Page 52 of I Know You

I sigh. I have answers, but a lot more questions. Had my parents known I would be able to travel like they could? Why hadn’t they said anything, even just to warn me to be careful around old mirrors? “What about my birth certificate?”

“According to Burke, it’s a forgery. An amazing one, but a forgery.” He reaches for a tablet nearby and flicks a few things on it. “Plus I found this.” He holds the tablet so I can look at the image of an index card with type on it. The reference numbers and words at the top mean little to me, except that I guess the abbreviation in the top right, S.F. Co., stands for San Francisco County.

It’s the names and dates that make me stare at it in wonder.

Quint was right. “I was born in the past,” I say aloud.

Ben nods. “Your parents weren’t, but you were. Your birth certificate is the only thing forged, so they probably used that to get the rest of your documents when they returned.” He chuckles to himself. “Dr. Cooper said if the task force had been around at the time, it’s the kind of work they would have done for them.”

“I may never know why without asking them myself.” I frown at how Ben’s smile disappears and his expression tenses. “Which you don’t think I should do.”

He sits back, pressing his hands together. “Haven’t we meddled enough?” There’s something in his tone, the edge of an accusation.

“What does that mean?” I struggle to sit up more, irritated to be so helpless.

He doesn’t answer at first, instead standing to adjust my pillows for me so I can sit up. When he sits back down, he hands me a paper. “I don’t know what happened between you and Quint or even how it happened, although how much he cared for you was obvious. After you left, he didn’t marry until 1939—he was thirty-four years old.” He nods to the paper, printed from a family history site. Quinten William Allen, married Catherine Pratt, 31 March, 1939.

I stare at it, almost surprised that I’m not reading Lizette’s name. It takes a moment for the ache to come back. “He was convinced that my time with him at The Villa meant we were supposed to be together.” I force a laugh that isn’t convincing. The song that Quint had written inside of me feels full of wrong notes now and an unpracticed tempo. “You’re probably right about meddling.”

Silence settles between us, full of all the disappointment burgeoning inside of me. Ben is the only person who can understand why this hurts so much, but also the only person I can’t unburden myself to about it. I can see in his expression how much the idea of “what happened” between Quint and me is hurting him.

“I’m going to let you sleep some more, okay?” Ben stands and squeezes my hand before he quietly leaves the room. The nurse returns and uses the opportunity of Ben’s absence to take some vitals, but I feign sleepiness to avoid speaking with her.

It’s a long time before I actually fall asleep, and it might be a much longer time before I rest with any peace of mind again.

Chapter Sixteen

We stay at Ben’s house in New York while my shoulder heals as much as possible. Going home with my arm in a sling will invite far more questions than either of us wants to answer.

When Ben deems me rested enough to have visitors, Dr. Cooper comes to debrief me. It feels too official for the man who looks more like a professor than anything else, but he jots my words down in a notebook and records the conversation.

I have little to add to the report Ben gave them. My locating Gibbons was by accident, not by anything I’d done, as much as I want to be a vital member of the team. Dr. Cooper is about to leave when I ask him to wait.

“What does our future with this team look like?” I ask.

“What would you like it to look like?” He puts a hand on the back of the chair he sat in while debriefing me, and I don’t miss that his eyes light up.

“Ben would like to study history in a … less stress-filled way,” I begin, staring at my blanket and thinking of the work my mother did, wondering how connected it is to the abilities I may have. “And I…” I take a deep breath.

“Want answers about your family,” Dr. Cooper guesses.

“Please,” I say in a husky voice.

He draws in a deep breath that warns he’s about to disappoint me. “We can’t let anyone jaunt around in the past without rhyme or reason or just because they want to make their own life better somehow. We can’t allow you to travel without authorization.”

My heart pinches. “Not even to figure out why I was born in the past or why my parents traveled when I was so young?” I ask anyway. And no dropping in for a glimpse of Quint to ease my pain.

“Definitely not until we know more.”

“But maybe?” I press.

“Maybe,” he allows. He leaves after that.

I force myself not to wallow in disappointment, especially over the ridiculous idea that I could just look at Quint again. Like Ben said, leaving Quint brokenhearted for ten years was meddling enough.

After Dr. Cooper leaves, I take the tablet Ben left beside my bed to keep me entertained and do an internet search for Quint. Somehow, I have to convince myself that him waiting until 1939 to get married wasn’t about me—men got married older in the past, right? To establish themselves. But a prick of reproach tells me that Quint had been well on his way to being established.

I don’t know what I expect after searching for Quinten Allen, but “philanthropist founder of the successful Granville House” isn’t it. My heart stops for a second as I look up Granville House. School founded by the Allen Family Foundation for vocational and traditional training for impoverished young women…