The Day Before Forever (13 page)

“What a good idea,” Henley said, as if he hadn't known I would give him that answer.

I quickly scrawled down Miss Hatfield's address in the city. I was lucky that one of the first things Miss Hatfield had made me do was commit it to memory. She had been worried I wouldn't be able to find her again in 1904, but thankfully street addresses don't change much and it was the same street name in 2016.

I passed the page back to Henley, who gave it and the other forms a once-over before handing them back to Tabitha.

“Thank you,” she said, beginning to stand.

“One more thing,” Henley said. “Since we're still traveling and won't be home for potentially a few months, would it be possible to have a smaller amount in cash?”

“Cash?” Tabitha's eyebrows were raised so high, I thought they'd meet her hairline. “We usually do a bank transfer. Cash is—”

“Yes, cash,” I chimed in. “Say . . . ten thousand pounds?”

“That's
highly
irregular. I'm not sure—”

“We have the jewelry,” Henley said. “And once it's dated and appraised by Carter House, we will go forward with the transaction, since there's nothing more to prove about its validity. Unless, of course, Carter House would be unable to pay the small portion in cash. Then we'll have no other choice but to take our business elsewhere, won't we, Rebecca?”

I nodded as I watched Tabitha grow more flustered.

“I-I'm not sure what the policies surrounding that are . . . I'd have to check with someone from the management team.”

“It's just that we're traveling . . . And this way is simply a lot
easier for a foreigner in the UK.”

“That seems understandable,” Tabitha said slowly. “I will check with someone from management as soon as possible. Could we also take your bank information down at this time? Of course, this will not be the final transaction—a mere formality of sorts and also a way for us to ready the documents for your next visit.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Please excuse me.” Tabitha left the room again. Thankfully, she was less pale this time, having had time to recover from the shock I'd given her previously. She was almost back to her usual color.

Tabitha came back a few minutes later. She sat down with a laptop in front of her. “Could I first have the name the sale would be under?”

“Let's put it under my name, dear,” I said, making a show of patting Henley's hand. “It'll work better for our taxes.”

“That's right,” Henley said.

I turned to Tabitha. “Rebecca Hatfield.”

Tabitha clicked furiously. “Let's see . . . I'm just verifying your online presence—another mere formality, I'm afraid.”

My mouth went dry. That was something I didn't plan for. I glanced toward Henley and saw that he had a worried crease in his forehead.

“I'm sorry, this takes a bit more time than it should,” Tabitha said. “The first couple pages of Google tend to be social media links . . . And I see you're no different. Your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram pages are coming up first.”

I didn't even know I had accounts on those sites. Miss
Hatfield, perhaps? We did have the same name, and she was a fan of blending in seamlessly . . .

“Oh,” Tabitha said suddenly.

I prepared myself for the worst.

“I see you own your home. Yes, good. Home ownership is a big plus . . . I'll just send these over to our finance department, but everything looks fine and in order,” she said, while typing. “Where do you bank?”

“Chase,” I said, as Miss Hatfield had taught me.

“And your bank account number.”

I prattled off the number that was ingrained in my mind.

Tabitha continued to type. “And you wanted ten thousand pounds in cash? Let me just make a note of that in here. Everything will now just go through our finance department.” Tabitha shut her laptop.

“Wonderful,” Henley said.

As she stood, Tabitha reached for our hands. “It's a pleasure working with you. I'm sure we'll find your grandmother's jewelry a nice home.”

Henley was as slick as Tabitha when he spoke. “The pleasure is ours, working with an institution as fine as Carter House.”

“Please, let me walk you both out.” Tabitha held open the conference room door for us.

We followed her down the hall. I didn't know how much time we had spent in that room, but the other conference rooms were still empty and dark. I wondered how many clients they saw per day.

Tabitha opened the last door that led out to the Carter House lobby.

“Thank you again,” she said. “And we'll see you again in a week.” She turned on her heel and left. The door swung shut after her.

Henley called the elevator. When it opened, we saw the elevator man was already in it.

“What floor, sir?” he asked as we entered.

I didn't like how everyone in this building seemed to only talk to Henley and ignore my existence.

The woman at the Carter House lobby desk called out to us as the elevator doors closed. “Hope you had a good visit!”

I thought we had, but it wasn't clear if Henley agreed.

I handed Henley the can of beans. “Kidney beans?”

It was a good thing we'd had the foresight to ask Aaron for a can opener on our way back to the room.

“Fine . . . ,” he grumbled, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“You don't
have
to eat them,” I said.

“No, I do, since I'm hungry and that's practically the only food we have.”

“We
could
buy . . .”

Henley cut me off. “Things are still uncertain. We don't quite know what's going to happen yet. Something might cost us a lot of money down the line. We need to be prepared. Kidney beans are fine.”

I walked over to Henley and handed him the can. Since we didn't have any utensils, he started slurping up the kidney beans.

“That's so . . .”

Henley put down the can. “Disgusting?”

“Yes, precisely. Disgusting.”

Henley wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You're going to wash that, right?” I looked at his hand.

Henley got up and handed me the can on his way to the bathroom. I heard him turn the faucet on.

I stared down into the can. Henley had left a few bites—or rather sips—of beans for me. How thoughtful of him.

I started to drink. After two sips, I screwed up my face at the taste. It just wasn't worth it.

When Henley came out, I handed the can back to him and he downed the rest.

He threw away the empty can and went to lie on the bed.

I quickly wrote down Carl's phone number from my wrist. I couldn't relax while I was thinking I could accidentally rub it off.

“So I guess all we can do now is wait,” Henley said.

“Yeah . . . Do you want some celery, Henley?” I was already getting out the stalk we had bought. We needed to finish eating it before it went bad. At least it'd taste better than a canned-bean smoothie.

I also took out the peanut butter and climbed on the bed.

“You're the only woman I know who comes to bed with celery,” Henley said.

I pretended to whack him with the stalk.

“We have everything set in motion,” I said. “So hopefully everything will go according to plan.”

“Everything
will
go according to plan. And then we can get out of here.”

“You're so focused on leaving everything and getting back,” I said.

“What, and you're not?”

I sat up cross-legged and opened the jar of peanut butter. “No, I am . . . just not as intensely as you—”

“You're the one who can't physically stay in one time period for too long without going insane.”

“And I know that.” I took a piece of the celery and dipped it in the peanut butter. “It's just that you remind me of your mother sometimes.”

“Miss Hatfield,” Henley said, as if he was correcting me.

“Yeah . . . I guess it's strange that I got to know your mother more than you did,” I said, taking a bite of the celery.

“You guess?”

“Did you
want
to know her?”

Henley took his time answering that question. He took a piece of celery from me and dipped it into the peanut butter. He took his first bite, chewed, and swallowed before answering.

“I don't know,” he said.

I waited for him to say more.

He took another bite. “Sometimes I wonder if she would have liked me.”

“Of course she would have liked you! You're her son!”

“Besides that, I mean. As a person.” Henley bit his lip. “Moreover, I'm not sure ‘son' had much meaning for her. She left me with Mr. Beauford.”

“You know she couldn't have raised you,” I said. “People would have noticed that she wasn't changing. They'd know that something was different. And it wasn't as if she could take you with her—you were only half-immortal.”

“I know,” Henley said. “It's only—”

“You think about the way things could have been.”

“I suppose you do that too? If Miss Hatfield hadn't turned you immortal?”

“Sometimes I'm amazed by how well I took it,” I said.

Henley wrinkled his forehead, trying to understand.

“When Miss Hatfield aged me and then turned me immortal, sure, there were tears and hysterical sobs, but there wasn't any screaming or locking myself in the room.”

Henley shook his head. “You were in shock,” he said, as if he had been there.

“Shock, yes. But more than that, I knew it wouldn't do me any good. Once it happened, there was no going back.”

Henley turned his face away from me.

“I know you can't think of your mother as all good, but—”

“Rebecca, she took you away from your family and did
this
to you.” Henley spoke through his teeth.

“And then she became my only family. She had her reasons,” I said. “We both might not agree with them, but she wasn't cruel.”

“You were too kind to someone like
that
.”

“I didn't fight her that first day because I was resigned to my fate. I knew she was right—I couldn't go back to my family after she had aged me and taken away death. It wasn't kindness. It was resignation.”

Henley finally turned toward me. “But what about now? The woman is dead and you speak of her almost fondly,” he said.

“I speak of her as a mentor and the only family I had for a long time. Look, you didn't know her—”

“You're right, I didn't.”

I wished I hadn't said that.

“But don't you want to?” My voice was soft.

“Want to know your kidnapper? Of course not.”

“Want to know your mother,” I corrected. “Just because we don't agree with what she did and just because I have no intention of continuing Miss Hatfield's legacy doesn't mean Miss Hatfield didn't do what
she
thought was right in the given moment.”

Henley looked at his hands. “You can't separate out the different parts of people to suit yourself.”

“You can and you have to,” I said. “Every person wears different faces and plays different roles. It's not just your mother. People show different versions of themselves. One version isn't truer than the other. It's something we all do.”

There was silence, but I knew Henley was listening.

“She would have wanted to know you,” I said.

Still no response, so I continued to tell him about his own mother.

“She had hair a little lighter than yours. With more of a red undertone. She liked to wear it up, but at night, she would take it down and it would make waves down her back.”

I watched Henley's chest rise and fall with his breath.

“She spoke sharply and believed in always enunciating the endings of her sentences. Her words never died off in a mutter. She wasn't like that.”

I studied Henley for a sign that he was taking in my words. He only sat still.

“You have her nose . . .
had
her nose,” I corrected myself.
Henley didn't have his own body anymore. “And the way your eyebrows furrowed and made the creases in the middle of your forehead when you worried—that was hers too. You carried a lot of her. You can't run from that.”

Henley blinked at his lap.

“And for the record, she cared about you. That day you took me out to get ice cream, she was there. You caught sight of her, remember? You thought she was a friend of mine from home. I suspect she was there hoping to catch a glimpse of you. And you know what? She asked about you. She would ask after Mr. Beauford's son specifically. So think what you want about your own mother, but you can't think she didn't care.”

Henley's hands were trembling. They started to shake, with bigger tremors moving up his arm and to the rest of his body. Henley shuddered.

There, with a jar of peanut butter in my lap, I touched the back of his neck, and he took a deep breath. His body let out the first sob. A second one slipped out. A third, a fourth . . . until his whole body was racked with them.

I sat there with my hand against his warm neck. His body didn't want to be soothed. His body only wanted to get it out.

When he was done, Henley silently stood up and walked to the bathroom. He didn't look at me. Once in the bathroom, I heard the shower turn on.

We didn't talk about it afterward. We only got dressed—me in one of his large shirts and him in his pants—and got ready for bed. With the sheets tucked to my chin, Henley patted my hair gently as I drifted to sleep. His hand kept stroking my hair. It was as if I had been the one crying.

SEVEN

SOMETHING SHOVED ME
in the shoulder.

“Rebecca.”

Henley was being awfully loud for morning. I turned, burying my face in the pillow.

“Rebecca, get up.” He began tugging the sheets down.

My arm flailed, trying to grab onto the sheets so he couldn't take them.

Henley chuckled. “Rebecca, you're like a child. It's almost ten . . . Don't you think it's time to get up yet?”

We were sleeping well for people whose room had been snuck into, but it just didn't seem to be enough. All the worrying, all the preparations—it left us exhausted at the end of each day. It seemed like I couldn't ever sleep enough.

“Shh,” I mumbled into my pillow.

I felt the weight distribution change on the bed. Two hands grasped my legs. Henley was now trying to pull me out of bed
by my ankles.

“Rebecca!”

“No, no you don't,” I said, though by this point I was already up. I noticed that he was already dressed. Typical Henley.

“Oh yes, I do . . .” Henley pulled. He dragged me out of the sheets and half onto the floor with him.

We were both laughing as we slid the rest of the way down onto the ground.

“What was that for?” I said, wiping my hair out of my eyes. “Look what you've done. Now the comforter and the sheets are on the floor.”

“You were asleep till ten!”

“And . . . ?”

“And today I thought we would do something special.”

Henley chuckled again when he saw me visibly perk up at the word “special.”

“What are we doing?” I asked.

Henley took my hands and helped me stand. “We are going to go on a date. Our
real
first date.”

I thought back to all the time I had spent with Henley. I guess all of our experiences in Tudor England didn't count since he technically didn't have a body and didn't have a choice of being there or not. The latter part of the time we spent in 1904 was difficult thanks to Henley's father's death and the growing unease I had felt from being in one time period for too long. And the beginning of our time in 1904 . . . well, I suppose that had been a little closer to what a real date would be like. I remembered Henley taking me shopping and for ice cream—that was what people did on dates in the movies. Of course, the shopping
was for clothing to fit into the time period and pose as Henley's cousin and fool his father . . . And the ice cream was cut short by my seeing Miss Hatfield there and being reminded that I was on a mission. There was also the fact that I hadn't been able to tell Henley anything about me. I had to either lie to him or keep everything vague. So I guess that wasn't a date either.

“Rebecca?” Henley's brows were furrowed.

“Yes?”

“Is that all right with you?”

“What?” I said.

“If we went out on a real date.”

I laughed. “Of course. Why would it not be?”

“Well, you hadn't answered and . . .”

I thought it was funny that Henley could think that I would say no to my first official date with him when I had been with him for centuries, and often as my only confidant.

“So what are we going to do?” I asked.

“I don't know yet,” Henley said. “There must be a lot to do in London. But first get changed.” Henley walked across the room and tossed me my black dress.

“Hmm . . .” I fingered the fabric of the dress.

“What is it this time?”

“My dress feels a bit damp.”

“I washed our clothing while you were still asleep,” Henley said. “I hope you don't mind, but I much prefer my women clean.”

I rolled my eyes at him and began to change.

Ever the gentleman, Henley turned to face the wall for me. I wondered if that would ever change.

“You can turn around now,” I said when I was finished.

“You look stunning as always,” he said, grabbing the backpack with all our things in it.

“You sound sarcastic as always.”

“I'm just trying to give you a compliment, but if you can't take it, that's on you.”

Henley got the door for me as we left.

In the lobby we ran into Aaron.

“Beautiful day out for a walk,” he said.

“That's what we intend to do,” Henley said.

“Oh, where to?”

Henley glanced at me. “We're not quite sure yet. Maybe we'll do some of the most touristy things.”

“The London Eye, perhaps?”

I didn't know if Henley knew what that was. It most certainly didn't exist in the early 1900s.

“Whatever my lady wants,” Henley said, looking at me so sincerely, I couldn't help but feel a bit shy in front of Aaron. “I'm spending a day with her, after all.”

“Right you are.” Aaron looked like he was about to swoon. “I wish my partner was that romantic.” He winked at me. “Oh, before I forget, Alanna and Peter were asking after you. They were going to a comedy show and wanted to know if you would join them.”

Henley looked at me.

“Tonight might be a bit difficult,” I said. “But we're hoping to catch up with them later.”

“No worries,” Aaron said. “I'll just let them know.”

Henley put his arm around me.

“Have a lovely day out,” Aaron said. His head was tilted, as if we were the sweetest things he had ever seen.

As we walked down the road, I kept waiting for Henley to pull out his map.

“You're not going to look up directions?” I finally asked.

“Directions? To what?”

“Well, I don't know. Something you want to see?”

“Wandering is best when you don't know what you want to see. Let something come across you for once,” Henley said. “This road will turn onto the main street soon, and there's bound to be something there if we keep walking along it.”

Henley was right. As we neared the main street, we heard the bustle of people and traffic—that much was normal—but then we started to hear music.

“What do you think it is?” I asked, as we got to the street.

For the most part, traffic was at a standstill. People clogged the sidewalks, jockeying to buy food and snacks sold on the street in little carts. A stilt-wearing, eight-foot-tall man slowly walked past us. A clown was also making balloons for a mass of children on the other side of the street.

“Some kind of festival, I guess,” Henley said. He grabbed my hand. “Here, let's walk down that way a bit. The people with popcorn and balloon animals seem to be coming from there, so that must be toward the center of all this.”

Henley pushed into the throng of people on the sidewalk. I was glad I had ahold of his hand, as I would have lost him otherwise.

“Do you see this?” From between heads in the crowd, I saw Henley's eyes twinkle from excitement.

When I caught up to him, I saw that the road was closed off. Games, shops, and various kiosks were set up. Every two feet there seemed to be another stall of some kind.

“Isn't this better than the London Eye, whatever that is?” Henley said.

I laughed.

I could barely hear him over the crowd. He had to step closer to me and stand by my ear.

“Now what should we do first? Games?” Henley was raring to go.

“But Henley, don't these games and things cost money? They probably ask a bit for each game,” I said, but Henley couldn't hear me.

“Hmm . . . Let's try that milk bottle game first. I think you'd be good at it!”

“I don't know about that,” I said, but he didn't hear that either.

I had to tug on his shirtsleeve like a child for him to notice and hear me.

“Don't these games and other kiosks cost money?” I said. “I know we have a little more than we began with, but I don't want to spend it on frivolous things.”

“I'm not sure . . .” It was obvious the thought hadn't even crossed his mind. “We'll just have to wait and see.”

Of course, we could just be killed tomorrow and all this saving money would have been in vain. There was no telling where the murderer was. We could be dead by the end of the day. Maybe we might as well have some fun while we're still alive.

We watched the little boy in front of us in line. It didn't look
like he handed the man any money when he received his plastic rings for the ring toss, but it was hard to tell.

When the boy was done, it was our turn.

Henley pushed me forward. “Ten rings for this lady here.”

The man in charge simply handed me the rings. I guessed it was free then.

“You want to toss them onto the bottles there,” the man said.

I nodded gravely and tried to throw my first one.

The first ring missed the bottles completely.

“Why don't you try throwing it like a Frisbee?” the man in charge said.

I had no idea what he meant or even what a Frisbee was. I looked to Henley, but he looked like he had no idea either.

The man had to walk over and show me how to throw the ring.

“Firmly plant your feet. And then it's a little snap of the wrist,” he said.

“Okay . . .” I tried again. This time the ring hit one of the bottle necks.

“Very close!” Henley cheered from the sidelines.

“I just can't get it over,” I said, walking to Henley to pass the rest of the rings to him.

“No, no,” he said. “At least give it another try.”

I did, and the ring hit the bottle lip this time.

“I'd like to see you give it a try,” I said. “Bet you can't do any better.”

Henley wrinkled his nose, and I laughed at the goofy expression he made.

“Is that a challenge?” He took the rings from me and made a show of firmly planting his feet.

“Go on already,” I said, but I was giggling.

Henley whipped his wrist back and sent the ring flying. It hit the first bottle and perfectly dropped around its neck.

My mouth gaped.

Henley immediately looked over to me and flashed a cocky grin.

“No fair!” I said. “You saw the man teach me how to hold and throw the ring before you went.”

“That's called strategy,” Henley said. “You go first so I can learn from your mistakes.”

I made a show of pouting.

“You look too adorable when you do that.” Henley threw his second ring, and it slid into place on top of the first. “Third time's the charm,” he said, and his third ring slipped around another bottle neck. “I think I just found my new favorite game.”

“Now you're just showing off.”

“Finally something I'm naturally better at than you,” he called, as he continued throwing his rings and continued making them go around the bottles.

“Hey, you had horseback riding too.”

Henley gathered his rings and gave them back to the man, thanking him.

“Your prize,” the man said, handing Henley a small plastic bag emblazoned with a large company logo.

There was a fuzzy mascot walking past us with the same company logo on his shirt. I think the mascot was supposed to be a cow. This whole carnival event must be sponsored by the
company.

Henley withdrew a disposable camera from the bag and slowly turned it over, inspecting it. He marveled at how the dial clicked as he wound it. “I've seen these so often when I was . . .” He trailed off, but I knew what he meant. When he was without a body.

Before I could say anything, he took a photo of me. “
Naturally
better,” he said, returning to our previous conversation, as we began walking again.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I was only better at horseback riding than you because I grew up around horses at the country house. You had probably never seen a horse before, and in a month you already had the skill it took me years to build up.” Henley wound the dial again on the disposable camera.

I almost stuck my tongue out at him. “I still wasn't as good as you.”

He smiled at that. I thought he was going to jokingly pat my hand, but Henley took out the camera again and took another photo. “We can't all have everything we want, my dear.”

“Someday,” I said. “If we ever go horseback riding together again, I'll practice till I'm as good as you.”

“I'm looking forward to that.”

“Excuse me, sir?” Henley tapped a random man on the shoulder.

The man was wearing a baseball cap backward and looking as confused as I was.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

Henley handed the man the camera. “Would you mind
taking a photo of us?”

“Not at all,” he said, peering through the viewfinder. “Should I take a few?”

“That would be great.”

Henley stood next to me, our shoulders touching.

“Smile,” Henley whispered. “We don't have any photographs together.”

“One. Two. And three . . .”

I smiled. This was exactly the kind of thing Henley would do.

“One more . . .”