Connor glanced toward the door, and then quickly looked down at his feet. He didn’t say anything, but I could follow his train of thought—the same would be true of my relationship with Trey.
“I know, Connor—but I’ve had a month with Trey and nearly seventeen years with Dad. And Trey seems convinced that all I have to do is kiss him and we’ll magically be… us again.”
“Princess Charming, I presume?” He gave me a halfhearted grin. “The only problem is that you seem less convinced on that point than Trey.”
“Yeah, but letting him know that isn’t going to make it any easier on either of us, is it?” I glanced at the clock. Five-forty-eight. The six o’clock deadline was obviously fluid—I’d be arriving early on the morning of October 28th, 1893, no matter what time it happened to be when I left the library. But every minute I waited made it more likely that I would lose my nerve.
“I’ll meet you in the library in ten minutes, okay?” I gave him a shaky smile and walked to the back door, tucking the letter into my pocket.
Trey was seated on the low stone wall surrounding the patio, with his back to me. Daphne lay at his feet, happily chewing on the edge of her neon green Frisbee. The late-afternoon sun was low in the sky, and combined with the few remaining tears in my eyes, it created a soft golden aura around him. I stood there for a minute, just looking at him, wanting to cement this in my memory. He turned toward me and smiled, and I had to fight back a fresh wave of tears.
I bent down and called Daphne to me, delaying the moment when I’d need to look up at Trey. “You take care of Connor for a little while, okay, girl? I’m going to go get Katherine.” The good-bye was more for me than for Daphne, since from her perspective, if everything worked out as planned, I’d only be gone a matter of minutes. She lifted her head and sniffed at my cheeks where the tears had been, giving me a soft lick before she went back to gnawing on the toy.
“What was that about?” Trey said, motioning his head toward the kitchen.
I sat down beside him and pulled the letter out of my pocket. He started to speak when he finished reading, but I smiled gently at him and shook my head. “It’s okay, Trey. I’m glad I read it, although I’m still sorry that I interrupted his life. He seemed so happy there—but you know, he’s happy with Sara, too. And with me.”
I took his hand and laced my fingers through his. “And we don’t know how any of this works; Katherine said that even in her era there was this huge debate about whether changing something would just spin off a new timeline… whether there could be an infinite number of different timelines all coexisting on separate planes. She said that maybe this timeline goes on, too, somehow, and some version of my dad will still be—”
“No,” Trey interrupted, his voice resolute. “No. I don’t believe that. This timeline ends.” I realized with a pang that while the infinite-planes-of-existence theory had sounded pretty good to me, since this version of Dad and my two little half brothers might still exist in some cosmic sense, it had a very different meaning for Trey.
He shook his head, squeezing my hand tightly. “I don’t want an infinite number of lives on different planes if even one of them means I’m not with you. You’re going back to fix this reality, to make it right again so that we can be together. And it will be okay. Estella always tells me that you have to have faith to get through life—and I’m not sure I have the type of faith she’s talking about, but I have faith in you. In us.”
He pulled me to my feet and held me a few inches away, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “What was it Westley said to Buttercup? ‘This is true love—you think this happens every day?’”
“I just wish you were going to be there with me in this particular Fire Swamp.”
“Me too,” he admitted. “But you can do this. I know you can.”
His optimism wavered a bit when we were saying a final good-bye at the front door. There were tears in his eyes when he kissed me. “I love you, Kate. Just find me, okay?” And then he was gone. I rested my forehead against the door, half hoping he would open it again and give me an excuse to change my mind.
After a moment, I heard his car start and pull away. Connor came up behind me and squeezed my shoulders. “Come on, girl. If we’re going to do this thing, might as well get it over with.”
I gave him a shaky grin. “Easy for you to say. Two minutes after I leave, you’ll know if I succeeded. I’m the one who’s going to have to chase Katherine around Chicago all day.”