Cascade (34 page)

We could hear voices outside the tomb. They were upon us. We had to leave.

“Trust me, Gabs,” she said in a hushed voice, pulling me closer to the wall. “Marcello Forelli will be waiting for you.”

We moved toward the handprints and reached up.

“All the way home,” Lia whispered. “Then we’ll figure out our next step.”

Mom grabbed hold of our shoulders.

And then we were gone, cascading back to the future.

CHAPTER 34

We hit the end of the time tunnel, and this time, it felt like we’d hit a brick wall, running at full speed. We rammed forward and then fell back on the floor, on top of Mom, all three of us gasping and groaning.

“Shh, shh,” Mom tried, remembering before we did the new danger at hand.

Dr. Manero.

How long had we been gone? Five, six minutes?

She crawled forward, peered around for a moment and then backed into the tomb again and stood.

“All right, so now we touch our handprints—just for a few seconds—and we’ll be back a year, maybe two, and we can find Dad,” Lia said.

“A few seconds? Wouldn’t that take us back to, like, before we’re born?”

“Let’s think about it. How long do you think the whole journey takes?” Mom said.

I shook my head. “It’s hard to tell. We get into that warpy-stretchy place and it feels like I’m not breathing, like time is standing still, not whipping by a century-a-second.”

“I think it’s about twenty seconds,” Mom said, eyes narrowed. She had her Science Voice on. All analytical, all of a sudden.

It comforted me. Because I couldn’t figure it out. It was like a nightmare of a story problem. With life-and-death, love-or-loss kind of stakes.

“If it takes twenty seconds to cascade through six centuries…”

“Six hundred and seventy years, give or take,” Lia corrected.

“Then ten seconds to go through three hundred and thirty-five…five seconds to go through a hundred and sixteen…two seconds to go through fifty-odd years.” She looked up at me and Lia. “We’re a hair’s breath away from your dad,” she whispered.

I shivered. Could we really be that close?

“It’ll take but a touch to send us back five years.”

“Can we even match the prints and get back off that fast?” I asked.

“We have to try,” Lia said.

“Where were you five years ago, Mom?”

Her face fell. “Capua.”

I frowned too. That far south…the other side of Rome. It’d take us a day to get there, find him—if we could find him—and return. I shook my head. “I can’t. Mom, I can’t! That would take too long. Marcello will have waited
years
before I get back. Maybe he’ll have given up on me, married someone else.”

“You’ll get back before that happens,” Lia cut in.

“Maybe not, Lia.” I covered my aching eyes and leaned my head against the wall. It was too much to figure out, too hard…

Mom paced, chin in hand, thinking. She looked over at us. “Two years ago, we were in the next valley. Remember? We thought
this
place might be there.”

“We won’t have a car to get there,” Lia said slowly.

Mom looked at me with an expression that said
Don’t Lose Hope.

“Mom,” I said. “We’ll have to climb out of this valley—without that old guy who brought us here guiding us—and hitchhike over there. We’ll have to find Dad, if he’s there at all, explain it to him and bring him back…”

“Your dad will have the Jeep, Gabi.”

“But it’ll take
hours
. Do you know what that means for Marcello? For Luca?”

“Years,” Lia whispered.

I put my hand on my head. “And it was 1342 when we left. Do you know where
years
puts us?”

“In the middle of the Black Plague when we return.”

“We just have to pull off before then. He’ll leave us a sign. You asked him to do so, right?” I said to Lia. “In the note?”

“Yes,” she said with a nod. “It’ll be there, Gabi. We’ll know. Even easier than before.”

“You think.”

“No, Gabs, I know. He’ll be ten times more anxious than you to get back together. Because he’s living without you, right now. Days going by for him while it’s just minutes for us. It’ll be there.”

“Remember why we came back at all, Gabi? For your dad.” Mom moved toward me, touched my arm, and then ran her hand down to mine. “Gabriella, please.
Please
.”

It was a horrible decision. Was I taking a course that would save one man I loved but cost me the other?

But we were here, now. And Dad’s death impacted all three of us. Marcello could figure out why we’d left. Would he think that the portal had somehow ceased to work? Or worse, that I had simply decided not to return to him?

I gasped around the lump in my throat. The decision weighed upon my chest like an anchor in deep seas, dragging me backward, down. Each word, each step was an agony of effort. I put my fist to my mouth and looked at Mom. “Okay. But we have to move fast, Mom. Really fast.”

Lia pulled a scroll from a pocket in her gown. “I’ve written it out. So we remember. We might forget everything when we go. Two years ago, we didn’t know about this place. We didn’t know what would happen to Dad.”

“We didn’t know Marcello. Or Luca.” I swallowed hard. Would I forget all that had happened? Forget what I felt for the man? This everything-in-me pull back to him? If I forgot him, would I go at all?

“You won’t forget,” Mom said, resting her hand on my shoulder. She shook her head. “This,” she said, gesturing toward the handprints, “is some sort of time-space continuum. If we remember Marcello and Luca and all now, we’ll remember it when we stop two years back.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m sure. Trust me, Gabriella.”

Trust her. Trust Marcello. Trust God. Everyone demanded I trust them! I kinda liked it better when I just had to trust myself.

We heard voices outside. “All right,” I whispered. “Let’s do this.” I looked at Lia. “The fastest touch possible.”

We practiced a few times, counting, on and off, a tap that had to be perfectly timed.

“One, two,
three
.”

We staggered backward, and Mom steadied us. The only light came in from above, through the tomb raider’s hole.

We’d done it. Gone back. But how far?

“Quick,” I said, bending to give a foothold to Mom. She reached the top and, with her legs swinging wildly, curved up and over. It was then that I thought about us all in medieval gear and groaned. How much harder would it be to snag a ride in these getups? “Come on, Lia,” I snapped, reaching down for her foot.

She ignored my irritation and held on to my shoulders before reaching for Mom’s hands. Soon, she was turned around and reaching down for me, with Mom holding on to her. I backed up, ran and jumped, just barely connecting to her hands.

As I swung, Lia grinned down at me and began to giggle. “We’re like a circus act,” she said, laughing so hard her grip began to loosen.

“Don’t laugh!” I said. “You’ll drop me! Pull, Mom, pull!”

Lia edged upward, pulling me with her. At the top, ten feet from the ground, I struggled to get over the edge, but then Lia and Mom both grabbed my belt and dragged me up and over.

Outside the curve of the tomb, we looked around. There was nothing but the sounds of nature. No people in sight.

“It’s summer,” Mom said with a smile of satisfaction.

“The question is, which summer?” Lia asked.

“Last year. Maybe the one before. You girls were on and off those handprints lightning fast. It was perfect.”

“You remember the way,” I said to her, ignoring her praise.

“I remember everything. Don’t you?”

I thought about it a sec. She was right, I decided with relief. It was all still with me. Every memory from past and future.

“Come on,” she said, offering me a hand. “I’ll lead the way.”

We pushed through the forest and picked our way down the face of those boulders as fast as we could. “See?” she said, showing me the ancient paving stones that our guide had once pointed out to us. “This is the right way.”

“Got it. Go,” I said, not wanting to waste a second.

We pressed on and eventually hit the old gravel road where we’d originally met the landowner. It was a good two miles back to the highway, but we set off, jogging as fast as we could. It was then that I realized that neither my thigh nor ribs hurt any longer.

“It heals for sure, that tunnel,” I said to Mom in a pant. “My injuries…they’re gone. Just like last time with the poison.”

“It’s good to know,” she said, eyeing me. “If we’re going back to the era of the Black Plague.”

She did not need to say more. But as we ran, I wondered what we’d do if one or more of us contracted the awful disease. I thought of bringing Marcello back here, to the present, and how there was something timeless about him.

Yeah, he was pretty much a stud in any year.
Wait for me, Marcello,
I thought, hoping that somehow, some way, he might know my thoughts.
Tell him, God. Tell him to wait for me.

When we spotted Castello Forelli we came to a dead stop, hands on knees, panting. Because it was no longer in ruins. A good number of the walls were intact. All five towers still stood.

Which was good, of course. But the first two words in my head were
oh no.

Because we’d changed history. Castello Forelli, no longer in ruins as we’d seen it in at the very beginning. Someone—Marcello? Paratore?—had rebuilt the tumbled wall. It had been inhabited for centuries, judging from the good condition.

And because of that, it was now a tourist draw. There was a parking lot to our right, where there had once been nothing but road and woods. A ticket booth had been erected at the front, just outside the massive gates, gates that had been rebuilt recently but looked like they’d been carefully redone to historical specifications. I ran forward, compelled, drawn.

Mom stopped at the ticket booth.

“Siete qui oggi per lavorare?”
the young man asked idly, looking us up and down.
You are here to work today?
Lia and I shared a glance. Maybe their volunteers dressed in medieval costumes.

“Indeed,” Mom said, readily picking up on the excuse. “But we have an emergency. Our car has broken down in the next valley. Is there anyone who can drive us and haul it back?”

I looked inside, to where grass now grew across the courtyard. The keep and Great Hall were still in place, but the doors leading to each corridor were new. Perhaps they’d rotted away too much for the historians to figure out what they once looked like. Or maybe at some point, they’d just been replaced with the more durable steel that graced each doorframe now.

I looked back in agitation at Mom, who was still talking with the ticket dude. Precious minutes were passing. Weeks.

I bent over and cried out. “My…my stomach!”

Mom stared at me a moment, then leaped on it. She came over to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Appendicitis?” she asked.

I nodded. “I think so.”

She’d caught on—the nearest medical care was in the next valley. The guy might be able to ignore a request to pick up a broken-down car, but an ailing girl? Nah. He’d have to act.