Page 100 of Disturbing the Dead
I think of saying that, but we haven’t discussed my “trip” since that day on the monument, and I’ve decided that’s intentional. My parents let me know they accepted my truth, and we’ve moved on, and they aren’t comfortable discussing it again.
“I’ve been thinking of your nan,” Mom says. “Well, obviously, but about something in particular. When I told her I was staying in Canada. I wrestled with that for so long. I…”
She glances at my father, and then back at me. “I almost broke it off with your dad because I couldn’t bear to tell my mother that her only child had moved across the ocean forever.”
She reaches for my dad’s hand. “That would have been the biggest mistake of my life, but it shows how upset I was. Your nan was disappointed, obviously. She’d hoped we’d move to Scotland together. But your dad’s roots were in Canada, and my new roots were there, and the opportunities were there, and it was where I wanted to be. That was what mattered to her—that was where I wanted to be. There were phones and there were planes, and we’d be fine.”
Mom shifts in her seat. “But that got me thinking about what it was like for families in the past. Like when your dad’s great-grandparents emigrated to Canada. It was permanent. There were no phones and no airplanes and no money for monthlong steamship voyages. People went to Canada, and they never saw their families again. All communication was by letters. I couldn’t imagine what that would have been like for parents. But now, having a daughter of my own, I think I understand. We want for you what my mother wanted for me—for our child to be happy and free to find her own joy. We don’t raise our children to look after us in our old age anymore. We raise them to fly on their own, to soar if they can.”
Her eyes meet mine, and they glisten with tears that she quickly blinks back.
“What would be keeping you here, Mallory? What would keep you from going back to 1869?”
“I can’t get back—”
She lifts a hand. “Pretend you could. Consider this a thought exercise. Would you stay here for your job?”
I shake my head.
“For your friends? I know you have plenty, but I also know you’ve drifted from the truly close ones you had as a girl. Would you stay for them?”
I shake my head.
“So, imagine you could walk through that door.” She points at the front entrance. “And be back in 1869. Would you do it?”
“No.”
“Because of us.”
I pull away. “No, it’s just… a lot of things. It isn’t my world and—”
“What if you could walk out that door, but every now and then, you could come back, and we’d be here. Would you leave then?” Her gaze cuts into mine. “Give me honesty, Mallory. Would you leave then?”
My throat closes, but I nod.
“So we are what would hold you back,” she says, with the decisiveness of delivering the final argument in a court case. When I go to protest, she continues, “Your Dr. Gray wouldn’t hold you back, would he? If he were sitting here, and that door was the way to the twenty-first century, he’d tell you to go because it’s what you wanted.”
I don’t answer.
“You can say he just didn’t want to lose a new assistant, but that’s not it. That’s not it at all, and yet, if the way opened, he would have told you to go. Knowing he’d never see you again, he would want you to go because he wouldn’t hold you back. Your happiness is more important than any happiness you might bring him.”
Her gaze locks with mine again. “It’s the same for us, Mallory. We raised you to soar, and we want to see you soar… even if it means you leave us behind.”
I love my parents for saying that. Lots of tears follow. It’s a moot point—there is no door for me to walk through—but I love that they would let me go, even knowing I might never come back.
When the tears—and the tea—are done, I say, “I should call my sergeant. I need to discuss my return to work.”
“Not yet,” Dad says, gathering the teacups. “First, we need to try getting you back to 1869.”
I look over, certain he’s joking, even if a squeeze in my gut whispers it would be a cruel joke, and my dad is never cruel.
Mom makes a face and then sighs. “Don’t get her hopes up, Glen.” She looks at me. “Your grandmother had dreams before she died, about you and how you passed back through. She left a video for you to watch.”
“With a method for returning that came to her in a dream?”
“I know.” Mom rolls her eyes. “Mostly, I just want you to know that if it ever happens, for any reason, and you end up in the nineteenth century…” She trails off and takes a deep breath. “I want to have had this conversation. If you disappear or fall into a coma again, we understand where you are and you have our blessing to stay there. Also…” She stands. “I want to have a way for you to communicate.”
“Uh…”
