watching the growing blaze in the distance. Soon it illuminated the entire night sky. The barn was old, tinder-dry, and had gone up like a matchstick.
Zach ought to be working. He knew he should, for so very much depended on the success of the current experiment. And he was so close. So close.
Right now, though, Benjamin needed him. And right now he couldn’t bring himself to leave.
But as the sun rose high the next morning, and spirals of smoke still rose from the charred remains of the old Thomas barn, Zach gently tried to extricate himself from the bed without disturbing Benjamin. And he did. A bit too easily. As he got to his feet, it hit him that, sick as he was, Benjamin was normally a very light sleeper. He should have at least stirred when Zach got up from the bed.
A cold chill crept up his spine as he turned to face his son, who hadn’t so much as stirred in his sleep all night.
And then Zachariah Bolton’s heart froze over. He shook Ben’s frail shoulders gently, tapped his pale cheek. But there was no response. His son had slipped into a coma. The state that marked the final stages of his illness. Death was only twenty-four hours away now, perhaps less.
There was no more time. None whatsoever. He must act now, and if the experiment had side effects, then so be it. He’d suffer whatever he must in order to save his son’s life.
He reached into his vest, and removed the device from its pocket. There was no longer any reason to stay by his son’s side. Benjamin wouldn’t wake again. Not unless… Not unless this worked.
Leaning over the bed, he stroked his son’s coppery curls, kissed his forehead. “I’ll be gone for a little while, my Ben. But I’ll try to arrange it so it’s only an instant for you. I don’t want to leave you, but I must to get you healthy again. Understand?”
Benjamin’s auburn lashes rested on his chalk-white cheeks, and his breath wheezed in and out of his rail-thin body.
Zach straightened and pushed his hands through his hair. He looked like hell. He knew it without a glimpse at the looking glass. His clothes were rumpled, vest unbuttoned and gaping. The thin black tie he’d worn the day before hung loose from his collar. He’d planned, though. There was a small satchel in Benjamin’s wardrobe, with a change of clothes and the things he’d need. Including proof, should he be questioned. He took a moment to retrieve the satchel. No time to change. Not now. Ben could very well expire while his father worried over such trivial matters. But once Zach was gone, time would virtually stand still for his son. Time enough to bathe then. If he was displeasing to those he met, well, too bad for them. Not that he was likely to meet anyone at all. Each time he’d opened the portal, it had shown him an empty, unlived-in version of his own house. Not that he cared right now who he might meet, or what they might think of him.
He wasn’t thinking of himself. Not at all. He wasn’t thinking of society, either, or of the repercussions he knew full well might come from his tampering with nature this way. He flatly refused to consider those. The only thing on Zachariah Bolton’s mind was his son. His precious Benjamin. The only thing that mattered right now was finding a way to save his child’s fragile life. The child who was, right now, precariously close to death. And he could do it. Zachariah Bolton could do it. He could travel backward through time. He could go back to a time before his son had been exposed to the killing virus that was trying so hard to take him. And when he arrived there, he’d take Benjamin away, somewhere safe. So that when the virus pummelled Rockwell, Ben would be far away. He’d never be exposed. And when the danger had passed, he’d bring Ben home safe and sound. He’d never become sick. He’d never die. He’d be all right. Zach would return here, to this time, to find his son healthy and well again. With no memory of having been sick at all.
Zach’s heartbeat escalated as he pointed the device toward that spot in the very center of his son’s bedroom. He had no idea what the spot was. A wrinkle in the fabric of time. A rent. Whatever it was, it was only here, in this room, and he suspected it had been here, hovering in the air above the ground, even before the house was built. He’d attempted the experiment in numerous locations, but here and here alone had he found success. One night, when he’d been working in here so as to be with his ailing child, he’d discovered the portal purely by accident.
With his thumb, he depressed the initiator button. And a pinprick of light appeared in midair, at the room’s center. Holding the device steady, he turned the expander dial, and the light grew bigger, brighter, until it was a glowing sphere that extended beyond the ceiling and the floor. A mist-filled, glowing orb. But even that began to change. The mists cleared and took on forms, and in moments Zach was looking into what appeared to be a huge mirror. And the mirror reflected this very room back at him. Only in another time. He could clearly see that the wallpaper was different, and the curtains in the windows were different, and the furnishings. Everything. Right down to the small body bundled beneath the covers in the bed. Benjamin? Before he was taken ill, when he was well and strong and healthy? This was going to work. It was going to work!
He only hoped it didn’t kill him. Every test so far indicated there would be side effects. The tea cup Zach had pushed through the portal a few days ago had shattered. He’d made adjustments to the device and tried again. The apple he sent through had withered, and he’d made still more changes. The mouse…the mouse had died. And though Zach had recalculated and made even more changes, he couldn’t be certain he had it right this time. So, yes, there might be side effects. Serious ones. He just didn’t know what they would be, yet. But—he smiled a little—he was about to find out. “You’re going to be all right, Benjamin. I swear to you. You’ll be well again!” And Zachariah Bolton stepped into the light, and promptly felt a post wallop him right between the eyes.
Jane Fortune couldn’t sleep. There was simply too much on her mind. Oh, not the house. The house was perfect, she’d known that the second she saw it. The aging but elegant Victorian, standing like a guardian of the sea. The rocky Maine shoreline below. The songs of the waves that would sing her to sleep under ordinary circumstances.
Her new antique shop—Jane smiled at the words—was now a reality. She’d researched the area, made new contacts and stocked up on local finds. She’d been open for several weeks now, and business was brisk. The guest house—a miniature copy of the main house, perched at its feet as if the house had given birth to a pup—was perfect, just as Jane had known it would be. Even the nearby town, appropriately named Rockwell, was picture-perfect. The epitome of the New England fantasy. A place time and progress seemed to have forgotten. It boasted a corner drugstore complete with a soda fountain and a barbershop with an old-fashioned candy-cane pole outside. When she walked along Rockwell’s sidewalks, she half expected to round a corner and spot four men in flat-topped straw hats and handlebar mustaches singing about strolling through the park.
But as Grandma Kate used to say, when things seem too good to be true, look out, because they probably are. What if the business failed? What would she do then? Go running back to Minneapolis with her tail between her legs?
No. No, this move had been hard enough on Cody. She wouldn’t uproot him again. She’d make this work, somehow. She had to, for her son’s sake.
But financial worries were not the only things troubling Jane’s mind tonight. She was more concerned about her son than about anything else. Cody’s wish for a father had gnawed at her heart from the second he uttered it in the car that night. He was an intelligent child—gifted, the school officials called him. He knew he’d had a father once. But while Jane didn’t believe in lying to her son, she hadn’t told him the whole truth about Greg. He knew only that his father had been a talented musician who died when Cody was still a baby. She’d left out the rest. She’d never told Cody how taken in she’d been by Greg’s idealism and sincerity, and the beauty and meaning behind the songs he wrote
