“A couple of months ago, I received a voice mail from someone I didn’t recognize requesting a meeting at Riverbend Park.” He shot me a sidelong glance. “Just off the main path, in a grove of trees. It was Em. Well, the Em from ten years from now. She told me how and when to contact Thomas to offer my services, as well as what I’d need to know to convince her I was legit. She also told me to research the Novikov Principle.”
“What?” Cat breathed the word out, lifting her hands to brace herself against the table behind her. I studied Michael’s face, intrigued by his revelation.
“No travel rules were broken,” he explained hurriedly to Cat, avoiding my eyes. He said the next words deliberately. “She told me the two of us were a pair. She could help me do what no one else could.”
Cat pushed away from the table, causing it to shake violently. Glass rattled and liquid splashed, hissing as it ran into the flame of the burner. “You want to save Liam.”
Michael nodded, but didn’t speak. The seconds ticked past, and Cat’s breathing grew more labored.
“No. You know there’s no possibility. You can’t interfere with time properties that way. They’ll never let …” She stopped, shaking her head before continuing. “Slowing down and speeding up for our purposes causes enough trouble, but going back, resurrecting the dead? No.”
“You’re not thinking about the possibilities,” Michael persuaded, taking a hesitant step closer to her. “Have you even considered the Novikov Principle?”
“I won’t consider any principle, Michael. It’s a no.” She slid her body across the edge of the table, taking a quick step back to put the bulk of it between them. “A solid, irreversible no.”
Kaleb, standing beside me and listening to the conversation, had remained silent up until this point. I felt his words more than I heard them, the sound of his barely contained rage pushing against my eardrums. “Why? Why the hell won’t you help save my dad?”
I put my hand on his arm, even though it was foolish to think I had any hope of holding him back if he decided to go after Cat. His bicep tensed under my fingers, and I expected him to shake me off. He didn’t.
Cat looked around the room as if she was seeking the closest exit. “It’s not about saving your father. It’s about the rules, the things we can and can’t do.”
Kaleb’s long stride devoured the floor space between him and Cat. When he reached her, he pounded his fist against the stainless steel tabletop, emphasizing each of his words. “Screw the rules.”
“Kaleb, please,” Michael said, his voice strained. Kaleb didn’t move.
The only sound in the room was the hiss of the Bunsen burners and liquid bubbling in a suspended tube. After what seemed like a lifetime, Cat spoke.
“Emerson’s never traveled before,” she said, looking from Kaleb to Michael. “Are you telling me that you’re willing to risk her safety, her life, to have her go back and save someone she’s never even met?”
Michael tried to defend himself. “It’s not danger—”
“Yes, it is,” Cat cut him off. “Michael, you know how Liam died. The timing of what you’re proposing would have to be precise—down to the millisecond—to have any chance of being successful.”
“We could do it,” he argued. “It would take some research—”
“Research? Think about what you’re proposing. One false move, and you and Emerson could both be killed, burned to an unidentifiable pile of bones just like Liam. Is that what you want?”
Kaleb hissed through his teeth, stepping back to put himself between Cat and me.
Her words hit me like a physical blow. I wrapped my arms around my waist, my stomach aching with the need to be far away from the building and the conversation. I turned and left without looking back, weaving my way through the banter of chattering students now flooding the hallway. Dodging backpacks and people, I shot out the double doors and down the steps to ground level. Once I reached the sidewalk, I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one had followed me.
Mistake.
In front of the building, a group of young men roughhoused, passing an old-fashioned pigskin football back and forth. It wasn’t old-fashioned to them.
They wore short pants with striped socks and cleats, and I placed their uniforms in the early 1940s. I was already pushing the crazy envelope for the day, and now a whole ghostly football team stood in front of me, lining up to pose for a picture on the wide waterfall of steps leading to the second story.
In lieu of trying to stick my hand into a team of more than a dozen bulky boys, I chose to search for somewhere less populated. To my right, tucked behind the administration building, I found my sanctuary. The Whitewood Memorial Prayer Garden. Two mossy benches flanked an ancient-looking bronze sundial. Flowing willow tree branches created a lush green wall, muffling the sounds of campus life and hiding a small pond. Sinking onto one of the benches, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, grateful for the warmth of the late afternoon sun on my face.
But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t make Cat’s words go away.
After I lost my parents, I replayed my version of the shuttle crash in my mind endlessly, imagining what it must have been like to slide down the mountainside into that crystal-clear, freezing-cold lake. I liked to think the end had been peaceful for them.
I knew the end hadn’t been peaceful for Liam Ballard.
Heavy footsteps sounded behind me and I turned, expecting to see Michael. I let out a small gasp of surprise when I looked up into Kaleb’s blue eyes.
“Michael’s chewing Cat a new one for scaring you. I thought you could use these.” He sat down, handing me a bottle of water and placing a wet paper towel on the back of my neck. It was so saturated that rivulets of water ran down the back of my shirt. “Are you okay?”
“Me? What about you? Are you okay? Cat compared your father to …” I trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence. I took the dripping towel from my neck. Crumpling it into a small ball in my fist, I watched as the water squeezed out through my fingers and ran down the inside of my wrist. The sensation made me shiver.
Kaleb noticed. Placing his elbows on the back of the bench, he lowered the arm closest to me, resting it lightly on my shoulders. I resisted the urge to relax into the curve of his body.
The sun, low in the sky, filtered everything around us through a soft yellow lens. The garden looked like it belonged in a storybook, not like the kind of place in which to have a conversation about death. Pain.
“Kaleb, how could she say something like that in front of you?”
“She didn’t mean it,” he answered, his expression carefully blank. “Her intention was to make a point, and I’m guessing by your reaction she did.”
“I reacted because of you. I’m guessing the two of you are close. I caught the look she gave you after she asked you about last night.”
He turned his head away, his gaze skimming over lily pads and cattails to the far edge of the pond. A fish jumped, and tiny waves did a dance with the shoreline. “My relationship with Cat is unusual. Always has been. She’s my legal guardian.”
“But you don’t live with her.”
“I’ll have to, now that my mom’s not at the house anymore. I’m moving some of my stuff in tonight.”