Page 28 of The Book of Lost Hours

“I just haven’t. I guess… I don’t really want to know what happened to the world after I left it.

The idea that everything I used to love might be gone or, worse, that it’s been changed by memories I couldn’t save from the timekeepers—” She broke off, staring up at the falling snow.

“It’s safer in the past. Everything is already over. ”

Ernest had to agree with her, despite the obvious flaws in her reasoning.

Sometimes, when he woke up from nightmares in which he watched his friends die or walked through the concentration camps on Liberation Day all over again, he wished he had never gone to war at all.

That he could take it all from his memory and forget it.

And as for the other part… well, even he couldn’t know what pieces of his world had been altered without his knowledge.

He thought of Ezekiel Levy and how little remained of his memory.

His whole identity taken and destroyed. If Lisavet didn’t want to know all that had happened, who was he to tell her?

Who was he to ruin what few precious memories she had of her life before the time space?

He had begun to wonder how much of his own life had been altered by timekeepers like him.

Occasionally, Lisavet would mention something that he himself had forgotten.

Historical figures erased. Details of an event altered, even those that had happened in his own lifetime.

At first, he’d been horrified at the realization that she could remember the things that somebody else had erased.

Wary even. The knee-jerk reaction of a soldier discovering a breach in the ranks.

Before long, that horror turned to frustration, until it morphed into something closely resembling shame.

He, too, was beginning to see that what they were losing was not just memory, but truth.

Sometimes, when they met in the time space, he brought pages from books he himself had been ordered to erase, asking her to keep them.

He never said much when he did this, simply handed her the pages, grappling with guilt and a new sense of duty that was slowly replacing the old.

When he returned to his apartment after their visit to Russia, he noticed that the lights in the living room had been turned off.

He passed a weary hand over his face, checking his watch.

It was a little before midnight. He had been in the time space with Lisavet since dinner.

He stumbled out into the kitchen in the dark.

As he was fumbling around for the light switch, he heard the click of the lamp across the room.

Jack stood in the middle of his apartment. One hand on the lamp switch, the other holding a black notebook open to the center.

“Good evening, Ernest,” Jack said in a dry, self-satisfied tone. “Nice of you to drop by.”

“What are you doing in my apartment?” Ernest blurted out.

“I came to check in,” Jack said, snapping the notebook shut with a loud clap. He set it down on the coffee table.

“Awfully late for a visit.”

“We need to talk.”

“And it couldn’t wait?” Ernest asked, the initial shock balling itself into a hard lump in his stomach.

“Do you remember what the primary mission statement of the TRP is?” Jack asked in a deliberately condescending voice.

Of course he knew. His father was the one who wrote it.

Jack didn’t give him a chance to respond.

“To protect, preserve, and immortalize American interests within the collective memory of history. To eradicate antidemocratic ideologies and defend American values inside the temporal realm… that’s why we do what we do.

To keep another Hitler from spreading his ideas.

To prevent another war like the one we both fought in. ”

“What’s your point, Jack?” Ernest snapped impatiently.

Jack reached into his jacket, pulling out a single sheet of paper. “Charles Lambert. Beverly Hawkins. Melvin Caldwell. Ralph Newton.” He paused, holding the sheet up. “Any of those names sound familiar to you?”

Ernest’s brow twitched. He didn’t answer.

“They’re all names of people whose memories you were supposed to eliminate. Only… you didn’t. Did you?”

Suddenly, Ernest understood. He had been given those names to destroy months ago and, after reviewing the contents of their memories, had taken them to Lisavet to hide.

“They must have slipped through the cracks. I’ll amend it in the morning,” he said, trying to play it off.

Jack let out a lengthy sigh. “You’ve always been the most thorough of all the timekeepers on staff. If you were to tell me that one name escaped you, I might believe it. But it isn’t just one. In fact, we’ve started to notice a pattern.”

“We?” Ernest asked, feeling a twinge of foreboding.

Jack ignored the question and set the list down on the coffee table next to the notebook he had been reading, drawing Ernest’s attention to it.

He realized with horror that it was his own.

The notebook he used to log all his visits to Lisavet from the very beginning.

It had been on the desk in his bedroom. Which meant that Jack had seen everything atop it as well.

The notes on Lisavet’s predicament. The other letters from the shop in Nuremberg.

Records he’d pulled on her family, her history, her .

Jack passed a tired hand over his face, looking like a teacher about to scold a disobedient pupil. “I asked Brady and Collins to keep an eye on you the next time you went into the time space and… you’ll never believe who they saw you with.”

Ernest’s mouth went dry. “Jack…”

“You’ve been lying to me, Ernest,” Jack interrupted. Anger had begun seeping into his voice, the edge as sharp as a knife. “The German girl is still alive. Lisavet Levy. That’s her name, right?”

“Jack, I…”

“I read all about your little relationship in that diary of yours. Instead of doing your duty, you decided to extend the honeymoon by telling us all that she was dead.”

“She isn’t a threat! It’s not her fault she got trapped there, I was just trying to protect an innocent girl from getting hurt.”

“Not a threat? She’s been interfering with our mission.

Saving memories we’re trying to destroy, getting you to lie for her.

A girl who can walk through memories of the past and take things right out of history—I read your notes on her ‘condition.’ If you believe a girl like that isn’t a threat, then you’re a bigger fool than I thought. ”

“Jack, please,” Ernest said shakily. “She is saving memories, but it isn’t what you think.”

Jack scoffed. “I don’t care why she’s doing it, and neither should you.

She’s the daughter of the last man alive who knew how to make a watch that could access the time space.

I’d bet money that that’s what she’s got stored away in that book.

And here you are, letting her walk free with secrets that could change everything .

That fact, paired with your theories about her condition… she needs to be stopped.”

Ernest’s face paled. He knew where this was going. “Jack, no. If you read my notes, then you know… if you take her out of there, she could die.”

“After all the trouble that girl has caused, you’re lucky I don’t send someone in to shoot her outright.”

“This is my fault,” Ernest said, clenching his fists. “She didn’t do anything. It wasn’t her idea.”

“You’re right, it is your fault. So you’re going to fix it.

It seems you’ve got quite the rapport with her if those notes you left are anything to go off of.

None of the others have even seen her up close before, whereas you’re over here going on dates with her every other night.

So you get to be the one to bring her out. ”

Ernest stiffened his jaw. “Like hell I am.”

“I figured you’d say that,” Jack said smugly. “But here’s the thing. If you don’t, I’ll do more than just end your career. I’ll contact the head of the CIA myself and let him know that Gregory Duquesne’s son, golden boy of the TRP, has been committing treason right under our noses.”

For a moment, Ernest wanted to dare him.

To spit in his face and hand in his resignation all at once, damn the consequences.

But then he thought of his mother and what it would do to her.

He thought of Lisavet, who would be dragged out of the time space even if he refused.

He needed to play his cards right. To buy himself time.

He said nothing, but Jack seemed to recognize the resignation in his eyes. He clapped him on the shoulder. Hard.

“Attaboy,” he said with a vicious smile. “I’ll give you one week to coax her out before I send someone after you both.”

Never had Ernest wanted to punch him more than at that moment. Jack turned to pick up the black notebook and left the apartment.

Later, when Ernest returned to his bedroom, his desk had been cleared of his notes. Taken for evidence maybe. Something to hold over his head. Everything was gone. Every scrap of paper, every theory, leaving his desk empty and barren. As though she’d already been ripped from his life.

E RNEST CAME early the next evening. Lisavet was busy folding a new set of pages into the book of memories.

When she saw him coming, she quickly shoved the book into her messenger bag, hoping he hadn’t noticed.

She’d return it to its hiding spot later, she told herself, smiling at him until she saw the look on his face.

“Ernest? What’s…”

Her words were cut short as Ernest pushed her up against one of the shelves and kissed her with bruising intensity. She could almost taste the frenetic energy spilling off him.

“Ernest? Is something wrong?”

He pressed his forehead to hers, eyes shut. “I know we were going to Carnival in Brazil today, but can we go someplace quieter instead? I… need to talk to you.”