“But…” Adam frowned. “Are you saying the past can’t be changed?”
Victor held up an orange peel. “See this peel? Let’s say I accidentally drop it on the ground. It gets blown away in the wind and lands on someone’s windshield. This startles the driver, and he swerves off the road. His car is now wrecked, so he misses his daughter’s ballet recital because he has to wait for a tow truck.”
Adam didn’t see where this was going. “And then what?”
“Well, then the daughter, upon realizing that her dad isn’t in the audience, performs terribly. Her teacher later evaluates the recital and ends up giving the lead in the next big performance to another dancer.” Victor sucked in his breath. “So the daughter decides to travel back in time to prevent the orange peel from hitting the windshield. But then it turns out her appearing out of thin air was what startled me and made me drop the orange peel in the first place!”
“That’s ridiculous,” Adam argued.
“That is the paradox of time traveling. Everything up to today—to this very minute—has happened because of a specific series of events. Including anything that you try to change by going back. And I’m not saying the daughter did the wrong thing by traveling back in time,” Victor added with a shrug. “It could be that during the big performance, a piece of scaffolding falls onstage and hits the lead dancer right in the foot. So she managed to save herself by avoiding a bigger disaster.”
Adam wasn’t completely following Victor’s line of thinking. He wondered what seemingly small incident had caused Victor’s university to lose funding and consequently make the former mathematician lose his career. Or what orange peel had caused his parents’ plane to crash. Life certainly didn’t seem fair.
“The thing I don’t get,” said Adam, changing the subject, “is who was J.C. Walsh? He’s way older than both me and Jack. Jack would be in his forties right now, and J.C. Walsh looked to be at least sixty-something.”
“Are you sure the initials JCW refer to the man you saw in October?”
“No…but who else could it be?” Adam explained again how the stranger in the raincoat had carried a snow globe into the Biscuit Basket and introduced himself as J.C. Walsh. “I haven’t seen him since then,” he added. “He must’ve not liked the red velvet cake.”
“Naw, your uncle’s baking is some of the best I’ve ever tasted,” Victor reassured him. “Has the bakery reopened?”
“Tomorrow.”
The broken window had finally been fixed after a long week. Uncle Henry was currently preparing special snowflake cookies for the Biscuit Basket’s reopening. That reminded Adam—he had promised to help taste test the cookies later that night.
“I have to go,” he told Victor. “Thanks for listening.”
“Anytime, sonny.”
As Adam slowly walked home, he considered the initials on the music box again. His first thought had been they stood for Jack’s name—Jack Something Walsh. But Jack had said the music box was a gift from his grandpa. J.C. Walsh must’ve been Jack’s grandfather, then. Except, according to the name on the headstone, his name had been Elbert Walsh.
Adam hopped over a puddle on the sidewalk. Maybe he could still track down Jack. But even as the thought crossed his mind for the hundredth time, he knew it was near impossible. Finding someone in the city of New York was hard enough, and his only lead there was Charlie. That had been a dead end. Extending his search to unknown towns and cities outside New York without the proper resources…well, he was out of luck.
Back at the bakery, Uncle Henry had finished baking the first batch of snowflake cookies. The careful baker had even made each one different to truly capture the unique quality of snowflakes: some cookies had six prongs, others twelve; some had crisscross patterns; still others had strange patterns in tartan and zigzag. Each cookie was lightly dusted with fine blue and white sprinkles.
The sight of the beautifully assorted cookies cheered up even Adam. “These look amazing, Uncle Henry,” he said.
“Thank you, my boy. Here’s to a new beginning for the Biscuit Basket. Whoever tried to knock us down failed. Tomorrow we will be back stronger than ever—just in time for the holidays!”
Adam helped himself to three cookies. The crunchy sugar reminded him of real snow. He couldn’t wait for a snowfall to hit New York City.
Later, Adam went upstairs to his bedroom. After making sure the door was closed, he pulled open the bottom drawer of his dresser and carefully took out a golden disk attached to a fine golden chain.
It was the pendulum he’d pocketed from the ruins of the candle factory.
Adam studied the object. He’d managed to identify what it was when he returned home from his last journey and looked at it under proper lighting. The disk was smooth, and the chain looked almost brand-new. He knew, however, it was nearly a century old. The last owner he’d seen wearing it had been the Gold Mold’s father, in 1922.
He had no doubt the item was extremely valuable. Worth hundreds at least, perhaps thousands. They could sell it and make a small fortune. But he knew he could never bring himself to do so. He’d seen its power firsthand, and the idea of letting it slip into some random person’s possession didn’t feel right.
The alarm clock on Adam’s nightstand went off. He looked up in surprise. The time on the clock was wrong once again—as if the hour hand kept rewinding itself. It was the
