Mira's Diary (12 page)

I was back at Notre Dame on the walkway with the gargoyles, and Malcolm was standing next to me, grumbling that he was hungry and could we go get some crepes.

I hugged my brother so hard that he squeaked.

“Hey, let go! What's the matter?” He pulled away.

“I'm sorry. I just missed you so much.” It was true. I had missed him, though I hadn't let myself think about him or Dad much.

“Dad!” I hugged him tightly, and though he looked as surprised as Malcolm, he hugged me back.

“Are you okay?” Dad asked, looking at me as if I was made of glass and might shatter any second.

“This is going to sound crazy, but I saw Mom. I know where she is.” Now they both stared at me as if I had sprouted an extra eye. “It's complicated, but let me explain. Just listen first and then you can think I'm a nut job.”

We wound our way back down the circular stone staircase, coming out onto the modern street of the modern city with cars and bicycles and huge tour groups led by banner-waving guides. The city sounded different, with the noise of cars, sirens, cell phones, airplanes overhead, and conversations swirling by in several languages. It even smelled different, less like coal burning, trash, and that distinctive sewage aroma, and more like car exhaust, cigarettes, and something else, something indefinably modern. I wondered if I was sniffing technology, the Internet, all the cell phones buzzing around me.

Dad steered us to a café. It was strange to think I'd been in this city so much longer than they had, but this was still my first meal in modern Paris. There was no easy way to explain the whole time-travel and Mom thing, so I just started at the beginning and went all the way up to the weird meeting with all the disguised military guys and Esterházy. (Yes! I remembered the traitor's name!)

Dad didn't say anything. He just waited for me to finish my bizarre explanation. Malcolm didn't ask anything until the end when he said, “Really? We're supposed to believe this? C'mon, Mira, what's the joke here?”

“It's not a joke! Dad, you believe me, right? Didn't Mom tell you she could time-travel?” I hoped she had, or no way Dad would believe me either.

To my relief, Dad looked me straight in the eyes and nodded.

“What?” Malcolm gaped, his eyes bugging out. He clearly didn't believe either of us. “You're kidding! You've got to be!”

“It's true,” Dad said. “But I thought that was over. She hadn't traveled for such a long time…since we met again in college.”

“What do you mean ‘again'?” I asked.

“It's complicated, as you know, Mira, but I actually met your mom many times as she was time-traveling, never for very long. I couldn't understand why she'd disappear for so long, so suddenly, without a word of warning. She explained it all when we were both twenty. She told me she was finally in the time where she belonged, where she could stay. And be with me.”

“So you must have suspected that's what happened when she went missing. That's why we're here, isn't it, to find Mom?” Now Dad's blind faith in Mom made sense. He knew she hadn't left on purpose, but she hadn't been kidnapped either.

“I admit I hoped she'd find us. The postcard was a clue, both of time and place—you saw how old the stamp was.” Dad rubbed his forehead. He looked worried, not relieved, the way I thought he'd be. “She promised she was through with time travel, that it was too dangerous, so I didn't suspect that at first.”

“What do you mean dangerous?” I asked.

“There are rules that have to be followed, and if you don't, there are serious consequences for the future.”

I leafed through my sketchbook, hoping Mom's letters were still tucked inside. They were! I unfolded the one Morton had given to me and handed it to Dad.

“She sent me a couple of letters. This first one tells the rules. You're not supposed to take things back, but I think I still have these because they don't belong to the past—they belong to Mom from the future. I've kept my sketchbook the same way. You also can't take people back with you or tell anyone you're from the future. And it's better for family members not to travel in the same time and place. Are those all of them?” I couldn't help thinking there were things Mom hadn't told me, things Morton knew but didn't tell me either for some reason.

Dad gripped the letter, reading it with a frown. “These are some of the rules, but she's leaving out the most important one: you can't change anything in the past. Mom said she traveled like a tourist to see, appreciate, experience, but never to change. She insisted all time travelers had to obey that. That's why she stopped traveling once Malcolm was born. She didn't want to risk doing anything to upset our children's future.”

“But that's not what she told me!” I blurted out. “Just the opposite! We're supposed to change what happens to Dreyfus, keep him from being punished as a traitor. She was absolutely clear about that. Look, she says so in her last letter.” I gave Dad the other two letters, remembering how sweaty and panicky Morton had been when he gave me Mom's message that day on the bench. He was breaking the most important rule of all—not to change the past—and he knew it. He'd said something about owing Mom a big favor so he felt obligated to repay her, but he sure wasn't comfortable about it.

“Wait,” said Malcolm. “This is all going too fast. Why didn't you tell us all this when Mom first disappeared, Dad? Why did you let us worry like that?”

“You would have thought I was crazy.”

“Instead you think I'm crazy!” I said.

“No, I know you're not,” Dad insisted. “And I bet Malcolm believes you too.”

Malcolm shook his head. “I guess I have to. Otherwise, I'm surrounded by crazy people.”

“What I need to know is why Mom is trying to change history,” Dad said. “There has to be a reason.” His face suddenly turned pale, and his eyes widened in fear. “There's only one possible explanation. She knows something horrible is going to happen to one or both of you, and she's trying to stop it. She would disobey such an important rule for only one reason—you guys.”

“But she told me this has been her job, changing events so bad things won't happen. And there are other time travelers who try to stop her and her friends.” I described Madame Lefoutre, how she attacked me in Notre Dame, how she followed Mom.

“She grabbed you!” Dad looked really terrified now. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. She just knocked the wind out of me. But she had such a grip on her, like a robotic hand, that I swear she didn't seem human.”

“Time travel is hard enough to believe. Now you're asking me to believe in aliens?” Malcolm wagged a french fry at me like an admonishing finger.

“So maybe she wasn't an alien.” I shrugged. “But she was plenty creepy.”

“Creepy and beautiful. That I'd like to see.” Malcolm dipped the french fry in ketchup and ate it. The weirdness of all this hadn't affected his appetite at all, though I could barely choke down a crumb.

“This is all really strange. Mom trying to change history—which she shouldn't. Another time traveler attacking you—which she really shouldn't. What's going on?” Dad hadn't touched any of his french fries. Like me, he was too freaked out to eat.

“Maybe the rules have changed. Maybe Mom knows something the other time-travelers don't. All I know is she's scared and this is important to her.” I looked at Dad. “We have to trust Mom, don't we? You said we did.”

Dad didn't answer right away. Then he said slowly, “Of course we do.” He rubbed his temples the way he does when a crossword puzzle really has him stumped. “You're right. So what is it Mom is trying to do? What does she want you to do?”

“According to Mom and her supposed friend, Morton, we need to do something to clear Dreyfus's name. The military has to admit their mistake and punish the real traitor, Esterházy. But that hadn't happened when I left. Just the opposite. They were protecting him to cover their own butts. I couldn't believe they'd go that far, but they did.”

“Sounds like a great conspiracy theory,” said Malcolm. “Is this for real? You're trying to prove the military framed Dreyfus? That's like trying to prove the CIA was behind the Kennedy assassination.”

“Come on, Malcolm, be helpful here,” Dad reproached him, then turned to me. “So you need to uncover the conspiracy?”

“I don't really know. At first I was supposed to get Degas to like Jews so he'd support Dreyfus, but that didn't work. Then I thought maybe I could get Henry to confess or something. I think he's the guy who forged papers to prove Dreyfus's guilt. But I couldn't get close to him.”

“This all sounds totally ridiculous!” Malcolm said. “You met Degas and tried to make him like Jews? What were you supposed to do, sell him on the merits of bagels?”

The way Malcolm said it, it did sound silly. But when Mom asked for it, somehow it made sense. How could I explain that?

“Do you know what Mom was doing?” asked Dad.

“Something to do with Zola, this writer guy. I'm guessing she was trying to get him to write something, but I don't know what.”

Malcolm shook his head. “Admitting that what you say is true, why would you be the one to time-travel? I'd be so much better at it than you! You don't know history. You don't even know who this ‘Zola guy,' as you call him, is.”

“I didn't ask for this!” I blinked back tears. No way would I let Malcolm know how much he'd hurt me. Because it was true. He'd be much better at figuring out this stuff than me.

“Sounds like we need to do some research,” Dad said, changing the subject. “I've heard the name ‘Dreyfus,' but I don't know anything about him really. Maybe we'll find something that will help you or Mom. If you can get back to her.”

It seemed like a pretty big if.

While normal tourists went to the Louvre or the Picasso Museum, we went to an Internet café. Wikipedia at last! Once Dad showed me how to hunt and peck my way around the strange French keyboard, I read about Esterházy, Dreyfus, Henry, Picquart. Every name I'd overheard. Malcolm actually tried to help, reading to me about the start of Zionism, which some historians think had its roots in the Dreyfus affair.

When Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist working in Paris, saw the crowd's ugly response to Dreyfus, he developed his theory of Zionism—that assimilation didn't work and Jews could only be safe in their own country. He wrote a book called
The
Jewish
State
in 1896 proposing this solution to the age-old Jewish problem. Zionism was already in the air then, and I'd had no idea.

Well, really, why should I? I only traveled to very specific snippets of time and had no bigger sense of history than I did here and now, in 2012 Paris. The only way to see history clearly is when it's all in the past and you're looking at it from a distance. You can't figure much out when you're right in the middle of it because it's all too confusing.