A Husband in Time

Jane’s heart seemed to grind to a halt. Without a second’s hesitation, she stepped into the room, snatched the baseball bat from where it leaned in the corner, lifted it and moved forward.

“Mom, no!”

Cody’s shout made the lunatic who held him pause and stiffen, as if just realizing someone else had come into the room. And Jane hesitated. Instead of bringing the bat crashing down on his head, she just held it there, ready, poised. Her throat was so dry that the words sounded raspy and harsh when she said, “Let him go. Let him go, right now, or I swear…”

And he turned very slowly, still hugging Cody tight, to face her. The movement bringing him out of the light, so that his face was in shadow. His brows drew together, and he seemed puzzled. Confused.

“Please,” Jane said, and her voice wasn’t quite as demanding or as confident this time. Her hands shook, and her grip on the baseball bat was none too steady. “Please, take whatever you want. Just don’t hurt my son.”

“Hurt him?” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. Tormented, pain-filled, and weak. “No, I could never… I love him. He’s my son, my Benjamin, my…” Blinking as if to clear his eyes, he turned to stare at Cody’s small, frightened face.

Jane lowered the bat, reached out a hand, flicked on the light switch. She saw the man jerk in shock, saw the fearful glance he sent up at the light fixture on the ceiling above him. Then his gaze returned to the top of Cody’s head, because he held him too closely to see much else.

“He’s my son,” Jane said, calmly, gently, and her eyes were fixed to Cody’s. The man was obviously insane. “His name is not Benjamin, it’s Cody. He’s my son. Please…”

The man gave his head a shake. With deliberate tenderness, he clasped Cody’s small shoulders and moved the boy away from him, just a bit. Enough so that he could stare down into Cody’s face.

“You’re…you’re not Benjamin….” he whispered, and the pain in his voice had tears springing to life in Jane’s eyes.

“I’m Cody, mister. Cody Fortune. I had a dad once, but he died when I was a baby. That’s my mom.” Cody pointed. “Her name’s Jane.”

The man’s brows rose. He shook his head slowly, and tears filled his eyes. “Lord,” he whispered. “You’re not… But…I thought…” Blinking repeatedly, he gripped the bedpost, pulled himself to his feet, but remained bent over, his free hand pressing to his forehead. Finally, he straightened, and turned to face Jane fully, right beneath the overhead light.

She saw his face, and her jaw fell. She caught her breath, forced her shock into submission. But then she noticed the clothes he wore, and her heart flip-flopped all over again.

Dear God, he was the image of the man in the painting.

“I’m sorry,” he said, glancing down at Cody. Then facing Jane, he repeated, “I’m so sorry I frightened you both. I…” He took a step toward her, but swayed a little, and grasped the bedpost to hold himself up.

“Th-th-that’s okay,” Jane said, and she wiggled her hand at her son. Cody ran to her, and she held him tight, never taking her eyes off the stranger. “Um…look, how did you get in here?”

He frowned, and looked around the room as if for the first time. “It’s…it’s different.” He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

Jane gently pushed Cody behind her, then took a backward step. She forcibly ignored his resemblance to the inventor she’d been mooning over so recently, and refused to think about his clothes. “You’re, um…sick or something, aren’t you,” she said, almost as if to convince herself of it. “You’re disoriented and you wandered in here by accident. I understand, all right? I’m not going to press charges, or anything like that.”

The man’s eyes opened. They were a bit dazed, clouded with pain, but they were also intelligent, perfectly sane and utterly sincere brown eyes. Brown eyes that looked so familiar it was downright uncanny. “What year is this, Jane?”

What year—

Jane swallowed hard and refused to so much as allow the thought to enter her mind. “Nineteen ninety-seven,” she told him, as casually as if it were a question she answered every day. She nudged her son with her as she took another backward step into the hall.

The man’s head jerked up fast and his eyes widened. “Nineteen…” Then he looked above him, at the light fixture in the ceiling, and when he lowered his head again, he grimaced in agony. “No… No, I went the wrong way. I came forward instead of going back. This can’t be, I…” Still ranting, he lunged forward, toward Jane, but he never made it. He went down like a giant redwood, in a heap at her feet.

And that was when she noticed the gold wire-rims on the floor beside him. The satchel in the middle of Cody’s bedroom floor. The little black box. She swallowed hard and told herself she was letting her imagination run wild. She bent down over him, reached into his vest pocket and pulled out the pocket watch—the exact same pocket watch she’d seen in the painting. And then she looked more closely at the small black box on the floor. An odd-looking remote control that looked an awful lot like the box the inventor was tinkering with in the painting.

“He asked what year it was. Said he’d come forward,” she muttered. And she mentally revisited what Sheriff O’Donnell, and the library books, had told her about the genius scientist who’d lived here. That he’d claimed to have invented time travel…and then he disappeared.

“But that just can’t be…”

“Mom?”

She rose, and turned to face her son.

“Can we keep him?”

Jane braced her hands on the edge of the bed, bending almost double as she tried to catch her breath. The man was no lightweight, that was for sure. Getting him into the bed had been no easy job. And whoever he was, he could use a shower, a shave and a clean change of clothes.

None of which, she reminded herself, was her problem. All she had to do was go downstairs, call Sheriff Quigly O’Donnell and have this intruder taken away to a jail cell.

Except that she hadn’t placed that call just yet. And she was in no hurry to, for some reason.

“Mom, is he sick?”

She glanced at her son, shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. You’d better go wash your hands, Cody. It might be catching.”

Cody didn’t go. “Maybe he’s not sick, Mom. Maybe he’s hurt.”

Jane slipped her arm around her son’s shoulders and squeezed. “You must have been scared to death.”

“Nah. At first I thought he really was my dad. That he’d come back somehow—even though I know that’s impossible. The way he was hugging me and all.” His chin lowered just a bit. “It was kinda nice.”

Jane’s throat tightened. Time to change the subject. “How did he get in here, sweetheart?”

Cody shook his head. “There was this big light, right in the middle of my room. Round. Like…sort of like a train tunnel, only light instead of dark. Really light. It hurt my eyes.” Jane frowned, but her son kept on talking. “Then the light was gone, and he was laying on the floor.”

“Lying on the floor,” she said automatically, her gaze pinned to the man in her son’s bed.

“That’s what I said. Mom, you think he’s a ghost?”

“No, Cody, I don’t think he’s a ghost.” She frowned at her son. “And I didn’t think you believed in anything as non-scientific as that.”

“I don’t. But what about—?”

“Come on,” she said, feeling uneasier by the second. A train tunnel, indeed. “Let’s go call Sheriff O’Donnell.”

“Mom, we can’t!” Cody pulled his hand free. “He needs help! He’s sick or hurt or something! You can’t go putting him in jail!”

“Honey, he broke into our house—”

“He’s my friend!” Cody crossed his arms over his chest, lower lip protruding.

“How can he be your friend? You don’t even know him.”

“He hugged me,” Cody said firmly. “And he said he loved me. And I’m not going to let you put him in jail.”

Jane closed her eyes and sighed. “Codester, sweetie, we can’t just keep him.”

“Why not? He could help with the tree house I want to build in the backyard. When he’s better, I mean. It would be great. And we could—”