Timebound(101)

19





My jaw dropped. “Your boss? You mean, from the cabin? On the Wooded Island?”

“Yeah,” he said, his dark eyes imploring. “I’m sorry, Miss Kate. I shoulda tol’ you, but I’m not s’posed to tell anybody, ever. Even me dad agreed wi’ that part. And I was doin’ the same as you, watchin’ out for when those two showed up, so I thought maybe it would be okay, y’know, to join forces.”

“And exactly why were you watching for them, Mick?” I asked. “What were you supposed to do?”

“I…” He shook his head and let out a long breath. “You won’ b’lieve me, Miss Kate. There’s this book? It belonged to me dad. It sends her a message. Me granddad give it to him, before he died, along with this round thing that glows. It lights up the space around it with words ’n’ stuff when you touch it. They make all them inventions in the Expo look like cheap toys.”

Apparently Saul had figured out a way to use the diaries that Connor and Katherine had missed. The boy glanced up at me, but I kept my face composed and nodded for him to continue.

“Well, I’d just finished doin’ that—sendin’ her a message—when I looked aroun’ an’ there you were comin’ up the hill. An’ then I saw the letter you dropped, an’…” He trailed off, and the gears roared loudly as the wheel, with its last passenger on board, began to rotate, lifting us high above the Midway.

“Is your boss the lady from the church that you were talking about?” I asked. “The one who wants your mom to move back to the church farm?”

He nodded but didn’t say anything, so I pressed a bit further. “Why don’t you trust her, Mick?”

“Because me dad didn’,” he said fiercely. “Tha’s why we left. The church brought us over—they paid our way on the boat all the way from Irelan’—so I think they ’spected us to work longer and for me to keep takin’ their Cyrist classes, but me dad said we’d find another way to pay ’em back. There was a lot of arguin’ when we left, an’ me dad said we were done wi’ that lot. He got a job on the construction, and me mom found work and some odd jobs for me. Ever’thin’ was okay again, once we left.

“Then when the fair was all built, money was real tight.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and continued in a voice so low that I had to lean in to hear him over the excited chatter of the crowd as we climbed higher into the sky. “Sister Pru, she found us here and she said she forgave me dad for leavin’ the farm an’ for all the bad stuff he’d said ’bout the Cyrists. She pulled some strings t’get him on wi’ the firemen—an’ I tol’ you how that turned out.”

His mouth twisted bitterly. “Me mom says she couldna known me dad would get killed an’ I know here,” he said, tapping his head, “that me mom is right. But here,” he added, tapping his chest, “says she did know an’ she foun’ a good way to shut me dad up.”

His lower lip trembled, and I gritted my teeth in anger. I couldn’t say for certain whether Prudence had known that the Cold Storage Building would go up in flames and his father would be killed, but she’d certainly had the opportunity to know.

“I know it’s stupid, but it’s what I feel, an’ I wish I didn’ hafta work for her. Although,” he said with a weak laugh, “I guess maybe now I won’ hafta work for her. But oh, me mom is gonna be madder’n bloody hell.”

It clicked then, with his last two words, and I realized why I’d had the touch of déjà vu earlier when he rubbed his temples. I probably would have recognized those eyes earlier, but when I had seen them before—both through the medallion and on the Metro—they had burned with a type of passion that the little boy in front of me wouldn’t understand for several years.

He mistook my stunned expression for disapproval. “Sorry, Miss Kate. I ain’ ’sposed to say that. One more thing me mom would be mad about if she knew I was cursin’, ’specially in front of a lady.”

I smiled at him. “No, it’s okay, really. I told you, I’m not prissy.” He didn’t look convinced, so I leaned in and whispered, “Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody hell.”

His mouth twitched and then he finally looked me in the eyes as a smile broke free.

I breathed in deeply and tried to decide what to do. My stomach lurched as I glanced downward at the now miniscule buildings below us, but it was hardly noticeable since my insides were already clenched in a tight knot. How much should I tell him? How much could I tell him without causing even more upheaval in the timeline? What if something I did now was the key to him being there to warn me on the Metro? Or if something I did now kept him from being there on the Metro? Bloody hell was right.