Reaching Through Time

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “So you come every week to visit her,” she said.

  “Of course. It’s because of me that she’s here.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I was driving. I braked to keep from hitting a deer that jumped out into the road. The car skidded. I woke up on the ground. That’s all I remember.”

  Most of his story was true, but Maura realized parts were conjecture manufactured by logic, reconstructions of the few memories he did have. But the glass wall in his mind was still intact. She ached to know what lay behind it, and fought the temptation to find out. “I should wait outside,” she said, stepping back toward the door. “You came all this way to visit her. Take your time.”

  He turned to the bed, picked up Catherine’s limp hand and kissed it. Maura couldn’t bear to watch. She left the room, steeling herself, wondering how she was going to help him when, despite all her intellectual abilities and willpower, she was falling in love with him.

  In her dream, Maura’s two worlds were colliding. Her future time stream kept blending with the time stream she lived in now. She saw her parents in Dylan’s house; her mother, Diane, working over Sandra’s old-fashioned cooktop. Her mother’s image brought pangs of loss. She missed her, and wondered how her family felt about their daughter’s being a time fugitive. Picking up the time-travel device and recklessly pushing the button had changed everything about her old life—not only for her, but for the people she’d left behind.

  Still, if she hadn’t pushed the button, she’d never have met Dylan or tested her clinical skills. Be truthful, she told herself in the dream. Her interest in Dylan far exceeded her medical interest in him.

  She saw her best friend, Shalea, sitting on the sofa in the house where Maura now lived. Maura ran to her. “I’ve missed you so much!”

  “We’ve missed you too,” Shalea said, her manner offhand, as if Maura had been gone fifteen minutes instead of almost three months. Shalea was reading, studying the piece of glowing electronic paper in her hands. “You’ve missed so many classes. How will you catch up?”

  Maura waved away her friend’s concerns. “Let me show you whom I’ve met.” As a Sensitive, she could place pictures into others’ minds, and she did so, focusing her efforts on the moonlit night by the river. She sent every sensation she’d felt too: the shivers, the pounding heart, the feel of Dylan’s skin, the scent of him and the night air.

  “Wow,” Shalea said. Her dreamscape eyes grew wide enough for Maura to see her own reflection in the pupils. “What do you think you’re feeling?”

  “Love.”

  Shalea burst out laughing. “That’s silly. He’s an antique. He’s no better than a caveman. You can’t love him. Aren’t you curious about whom the elders have paired you with? A modern man, for sure.”

  Maura began to cry because Shalea’s words hurt her. “Not true. It’s wonderful to discover someone you love by chance. Much better than some guy assigned by committee. Besides, Dylan needs me.”

  “The committee is protecting your DNA, making sure it goes to offspring who will shape society.”

  “You sound like a professor. Think with your heart, Shalea.”

  The scene shifted and Maura was in a dark wood. She heard wolves growling, saw their red eyes glowing in the night. Her heart seized, but when she turned to run, her feet were rooted to the ground. The growling intensified. She panicked, felt a scream rise in her throat.

  She woke with a start, heard real growls next to her ear. Chowder. Maura bolted upright in bed, listened carefully. “What’s wrong, boy? What do you hear?”

  The dog’s simple brain was easy to navigate. She heard what Chowder was hearing, twigs snapping in the yard, caught the scent of “stranger.” Maura’s heart hammered. Whatever was outside hadn’t penetrated her mind shield yet. If it was the authorities though, it was only a matter of time before they did.

  Days later, Jerry had an emergency case come into the clinic. Sandra came to pick up Maura and run her home since Jerry couldn’t and Dylan had a job that was running late. As Maura got into the car, she said, “Thanks a bunch. I didn’t want to wait around. No telling how long the emergency will last.”

  In truth, Maura wanted to be home at night. She felt certain that when the cops came for her, they’d come at night because it would be easier to take her under cover of darkness. She wanted a chance to escape when they came, and she wanted to feel herself close to Dylan and the area they’d met for as long as possible.

  “No problem,” Sandra said. “I had to take the girls to dance recital practice. The big event is Friday night, with a nice reception afterward. I hope you’ll come.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Hey, why don’t you come by the house and have dinner with me? I fed the girls earlier, but I haven’t eaten. Nothing fancy, just a burger.”

  “I should get home.”

  “Dylan can run you home. He shouldn’t be too much longer.”

  The thought of seeing Dylan broke Maura’s resolve. Eating something she didn’t have to cook was appealing too. Unfortunately she’d developed a taste for meat, especially hamburgers with melted cheese.

  “I’ve been hoping to get to know you better,” Sandra said.

  Maura sensed a hidden agenda but wasn’t offended. She had many questions for Sandra as well. “Can’t pass up a good meal,” Maura said brightly.

  In Sandra’s kitchen Maura watched the woman slap raw meat into flat patties. Maura hated the look of the meat, but once it began to cook outside on the grill, the aroma made her mouth water. While Sandra tended the burgers, Maura sat at the patio table and poured herself a glass of iced tea from a frosty glass pitcher.

  “Have you had a good summer? Anxious to go home?”

  Maura realized Sandra was softening her up for the real questions she wanted to ask. Maura saved her the trouble by saying, “I went to the rehab center last Sunday with Dylan, and I saw Catherine.”

  Sandra’s expression went from cheerful to haggard.

  Maura said, “Dylan told me about the accident. He told me everything.” She wanted to build Sandra’s confidence, wanted Sandra to know it was safe to talk about the tragedy with her.

  “Did he, now?” Sandra said skeptically. “Everything, you say.”

  “Um—everything he said he remembered,” Maura said, confused and less sure of herself.

  Sandra turned from the grill to face Maura. “Did he also tell you that he tried to kill himself because of it?”

  8

  Maura felt blindsided. After all the time she’d spent with Dylan, how could she have missed it? Was that what he was protecting behind the wall inside his head, the actions of grief, guarded by sentries of memory cells? “No,” Maura said. “He didn’t tell me.”

  Sandra slumped, her expression turning raw. “He was hurt really badly himself in the accident. In the hospital, in traction after surgery, his leg set with steel rods and screws. He couldn’t even visit Catherine, and when he did …” She paused. “At first, she was in this coma and we kept thinking, ‘She’ll wake up any day now.’ But she never did. She just sank lower, and nothing the doctors did made a hill of beans’ worth of difference.”

  Maura sensed Sandra’s despair, but she didn’t interrupt the flow of her story.

  “The longer Catherine lay in the hospital, the deeper Dylan went into depression. His body healed, but his heart—” She looked out to the perfectly maintained backyard, the well-trimmed grass, the freshly mulched flower beds.

  Dylan’s work, Maura realized. Ordered and groomed and expertly kept. The work that held him together.

  Sandra said, “He missed months of school. He had to repeat his junior year. We got him tutors so he could finish with his class, but it made him angry. ‘I’ll finish when Catherine does,’ he told us.

  “ ‘But she’ll never finish,’ his dad and I told him. ‘You have to go on with your life.’ Instead, last summer he tried to take his life.”

/>   Maura shuddered. Tears welled in her eyes. Suicide, a Mind Doctor’s greatest failure. “What did he do?”

  “Went in the garage and turned on his car after closing and locking all the doors. I’d taken the twins shopping and Jerry was at the clinic. We’d replaced the car that was burned in the wreck. At the time, we thought it would cheer him up. Can you imagine? Cheering up clinical depression. We were stupid.”

  Maura knew that wasn’t true. Dylan just hadn’t been diagnosed. “You shouldn’t blame yourselves.…” Maura’s stock answer embarrassed even her. “I—I mean, that’s what I’ve heard.”

  Sandra shrugged. “Thank God Lucy got a stomachache and we had to leave the mall early. When I opened the garage door, the exhaust fumes and carbon monoxide almost knocked me over. I called nine-one-one and he was rushed to the hospital. They saved him, and we made certain he went into therapy.”

  Maura saw the scene in Sandra’s head like a three-dimensional movie, the garage full of toxic fumes, the twins screaming hysterically, Sandra pulling an unconscious Dylan from the car and out onto the driveway. “Did the therapy help?”

  “It seems to. He takes medicine, visits his psychiatrist, though not as much as he used to. He returned to school last spring and will face his senior year this fall.”

  “But he still insists on seeing Catherine once a week,” Maura said.

  “Yes. It breaks our hearts, but he won’t give it up.”

  Penance, Maura surmised; a way to soothe his guilt. “Do her parents blame him?”

  “I don’t think so. It was an accident … every mother’s greatest fear. Dylan and Catherine were sixteen. Their curfews were midnight, and when our phone rang at one a.m., I knew something horrible had happened.”

  Maura thought of her own mother. Was she mourning the loss of her daughter?

  “We rushed to the hospital, fearing the worst. Dylan was conscious, and Catherine’s parents were so grateful she was alive.…” Sandra paused. “Now they maintain her at the rehab center even though there’s no hope.” Sandra gave Maura a wondering look. “Do you know that the longest record for survival of a PVS patient is over forty years?”

  In Maura’s time, there were no PVS patients. Once Medical Sensitives proclaimed a human being dead, food and water were withdrawn and the victim died. To her, prolonging such a patient’s life seemed primitive and a poor practice of medicine. “I didn’t know.”

  “You’ve been good for him, you know.”

  “Me?”

  Sandra smiled. “Yes, you. He’s been happier these past couple of months than in the last two years.”

  The words pleased Maura, but the feeling of satisfaction was brief.

  Sandra sighed. “We’ll miss you when you leave. I wish you lived closer. I wish you went to school here. But I guess your parents miss you terribly.”

  For the first time in a long while, Maura felt a jolt from her conscience, remembering the lies she’d told Dylan to explain her sudden appearance in his time stream. Without his help, she would never have been able to stay. And she never would have had the experiences that had enriched her life. She would have never had fallen in love. True to his word, he’d kept her secrets—lies all, but Dylan didn’t know that. “I hate the idea of leaving too,” she said with more sincerity than Sandra could possibly understand.

  Sandra pulled the burgers off the grill, but they looked shrunken, black and hard. She stared at them. “I ruined the burgers. Let me go make some more patties.”

  “That’s all right,” Maura said, standing once she saw how dark it had grown. “I’ve got stuff at home to eat, and you probably have to leave soon to get the girls, don’t you?”

  “Oh my gosh! I let the time slip.”

  “No problem.”

  Sandra thrust a bag of chips at Maura. “I’ve got to run. I can drop you at your grandparents’ on the way.”

  “I like walking. It’s only a couple of blocks.”

  “Help yourself to anything in the kitchen,” Sandra said, hurrying into the house for her purse and car keys.

  Maura waited on the patio until she heard Sandra’s car leave the driveway, feeling sad, adrift in time, and lonely. She missed her family, wished she could figure out what to do. She couldn’t stay, and she would be in colossal trouble if she returned. But what choice did she have? Better to return voluntarily than to be jerked home by the cops. She picked some vegetables from Sandra’s small garden and walked around to the front.

  Bright headlights nailed her as she tried to cross the driveway. Her heart skipped a beat. Dylan’s car stopped and she calmed down. “Hey,” she called.

  He got out of the car, came up to her. “Chips and veggies for me?”

  “If you want them.” Just the sight of him made her pulse race and brightened her mood.

  “No … I’m trying to quit.”

  She weighed his words, realized he was joking. “Me too.” Stars had begun to pop out overhead. “You finished for the day?”

  “I’m finished.” He looked bone tired.

  “I was just going home. Want me to stay awhile?”

  “Um—about that. The Carters called today. They’ll be home Friday, so that means you’ll have to vacate.”

  “In two days?” Tension gripped Maura.

  “I know it’s short notice. Look, if you want, you can crash here for a few days. Until you’re ready to go home. Or run again. You should have some money saved up by now. Wasn’t that your plan?”

  That was what she’d told him. “How would I explain it to your family? They think I’m at my grandparents. What reason could I give for leaving their home for yours?”

  He thought about it, rubbed his temples. “We’ll come up with something tomorrow.”

  “Sure, we’ll figure something out,” she said, knowing she was out of options. She had to go.

  Dylan draped his forearms over her shoulders, lowered his forehead to touch hers. His skin was still warm from his day in the sun. She closed her eyes, breathed in the scent of him, stored the puff of his breath in her memory cells so that whenever she needed to, or wanted to, she could conjure him up, could bask in the feel, scent, taste of him. She envied the past Catherine had with him, the sweetness of it. She imagined that he loved her, Maura, as he’d loved Catherine.

  He raised her chin a fraction of an inch and brushed his lips across hers. This time she didn’t stop him. “We’ll think of something,” he said, and pulled away.

  Maura fought tears, turned abruptly and jogged down the sidewalk, her heart aching. And yet, as she ran, it struck her that in spite of what Sandra had told her earlier, Maura had sensed no antidepression medications in Dylan’s system. None at all.

  9

  Maura cleaned the house, erasing all traces of her long stay. She had total recall, so it was simple to restore each room to its original state. She even turned coffee-table books to the exact angle arranged by the Carters. The cats watched from atop an armoire, their tails twitching with interest and curiosity. “You are nosey beasts,” Maura told them, very glad that animals couldn’t talk. “But I’ll miss you.”

  Chowder was much more concerned about her activity, and he was anxious and unsettled. The dog followed her from room to room, staying close to her heels, sometimes making her trip over him. She often stopped working, trying to reassure him. She would miss him, and understood why owning a pet was so popular in this day and time. They brought comfort and affection and were of great service to the elderly and lonely. Too bad keeping one was prohibitively expensive in her time.

  She sat on the sofa and Chowder rested his head on her knee, staring up at her with sad brown eyes. Maura rubbed his thick fur, scratched behind his ears the way he liked. She cupped his muzzle. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you get back to Doc Jerry. He’ll find you a good home.”

  A lump rose in her throat. “Thanks for taking care of me. They would have found me sooner if you hadn’t warned me.” Chowder tilted his head. “I’m going back,” she t
old the dog. “Better to go on my own than with the cops, don’t you think?” She gazed into the dog’s questioning eyes. “Maybe I can explain how I only wanted to help Dylan. I was making headway too.” She would still be punished, though. She disliked imagining that part, but facing punishment was mandatory. “I’m not changing anything,” she reminded the dog. Maybe it would count in her favor when she stood in front of the judge for sentencing. The penalties for time travel without permission were harsh, but changing history was the ultimate crime.

  Tomorrow she’d drop her clothing, plus everything else she’d acquired in this time stream, into a charity bin. The money would be an especially nice discovery for the organization. She planned to take the dog to Dylan’s house on Friday evening while everyone was at the dance recital. She’d told Jerry at work that day that her grandparents would be bringing her to the recital.

  Jerry had grinned. “Good! We’ve wanted to meet them.”

  Leaving Dylan would be the hardest of all. Best to never see him again. “Eventually people here will forget about me. So will you.” She ruffled Chowder’s fur. “Someday Sandra or Jerry or the girls might ask, ‘Whatever became of that girl who just vanished one night?’ And Dylan might say, ‘She was a runaway. Probably didn’t want to go home.’ ” Once he filled in details, they would have an acceptable explanation for her disappearing act and they would forget she ever existed.

  But she would never forget them.

  On Friday morning she fed and watered the cats, took all her personal belongings to the charity drop and went to Dylan’s house, where she hitched a ride to work—her final day—with Jerry. The day seemed to move more swiftly than usual—an impossibility, of course. Time moved the same way every day, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour. She told each animal goodbye. Most understood. They absorbed human emotions, and mourned when they cared for a person who was troubled in any way.