The United States, however, was not able to stop World War II. When Adolf Hitler was not killed by Vincent during World War I, he rose to power in Germany. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini also rose to power. Communism and Fascism were on the increase.
The Japanese would not expand the Japanese Empire into most of Russia and into India as they had before. They would join World War II under the same pretenses as they had previously.
Despite Vincent’s extreme efforts, the Holocaust was not avoided. The death of millions of lives that could have been avoided weighed on his soul for the remainder of his life. He was constantly conflicted as to what he could have done differently (other than not choose Libby).
New countries that had been created in the past timeline were not created. Gran Columbia and Southwest Africa, historic nations that had continued under the previous timeline dissolved as nations. The Ottoman Empire was one of these disbanded nations.
Teddy Roosevelt did not become the President in 1901. He served as Lodge’s Vice-President and took over the presidency in 1924 (Lodge died in 1924 soon after signing the Civil Rights Act into law.) In another timeline, Roosevelt would have died in 1919. In this timeline, he was very healthy and served two terms as President. He died in 1939, peacefully at the distinguished age of eighty one.
After Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover was elected President. He was in office one term. In 1936, former Assistant Secretary of War Henry Skillman Breckinridge ran against Hoover and defeated him. He served two terms as President.
Next was Thomas Dewey, the Republican Governor of New York in 1944. In 1948, Thurgood Marshall became the youngest and first African-American President of the United States. He served for three terms.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy became the President and all of the subsequent Presidents followed in the same fashion as the previous timeline. The Cold War developed as it had in the other timeline and Kennedy faced the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The world never knew Woodrow Wilson. He died young and was not replaced by a man from a future time who wanted to be part of history.
This was the world that Vincent found himself in when he came back. He woke up in the coma ward of a hospital in Ypres, Belgium and was faced with an existence much different than he had left.
He had been through a lot. He had killed men and seen those he loved die. He wasn’t sure upon waking from his coma if everything he had experienced was real or not but the memories of those timelines told him otherwise.
He looked around and double checked to make sure no one was watching. Then, he unhooked the machinery that monitored his life signs, stole some clothing from the doctor’s locker room and walked out the hospital.
The blue sky was welcome. The day was perfect. And he couldn’t explain it but he knew what day it was. He also knew who would be in Ypres giving a speech in remembrance of those who died during World War I.
As he walked towards the monument, he thought on those who had died. Especially on the man who killed Wilson. Vincent never learned his name or who he was but he was glad the man was dead.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the crowd. He turned his eyes to where people were gathering for the American President and increased his rate of walking.
Life was perfect (or so he hoped).
CHAPTER FIFTY TWO
Ypres, Belgium – Present Day
Libby traveled to Belgium to attend the anniversary and commemorate the Allies victory in World War I. The nation had always been a strange attraction for her.
She had just walked onto the stage towards the podium when her attention was immediately drawn to a man standing to her left, near the monument.
For a moment, everything was quiet and it seemed to her as if the man was the only person in an infinite open area. She had a vision at that moment of being in a hospital (she wasn’t sure how she knew but she knew the hospital was in Belgium) and in that vision, she saw herself walking towards a man in a coma. When she reached the man, she asked the doctor his name and the doctor replied that the man’s name was Vincent Shakespeare.
It was at that moment that the President of the United States recaptured the memories of a life that she had never lived with a man she had never met. Memories of looking at Edith Wilson through the eyes of Woodrow Wilson. Of World War I and meeting with Sir Haig. Of all the things she had changed in the world as President following the Great War.
Of being murdered.
She remembered being taken by force from the White House by a man who called himself Jack. She remembered that one moment she was inside the White House and the next moment she was somewhere else.
She saw the blood lust in his eyes as he held her down. Then, she felt the cold steel blade enter her stomach. She screamed and couldn’t help but look down at the blood that poured from her onto the ground. He filleted her skin and the pain just kept coming. Her last sight was of her intestines.
Libby shivered at those memories. But they were only memories. She was alive. She was alive and looking down at the man she loved.
The crowd and the world stage waited eagerly at her words to commemorate the Battle of Passchendaele. But whatever great speech she was going to give, the world never heard it.
Instead she walked away from the podium and turned towards the back of
