Page 40 of The Book of Lost Hours

Again, this caught Jack’s interest. He leaned forward. “What sort of things?”

“Anything. Everything. But it comes at a cost.”

“The chasm.”

Lisavet nodded.

“So that was you?”

“Yes, it was me.”

Jack actually laughed. “I lost a man to that thing. Fell right in and we never saw him again.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

Jack shrugged it off. His cigarette had burned its way down to a stub. He gestured for hers and she handed it to him apprehensively. He stubbed them both out on the table and then opened his briefcase.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why I had my men targeting you.”

“Not really.”

“No?”

“Ernest told me it was because I was interfering. You wanted me to stop.”

“And do you know why I wanted him to stop you?”

“Because you and your fellow timekeepers fancy playing God.”

Jack laughed again. Lisavet decided she didn’t much care for the sound.

“Funny you should phrase it that way,” he said. “You’re Jewish, right?”

“I was.”

“Not anymore?”

“When you spend enough time in what others might call the afterlife, you stop believing in things like that.”

“I see. Your father was Jewish.”

“Yes, he was.”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“He… he died. He was killed by the Nazis.”

“And do you know why?”

Lisavet could sense this conversation taking a turn she wasn’t sure she was ready for. “Because they wanted his watch.”

“Sure, sure. That was part of it.” He stopped digging around in his briefcase, returning to his chair with a thick folio in one hand. “Ernest tells me you never visited memories after 1938.”

Lisavet tried not to show her surprise at how much Ernest had told him about her. “No, not really. I only know what I saw in the memories I saved.”

“So then you don’t know.”

Lisavet frowned. “I know there was a war. I know that the Nazis lost and now the Americans are fighting with the Russians.”

Without a word, Jack extended the folio in her direction.

“What’s that?”

“Something I had put together for you. Newspaper clippings. Headlines. Photos of the past fourteen years. All of the things you missed.”

Lisavet eyed the folio as though it had teeth. There were pictures of war in there. The war that had brought the shadows into Ernest’s eyes. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see that.

“No, thank you,” she said.

Jack held it out farther. “It’s either this or I strap you to a chair and play it back on tape. Your choice.”

There it was again. The glint in his eyes that promised pain if she failed to cooperate.

She took it from him, letting it fall open on the bed in front of her.

It began with 1938, the night she’d entered the time space for the first time.

They had named that night now: Kristallnacht.

Broken shop windows, hundreds killed in riots across Germany, including in Nuremberg.

From there it got worse. Headlines spoke of a war building and building before it finally broke.

She read articles about two halves of the same war. One in Europe, one in Japan.

“Did you fight in this war?” she asked. Hoping she could distract him with questions to avoid seeing any more of it.

“I fought in Japan,” he said with a nod. “Keep going.”

What came next was worse. Victory in Europe, followed by something called Liberation Day.

Her hands trembled as she looked over the images.

Skeletal faces, more dead than alive. Piles of bodies.

Mass open graves. Headlines that had phrases like “gas chambers” and numbers of the dead that reached into the millions.

“What is this?” she asked, struggling to breathe.

“Death camps,” Jack said matter-of-factly. “A little something the Nazis called the Final Solution.”

“W-what?”

“This is what happened to the Jewish people while you were trapped inside the time space. This is what your father saved you from when he locked you in there.”

“Did my father ever…”

“End up in one of these? No. He was killed long before he made it to one. But your brother did.” He gestured to the folio.

Lisavet thought she might be sick. She turned the page to find a written record with her brother’s name at the top. Klaus Levy. Her eyes skimmed the page, noting the details of his death. The brief, merciless account of his short, half-lived life. She shoved it away.

“I don’t want to see any more.”

“That’s too bad,” Jack said, pushing the folio back in her direction. “You need to see this, just like the rest of us did. You need to know.”

“But why?”

“So you understand,” Jack said, his voice taking a more forceful tone.

“So you know what it was that me and the American timekeepers were up against. What we’re still up against. So you understand what you were doing by interfering.

All that work you did to stop the Nazis and preserve the past…

in the end it didn’t make one lick of difference out here in the real world.

Bad things still happened. They keep happening.

Time is just too big a thing for one person to tackle. ”

“Then why was I considered such a threat?”

“You weren’t a threat, you were a nuisance.

But then Ernest got shot saving your neck and the Russians started believing we were spying on them.

They weren’t the only ones. Other timekeepers believed you were one of our spies, and the way you and Ernest started carrying on certainly didn’t help things.

Churchill said that history is written by the victors.

But it’s deeper than that. History isn’t written by victors, but by the ones holding the pen.

And you, Miss Levy, upset the Russians and got blood in the inkwell. That’s why you’re here.”

Lisavet let out a shuddering gasp. “Why are you telling me this?”

“So you understand that what you’ve been doing… the interfering, the saving memories…” He paused, gesturing to the folio again. “It never made any difference.”

His words felt like a punch in the gut. “But I thought…”

Jack gave her a half smile that was almost kind. Almost, but not quite. “I know what you thought. But you were wrong.”

A single tear fell on her cheek. Jack took another cigarette from his coat and lit it.

“What’s going to happen to me now?” she asked quietly, pulling her knees in close to her chest.

“We’ll have to discuss it,” Jack said.

“Will I get to leave here?”

“Maybe. We’ll see. It will have to be under my terms.”

Lisavet didn’t like the sound of that. Her fate rested entirely on the whims of this man. “Why your terms?”

“Because, Miss Levy, you are a criminal. A refugee with a history of working against the US government. There is no Lisavet Levy out here in the real world. She doesn’t exist. You have no home.

No papers. No one even knows you’re here.

You have no place in this world except for the one I choose to give you. ”

Lisavet squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could shut him out too. She wished she was back in the time space. Where everything made sense, and nothing could hurt her. There she’d had a place to go. There she belonged.

“I just have one more question,” Jack said abruptly. “What happened to the baby?”

Lisavet opened her eyes. Surely he didn’t mean…

“Baby?”

“One of my agents saw you with a baby once.”

Lisavet swallowed, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. “She died.”

“She?”

“It was a girl.”

“That’s too bad. I suppose the time space wasn’t habitable for a child.”

That wasn’t entirely true, Lisavet wanted to say. It had been habitable for a child once. It was her home, even though it couldn’t be her daughter’s.

“It was Ernest’s. Wasn’t it?”

Lisavet didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.

He stood up to go. Lisavet looked at his large, violent hands as he held one out for her to shake. As if they’d just finished a business meeting. This time, she took his hand, already playing his game.

“Until next time, Miss Levy,” he said. He started for the door.

“Wait,” Lisavet called after him.

He paused, arching one eyebrow as he looked back at her.

“Do you think… would it be possible for me to have something to do? Like a book or some paper and pencils or something. Anything. I just… I feel like I’m going crazy in here.”

Jack tilted his head to the side, studying her. “I’ll see what I can do.”

T HE NEXT time Jack came, exactly one week after the first visit, he brought her three books.

Lisavet thanked him enthusiastically. The books were gloriously long ones.

All in English, naturally, but she didn’t mind that.

The Three Musketeers , which she enjoyed.

Gone with the Wind , which she found melodramatic.

And Aurora Leigh , a long-form narrative poem that she adored.

That was the one she read the most. Over and over again until the cover became worn.

Noting her preference, Jack brought her more poetry next time he came.

She might have been touched by his gesture if it weren’t for the fact that he was so condescending about it.

“Ernest likes poetry, you know,” he told her. “Recites it like some kind of pretentious academic.”

Jack began each visit the way he began the first—by offering her a cigarette, leaning in close so he could light it for her.

He didn’t trust her to handle the lighter.

Smart man , she thought, surveying the fabric of his suit from up close.

It looked flammable. She came to rely on their little ritual, needing the smoke to keep her nerves at bay.

At first, he asked a lot of questions, covering every detail of her life in the time space with special emphasis on the book of memories.

When she’d told him that it had been taken by a Russian, he had her describe him, then recall each and every memory contained in the book.

As the months dragged on, the questions became less urgent.

Jack, it seemed, had gathered all the information he needed.