Valley of the Moon

“We knew it, we just didn’t want to acknowledge it. The existence of this young woman confirms it,” Joseph said to Martha. “Time has been speeding up on full moon days and to the tune of approximately fourteen years. But only on full moon days.” He turned to me. “The rest of the days of the month—like today—time passes here exactly as it passes out there on the other side of the fog.”

He nodded at me. “I don’t think you’re in any danger, Lux. You made it through the fog perfectly fine. And unlike us, it appears you can leave anytime. You can leave right now if you want to.”

We had reached the meadow. The wall of fog still hung there.

“I think she should go,” said Martha. “We don’t want to take any chances.”

I thought of Benno with my parents. Day two of his vacation.

“Please, go,” pleaded Martha.

“If I go, will I be able to come back?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

I’d always had a sixth sense about Benno being in danger. I knew moments before he fell off the jungle gym that he was about to fall off. I would often wake in the middle of the night just before he woke with a nightmare. We were that close, that connected. I tried to reach out to him, to feel him three thousand miles away in Newport. I sensed nothing but good, clear energy. He was probably sitting on the couch with my mother, eating apple slices.

“I want to test out the fog once more,” I said. “Make sure I’m okay in it. That I really can leave whenever I want.”

Martha gave me a concerned look.

“I’ll stay in there just a minute,” I said.

“You have somebody—at home?” Joseph asked.

“Yes.”

“If you decide not to come back, we’ll understand,” he said.

Heart thudding, I walked into the fog. It was thick, but I had no trouble breathing. In fact, it seemed completely indifferent to me. I turned my back on Greengage and tried to peer through the fog to my campsite. I saw the faintest of glows, which comforted me: it was daylight in my time just as it was daylight here. I listened carefully and heard the hum of Route 12. And then a song. A car radio as it drove by. The unmistakable chorus of Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together.” That song reassured me like nothing else—it was on a constant loop on every station in 1975.

“A minute’s up,” said Joseph.

I hesitated, then stepped into the past.

“You’re sure?” I asked Joseph, back at the house. “That unless it’s the day of the full moon, time passes regularly here?”

“As sure as I can be.”

Martha frowned. “I still think she should go back.”

Now that I’d convinced myself time was passing normally on the other side of the fog, I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t want them to force me to. I had something to offer them. Information. I would parcel it out to them while trying to figure out what was really going on.

“We studied the earthquake in school,” I said. “It leveled San Francisco. The city went up in flames. It was an eight-point-something on the Richter scale.”

“The Richter scale?” asked Joseph.

“It’s a way to measure the magnitude of a quake.”

“Eight points is high?”

“It’s a monster.”

“We kept waiting for somebody to rescue us,” said Martha. “We were well known in Sonoma. We sold our produce to every restaurant and grocery store within fifty miles of the farm. Why didn’t people come looking for us?”

Joseph rubbed his temples and sank lower in his seat. I could see the depression enveloping him. Crazy or not, I had to do something.

“When I go home, I’ll get help.”

“What kind of help could you possibly get?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Who could figure out a way to get you out of the fog? A physicist?”

He gave me a skeptical look.

“Maybe a meteorologist?” I said, attempting a joke. “Look, I’m not kidding. There’s got to be a solution.” Even though part of me was still not accepting the reality of all this, I forged ahead. “What about if I got some sort of a vehicle here? We could drive you through the fog.”

“We tried that,” said Joseph. “We have a Model T. Magnusson built a compartment for it. It was airtight. It didn’t work.”

The front door opened and footsteps pattered down the hallway.

“My sister, Fancy,” said Joseph.

The woman who’d hugged me when I first arrived walked into the room. Her dark hair was cut in a pixie. She wore crimson silk pants and a green kimono top. Compared to Joseph and Martha, she looked like a circus performer.

“Is it true?” she asked Joseph. “Is it true?” she asked me, not waiting for her brother’s reply. “Are you really from 1975?”

“I am.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. “I’ve missed everything,” she cried.

I understood what it was like to feel like life was passing you by.

“Did women finally get the right to vote?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What year?”

“Nineteen twenty, I think. Here in the States, anyway.”

“Oh goodness, it took that long, did it? I have so many questions. Is she going back? Are you going back?” She looked at me with a desolate face, handing me something folded up in a cloth napkin. “I brought you a treat. A bribe, really, to induce you to stay. Some of Elisabetta’s almond sponge cake.”

I opened the napkin. A square of golden cake was nestled into the cloth. “No inducing necessary,” I said. “I’m staying.”

I was still far from convinced it was 1906, but I wasn’t leaving without looking around a bit more.

“For the day,” clarified Martha.