place. Until then, I’ll never forget a single detail of your loving face, your smile, the way that you looked at me with love. I’ll cling to your memory like I would to a life preserver in a stormy sea. It wasn’t until I met you that I realized I had never been able to give myself completely to any man, to anyone. My heart continues to ache because I didn’t realize this until after you were gone.
Our good friend, Samuel Clemens, once told me that love is as real as if it were made of the very earth, and like the earth, it is forever. So, even if you do not hear my words now as I speak them out loud, this letter will have to do.
You’ve taught me how to love… and for this, even in my darkest of moments, when hope seems hopeless, I will say the name “Jack” and know that, if even for the briefest of shining moments, I had and I knew love.
I say all these things standing behind you in time, speaking softly into your ear, hoping that you’ll turn around and come back and take me into your arms and hug me into tomorrow.
I could see your love for me was shaping the person you were becoming too. Together, we grew spiritually closer, and I could see you becoming the man you were destined to always be. I only hoped I could be the woman I was when I was with you in all the rest of my life.
I bless the day I met you, and I thank God that he let me. I’m a better person for the time we spent together.
I have waited for so long, but I feel my wait is coming to an end. I am waiting for you in time.
Love, your wife,
Frances
“I knew that was your car in the parking lot,” Brent Hopwood said. He walked up to Jack and moved in next to him on his walk back up the beach.
“How could you tell?” Jack asked, wiping away his drying tears.
“Besides being the only one in the lot other than mine, there is an Enterprise Rental sticker on the bumper.”
“Should have been a detective.”
“You seem better than you were before.”
“I guess it was more cathartic than I thought it would be,” Jack said.
“I read the letter. From what I could see, at least you have answers.”
“I still have a million questions—like how I was able to go back, and why?”
“I think it’s pretty simple: you went back to stop the Civil War, and you succeeded,” Dr. Hopwood said.
“I don’t think so,” Jack said,
stopping to pick up a stone. It wasn’t until he skimmed it into the water that he realized this was probably the same place he skipped a stone 150 years ago with Frances.
He turned to look at Dr. Hopwood. “I think I was sent there to learn a lesson about love, and myself. To discover that I had the capacity to love and for me to give of myself.”
“I know if I would have had a say in the matter, I would have sent you back to save my grandfather. Maybe you went back to save your own life. Whatever the reason, so much good came out of it.”
It wasn’t until the next day Jack realized that neither he nor the letter had ever said anything about the Civil War. With the change in the time stream, Jack was the only person on Earth that could have known if there ever was a Civil War in the United States. How had Brent Hopwood known? By the time Jack got back to the Fort, not only was Dr. Brent Hopwood not there, he had never worked there. From what Jack could discern, Dr. Brent Hopwood didn’t exist. Jack had an odd feeling that it wasn’t Hercules driving that UPS truck that sent him back on his time travel journey, it was this man that called himself “Brent”, and whether or not he was Hercules’s grandson was anybody’s guess.
I look at these words today and there is almost no recollection of the events and a diminishing emotional attachment. If I didn’t have the letter, I might not believe me. I have recorded these memories and feelings into my VITU unit before they leave me like a half remembered dream.
As I started to remember more of this life (Johnny’s or Jonathan’s) Jack’s seems less and less real. I only know this because I mentioned it about a million times in my VITU recording. The cemetery of Jack’s past is filled with unmarked graves.
I may seem callous or cold, but I have changed too. I like the name Jack—I like what I remember of him. When I meet new people I have them call me Jack and to the old people that knew me, well there wasn’t that many of them. Something that bothered me that I failed to mention was when I woke up from my coma in the hospital, I was all alone. There were no family or friends, nothing—zippo.
I decided to change that. See in this time stream my mom never committed suicide and we have reconnected, sort of, but she doesn’t know she’s my mom (it’s complicated). I’ve got a best friend named Bill that I realized meant a lot to me, and spend most of my days getting immense pleasure making all my big piles of money do the most good. I don’t have a girlfriend yet, I thought I’d give that side of my life a little break.
I can remember one thing, one thing that transcends while nothing else does, and that is I remember being loved. So, if I really did go through all this, and some days I’m still on the fence, I can say this for sure—it was worth it!
Jack Riggs
October 21, 2013
Norfolk, Virginia
THE END
Thank you for reading “Time Change B2”.
“Time Change B3” is seventy-five percent finished and I have been having a blast writing it. It all takes place in the changed timeline of the present, that looks very much like our future.
Jack’s missing iPhone turns up in the most peculiar of spots. There is evidence that Jack’s trip back to the 1850’s wasn’t his only time travel experience. Plus we learn more about the “dark man” and who the heck “they” are.
I learned a lesson last go around making a promise of when the next book will be out—in my heart I want to say soon.
Alex Myers
3-10-13
Austin, Texas
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alex_Austin
Or on my blog: http://alexvox.com/
Or to see actual historical pictures, maps images, my vision of what the characters looked like check out the “Time Change” Pinterest site: http://pinterest.com/alex_austin/time-change-b2/