There were a number of reasons they decided on that time. It would allow them to build the lodge in 1901 and furnish it. Then it would allow them all to use it for a few years as a base in the summer and allow Dawn and Madison see if they enjoyed living there and spending the winters there alone.
Both Dawn and Madison were both sure they would, but staying until 1910 gave it a great test. It would also allow Janice and Steven to stay in Roosevelt and run their store until the town was destroyed. Both of them were working on new books and both of them felt that would give them enough time for the research they wanted to do.
If anyone wanted to go back after 1910 into the same timeline, they could. Assuming this plan worked, of course.
Ryan and April would go back with Duster and Bonnie to the day after they all left in September 1900 to see how close they could actually be on a return trip on the same connection.
The other four would come through in May of 1901. Duster would meet them with horses and supplies and they would all head for Roosevelt.
April and Bonnie would continue their shopping through the winter and next summer to get the lodge furnishings and fixtures. Ryan wasn’t sure what he would be doing during the winter, but he honestly didn’t care as long as he could spend most of it with April.
As it turned out, they had been in the mine for just over four hours in 2015 before all of them took positions around the machine in the crystal cavern and went back.
Ryan felt nervous and excited and April said the same thing. He still couldn’t completely believe that if they all stayed in the past until 1910, only two minutes and fifteen seconds would pass in the mine. He found that was a very, very hard detail to get his mind around.
But when the four of them touched the machine, the other four just vanished from the room, left back in 2015.
April and Ryan and Bonnie and Duster hit right on target, just one day after they had jumped out.
Duster and Bonnie had both been very, very happy at that fact, talking all the way down the hill from the mine to Silver City about the advantages that gave them.
It was about noon and the air had a fall bite to it, but the day was still beautiful.
They got the horses out of the smith, who was surprised they were back so soon, but he had the saddles ready anyway. Duster let him keep all the money for the extra time and gave him more as a bonus.
They then headed for Boise on a much slower pace than Ryan and Duster had ridden getting to Silver City.
Ryan did feel uncomfortable at times with the lining in his saddlebag being full of gold coins. But Duster said that he would show them some hiding places for the coins in the big house when they reached Boise.
And he said he would give them both a history lesson on banks in Boise and businesses to invest in as well. Since Boise was a fast-growing town now that Idaho was a state and the capitol had been moved there, making money at this point in history in Boise would be easy.
As they rode, April just looked wonderful. He could hardly keep his eyes off her. And she kept smiling and enjoying the day and looking at him.
All he really wanted to do was just spend time with her this coming winter.
As much time as possible.
And off into the future for as long as possible. He couldn’t believe how much he had fallen for her.
That night they camped next to a hot springs along the Snake River that was only large enough for two at a time.
After Bonnie and Duster came back from the springs, he and April went down the narrow trail to the small pool among rocks over the river. They took turns washing each other’s backs, as well as other places. And making love, slow at first, then hard and fast, splashing water everywhere.
Finally, as the sunset was coloring the sky with reds and oranges that matched the fall leaves on the trees around them, they sat together in the flowing hot water, just holding each other.
“This is just perfect,” she said, smiling at him and then kissing him again.
“So we’re in this together?” he asked, hugging her naked body even closer if that was possible. “An adventure through time.”
“Through time,” she said, hugging him back.
“Perfect,” he said.
And he meant it.
Being with her was perfect.
PART FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
September 14, 1910
APRIL COULD NOT BELIEVE the ten years had passed so quickly. And they had been a wonderful ten years with Ryan. The best ten years of her life. They had lived as man and wife for the entire time, and about the second year had joked that when they got back to the present, they might want to actually make that a reality.
But right now all she wanted to do was get back to 2015 and turn right around and come back and continue their life here together. And Ryan completely agreed. In fact, after ten years, she was having some trouble even remembering things from the future.
She had always thought she was born a hundred years too late. Now, after ten years of living in the past, she was sure of it.
Ryan finished making sure the generator was off and all wires were unplugged.
She had walked around the beautiful home one last time, making sure all lamps were out.
Duster and Madison would be getting to the mine about an hour after sundown. And right now the sky outside was growing dark.
“Can you believe we’ve lived in this fantastic place for almost ten years?” Ryan asked, coming up and hugging her as she reached the kitchen.
She looked around at the huge mansion kitchen they had built on the estate next to Bonnie and Duster’s home, a kitchen full of wonderful memories and great dinners. Duster had given them the land after they got back that first winter and they had built the house in just six months, using the same crew that had worked all the first summer on the lodge.
Five bedrooms, two stories, plus a full basement, part of which was hidden. The bedroom suite looked out over the river and had a deck that many a warm evening she had sat on sipping iced tea and enjoying the view of the water.
Even though Boise was growing quickly, they were still a very long ways out into the country and she loved that. And everything about the home.
Everything.
Both she and Ryan had designed their perfect home.
By the end of the second summer, not only had she furnished the huge lodge, but their new home as well.
The lodge had turned out even more fantastic than either of them had imagined when designing it. All eight of them had sat on the huge lodge deck overlooking Monumental Valley in the fall afternoon in 1901. That was a memory to treasure.
Since then, Dawn and Madison had lived in the lodge. They planned on coming back as well and having children to leave the lodge to.
April and Ryan had managed to not have children this first time back, even though at times they both worried about it. They both wanted kids, but they wanted to make sure that returning to the future in 1910 wouldn’t be a permanent thing as far as this timeline went. They both wanted to be sure they could return and not strand a child in an orphanage in the past.
April wasn’t sure she could live with having that happen.
Plus having a child in the past just scared her something awful. And it seemed to scare Ryan even more. It hadn’t slowed down their sex life over the last ten years. Just made them very, very cautious.
“You think we’re coming back?” she asked, giving their wonderful mansion one more look as they went out the back and pulled the door closed.
“I think so,” Ryan said as he locked up. “We did it before. And if we have to, we’ll build this home again. More than likely, if our friends can be believed, we’ll build the lodge and this home a number of times.”
“That’s true,” she said. “But I like this first one.”
“As long as we’re together,” Ryan said, “it doesn’t matter.”
He kissed her and she kissed him back.
They had b
oth aged, but could still pass for young. When they returned, they would again be in their early thirties instead of early forties. Neither of them had gained any weight and they had kept their hair the same. So she hoped that given a little time, no one would notice their younger looks.
“So this ten-year trial run at being together has worked for you?” he asked.
“Let’s talk about it after a couple hundred years,” she said, looking into those eyes that she never got tired of looking at. She was more in love now with this man than she had been ten years ago. And she could only imagine that continuing to grow.
“Sounds like a plan,” he said, kissing her one more time, then taking her hand.
Without a look back at the beautiful mansion they had built overlooking the Boise River, they walked hand-in-hand across their back lawn and through the hedge toward Bonnie and Madison’s home.
As they neared the back door of the other house, she had to stop and laughingly adjust all the gold coins she had on in a vest under her riding clothes. In ten years, they had become fantastically rich. Knowing just a little of the near future could do that for a person. Especially with Duster’s help. Now, since they had to go back, they were going to replenish what they had taken out of the gold storage room, plus some.
In the vest under her clothes she also had a journal she wanted to get back to the cave. It had all her notes about finding furniture and where she had found it, as well as some ideas on a few books on historical interior design she wanted to write.
She had almost twenty pounds of gold on her and Ryan gladly helped her adjust it, managing to get frisky in the process. Ryan had over thirty pounds of gold coins on him.
Between the two of them, at 2015 gold prices, not counting the value of the coins themselves, Ryan figured they were carrying well over a million dollars back with them.
They went inside without knocking and sat at the kitchen table. April was impressed that neither of them clanked or jingled like a piggybank when they sat down.
Bonnie had the house dark and shut down and someone was coming in to watch the horses tomorrow. Madison and Duster had April and Ryan’s favorite horses and would board them in Silver City, since the four of them were planning on returning quickly.
Steven and Janice were thinking of returning and just living in Bonnie and Duster’s big place for a time, writing. Bonnie and Duster had both decided that they might join everyone in twenty years or so, see how things were going.
Of course, in the future, all that would take place in the two minutes and fifteen seconds. April had never, in ten years, been able to wrap her mind around that. And after a year or so, she and Ryan had just stopped talking about it.
Now, very shortly, she was going to see how it all worked.
April was about to say something to Bonnie when suddenly she found herself in the bright crystal cavern standing next to Ryan. All eight of them were touching the machine.
And this time something very different happened.
Very different.
A shimmering went through the cavern, like a heat wave off hot pavement.
And suddenly April had two memories in her mind.
Two very, very clear memories.
One memory was of her being hired by Bonnie and Duster and meeting and falling in love with Ryan and building the lodge and living for ten years in the past.
And the other memory was not being hired and going back to Denver, and going to work in Kansas City on a big old house remodel there.
That memory ended in July of 2015.
And in that memory she had not met Ryan.
She glanced around as everyone sort of staggered back, clearly shocked.
Something different had happened.
Something had gone very, very wrong.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
July 20, 2015
THE CRYSTAL ROOM appeared around Ryan as he found himself standing next to April, one hand on the machine.
One moment they were sitting down in a kitchen in 1910, the next moment standing in a cave in 2015. He and April had lived ten years in the past and only two minutes and fifteen seconds had passed here.
Then everything in the big crystal cave seemed to shimmer like a heat wave had crossed over them.
That wasn’t normal. Or at least it had never happened before in the few times they had done this.
Then he felt the new memories crowd in with the ones he had.
Now he could clearly remember working the summer on two other major projects, still in his old office in the North End of Boise. He had never been hired by Bonnie and Duster and had not met April.
And yet he remembered clearly the last ten years living in the past, building the lodge, living with April, falling more in love with her than he could have ever imagined being in love with anyone.
And he knew instantly the reason why he had two levels of memories.
The Monumental Summit Lodge now already existed.
In fact, in part of his old memories, when he was a junior in college, he and an old girlfriend had spent a night in the lodge one summer, having dinner on the deck and then making love in a big featherbed in the third room on the main floor. He had loved the place, felt attached to it, but the girlfriend had hated it because it was so far away from anything.
They had broken up a couple of months later as school got started and he got busy.
In the timeline where the lodge didn’t exist, he and the old girlfriend had stayed together another two months, almost to Thanksgiving before breaking up, clearly because they hadn’t made the trip to the old lodge.
He now remembered both timelines clearly.
How was that possible?
He stepped back from the machine in the big crystal cavern and took April’s hand.
She squeezed his, clearly not wanting to let go and he didn’t want to let go of her either.
She existed. The ten years they had just spent together existed.
That was all that mattered.
Then he remembered their first trip into Roosevelt Lake and what had bothered him.
Madison’s grave had actually been there.
Madison had actually died in this timeline in the past.
But yet Bonnie and Duster said that was impossible. That the grave was nothing more than an echo.
But the grave was there and his name was on the marker.
That had been very real.
Now the lodge was real and there as well.
Ryan nodded to the shocked look on April’s face and kissed her quickly, then looked at the others.
Dawn and Madison were holding each other tightly, as if they were afraid to let go. Clearly the lodge existing since 1901 in this timeline really made a lot of differences for them.
Janice and Steven both just looked shocked and were staring at each other.
“What just happened?” Madison finally asked.
“I’m remembering two timelines,” Dawn said.
Both Bonnie and Duster nodded.
“We all are,” Bonnie said.
“We were touching the machine,” Duster said. “So we remember the timeline from before any change. And the one after the change.”
“So how did the lodge get built here?” Madison asked. “I didn’t think that was ever going to be possible in this timeline.”
Neither Duster nor Bonnie said anything.
They all just stood around the machine in the big crystal cave, looking more lost than anything.
“The same way your grave got there,” Ryan said, deciding to jump in.
“The lodge is built here, now?” April asked.
She was the only one not from Idaho and wouldn’t know about the lodge from before. Ryan nodded to her.
“My grave?” Madison asked, looking puzzled.
“It wasn’t an echo,” Duster said, softly, as he carefully unplugged one wire from the machine, but left the other wires hooked up to the crystal on the wall.
“Well that answers a b
unch of questions,” Bonnie said, shaking her head.
“How did the lodge get built?” Janice asked.
“We built it,” Duster said, turning toward the tunnel to the big cavern. “I need a shower after that ride.”
“How did we build it?” Steven asked.
“We built the lodge in that timeline,” Bonnie said, pointing to the crystal on the wall.
Then she waved her arm around at the millions and millions of timelines represented by crystals in just the close vicinity to where they were standing.
“The six of us exist in all those timelines as well,” Bonnie said. “And in most of them we built a lodge on this trip back into the past.”
“So some group of us built a lodge in this timeline?” Madison asked.
“Exactly,” Bonnie nodded. “We built it, actually, because there really is no difference from the six of us a million timelines over than the six of us here. And the lodge is a big enough event in our lives to cause the timeline shift.”
They stood there in the big room in silence for a moment.
Around Ryan the vast cavern seemed to go on forever in the distance.
“So now what do we do?” April asked.
Bonnie shrugged. “We have dinner and talk about it.”
“Does time travel give anyone else a headache?” April asked.
Everyone nodded.
Madison went over to look at the crystal they had spent ten years inside. “Connection’s secure if we want to go back.”
“I guess we’ll need to let the math brains behind all this figure that out,” Steven said, looking at Bonnie.
She nodded. “We’ll talk about it.”
Steven took Janice’s hand and turned toward the exit from the big cavern.
“It’s weird having two memories,” April said.
“Can’t argue with that,” Dawn said.
Ryan took April’s hand and said, “Come on, let’s get in some modern clothes, drop all this gold off, and take a look outside.”
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