“But it said 1980-something or another,” he shook his head not understanding.
“1982. I know,” Emmy insisted. “It wasn’t wrong. I was born on March 10, 1982. The day I came here, it was October 18, 2010.”
A part of Connor wanted to throw back his head and laugh in amusement at her farce and await her to join him admitting that her words were in jest. As he stared at her solemn eyes, however, he knew she was serious. My God, she was mad, he thought, and rubbed his hands over his face in disbelief.
“I’m not crazy,” her words denied his thought. “I am perfectly sane. Contrary to what I said before when we were at lunch in Oban, there is no frequent time traveling in the future, at least that I know about. I’m not certain how it all happened but when I came here to visit the castle, it was Donell who brought me.”
“Old Donell?”
“Yes, the man from the inn. He drove me here in 2010 and somehow sent me back to this time. To you. I don’t know why, he mentioned something about second chances but I haven’t been able to find him again. You said he was a wizard or something?”
“Emmy,” he shook his head in denial, “those are just absurd rumors…”
Emmy cut him off. “All I know is that I got off the shuttle with a ticket to see this castle and the next I knew, I was here in 1895. There you were riding up on your horse. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “And Donell is the one who did. He admitted it to me.”
“Emmy,” he started shaking his head.
She cut him off, eyes pleading for understanding. “I know it sounds nuts, I do! I have thought and thought trying to figure out the whys and hows of this whole thing and I truthfully don’t have one logical sounding reason or explanation to give you. He did it. Donell did it. Magic or whatever. I tried to send for him, to talk to him, but he’s just disappeared. No one can find him.” Emmy rubbed her own face in frustration and gazed back at him expectantly, but he remained silent. Hopefully, she thought, he was considering her words so she gave him a moment to think on her confession.
Instead he pulled away from her and climbed out of the bed searching for a pair of trousers and slipping them on.
“There’s coffee on the table,” she told him wearily. “It should still be warm if not hot.” Defeated, she toyed with the phone. She had wanted, hoped that he would simply believe her. He loved her after all and love required a measure of faith. But Emmy felt she should have known the concept was too fantastical to be taken without a measure of doubt. She could not fault him for reacting this way. A little self-analysis told her she would doubt such a revelation as well and probably more vocally than he.
Time and evidence.
She stood and moved to join him at the little table where he was adding sugar to his coffee. Emmy sat across from him as he sipped. His dark eyes were critical and grave. “What ye’re saying is insane,” he commented at length.
“It is.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Absolutely,” she nodded wanting to reach across the table and hold his hands in hers. He must have realized her purpose since he wrapped both hands around the cup propping his elbows on the table. Withdrawal. “Yes, it is that and more, but, Connor, it is also the truth. I am not a nutcase from Bedlam. Without Donell I can give you no rationalization on how it happened, but I only ask that you consider that you have thought me an intelligent woman. Consider that I know you are an intelligent man and how such a claim, if it were not true, would demean both our intelligence. I don’t believe in magic and witchcraft but I know that once you have time to consider all the facts, you will know that I would never lie about something like this.”
Connor watched the woman he loved in astonishment. She thought to rely on his intelligence to accept her claims as truth? His very intellect challenged her allegation! Time travel? Witchcraft? He snorted dismissively. It was impossible. Inconceivable! In truth the Scots were a superstitious lot. Tales of witchcraft and wizardry went back a thousand years. But even if magic did exist, one could not walk through the fabric of time regardless of what Wells and Verne had written about it and that fictitious 5th dimension. Time was absolute. Their works were but narrative. The idea that sorcery might have been the key was even more unbelievable. Sorcery was mostly myth and partially parlor tricks. Nothing like this! If Emmy thought that his logic and reason would bend to allow her point… and he could see that she did believe it…then perhaps she was a Bedlamite escapee.
He was just opening his mouth to convey his conviction when her hand slid across the table toward him, flattened but covering something. She sat with her arm extended for a moment, her eyes searching his. Pleading. Uncertainly, she sighed and withdrew her arm leaving what had been under it on the table in front of him.
It was the item that Margo had given her the previous week.
The object they had prompted their argument almost eight days ago. He leaned in and squinted at it before reluctantly picking it up. It was small and flat, one side shiny silver with the silhouette of an apple with a bite taken from it and IPHONE in white letters. The other side, black glass, was almost mirror-like in its reflectivity. From one end a white covered
