by D. L. Orton
He shakes his head. “We don’t have any masks.”
“Maybe there are some hidden in a box somewhere.” I sit up, keeping the covers tucked under my arms, and take a look at the map.
The room is dimly lit, and it’s hard to see details, but the round edge of the biodome is clearly visible on the blueprint—except the words are hard to read.
And then I realize he has the drawing upside-down.
I take the large sheet of paper out of his hands and turn it around. There are lots of rooms marked ‘Storage Area.’ “Wow. This is perfect. Where’d you get it?”
He half-smiles. “I took it from the old Control Room. No one goes in there anymore now that the power’s off.”
I nod, impressed. “Thank you. It’s perfect. If we can find some masks—and the epoxy I need to repair them—I could leave right away.”
He takes the blueprints and folds them up, his smile fading. “I’ll look some more tomorrow, but it may take some time. I have to do all my regular work, and in the evenings we have to make them think we’re… you know.”
I take his hand and squeeze it. “Thank you.”
He jerks away like I’m contaminated with all those diseases the women are afraid of and stands up. “It’s late, and we should get some sleep.”
“Yeah, sure.” I take the comforter and a pillow off the bed and hold them out for him. “I don’t hate you, Peter. I just want to go home.”
He looks at me, his expression defeated, and takes the bedding. “I wish I had somewhere to go home to.”
17
Fish and Chips
Diego
Bella waves when she sees me, awakening some dormant longing in me.
Now that her hair’s back to its natural color and all the pretense is gone, I realize I’d do anything for this woman.
I can’t decide if that’s good or bad.
Heads turn as I make my way across the crowded bar. A couple of guys from the repair crew wave—and then turn to see who’s expecting me.
“Thanks for waiting,” I say and plop down across from Bella—who’s sitting with a half-empty cup of tea and a pile of papers in front of her.
She pushes the folders aside and smiles. “I took the liberty of ordering you a beer. It’s not as good as a Guinness, but I think you’ll like it.”
I don’t bother to ask how she knows what kind of beer I like. “I’m sure I will,” I say as the barkeep sets a glass of dark brown liquid in front of me.
“Finest Irish stout on the planet,” he says, splashing a bit of foam over the rim. “I grow the barley on my allotment and brew it myself.”
“Good head,” I say and try the beer. “Wow.” I can’t remember the last time I had something that tasted this good, but it wasn’t in this universe. “Spectacular,” I say and mean it.
The man beams. “Were you wanting something to eat?” he asks. “I’m afraid it’s late. So all I’ve got left is the fish and chips.” He shrugs. “But I could have Hank do you up an omelette, if that suits you better.”
“Actually, the fish and chips sounds great,” I say, my mouth watering.
“Make that two,” Bella says. “And a round of the beer for me, please.”
The guy’s eyebrows rise, but he recovers quickly. “Of course, Dr. Kirk. I’ll have that right out.”
When the man leaves, I turn back to Bella. “So, is beer incredibly expensive—or have you never ordered it before?”
“Both.”
I spend a minute running my gaze across her face and hair, unable to keep the smile off my face.
She blinks but doesn’t look away.
Finally, I clear my throat, my heart racing again. “What’s up?”
She glances down at her teacup and then back up at me, her expression changed. “What do you know about Lucas?”
Her question catches me off guard, and I spill some beer in my lap. “Lucas?”
“Yes,” she says, watching me dab at my jeans with a napkin. “I know you saw the biotech paper, and I’m sure you noticed the names on it.”
“I did,” I say. “But, unfortunately, I don’t know anything about Lucas.”
I’m a terrible liar, and it’s clear she’s aware of that, because she glares at me until I drop my gaze.
I clear my throat. “Although I recognize the name, I’ve never met him.”
She reaches across the table and puts her hand on my wrist. “Please. Tell me the truth.”
The barkeep sets a beer in front of Bella and then places our dinners on the table. “Will there be anything else, Dr. Kirk?”
“No, thank you.” Bella slips her hand back into her lap. “Put it on Mr. Kirk’s tab, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He acknowledges me with a nod and leaves.
The meal is more poached fillet and hashbrowns than fish and chips, but I’m ravenous and it tastes fantastic.
“Thank you,” I say to Bella.
“You’re welcome.”
We eat in silence for a minute, Bella watching me wolf down my food—but only picking at hers.
Finally she can’t wait any longer. “So what’s the truth? How did you recognize his name?”
I exhale. “In my universe, you and I chose the same names for our twins—Lucas and Soleil.”
She raises her eyebrows. “In your universe?”
“Yeah,” I say. “But I don’t know what happened in this universe.”
Her eyes get big. “This universe? What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”
“I thought it was pretty clear.”
She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again. “Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s say you are from another universe.”
I smile, feeling right at home now.
“What the hell are you doing in my universe?”
I gasp. “Having dinner with you, of course.”
She rolls her eyes. “Why are you here?”
“I came for my health,” I say.
“Your health?” She gives a mirthless laugh. “This whole world is a mess.”
“I was misinformed.”
She stares at me.
And then the tiniest hint of a smile flits across her lips.
“Tell me about Lucas,” I say.
“Soleil has always believed that he and James are alive,” Bella says, biting her lip. “A few weeks after they were killed, she told her teacher at school that ‘Daddy and Lucas are under the ground, but Daddy is mad at Uncle Dave.’”
“Under the ground?” I ask, my thoughts racing.
“Yes. The psychiatrist I took her to assumed she was coming to terms with their deaths—because they had been buried under the ground.”
I raise one eyebrow.
“But they hadn’t been. Their bodies were never found.”
I wait for her to continue.
“Someone saw the car drive off the bridge and called 911, but by the time the divers got there, the bodies had been swept downstream by the current. Soleil refused to accept that they were dead.”
“What happened that night, Bella?”
“It was dark, no moon, and there was snow on the ground. The car James was driving hit a patch of black ice on a bridge, and he lost control.” Her eyes fill with tears. “We had been fighting that afternoon—about some trouble James was in with the Russian government. I had convinced him to go to the police that morning, but the cops didn’t believe him—they thought he was some crackpot. When we got home, he told me he’d bought a gun—and that he wanted me to learn how to use it. I couldn’t believe that he’d bring a gun into our home, and I… I just lost it. I started yelling at him for putting his family in danger. I said all sorts of horrible things.” She looks away. “He insisted that I learn to protect myself and the kids, that he wouldn’t always be there to take care of us. I asked him if he was planning to abandon us, and he didn’t respond. Finally, I told him to get out, that I didn’t want to fight about it anymore, and he just… gave up. He told me he was going
to spend the night at David’s—that he’d be back in the morning after we’d both cooled off—and I told him not to let the door hit him on the way out.”
I shake my head, knowing exactly how that conversation probably went down.
“The kids were five, and they had seen us argue before—but never like this. I thought they were hiding in the bedroom, waiting for the yelling to stop—until I got the call from the police. Lucas had crept into the garage and climbed into the back of the car without either of us knowing.”
“Oh, Christ in heaven, no.” I reach out for her hand, but she withdraws it.
“It’s possible James didn’t know Lucas was in the back seat, that he had no idea his son was in the car with him when he lost control and plunged twenty feet into the icy river below.”
I think about that for a moment, replaying in my head the panic he must have felt if he knew his son was going to die. “How did you know Lucas was in the car,” I ask, “if they never found his body?”
“His Scooby-Doo backpack was missing from his room, and the divers found his slipper wedged in the door handle. Lucas took that backpack and a stuffed frog with him everywhere. Someone found the frog a few days later, six miles down from the bridge, lodged underneath a foot of ice.”
“Mierda.”
She sighs. “Their deaths nearly killed Soleil too. She and Lucas were inseparable. They did everything together, from learning to play soccer to singing in the school play. After Lucas died, he became her imaginary friend. She told me that she talked to him in her dreams, and that he told her things. Things like—”
She glances around, making sure no one else is listening.
“—like he and James were building some sort of time machine, and that James was going to use it to fix everything.”
She looks at me as if expecting a response, but all I can do is shake my head and stare at my empty glass.
She takes a drink, blinking back tears, and continues, “I knew it wasn’t normal, but Soleil seemed happy, reasonably well-adjusted considering what had happened. But when she was sixteen—a year after we moved inside the biodomes—she started waking up screaming in the middle of the night, her sheets soaked with sweat. She insisted that James and Lucas needed help, that we had to find them. She said that Lucas was sick and needed a doctor—that he needed me.”
I want to say something comforting, but I can’t find the words.
“Then a year or so later, the nightmares stopped.” She shrugs. “The doctor said she’d grown out of it.” She’s quiet for a moment. “But Soleil never returned to normal. She attended all her classes and did all her schoolwork, but something inside her had died.”
“I’m sorry” I say. “I can’t even imagine what both of you must have gone through.”
“What happened in… your universe?” she says. “You obviously weren’t killed in the car accident. Did Lucas survive too?”
I shake my head. “In my world, there wasn’t a car accident. I knew Dave from college, but we had a falling out right around the time I met you.”
Over you, actually—Dave showed his cards, but I wasn’t smart enough to know what it meant.
“So things turned out differently,” she says, looking as though she’s responsible for her son’s death and her daughter’s mental illness. “Lucas and Soleil never… suffered?”
“No,” I say, feeling a crushing pain in my heart. “They didn’t suffer.”
It takes me a minute to pull myself back together.
I look at her, wanting to reach across the table and take her hand. “Bella, what happened to you and the kids wasn’t your fault. You need to stop blaming yourself.”
She nudges the food around her plate for a minute, lost in thought, and then looks up. “Would you like the rest? I’m not very hungry, and I hate to see it go to waste.” She’s barely touched her food.
“Sure,” I say, wondering about that opulent dinner I had at her mansion where she didn’t eat anything either.
She scoots the plate over to my side of the table. “I don’t know what I would have done if David hadn’t been there when Lucas and James died.” She sniffs her nose and then wipes her eyes on the back of her hand. “He helped pull the car out of the river, talked to the police, and arranged the funeral. He even offered to hire a private firm to search for the bodies.”
“So Dave and James were still close then?”
She swallows, her lips pressed together. “Yes, but David and I were friends too. Up until the accident, we had always had James there between us, someone to smooth out the occasional disagreements and conflicting opinions. Then all of a sudden, James was gone. I had never really liked David as much as James did—we were friends by association, if you know what I mean—but I had no one else to turn to. So, I put up with his incessant bragging, and his teenage mistresses, and his thinly-veiled attempts to manipulate me because…” She looks away. “Because I was afraid of the alternative. I can’t say that’s ever really changed.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I say and push a lock of hair back behind her ear, wishing I could do something more, wishing I could take all the pain away.
Her eyes get big—but she doesn’t pull away. “Who are you really?”
“No one of consequence.”
She plays along, reciting the lines, as I knew she would. “I must know.”
“Get used to disappointment.”
She laughs. “So you’re sticking with the story that you’re from another universe?”
“Would saying it again make you any more likely to believe me?”
Her smile fades. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know what to believe. But I do know this much: You look like James and you sound like James, but you can’t be James.”
I glance back and forth between her eyes, falling in love with her all over again. “So how did you end up married to Dave?”
“Like I said, he and James were best friends, and when things started spinning out of control—and the biodome Soleil and I planned to move into was destroyed—David asked me to marry him. It was the only way he could get us in on such short notice.” She covers her face with her hands. “And I said yes.”
“There’s no reason to be ashamed, Bella. In your shoes, I would have done the same.”
She wipes away a tear. “And then you came back.”
I reach across the table and take both of her hands in mine. “You’re right, I’m not James. But that doesn’t mean I don’t… have feelings for you.”
“It’s too late for that,” she says and pulls away. “It’s too late for me.”
“It’s never too late for us,” I say. “At least, I hope it’s not.”
She drops her gaze to her lap.
“So how do you know I’m not James?” I ask. “The simplest explanation is that I am—and the biotechs have kept me from aging.”
She looks up, her eyes defiant. “Because James would have known better than to show up twenty years younger sporting the latest biotech gadgets and claiming to be Robinson Crusoe.” She exhales. “That and I verified your biological age. You’re forty, not sixty. Unless they had you in the deep freeze for two decades, you aren’t James.”
I smile.
She wipes her face on her napkin and then blows her nose on it. “What?” she says, looking annoyed. “Why are you smiling?”
“Because you remind me of someone—someone I miss more than I could possibly say.” I let my gaze run over her face and hair, taking it all in. “And I like the new look. A lot.”
She glances down, taking a vial of pills out of her purse. “You’re just saying that to flatter me—keep me off-balance.”
“Is it working?”
She blushes and dumps three tablets into her hand.
“What are the pills for?” I ask, trying to read the label.
“Stress, of course.” She shoves the bottle back in her purse and then washes the tablets down with the last of her beer. “Do you have any idea h
ow many things can go wrong in this place? How many people I have begging me to give them drugs or treatments that no longer exist?”
I shake my head.
“Trust me,” she says. “If you were in my shoes, you’d be popping a few pills now and then too.”
I reach across the table and take both her hands in mine. “I’m sure I would.”
She’s quiet a moment, her gaze moving from my hands up to my shoulders and finally to my face. “So you don’t know anything about James?”
“No,” I say. “I’m sorry.” I peer into her turbulent green eyes, trying to get the words right. “But I can tell you this: James loved you more than life itself, and if there was a way—any way— he could have gotten back to you, he would have done it. I’m absolutely certain about that.”
She nods, fighting back tears.
“Come on,” I say, not letting go of her hand. “Let me walk you home.”
18
Breaking and Entering
Lani
The following morning, I eat a granola bar and check in with the Bub without getting out of my sleeping bag. Ally, who’s still filling in for her father, tells me that Mr. Kirk is planning to send some men to get inside the Magic Kingdom, but at the moment, none of his aircraft are available. As it is, he’s going to have to pull a plane off the Lou rescue efforts in order to get Shannon out of Catersville. He wants to know how badly I need them.
“Not that badly,” I tell her. “Have him get Shannon out first and worry about me later. How’s everyone at the Bub?”
“Fine,” Ally says. “Dad’s hanging in there, Lucy is insisting she doesn’t need to be in bed, and Mom’s back to normal and won’t let Lucy get up.”
I laugh and promise to give them an update as soon as I know more. “Over and out.” I turn off the radio and get dressed.
Outside, the air is frosty, but the sun is out, and there’s no sign of the snowstorm Seattle was predicting. Yesterday afternoon, I set up camp in a glade near a stream. So, I grab my things and hike back up to the concrete ledge, going over the options in my head.