I used to like to sit here alone on the dunes to feel the peace of the sea and sand and sky. In the last few months, though, I’d been coming out here to grieve, and I was so, so tired of grieving. A few days had passed since that visit to the National Institutes of Health. I wished I’d never gone. I rested my hands on my belly through my jacket. Joanna Elizabeth. The name had come to me the day before. I would name her after Joe and my mother.
“Please, God,” I whispered. “Let that doctor be wrong.”
“Hey, Carly.”
I turned to see Hunter walking down the path from the house toward me. I didn’t answer him. I was still irrationally angry with him for making me go to NIH to hear news I didn’t want to hear.
He sat down next to me and I kept my gaze on the water. I waited for him to ask me one more time how I was doing. I was quickly getting tired of that question.
“Carly … do you trust me?” he asked instead.
Not the question I’d expected. I turned to look at him, suddenly guilty for the anger I felt toward him. I loved this man. I loved him for the joy he gave my sister. For the way he’d treated Joe like a brother. For the love he showed my sweet little nephew. I loved how easy he was to lean on.
“Of course I trust you,” I said.
“And do you think I’m sane?”
I frowned. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Do you?” he pushed. “Do you think I’m mentally sound?”
“You’re the sanest person I know.” I remembered meeting him in the rehab ward when everyone thought he was suicidal. What no one had known was that he’d recently lost both his wife, Rosie, in a bicycle accident and his mother to a heart attack. Of course he’d been depressed and uncommunicative, poor guy. Possibly he had been suicidal, momentarily, anyway. But I’d seen absolutely no hint of any psychological problem in him since that day five years ago.
“I want to tell you something about myself that no one knows,” he said now. He plucked a piece of beach grass from the sand. “Not even Patti knows this,” he said as he began tying the grass into a knot. “I need to tell you. But you have to promise me you won’t talk to her or to anyone else about what I say.”
“About what?” I couldn’t imagine where he was going with this.
“Promise me,” he said. “You’ll keep this between us.”
There had always been something of a mystery about Hunter, although Patti didn’t see it. Patti saw only perfection in him. “Did you serve time in jail or something?” I asked.
He smiled, the sun small specks of gold in the blue of his eyes. “Nothing like that,” he assured me.
“Is it something that could put Patti or John Paul in danger?” I asked. I wouldn’t be able to keep that promise.
“No. No, they’re safe. I would never put them in jeopardy.”
“All right, then. What’s this big secret?”
He took in a deep breath and looked hard into my eyes. “I was actually born in 1986,” he said.
I frowned. I couldn’t imagine why he’d joke with me when he knew how upset I was. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “You’re thirty-seven years old. You were born in”—I did the math in my head—“1935. I saw your medical record in the rehabilitation unit, remember?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I was born in 1986.”
I felt a chill. He looked entirely serious. “Please don’t tease me. I can’t handle your teasing right now.”
“I’m not teasing,” he said, his voice sober. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but please just listen. Hear me out.”
“I’m listening.” I felt annoyed.
“I was born in 1986,” he said. “I got my doctorate from Princeton in 2017.”
“You got your doctorate from Duke.”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid that was a lie.”
I drew away from him, unnerved. “You’re scaring me, Hunter,” I said. “I don’t know why you’re being so weird, but stop it, okay? Seriously. I don’t need this right now.”
“Actually, you do need this,” he said soberly. “Otherwise, believe me, I would never tell you.”
“Tell me what?” I snapped.
He looked away from me then, out to the sea. His eyes had lost their sparkle and red splotches formed on his neck. He was clearly nervous and I softened toward him. Touched his arm. “Tell me what?” I asked, quietly this time.
“I told you the truth about being married and losing Rosie,” he said. “At the time of her death, I was working in a private astrophysics program near Washington, D.C., called Temporal Solutions.”
“But you grew up in New Jersey,” I said. “Is that still true?”
“Yes, but I moved to the Washington area—specifically, Alexandria, Virginia—when I was fifteen.” He glanced at me. “Which was 2001.”
“What do you mean, two thousand and one?”
“The year 2001. That’s when I was fifteen.”
“Hunter! Do you hear yourself? What is wrong with you? Please stop.” My eyes prickled with frustration. I couldn’t understand why he was doing this to me. Telling me nonsense. My brief burst of sympathy for him disappeared.
“I’m sorry, Carly,” he said, “but I have to tell you this. Hear me out, all right? Just hear me out.”
I folded my arms across my chest, annoyed, as I waited for him to continue.
He took in a breath. “I was involved in an experimental time-travel study,” he said.
I stared at him as the words registered. Then I laughed, although the sound was false, I hadn’t laughed in so long. “You act like you really believe what you’re saying.”
“I do believe it, because it’s the truth. Will you let me finish?”
“Sure,” I said, then added sarcastically, “I can use the entertainment.”
“My mother was a physicist,” he said. “The most brilliant person I’ve ever known. She was studying quantum physics and she—”
“What’s quantum physics?”
He brushed his hand through the air dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that during her studies, she discovered it’s possible to travel forward and backward in time.”
“Ridiculous.”
“She started a secret program under the cover of a sham business she called Temporal Solutions,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I didn’t know what she was involved with until I was in college. She told me then because she wanted me to study physics as well so I could join her in the program. When she told me about it, I—”
“Hunter, enough. Please stop.”
“There were only twelve people involved in the program at that time,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard me. “Twelve scientists my mother knew she could trust enough to enlist. By the time I got involved, five of them, including my mother, had already been sent backward and forward in time. And then—” He stopped, and I knew he saw the look of worry on my face. “I’m perfectly sane,” he assured me.
“But what you’re talking about isn’t possible,” I said.
“Yes, Carly, it is. To be honest, it’s not even all that complicated once the mechanism is understood. But it takes courage to do it. Stepping into the unknown and all of that. I made my first trip into the past when I was twenty-five. I went to 1900. It was a life-altering experience.” He smiled as if at a memory, while I wondered if I should run back to the house and get Patti. Tell her what was happening to her husband. Instead, I sat rooted to the dune, unsure what I should do as he continued.
“Then when I was thirty-two—it was 2018,” he said, “my mother wanted one of us to go to the sixties. She knew technology was going to take off during that era … this era, right now … and she saw savvy investing as a way to gain funding for the program. So whoever came to the sixties was not only supposed to record the experience but also invest in technology stocks, et cetera. I was reluctant to use the program in that mercenary a way. But then Rosie was killed. And my mother…” He hesitated
for a moment. “She died,” he said. “And I thought, what the hell? I might as well volunteer to be the guy who goes to 1965. It’s what she wanted. But the problem was, there was a storm when I traveled and it threw off my calculations. Or maybe I was so depressed then that I screwed them up myself. I don’t know.” He gave a dismissive shrug. “I was supposed to land on the UNC campus. Instead I landed on the roof of that building and fell off. That’s how I broke my ankle and ended up in rehab. That’s how I…” He hesitated, then continued. “That’s how I met you and then Patti and—you two saved my life.” His voice cracked and he swallowed once, twice, before he continued. “Once I met Patti, I didn’t want to go back,” he said. “I’ll never go back. I don’t want the … the clutter of the future right now. There’s so much more going on in 2018, Carly. You can’t imagine what it’s like. Hundreds of channels on TV. Everybody has their own computer. Their own phone they carry around with them. There’s a digital revolution happening, and the medical and scientific advancements are unbelievable. But none of that compares to having Patti in my life. And to the … the simplicity of this life.” He swept his arm through the air to take in the sea and sky. “I love my life here.”
Tears welled up in my eyes. I felt both sad and frightened sitting there with him. Something was radically wrong with him and he needed my help. Maybe I should humor him as I quietly got to my feet and walked slowly back to the house to call for an ambulance. The closest hospital was in Elizabeth City, an hour and a half away. Did they have a psychiatrist there? I didn’t know, but I had to do something. I had to admit it to myself: Hunter had never been like other people. He always stood out in a crowd for a certain brilliance. A certain quirkiness, if truth be told. Had Patti and I been kidding ourselves for the past five years that he was perfectly normal, psychologically? Was he decompensating now? Maybe losing Joe, his best friend, and then learning the grim news about my baby … maybe all that had thrown him over the edge. He’d hidden his illness all these years and now it was back with a vengeance, and I was scared for him and for Patti and John Paul. And for myself. My entire world seemed to be crumbling around me.
“Honey.” I leaned forward, covering his hand with mine. “I think we need to get you some help,” I said. “Tomorrow, let’s drive to Elizabeth City and—”
“I’m … not … crazy.” He bit off the words, one by one. “I’m telling you this because there are ways to help your baby in the future.”
I leaned away, my concern for him suddenly turning to anger.
“That doctor said nothing can be done,” I said. “Why would you tease me like this?”
“I’m not teasing you,” he said. “He’s right that nothing can be done in 1970, but something can be done in the twenty-first century.”
I got to my feet and took a few steps away from him. I suddenly felt afraid of being alone out here with him. “I’m going in,” I said. “I’m finished talking to you about this.”
“Please don’t say anything to Patti!” he called after me. “Whether you believe me or not, please don’t say anything. You promised.”
I wouldn’t say anything to Patti, I thought, as I walked toward the house. At least not yet. I didn’t want to hurt Hunter. I adored him and didn’t know what I would have done without him in the months since Joe died, but I needed to get a better handle on what was wrong with him before I burdened Patti with it. He might be losing his mind, but I was sure he wasn’t a danger to himself or the rest of us. I wondered if he’d taken a hallucinogenic drug. I’d never known him to use drugs or even drink more than a couple of beers or a glass of wine. But someone might have slipped him something. I would see how he was later tonight before I mentioned anything to my sister.
4
Patti and I made fried chicken for dinner that evening, the radio blaring in the kitchen as we cut up the chicken, chopped bits of ham hock for the butterbeans, and rolled out pastry for biscuits. We’d started cooking together after our parents died. We’d had no choice but to do it ourselves back then, and we always cooked with the radio on. Patti’d make it fun, dancing around the kitchen to Chuck Berry or the Everly Brothers. I was older when I realized she’d kept the mood light for my sake. Patti was always trying to keep the grief away.
Hunter had taken John Paul out to the beach to burn off some of the little boy’s one-year-old energy, and as I rolled out the pastry, I kept a careful eye on them through the window. John Paul was walking pretty well in the house, but on the beach he resorted to a crawl much of the time. I watched Hunter grab him from the sand, toss him gently into the air and catch him, nuzzling his neck with kisses while John Paul screeched with joy. My eyes burned watching them. I wanted my own healthy little baby. My Joanna. And I wanted my brother-in-law to go back to being his sweet, sane self.
“Hey Jude” came on the radio, and Patti shook her head. “I still can’t believe it,” she said.
I knew what she was talking about without her being more specific. A couple of weeks ago, Paul McCartney had announced the breakup of the Beatles and Patti wasn’t quite over it yet.
“I blame Yoko Ono,” she said. “Seriously. That woman cast some sort of spell on John.”
“Maybe they’ll get back together,” I said. “Maybe this is just a temporary thing.”
“I wish,” she said. Then she looked at me while I slipped a tray of biscuits into the oven. “Why don’t you get off your feet, Carly?” she said, the worried-big-sister tone in her voice. “I can manage everything. Just sit at the table and talk to me.”
“I’m fine,” I said, though I felt anything but fine. I picked up a cucumber and peeler from the counter. I didn’t want to sit. I wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on Hunter and John Paul through the window if I sat down at the broad old wooden table. Hunter was sitting on the beach now, playing with John Paul and a pail and shovel. The dunes blocked most of my view, but the two of them looked fine. I couldn’t believe I was actually having doubts about Hunter as a father. He was the best.
Patti followed my gaze outside as she pulled a stack of plates from the open shelving above the counter. “I worry it’s hard for you to see John Paul,” she said gently. “That it makes you feel sad about—” She motioned toward my belly.
I was a bit stunned. “Are you kidding?” I said, setting the cucumber on the chopping board. “It thrills me to see John Paul. He’s so healthy and happy, and I’m so glad you have him.”
She turned toward me. Setting the plates on the countertop, she bit her lip as though trying to hold back the question she was thinking. “What are you going to do?” she asked finally, her blue eyes studying my face.
“I’m going to have her,” I said simply. I worried I was condemning Joanna to terrible suffering by giving birth to her, but what if those doctors were wrong and she was actually fine? I still clung to that fervent hope. I wished I knew the right thing to do. All I did know was that, with the baby inside me, I still had a little bit of Joe with me. My throat tightened and I focused once again on chopping the cucumber. “I hope I’m making the right choice, sis,” I said.
She put an arm around my waist and rested her cheek on my shoulder. “I love you,” she said. “And whatever you decide, I’ll be right there with you.”
* * *
After dinner, Patti and Hunter took John Paul upstairs to get him ready for bed while I did the dishes. Hunter had seemed like his usual self over dinner, and I wondered if he even remembered his crazy talk from the beach. I was drying the last plate when he walked into the kitchen.
“I want you to look at something, Carly,” he said quietly. “Put down the plate and hold out your hand.”
I set the plate on the counter as he reached into his pants pocket and drew out two coins, dropping them into my palm. “Look at them,” he said. “Look at the dates on them.”
They were quarters and I turned them over so I could see the dates in the fading sunlight that sifted through the kitchen windows. One was 2014 and the other 2016. I looked
up at him. “Where did you get these?” I asked.
“I saved them from when I … when I arrived here,” he said. “And I have a stack of bills—a lot of money—a lot—from 2018, too. The money is in a safe-deposit box in Raleigh. Of course it can’t be used in 1970.”
I felt shaken. I wasn’t sure how to explain what he was showing me. He could have had the coins minted someplace, I supposed, but why would he do that? Why would he go to that trouble? And that advance planning would shoot a hole—several holes—through my wishful thinking that he was suffering the effects of a drug that would soon wash out of his system.
“So,” I said slowly, “if you had a lot of money when you fell off that roof in ’65, where was it when the ambulance came to take you to the hospital?” I’d read his records back then. He’d arrived at the hospital with a change of clothes and a wallet in a mustard-yellow backpack and that was it.
He nodded as though he’d expected the question. “I hid it in the shrubs where I fell,” he said. “I had it in a plastic bag and I didn’t want to be found with it, so I dug a hole in the dirt with my hands and buried it. I got it back once I was well.”
“This is … it’s ridiculous, Hunter.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but these coins notwithstanding … it’s just not believable.”
“I have a way to convince you,” he said. “To truly convince you. What date is today?”
“May third,” I said.
“All right.” He nodded as though pleased by the date. “In a day or so—I can’t remember the exact date, but it’s soon, very soon—”
The Dream Daughter: A Novel Page 3