Red, White, and the Blues

by Walker, Rysa

  My plan is to get a moment alone with Kate, but there only appear to be a few women around, all of them inside the church, and none of them under sixty. I walk around the side of the building to the back, where a group of about a dozen men has gathered on the strip of land between the building and the lake—which is really just a wide place in the canal—and wait, pressing my back to the wall to keep out of the windblown rain. It’s a futile effort, and I’m just about to retreat inside and try to find a window to watch through, when the door a few yards away from me opens and two teenage boys step through. The one in front is pushing a wheelbarrow.

  “Pretty sure it’s blasphemy to take a shortcut through a house of God with a wheelbarrow,” the shorter one says as a middle-aged man follows them into the yard.

  “Your brother is right, Harry. If we end up in hell, it’s on your conscience.” There’s a lingering hint of an Irish accent in the man’s voice. He’s dressed in jeans, work boots, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and his hair is dark, just a tad longer than the prevailing fashion, with a touch of gray at the temples. When he turns toward me, I’m certain it’s the man in the photo album. Any doubts I might have had are erased when I see the scar on the inside of his left arm. One of Kate’s diary entries said he gave himself that scar clawing out a CHRONOS key that Prudence Rand had hired a doctor to embed in his arm.

  It’s no surprise then that the color drains from his face when he catches sight of the medallion around my neck. “Who sent you?” he demands. “Simon? Or Prudence?”

  “No one sent me. I know their names from Kate’s diaries, but I’ve never met either of them.”

  That may only be a partial truth in the case of Prudence, and a bit of hesitation must show on my face, because Kiernan leans in toward me, jaw clenched. “Fine. I don’t really care who sent you, when you’re from, or where you got that medallion. But I want nothing to do with it. And if you’re smart, you’ll toss it into the lake and forget you ever saw the bloody thing.” He steps out into the rain, striding purposefully toward a pickup parked at the very edge of the lot, where two men standing in the back of the truck are handing out sandbags.

  I follow him, my shoes squelching in the mud. “No one sent me. I found the key in the garden of my Great-Great-Grandmother Kate’s house, buried next to a dog toy. And I’d love nothing more than to toss the cursed thing to the bottom of the ocean, Kiernan Dunne, but if I do that, everything you and she worked for will come unraveled.”

  His legs are much longer than mine, and he’s several steps ahead when he whirls around, eyes blazing. “I fought my battle already, miss. Whatever’s happening in your time, Kate—my Kate—and I can’t help you. That’s your future. You fix it.”

  “Except it’s your future, too. Their future.” I nod toward the truck, where his sons are waiting for the man in the back to hand them a couple of sandbags. “Six years. That’s all you have left before everything goes to hell.”

  Several of the other men in the yard are giving us odd looks. Kiernan lets out an audible huff and then stalks off toward the front of the church. Again, I follow. Halfway to the parking lot, he ducks into an alcove.

  “Listen,” he says when I join him. “I know there’s a war right around the corner. I’ve got two sons, one of whom will be itchin’ to enlist on day one and the other who’ll probably get sucked in because he’s prime draft age. Kate and I knew that was on the horizon from the day they were born. We decided that whatever happens, happens and we’d face it like everyone else. And then . . .” He sighs, and a smile lifts one corner of his mouth. “And then I’m pretty sure she jumped ahead and checked anyway, even though she’d never admit it. She stopped worrying quite so much, and I’m guessing it’s because she knows they make it through. But even if she’s wrong, the war on our horizon is one that has to be fought. Same as when we took down the Cyrists. Good people don’t just stand aside and let evil win.”

  “You’re wrong,” I say. “Sometimes they do stand aside. Sometimes people, people who are normally good, are only willing to fight back if evil lands the first punch. And it’s not enough if evil hits someone else. They have to feel the weight of the punch. Then, only then, do they wake up enough to fight. You know that’s true. If it wasn’t, Hitler wouldn’t be steadily gaining power in Europe.”

  His eyes soften slightly, but he shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. Neither of us can use the key any longer. I’m sorry, but—”

  “I’m not asking you to get involved directly. All I’m asking you to do is take in a refugee . . . in 1966. Only for a week or so. And even if you say no, I wanted to tell you that you might want to keep your entire family inside a CHRONOS field . . . I don’t know the exact date and time the shift happens, but I suspect it’s right around December 7, 1941.”

  Kiernan’s eyebrows go up when I say the date. “Sweet bloody hell.” He stares down at the mud for several seconds, then sighs and rubs his temples. “Listen, I’ve got work to do warding off this flood. Meet me tonight at eight at Vacca’s. Cross the bridge, take a right, and it’s maybe two blocks down. You can make your case to Kate, although I can tell you already that she’s gonna be in a foul mood about this.”

  “Fair enough. I’m not exactly overjoyed about it, either.”

  He gives me a nod and heads back to join the sandbagging crew. Given that a flood is coming, the odds seem good that the rain will get worse, not better, between now and eight. Might as well make the walk while it’s still daylight. So, I hoist the umbrella, which very nearly turns inside out in the wind, and head off toward the bridge.

  Vacca’s is on the corner, a redbrick building that appears to be half grocery and half restaurant. When I find a narrow drive between two neat Victorian houses, I step inside, set a local point, and then jump forward to seven fifty-five. I tell the waitress at Vacca’s that two people will be joining me, and she seats me at a table near the back.

  “You’re lucky the weather’s so awful,” she says as she fills my water glass. “Usually we’re packed on Saturdays, but I guess nobody wants to venture out in this. Can’t really blame ’em.”

  By eight fifteen, I’m pretty sure that Kiernan Dunne is a dirty, rotten liar who simply said he’d meet me here in order to get rid of me. I order a glass of wine and a salad, mostly to have something to do while I wait, but as soon as the food is in front of me, I realize I’m actually pretty hungry. I’m debating whether to go ahead and order pasta, too, when the door opens and two women step inside, followed by Kiernan. One of them is definitely Kate. Her hair is pulled back into a bun, unlike the vids I’ve seen of my great-great-grandmother, where it was long and loose even into her eighties, but her eyes are the same vivid green. It’s the same green as the younger girl with her now, in fact, who is almost certainly their daughter. She’s around my age, pretty, with dark shoulder-length curls and her father’s olive skin.

  It’s instantly clear that Kiernan’s prediction about his wife’s mood is dead on. Kate’s eyes narrow when she spots my CHRONOS key, and when I extend my hand, she ignores it. Her daughter rolls her eyes and steps forward. “Cliona Dunne,” she says, shaking my hand. “I believe you’ve met my father already. And the woman with the antisocial personality disorder is my mother, Kate.”

  The comment gets a grudging smile from Kate as she takes one of the two chairs across the table from me. “One psychology class, and Clio thinks she’s Sigmund Freud.”

  “I’m Madison Grace. Most people call me Madi.” I hand her the two photographs from the volume. “You’ll want to keep those inside a CHRONOS field. These were part of an album you sent to Kate Pierce-Keller, who was my paternal grandmother’s grandmother. I don’t know how much your husband has told you, but . . .”

  I trail off as the waitress approaches with a breadbasket and a bottle of Chianti. They must come here often enough that she knows what they like, since she was occupied with another table when they walked in. She chats with them for a moment about the r
ain and then asks if it’s coming down as hard over in Skaneateles. When the pleasantries are over, she tells them the special is lasagna Bolognese, which they all choose. I’m not entirely sure what’s in a Bolognese sauce, so I opt for linguine with pesto, and the waitress heads to the kitchen with our order.

  “Madison Grace,” Kate says, once she’s gone. “You’re one of the three who invented the damn keys, aren’t you?”

  “I guess? I mean, that’s what the Brief History says, so that must be what happened in some iteration of this timeline. All I know is that I decided to plant a garden in the backyard in Bethesda and I pulled out a plastic bone and a CHRONOS key. And that discovery apparently sped everything up by a few decades.”

  “Daphne,” Kiernan says.

  Kate’s eyes soften. “I’m amazed that she got close enough to a CHRONOS key to bury it. Daphne hated those things.” She turns to Clio and says, “Daphne was my grandmother’s Irish setter.”

  “How can you be certain this will happen?” Kiernan asks, which answers our question about whether they would have felt the time shift this far into the past.

  “Because it’s already happened. And it’s not the first time. There was a rift in the 1960s. Several key figures were assassinated—or rather, assassinated early, in the cases of Dr. King and John Lennon. US involvement in the war in Vietnam stretched out a bit as a result. We fixed that problem, and then almost immediately—”

  “Let me get this straight,” Kate says. “You find the key in Katherine’s garden, figure out how to use it, and suddenly we have two time shifts. Have you considered that maybe you should stop using the key?”

  I take a deep breath before answering, reminding myself that her tone is at least somewhat warranted. Some version of me apparently helped create the device, which led to its misuse by Saul Rand, her kidnapping, and her very near death. In addition, for the past two decades, she’s had to deal with the fact that if she steps outside of a CHRONOS field, she will simply cease to exist. “I’d be delighted to stop using it, but as I told your husband, my use of the medallion isn’t what triggered the shift. Or . . . at least, not directly. Are you familiar with Temporal Dilemma?”

  The three of them nod and exchange a confused look.

  “Of course,” Kiernan says. “Time chess. Saul’s bloody game. But surely you aren’t saying a computer game caused the time shifts?”

  I explain what we’ve learned so far as we eat dinner. The fact that I can’t answer at least half of their questions reminds me we are still flying blind in so many ways. I’ve been honest with them up to this point, and even though I suspect it’s not going to help my case, I press ahead with the one thing I’d really prefer not to tell them.

  “We killed two of their people—their observers, as they call them—in our last confrontation. The man I killed had a sniper rifle aimed at a concert across the street and was planning to assassinate several civil rights activists, including Dr. King. The man Jack shot was about to kill me. This Morgen Campbell guy doesn’t seem to be holding my actions against me, or maybe he doesn’t know I’m the one who took out his sniper. But Saul Rand is apparently not happy with Jack. And Jack is stranded—that jump to Memphis was the first time he ever managed to use the key, and I don’t know if he’s just tapped out or what, but we can’t get him back to 2136. The geneticist on our team is working on a solution, but the time shift means she doesn’t have a lab anymore. I need a safe house for Jack in 1966, somewhere he can help us with research. If either of you can still pull up a stable point, we’d welcome your help, too. We’re authorized five observers, but with CHRONOS no longer existing, there’s really no one for us to pull in.”

  Kate’s arms are crossed, her back pressed against her chair. “Can’t say I’m exactly broken up about CHRONOS not existing. And you’re asking us to take in someone Saul Rand would like to see dead.”

  “Well . . . not the Saul Rand you’re thinking of,” I say. “He’s from another timeline.”

  “He’s still Saul Rand.” There’s an edge to her voice, and it occurs to me that she’s also from another timeline, so this might be a personal peeve of hers. “And that’s asking us to take a rather major risk.”

  “She’s right,” Kiernan says. “Giving sanctuary to someone with a bounty on his head effectively puts a bounty on ours. But . . .” He turns toward Kate. “I’ll be over eighty by then. You won’t be far behind. We can make sure the kids—who will be grown, probably with children of their own by then—are safe. Someone once gave me and the other Kate refuge from the bloody Cyrists, and I’d likely have been dead if she hadn’t. I told you this decision would be yours, and I’ll stand by that. But I’m willing to take a little risk to pay that debt forward, if you are.”

  Clio has been mostly quiet, almost to the point that I wondered if she was paying attention. Now, however, she puts her fork on the edge of her plate. “If the two of you don’t want to or can’t take this guy in, I will. I’ll be in my fifties by then, so hopefully I’ll be doing well enough to have a spare room or at least a sofa. But I think everyone is overlooking a really big issue. We’re about to live through twenty-five years under a very different government and society. Even if they manage to repair the rift, we’re under CHRONOS keys. Our dual memories are going to be massive.”

  There’s a really long silence at the table, and then Kate says, “No. Our dual memories are going to be massive.”

  Clio arches an eyebrow. “Isn’t that what I just said?”

  “What she means is that you have another option,” Kiernan says. “It’s been nearly ten years since either of us could lock in a stable point. We’re stuck moving through time in single-day increments, so we’ll have at least vague memories of two different chains of events. But if you stay in the period before the time shift, you can avoid that entirely.”

  “We’ll find a spot where you can lie low and wait this thing out. If they manage to fix it,” Kate adds, “our new memories will mostly overwrite the old. And if they don’t, then you join us in 1941, and we find a way to fight within the system. Or we head north. The Canadian border is only a few hours’ drive.”

  Kiernan’s eyes catch Clio’s. It’s a fleeting look, but they’re clearly communicating something. Kate catches it, too, and says, “Oh, no. You are not getting involved in this, Cliona Dunne. These people have trained for years. Using the key to travel home from Chicago more quickly is one thing, but using it to actually time travel . . .” She stops, probably realizing that she’d just advocated Clio using the key to remain in the past and avoid the double memories. “They’re trained for this. You’re not.”

  “I know better than to get involved, Mom. Dad and I were just a little surprised that you were suggesting I use the key at all. Of course, if I’m stashed in the past, you’ll have to be the one who takes in Madi’s friend.”

  There’s a slight pause and then Kate says, “Fine. I’ll make a note to expect a houseguest in . . . thirty-one years.”

  Clio then turns to me. “When and where are you meeting your friend?”

  “The bus station in Geneva. August 23, 1966. His bus is scheduled to arrive a little after three.”

  “So four, if he’s lucky,” Kate says. Clio and Kiernan nod knowingly, so I assume that station has a reputation for delays.

  “We’ll have someone there to pick him up,” Clio says. “Were you planning to jump directly home, or do you need a ride to the station?”

  I glance at the time. Between the walk to the church, the twenty minutes or so I spent there talking with Kiernan, the walk over here, and dinner, it’s been a little over an hour and a half.

  “I’d like to meet him there so that I can catch him up on our progress,” I tell her. “But I’m on a tight schedule. How far is it?”

  Clio tells me it’s about twenty minutes in good weather, but a half hour on a rainy night like this one.

  “Why don’t I drop the two of you off at the Strand and drive Madi to the station?” she says
to her parents. “Then I’ll circle back to pick you up.”

  “But you’ll miss the movie,” Kate protests. “And you love Bette Davis.”

  “I’ve already seen it, Mom. We got that one nearly a month ago in Chicago. And I’m dying to learn about the fashions two hundred years from now.”

  We drop Kate and Kiernan off at the theater on Fall Street, just a few doors down from the stable point where I’d jumped in earlier. The marquee reads The Girl from 10th Avenue and Coming Soon—The Glass Key. Clio pulls the car, a boxy-looking thing that I think might be a Model A, into the small lot next to the theater to turn around. I brace for the fashion questions she mentioned earlier, thinking that she’s going to be woefully disappointed given my preference for casual over trendy. But instead she pushes a button on the control panel of the car. It squishes in, then she reaches into her bag and fishes around for something. After a moment, she pulls out a battered pack of cigarettes. A piece of card stock—a ticket, maybe?—is stuck between the package and the cellophane wrapper. She taps one out of the pack and then offers one to me.

  “No, thanks,” I say. “You know those things are really, really bad for you, right?”

  Clio grins and drops the pack onto the bench seat between us. Then she yanks the button thing out of the dashboard. It’s now glowing bright red, and I realize it’s a cigarette lighter. “Not as bad for me as you’d think,” she says as she lights up. “These are from 2170. Smokeless smokes. The only thing burning is paper, and I’ll get just a tiny hit of nicotine. Still not entirely safe, but believe me, there are worse habits I could have picked up over the past five years. And I’m celebrating.”

  It’s an odd choice of words given what I’ve just told her. “Celebrating what?”

  “A personal victory.”

  I’m not really in the mood for twenty questions, so I ignore her cryptic comment. She’ll tell me if she wants me to know. As we reach the edge of town, she yanks on the metal stick that protrudes upward from the floor of the car and the engine revs a bit louder. Blades flip across the windshield in a mesmerizing rhythm, diverting the rain. Clio guides the car along the highway almost effortlessly, tapping her cigarette against the wheel, and I find myself wondering what it’s like to drive something this large. I’ve never operated a vehicle bigger than a scooter, and that was only when I was a kid. I don’t think my mother has, either. My dad flew a small craft that a friend of his owned a few times, but it had an override for pilot error. Nora said that she drove when she was younger, but even back then there were safety features in the event that an animal rushed onto the road or your tires hit a patch of water. She said the cars her parents owned had balloons that inflated if you were in an accident and restraints to hold you in place. This vehicle has none of those things, and while Clio seems like a competent driver, I’m kind of wishing I’d refused the offer of a ride, especially when she takes her eyes from the road to glance in my direction.