Cascade (35 page)

Ticket Dude, frowning, picked up the phone and called someone, speaking in quick, hushed tones. Lia came over to me and held my arm. I groaned and bent over again.

“Careful,” Lia whispered. “You’re supposed to have appendicitis; you’re not about to have a baby.”

I grimaced and turned away so the guy wouldn’t see my smile. She was right. Appendicitis would create a steadier, building kind of pain. I modified my act.

“I can take you. I just need to wait for my replacement.”

I groaned and bent over again.

He frowned, then came out the side door and shifted his weight, back and forth, anxiously looking toward the castello, to where his help must be coming from.

“Please,” I said, reaching out to him. “Can we not go now? Please.”

He gave the castello one last look and then gestured over to a tiny vehicle, barely larger than a Smart Car. Lia and I climbed in the back, our knees practically at our ears, and Mom and he climbed into the front. As he started the car, I cried out again,
“Sbrigati!”
Hurry
.

Much to my satisfaction he sped out of the parking lot. Climbing the road and turning onto the highway within fifteen minutes.

“Gabriella, stay with us,” Mom said in Italian. She looked at Lia. “Is she thinking straight?” Then to me again, “What year is it?”

Man, she was smart, my mom. “Uh,” I said, gritting my teeth against the pretend pain. I guessed a year, five back.

Our driver snorted. “Is she simpleminded or feverish? You can see right now the year.…” He pointed to his cell phone on the dash. It had the date as his screensaver.

I leaned back with a sigh of relief as Lia squeezed my hand in excitement. We’d done it. Or God had. We’d gone back two years. And it was summer.

Come on, Dad. Be there. Be where you’re supposed to be. Not filing paperwork in Firenze or Siena or Roma. Be there, be there, be there, please…be there.

In another fifteen minutes, we reached the next valley. “Turn here!” Mom said, gesturing toward an upcoming dirt road to the left with a
Societa Archeologico dell’ Italia
sign on a tree. “I think this site has a doctor on campus.”

“There is a doctor at the clinic, just ahead.”

“Turn here!” all three of us yelled, just as it was becoming too late.

The guy slammed on his brakes and barely made the turn, frowning at us like we were crazy. With agonizingly slow speed, he found a spot in the dirt parking lot. “Can you wait here a moment?” Mom asked the driver.

He rolled his eyes and complained that he needed to get back, but she gave him a pleading look that no man, regardless of age, could deny.

Mom ran along, ignoring the calls and greetings of others around her, recognizing her, wondering about her strange gown. People we knew well—scientists, university students, volunteers—looked at us as if they wanted to greet us but were afraid to say something. Because, of course, we’d grown into young women since they’d seen us, the
day before
for most of them.
Talk about growing up overnight.…

I stopped abruptly. Could it be that we’d come face-to-face with ourselves? Our younger selves? I glanced around warily.
That’d seriously creep me out.

“Have you seen Dr. Betarrini?” Mom asked one.

“He’s around here someplace…”

“Phoebe, have you seen my husband around?” she asked the next, her anxious movements betraying her casual tone.

Phoebe shook her head and looked my mom over.

“He’s over here!” called Jack, another colleague of my parents. He gave my mom a curious look too and hooked his thumb over his shoulder.

It was then that a man straightened behind him and looked over at us, his eyes slowly focusing on us, recognizing us. Sort of. Mom, anyway. But he was looking at me and Lia, as if he was trying to decide if he was in the middle of a crazy daydream or if two young women who looked just like his daughters, but older and dressed weird, were really standing fifteen paces from him.

We, of course, were totally stuck. Overwhelmed. Tongue-tied. And scared as all get-out.

“Oh. My. Gosh,” Lia said. “Is it real?” she asked, tears already in her eyes.

But I was moving, along with Mom, toward him.

Running now.

Dad
.

Dad
.
Dad! Dad!

We flew into his arms, and he stepped back, laughing, surprised, wondering what the heck was going on. Lia came then and wrapped her arms around all of us, laughing, crying too.

He leaned back, his face a mask of confusion. “Whoa, whoa, what’s going on here?” He took my face in his hands, then Lia’s. He glanced at Mom and down at her gown. “What’s with the medieval wench getup?”

Mom smiled through her tears and pulled him closer, reached up and touched his face, as if she were trying to memorize every wrinkle and pore. “Oh, Ben…You have no idea how good it is to see you.”

Tears were streaming down my face and Lia’s. We reached in to hug him with Mom again.

“All right, all right,” he said, half exasperated with us, half bewildered. “Who is going to tell me what’s going on here?”

“Come with us,” Mom said, pulling him along. I stayed glued to his side, under his arm, trying to believe this was really happening.

I helped Mom propel him forward. “We’ll explain on the way, Dad. Please.”

“N-now?” he sputtered. “We’re about to—”

“Right now,” Mom said, accepting no argument. “Do you have a car?”

“
We
have a car,” he said slowly, speaking to her as if she was losing it. “Remember?”

So Mom had been right about the vehicle. The Jeep we’d had that year. It barely ran. Hopefully it was a good day. Because on bad days it had left us stranded, over and over again. We’d had to steer while Mom and Dad pushed it to get it started, then we’d move aside so they could jump in and take the wheel.

“Come on,” she said, pulling at his hand. She looked apologetically to their colleagues. “Wrap camp for the day,” she said. “This might take a while.”

We ran back to the parking lot. The Ticket Dude lifted his hands as if to say, “What’s the deal?” when we ran past him and got into the Jeep. He made an angry gesture and peeled out of the parking lot.

“It running okay today?” I asked, anxiously looking after Ticket Dude.

“Uh…
yeah
. You were in it this morning, remember?” Dad said.

“Not quite. Get in and start driving,” Mom said, sliding into the passenger seat as Lia and I swung into the back.

“There’s something weird going on here,” he said, glancing back at us. “I know I haven’t really been paying attention to the girls this summer, Adri, but when did they grow up? Overnight? Is it the clothes? What’s with the costumes?” He stared at us, trying to sort out what had to be the most confusing day of his whole life. He shook his head and frowned, looking from me to Lia and back again. “Nah, it’s more than that. I mean look at you!”

I was torn between wanting him to just keep talking, unable to keep my eyes from him, and wanting to scream at him to drive.

“I’ll tell you what’s happened, Ben,” Mom said. “But please, drive while we talk.”

“Okay,” he said, turning the key. But the engine wouldn’t start, of course. Lia and I glanced at each other, hopped out and began pushing the vehicle down the hill. In a few seconds, the engine caught and we hopped into the back.

“That’s new,” he said, gesturing back at us and looking to Mom. “Last I remember, that was our job.”

“There are quite a few new things I need to tell you about,” Mom said as we bumped over the dirt road, following behind the kid from the ticket booth.

“Please pass him, Dad,” I said.

“Are we in a hurry?”

“Yes!” we all cried together.

He clamped his lips shut. And passed the ticket guy on the highway.

“How long you figure we’ve been here?” I asked Lia.

“Counting the minutes at the very end, bouncing back here, I’m thinking it’s been a good hour, maybe an hour and a half.”

Mom told Dad what she could as he drove, finally reaching the road that ran past Castello Forelli and to the edge of the tomb field. We noticed she didn’t tell him the biggest thing. That he’d died. That we’d come back to save him. Was she afraid it would change that outcome somehow?

To his credit, Dad didn’t stop or demand that he take us all to see a psychiatrist. In his place, I might’ve done that. We passed Castello Forelli, and Dad didn’t pause. Apparently, in his world, it had been there all along.

But he seemed reluctant as we ducked through the trees and climbed the boulders, as if he might be dreaming, that his dream-wife and dream-daughters were taking him on a journey he wasn’t really ready to take.

“Come on, Ben,” Mom said, gesturing back to him. “This is where I found it.”

He climbed up the last boulder. “That’s what I don’t get, Adri. Where was I?” But his attention was then on the tumuli before them. He reached up and ran his hands through his thick brown, curly hair, so like mine. And his face broke out in excitement. “Adri! Adri! We found it!” He hooted and shook his head in disbelief as Lia and I dragged him forward. “It was so close, all along! We were so close!”

“Yes,” she said, smiling at him tenderly, staring at him in wonder. “How I longed for you, for this moment.”

“Can you talk about it on the other side?” I muttered, pushing them toward Tomb Two.

“Other side?” he asked. “You intend…we are going back? In time?”

“Yes,” I said. “I have to, Dad.”

“First we’ll go to the future, by two years. Then back. That’s how it works,” Lia said. “We have to kinda bounce from one end to the other. I think.”

Mom gestured behind her. “If you think this is the archaeological discovery of our lives,” she said, “wait until you see Italia in all her medieval glory.”

“You realize this makes no sense, whatsoever, Adri. This is totally unlike you. Maybe you three stumbled into some bad mushrooms when you were collecting herbs or something?”

Mom took his hands in hers and looked into his eyes. “Believe me, Ben. I know what you’re thinking, feeling. How crazy this all sounds…But it’s important you come with us. Can you trust me?” She glanced back at us and then to him again. “Trust us?”

He hesitated a moment longer. “I’m willing to suspend disbelief for a bit. Test a theory.” He squinted at her. “We can make this leap? All of us? Safely?”

Lia and I looked at each other. We’d hardly been safe, considering all the battles and escapes we’d endured. But this was life.
Life,
more full and vital and exciting than we’d ever known. And we wanted more of it.

Mom was still trying to figure out how to promise him that it was safe. That was a laugh.

“All I can tell you is that the girls have made the journey twice already,” she said at last. “And that we must go too. In a way, Ben, we travel not to the past, but to our future.” She looked over at us. “We’ll be together, come what may. And that, I’ve found, is the best thing of all.”

Lia and I stepped closer. I held out my hand. “I like that, Mom. ‘Together, come what may.’”

“Together,” Lia said, putting her long fingers on mine.

“Together,” Mom added, placing hers on top of Lia’s.

We looked to Dad, waiting. He smiled at us, each one of us, and then gently put a big, warm hand beneath my own, and his other on top of Mom’s. The gesture made a lump form in my throat. I couldn’t look at Mom or Lia, knowing that I’d cry if I did.

“I don’t know exactly what’s happening here, or why,” he said. “But I know this…if my three girls are going somewhere, so am I.”

… a little more …

When a delightful concert comes to an end,

the orchestra might offer an encore.

When a fine meal comes to an end,

it’s always nice to savor a bit of dessert.

When a great story comes to an end,

we think you may want to linger.

And so, we offer ...

AfterWords—
just a little something more after you

have finished a David C Cook novel.

We invite you to stay awhile in the story.

Thanks for reading!

Turn the page for ...

• A Chat with Lisa Bergren

• Discussion Questions

• Historical and Factual Notes

• Facebook Fan Site

• Acknowledgments