Timeless (31 page)

“Annaleigh?” Michele called out uneasily. There was no answer.

She walked tentatively into the library. As she stepped into the room, she saw that she was alone, and yet she felt another presence there. She nervously tried to back out, but she felt herself being pushed forward, as if by an invisible hand. She saw a book lying on a reading table, the strange glow coming from the ceiling above it. Without warning, the book snapped open on its own. Michele gasped and tried to run, but she was frozen with fear, stuck in place. She watched in terror as the pages
flipped back and forth, then came to rest. Michele felt herself being nudged toward the book, and as she moved closer, she saw that it was a photo album. And it was opened to the old photo of Irving Henry, circa 1900.

Michele shakily reached for the album, and suddenly her legs felt paralyzed, her hands glued to the album, as she was flung back in time with the stunning realization
It’s happening again
.

“Walter! Hurry up, dear. We’re going to be late.”

Michele jumped, the photo album falling from her hands. She was alone in the library, but the female voice she heard was familiar. Anxiously, she ventured out to the Grand Hall. A middle-aged couple was waiting by the door: a dark-haired man in a black suit and hat and a red-haired woman in a black three-quarter length skirt and sweater set. As Michele looked more closely at the woman, she felt a jolt of recognition.

“Clara!” she cried, overcome with emotion at seeing her all grown up. But to her surprise, Clara didn’t react as though she had heard anything. She simply looked straight through Michele, as if she weren’t there.
She can’t see me anymore
, Michele realized with a pang of sadness.

A boy of about eight or nine came barreling down the stairs in a little black suit of his own. Michele drew in her breath in shock as he came closer. There was no mistaking those eyes. It was her grandfather, Walter!

“But I don’t
want
to go to a funeral for some old stranger,” he whined as Clara grasped his hand.

“Now, Walter, that’s no way to speak of the dead,” Clara admonished.
“Mr. Henry was a very nice man who worked for the family for years. We have to pay our respects. And besides, we’re meeting your mommy there.”

Mr. Henry
. Michele gulped.
They’re going to Irving Henry’s funeral
.

“And I
don’t
see why Mommy and Stella went out without me either,” little Walter said, pouting.

“Darling, your cousin is an engaged young lady and sometimes she needs girl time with her auntie,” Clara explained. “You’ll understand when you’re older and you have a young lady of your own.”

Walter grimaced. “Blech!”

As Michele looked around, she noticed that something was very different. The Windsor opulence was far less on display, with the mansion missing many of its luxurious decorative touches. Instead, American flags of different shapes, sizes, and textures were hung throughout the house. So far she hadn’t spotted any member of the normally sizable Windsor staff. A cream flag bearing a blue star and a gold star was hung on the front door.
A blue star means someone in the family is in the army … and a gold star means someone’s been killed in action
, Michele remembered from history class. And that was when the dates on Irving Henry’s headstone from her dream flashed back to her. Was it really … 1944? A cold feeling ran down Michele’s spine as she realized that this was the middle of World War II.

“Let’s go, Sam, Walter,” Clara said.

Clara’s husband, Sam, opened the door and the three of them trooped outside and into the black Chrysler two-door car that was parked in the driveway. On impulse Michele
followed them, slipping unseen into the backseat next to little Walter. As Sam drove uptown, Michele was distracted from their conversation by the sights of 1940s Manhattan. Posters for the war effort were emblazoned on every commercial building.
RUMORS COST US LIVES!
cried one, with a grim illustration of a man whispering war secrets.
BUY WAR BONDS!
urged signs on every street. But the most common picture in the posters was the smiling, determined, and grandfatherly face of the wartime president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Bookstore windows advertised titles such as
The Officer’s Guide
and
So Your Husband’s Gone to War!
Department store windows busily promoted a plethora of war relief materials, from blackout drapes to Mickey Mouse gas masks for children. Michele shuddered.
What a terrifying time to be alive
, she thought. The New Yorkers walking briskly past were all wearing similar plain cotton clothing, nothing like the formal ball gowns and tuxes of 1910 or the dazzling flapper dresses of the twenties. Michele saw the same anxious yet determined expression on many of their faces.

Sam pulled into the Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum, which was surrounded by elm and oak trees and grassy lawns and overlooked the Hudson River. Michele followed as they headed toward a group of people surrounding a hole in the ground, where the coffin was being lowered. She stood slightly behind Clara, Sam, and Walter, thinking how surreal and insane it was that she was not only back in the 1940s, but there with the grandfather she lived with in 2010—who had no idea that his future granddaughter was in his midst.

“Mommy!” he called out suddenly, waving.

“Hi, darling,” a familiar voice cooed.

“Lily,” Michele whispered, nearly overwhelmed with emotion at being with them all together. Lily was now a woman in her midthirties, and she still looked dazzlingly glamorous, even in a black funeral dress. Her hair was no longer in her twenties bob; she now had shoulder-length pin curls under a wide-brim hat. A girl about Michele’s age was with her, dressed in a billowy black blouse and a matching formfitting skirt, white socks, and saddle shoes. Her wavy dark hair and sandy brown eyes were familiar to Michele, and she realized that this was Stella, the girl from the portrait in Michele’s sitting room.
She must be Clara’s daughter!

As Lily and Stella headed toward the rest of the family, Stella suddenly froze. Her eyes locked with Michele’s.
She can see me
, Michele realized in amazement.
But why her? Why not the others?

Lily scooped up Walter in a hug, and Clara and Sam gestured to Stella to join them, but she stayed rooted to her spot. “Who is that?” she blurted out. “That girl behind you. The one in those tattered trousers.”

Michele glanced down. Oh, yeah. She was wearing her Abercrombie jeans with the strategic rips.

Lily looked up sharply at Stella’s words, and Clara’s eyes darted around the area. For a moment Clara and Lily met each other’s gaze, then quickly looked away. And Michele knew:
They’re both looking for me!

“Sweetie, there’s no one of that description,” Sam said.

Stella looked at her parents incredulously and pointed to Michele. “But she’s right there!”

“We don’t see anyone, dear,” Clara said, making an apologetic gesture.

The color drained from Stella’s face and she looked from Michele to her parents, clearly stunned that she was invisible to them. Stella forced a laugh, trying to hide her panic from them.

“Never mind, then,” she said shakily. “I’m just … hungry and I must have gotten light-headed and—and thought I saw someone.”

“We’ll get lunch right after the service,” Sam assured her. “Come stand with us.”

Stella obeyed but stood as far from Michele as possible, casting her frightened looks every few minutes.

“It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I can explain,” Michele called out to her, trying to sound reassuring, but Stella promptly turned her head, pretending she hadn’t heard.

Just then the vicar arrived. As the funeral service proceeded, Michele’s mind drifted off. She wondered where Philip was now. Was he okay? Was he in New York? When would she be able to find out what had happened to him?

“My uncle Irving was a man who didn’t belong in his time.”

Michele’s head snapped up at those words. A middle-aged blond man was speaking, glancing down at note cards in his hand.

“We all know he was a brilliant attorney. We also know that he was brilliantly eccentric.” At that, a laugh rippled through the crowd. “My uncle had an obsession with time—Time with a capital
T
, as he called it. He believed in the future. That’s where he said he belonged, where he said he
loved
. It was part of his imaginative eccentricity, yes. But Uncle Irving’s passion for the future gives me relief, for I know that’s where he is now: in his
Heaven of the Future.” With a smile, the blond man stepped back and the crowd applauded, murmuring supportively.

Michele felt her heart thudding loudly in her chest. Her mind was racing, confirming the answer that seemed too unbelievable to be real. She sank onto the dirt, barely able to hear the rest of the funeral service, with the words of Irving’s nephew echoing in her ears:
He believed in the future. That’s where he said he belonged, where he said he loved
.

Why had Irving Henry been able to see her? Why had he stared like that at the key around her neck? Why had he looked at her as though seeing a ghost? Why had his face looked vaguely familiar to her?

Because he’s my father
.

Michele hugged her arms to her knees as she felt her whole body tremble, tears welling in her eyes. The young man Marion had fallen for, who went by the name Henry Irving, who seemed so different from the other boys of the 1990s … was none other than the man being buried that day. This meant that she was born to a father from the nineteenth century and a mother from the twentieth. It was unthinkable.
But then … is it any more impossible than my being here right now?

M
ichele dazedly followed the Windsors back into the car after the funeral, her head still spinning from her discovery. Stella took one look at Michele climbing into the Chrysler and announced that she’d ride home with Aunt Lily. The Chrysler reached Windsor Mansion before Lily’s car, and Michele took the opportunity to race upstairs to her—or rather, Stella’s—bedroom. She was desperate to return to her own time.

As Michele swung open the bedroom door, her eyes took in all the changes. The Art Deco–style decor of Lily’s room had given way to a cheerful, kitschy 1940s look. A bright red rotary phone was on the bureau, and standing in a place of honor was a large table holding both a radio and phonograph. The posters
on the walls were of Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band. Framed photos of Stella with a cute, lanky guy in army uniform were placed throughout the room. The calendar on her desk was set to May 1944.

Michele sank onto the desk chair and was just about to take hold of her skeleton key when she heard a sharp gasp. She looked up to see Stella in the doorway, quivering with fear.

“What do you want?” Stella cried, her voice strangled. “Why are you following me?”

“I’m not! I mean—I’m not going to hurt you, don’t worry—”

Should I just tell her who I really am?
Michele wondered.
Then I can give her the good news that America wins the war
. But just as she was opening her mouth to tell the truth, she heard a warning in her mind.
What if her knowing ahead of time that America is to win the war changes the outcome? What if the element that caused us to win the war was the frantic attention to it, the fixation, even on the home front, on doing anything and everything possible to win?

“You’re a ghost, aren’t you?” Stella whispered. “A ghost from the graveyard.”

While the ghost alibi had worked well enough with Clara and Lily, Michele figured that the idea of being followed home by a graveyard ghost was hardly comforting to Stella. “No,” she said quickly. “I’m … someone only you can see. But I’m good. You have nothing to be afraid of.”

Stella stared at Michele. “Are you … are you saying you’re all in my head? Like an—an imaginary friend?”

“No, I’m real,” Michele assured her, not wanting Stella to
panic that she was going mental. “It’s just that you’re the only one who can see or hear me.”