The Dream Daughter: A Novel

by Diane Chamberlain

  It was nearly two thirty and I’d been working on a database program for one of the fledgling RTP drug companies for a couple of hours. I’d worked out the programming in my head, and sheets of paper covered with my chicken scratch littered my desk. In a few minutes, I’d head over to the mainframe computer at Duke, where I leased time on Mondays and Tuesdays, and I’d test my work there. The truth was, my consulting business was a bit of a cover and had been from the start. I was first and foremost an investor. Along with the cash I’d carried with me from 2018, I’d brought a long list of companies and technologies I could invest in. My mother had given me the list, expecting me to travel to ’65 and make millions to feed back into Temporal Solutions when I returned to 2018. Since I had no intention of ever returning to the future—at least not in the way she’d anticipated—I invested for myself. For my family. Occasionally I felt guilty about it: my knowledge gave the term “insider trading” new meaning. But I wasn’t greedy. Patti and I didn’t live in luxury. All I wanted was enough money so that my son—and my future children—could graduate from college debt-free.

  I looked down at the papers scattered on my desk. I’d done a sloppy job for the drug company today. My concentration was way off. My impatience with Carly felt like a living thing under my skin. I was counting on the upcoming massacre at Kent State to wake her up. Surely then she’d know I was telling her the truth. But while I was nearly certain that deplorable event occurred this week, I couldn’t remember the exact date and I felt antsy as I waited for the inevitable. I had that helpless feeling that was all too familiar to me when I knew something terrible was going to happen and couldn’t do a thing about it. The war in Vietnam was the most painful example to me. From my rearview-mirror perspective, I could see what an abomination that war was. I tried to talk Joe out of staying in the service. I tried and tried, and failed miserably. I knew I would fail, and yet I couldn’t help but try to save him. Such a damn loss.

  I hadn’t been able to do anything about Joe, but I could do something about Carly’s baby. All I needed was her cooperation, and I knew I would get it. I only wished I knew when I would get it. She wasn’t making it easy for me.

  There were days I missed the comforts of 2018. I missed my laptop computer and cell phone and the internet more than anything. I missed being able to easily communicate with my friends and clients. I missed being able to look up information in seconds. But 1970 came with a sort of peace I’d never known before despite the turmoil of the war and the racial strife and the startling inequalities. I traded in my laptop and cell phone for a hammock and a book. I had a joy-filled, life-embracing little son. A sweet, wounded, tenderhearted sister-in-law. And above all, I had Patti. I would be forever grateful to Carly for introducing me to my wife. Patti was so different from Rosie. I’d loved Rosie, of course, but I couldn’t even imagine her and Patti in the same room. While Rosie had been smart, sharp-witted, and wildly opinionated, Patti was gentle, insightful, and loving. I’d loved Rosie for her brain; I loved Patti for her heart. She made me laugh, and what could be better than that? She’d brought me out of my private pain. She was a planner, and everything she planned was fun: picnics and parties and concert after concert—that woman loved her rock and roll. Within days of meeting her, I couldn’t imagine my life without her. I’d known her exactly a month when I asked her to marry me, knowing it meant I would never return to 2018. I had no desire to go back to my old life where I’d felt empty and alone, bereft of all positive emotion. I had the future I wanted now with Patti. I looked forward to being with her for the rest of my life.

  Turning off my radio, I gathered the papers I’d been working on from the desk. Putting them in the proper order, I looked them over one last time before slipping them into my briefcase. I called over to Duke to be sure the mainframe was available. Sometimes it didn’t matter if I had an appointment if some professor thought his or her project was more important than my work. The mainframe was free, so I picked up my briefcase and left my office, walking next door to Gloria’s to tell her I was leaving.

  “I’m heading to—” I said to Gloria, then stopped when I saw her face. She was hanging up her phone, her eyes wide with shock. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Did you hear the news?” she asked.

  I froze, my fingers tight on the handle of my briefcase. “What news?”

  “That was my sister on the phone.” Gloria numbly shook her head. “She said the National Guard just killed four students at Kent State. Isn’t that the most grotesque thing you’ve ever heard? Four children, dead just because they were against the—”

  “I have to go back to Nags Head,” I interrupted her, already heading for the door.

  “What?” Gloria frowned. “You have that appointment tomorrow and—”

  “Cancel it for me,” I said. “Cancel everything for this week.” I raced out the door, out of the building. This is it, I thought. Carly would have to believe me now.

  Instead of going to Duke, I drove to my Raleigh bank, where I’d long ago rented the largest safe-deposit box they offered. The bank clerk set me up in a small private room where I withdrew a packet of bills from the box, checking the dates on them before slipping them into my briefcase and lowering the lid on the box again. Then I got into my Impala and headed for Nags Head. Whether Carly knew it or not, she was going to 2001.

  7

  CARLY

  Patti and I sat in the living room that evening watching a special news report on the debacle that took place at Kent State. It was horrific to hear the details of the carnage and to see the fuzzy images on our small TV. Reception was always terrible on the Outer Banks, but tonight it seemed particularly bad. We could hear the commentator though, loud and clear. Two thousand students had been in the commons of the university, he said, participating in a banned rally. The National Guard told the students to disperse, but the kids responded by throwing rocks and shouting at the guardsmen, who fired tear gas at the crowd. The students didn’t back down and the guardsmen let loose a volley of gunfire. “More than sixty shots in thirteen seconds,” the newscaster said. Nine students were wounded in addition to the four who were dead. Patti cried as the photographs of the dead students flashed on the screen, but I was too numb to cry. I couldn’t seem to react in any way at all. At least not on the outside. Inside, I was trembling with disbelief.

  Hunter had called at four o’clock to say he was coming home tonight, and as I watched the report, I listened for the sound of his car crunching over our crushed oyster-shell driveway. On the phone, he told Patti he’d finished all his work early, but I knew his real reason for making the four-and-a-half-hour drive home tonight: me. He figured I’d believe him now. I guessed I did, though the realization that he’d been telling me the truth unnerved me. My head ached with the impossibility of it. Hunter, the guy I’d known and admired and loved as my brother-in-law for the past five years, was truly from the future? It was ludicrous, and yet it had to be the truth. I could think of no other way he could have known in advance what was going to happen at Kent State.

  He arrived home at nine. He walked in the front door, set his briefcase and small suitcase on the floor, then pulled his sad wife into his arms. He held her, whispered words of comfort into her ear, but his gaze was on me where I stood twisting my hands together in the doorway to the kitchen.

  “You heard about Kent State?” Patti asked, pulling away from him.

  He nodded. Smoothed her wavy red-blond hair with his hands. “Such a tragedy,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “It’s just so … so wrong,” she said, and he nodded.

  “I know, babe.”

  From where I stood, I thought I could see the grief in his eyes. Four young people had their futures stolen from them and he had known it was going to happen and yet had been unable to do a thing about it. I couldn’t imagine that burden.

  “And how are you holding up, Carly?” He looked in my direction again as he picked up his suitcase.


  “Okay,” I said, trying to send him a message with my eyes. We need to talk.

  “Come up to bed?” Patti asked him, and he nodded. They headed for the stairs. He walked behind Patti and I saw him mouth the words I’ll be back to me. I nodded.

  I made a cup of tea I doubted I would drink and carried it outside to the wraparound porch. Sitting down on one of the rockers, I set my cup on the small table next to me as I watched the moonlight illuminate the waves rushing toward shore. Ever since I moved into the old cottage after Joe’s death, the porch had been my place of solace, especially at night, even in the icy chill of January and February. There was something about the never-ending vastness of the sea and sky that usually gave me comfort, reminding me that in the enormity of the universe, my problems, no matter how painful, were very, very small. Tonight, though, much as I struggled to feel that comfort as I watched the moonlight flicker like glitter on the sea, I felt only fear and confusion. How could it be true? How could Hunter—how could anyone—travel through time?

  At least half an hour passed before he came out to the porch and sat down in the rocking chair next to mine.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked again, and I knew he was talking about more than the news from Kent State.

  “It must have been terrible for you,” I said softly. “Not being able to do anything to save those students when you knew what was going to happen.”

  He was quiet a moment. I could barely see him in the darkness. I could make out a flicker of moonlight in his eyes. On his cheek. That was it.

  “Yes,” he said. “Thank you for understanding that.”

  “If you have that rule … that ‘don’t tamper with history’ rule … then wouldn’t it be dangerous to try to help my baby?”

  Again he was quiet. “I don’t think so,” he said finally. “Your baby hasn’t been born yet.”

  I wished he sounded more certain about it. “Could you go back to 1969 and somehow stop Joe from going to Vietnam?”

  “I did try to stop Joe, against my better judgment,” he said. “I knew … I know … this war is a mistake … that will all come out later. But talking to Joe didn’t work, as you might remember. He was so committed to doing what he felt was the right thing.” He let out a long sigh. “Anyway, I can’t change what happened in the past, but your baby is alive right now. Maybe we can save her.”

  “They’d operate on her while she’s still inside me?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Fetal surgery.”

  “It would save her life?”

  “I’m not positive of that,” he cautioned. “But it would give her a chance. Right now, it sounds like she has none.”

  I winced, remembering the cool, clinical predictions of that doctor at NIH. It was a moment before I could speak again. I heard the squeak of Hunter’s rocker against the old porch’s floorboards.

  “How do you do it?” I asked finally. “Travel to the future? Assuming I wanted to do it, what would I have to do?”

  Hunter drew in a breath and I thought I heard a tremor in it. “I’d use the computer at Duke to help me figure out exactly where and when you’d have to step off, and—”

  “Step off? What are you talking about?”

  I heard rather than saw him rub his hand over his chin. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had to explain this to anyone, so bear with me,” he said. “I’ll give you the simplified version, all right?”

  “All right.”

  “There are naturally occurring gateways into time,” he said. “They exist all around us. There are an infinite number of them and each of them is linked to a specific time and place. We call them portals. You have to figure out the exact—within seconds—time you need to move into a specific portal to get to a particular time and place. You step off—literally—from something that’s at least sixteen feet above the ground—a roof or a ledge of some sort—so that, for a few seconds, you’re not earthbound. That’s the important thing. To be in the air, untethered, at the right moment.”

  “Oh my God,” I said, thinking there was no way I could ever do that. “That’s insane.”

  “Also,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “like I explained to you yesterday, the atmosphere should be still. If it’s too stormy, for example, it can throw off the calculations, like it did when I arrived in ’65. It can be a problem on the other end too, which you can sometimes predict if you’re going back in time, since you can research the weather on that particular day, but going forward is harder.” He spoke rapidly, almost to himself, overwhelming me with images of me leaping from a rooftop. “It’s more challenging to travel forward than backward,” he said. “But it’s certainly possible, so we would make it work for you, and—”

  “Wait a minute.” I stopped him. “I’m not saying I’m doing this.”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “I’m just telling you that I’ll make it work—if you decide to go. I promise you that. If the calculations are done correctly—and I promise you I’ll make sure they are—you’ll have no problem. See my watch?” He held his arm toward me and I looked down at his wrist, where the numbers and hands of his gold watch glowed a pale green in the darkness. Three smaller dials were nestled inside the regular clock face and even they were illuminated. He’d worn that complicated-looking watch since the day I first met him.

  “Yes,” I said. “What about it?”

  “It’s actually a chronometer,” he said, withdrawing his arm from in front of me. “It’s extremely accurate, down to the second. It sets itself to the atomic clock that—”

  “You’re losing me,” I said, overwhelmed by all he was laying on me. “What’s the atomic clock?”

  “Just the accurate time,” he said. “You know when you call for the exact time on the phone? The time the automated voice gives you is from the atomic clock. The chronometer sets itself automatically to the atomic clock, which is critical, because if your time is off—or your location is off—you can end up someplace you don’t want to be.”

  “It sounds like there are too many ways this could all go wrong.”

  “Not really,” he said.

  “How does it feel when you’re … traveling?” I asked. “Is it like flying?”

  “No, actually, not at all,” he said. “For a few seconds you’re unconscious, or at least it feels that way. You are … out of it. You lose or gain some time, possibly days, depending on a bunch of factors. When you come to, you’ll be within a few yards of where you planned to land.”

  “I don’t understand the … the portals. Do you create them or—”

  “No. Like I said, they occur naturally, but they aren’t stationary. They’re moving all around us all the time, and each one is connected to a location and a particular time in the past or the future. So the trick is finding one that not only jibes with the stepping-off point, but with the place and time you want to land, as well.”

  “My God,” I said. “How do you figure out where and when to … step off?”

  “Computers,” he said. “Don’t worry.” He must have heard the worry in my voice. “I’ll get you there and back safely. I promise.”

  “How come people don’t disappear all the time if the portals are everywhere?” I asked, trying to work through all he was telling me. “When they dive from a high dive, for example? How come they don’t end up in another time?”

  Hunter nodded. “When I hear about someone disappearing, someone who’s never found, I do wonder.” He fell quiet as though he was imagining such a disappearance. I rocked a little in my chair, looking out to the ocean. A bank of clouds passed overhead and stars popped out from behind it, one by one.

  “So,” I said slowly, “let’s say I agreed to do this. Where would I land?” I could barely believe the question was leaving my lips.

  “Princeton,” he said with certainty. “I’ll get you as close as I safely can to where I want you to go, which is my mother’s house.”

  “Your mother’s house?”

  “Yes,
” he said, as simply as if his mother lived down the street from us. “You’ll be a few miles away from her, so you’ll have to walk or find a cab. You could hitch a ride, but be aware that people don’t hitchhike in 2001 like they do today. It would seem strange. You’d have to say your car broke down or something.…” His voice faded away and I thought he was deep in thought, trying to imagine me in Princeton, New Jersey, in the year 2001. Which was an insane idea.

  “Why would you send me to 2001 instead of 2018, the year you came from?” I asked. “Wouldn’t that … wouldn’t fetal surgery be even more advanced in 2018?” I couldn’t believe I was talking about 2018! I couldn’t imagine a world nearly fifty years in the future.

  He didn’t answer right away. I watched a light bobbing out on the horizon. Fishing boat, I thought. It would probably be out there all night long.

  “You’ll have to trust me on this,” Hunter said finally. “The year 2001 is the right time.”

  “So, I’d go to your mother’s house … and then what?”

  “I’d give you a letter of introduction.” I heard hesitation in his voice. “She’ll have a lot of questions about me,” he said. “Just tell her I’m well and very happy, okay? Needless to say, don’t tell her you know she’s going to disa … to die in 2018.”

  I cringed. I didn’t want to meet anyone whose death I could predict. This was so bizarre. I tried to picture his mother. I envisioned a gray-haired woman welcoming me with tea and cookies as she peppered me with questions about her son. “You realize I’m still not saying I’ll do this,” I said.