Page 110 of Across Eternity

She looks at him for a long moment, so long that it’s awkward, but he’s watching her too. I get a chill up my spine. “I have to go now,” she says. She sounds wistful. “But my name is Quinn.”

“I’m Nick,” the boy replies.

I glance at the mailbox. Reilly, it says.

Like Luna Reilly, the time traveler who tried to fight off Coron in 1918 and died for it.

My hands grip the steering wheel. I want to tell myself it isn’t possible. But as I look at the two of them there, my daughter and this little boy, so spellbound by each other, I know what I’m seeing. Two of the first families in my daughter, and—I am guessing—the other two in him.

Four pieces of the puzzle, in the same place at last.

53

SARAH

There were no homes for sale, but with enough money almost anything can be purchased, and we move into a house a few doors down from the Reillys one month later.

Our lives change immediately—Quinn’s life, most of all. Until now, she was a tiny city dweller, and our days were spent in galleries and parks, with Cecelia’s bodyguards lurking discreetly behind. Now, she is a small wild thing with bruised shins and dirty feet, gone from sunup to dusk. Always off with the Reilly boys. She likes them both, but it’s Nick she’s drawn to, Nick she prattles on about as we eat dinner.

“Nick’s dad is a doctor,” she says one night, climbing into the tub. I’ve avoided the parents as much as possible, and I do my best to avoid the boys as well. It’s easier not to get close to people.

“Hmmm,” I say absent-mindedly, filling a cup with clean water to wash her thick, unruly hair. Henri’s hair, though long and lit with gold from these days out in the sun.

“What was my dad?” she asks.

My heart clenches. It’s been five years. Is there ever going to be a time when the mention of him, the memory of him, doesn’t ache the way it does? “He was a soldier,” I reply. “He died in the war. I told you that.”

“But what else was he?” she persists.

“He wanted to be an architect. And he was someone who loved you long before you were born.”

“I wish I could see him,” she says. “I wouldn’t even talk to him. I just want to see him.”

I close my eyes. The mother in me wants to forbid that trip she’ll take in a few years, but doing so could change things. And aside from the day I lost him, I wouldn’t give up a single piece of what we had, exactly as it was.

“Yes,” I say simply. “I wish you could too.”

* * *

Quinn’s gifts begin to unfold, as I knew they would. She has Marie’s ability to travel anywhere, anytime, with ease, and she has my ability to be in two places at once. At first, I’m constantly having to cover her tracks, changing the past so no one remembers the many times she accidentally disappeared in public. Eventually, I pull her out of school and teach her myself, waiting until she can control her gift on her own.

One afternoon she comes home and tells me she accidentally disappeared in front of Nick. I fix it, as I often do, after she goes to sleep. Changing her past means it no longer exists. Nick isn’t supposed to recall anything about it, and neither is she. The problem is...they do.

“Nick doesn’t remember seeing me time travel yesterday,” she says the next night over dinner. “But he says he dreamed he saw me disappear.”

The fork falls from my hand.

“Do you remember it?” I ask.

She nods. “I remember it both ways,” she says. “I always do, if Nick was there.”

I slowly breathe out. Some piece of her is holding on to a piece of him, even when it no longer exists. I don’t understand the import of it, however, until a few months later.

It’s a Saturday, and Quinn’s just run off to the treehouse. I watch as she goes and walk back inside to find two naked little girls sitting on my kitchen floor. One blonde, one brunette. Time travelers, both of them.

For a moment I’m so astonished I can only stare. They are far too young to have that kind of ability—younger even than Quinn when she followed me and Henri.

“Who are you?” There’s something familiar about them both, though I can’t place it.