Page 70 of The Book of Lost Hours

Amelia handed her the coffee, feeling shy.

Both halves of her knew who this person was, but the half that was less familiar didn’t know how to behave.

She studied the woman as she cupped two hands around the mug and took a drink.

In her face, she could see traces of the Lisavet Levy from before.

Of Moira, the woman Lisavet had become. But the whole of her was neither of those people. In this life, she was simply “mother.”

“You’re quiet today,” her mother said. She still had the remnants of a German accent. She hadn’t had that before.

“I was up too late,” Amelia said.

“I heard. Your father thought someone was trying to break into the house.”

Amelia smiled, letting herself slide into this life.

A life where she could sip coffee out in the garden with her mother while her father cooked breakfast. But then she looked down and choked.

At her feet, a clump of blue forget-me-nots with their bright yellow centers covered the flower bed.

Blooming still in spite of the lateness of the season.

“Are those…”

“Forget-me-nots,” her mother said, kneeling down to admire them. “They’ve been behaving so unusually this year. I thought we’d seen the last of them but when I came out this morning, here they were. Odd for a spring flower, don’t you think?”

She looked at Amelia, eyes twinkling with meaning, a kind of understanding passing between them. Ernest called out the window for them to come in for breakfast. Lisavet stood up to go.

“Wait,” Amelia said.

Her mother turned back expectantly.

“Is this real?” Amelia asked.

“Why would you think it isn’t real?”

“I don’t know. I just…” Amelia frowned. “What if this is just a dream? Or what if it’s just some kind of memory and neither of us knows it?”

Her mother leaned down to kiss her forehead. “If it is just a memory, then at least it’s a happy one,” she said, squeezing her hand.

Ernest called again, accusing them of being slow. They returned inside together.

Amelia wanted to leave it alone. To embrace this beautiful new life and forget everything else. But the watch still called to her. She needed to know what had happened to that place. If it was really gone. If this was really happening or if it was all just a happy memory.

After breakfast, overcome by curiosity and unable to resist the temptation, she went to her room and retrieved Ezekiel Levy’s pocket watch from her dresser drawer.

With shaking fingers, she spun the crown three times and pushed it down.

She held her breath and stepped through the door of the bedroom, squeezing her eyes shut.

Nothing happened. The watch continued ticking.

No silence. No stillness. Maybe it really was gone.

Erased. Then she remembered that once, monks and prophets found the time space through little more than concentrated force of will.

That Azrael, who had never had a watch, had found it in the days when Time was just an idea.

She shut her eyes, turning the crown of the watch in her hand, and there it was.

The whisper, just as it had been in the time space.

She reached for it, the way Lisavet Levy had reached out to part the curtains of Time, and stepped back through the bedroom door again, feeling the very air shudder with indecision.

There was stillness on the other side, invisible drafts giving way to absolute calm.

Amelia waited for the impermeable quiet of the time space, but the whispers didn’t stop.

They got louder and louder, gathering, drifting, culminating around her. She opened her eyes and gasped.

There were no books. No shelves of any kind.

Only stars that hung in the air, swimming in shapes that formed and re-formed in clusters, first in one place, then someplace else as smaller, more varied versions of the world were written and unwritten in an endless flow.

Here, conscious thoughts came into contact, bounced off each other, and entwined in great swirling patterns that slowly became one light.

Here there was no history, no confined past to be maintained.

Here, there was only memory. Floating. Changing.

Free. Each mind a world all its own, each memory neither reflection nor echo of any other.

For a long moment, Amelia stood, looking at the limitless expanse of possibility that was Time.

The whispers all around her were ceaseless.

Time had been silenced before, but now it sang.

When she had seen all she needed to see, she turned back and stepped through the door, still open behind her.

Back to the life that was both real and not real, that both existed but didn’t, as with all memories.

Amelia would hear that whisper for the rest of her life.

The reminder that all of Time was a miraculous construct that gave shape to conscious thoughts and wrote a thousand versions of a single life.

The door to the time space closed behind her. She never opened it again.

A MELIA DIDN ’ T go to Pembroke anymore.

Instead, she went to a different private school close to home where she came and went each day rather than boarding.

Still snooty. Still prestigious. But different.

Apparently this version of Amelia wasn’t as prickly as the other had been.

She had friends. Girls whose names she’d known her whole life.

Girls who ate lunch with her each day and waited for her in the halls between classes.

She was talking to one of them, a mousy-haired girl named Daphne, when she heard rambunctious shouting from down the hall, followed by a loud clattering.

Amelia looked up in alarm, watching a small crowd of seniors kicking some poor victim’s books in all directions.

Beside her, Daphne sighed. “I really wish they wouldn’t do that.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s Steven again. Harassing that poor Russian exchange student. They should leave him alone. It’s not his fault he’s a communist.”

The bell rang. The crowd of boys gave their victim’s belongings one final kick before dispersing. Amelia caught sight of a miserable-looking Russian boy hunched over, scrambling to collect his trodden books. A Russian boy with lanky limbs and hollow cheeks.

Daphne tapped her on the arm. “Come on, we better go. We’ll be late.”

“You go ahead,” Amelia said, waving her off.

She watched the boy as the hallway cleared.

It couldn’t be… could it? She moved toward him slowly and bent down to pick up the last of the books.

A Russian-English dictionary. She wondered if this version of Anton Stepanov spoke English as well as the last. He looked different somehow, and yet entirely the same.

Still scrawny. Still dark-haired and hollow-featured.

But some of the haunted look had gone from his eyes.

He glanced up to see her standing there and pulled an irritated face she knew all too well.

“What are you staring at?” he snapped.

Amelia gave him an indignant frown. “Well, I was going to give your book back. But if you’re going to be rude about it…”

“Oh, I see. Very funny. Take the dictionary from the communist boy so he cannot talk.”

“I wasn’t going to steal it.”

“No? Then give it back.”

Amelia held it out to him. He took it from her begrudgingly, turning back to swap some of the books from his locker.

“You could say thank you,” she said.

“For not stealing? Okay, thank you for following the law. That is very nice.”

“Wow. Are all Russians this rude?”

He shut his locker with a sigh. “Okay, okay. Thank you. Are all Americans so needy?”

Amelia couldn’t help it. She giggled.

He scowled at her, muttering to himself in Russian.

At lunch, she saw Anton by himself on the outskirts of the cafeteria. His plastic tray of food had been largely untouched. Amelia picked up her own lunch and stood up, ignoring her other friends. She cleared her throat as she approached.

“Oh. You again,” he said, frowning at her. “What do you want?”

“Want some company?” she asked awkwardly.

“You don’t mind eating lunch with the communist?”

“No. But I think it means you have to give me half of your banana bread.” She gestured to the plastic-wrapped loaf on his tray.

Anton frowned at her. “Why?”

“Don’t communists believe in sharing?”

He pointed to the slice of chocolate cake sticking out of the top of her open lunch box. “I will trade you for it. After all, we are in America. Don’t Americans believe in trading?”

“I hardly think chocolate cake for banana bread is a fair trade.”

Anton cracked a smile. “You’re right. It isn’t. That’s what makes it American.”

Amelia smiled back and slid it over to him. They didn’t say much else to each other that day, but Amelia didn’t mind. She knew it took time for him to get comfortable.

The next day, she arrived before he got there and sat at the same table.

Anton approached her but didn’t sit down.

She looked up at him expectantly. He held up his dessert plate.

Today it was a blueberry cobbler. Amelia had brought a whole Hershey’s chocolate bar in anticipation and offered it to him.

“You know, I think you’re starting to get the hang of this whole being American thing,” she teased as he sat down and peeled off the wrapper.

“Then maybe we try this instead,” he said, breaking off the top quarter of the chocolate bar and holding it out to her.

“What country does this?”

Anton shrugged. “No country. Just friends.”

Amelia smiled and took the offering of chocolate and friendship.