A Husband in Time

Two

1897

T hunder rumbled and growled in the distance, and Zachariah got up from the chair where he’d been keeping constant vigil to light the oil lamp on his son’s bedside table. Benjamin had always been afraid of thunderstorms. Just as Zach fitted the glass chimney into place, Ben stirred, as Zach had known he would.

“Father… Oh. You’re right here.”

“Where else would I be?”

“Working on the device, of course. You waste an awful lot of time sitting here with me, you know.”

“I like sitting with you.” Thunder cracked again, and Benjamin reached for his father’s hand, found it, and held tight.

“There, now. No need to be afraid, son. You know thunder can’t hurt you.”

“That doesn’t make it any less noisy, though,” Benjamin said, quite reasonably. “How much longer will it last, Father? It’s been storming all night.”

Zachariah pulled the gold watch from his vest pocket, opened it and then turned its face toward his son. “It’s only 9:08, my boy. It hasn’t been storming all night, only a couple of hours. And it will end any time now, I’m cer—”

His words were cut off by the loudest, sharpest crack yet, this one so loud it even made Zachariah jump a bit. At the same instant, the night sky beyond Benjamin’s window was ripped apart by a blinding, jagged streak.

“Father, the lightning! It’s hit something!”

Zach moved to the edge of the bed and gathered his son in his arms. “There now…” he said. “It wasn’t as close as it seemed.” But he kept his gaze focused on that one spot in the night where the lightning seemed to have struck. And as he watched, he rocked his son, whispered to him, stroked his hair.

Within seconds, a pinprick of light danced in the distant sky. And then it began to grow, and spread, until Zach recognized it for what it was. A fire. And from what he could see, it was the old Thomas barn, nearly three miles away, that had been hit, and that was now burning. No great loss. It was an old, decrepit building and hadn’t been used in years. The only thing inside, so far as he knew, was some musty old hay.

Benjamin fell asleep in Zachariah’s arms, and Zach remained right where he was all night long, holding his precious child and watching the growing blaze in the distance. Soon it illuminated the entire night sky. The barn was old, tinder-dry, and had gone up like a matchstick.

Zach ought to be working. He knew he should, for so very much depended on the success of the current experiment. And he was so close. So close.

Right now, though, Benjamin needed him. And right now he couldn’t bring himself to leave.

But as the sun rose high the next morning, and spirals of smoke still rose from the charred remains of the old Thomas barn, Zach gently tried to extricate himself from the bed without disturbing Benjamin. And he did. A bit too easily. As he got to his feet, it hit him that, sick as he was, Benjamin was normally a very light sleeper. He should have at least stirred when Zach got up from the bed.

A cold chill crept up his spine as he turned to face his son, who hadn’t so much as stirred in his sleep all night.

And then Zachariah Bolton’s heart froze over. He shook Ben’s frail shoulders gently, tapped his pale cheek. But there was no response. His son had slipped into a coma. The state that marked the final stages of his illness. Death was only twenty-four hours away now, perhaps less.

There was no more time. None whatsoever. He must act now, and if the experiment had side effects, then so be it. He’d suffer whatever he must in order to save his son’s life.

He reached into his vest, and removed the device from its pocket. There was no longer any reason to stay by his son’s side. Benjamin wouldn’t wake again. Not unless… Not unless this worked.

Leaning over the bed, he stroked his son’s coppery curls, kissed his forehead. “I’ll be gone for a little while, my Ben. But I’ll try to arrange it so it’s only an instant for you. I don’t want to leave you, but I must to get you healthy again. Understand?”

Benjamin’s auburn lashes rested on his chalk-white cheeks, and his breath wheezed in and out of his rail-thin body.

Zach straightened and pushed his hands through his hair. He looked like hell. He knew it without a glimpse at the looking glass. His clothes were rumpled, vest unbuttoned and gaping. The thin black tie he’d worn the day before hung loose from his collar. He’d planned, though. There was a small satchel in Benjamin’s wardrobe, with a change of clothes and the things he’d need. Including proof, should he be questioned. He took a moment to retrieve the satchel. No time to change. Not now. Ben could very well expire while his father worried over such trivial matters. But once Zach was gone, time would virtually stand still for his son. Time enough to bathe then. If he was displeasing to those he met, well, too bad for them. Not that he was likely to meet anyone at all. Each time he’d opened the portal, it had shown him an empty, unlived-in version of his own house. Not that he cared right now who he might meet, or what they might think of him.

He wasn’t thinking of himself. Not at all. He wasn’t thinking of society, either, or of the repercussions he knew full well might come from his tampering with nature this way. He flatly refused to consider those. The only thing on Zachariah Bolton’s mind was his son. His precious Benjamin. The only thing that mattered right now was finding a way to save his child’s fragile life. The child who was, right now, precariously close to death. And he could do it. Zachariah Bolton could do it. He could travel backward through time. He could go back to a time before his son had been exposed to the killing virus that was trying so hard to take him. And when he arrived there, he’d take Benjamin away, somewhere safe. So that when the virus pummelled Rockwell, Ben would be far away. He’d never be exposed. And when the danger had passed, he’d bring Ben home safe and sound. He’d never become sick. He’d never die. He’d be all right. Zach would return here, to this time, to find his son healthy and well again. With no memory of having been sick at all.

Zach’s heartbeat escalated as he pointed the device toward that spot in the very center of his son’s bedroom. He had no idea what the spot was. A wrinkle in the fabric of time. A rent. Whatever it was, it was only here, in this room, and he suspected it had been here, hovering in the air above the ground, even before the house was built. He’d attempted the experiment in numerous locations, but here and here alone had he found success. One night, when he’d been working in here so as to be with his ailing child, he’d discovered the portal purely by accident.

With his thumb, he depressed the initiator button. And a pinprick of light appeared in midair, at the room’s center. Holding the device steady, he turned the expander dial, and the light grew bigger, brighter, until it was a glowing sphere that extended beyond the ceiling and the floor. A mist-filled, glowing orb. But even that began to change. The mists cleared and took on forms, and in moments Zach was looking into what appeared to be a huge mirror. And the mirror reflected this very room back at him. Only in another time. He could clearly see that the wallpaper was different, and the curtains in the windows were different, and the furnishings. Everything. Right down to the small body bundled beneath the covers in the bed. Benjamin? Before he was taken ill, when he was well and strong and healthy? This was going to work. It was going to work!

He only hoped it didn’t kill him. Every test so far indicated there would be side effects. The tea cup Zach had pushed through the portal a few days ago had shattered. He’d made adjustments to the device and tried again. The apple he sent through had withered, and he’d made still more changes. The mouse…the mouse had died. And though Zach had recalculated and made even more changes, he couldn’t be certain he had it right this time. So, yes, there might be side effects. Serious ones. He just didn’t know what they would be, yet. But—he smiled a little—he was about to find out. “You’re going to be all right, Benjamin. I swear to you. You’ll be well again!” And Zachariah Bolton stepped into the light, and promptly felt a post wallop him right between the eyes.

Jane Fortune couldn’t sleep. There was simply too much on her mind. Oh, not the house. The house was perfect, she’d known that the second she saw it. The aging but elegant Victorian, standing like a guardian of the sea. The rocky Maine shoreline below. The songs of the waves that would sing her to sleep under ordinary circumstances.

Her new antique shop—Jane smiled at the words—was now a reality. She’d researched the area, made new contacts and stocked up on local finds. She’d been open for several weeks now, and business was brisk. The guest house—a miniature copy of the main house, perched at its feet as if the house had given birth to a pup—was perfect, just as Jane had known it would be. Even the nearby town, appropriately named Rockwell, was picture-perfect. The epitome of the New England fantasy. A place time and progress seemed to have forgotten. It boasted a corner drugstore complete with a soda fountain and a barbershop with an old-fashioned candy-cane pole outside. When she walked along Rockwell’s sidewalks, she half expected to round a corner and spot four men in flat-topped straw hats and handlebar mustaches singing about strolling through the park.

But as Grandma Kate used to say, when things seem too good to be true, look out, because they probably are. What if the business failed? What would she do then? Go running back to Minneapolis with her tail between her legs?

No. No, this move had been hard enough on Cody. She wouldn’t uproot him again. She’d make this work, somehow. She had to, for her son’s sake.

But financial worries were not the only things troubling Jane’s mind tonight. She was more concerned about her son than about anything else. Cody’s wish for a father had gnawed at her heart from the second he uttered it in the car that night. He was an intelligent child—gifted, the school officials called him. He knew he’d had a father once. But while Jane didn’t believe in lying to her son, she hadn’t told him the whole truth about Greg. He knew only that his father had been a talented musician who died when Cody was still a baby. She’d left out the rest. She’d never told Cody how taken in she’d been by Greg’s idealism and sincerity, and the beauty and meaning behind the songs he wrote and played in clubs around Minneapolis. God, when she thought now about how quickly she’d fallen in love with him…

She’d been a fool. Greg’s idealism had fled the second some L.A. big shot heard him play, and offered his band a recording contract. A pregnant young girlfriend who had made it clear she wanted no part of her family wealth, hadn’t fit in with his new and improved plans. She wouldn’t have wanted such a shallow and irresponsible man raising her son, anyway. She knew that now. But she also knew her son ached for the lack of a father in his life.

Oh, if only…

She looked wistfully at the painting on the wall beside her bed. Zachariah Bolton. His soft sable hair fell across his forehead, his brown eyes gleamed. The narrow black tie hung in two thin ribbons, and his vest was unbuttoned. The top of a gold watch peeked up from a small pocket.

The boy’s resemblance to her own son struck her again, and she figured that might be a lot of the reason she liked the piece so much. The two sat very close to one another, at a wooden table with an oil lamp at either end. Each intent on his own work, but still, somehow, aware of the other. You could almost feel the love between them. Father and son, she’d have known that even without Quigly O’Donnell’s narration. A father whose work meant the world to him, she thought, but who had never once allowed that work to come before his son.

If only Cody could have a father like that one.

Jane sighed, and relaxed deeper into her pillows. It was no use dreaming. She’d never find a man with those century-old values in the nineties. Not even in this nostalgic town. And she wouldn’t settle for less. She didn’t want another man whose career meant more to him than his own child. And she didn’t want an ambitionless bum, or an immature, irresponsible overgrown kid, either.

She wanted…

Her gaze wandered back to the man in the painting. His full lips were parted just slightly, his strong jawline was taut, as if he were grating his teeth, and he was shoulder-to-shoulder with the little boy. The passion in his eyes was for his work. But it was intense enough to make her wonder if it had ever been there for a woman. His wife, the boy’s mother, perhaps?

She smiled and shook her head. She was gifting the mysterious inventor with qualities he’d probably never had. The day after she and Cody moved in, Jane had made a trip to the Rockwell Public Library and borrowed several books on the town’s history. The chapters on Bolton all read much the same. He’d been a notorious womanizer. The Don Juan of the nineteenth century, one author had dubbed him. None had mentioned his wife. Poor, long-suffering woman.

And yet that passion in the eyes of the inventor called to her.

Oh, but all this speculation was silly. The man was no longer living. And that probably wasn’t passion at all in his eyes, but perhaps the beginnings of insanity. Once a man considered to be a genius, and far ahead of his time, Bolton had, the books claimed, crossed that fine line between brilliance and insanity. And from what she’d read, Jane thought the madness had begun to take over long before the death of his precious son. Two accounts said that Bolton had claimed he’d discovered a way to travel through time. He’d been ridiculed for that claim, and soon after he’d refused to discuss it. Some said it was that ridicule that had sent him into seclusion, as much as the loss of his son. Whatever the reason, he’d dropped out of sight in 1890-something, never to be heard from again.

A shame. A crying shame.

“Mom! Mom, hurry!”

The alarm in Cody’s voice pierced straight through every thought, to her very soul. Something was wrong. She jumped out of bed and ran into the hall, down it, and her heart was in her throat even before she exploded through his bedroom door and froze in place.

The moonlight spilled through the window and bathed the two forms in its pale, liquid glow. A rumpled, tousled man knelt on the floor, holding her son in his arms, so tightly she wondered if Cody could breathe. The man’s back was toward Jane, and his shoulders shuddered and convulsed as if he were sobbing. Cody stared at her from the darkness, wide-eyed, as the man rocked him back and forth.

“My son,” he kept whispering, his voice raw and coarse. “My boy, my son. Thank God…”