Time's Edge

I notice his use of the past tense and say, “So you’ve already done all of that? Even the 1938 visit from your ‘son’?”

“Yes. I’ve been very busy.” He bites off the end of one of the grass stalks and offers me a piece. “Sourweed. Tastes kind of lemony. Want some?”

“No, thanks.” I join him on the steps. “It sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”

He moves his eyebrows up and down and then grins. “Now that you mention it, I do believe I have.”

“And you really made enough betting on sporting events to buy a farm?”

“Yes, and I guess I should thank you for the idea. The movies with the boy on the flying board? Auto doors that open straight up instead of out?”

I sigh, not bothering to correct him, even though we both know that he’s never watched a movie with this version of me. “Given that you nearly talked my ear off about baseball the other day, I’m pretty sure you’d have figured it out without assistance.”

He wrinkles his nose. “I don’t bet on baseball. I mean, it’s okay if other people do, but it just feels . . . wrong for me. Mostly it was title fights, a few football games. Took me about a week, because I couldn’t place all the bets in the same town. Altogether I pulled in a little over thirty-eight hundred.”

It must be apparent from my expression that I’m trying to calculate the rate of inflation in my head, because he laughs. “No clue how much that is in your money, but I still have twelve hundred in the bank—maybe three years’ salary for the average person in 1905. Come on, let me give you the nickel tour.”

He stands up and reaches down to help pull me to my feet. His hand is warm, and I feel that same electric tingle run through my body that I always feel when we touch. I let go quickly, pretending to brush something off my dress, and follow him around to the back of the house.

“What happened to your head?” I ask.

He laughs. “Oh, that. Just one of the many perils of home ownership. I banged it up while fixing some things inside the cabin.”

We round the corner and enter a backyard that looks considerably different from the front where tall, mossy shade trees dominate the view. Back here, it’s mostly grass, with just two trees. One is similar to the trees out front, and the other, judging from the pits that are scattered on the ground, is a peach tree. A small lean-to shack sits to the left. The rear tire of a bicycle, propped against the wall, peeks out from the metal siding that forms the longer wall. Alongside the bicycle is a big tin washtub and some miscellaneous tools. About twenty yards behind the cabin and the shack is a wire fence, and off in the distance, a barn and another building that must be the other house Kiernan mentioned.

There are no cows or horses in sight, although it looks like there are a few chickens wandering around near the barn. “It seems a little bare, Farmer Du

“I’ve been too busy to play farmer. The livestock will come in around the same time Owens arrives.”

He opens the back door to the cabin, although it’s a good deal more spacious than the word cabin suggests. We enter a large room with hardwood walls and flooring. A multicolored woven rug is in front of the fireplace, and there’s a ladder leading to a loft up above. I see a small kitchen near the front of the house and two doors on the right side of the main room. It’s maybe twice the size of the cottage Dad and I shared at Briar Hill, when you add in the loft.

“It’s really nice, Kiernan. A lot more room than your other place.” I’m about to ask why he decided to invest in a house right now, in the middle of everything, but I heed the little voice whispering that I probably don’t want to know.

“There’s no electric and no cell phone tower. But we do have indoor plumbing. Hot water, too.”

“You’re kidding? In 1905?”

“Not kidding.” He crosses over to one of the doors and opens it to reveal a bathroom, complete with a toilet, sink, and a big white claw-foot tub. There’s also a cast-iron contraption, which looks like something from the cover of a steampunk novel, attached to the wall. It’s about three feet tall, with one end extending upward through the ceiling and silver pipes coming out the bottom and ru

“That’s the monster that conked me on the head when Charlie and I put it in. Runs on gasoline. You light the pilot and turn on the water. Just don’t touch it once it gets going. You can heat up a towel just by hanging it near the thing.”

“And you can buy this contraption in Bogart, Georgia?”

“Actually, no. Had to drive to Atlanta for it. I’ve gained quite the reputation as an odd Yankee as a result. Charlie—the local guy I hired to help me install it—talks nonstop, so I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. They can laugh all they want, though. I’m tired of cold showers where it takes half an hour to get the soap off you. The one at my old place had a line halfway down the hall most days, and when you finally did get in, it was like a squirrel peeing on your head.”

“Ick.”

“Yes, it was ick.” His eyes take on a teasing look, and he adds, “Perhaps I could run you a bath, so you can wash that god-awful paint out of your hair?”

“It’s not supposed to be attractive. It’s a disguise.”

“A travesty’s more like it. But I guess it’ll have to do for now.”

He motions for me to follow him back into the main part of the cabin. “My room’s up there,” he says, nodding up toward the loft. “This one’s yours.”

Maybe he notices me tensing up, because he quickly adds, “I mean, it’s the guest room. Yours when you need it. I know you’ve been putting in more hours than there are in the day, so this is another place you can go, if you need to get away. Just don’t forget to charge your computer first, and don’t count on accessing the internet.”

The door swings inward to show a small room with a single window opened halfway. A double bed, covered by a patchwork quilt, takes up most of the room, but there’s also a small dresser with a mirror that has those little knobs on the side so that you can adjust the angle. It’s very much the image of a turn-of-the-century bedroom, until my eyes drift upward and I see the glow stars.

I laugh, shaking my head, and he says, “I’ll take ’em down when I’m not here. But I couldn’t leave those behind.” He nods toward the bed. “Amelia, Jess’s wife, gave me the quilt before I left. Jess said to tell you hello, by the way.”

“How is he?”

“He’s okay, I guess. I hated to leave him up there with no one else believing him, but . . . I told him I’d pop in when I can.”

“It’s a lovely room.” I give him the best smile I can manage, even though the room and the effort he’s put into the entire cabin make me feel a little strange, maybe even a little guilty. I know he doesn’t really think I’ll be staying here, at least not often, but it’s beyond obvious that he wishes I would. He built this place with Other-Kate in mind—a house with as many of the comforts of the twenty-first century as he could possibly offer. Showing it to me is the closest he can get to her being here to see it.

“Your 1905 dress is in the closet there, along with a few other things. I bought two pairs of boy’s jeans that should fit you. You might want to slip a pair on before your lessons.”

I narrow my eyes. “What lessons?”

He opens one of the top drawers of the dresser and pulls out a gun. It’s smaller than the one he showed me before and looks more modern—square, a shorter barrel with engraving, and a pearl handle.

“Unless you’ve changed your mind?”

I swallow hard and shake my head. “The situation hasn’t changed, so I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“Not unless you’re willing to let me stay by your side all the time. And truthfully, I’d still prefer that you were armed, just in case. But I’m not turning a gun over to you until I’m sure you can use it safely.” He sets it down on the edge of the white crocheted doily in the center of the dresser, which somehow makes the gun look even more sinister, and then taps the bottom drawer with his knuckles. “Jeans are in here.”