“No cooking in the apartments,” Jacob said.
“Or any of the other independent-living features you have here,” the younger man said. “It’s a great place. I’d love living here — great gym, pool, easy access to down town, movie screen in the basement — and I don’t need the nursing.”
“And we can’t license it under an apartment building,” the older man said. “Because of the nursing.”
“We can’t call it a ‘hospital,’” the younger man said. “Because, I imagine, you don’t want to kick some guy out because his girlfriend isn’t disabled.”
“Or vice versa,” the younger man said.
Jacob nodded.
“What can we do?” Honey asked.
“Devon already spoke to us about this,” the younger man said. “He also spoke with the VA. You think you can fill three buildings? They have thousands of young men and women who would love a chance at a site like this.”
“Our plan was to post everything online so people can start these businesses all over the country,” Jacob said.
“That’s a great idea,” the older man said.
“That doesn’t get you up and running,” the younger man said.
“Give us until the end of the week,” the older man said. “We’ll see if we can’t push through a new category. It sounds pretty straightforward.”
“But if it were easy, we’d have done it already,” the younger man said.
“Okay,” Jacob said. He shook the men’s hands. “Thanks.”
The men made it a point to shake Honey’s hand as well.
“Well, what do you think?” Jacob asked.
“I . . .” Honey sighed. “I was about to say that this place was never going to open. But they seem to get the need and like the place.”
Honey shrugged.
“Who knows?” Honey asked.
“I’ll talk to Dad,” Jacob said. “He can talk to the Secretary of State again. See if that helps.”
“Good thinking,” Honey said.
“Can I drop you?” Jacob asked.
“Nah,” Honey said. “I need to get back to work. Thanks though.”
Honey tried to seem positive until Jacob left. Getting into her van, she let a few tears fall. This had been the best, most frustrating project of her life. She hit the dashboard.
“This is going to happen,” Honey said.
Laughing at her own fierce exuberance, she pulled out of the parking lot and called MJ to update him.
~~~~~~~~
Wednesday mid-day — 12:04 p.m.
“Hello, Delphie?” Abi asked as she walked into the kitchen.
Delphie was standing in the middle of the main Castle kitchen. Heather came down the stairs behind Abi.
“I didn’t know you were here, too,” Delphie said.
“Really?” Heather asked.
“No,” Delphie said. “I just thought it might be a polite thing to say when someone brings Olympia cheese into my house and doesn’t share it.”
While Abi looked embarrassed, Heather grinned at Delphie.
“That’s pretty manipulative, even for you!” Heather said.
Abi gawked at them. Delphie held her hand out. Heather set the cheese in her hand.
“You wouldn’t happen to have some honey, too?” Delphie asked.
Laughing, Heather gave her the rest of the jar of Olympia honey.
“Why, Heather!” Delphie said. “You shouldn’t have.”
Abi laughed. Delphie went to the counter. She cut a piece of cheese and dabbed it in the honey.
“I was just wondering. Do you . . .?” Abi asked.
She pointed from Delphie to Heather.
“All the time,” Heather said. “It was worse when no one knew I was Hedone. Delphie used to torture me for treats to keep her quiet. Like anyone could do that anyway.”
Delphie grinned like she’d won a medal. She took a bite of cheese.
“This is something I don’t wish to share,” Delphie said. “While we’re on the topic, did you ask Aristaeus about coming here?”
“Oh, Delphie. I know you want him to come and take a look at your bees, but . . .” Heather started and then stopped. “You know all of Apollo’s kids are . . .”
“Monsters?” Delphie asked.
“Hotheads,” Heather said.
“Ah,” Delphie said. She thought for a moment. “Great in bed, but impossible to have a conversation with?”
“Let’s leave it at ‘You don’t really want to spend time with him,’” Heather said.
“She did mention something about the way he smelled,” Abi said. She winked at Heather.
Delphie nodded that she understood. She gave them a sly look and ate another piece of cheese. She stuck her finger in the honey and sucked the sweet nectar from her fingers.
“What are you girls up to?” Delphie asked.
“I was leaving,” Heather said. “Abi wants to ask you about the Fires of Hell”
“Oh?” Delphie asked with a nod. “Oh, that is a good idea. If it’s a natural phenomenon, Abi will be able to help. If it’s some of Levi’s bs, she’ll know right away.”
Heather nodded. She started to walk out of the kitchen.
“You will make it in time if you leave now,” Delphie said. “Heather?”
Heather turned to look at Delphie.
“Yes?” Heather asked.
“You have to go now,” Delphie said. “You’ll just make it.”
Heather looked at her and blinked. She glanced at Abi, who shrugged.
“Are you feeling okay?” Heather asked. She walked back to Delphie and put her hand on Delphie’s head. “Should I call someone?”
“If you don’t leave now, you’ll miss your window,” Delphie said.
“Delphie, honey, we’re not sure what you’re talking about,” Abi said.
Looking exasperated, Delphie sighed in Heather’s direction. She turned to look at Abi.
“Do you know anyone who loves Blane completely and has the ability to move easily through time?” Delphie asked Abi. “Gosh, I don’t know anyone who fits that bill.”
“What are you talking about?” Heather asked.
“You have to get there at the moment she lets him into the house,” Delphie said. “He’ll be too caught up in her to notice that you’re there. You just walk right in behind him. She’ll see you but won’t say anything. She knows instinctively what’s going to happen and why you’re there.”
“She? He?” Heather asked and shook her head. “Blane . . .?”
Heather mouthed everything Delphie just said. She lifted an eyebrow and looked at Abi. Shaking her head, she looked Delphie. She opened her mouth to ask.
“Wh . . . Oh,” Heather said when she realized what Delphie was saying.
Delphie gave a little clap of her hands and jumped up and down. Heather looked down at Wyn.
“Delphie, would you mind looking after Wyn for a bit?” Heather asked.
“Of course, Heather,” Delphie said in a sweet as punch voice. “Anything for you.”
Heather gave Wyn to Delphie. Heather touched the side of her son’s face. With a nod, she disappeared.
~~~~~~~~
Twenty-nine years ago
Don’t ask where; you don’t want to know
Heather was pretty sure that she’d never been so scared in her entire life. Everything she knew about Sam Lipson’s brother told her that she should not be here.
But here she was — hiding under the open cement stairwell of a rundown apartment. It was the middle of an unseasonably hot day. While there were children’s toys around, no child was outside in this heat. She looked up. The woman in Apartment 201 had opened her door to let in air through her wooden-framed screen. The woman stopped to make sure the screen was latched closed. Heather could hear the soft refrains of an off-tune lullaby sung by a young mother to her beloved child.
Heather swallowed hard.
A car door slammed in the parking lot. A bead of sweat rolled down
Heather’s neck. And, her father appeared at her side. He was carrying his bow, and his quiver was full of arrows.
“What are you doing here?” Heather asked. “You’re supposed to be on vacation!”
Her voice betrayed her general irritation that Eros had begged her to take his position and then couldn’t leave it alone.
“What’s that? Does the liar speak?” Eros asked. “Don’t answer that. It’s only the child of my loins — lying Hedone.”
Surprised, Heather turned to look at him. She looked at his shoes and his clothing. He was definitely dressed for work. She blinked.
He gave her an angry stare.
“What’s wrong with you?” Eros asked.
“What are you doing here?” Heather asked, out of curiosity this time.
“Why do I ever come looking for you?” Eros asked, his voice filled with rage. “I want to know where my beloved wife is!”
“Where your . . .?” Heather asked.
It hit her like a ton of bricks. She’d gone back in time. Eros was moving in the other direction. He had no idea that he and Psyche had connected and were currently on vacation on Perses’ island. To him, he’d just run into his daughter again.
“Where is she?” Eros asked.
Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-nine
Don’t ask where
“Where is who?” Heather asked to buy some time.
She was hit with a vague memory of running into her father just before her mother jumped them forward this last time, probably a year or so from this time. He was furious with her for lying to him under the stairwell. He wanted her to apologize for what she’d made him do. She had no idea what he was talking about and told him so, which only added to his fury. She had no memory of standing under the stairwell, because, in her timeline, she’d never been here before. She groaned internally.
“Your mother,” Eros said. “Where is she?”
Heather squinted at him and said the one thing that usually made him leave her alone.
“Maybe you should have asked that very same question when she was being tortured by your mother,” Heather said. “If you had bothered to ask, maybe she wouldn’t have suffered so much.”
As predicted, Eros started ranting and raving.
Heather always found a unique kind of silence in his rage. He would never ask for anything while he was ranting. She could rest here in the silence of his verbal barrage. Her focus returned to the young man.
A medium-sized man with dark hair and hazel eyes started across the cement backyard. The man looked a good deal like Sam Lipson. He was thinner, more wiry, and in unguarded moments, his face was stony. He wore black jeans, black boots, and a jean jacket covering his Black Sabbath T-shirt. Overall, he seemed tired, almost exhausted. The man gave no indication that he saw Heather or heard Eros ranting like a four-year-old.
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs to light a cigarette from a book of matches. Heather could see into his eyes through the open space between the cement stairs. She instinctively shivered at the depth of his malice.
Her father touched her arm.
“Are you even listening to me?” Eros asked.
“Not really,” Heather said, in a moment of rare honesty.
“How dare you!” Eros said. His voice rose a pitch.
The man took a drag on his cigarette. Rather than blow out the match, he tossed the matchbook onto the concrete.
Eros screamed about how she should be loyal to him! After all, it wasn’t his fault that his mother hated his beloved. He couldn’t be held responsible for her actions. How was it his fault that he was so loveable? What could you expect from his mother?
“She was protecting you,” Heather said her part in their little play. “She tortured my mother because you failed to tell her that you were in love with Psyche!”
Eros screamed in her face. He began to pace. As he paced, he threw his hands around in gestures that would be perfected by Tanesha only a few years from now.
Heather grinned.
The man started up the stairwell, one lazy step at a time. Pull on the cigarette. Take a step. Exhale. Pull on the cigarette. Take another step. He certainly didn’t seem like an angry man in a rage.
“Pay attention to me!” Eros said. “I am your father! I deserve your respect.”
“Sorry, Dad,” Heather said. Her mind was a million miles away. She idly added, “I’ve heard it all before.”
“Well, hear this!” Eros said.
Before she could stop him, he pulled back his bow and shot Blane’s father with an arrow. The man’s face went completely blank. He stood with one foot on one step and the other foot on an other step. His cigarette burned in his mouth.
“What are you doing?” Heather asked. She pushed her father. “You can be such a jerk!”
“I’m a jerk? I’m a jerk?” Eros asked.
It was never a good sign when Eros started repeating himself. He sneered at Heather and fired another arrow at the man.
The man took a gasping breath, and then another. He threw down his cigarette and stalked up the stairs to Apartment 201.
“What did you do?!” Heather asked.
“You’ll see,” Eros said. He sneered at Heather one last time and disappeared.
Bam! Bam! Bam! The man banged on the flimsy screen door with his fist. Each time, the screen door bounced against the doorframe and went out as far as the latch would let it. The man hit the screen so hard that it bounced far enough out for him to grab the edge of the screen’s wooden frame. He yanked on the frame, and the screen broke.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice came from upstairs.
The man started to yell. She heard the man’s fist hit the woman’s face. A baby screamed at the top of his lungs.
Heather stood frozen under the stairs. She tried to move but was too flooded with feelings of remorse and guilt. All of this was her fault. If she hadn’t annoyed Eros so much, he would . . .
She shook herself.
One thing she knew for certain was that Eros did whatever Eros wanted to do. If he caused it, it was his will and, in his mind, his right as a god.
Her veins pulsed with the power of Olympia.
She took the stairs two at a time and walked into Apartment 201. She knew that she couldn’t keep Blane’s father from beating his mother. Even if she wanted to, which she didn’t, she couldn’t stop Blane’s mother from killing his father. She couldn’t stop either of them from dying. That was what was in store for them on this day.
No god or goddess could change that fact.
She walked across the apartment toward the fight. Blane’s father was so angry that he didn’t notice Heather reach into his pocket for his keys.
“I’ll take him,” Heather said to his mother.
In the silence of Blane’s father’s rage, his mother looked at her.
“Will you keep him safe?” his mother asked.
“I will do what I can,” Heather said. “He will suffer, but he will surely die today if he stays here.”
Blane’s mother jostled back and forth with the blows from his father. When she had a chance, his mother rolled away from Blane’s father. She set Blane in Heather’s arms. The baby was so scared that he was dead silent.
“The gun is under his pillow,” Heather said as she ran past.
Blane’s father was so fixated on his mother that he didn’t see Heather or the baby in her arms. Blane’s ran past Heather in hot pursuit of his mother. Heather had just reached the door to the apartment when Blane’s mother fired the shots that killed his father. Seeing a photo of Blane’s mother and father on the wall next to the door, Heather grabbed the frame and tucked it to her.
Heather calmly walked down the stairs. She instinctively checked to see if Eros was still there. He was gone.
At this moment, Blane’s mother was calling Delphie with her last breath. Heather went to Blane’s father’s car — a Ford Mustang from the 1960s. She set the baby in the passenger’s seat and drove to the ho
spital where Blane was born.
In the hospital’s parking lot, she broke the picture frame and tucked the image into the baby’s blankets. She set the baby on her lap. Baby Blane’s eyes opened, and he seemed to take in her face.
“I would save you from the next eighteen years if I could,” Heather said. “I can’t do that. That’s your path. I can only tell you that you are loved.”
Heather touched his heart. Without being conscious of it, she marked his heart with her love. That baby smiled at the gift. She kissed his face and got out of the car. With great ease, she carried him into the hospital and left him on the receptionist’s chair. She waited long enough for the receptionist to discover him. She threw one last worried look at the baby that was Blane before leaving the hospital.
She drove the Mustang to the small house in Mayfair where Sam, Celia, Valerie, and baby Jacob lived. She parked the car in the driveway and left the keys in the mailbox. She closed her eyes for a moment and said a prayer that she hadn’t changed things so much in this past that her world would change.
She sent herself back to the Castle kitchen.
To her relief, Delphie and Abi were still standing in the kitchen. She glanced at the clock. She’d been gone three minutes.
“How did it go?” Delphie asked.
Heather opened her mouth to say something pithy but realized that she needed to know that nothing had changed. Heather knew that Delphie watched timelines. It was one of her fascinations.
“Good,” Heather said. “Did you notice a shift in the timeline?”
Delphie closed her eyes for a moment before shaking her head. She scowled.
“There’s a photo,” Delphie said. “But that hasn’t changed things, much.”
“Where?” Heather asked.
“It will be found at Social Services when you ask for it,” Delphie said. “They’ll give it to you when you ask.”
Heather felt a wave of relief.
“Thank you,” Heather said.
Delphie shrugged.
“I owe you . . .”
“Just remember me when you have Olympic honey and cheese,” Delphie said.
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