by Nichole Van
Her mind fixated on them. Counting. Cataloging.
There were sixteen alone above the dining table. Ten more in sconces on the wall opposite.
Fossi was quite sure she was somewhere between shock and panic.
Daniel spun in a circle, taking in the space.
Finally, he looked at her properly, clearly reading the alarm and dismay in her gaze.
Sympathy flooded his blue eyes.
“Come here.” He opened his arms.
Fossi practically ran to him, desperately needing a firm anchor, to be wrapped up in him.
Her body trembled against his chest, face buried in his shoulder.
“All will be well, Fossi.” He rubbed his hands up and down her back, long comforting strokes. “I will ensure it.”
He held her for a long time.
Even pressed a kiss or two atop her head.
Held her until her breathing settled, and she felt she could talk without devolving into hysterics.
How she wished he could hold her forever.
Finally, she took a deep breath and pulled away, looking up into his fathomless eyes.
“So . . . ?” Fossi’s voice drifted into a question mark.
“When are we?” Daniel supplied. “The portal usually just tethers between the exact same date two hundred years apart.”
“So today would be the same day in two thousand twenty-eight?”
“Exactly.” He scrunched up his mouth and looked around. “Though this doesn’t quite look like the house in two thousand twenty-eight.”
Fossi chewed on her bottom lip.
“Ah-ha.” He pointed.
Walking over to the large marble counter, he picked up what appeared to be a white envelope.
“Mmmm. Look at this.”
He turned the letter toward her, his finger pointing to some printed numbers inside a stamped circle.
01 OCT 2017
It took Fossi a solid ten seconds to decipher it.
“October first, two thousand seventeen.”
“Precisely.”
A pause.
“So did the portal tether to two hundred years, in the end?” Fossi pointed at the letter in question.
Daniel grimaced, turning the envelope around. “It’s an advert for life insurance. Junk mail—”
“Junk mail?”
“Mail that is trying to sell you something unwanted and, therefore, usually ends up in the rubbish bin.”
Fossi stared past his head, trying to comprehend his sentence. It took a minute.
“Basically, it’s the kind of thing that wouldn’t be left on the kitchen counter for over a decade,” he clarified.
Ah.
Daniel tossed the letter back onto the cabinet. “When I pulled you into the portal, it abruptly stopped working and simply spit us out into the time it was cycling through. That’s the only explanation I can think of for why—”
A rumbling noise and the crunch of gravel came from behind the house.
Fossi looked out the back window in time to see a shiny, black carriage roll to a stop.
There were no horses attached to it.
That panicky breathlessness returned.
“Well, that certainly simplified things.” Daniel’s voice at her ear made her jump. “Don’t have to figure out how to call her now.”
Daniel walked around Fossi and threw open the back door, just as a tall woman exited the carriage. Beautiful with auburn hair, she was wearing trousers, boots and a loose shirt. She removed a pair of dark glasses, revealing blue eyes and a face shape that announced she had to be related to Daniel in some way.
“Kit,” Daniel called, a smile in his voice as he jogged down the short walk to greet her.
Of course.
Daniel’s older sister.
The one who had raised him.
Clearly they weren’t quite in the correct time, as Kit looked decidedly younger than Daniel.
For her part, Kit stared at her brother, mouth open.
“Daniel?” Her tone utterly quizzical. “Is that you?”
“It is indeed, sister dearest.”
“Wha—?” Kit looked beyond him to Fossi standing on the back stoop and then whirled her gaze back to Daniel. “Wow. You gave me quite the start. For a second, I thought you were Dad in one of his cosplay getups.”
Daniel laughed. “Figures I would look like him as I age.” He wrapped his sister in an enormous hug. “It’s good to see you.”
“Yeah.” Kit hugged him back with fierce strength before pulling back. “I’m glad I decided to stop in and check up on Duir Cottage today. I saw you last month, but that was with the portal time line being tethered to precisely two hundred years in the past, so you were in your late twenties.” She pointed a finger at him. “You’re not that guy. What’s going on Future Daniel?”
“Long story.” Daniel peered past Kit to the carriage. “Marc with you?”
“No. He’s shooting in the Maldives right now. Croc-quake.”
Daniel chuckled. “I remember Croc-quake.”
“Last month you said it sounded terribly derivative.” Kit glared at him.
“It is. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t good.”
Kit shook her head. And then stepped forward, giving her brother kiss on the cheek. “It’s wonderful every time I see you, Daniel.”
“You too, Kit.”
“Now.” Kit looked around Daniel to Fossi. “Introduce me, if you would, please.”
Several hours later, Fossi had learned many things.
One, food in the twenty-first century could be ordered using a flat, rectangular glass slab called a phone, and a half an hour later, a man would arrive with the food in stiff paper boxes. Hot and ready to eat.
Two, women would be given significantly more opportunities in the future. Kit owned her own company and was the current Lady Whitmoor in her own right.
Three, there were things called computers which could do sums on their own. Fossi wasn’t sure if she was elated by the idea or horrified at having been ‘outsourced,’ as Kit labeled it.
Four, mankind flew through the air and swam under the ocean and had even walked on the moon.
And, lastly, Kit loved Daniel with a lioness’ ferocity.
They talked for hours and the entire time, Kit sat next to Daniel. A hand on his arm, light in her eyes. She wept over Simon, raged over Alice’s perfidy and gracefully thanked Fossi for her help.
Fossi loved her for how she loved Daniel.
But the more they talked, the more Fossi sensed Daniel withdrawing from her. He was focused on his family and the task that needed to be done with saving Simon. And Fossi was an absolute anachronism in his world.
Case in point, during a lull in the conversation, Fossi had asked if people still grew pineapples. Kit and Daniel froze, staring at her. And then, without replying, Daniel had stood, retrieved a tin-can from the cupboard and proceeded to open it with a strange, geared device. Finding a fork in another drawer, he had set the tin-can in front of her.
Pineapple, Fossi decided, was sweet and tart and absolutely delicious. Though given how Kit and Daniel had stared at her as she savored every bite, she didn’t dare ask her multiple follow-up questions. Namely, how did the pineapple come to be in the can? Why did it not spoil? And could she have more?
Of course, Daniel would retreat from her. Fossi didn’t even understand something as simple as pineapple.
“You really believe that you will be able to stop Simon’s death then?” Kit asked, pushing back her dinner plate after finishing eating.
They were all seated around the large kitchen table.
“Absolutely. I inadvertently caused it.” Daniel set down his own fork and stretched, lacing his fingers behind his head. He had removed his coat and cravat and was in waistcoat and shirtsleeves, looking utterly at home.
“But . . .” Kit paused, brow furrowed in thought. “You just said that you saw me before taking the candy back to Simon. That’s still several years i
nto the future from now for me. Why didn’t I ever say anything about it? I could easily have stopped you from taking the candy, preventing this entire mess. Wait . . . did I say something?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Okay, but why—”
“It’s proof, don’t you see?” Daniel didn’t miss a beat. “Your silence is further evidence that this timeline is an aberration and will be forgotten. In the correct timeline, we never meet in 2017 like this. So you have no memory of this and that’s why you said nothing.”
Kit continued to frown.
Daniel sat forward on his elbows. “Think about it, Kit. You’ll see I’m right. Even Fossi’s answer to the equation proves my theory.”
“It does?” That was news to Fossi.
“Of course. The answer is infinity plus or minus one.” He said it like that explained everything.
A pause.
“You’re going to have to spell it out a bit more for me, Daniel.” Kit pointed to her head. “Math idiot, remember?”
“It’s like this—infinity is the number of human lives that exist in this vast cosmic ocean. Our answer is infinity plus or minus one. My actions caused Simon’s death far too early, causing him to become the missing one. So we restore him and everything settles back to normal.”
Kit tapped her fingers against the tabletop. “Hmmm. I’m going to have to think about all of this, Daniel. I’m not sure that’s how it works, to be honest.”
“How else would it work, Kit?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I need to think about it.”
They talked and planned until the hour was late.
Tomorrow, Daniel and Kit would retrieve some medicine that would save Simon if Daniel didn’t arrive in time to stop him from eating the candy. Fossi would sing to correct the portal, and Daniel would disappear through to fix what had gone wrong.
Fossi would then continue singing and return to her own time.
As a plan, it was . . . acceptable.
But after the others had sought their beds, Fossi lay awake for hours, staring up at the ceiling.
Funny . . . turned out ceilings were the one thing that hadn’t changed much over the years.
And in the dead of night, they all looked remarkably the same.
She lay there, feeling somehow like a passenger in a runaway carriage watching the approaching edge of a cliff.
That wasn’t quite true.
She did know why she felt that way.
There was no room in Daniel’s plan for her.
She wasn’t part of Simon or Kit and, as such, she would not be part of his future.
He would change their timeline.
She would go back to being Foster Lovejoy in 1826, as she had been. She would never meet him.
And perhaps even worse—
Fossi would never change.
The timid Foster Lovejoy who had ridden the night mail coach to confront Daniel in London was long gone.
Fossi wasn’t that person anymore.
She was a Foster Lovejoy who had weathered her sisters’ scorn and faced down Reverend Lovejoy’s wrath and bravely forged a path for herself in the world.
She was a Foster Lovejoy who had flirted and danced and—heavens!—kissed a lord.
A woman who ate pineapple out of a tin-can and reached for what she wanted in life.
She hated that the Foster Lovejoy she had become would, now, never be.
Fossi.
Wouldst that I had been.
Ugh!
She rolled over and punched her pillow.
Now . . . once Daniel restored everything to how it should have been . . .
She would be forgotten. Quite literally.
No witness for her life.
Without a broken portal, Daniel would not goad her to London.
Instead, she would remain anonymous. The unknown originator of Fourier’s Nemesis.
She would age with her father and move in with her unwilling sisters when he passed on. And in between darning socks and scrubbing dishes, she would eke out meager spurts of living through her numbers.
And Daniel would not even know she existed.
Oh.
The thought . . . scorched.
But . . .
How could she have expected more?
There had been no repeated kisses.
Not that Fossi anticipated there necessarily would be more. She was starting to wonder if Daniel had just taken pity on her with them. Kissed her because he was a kind man and wanted Fossi to have something special and they would both forget it happened anyway, so why not?
And even if that were the case, Fossi would still kiss him again.
Pathetic, but true.
After hours of tossing and turning in an incredibly comfortable bed, Fossi finally managed to find sleep.
But not before the most depressing thought of all flitted through her mind—
With everything that humankind had achieved in the future, she was three hundred point five percent more likely to walk on the moon than keep Daniel in her life.
It just figured those would be her odds with men in the end.
The next morning arrived too soon.
Daniel with medicine and a plan to save Simon.
Fossi standing in the cellar beside him, ready to sing the correct frequency note to get the portal humming in harmony.
Kit sat on the stairs behind them. She and Daniel had already said their goodbyes.
Daniel’s goodbye to Fossi had been gruff and quick. An expression of thanks. A sincere hug. He was clearly already thinking ahead to what needed to happen.
He and Fossi were just never fated to be.
“Ready?” Daniel asked her.
Fossi nodded. “Take care.” She had to say something. “I would say I will never forget your kindness and belief in me but . . .”
Fossi let her words dangle off.
They all knew how the sentence ended.
Daniel smiled at her, tight and withdrawn.
Sucking in a deep breath, Fossi began to sing. She increased her pitch by the tiniest degrees, searching for the perfect tone.
The portal fought her this time.
The energy bounced around the room, stubbornly resisting the resonant frequency.
The correct note was harder to find.
But after several minutes of coaxing, she hit upon it and the portal energies aligned, humming in harmony. Fossi could hear the cadences resonating in the higher registers as she sang.
Giving her one last smile and a tip of his head, Daniel stepped forward into the portal depression.
Nothing happened.
He turned around, confusion on his face.
Fossi took in a quick breath and kept singing.
The portal hummed.
But nothing happened.
They tried for another ten minutes.
She could feel the resistance in the portal. It was aligned, but just not . . . interested in cooperating.
Oddly, it was almost sentient. Not quite alive—it certainly didn’t have feelings, per se—but it definitely had a sense of which actions were valid and which were not.
Daniel’s actions were not valid.
At least, that was Fossi’s perception.
Eventually, she had to stop, her voice cracking from the strain.
The portal crashed back into chaos almost immediately.
Daniel stepped out of the depression, eyes bleak.
He stared back at it, running a shaking hand through his hair.
“This is ridiculous. Why won’t it let me back?” Voice gruff with frustration. “I have to fix my mistake.”
“Daniel,” Kit began, “much as it pains me to say—”
He turned to her. “Don’t, Kit!”
“—I’m not sure this is the correct path. The portal is telling you so.”
He shook a finger at her.
“This is the correct path. It has to be. I screwed up and wrecked the timeline. It’s my job
to fix it. We’re just missing something here.”
Daniel stomped past his sister and up the stairs.
Kit shot Fossi an apologetic look. And then followed him.
Fossi walked into the kitchen area behind them. Daniel was already pacing beside the kitchen island (she had remembered the name of it), a hand still in his hair.
“We know how this goes, Daniel,” Kit sighed. “The portal has ideas about how things should be. It won’t let you travel if it doesn’t think it’s right.”
“It makes no sense, Kit.” He threw up his hands at her. “I introduced something into 1826 that should have never been in that time period.”
“Are you so sure about that, Daniel? The universe protects itself. It won’t allow information or people to move in ways that disrupt the space/time continuum. The fact that you were able to give the candies to Simon at all—”
“My innocent son and heir died! Saving Simon is the answer. That’s when everything fell apart. I’m not giving up on him.”
Kit sagged against one of the dining table chairs. “I think we’re not considering everything here.”
“What am I missing?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. You say Simon is the plus one missing from the cosmic sea of life. But here’s the problem, Daniel. Simon did exist at one point. The cosmic pool is an infinite number of people who have lived and will ever live. Simon’s death at age six or sixty doesn’t matter, in the end. He’s still part of the pool.”
Daniel stopped pacing and faced his sister, chest heaving.
“No.” Emphatic. Denial.
“Yes.” Kit. Compassionate. Heartbreaking. “Simon cannot be your plus or minus one, Daniel. It was a good thought, but it’s not the answer. The universe allowed that candy to be taken to him—”
“No!”
Daniel turned away, bracing his hands on the marble counter top. His entire body shook, violent breaths seesawing in and out.
Kit’s shoulders crumpled. She swiped away a tear.
“I am so sorry, Daniel.” She lifted a hand to comfort him, but Daniel pushed away.
“No.” He whirled on his sister, jaw clenched. “You would never give up on your children. I will never give up on mine. There has to be another answer we’re missing.”
Daniel slammed out of the house.
He didn’t look back.