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Grace quickly moved on to the next item, a copy of a lengthy obituary. When she reviewed its particulars, she closed her eyes and sank in her chair. Her best friend was dead. Virginia Gillette Jorgenson of Seattle had died in 1995 of lung cancer at age 75.

Ginny had apparently blazed several trails as a newspaper reporter, editor, and publisher and won more than a dozen awards in her field. She had also belonged to four service organizations and left behind three children, eight grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.

The newspaper had not seen fit to list the survivors by name. It had apparently cut the names from the bottom of the article for reasons of space.

Grace found the obit disappointing. She wanted the names of the survivors. She wanted to know where they lived and whether one of the eight grandchildren missed a studious blonde he had dumped on a rainy doorstep. But she recognized that the answers she sought would probably not come in one tidy package.

She paused for a moment and then turned to the last enclosure. It was a copy of a March 2000 news article on Katherine "Katie" Kobayashi Saito. Katie, age 80, had apparently created a new charity with money from a foundation she had started with her husband. Scribbled to the side of the article was Mrs. Saito's current phone number and street address.

Grace reviewed each of the papers one more time and then shoved them into the envelope. She then slid the envelope into her skirt pocket and glanced at Penelope, who looked at her with obvious concern.

"Are you OK, dear?"

"I'm fine," Grace said. "But I do have a question."

"Ask away."

"Will you be OK if I leave tomorrow for a day or two?"

Penelope laughed.

"I've been taking care of myself for most of my eighty-nine years. I think I can manage until Doris gets back. Why do you ask?"

"I believe I've found a big piece to my puzzle – a way to find Joel – but I won't know for sure until I contact a friend I haven't seen in a very long time."

"Wouldn't it be better to call?"

Grace shook her head.

"Not in this case."

"Then take all the time you need," Penelope said. "I'll be fine. I can always call someone at the senior center if I need anything. Do you need my bus pass? If you do, just say so."

"I'll need a bus ticket, Penelope, but I don't think yours will do."

"I don't understand."

"I need to go out of the city," Grace said. "I need to go to Portland."

CHAPTER 15: KATIE

Portland, Oregon – Tuesday, June 13, 2000

Katherine Saito arranged the flowers in the vase and set them on the dining room table. She knew that only two people would probably ever see her creative display of carnations and mums, but she didn't care. She would appreciate the colorful assembly, even if no one else did.

Life had been quiet in the large house since Sunday, when daughter Joyce and her husband Bill had returned to Grants Pass with their five school-age children. Katie loved the kids. She loved their boundless curiosity and limitless energy. They kept her young. But she knew her ability to enjoy them was coming to an end. She could not move as well as she had even a few years ago. She certainly could not hear as well. Getting old was a pain.

Katie grabbed her afternoon coffee – decaf, of course – and walked toward a large window that overlooked a resplendent redwood deck, a well-landscaped backyard, and the lush Tualatin Valley. She never tired of the view – a view that had been hers since her husband Walter, a Portland attorney, had built the sprawling mansion on a hilltop west of the city in 1960.

She smiled slightly as she watched Walter strike plastic golf balls in the spacious yard under the watchful eyes of Butch, their three-year-old Rottweiler. She and Walter had come a long way since 1943, when they had been married in Minidoka, a war relocation center for Japanese Americans near Twin Falls, Idaho.

They had gone there with their families in the autumn of 1942, shortly after President Roosevelt had issued Executive Order 9066 and had decided that thousands of Americans who had been born and bred on U.S. soil suddenly posed a risk to national security. The forced relocation had left Katherine Kobayashi bitter, resentful, and distrustful of anyone in authority.

Walter had taken the change in stride. Even when confined to the crowded, dusty hellhole, he had maintained a positive outlook. He knew that times would eventually change and that both of them would survive – even thrive – in a world that had knocked them down.

But Walter hadn't been the only one to see the shifting winds. Someone else had seen change coming in the early 1940s. Someone else had
known
change was coming, and he had provided Katie with the financial means to take advantage of that change.

Katie let her mind wander as she recalled the happy, peaceful summer of 1941, when a 22-year-old cowboy from Montana had come to Seattle and profoundly changed her life and the lives of her dearest friends. Oh, what a time they had had. Oh, what a time that had been.

She had seen him just once since December of that fateful year – in September 1995, when she had attended the funeral of Virginia Gillette Jorgenson. He was a different person, of course. He was a 17-year-old high school senior who had not yet traveled through time to 1941, a boy who did not know that the somber Japanese woman greeting him in the receiving line would someday be his very good friend and a confidant of the woman he loved.

Katie had initially doubted his time-travel story, which he had told in a December 1941 farewell letter. Though she had always wondered what had become of him and the young woman who had left Seattle to find him, she had difficulty believing in something that most physicists believed was impossible. But when Ginny Jorgenson's daughter Cindy Smith gave birth to a boy in 1978 and named him Joel, the impossible had suddenly become believable.

It had become more believable with each passing year, as the boy pictured in Christmas cards Katie had received from Ginny and then Cindy began to resemble the boy she had known in college. By the time Katie had finally met Joel at the funeral, she had abandoned all doubt.

The question now was what to do with knowledge that she had possessed for years. Katie had every reason to believe that Joel's time travel had come full circle. When she had called Cindy Smith Monday night to inquire about a graduation gift, she had been told that Joel had recently returned from the Rockies. He had gone hiking and biking with a friend in Yellowstone National Park and had explored an abandoned mine in Montana on his way back.

Katie had also learned that Joel was going through a few personal struggles and had planned to spend some time alone in the coming days at nearby Seaside, Oregon. Seeing an opportunity to have a meaningful reunion with her long-lost friend, Katie had asked for and received Joel's travel itinerary. She now had a dossier on Mr. Smith as thick as a small-town phone book.

Mrs. Saito had far less on Grace Vandenberg. She had seen neither hide nor hair of her friend since she had walked out of her life on the evening of December 7, 1941. She knew that Grace had followed Joel to Montana – a call to Helena's Buick dealer had confirmed as much – and knew that she'd had enough information to find him. But Grace had not yet materialized, to her knowledge, and her absence in the modern world had begun to cause Katie great concern.

Katie saw Walter traipse through her petunias, in an apparent search for a missing ball, and knocked on the window to signal her alarm. She loved her flowers and didn't want to see them trampled by a duffer who viewed the backyard as Pebble Beach. But she also adored the man who had given her so much, including a life she'd once thought she'd never have.

Satisfied that Walter Saito was not about to flatten the flora, Katie grabbed her half-empty mug, which validated her status as "Number One Grandma," and walked toward the kitchen. She made it about halfway to her destination when she heard the doorbell ring.

Curious as to who might be paying a call at this unusual hour, Katie walked first to a bay window in the living room. The rightmost pane offered an unobstructed view of the front porch. When she reached the window, she peered through the tinted glass and saw a young woman.

Wearing a short yellow dress, the woman appeared fidgety. She moved her head frequently, tapped her fingers on a thigh, and wiggled her toes in thrift-store sandals. Twice she looked toward the bay window. Twice she turned away.

Katie smiled as she watched the woman. She appeared every bit as sweet and vulnerable as she had remembered – and, of course, as beautiful. The decades may have taken a toll on three of the one-time housemates of Klickitat Avenue but not this one. Time had not diminished her milky skin or platinum locks. She had remained an Eden for the eyes.

Katie stepped away from the window and walked to the entry. She paused to catch her breath, brush away a tear, and fully prepare for a moment she had feared would never come. When she opened the imposing front door, she lifted her head and gazed upon Grace Vandenberg for the first time in fifty-nine years.

"Welcome to Portland, Grace. I've been expecting you."

CHAPTER 16: GRACE

Wednesday, June 14, 2000

Grace watched the noontime masses go by and marveled at how shopping had changed in six decades. In 1941 she would have driven to a department store to buy clothes and then driven somewhere else for a bite to eat. In 2000 all she had to do was walk from place to place inside one immense air-conditioned building.

"What do you call a place like this?"

"Most people call it a shopping mall," Katie said. "I call it organized chaos."

Grace giggled.

"I mean this part of the mall, where we are now. What do you call this?"

"This, my dear, is a food court."

Grace looked beyond their table for two to the far edge of the public space, where more than a dozen food vendors offered everything from pizza and pretzels to cupcakes and cinnamon rolls. She had opted for a plate of sweet and sour pork, or what a sign at one of the food stations called "authentic Chinese cuisine." But she knew from living in Nanking for three years that the dish was about as authentic as the fortune cookie on her plate.

Grace paused for a moment as she thought of that place. What a happy and magical home it had been, at least before the Japanese army and the weight of the world came crashing in. She put her plastic fork on her paper plate and gazed at the woman who had purchased her lunch.

"Thank you."

"If you mean thank you for lunch, then you're welcome. But it's no big deal. Food is cheap," Katie said. "Indigestion is expensive."

Grace smiled softly. Her friend had not lost her wit.

"I mean thank you for taking me in yesterday. You didn't have to do that. You
still
don't have to do that."

Katie put down her fork and gave her chicken enchilada a rest. She grabbed Grace's hand and stared at her with serious eyes.

"I have waited a lifetime to repay the kindness you showed me in college. Taking care of you now is no burden. It is my pleasure."

Grace considered the comment as she returned to her not-so-authentic Chinese meal. Katherine Saito had done more than repay a kindness. She had provided Grace with a place to stay, food to eat, and a wardrobe that brought her into the twenty-first century. Perhaps more important, she had provided her with information – information that could not be found in any library, information on people who had meant the world to her and still did.

"Tell me about Ginny and Edith."

"What do you want to know?"

Grace frowned.

"How did they cope when I left?"

"I won't lie to you, Grace. They had a hard time. They thought you had acted rashly and selfishly. I'm not sure that either ever fully believed your story. They assumed that you had just run off to Montana or God knows where and had abandoned us for life with a charlatan. Edith, in particular, became very bitter."

Grace tapped her fingers on the table as a fresh wave of guilt closed in. She had expected as much. When you abruptly abandoned loved ones, you left wreckage behind.

"How did Ginny cope with Tom's death?"

"I don't know how she coped at the time. I was in the camp by then. I did not see her again until after the war, when she had already started dating Joe Jorgenson. But I do know that she rarely spoke about Tom. She never brought him up, and she did not like answering questions about him. He was a part of her past that was off-limits to others, even her family."

Grace brought a hand to her forehead. She did not yet regret leaving her friends in the past, but she did regret the way she had done it. She
had
acted rashly.

"I'm sorry for all the pain I caused you and the others. I
was
selfish. I just don't know what else I could have done. I meant it when I said I couldn't live without Joel. I still mean it. But it's clear I should have shown more consideration to all of you."

"You don't owe me an apology, Grace. You followed your heart, just as I followed mine two years later with Walter. We all make decisions that affect others. Sometimes they are good decisions. Sometimes they are not. But they are decisions we must make. You shouldn't feel bad about leaving us. You didn't have time to consider another course."

Grace wondered about that. It's true that the circumstances of December 7, 1941, hadn't left her much time to weigh the options. But it's also true that she had made up her mind to pursue Joel the minute she had seen the Buick ad in the Seattle paper. She had decided that her life had only one path left, and she was determined to follow it.

"I suppose we should talk more about the reason for this fuss."

"I suppose we should," Katie said.

"Are you certain that Joel will be in Seaside on Saturday?"

"I know only what his mother told me. She said that he had reserved a room at the Sea Mist Motel and would probably arrive sometime in the early afternoon."