A Tale of Two Centuries

Feet bouncing beneath my chair, I gather my strength and blurt out, “Do you not wish for me to stay?”

Austin stops writing. Cat drops the book from her hands. And I wait in fear.

The same doubts I had when I first walked up to her door come creeping back. Could she have been pretending this whole time? I think back to her excited greeting and the way she welcomed me so readily into her home, and doubt that can be true. But if she did miss me, and did want me here, could it be that I pushed too hard about Lucas?

I frown, thinking back over the last week. The two of them have seemed so happy now, especially once she settled his fears about his ancestor lookalike.

Finally Cat looks up, stopping my runaway assumptions and ponderings. “Of course I want you to stay, Less.”

Relieved breath rushes out of my lungs, even though I hear a distinct but left unsaid.

She puts her elbows on the tabletop and massages her temples with her fingers. “Of course I want you to stay,” Cat repeats, “but I can’t help being scared. Last night Reyna said that if you stayed here, you’d be changing history. Basically you’d be wiping out a whole line, right? So what does that mean for me? What if we find out today that I’m part of your line, Less? Does it mean that if you don’t go back, then I’ll just…cease to exist?”

Silence follows her speech.

Chapter Twenty-seven

I don’t know why I never thought of this before.

No wonder Cat has been so on edge all morning.

I stare at her steepled hands, the long, slender fingers so much like my own, and wonder how I could have missed the signs. From the first moment I saw Cat step out of the carriage that brought her to my home two years ago, I have felt a strong connection with her. Everyone loved her, of course—Mama, Father, Cipriano—but it was the two of us who bonded so quickly and so well. I teased her that we were blood relations and I could decipher her thoughts as well as my own, and perhaps this is why. She comes from my own blood.

For the past twelve hours, my only concern has been myself…well, myself and Austin. Not once did I stop and truly think about how my decisions would affect those who come after me. Cat is right. My actions tomorrow night could erase an entire lineage, including the descendant sitting beside me whom I’ve grown to love as a sister.

“Oh, Cat, I am so sorry,” I tell her, reaching a hand out and then hesitating and drawing it back. “I-I didn’t know… I didn’t think—”

“Princess, it’s all right.”

Austin’s words hang in the air. Astonished he could dismiss the subject so lightly, I gasp. Cat blinks—I only assume as baffled as I am—and we both turn our attention toward him.

“Excuse me?” she asks, dropping one of her hands to the table. It lands with a smack. “You did not just say it’s all right. I mean, I’m sorry for getting all heavy and freaked about my own demise, Mr. Laidback, but you know, some people actually value their lives.”

Austin shrugs, letting the insult and her sharp tone roll off his shoulders. “But you’re not part of Alessandra’s line. No demise to freak about.”

With an incredulous look, Cat’s head falls into her other hand, as if the day has already exhausted her, and it isn’t even lunchtime. Feeling similarly drained, I rest my elbows on the table. “And how can you sound so sure?”

“It’s easy. She’s related through her mom, right, because of the name?” he asks calmly, already knowing the answer. On the ride here this morning, we filled the boys in on all we knew, including how her birth mother’s last name of Angeli is the Americanized version of my real last name D’Angeli. I nod and Austin continues. “But your descendants would have your last name. The last name of whatever guy you married.”

Austin’s lip curls around the last word as he says it.

As Cat stares blankly ahead, obviously absorbing the information, I search my mind for any holes in his reasoning. But it makes perfect sense. My body sags under the enormous relief, and my head falls onto the tabletop. “Oh, thank heavens.”

Cat releases a shaky laugh. “You can say that again.”

“Oh, thank heavens.”

She laughs again, only this time for real. “Now you’re learning.” I hear her sigh and then feel the weight of her head press against my shoulder blade. “Girl, I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch all morning. I was just scared, but I wanted to help, and I didn’t know what to do.”

“You could have begun with telling me,” I say, my voice muffled by the tabletop. I lift my head, and Cat sits up; I turn so I can look in her eyes. “You do know that as much as I want to stay here, I would never even think about doing so if it meant hurting you, right?”

“Of course I know that,” she says. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. I wanted to find out for myself if it were true, and then only tell you if I absolutely had to.” She grins. “We only needed one family member hyperventilating in the bathroom this morning.”

I cringe, envisioning her doing just that while I grabbed a bowl of those delicious multi-colored circles for breakfast. “From now on,” I tell her, holding my little finger out as she’d showed me once. “We are a team. No more secrets.”

“No more secrets,” she repeats, hooking her finger with mine. As we tug, the tension between us drains away.

Austin nudges my foot under the table, attesting to that fact that while I may not have all the answers yet, I at least have the people I love in my corner, helping me.

One disaster averted, I think, nudging him back. Then I dive back into my book, my thoughts remaining on the rest of my possible descendants.

A few minutes later, Lucas returns with a broad smile. “I’ve got intel.”

He flips a chair around and sits down, setting his phone and an open notebook in front of him. “That was a friend of mine back in Milan. Figured they may have better resources on Italian history there, so I asked him to check things out for me. Basically I had him focus his search on any future world leaders, scientists, or Nobel Prize winners that were in your line. I thought that could be our loophole for Reyna—if no one affected history in a big way and you choose to stay, you can argue that any children you have here have the potential to do more for humanity.”

Lucas shrugs and sort of rolls his eyes, as if his idea is nothing more than a shot in the wind. But right now his theory is our best—and only—option.

“No, that could work,” I say, leaning forward in my chair with renewed optimism. “What did your friend find?”

“It turns out we got lucky. Records from the sixteenth century aren’t that easy to find for just everyday, regular people, but the guy you married was in government, so my friend was able to find a trail.”

Out of everything Lucas just said, one detail stands out from the rest as if it were lined with the many-hued lights that illuminated the streets of West Hollywood. It appears Austin agrees for he asks, “Wait, you know who she marries?”

I flinch at his use of the word marries.

Whenever the topic of my potential spouse has arisen so far, Austin has always been very careful to use the past tense, as if we were discussing something that happened long ago and has no effect on us now. And in a way, he is right. For him, these things are history, and depending on what we discover today, we may have the chance to change any of these things from happening.

But everything we are learning are also things yet to come for me. My possible future. And the fact that Austin didn’t just ask who I married makes me think that for him, things are now getting