Fifty-four - Kaitlyn
The next day we waited all day long. A holding pattern of waiting. It was a Saturday and there was no Magnus, no storm, nothing all day long. And we watched, man did we watch. But also we talked about — maybe we got the dates wrong.
But I reminded everyone, this wasn’t the way time travel worked, like at any time, any time at all, the person in another time could come back to this time, the date that was agreed upon. Like, Magnus could spend six years somewhere and then come back on this day because this was the day we agreed upon.
But had we?
He had said a week.
I had said Saturday. But we hadn’t actually both said the date.
By nightfall Zach said, “We got the date wrong, he’s coming tomorrow, easy.”
“And it could still happen tonight.”
“And I’ll be up because I’m not sleeping.”
“Me neither,” I said, but after all was said and done I had to sleep. I had been too excited and now I was too disappointed. I crashed when I was nursing Isla to sleep and we slept all night.
The following day, because we were all kind of overwhelmed by waiting, and Archie and Ben were particularly wild, Emma took them to the playground up on Atlantic for a couple of hours before dinner.
I sat on the couch with Isla, dressed to welcome my husband’s return but also, because it had been all day since I got pretty, sort of wrecked already: Isla spit up. Dirty diaper. Milk. I was not as fresh as I wanted to be because this was definitely longer than it should have been.
Zach came from his room, carrying the laptop.
“I did something.”
“What did you do?” I had my head back on the couch and wasn’t in any mood to watch the kinds of YouTube videos that Zach loved to share.
“I looked up the history of Balloch castle.”
I sat up straight. “Why would you — what did it say?”
He sat down beside me on the couch with the laptop on our knees and showed me the Wikipedia page.
“Look, when was he back there?”
“It’s 1705, August…” as I said it, his finger trailed down the list of years to 1705. The castle - destroyed.
“Oh God.”
“Does it say the date?”
“Yeah, it’s called the Balloch Siege — there, see?”
“Shit.” It was the same time.
“Yeah, an army destroyed the castle.”
“Did people die? Who died, oh my god, everyone is back there, who died?”
He ran his hand through his hair, I don’t know Katie, I mean, I stopped looking after this. The number says 225 people died, that’s all I... I don’t want to look, you don’t want to look, it’s—”
The front door opened and the boys barreled in with gleeful yells. Emma dropped into the chair across from us exhausted from the park. She said, “What’s going on?”
I said, “Zach said Balloch castle was in a battle, it lost, people died and...”
“Oh no! But that’s probably fine, right? Magnus got his family out, totally, he’s just dealing with that, that’s what he’s doing, right? Right? Don’t you agree?”
Zach stood up. “Yeah, we don’t need to look at anything else.”
“We can look?” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “No! We can’t look. Don’t look. We just need to accept that he lived through it. They all lived through it.”
I said, “But he’s not here. Magnus, Quentin, Beaty, James, Hayley, none of them are here.”
Zach closed the laptop and put it down on the coffee table in front of us.
“We got the date wrong, Magnus will be here any moment now. He’ll have everyone with him and—”
Archie rushed into the room and climbed into my lap all paws and snuffles and like a bear pushing and pulling to make a space for himself to cuddle on my other side then with a paw on my cheek pulled my face to look into his and with all the seriousness he could muster said, “I hungwy.”
Ben said, “Me too.”
Zach said, “Perfect, let’s reconvene after dinner to discuss this more. What was it you said once, Em. We can’t just not look things up, and then assume they didn’t happen, we have to—”
Emma said, “What the hell are you talking about, Zach?”
“I don’t fu— I mean, I don’t flipping know, this is — everyone we know is back there and we’re all that’s left. Kaitlyn’s got a baby in her lap. Who’s in charge of this whole thing, me? How the hell — I mean, how the heck did that happen? I’m not a hero, I’m a dad. This is fu— fudging crazy-making.”
I said, “Make dinner, we’ll eat. We’ll get the kids to bed, and then we’ll sit down and discuss our plans.” To try and set their minds at ease I added, “I’ve dealt with a lot worse with a lot less information—”
Emma said, “You didn’t have a baby back then.”
“We just need to stay calm and not panic,” I said.
“Yeah, okay, I’ll cook, that will help.” Zach went to the kitchen.
I added to Emma, “Motherhood has made me all super-capable and high-functioning. I got dressed today, trust me, I got this.”
They both left the room and I looked down at my two kids. Curled up in my lap. Did I have this? What was I doing by myself trying to figure this out? And where was Magnus?
We ate dinner. It was quiet except for dealing with the kids while they ate their own food. Dinners had become such a big production because of these little guys. This one we didn’t even try to turn into a sit-down meal. Zach ate at the kitchen counter. Emma buzzed around the boys’s table urging them to eat, returning to the kitchen counter to eat her own meal. I stood by the kitchen counter with Isla in the sling and she was not happy, wailing like a banshee, which in hindsight was because I had sat nursing and letting her sleep all day instead of going for a walk and taking her out in fresh air, and doing things like an adult human who lived in the world. This was my fault, me, and now she was screaming at me and so I ate and jiggled, jiggled and ate, and paced and soothed and tried to get her to calm down and...
Dinner sucked.
Then Emma read stories to the boys in the living room while Zach cleaned up, the only thing I could do was walk around with Isla. But then after she was really wailing Zach wiped his hands on a towel. “My turn!”
I was pretty damn grateful. I passed her from the sling and he held her in a football hold and patted her back and started ‘rockin and rollin’ as he put it while I went in and finished doing all the dishes. I needed the break actually and it was awesome to ‘get’ to clean these days, while my mind turned around and around — what was I supposed to do?
Did they need help?
And what help would they need?
And Magnus could handle it, right?
What if he was looping around right now fixing something and if I showed up I blew everything, what if...? I should let him fix it.
But always it kept coming back to—
Magnus didn’t come home.
Fifty-five - Kaitlyn
Isla kept crying and I kept trying not to cry.
Zach took her out on the back deck to walk up and down in the fresh night air, but it was getting cold outside so he returned. We had finished dressing the boys in their footed pajamas, ready for bed.
“Did you ask the night guard if he’s watching for storms?”
“Of course he is, but I didn’t ask. He wasn’t up there, must be doing a round in the front of the house. I’ll call him in a moment.” He did a two-step-swing with Isla. “She is really roaring tonight, want me to keep going?”
Archie said, “Kay-be come night-night?”
I sighed. “Let me see if Isla will nurse again, sweetie.” I got her into the sling, my shirt up, and the baby blessedly took my breast and quieted as if that was what she had wanted all along. Now I was second guessing the last full hour that we had tried to calm her without nursing her. But also I had tried to nurse her over and over before and basically what
I was learning was that this whole thing, being a mom, was just a matter of overriding chaos.
As my Grandma Barb would say, when there is chaos coming, keep your head up, back straight, eyes on the horizon.
Emma had already taken Ben to his room. Most of the time we put them in bed together in their little puppy-pile, but this time we all went to our different rooms. Ben needed his undistracted mommy, Archie needed his Kay-be.
I carried Archie to my bed, propped all the pillows to make a little nest, and gathered the two board books he liked me to read over and over: Going on a Bear Hunt and Goodnight Moon.
I climbed into bed keeping Isla in the sling across my lap and Archie fluffed up a pillow to get himself to my lap level. He leaned across her legs as if she wasn’t there and I opened the board book. “We’re going on a bear hunt, we’re going to catch a big one...”
His little plump hand was curled under his chin, looking at the book, his little dark lashes on his cheeks. All the desperate craziness of the last hour washed away in the calm of this moment. I pressed my lips to his forehead. “I am so glad you’re in my life. I love you so much, wee’un.”
“Wuv oo too, Kay-be.”
My heart soared. I continued reading “...what a beautiful day, we’re not scared...”
He pointed at the page, and piped up with, “Mammy go park.”
I answered, “I didn’t go to the park today, I will go with you next time.” I continued, “...what a beautiful day—”
“Mammy go. Mammy take me home.”
My world came slamming down around me.
“What do you mean, sweetie? Am I Mammy?”
He looked up at me, all sweetness and light. “No, you Kay-be, mammy take me home.”
And the room was going dangerously dark, not enough air.
“When did you see Mammy? Today at park you saw Mammy?”
“At park.”
He patted his hand on the page for me to keep reading, but I was throwing my covers aside, pulling him up to my hip, jumping from bed, and carrying them both out to the living room, “Emma!” I wanted to be calm and soothing, but I also wanted to keep my world from exploding, which it was, with a big giant kaboom all over my heart.
“Emma!”
Zach came from their room. “Whatcha need?”
Emma was right behind him. “Yes?”
“Listen to Archie, Archie tell Emma what you said just now.”
Archie looked from me to Emma, “Mammy take me home.”
Everyone looked confused.
I said, “Am I mammy?”
“Kay-be.”
“Emma, did anyone talk to Archie today at the park, was anyone there?”
“I didn’t see anyone, what do you think—?” At the look on my face she said, “Oh no, really?”
“Was he ever alone?”
“Maybe, I mean, I watch them but I also let them run around. Katie, I am so sorry I didn’t see anything that would have made me...”
“Zach, will you check with the guard, make sure he knows. Tell him to be on alert?”
“Already on it.” Zach left the house.
Emma and I stared at each other and then took Archie and Ben in their footed pajamas to the couch and tried to be calm when I said, “Please sit here for a moment, just quietly.”
A few moments later Zach burst through the front door with the phone to his ear. “This is Zach Greene for Magnus, I’m calling because you aren’t here and… Call me back when you get this message.” He hung up and said to us, “He’s not guarding, did you guys see him come to work? His car is gone. I swear I saw it earlier, he was here, right?”
“I don’t know Zach, I don’t know if he’s—”
“Fuck.” He began closing the blinds on the house.
Emma asked, “Do we get in the car, do we go?”
“We could be ambushed. We might be surrounded. Fuck, I mean, frick, I was out there on the boardwalk with a wailing baby, people might be out there. Wait—” He went to the kitchen, yanked open the drawer and got his handgun. “Wait here for a moment. Lock the door behind me.”
He slid out the glass door we rarely used to the dark end of the deck. He was gone for a couple of terrifying moments and then I unlocked it for him when he returned. He said, “There’s blood on the deck.”
I held on tighter to Isla in the sling. “Whose? What is happening?”
He shook his head again. “I’m going to try and call the security guard again.”
“Is it his?”
“He’s gone, but his car is gone too, I don’t know.”
Emma said, “We have to jump.”
Zach said, “I agree, where to?”
I stood. “I’m getting the vessels. We have to go to the past, I can warn Magnus that Balloch is going to fall.”
“Are we sure?” We could go to the future, we could tell Lady Mairead and go to the past with an army...”
“That might be Magnus’s plan. I don’t want to mess up his plan. I know he went to this date in the past and I need him. I don’t know if this is smart or — but I need Magnus, I can’t think straight about it, I need him.”
Zach said, “Okay, sounds good, Magnus will handle this, he’ll have an idea.”
Emma said, “Besides, we’ll all be there, it will be easier if we’re all together.”
“Yeah, this makes sense.”
I rushed through the house, up the stairs, for the safe. It took forever with my shaking hands to turn the dials and get it open.
I rushed back with the vessels. The boys were sitting on the couch, while Zach and Emma tore apart the kitchen stuffing food into bags. Emma pushed Mookie into a cat carrier. I grabbed a box of diapers, that made sense.
I came back. I spun around. What else did I need? I put on hiking boots with wool socks.
I grabbed shoes for Archie and yelled at Emma, “Ben’s shoes! We need coats for the kids.”
“Oh, right.” She rushed down the hall.
Zach had the phone to his ear again, and yelled, “Coats for us too.”
When Emma came back with a pile of coats and shoes she asked, “How fast do we need to go, are we taking too long?”
Zach said, “How long has there been no guard? He’s not even answering, he’s never not answered before.”
Emma said, “There could be someone right outside.”
My eyes fell on the new painting. “What if I pass a message to Lady Mairead? Tell her that we need help in the past, that we’re all going there?”
Zach said, “How can you trust her?”
“I can’t. Not really, but I have a peace offering.”
I took the stairs two at a time to reach our office. I opened the safe again and pulled out Johnne Cambell’s book. Then I rushed back downstairs.
Emma said, “What if someone else finds it, whoever is here, we need to...”
“I’ll be vague.” On a scrap of wrapping paper I wrote: We are all under siege. I will tell Magnus you said hello.
There was a knock on the door.
Zach went to the security system and checked the video of the front doorstep. Then he silently waved his hands for us all to move to the other side of the house.
I stuffed my letter into the book, used my fingerprint to open the door on the back of the painting, placed the book inside, and closed the door again.
Then I hid all the wrapping paper under the couch. I rushed down the hallway to Ben and Archie’s room, yanked down a poster of a bunny, and hung the painting on its hanger. Then I hid that bunny poster in the closet behind the boys’s shoes, but — that was stupid. I took the painting of Lady Mairead down, shoved it in the back of the closet, and returned the bunny poster to the wall. By now I was crying because I didn’t know what the heck I was doing.
There was another knock on the front door and—
Zach and Emma, carrying the boys and all of our bags, including Mookie, met me in the hallway. We raced up the stairs to the second floor and out onto the roof deck, a
place we never ever let the kids go without supervision. It was basically just a place to stand and look up at the stars and usually had a guard sitting there. It was also exposed, easy to see from every direction, and I hadn’t ever used it to jump from before. We crawled from the door and kept to the ground, even lanky Zach kept himself as low as possible, folding himself over Emma and Ben. Isla didn’t scream this whole time being such a good girl but as I twisted the vessel my racing heart broke for what I was doing, ripping her from her home, her time, her comfort and sweet security and Archie too — having not enough time to be a kid, to be always running. As the wind whipped our hair and blew past us with a hum that built into a roar, I held my babies close and said over and over — I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please forgive me, I’m so sorry — as the jump began.
Fifty-six - Magnus
The scouts returned. They had followed the army’s trail but men had dispersed in all directions. They had found none who could tell us what of the men who had followed, Sean and Liam, and nae trace of Fraoch and James.
We were relieved that the army was dispersin’ but kent we had to be vigilant, we were unprotected without many of our men. We stayed on the walls. I couldna convince Hayley to return tae the Great Hall, she was committed to watchin’ for Fraoch.
Then, in the evenin’ our men returned. Sean yelled for the gates tae open and as soon as they passed through the gates closed once more. Fraoch was among them. Hayley yelled, “Fraoch!” and raced tae the top of the stairs.
Quentin said, “I don’t see James.”
I said, “They haena found him.”
The press down the stairs was tight and crowded as we descended to meet the men. The courtyard was packed with people and horses as well as many other animals, and filled with a frightful smell. There were villagers crowded here who had come for protection but werna allowed intae the main rooms of the castle. The returning men and their horses pressed into the crowd.
Fraoch jumped from his horse tae sweep Hayley intae his arms.
Our Shared Horizon (Kaitlyn and the Highlander Book 10) Page 25