Page 51 of The Book of Lost Hours

On Monday morning Moira came into the office early. Jack was meant to be getting back that day and she wanted to make sure everything was in order. When she arrived, Ernest was already there. She caught him in the act of laying something on her desk.

“Mr. Duquesne?” she asked as she removed her coat.

He jumped back in surprise. He clutched the paper-wrapped package in his hands, looking remarkably guilty.

“M-Moira,” he said. “I mean… Miss Donnelly.”

“Did you need something?”

“Yes. Or, uh,… no. I just came to give you this.” He held out the package to her. “As a thank-you for everything you did for me the past two weeks.”

“I was just doing my job,” Moira said, feeling herself blush.

“I know, but it meant something to me.”

Meant something to him. Moira took the package from him, heart in her throat. She opened it carefully to find a slim volume of poems by Edgar Allan Poe bound in red, pages edged with gold foil.

“In case you ever find time to read again,” Ernest said sheepishly.

“Thank you,” Moira said softly. She couldn’t look at him. If she looked at him, she might start crying and that was unacceptable.

“I took your advice by the way. I went up to Boston over the weekend and took Amelia to the zoo. It worked like a charm. She finally started speaking to me. And we’re talking full sentences.”

Moira smiled, brimming with warmth. “That’s wonderful. And did she tell you her plans for the frogs?”

Ernest laughed, the sound of it sending shivers down Moira’s spine. “Apparently there’s this girl, Rebecca, who’s been giving her a real hard time. The frogs were inbound to Rebecca’s bed when the house mother intercepted them.”

Moira laughed with him, but in her head all she could think about was her daughter’s craftiness.

How very like her she was after all. Ernest would certainly have never come up with such an elaborate revenge plot, diplomat that he was.

As the laughter died between them, Ernest held her gaze, looking as though he wanted to say something else.

“Well, anyway. I just came to say thank you. For the suggestion.”

“Anytime,” Moira said.

He turned to go. Stopped halfway. Started walking again. Finally turned back. “I was wondering. Would you…” He paused, eyes drifting up as if reconsidering.

Moira waited expectantly. “Yes?”

“Would you maybe… want to get dinner sometime?”

“As in a date?” she asked, her voice a much higher pitch than usual.

“Well… yes.”

“A date with you?”

His lips tilted upward. “Preferably. But I suppose that’s negotiable.”

Moira hesitated. A date with Ernest. Jack would be furious. She should decline. But something stopped her. It had been more than two years. She’d been an exemplary employee thus far. And it wasn’t like Ernest remembered her. What was the harm?

“Okay,” she said at last. “I’d like that. When?”

“This Friday night maybe?”

“Friday is good.”

“Good.” Ernest smiled to himself. “I’ll pick you up at seven. You’re at that boardinghouse off Fifth, right?”

Moira made a noise.

“I’m not stalking you,” he said at once. “I just… Collins mentioned it once and I… have a good memory I guess.”

Moira’s stomach flipped again. He had talked about her with other timekeepers.

“Oh, right, I’m sure that’s it,” she said, hardly recognizing the flirtatious nature of her own voice.

He blushed. “Right, well. I’ll see you Friday night.

Not that I won’t see you around the office this week, but especially on Friday, I…

I’ll see you.” He turned to go and then stopped yet again.

“Hey, um,… would you mind not saying anything to Jack? It’s not that I think he’d mind or anything, I just…

well, he’s bound to be insufferable about it. ”

Moira smiled at him. “Not a problem at all.”

When he left, she hid the book of poems in her desk drawer so Jack wouldn’t see them. She started typing his schedule for the day as usual, smiling at him when he finally came into the office.

“Anything noteworthy happen while I was away?” he asked as he undid his scarf.

Moira kept her eyes on her work. “Nope. Nothing at all. Things were rather quiet without you actually.”

“Quiet?” Jack repeated.

“Yes. In fact, the rest of us finally managed to get some work done.”

Jack gave an incredulous laugh. “Watch it, Donnelly. I’m not about to take that kind of talk from the likes of you.”

His tone was lighthearted. Completely unaware that she had just succeeded in lying to him for the very first time without him noticing.

She smiled to herself as he went into his office and shut the door.

After almost four years since she’d left the time space, she was finally figuring out how to play his game.

O N THE night of his date with Moira Donnelly, Ernest was in the time space, pacing.

“You look nervous.”

The voice came from several feet away, emerging from the darkness.

“Do I?” he asked, running a hand through his hair distractedly.

Vasily Stepanov stepped out from behind the shelves. “I have not seen you look this nervous since the day we met,” he teased.

“I wasn’t nervous the day we met,” Ernest muttered begrudgingly.

Vasily’s lips curled at the edges. A hint of a smile, as though his mouth had forgotten how long ago but still wanted to try.

Vasily was a tall man, but not overly large for a member of the KGB.

Broad shouldered but thin, with dark hair and a pair of thick, serious eyebrows that accented the cavernous depth of his eyes.

Eyes that carried a spark of intrigue in them as he removed his gun from his belt and laid it on the shelf next to where Ernest had placed his upon arrival.

Their standard greeting. A way of establishing trust.

“So what is it today? Is it a woman?”

Ernest grimaced. “What makes you think that?” he asked, trying to seem casual but failing.

Vasily leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner, dropping his voice into a whisper. “It is always a woman. What else can turn hardened soldiers like us into spineless ninnies?”

Ernest chuckled softly at his phrasing. Spineless ninny was right.

In the days leading up to his date, Ernest thought about canceling on four separate occasions.

It was to be his first date in years, and he could think of a dozen reasons not to go through with it.

But despite his rationalizing, he couldn’t bring himself to cancel.

“So, are you going to tell me?” Vasily prompted again.

“I have a date tonight,” Ernest admitted at last.

“Ahhhhh,” Vasily said, smiling a little more freely. “That is wonderful for you. What is she like? Is she very beautiful?”

Ernest smiled in spite of himself. “Well, yes, she is. She… she’s luminous.”

“Luminous,” Vasily repeated, measuring the word. Anyone else would mock him for his overtly poetic language but not Vasily. The Russian man had an admiration for beautiful words.

Ernest had been meeting with Vasily Stepanov at least once a month.

After Azrael, as the memory of the monk called himself, had introduced them, they’d begun a wary but cooperative relationship of sorts, exchanging notes on what was to be burned, working together to salvage what they could without risking their own lives in the process.

They’d developed a system for communicating where to meet by marking the spot with a drawing of a flower in chalk.

Easy to erase with a single swipe of the hand once seen.

“Forget-me-nots for Lisavet Levy,” Vasily had said, drawing one on the floor of the time space to demonstrate. The drawings had been his idea.

Forget-me-nots: a flower whose name held the same meaning in English, Russian, and German.

Ernest had tried to ask about the girl called Lisavet Levy, but Vasily had never given him the full story, claiming that it was too dangerous.

That knowing too much might lead Ernest down the path of destruction they were both so desperately trying to avoid.

Whoever she was… whatever had happened to her…

Vasily seemed to feel personally responsible.

At first it made Ernest suspicious, as did everything the Russian man said or did those first months.

He wasn’t alone in it. Vasily was just as wary of him, both of them watching the other’s every move.

Over time, however, their suspicions toward each other had grown into a begrudging respect, then a cautious friendship.

Ernest learned more about his former Russian adversary.

About his children, a son and three daughters.

About his late wife. In turn, Ernest had told him about the death of his mother and sister as they’d happened, leaning on him in his time of grief.

He’d told him about Amelia, getting advice on how to handle a wayward little girl from a man who already had three of his own.

They had a lot in common, Ernest and his former adversary.

“So this woman you are seeing…” Vasily asked when they’d finished exchanging their notes for the evening. “Is she a good match for you?”

Ernest’s stomach flipped a little. “I guess we’ll find out tonight.”

“You do not know already?”

“Tonight’s our first date.”

At that, Vasily gave him a knowing look and patted him on the shoulder. “Well, I wish you luck then, my American friend. We meet again soon?”

Ernest nodded, reaching to take his pistol from the shelf and return it to its holster. “Three weeks from tonight. Same time.”

Vasily gave him a sharp nod and a salute before taking back his own gun and leaving the time space.