Page 42 of The Book of Lost Hours

She looked back at the sleeping man. Only a boy really.

Time ticked in the back of her head. Even from several feet away she could sense it.

His memories swirling up and away from him.

Not visible in the real world but still there.

She could do it. If she wanted to. But what would that mean for him?

Which pieces of his life would she be erasing?

“If you don’t do this, it will only be worse for him,” Jack said over her shoulder. “You realize that, right? Worse for him… worse for you.”

Lisavet’s eyes snapped to him. He meant isolation.

He meant death. For Harry… but also for her if she didn’t comply.

Jack would keep them both locked up like this until she did what he asked or perhaps he would kill him.

And really what were a few lost memories worth when the alternative was perpetual imprisonment?

What value was the truth in comparison to death?

She took the notebook from his hands. As she stepped closer to the sleeping man and cleared the memories from his mind as instructed, she felt Jack’s eyes on her. A smile curling the edges of his lips, he was pleased with the outcome he had wrought.

When she was finished he led her back to the car, where they drove in silence. Lisavet seethed in the passenger seat before Jack spoke.

“Something the matter?” he asked, even though he knew perfectly well what was wrong.

“How do you live with yourself?” she asked bitterly. “Knowing how many people’s lives you’ve erased.”

Jack looked taken aback at her accusation. “By thinking of all the lives I’ve saved. We’re preventing a war, remember? A few memories are nothing in comparison to keeping the world from another disaster.”

“And what gives you the right to choose what’s worth saving?” Lisavet asked. She’d asked Ernest the same question, years ago, but Jack’s reaction to it was far from what Ernest’s had been.

“If it isn’t me, it’s someone else. You think if I quit, it’ll all just stop? Think again. It’s bigger than that, and the way I see it, it’s better to be the one erasing than the one getting erased. This way I at least have a shot at protecting what matters most.”

“What matters to you, you mean.”

Jack gave her a vacant look as he braked for a red light, one corner of his mouth raised in a wry smile. “Isn’t that what you did? Altered the past. Changed memories to save the people you cared about.”

Lisavet frowned at him. “What I did was different.”

“Is it, though? I’ve seen that chasm. Whatever you changed, it must have been something big. Nothing I’ve done has ever had an impact like that.”

The light changed and he began driving again, turning his eyes back on the road. For a moment, Lisavet assumed they were done talking, but then Jack spoke again, his voice low.

“I’ve been asking myself about that chasm a lot, you know. Wondering what it could have been. What could have made the girl who fought so hard to save meaningless scraps of history alter the past so drastically like that? Something to do with Ernest maybe or… something to do with your daughter?”

Lisavet froze, every inch of her body going cold.

“You know, Brady thinks she’s still alive,” he continued in an offhand manner. “His theory is that she’s out there somewhere. That you altered the past to save her and hid her in one of the memories that you kept in that book of yours. But of course, that’s all just speculation.”

Jack didn’t so much as look at her, nor did he say another word about it.

He didn’t have to. Lisavet knew him well enough by now to understand that behind his statement was an unspoken threat.

One that would ensure that, the next time he asked her to erase someone’s memories, she would comply without a fuss.

T WO DAYS later, Jack came at his usual Saturday time.

He pulled up his chair and offered her a cigarette, which Lisavet took eagerly, as dependent on them now as she was on him.

At first he said nothing at all, but then he spoke in a remarkably casual sort of way, examining the tip of his cigarette.

“I talked to your doctors today,” he said.

Lisavet often wondered what they talked about when they discussed her case. Not the time space, certainly. Lisavet herself had never even spoken to any of these doctors. What kind of illness had they given her? How had Jack explained away her condition?

“You did?” she asked hesitantly.

“Yup. They said it’s about high time we get you out of here.”

Lisavet blinked several times, not fully comprehending.

“You’ve shown remarkable signs of improvement these past few months.

On our little outings you behave almost normally.

You’re eating better, though still not enough.

Sleeping more. You’ve almost completely reacclimatized to life outside of the time space.

And they think the best way to move forward is to let you rejoin society. ”

Lisavet scarcely dared to hope. “And… what do you think?”

Jack took an agonizingly long pull on his cigarette, prolonging his response. “I think they’re right.”

She struggled to swallow. To maintain normalcy. “R-really?”

“Uh-huh. So I’ve started putting together a plan for you. I was hoping I could run it by you before our outing today.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“I want you to come work for me.”

“Work for you? As in, for the TRP?”

“I want to bring you on as my secretary. It’s a low-level job, but the pay is good.

Perfect for someone like you. You’re a little inexperienced, but I’m sure that won’t matter given your other talents.

You’d work normal hours, Monday through Friday.

There’s an open room at a ladies’ boardinghouse not far from the office.

Normally you need a guardian to sign a waiver, but I could put it in my name.

” He paused, watching her closely to gauge her reaction.

“You’d be doing me a favor, too, Lisavet. I could use someone like you.”

Someone like her. Someone who could stop Time. Someone who could, when prevailed upon by him, alter Time and erase living memories at will. He could use someone like her indeed.

“Would that even be approved?” she managed to ask.

“Already has been.” Jack took a stack of folded papers from the inner pocket of his coat. “The pardon for your past actions made it through the necessary levels of approval about six months ago. I’ve had a buddy of mine in the INS department working on securing your identity papers.”

“Identity papers?”

“Birth certificates. Passports. You can’t very well come work for the TRP as Lisavet Levy, now, can you?”

“I guess not.”

Jack set the papers down in front of her.

“I’ve filled out the application for you.

If anyone asks, you’re a second-generation immigrant of Irish descent who grew up in Brooklyn.

Your parents worked in a factory. Both died before the age of fifty.

Lung disease. A real tragedy. You’re an only child and all your other relatives are still in Ireland. Last name, Donnelly.”

“What’s my first name?” Lisavet asked, noticing that section was blank.

“I thought maybe you’d like to decide that for yourself.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Why not? But, I should add, you won’t be permitted to discuss your former life. In the office or otherwise. You would assume your new identity in every aspect of life. Lisavet Levy would cease to exist entirely.”

“But… I would get to leave?” Lisavet asked tentatively.

Jack smiled at her. “Yes, Miss Levy, you would get to leave.”

“And… what about…”

His smile widened in a darkly bemused fashion. “Ernest? What about him?”

“He also works for the TRP. Right?”

“Yes.”

“And that won’t… it wouldn’t be…”

“A problem? Why would it be? It’s not like he remembers you.”

Lisavet looked down at her hands. Sure, it wouldn’t be a problem for him. But what about her? Could she work that close to Ernest all the time, knowing what had passed between them? Could she listen to him talk about Amelia and not have it break her into a thousand pieces?

“What do you say, sweetheart? Want to come work for me?” Jack asked, breaking through her cloud of thoughts.

He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, watching her think this over with an infuriating smirk fixed to his face. He knew exactly what this arrangement would do to her. But what other options did she have?

“When would I start?”

“Next week. We just need you to pick a first name.”

Lisavet looked down at the papers, thinking.

“Moira,” she said after a few moments.

Jack made a face. “You sure? You can take a second to think if you want.”

Lisavet could tell he didn’t like it and that pleased her.

“Moira was my mother’s name,” she said. The only name she could bear to be called that wasn’t her own.

“Well, then Moira Donnelly, I’ll get that taken care of for you.” He wrote it down and stood up. “You ready?”

“For what?”

“We’ve got one more outing to go on before we bust you out of here,” he said, holding out a conspiratorial hand. As if he wasn’t the one keeping her here in the first place.

He took her two blocks south of the hospital to a tailor shop where a woman with a beehive hairdo took her measurements for a new wardrobe.

She talked in a rapid-fire Boston accent as she did, asking all kinds of questions about where she was from and what her family was like.

It was a test. Lisavet could sense Jack watching her as he smoked a cigarette on the sofa nearby, waiting to see if she would slip up.

She delivered her lines with ease, fixing the woman with a confident smile that seemed to come from someone else.

The woman tittered enthusiastically at her responses, claiming that she had a sister who married an Irish Catholic.

As the woman went into the back of the shop to retrieve a bolt of fabric, Lisavet looked to Jack for his approval.

In response, he raised his cigarette in her direction.

When they were finished, he took her down the street to a salon to get a haircut.

Her pale, waist-length hair was one of the things Ernest had always loved most about her; she didn’t want to cut it.

But Jack insisted it was necessary. He stepped out to “take care of something” a few blocks away.

Lisavet’s heart was in her throat as the stylist took her to the back, conscious that this was yet another test. To see what she might do when left alone.

“So what are we doing today, dear?” the stylist asked.

Lisavet bit her lip, studying her face in the mirror.

It looked different than she remembered it.

Her hair hung limp, her cheekbones seemed sharper, her cheeks hollower.

But it was her eyes that looked the most changed.

Haunted, like Ernest’s had been. The person staring back at her in the mirror was not the girl who had danced with Ernest in 1949 and kissed him under a sky full of stars.

This person was someone she didn’t recognize. A stranger wearing her hair like a wig.

“Cut it off,” she said at last.

The stylist’s eyes widened. “What? All of it?”

“All of it.”

Recognizing the determined look in her eyes, the woman leaned closer and pulled her hair back away from her face. “Have you ever considered a darker color?”

When Jack returned, Lisavet emerged from the shop with her hair cut just below her chin, dyed a shade of dark midnight brown. His eyes widened when he saw her, his mouth dropping open in surprise.

“Damn,” he said with a chuckle.

“Do you like it?” Lisavet asked.

He took one of the strands between his thumb and forefinger, examining it. A smile broke out over his face, still smug but a little more genuine than normal.

“I do. It suits you. Sharp and dark. Just like you are.”

As they went to the car, Lisavet rolled the words over in her head. Sharp and dark he had said. That’s what he saw when he looked at her.

She was the moon no longer.