The Children Who Time Lost (29 page)

“Can I help you?”

I spun around and got myself in a tangle. I fell in a heap to the ground and grunted in pain. A woman in her late fifties ran over to me and extended her hand. I grimaced and took it. After I got back to my feet, she wiped some grass from my trousers.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” I said.

She didn’t speak until my clothes looked spotless again. “There,” she said. “Good as new.” She adjusted her thick glasses and stared straight into my eyes. “What in God’s name were you doing? You do know an ex-police officer lives just across the street, right?”

I started to speak, but she waved me to silence. I tried to jog old memories, but I didn’t recognize her.

“Why would you want to rob this place anyway? The people who live here are the loveliest people I’ve ever met.”

“So you know them? The Harrises?”

“Of course I do. I’ve lived here nearly thirty years. I know everyone here.… Wait—you said their name. You know them, too?”

Thirty years? Why didn’t I recognize her? I started to think that I might have been in an alternate version of 2013, different from the one I remembered. Maybe something had changed. Or maybe I just couldn’t remember her. I nodded and smiled. “Yes, I’m Ra … Rosemary Nichols.”

She gave me a bewildered look.

“I’m Justine’s sister.”

Her face lighted up. “Oh, I see.” She gave me a huge beaming smile, but embarrassment soon followed. “I’m so sorry for saying all those things about you wanting to rob the place. I’m just real protective of my neighbors. I’m Holly Wicker.”

“Hi, Holly. And don’t worry about it. You’re just looking out for your neighbors. I take it they’re not home then?”

She shook her head. “No. I think they’ve gone to pick up their daughter, Rachel.”

I swallowed. It was weird hearing someone talk about me to me.

“What’s she like?”

She gave me another of her strange looks.

“Rachel.”

“You haven’t met Rachel?”

Oh, damn. I just said I was my mom’s sister. Come on, Rachel, get it together.
“Weird, right? My sister has a four-year-old and I haven’t even met her.” I smiled widely, but she didn’t reciprocate. I swallowed. “I’ve been working in Japan. I’m a reporter.”

Still nothing from her.

“Well, this is my first day back in, like, forever. I just can’t wait to meet little Rachel. Tell the truth, I’ve been looking forward to this day since she was born.”

She kept looking at me, as if deciding whether to believe my story. Then she gave me the broadest smile. “Sorry. I don’t know where my manners went.” She walked across the porch and waved for me to follow her. “Let me at least make you an iced tea.”

I hesitated.

“Come on. I won’t bite, I promise.”

“Maybe I should just wait for them to get back.”

She grabbed my hand and dragged me with her. “Oh, come on. They might not be back for hours. Besides, we can talk and you can tell me some secrets about your sister. I’ve never in my life met someone so perfect.”

We crossed the road and walked past two houses until we reached hers. She waved at an elderly couple who’d gotten out of a black station wagon. Then an elderly woman called out to her from a house across the street. They spoke for a moment before Holly walked onto her porch. I stared back at the elderly woman. She smiled and waved at me. I waved back.

I looked up and down the street. Almost every house looked identical, and all had perfectly trimmed bushes. The streets were empty aside from a few station wagons. It was so quiet; you could probably hear crickets every night. It certainly didn’t seem like a hip neighborhood. I hadn’t thought about things like that at the age of four, but now I wondered why a young couple like my parents lived in such a weird area full of older people.

“You coming or what?” Holly said.

I smiled and followed her inside. Her house was immaculate. The sofas looked like they hadn’t been sat on for years. The flowerpots around the living room were full. I walked toward the patio door and gazed at the square garden. It had a shed right in the middle. It was exactly how I remembered my house. I heard shuffling and turned around. Holly placed two glasses of iced tea on a square coffee table and sat down. I took a sip and smiled.

“It is strange you turning up today, though.”

I lost my smile. “Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing.”

I sat beside her. “What is it? Has it got to do with Justine?”

“It’s just that they never get visitors, and today they’ve had you and the three people this afternoon.”

I swallowed and almost dropped my glass. Then I looked away. I didn’t want her to see my face turning white.

“Are you all right?”

I faced her after a moment. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

I nodded. “Who came to see them?”

She started to speak, but her eyes widened. She stared toward the window. I followed her gaze and saw a black sedan with tinted windows being parked across the street.
What the…

“It’s them again,” she said. “I think they’re police or something.”

I looked at her.

“The people who came to look for Justine this afternoon—that’s their car.”

I rushed to my feet and edged toward the window. “So did you speak to them?”

“I just told them they weren’t home.” She rose and walked toward the door.

I ran and sat her back on the chair. “There’s nothing out there,” I said.

She gave me an angry look. “What’s going on? Are you really Justine’s sister?”

“Course I am.”

“Then why are you acting so strange? Maybe I should just go out there and tell them that you were snooping around their house.” She started to stand again, but I held her hand. “Take your grubby hands off me, lady,” she snapped. “I might be older than you, but I can still scream.”

Damn. What do I do?
“But I just got here. Can’t we just talk for five minutes and then you can go out there and tell them whatever you want.”

She yanked her hand out of my grasp and stood up. I stood with her.

“I’m going to the bathroom. I’m not going to talk to anybody.”

I raised my hands and stood aside. After I heard the bathroom door shut, I rushed to the window and ducked. Then I pulled the binoculars out and twisted the knob at the top. I ducked again in shock. Two men and a woman were standing outside my parents’ door. When I looked again, the woman was knocking while the men stood by the edge of the porch, looking around. One of the men had two dark marks across his face. It was the officer named Willie from Barstow. The woman was his blond boss, Sergeant Briggs, who’d insisted he release me. I didn’t recognize the third man. It made no sense that Willie and his boss were in L.A.; it wasn’t their jurisdiction. Even stranger was that they’d arrived in an unmarked car and Willie no longer wore a uniform but a neat black suit instead. If I hadn’t met them earlier, I would have thought they were federal agents.

I saw Briggs put a cell to her ear. Her lips moved for at least a minute before she hung up. They didn’t look like they were planning to leave any time soon. I had to stop Holly from talking. I shook my head, angry with myself for even thinking that. What was going on with me? There was no way I’d harm an innocent person. That just wasn’t me. If only she could …

An idea formed in my head. I heard her footsteps coming down the hall.

I was holding Holly’s glass of iced tea when she walked into the living room. I figured that a nice gesture would help ease the tension I felt before she went to the bathroom. She eyed the window for a second but came over and sat down.

“So, what do you want to know about Justine?” I asked with a smile. She sipped her drink, but I could tell she was deep in thought. I gulped my drink down and sighed. “That’s probably the best iced tea I’ve ever had.”

A huge grin filled her face. “You liked it?”

“Of course. It was amazing.”

She gulped hers down, too, but just then the glass fell from her hand to the floor. Her head hung down.
Oh no. It’s happening too fast. I hope I didn’t give her too much.
I lunged forward and held her head. Her eyelids flickered before she passed out. I put my finger on her neck. There was a pulse. She was just out cold. I’d taken a gamble, mixing some of my medication with her drink, but I knew that, at most, it was a strong sedative to anyone who had not been taking it for more than three months.

I carried her down the hall to her bedroom. She weighed a ton for a skinny lady. Her room had a pleasant aroma. I saw incense sticks burning in every corner. After I placed the covers over her, she started snoring. I rushed back to the living room and returned to the window. A second sedan was pulling up. The door opened and a man with prominent cheekbones stepped out. The wind tousled his long dark hair. I swallowed. It was Lorenzo, still in the same blue suit he’d been wearing at the station. First he’d posed as my lawyer, and now he was with the officers who’d questioned me. Nothing added up.

Lorenzo spoke to Sergeant Briggs and then to the other man. Willie stood at the edge of the road, looking up and down. I sat on the floor, away from the window, and thought of my younger version. Were they there to kill her? Me? Was I too late?

Four hours later, the clock struck nine and the cars still had not moved. I had no problem with staying where I was, but Holly would be waking up soon, and it would be difficult to sedate her again. But that was not my main fear. The people outside my parents’ house were obviously there to see the younger me, maybe even kill her and prevent me from ever using the portal and causing so much trouble. But if they wanted to do that, it would have made more sense if they went further back in time, to a period where I wouldn’t be able to stop them.

I heard the sound of a car pulling up. I popped the binoculars up and looked left. A brown station wagon approached. I shuddered. It was my parents’ car. I couldn’t just stand there while they killed the younger me. Older me would just vanish if they did, my memories gone, as if the entire life I’d built for myself had never happened. I would never give birth to Madeline and experience the joys of being a mother. She would miss out on the experience of being at all.

I ran into the kitchen and opened all the drawers. I grabbed a handful of kitchen knives but stopped.
What am I really going to do with this against them?

I returned to the window. My mom and dad were by their door, both holding the hands of a young girl in a long red dress. It was me, age four. Even then my blond hair was long and thick. I smiled but lost it when I saw Lorenzo walking up the porch toward them. A lump formed in my throat. I wanted to run out there, swinging the knife everywhere, but they would disarm me in a couple of seconds, and it would only put my parents and younger me in more danger.

But then again, maybe they couldn’t just kill me. I had read a few things on time travel when the Lotto first began. Changing things unnaturally in the past could sometimes affect the space-time continuum. Maybe killing my younger self was one of those things. For all I knew, they were here to get a lead on where I was.

Willie, Sergeant Briggs and the other man had now joined Lorenzo on the porch. Lorenzo did most of the talking and my dad kept nodding. They didn’t even look down at younger me. Then my parents opened the door and walked into the house. Whatever their plan was, hurting my younger self obviously wasn’t part of it.

Lorenzo and the others spoke among themselves and then returned to their cars. Then they drove off, just like that. I stared at the light blue walls for almost five minutes, my jaw twitching. I had a number of theories about what was going on and why the officer who had saved me from Lorenzo was now working with him. I was sure Willie didn’t know that when Lorenzo wasn’t wearing a human face, he had the snout of a reptile and a number of slithery organisms covering his body.

I rushed to the bedroom, where Holly was still snoring. I turned back toward the door, about to walk out, but I saw a bunch of keys by her bedside table. I couldn’t afford to run around looking for a cab with Lorenzo and company roaming close by. I rummaged through Holly’s drawers and pulled out a large white envelope. I grabbed a fountain pen from the table and wrote on the back: