Page 35 of The Book of Lost Hours

She reached for the baby and for a moment, Lisavet almost changed her mind.

In three days, she had not set her daughter down once, not even for a moment.

She forced herself to come forward. To deposit her child into Elaina’s outstretched arms. To watch this other woman hold her baby to her breast and give her what Lisavet’s own body had failed to provide.

“Thank you,” Elaina said quietly. “For bringing her. I don’t know what I would have done if…”

Lisavet swallowed, offering her as warm a smile as she could muster. “Have you decided what you’re going to name her?”

“I hadn’t yet. I didn’t want to risk it in case… but I suppose she’s better now.”

“Much better,” Lisavet said.

“I hadn’t given much thought to girl names. I was so certain she would be a boy,” Elaina admitted. “What would you name her? If she were yours.”

It took everything Lisavet had left not to break down at those words. Instead, she told her the name she had picked out for her daughter the moment she was born.

“Amelia. I would name her Amelia.”

“Amelia,” Elaina repeated, savoring the name carefully. “It’s perfect.”

The baby stopped feeding and let out a satisfied gurgle.

“Should I take her back to the nursery for you?” Lisavet asked. “So you can rest?”

Elaina nodded reluctantly.

Lisavet left Elaina to sleep, pausing to pick up her things before sliding out of the room.

Keeping her head high to avoid suspicion, she carried Amelia down to the nursery, waiting outside until she was certain nobody else was there.

She located the cradle where Elaina Duquesne’s real daughter lay, cold and unmoving.

She forced herself to lay Amelia down in the empty cradle next to her and paused just long enough to write her new name on the plate affixed to the bed.

She read the date on the bottom, committing it to memory.

With great care, Lisavet took Elaina’s dead infant from its cradle and forced herself out of the memory.

Leaving her child in the past where Ernest was sure to find her.

Where he would not know she was his daughter, but where at least, he would be there to love her. Even if it meant Lisavet could not.

Before returning to the time space, she visited another memory to give Elaina’s baby a proper burial. She sobbed over its tiny figure as if it were her own. The desperate, heartrending sobs of a mother who had lost a child.

She braced herself for the return, knowing that she would have caused damage.

A dead child replaced. A mother whose suicide stemmed from grief over a lost child recalled to life.

The course of both their stories altered forever.

She knew there would be consequences, but nothing prepared her for the reality of what she had done.

As the time space came into focus before her, she gasped.

She nearly lost her balance, arms flailing out to prevent herself from falling into the hole, the chasm, that had opened in the middle of the floor.

It stretched wider than she was tall, creating a rift that swallowed the shelves around it.

She dropped her messenger bag onto the floor, falling to her knees.

A loud whispering came from within. It was Time, fraught with the echoes of the memories she had destroyed, calling out to her.

She heard another sound and looked up. Through her tears, she saw the Russian timekeeper. He was close. Too close. She scrambled to her feet.

“Don’t run away,” he said in Russian. He caught the strap of her bag as she tried to pick it up. “I only want to help. What happened to—”

“Stay away from me,” Lisavet said, wrenching the bag away with a violent tug that almost sent her sprawling.

She ran from him. But instead of following, he bent down to pick something up.

Her heart skipped a beat. Her book. He had her book.

It had fallen out of her bag when he’d tried to take it from her.

She considered turning back for it, but he was already turning the crown of his watch, taking her book, and all her memories of Ernest with him.

T IME MOVED forward.

Though she knew she shouldn’t, Lisavet visited her daughter through memories dozens of times over, entering them through the altered pages of Elaina’s past. She watched Ernest meet her for the first time, watched Elaina try to care for her.

As it turned out, her child’s death hadn’t been the only thing that forced Elaina over that bridge.

Lisavet had brought a woman back from the dead, but it didn’t mean she had saved her life.

To compensate, Lisavet did what she could to make things better.

She made more changes to the past, telling herself that it was worth the consequences.

It was for her daughter. In the first two years of Amelia’s life, Lisavet interfered no fewer than seven times, doing what she could to keep Elaina afloat.

Sending money her way when the rent was due.

Preventing her from getting fired. Stepping in to prevent an accident on Amelia’s second birthday when Elaina left the stove on.

All the while, the chasm in the time space grew wider.

“Lisavet, you have to stop this,” Azrael told her. “You cannot rewrite the past every time you don’t like the outcome.”

“I will, I promise. As soon as they get through this.”

“No. Not when they get through it. You have to stop now.”

“I can’t. Amelia needs me.”

“You’re destroying the past, Lisavet. Can’t you see it’s gone too far? I can’t keep watching you do this.”

“Then look away!” Lisavet snapped, wheeling around to face him. “I’m not a little girl anymore, Azrael. I don’t need your help.”

Azrael looked at her sadly. He wasn’t upset or even hurt by her words. He was too old for that. Too wise to be fooled by her anger. “That’s where you’re wrong, my girl. You need it now more than ever.”

“Well, I don’t want it. Just leave me alone.” She didn’t wait to hear his retort before storming into another memory.

Perhaps if she had known that would be the last time she saw him, she would have turned back. She would have left things in a better place. But it was as he always said; Time was not a friend. It did not care for parting words and final goodbyes.

They came for her that night in 1952.

As she walked the time space hours later, she saw a timekeeper standing very still in the middle of one of the rows.

An American, with tightly cut brown hair.

The way he held himself, with his head cocked to one side and his shoulders tense, seemed strange to her and she drew back into the shadows.

He did not reach for a book and instead took several deliberate steps to the end of the shelves, craning his neck to see around the edge.

Lisavet followed him, taking her leather gloves from her bag so that she would be ready when he finally chose his mark.

He stopped in the middle of another row and raised one arm, bent at the elbow as though he were waving.

She squinted at him in the darkness, so perplexed by his movements that she didn’t notice the shadows shifting around her.

Didn’t hear the quiet footsteps. Only when his arm straightened, his finger pointing in her direction, did she realize what he was doing.

Someone grabbed her from behind. Violent hands gripped her arms so tightly they left entire handprints on her skin.

Everything happened in a blur. The other timekeeper came to help, the two of them grappling to get her under control.

Someone struck her when she fought too hard.

She begged, but neither of them listened.

One of them spun a watch, the other forced her through the door that appeared.

As they drew close to it, she gave one final, adrenaline-fueled twist, managing to loosen her captor’s grip enough so that he dropped her.

She scrambled to her feet, tripping over hands that tried to grab her, and sprinted down the row of shelves.

She almost got away, she almost escaped.

Until she rounded the corner and ran straight into Jack Dillinger’s waiting arms. She recognized his voice, despite the fact that she’d never heard it outside of memories.

“Settle down now. No one is coming to save you.”

He held her in a chokehold so tight that she couldn’t breathe. The cold metal of a pistol pressed against her temple as he shoved her toward the waiting door.

In a final, desperate attempt, she called out Ernest’s name. Even if he didn’t remember her, maybe he’d still come. Maybe he would save her from this.

“Scream all you want, Miss Levy,” Jack said cruelly. “He can’t hear you.”

She was forced through the door. On the other side, two more men in white coats were waiting. Jack held her still while one of them inserted a syringe into her neck. A sickly chill washed over her as her muscles gave way to the sedative.

The door to the time space closed behind her as she slipped into unconsciousness. It never opened again.