“I’m going with you, Sarah. I told you—”
Adeline pushed the door open slowly, but he didn’t see her.
“I’m well aware that I’ve started a new job, and if I get fired, so be it—I’m going. I want to be there to advocate for you.”
He turned suddenly, realizing Adeline was in the room.
She held her hands up, backed out, and closed the door.
He opened it a minute later.
“I’m sorry—”
“No,” Adeline said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have barged in.”
“The meeting slipped my mind.”
“You’ve got a lot on your plate.”
“I need to ask for some time off.”
Adeline stepped into the office and closed the door behind her. “You don’t have to ask for time off. I’m not your boss, Sam. I’m your partner. And partners take care of each other. You need time off. You take time off. I also have something that might help.”
Adeline’s father raised his eyebrows.
“A NetJets card. Traveling with a sick family member is tough enough. This will make it easier. And you can schedule the return flight when you’re ready. Just in case you need to stay longer for more treatment or recovery.”
Adeline realized another thing about time and families then: if you live long enough, the role of who takes care of whom gets reversed.
That wasn’t the only role that had reversed. In Absolom City, after her father had been sent into the past, Adeline had been the one in the dark, racing to try to unravel everyone’s secrets.
Now she was the one with the secrets. She had the power. She was pulling the strings. She was controlling the past. Which led her to a question she hadn’t entertained before: how much the past had already been changed. By someone else. If she was an agent acting on the past, had there been others?
Finding out wouldn’t be easy. But she had all the pieces she needed.
*
A week after he returned, Adeline’s father leaned into her office and said, “Thanks again for the jet.” He laughed and shook his head, as if still in disbelief. “It was amazing.”
“You’re welcome. Glad I could do it.”
“Sarah would like to finally meet you—and say thanks. Are you free for dinner one night soon?”
“I am. Any time.”
Adeline had been expecting the invitation at some point. She had been both looking forward to it and dreading it.
In so many ways, she was finally going home, to the place where she had grown up and where her mother had grown sicker. It was the place where they had become a family and where that family had been shattered.
*
On a Thursday in late November, Adeline stood on the stoop of her childhood home, watching the leaves of the maple trees rattle in the wind, the orange, red, gold, and brown tones mixing together as if the trees were on fire.
The door opened, and Sam ushered Adeline inside. Ryan was sitting on the floor of the living room, playing with magnetic blocks. The boy was about five years old, and at his father’s behest he did a minimalist greeting and returned to building his castle.
As her mother approached, Adeline extended her hand, but the woman held out her arms and hugged her. Adeline thought her mother’s arms felt frail, but her eyes still showed a strength that warmed Adeline’s heart.
Her counterpart was nowhere to be found. Young Adeline was likely at a friend’s house, supposedly doing homework while actually gossiping the night away.
It was an unusually warm night, so they had dinner on the porch, her mother wrapped in a shawl, her father in the V-neck sweater he had worn to work.
When the meal was done, Adeline’s mother rose to clear the plates, but Adeline reached out and gently gripped her mother’s wrist. “Please, let me.”
When the dishes were collected, Adeline’s mother showed her the sewing room. “It used to be a nursery for Ryan. I’ve been working in here since…”
Adeline thought she was going to say, Since I got sick. Instead, she said, “Since I stopped teaching.”
Adeline picked up two pieces of cloth, consulted the pattern her mother had printed off the internet, and held them under the needle at the sewing machine. “Would you mind?”
Her mother smiled. “Not at all.”
A minute later, when the sewing machine whined down to silence, her mother shook her head. “Didn’t know you sewed.”
“My mom taught me.”
“Same here. I’ve been trying to get Adeline into it, but she has zero interest.”