“Who is it?” I demanded.
All of us except Tish rose to confront him; somewhere in a shadowy corner of my mind lingered the memory of the day another stranger entered the cafe, a man named Zack Dixon. But Zack was not part of this timeline; Aunt Jilly had not been attacked that summer, back in 2006.
Robbie said, “It’s Derrick Yancy.”
Tish lifted her head, leaning on the table for support.
I opened the screen door as Derrick climbed the porch steps, noting his obvious discomfort at finding himself the focal point of everyone’s attention. He closed and shook off his umbrella before entering, gaze leaping straight to Tish.
“I am so sorry, Tish,” he said with quiet sincerity, and whatever negative opinions I’d harbored about this man were at once dashed.
Her voice was as jagged as broken glass. “Case is gone…”
Ignoring everyone else for the time being Derrick strode to her side, wet shoes squeaking across the floor, and knelt. “I couldn’t get away until now. No one knows I’m here. I didn’t even chance an airline ticket. I drove straight through. Fallon has not reappeared since Saturday night. Father refuses to believe Fallon was responsible for anything. He thinks you were mugged, for Christ’s sake.” Derrick cupped Tish’s upper arm and squeezed. “I know otherwise. Fallon has lost all touch with reality. He has to be stopped. And…I may know how.”
Two hours later no one was hungry even though it was well past the dinner hour. Icy rain continued to fall, drumming on the roof; the wide front windows resembled distraught, weeping eyes. The conversation had deteriorated from its earlier animated progress; everyone was talking and no one was listening. I slipped outside for a moment to collect my thoughts, keeping under the eaves to avoid the drizzle as I paced. The wind had died. Flickertail no longer roiled with whitecaps, its silver surface pockmarked now by less-violent droplets. I paused at the far end of the porch, stalling, trying to process what Derrick had revealed.
So the Yancys’ ability to jump through time is not exclusive to Fallon.
But Derrick is too scared to try.
The back of Derrick’s head was visible from my vantage point as I peered through the front windows, hidden in the shadows of the eaves. He sat facing Tish, elbows widespread on the table; I couldn’t discern their words through the glass, only muted sounds. At age thirteen, Derrick woke one morning in a bed not his own. More bewildered than afraid, he wandered long hallways and peered into opulent rooms, at last coming across a newspaper abandoned on a desk. The date on the paper, a Chicago Tribune, was Sunday, April 10, 1910. As if touching the newsprint triggered a mechanism operated by someone out of sight, he was abruptly whisked back to his own bedroom in 1998.
“I’ve done everything in my power to forget that day,” were his exact words. “I knew enough about Fallon by then to realize he would kill me if I told him what had happened. He would have viewed my ability as a threat. I was terrified to sleep for months after that but it never happened again. To this day, I don’t know if I caused the jump to occur or if it was simply a fluke. I’ve never tried again.”
The jump.
“You have to try now.” Tish was gritty dead-serious, her bruised eyes fixed on his with the intensity of a cornered animal.
“I have no control over it. What if I can’t get back again? It’s not like there’s a guarantee for return.”
And so on.
I felt utterly disconnected, free-floating, all strings clipped as I peered through the front windows of my family’s longtime business. If returning to our real lives proved impossible, nothing else mattered – not even Derrick’s ability. So what if everyone believed this timeline was a horrible deviation from what was meant to be? Justin couldn’t very well leave Aubrey and start having babies with Jilly; Tish couldn’t bring Case back any more than Blythe and their sons could be restored to Mom, or Mathias and our children to me. Grandma and Aunt Ellen were gone. Ruthann and Marshall might as well have been stranded on distant planets. I turned away from the window, grinding my teeth, and descended the porch steps, lifting my face to the damp black sky.
The name on my lips was one I’d called upon many times in past years, connected to the man whose photograph once led me to Mathias. Whether he knew it or not, Malcolm Carter had sustained me for a long time. Clasping my hands as though praying – and, in a way, I truly was praying, hoping that somehow he would hear me through the barriers of time – I brought my intertwined fingers to my lips. “Malcolm. I know you’re out there. I can feel you out there. I always have. I believe that my sister Ruthann is with you and I need you both to hear me. I need you to know what’s happening to us here. Please, oh please, Malcolm, hear me…”
Nothing but the deep, repetitive pulse of falling rain met my ears. I inhaled a slow breath, concentrating for all I was worth. I pictured Malcolm’s face on the black and white photograph, the only tangible image of him I possessed, filling in the colors of his hair and eyes and skin, the mellow sunset sky behind him. I imagined the scent of him and the way his shoulders would feel beneath my hands. I remembered how often I’d kissed the two-dimensional image of his face; the face of a man I had loved through all time. And then I tried again.
“I know you’re out there, Malcolm. I forgive you, do you hear me? I know you never found Cora. Me, I
