By the Bay (21 page)

The
front
door opened and she saw Auntie standing there. This time she felt the ripple coming. Auntie and the cottage vanished, as did the one next door. Down on the bay, she saw the causeway that led to the island rise into being.

Angrily she whirled on Davis. He was gone.

The disappearance of Davis was a disaster as far as the Timing crew was concerned. It had taken hours for Jillian to drive the two of them back to Brownsville and the still standing headquarters building. In between they encountered scene after changing scene as the ripples continued to come fast and furious, providing small slices of time so that they might be in winter in one place and summer in another, in early days in one and in the far future in another. The worst was when they went back to pre-settlement days and the road ahead vanished. They only had to wait a few minutes, however, and it came back.

Shaking with shock, she finally parked in
front
of the headquarters and this time Philippe had to steady her as they were admitted inside.

That was when they told Roderick and the others what had happened to Davis, hoping that he might have showed up here. This building was built to be safe from the time changes, she told herself, feeling a little safer once they were inside.

But then, the theory
had been that those talented enough to move through time were safe from erasure by its ripples. Well so much for theories, Davis wasn’t here and as far as the team could figure out, he wasn’t anywhere.

Oddly enough Jillian,
Florence
and Christine were still in place, but their memories were different. When they were brought to the headquarters, they were found to be in a dazed state, their memories scrambled. Christine vaguely remembered a man named Davis who she had once dated.
Florence
agreed with her only after some talk and lots of reminders from her sister. Jillian suspected Christine’s certainty had only made
Florence
think she remembered. Or she was just soothing her sister by agreement.

As for the other Jillian, the one who looked like her twin sister, she was engaged to be married to a man named Phil who seemed to bear little resemblance, other than the similarity in names, to her Philippe. Jillian seemed a little annoyed with her lookalike, as though some kind of trick was being played on her.

The team met formally in the conference room. Jillian was determined this time to get some real answers and suspected the opportunity might come this time. The members seemed very shaken by Davis’ disappearance.

“Have you ever lost a Timer talent before in these waves of change that are rolling across?” was her first question.

Roderick shook his head. “We thought they were stable and we have so few. We should never have let Davis go with you, but he was so insist
e
nt.”

“How many talents are there then?”

“A few
,” Karyen
said, her eyes not meeting Jillian’s.

“What’s a few?” she pushed. “Three, thirty, three hundred?”

The three of
them
exchanged glances. “We can’t tell you that,” Roderick finally said. “It’s classified info.”

Closer to three than three hundred, she decided.
“And what have you determined is going on now with all these tiny time zones?”

“Davis said the instability
was
deepening.  His belief was that they are like the smaller shocks that sometimes come before a really big earthquake. He feared that a tremendous change was eminent.”

“A change?  This is bad enough. If it goes on long enough, most of the people are going to lose any sense of reality. We will see people virtually going out of their minds.”

Roderick nodded. “Davis thought it might blast us out of reality entirely. He said we might cease to exist.”

Throughout the conversation,
Philippe
had sat silently and she’d assumed he had over-taxed his strength. Now he spoke up. “What about our reality? The places and times that we come from?”

“It’s all just theory, really,”
Sherlyn’s
pretty face took on a look of earnestness. “We don’t actually know anything for sure, but we suspect each world is sealed from the other.”

“Obviously not,” Jillian snapped. “Davis came over to visit regularly until recently. And Philippe and I are here, not there.”

“Well, of course,” she looked slightly embarrassed, “the talents are exempt from the logic. They are wild cards in the game.
They seem to be beyond established scientific thought.”

Jillian considered. “If you believe that then you should be confident that Davis will find his way back again. Just give him enough time and the ripples will once again deposit him at your side.”

Roderick frowned. “The possibilities are infinite. We could wait a thousand years. But it seems unlikely we will even be around for a normal lifetime.”

Chapter Twenty
Nine

Florence mixed pancake batter. Owen
bragged about her pancakes. He told customers she made the best pancakes in town, maybe the best in Texas.

Gossip in the café this morning was that German subs had been spotted off Galveston. As far as
Florence
was concerned that was way too close for comfort.

The war didn’t seem to be going well on any
front.
Normally an optimist, she’s begun to wonder lately if the conflict wasn’t going on for years and years and, maybe in the end, the allies would lose. She couldn’t imagine a world with a defeated United States. They always scraped through. They always won in the end.

And they would this time, she reassured herself. The trouble was that she was missing Jillian and terribly worried about her well being. Her fears were coloring her thinking and she was imagining that nothing could turn out well.

She poured batter in small pools onto the sizzling griddle. Within seconds they began to bubble and when the bubbling spread throughout the cakes, she flipped them over, admiring their golden brown tops.
Quickly she added the cakes to plates where crisp strips of bacon already lay and handed them out to the waitress who would deliver them to customers.

Owen
was having one of his increasingly common days when he didn’t feel well enough to get out of bed. It scared her a little for
Owen
to be sick, making her think that the days might not be too far ahead when she would have to go on without him. It was a shame that their ages weren’t closer together. If only she could
manage
to go back in time and arrange to be born about twenty years earlier. She laughed at the thought. She was going to have to quit reading magazines like
Astounding Science Fiction.
Before she knew it she’d begin believing that an A Bomb was a real possibility.

One thing she wished she had right now was some sort of device that would help her find her niece. As she scrambled eggs, she thought about what that would be like. Some sor
t
of tiny magnetic device that would send out messages to that the police could home in on where Jillian was right at this minute.

Though, of course, her niece might not be too happy if she were actually just off in beautiful New Orleans enjoying her honeymoon with her new husband.
But it served her right for not even bothering to call.

Taking a break between the breakfast push and the noon rush,
Florence
walked to the cottage to check on her sister. Chris was doing a little better these past
few days
, saying that she expected Jillian home any minute now as her dad had promised to bring her.

Up until now Christine had kept her illusion of impossible visitors entirely limited to her late husband. Her dead parents, or even their one deceased brother, never paid such visits.
Florence
couldn’t help feeling a little uneasy about having her niece included in the mirage that was part of Christine’s life. She denied any thought that Jillian might have come to harm. She was sure she was somewhere safe and whole.

Florence wished she could believe that
.

When she got to the cottage, she found today’s caretaker, Maria, doing her best to soothe a hysterical Christine. Her sister  lay sobbing across her bed and when she was calmed enough to make some sense, she told
Florence
that a stranger had broken into the house and shook her, demanding she tell him where Jillian was.

Florence
looked questioningly at Maria, who shook her head as though to say this was just another illusion, but something in the girl’s face stopped her cold.

Maria was new on the job, a younger sister of a former worker, and she remembered the sister saying that Maria could be somewhat undependable. “
B
oy crazy, that’s what she is,” she remembered Carla gossiping. “Some day she will wake up and face the real world. Too pretty and spoiled for her own good, that’s our Maria.”

With her glistening hair and huge eyes in a heart-shaped face, Maria was indeed attractive. Still patting her sister on the back,
Florence
said in a no-nonsense tone. “Perhaps you left her alone, just for a little, Maria?”

The denial was
immediate
. “No, no, I never leave the Missus.” The girl shook her head vehemently.

She was not a hardened
liar
, but a girl who indulged in small deceits, mostly involving her mama,
Florence
decided. She waited.

Big tears leaked from the girls eyes. “Just for a minute, Miss
Florence
. I only went out for a minute to meet my boyfriend down by the bay. Miss Christine, she was sleeping and I thought she would be bueno.”

Florence
could hardly blame the girl. She and Jillian would never have had much of a life if they hadn’t occasionally stepped out of the house, leaving Christine alone for a few minutes at a time. Most of the time, her sister was perfectly capable of looking after herself. It was only when the voices and the visitors and the
hallucinations
came that she was at risk. And nobody could be constantly on guard.

Still she couldn’t leave her in the care of anyone not at least reasonably reliable. During one of those bad moments she might set the house afire with her
still
inside.

“Maria,” she said gently, but firmly. “I think you’d better
go
home to your mother for now. I
’ll
look after my sister for the rest of the day.”

She listened for the door to close behind Maria, th
a
n turned to her still sobbing sister. “What is it, Chris? What scared you?”

No answer, just continuing tears.

She bent over to take her older sister in her arms, tenderness suddenly overwhelming her. A lot of the time Christine irritated her into impatience, but like this, frightened and despairing, she brought forth only the old love and caring. “I’m here, Chris.
Florence
. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

Chris clutched her for dear life. “You can’t stop it,
Florence
. Nobody can. He’s been watching and waiting for years. He intends to kill us.”

“Us?”
Florence
asked.

“Jillian and me. He wants us dead.”

This was new. Christine was obviously paranoid, afraid of everything, but this specific threat was new to
Florence
. She sighed, wondering if this was a new stage in her illness. Most likely they needed to see a psychiatrist again, but where was the money for such an expense to come from?

Years before they had sought such help. The doctor had given up after a few months, saying Christine needed to be permanently institutionalized.
Florence
refused
.

“Darling,” she said now, “Nobody wants to hurt either of you.”

Christine looked at her through tear-blurred eyes as though pitying such ignorance. She didn’t even try to argue as though she knew there was no use.

“Chris, who would want to harm you? You have no enemies.”

“He says I’m a killer. That I killed my own husband.” Suddenly she was speaking between sobs. “And it’s true,
Florence
. I killed Davis. That’s why he doesn’t come anymore.”

This illogic was impossible to argue, but as always
Florence
tried. “It was an accident,
Florence
. It wasn’t your fault.”

The words didn’t penetrate. She finally had to give her sister one of the little pills the doctor provided for extreme situations. They always put Christine out for at least twelve hours and she awoke groggy and not like herself.
Florence
didn’t like using them.