Page 34 of Time for You

Henry looked at the hand-drawn map in his lap as the countryside smeared by. George’s former paramour lived in London, but she had, as he’d claimed, known a lot about constellations and moon phases and “all that woo-woo shit” that everyone liked to tease Ellie about.

“How did I not know about Maria?” Henry asked George. Anne sat across from them, frowning down at a piece of paper.

“You’re easy to read and shockingly terrible at noticing things.”

Henry grinned. “That makes me sound like an awful friend.”

“No, just a very oblivious one. But do you think what Maria said sounds right?”

“I do, yes. The book she had was an earlier version of the one I found. The map in it isn’t as detailed as the one I saw in the future, but the title and theory are the same.”

“Oh, this is impossible,” Anne groaned. She had been immersed in calculations for the better part of an hour, determined to crack it for him. “This makes no sense .”

George grinned at her. “Never thought I’d see the day where Annie MacDonald gives up.”

“I am not giving up ; I am declaring this an utterly impossible tangle of numbers that only a mathematical genius could decipher.”

“I thought you were a genius,” Henry teased. “I believe you used to tell me so daily.”

Anne fixed them both with an irritated look. “I am a genius, but not this particular type of genius. I am a scholar of anatomy and medicine, not numbers and symbols. Those I’m merely brilliant at.”

Henry snorted, and wished for the hundredth time she could meet Daphne and her friends.

George, however, was looking thoughtful. “Who could do it, then? Maggie?”

Anne shook her head. “Mags is good at business, but it’s Mama who has handled all the numbers. Besides, Maggie would never consent to help get Henry back to the future; she doesn’t want him to leave again.”

“And you do?” Henry asked mildly.

“Of course. How else will I get uninterrupted use of your books?” Anne replied mischievously, but then she sobered. “George is right, though. We need someone else, and the only one who could do it is Mama.”

The three of them shared a look. None of them much fancied approaching Lydia with this, but Anne was right—she was their best shot.

“Then we ask her,” Henry said.

“Good,” Anne said, handing her stack of calculations over. “But you have to tell Mama you want to leave again alone, because I don’t want to be there when you do.”

Henry knocked on the door to what had been Father’s study and waited for Lydia to bid him to enter. She had a ledger open on the desk, a set of spectacles perched on the tip of her nose. It was odd, seeing her in the place Henry had seen as his father’s, but it fit, somehow.

“You’re back,” she announced, somewhat unnecessarily. “I assume it was a productive trip? Was Anne satisfied, or will she continue to wear the same three drab dresses I bought her two seasons ago?”

They hadn’t told her the real reason they were going to London, using Anne’s need to go shopping for the latest fashions—something she had never once expressed interest in—as their excuse. It was a flimsy pretense, and one he should have realized his mother would see through immediately.

Henry sank into the chair across the desk, chagrined. “It was, but Anne did come home empty-handed.”

“Ah. What did you discover, then?”

“A way back through the time veil. Or a possible way back. We hope.”

“You hope?”

“Anne started on the calculations, but she couldn’t get them to work.”

Lydia pursed her lips, sighed, and held out her hand. “Let’s see it, then.”

Henry hesitated. “If I leave, I am likely not coming back.”

“I know.” Lydia kept her hand extended, a stern look on her face.

“If I could go back in time to see your father, just once more—I would do it. In a heartbeat. So stop stalling and let me see what your sister came up with.” Her voice shook ever so slightly as she spoke, at odds with her matter-of-fact tone.

Henry pulled out the book and map with Anne’s work scribbled on them and handed them over. He explained the rough outlines of how it worked, but before he could finish, Lydia was nodding to herself, crossing out a few notations, and scribbling down more numbers.

She consulted the map, made one more correction to Anne’s calculations, and then nodded once more, satisfied. “There.”

“Are you—”

“Of course I’m sure.” She handed the map back to him, with an X over a graveyard in a map of Manchester. “It opens outside Manchester three days from now, and will take you to—” She broke off and consulted the book, flipping pages back and forth. “Florida. Isn’t that place beastly hot?”

“It is,” Henry confirmed, his brain struggling to keep up. “And it’s a long way from Minneapolis, but travel is much faster there.”

“Then our only real problem is the timing.”

“The timing?”

Lydia nodded crisply. “The spacing of the veils—if the calculations are correct, you’ll be arriving a year later than you were last there.”

That sank in, a cold cube of ice in his stomach. Only a year—she couldn’t have moved on in a year, could she?

Lydia must have noticed his fear. “What’s wrong?”

Henry made himself shrug. “There’s many things that could go wrong in a year, that’s all.”

“You’re afraid she’ll have moved on.” She took off her spectacles, her expression unfamiliarly gentle. “If she loves you, a year won’t have been long enough. Believe me on that. Finding love like that again doesn’t come easy.”

Henry knew Lydia was speaking from experience, but broaching that subject was beyond him at the moment. He swallowed hard, tracing a line with a series of numbers on it from Chicago to Paris. “And if she has?”

“Then in two years, you come back through the veil to Paris. Twenty-four months exactly after your arrival.”

It would be a cold two years, living in the future without Daphne, but he couldn’t imagine having a chance to see her again and not taking it. “Then that’s my plan.” He looked up, meeting her direct gaze. “Thank you,” he said softly.

Her eyes glistened, and her response came out in a whisper. “Of course.”

“There are sandwiches in your bag, along with some bannocks,” Lydia said, as usual hiding her emotions under business. “Shep can—”

“Shepard doesn’t need to do anything else,” Henry said soothingly. “It’s barely half a day’s journey to Manchester.”

“Half a day to Manchester, and then across the ocean over a hundred-some years into the future,” she corrected.

Henry could have argued, but instead he turned to Maggie, who was waiting impatiently to say goodbye. He opened his mouth, but as usual, his sister beat him to it. “Don’t you dare tell me anything about running the business as your final thoughts to me. I don’t need any help.”

“I was going to say as much.” He grinned. “I was never well suited to it, but you—you’re brilliant at it, and I’d never dream of pretending I knew better.”

“Good,” Maggie huffed, but she pulled him into a hug. “I hate that you’re leaving, but I do love you, you know.”

“I know,” he agreed.

Anne’s turn was next, although Henry had been up most of the night before, walking her through what the gang had taught him about using the medicines they’d sent and warning about the “space-time paradox” it might cause if word of them or the textbook were to get out. “I have something for you,” he said.

Anne looked at his hands eagerly. “Where? What is it?”

“It’s not so much a gift as it is an opportunity. I spoke to the medical college, and they have agreed to accept you for the Michaelmas term.”

“But that’s—”

“Starting in one week, yes. So you had better get prepared. I set the money aside in a trust, but you should be warned: Some of the professors do not want women there, or they charge more for teaching you. But if you make it through, there’s no reason you can’t work as a fully qualified doctor.”

Anne threw her arms around him in glee. “Thank you,” she said, sniffing back tears.

“Thank me by becoming the best damn doctor in all of Scotland,” he replied. If Anne started weeping, he might not be able to bring himself to leave.

“I have something for you, too,” Anne said, and thrust a folded piece of paper into his hands.

He frowned down at it, taking in the hand-drawn map with tiny stars scattered across Europe. “What is this?”

“Mama and I worked it out. It’s all possible rips in the time veil for the next fifty years, for each of us. As close as we could get, anyway. It might not work, but at least this way there’s a chance we’ll see each other again.”

Henry swallowed over the lump in his throat and hugged his sister one last time.

Lydia was waiting behind Anne, while George checked his watch to make sure they were still on time.

Their scheduled train would get them to Manchester with plenty of time to make it to the time veil, but that didn’t mean they could dawdle.

He gave his mother a tight hug. “I love you, Ma,” he whispered.

She let out a soft, choking sob. “I love you, too. And I want you to know—I understand.”

Henry let her go and wiped at a stray tear. “Thank you.” He glanced at the door, where Shepard waited expectantly with George. “And I see what Shepard is to you,” he added quietly. “You should be happy, Ma. Maggie and Annie would understand.”

Lydia’s eyes widened. “I—that would—people would talk, Henry.”

“They would. But you’d be happy.”

She looked over her shoulder and then back at Henry, nodding. “Thank you. You grew into a good man, you know. Your father would be proud.”

Henry nodded in turn and brushed one last kiss to her cheek.

He had a train to catch.