Page 60 of I Know You

“I have as much control as I presume you have.” Mom tilts her head, even more confusion filling her features along with worry. “How else would you have been able to pinpoint this day to come and see me?”

“Then why did you risk giving birth to me in the past?” My expression must mirror the confusion in my mother’s.

“What has happened…?” she whispers. I can imagine the questions racing through her mind. Why did I believe she hadn’t told me? Why didn’t I know this, a story that presumably she planned on telling me once she revealed the power she held? I shake my head, eliciting a huff of frustration from Mom. “I was hired to do a report on The Villa for its one-hundredth anniversary, so your father and I decided to make it a weekend trip and go back to the year it was built—1894. But something happened when we went back—perhaps because I was pregnant with you and didn’t know it yet? Because I carried extra energy? I still don’t know why. We were kicked off the … well, path, for lack of a better word, in 1906 instead. The mirror shattered the moment we stepped out, and without the use of the internet, it took us a lot of experimenting to find a mirror that would take us safely forward in time.” She stares at me for a long moment after the explanation. “Has it happened again?” she whispers.

So much worse, I think, but again, I can only shake my head.

“Do you have some time, Mrs. Granville?” Ben asks, breaking into the conversation. “Perhaps we could find somewhere to get something to eat and talk?”

Mom slips her hand into mine, her smile forced. “Of course, of course. My client didn’t need specific details—just a report of the atmosphere and the look of the whole thing.” She sighs. “I can certainly spare some⁠—”

“Mrs. Granville!”

This time all three of us stiffen at the voice, one that holds familiarity to me, which shocks me.

“I can’t believe it!” the woman calls, as we all turn to see Isabelle Allen hurrying toward us, towing someone behind her. “That in all these people I might run into you!”

“Quentin…” Ben breathes, stepping between the approaching woman and me. “Do not introduce us, Mrs. Granville,” Ben whispers in a rush. “Mrs. Allen will know my name, and likely Clara’s.” He waves off the questions in Mom’s eyes. “Did you plan to meet her?”

“Of course not,” Mom hisses, smiling and waving as Mrs. Allen comes closer. “This is pure chance. It seems I cannot escape notice today.” She sighs. “She spoke of getting involved, and of making sure that Quentin understood about these sorts of inequalities, when we were at the Villa. Good heavens, it won’t escape her notice, I’m sure, that I’m fifteen years older.” Mom tugs at her own hat, trying to cast her face into more shadow.

Ben backs away, pulling me with him, as Mrs. Allen finally pushes her way through the last remaining people to get to us. “I’d know that hat anywhere!” Mrs. Allen says joyfully.

“We must go,” Ben says under his breath to me.

My heart sinks, hitting like a rock at the bottom of my stomach. “We have two hours,” I plead.

“You cannot see Quentin Allen,” Ben says in a tight voice. “Even at nine—and if William is with her?”

Tears sting at my eyes. But I nod unhappily. “Good day! It was lovely seeing you!” I say in a falsely bright voice. I brush my mother’s hand, keeping my head tipped away from Mrs. Allen and Quentin. More than ever, confusion narrows my mom’s eyes, and I see the slight shake of her head as Ben escorts me away, his head already turned and his back to Mrs. Allen in case she recognizes the description of him.

When I drag my gaze away from my mother, it lands on the skinny boy next to his mother, and I can’t help meeting the golden-brown eyes that stare after me.

After I’ve changed once we return to Ben’s house—and checked my phone for news of the fire that took my parents, just to see if the past remains unchanged—I don’t leave the guest room for some time. I hear the low murmur of voices as Ben speaks to either Burke or Cooper on the phone, reporting what we learned from my mom, and no doubt the unexpected appearance of Isabelle Allen and her son. I sit on the bed, one I picked out for this room—the only other bedroom in Ben’s house that’s furnished besides his own—and lean against the headboard, crying. I had expected at least an hour, but I don’t know if that would’ve helped lessen the ache that seeing my mother and having her snatched away again produced.

“Clara, darling?” Ben knocks softly on the door. “Is everything okay?”

“Come in,” I say in my scratchy-from-crying voice, and he pushes open the door. He frowns when he sees me and reaches into his pocket, producing a handkerchief to hand to me. “Ben,” I say, laughing when I take it. “They’ve invented Kleenex, you know.”

“Once a gentleman…” he murmurs, sliding onto the bed to sit next to me and wrap me in his arms. “I’m sorry that we didn’t get to stay long.”

“I don’t know if it would have mattered. Even if we’d spent a year.” I take a deep breath and lean into his chest.

“Do you want me to drive you home?” He presses his lips into my hair.

I shake my head. “I can’t go back there tonight.” Not to the condo I spent so much time in with my parents. Not to The Villa where I first met Quint. Not to the place that holds too many memories tonight.

“You can stay here,” he assures me. We sit in silence, my breathing slowly settling down and matching the even pace of Ben’s as it rises and falls beneath my head. “I’m so proud of you. It would’ve been so easy to answer one of her questions—to give her one little hint.”

“Do you know the only thing that kept me from doing just that?” I whisper, turning so that I look up at him. “I had no idea what it would change for you, for everyone. What if you didn’t go back to 1899—or if you did and were trapped forever because I didn’t stumble along to bring you home because Mom told me when I was twenty-one and that mirror didn’t surprise me? And if you never went back, you’d never help William. He might never meet Isabelle. Mrs. Guthrie would still be in a boarding house.” There would be no Quentin Allen, but I don’t say that aloud. “Burke and Cooper are right. The effects are so far-reaching and … I just can’t be the one responsible for so many people’s happiness.”

Ben’s arms tighten around me. “I’m sorry you lost her, darling. I’m sorry we can’t change that.”

I bury my face in his chest. “Me too.”

Chapter Nineteen

I’m typing a long-awaited blog post on the costumes from the latest episode of a new historical drama when someone knocks on my door. I open it to find Ben waiting outside.