Timebound(34)

I punched his arm with my free hand.

“Ow! Okay, that hurt, but I guess I asked for it.” Trey pulled me around the corner, holding my wrists together to avoid another punch. “I’m sorry, really. I didn’t intend to drop your hand… but I was thinking about it earlier, and it doesn’t make sense that I would forget. I mean, unless there is another temporal shift, or whatever you call it, I don’t think my memory would be affected.”

I glared. “Then why didn’t you say that earlier?”

Another grin. “Would you have held my hand for the past three hours if I had? Really, Kate—I was going to suggest that we test the theory after we sat down to eat.”

“Test it how?”

“Well, if I had forgotten, the worst that could have happened is that you had to pull out your Metro pass so I could watch that vanish, right? Or one of your earrings? I mean, if the picture disappeared, those things should, too. And if a disappearing photograph convinced me in DC, I think a disappearing Metro card would do it in Annapolis.”

I shrugged, and then nodded. I was still annoyed, but it was hard to stay mad at Trey.

“Also,” he said, “judging from the way you’ve been shifting around in the car seat the past twenty-five miles or so, I suspect you need to use the facilities as badly as I do. And a joint trip to the bathroom might have been pushing the limits of familiarity for both of us.”

I couldn’t argue with that.





I spent most of the next hour staring out the window and trying to decide what I was going to say to Dad when I saw him. The area looked a lot like Iowa—flat patches of farmland, broken up by the occasional small town. Chaplin Academy was just outside one of those towns and I wasn’t any closer to figuring out what I was going to say when we arrived.

There was a security gate at the entrance, and I leaned over Trey, holding up my school ID for the guard’s inspection. “I’m Kate Pierce-Keller. My… my uncle, Harry Keller, teaches here. We’re driving through, so I wanted to tell him hello.” I was terrified that the guard would try to take the ID from me to inspect it—at which point I had no idea what I would have done. I couldn’t risk everything in the ID holder disappearing. The guard, however, was a friendly sort who leaned in the window to glance at the ID and then gave us directions to the faculty housing area.

I had worried that it would be difficult to find Dad. We didn’t have an exact address and I thought we might have to go door-to-door until we found a helpful neighbor. But I saw him before we even located a place to park. He sat at a wooden picnic table near the pond, a book in his hand, watching two boys—one around five and the other a few years younger—who were riding Big Wheels across the grass. The area was green and lush, with a large willow near the pond. I could see the back entrances to several small, neat-looking houses fifty yards or so behind the table, most with grills on the patio and a few with sandboxes or plastic playhouses.

I sat motionless, just staring at him. After a minute or two, Trey came around to the passenger side and opened the door, kneeling down to look at my face. “Do you want me to wait here at the car or come with?”

I thought for a moment. “Would you mind going with me?” I asked in a small voice. It would undoubtedly be a more personal conversation than anyone should have to witness on such short acquaintance, but I could feel my knees shaking and I hadn’t even stood up yet.

“Not at all,” Trey said. He reached out his hand to help me from the car and continued to hold it as we walked toward the picnic table. “For moral support,” he said, squeezing my fingers gently.

I gave him a grateful smile. I had never felt so vulnerable.

“Mr. Keller?” I said. Dad looked up and closed the book, holding his place with his finger. The cover of the paperback was an autumn mélange of yellow, orange, and brown, with the image of a rabbit in front—Watership Down, a book that he had read to me years ago. One of our favorites.

“Yes?” He furrowed his brow a bit and glanced at our school uniforms. I realized they probably weren’t the same on this campus, if uniforms were even required. “Do I know you?” he asked.

I sat down on the other side of the picnic table, with Trey beside me. “I hope so.” I had rehearsed twenty different ways to start this conversation during the ride and now the only thing I could think to say was, “I’m your daughter. I’m Kate.”

His look of utter shock made me instantly wish that I had taken a different track. “I’m sorry! That’s not how I wanted to begin this… I mean…”