Amber House: Neverwas (31 page)

and the nations of Europe and a very different end to the second

World War. Not Reichsleiter Jaeger and the Japanese Empire

and the Thousand-Year Reich.

192 O

Of course the change hadn’t been because of Maggie. It was

too huge; it went back too far. But it wasn’t because of Amber

either. Fiona had been mistaken. She’d followed the wrong trail.

So what had happened?
How
had it happened? Since I was the

one — the only one — who remembered that other time, I was

sick with the suspicion that, somehow, it was because of
me
.

Richard eased the car to a stop. He was staring at his grip

on the steering wheel. “Hey, Parsons, did I do something? Say

something wrong?”

I recognized the tone of his voice — the same brittle tone

he’d used to describe Claire’s abandonment, in the time before.

“I’m sorry, Hathaway. It wasn’t you. I saw something on the

trip that left me really upset, but I can’t explain it right now.

Forgive me?”

And he did, of course he did. Because, whatever the shadow-

Richard had been like before, this Richard was perfect.

N

Richard drove away as I started up the front steps. But I couldn’t

go inside. I realized I needed to go somewhere else. I needed

to go
to
someone else.

I took the path to the river. The frozen grass crunched beneath

my feet, faster and faster until I was jogging. The air I sucked

into my lungs burned, but I didn’t slow down. Careless of my

clothes, careless of my safety, I fled down the sloping path to

Jackson’s house.

And he answered the door without my even having to knock.

I took a step back, startled. He looked pale, thin, exhausted.

His skin had an ashy cast, and there were dark circles under his

eyes. “God, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Come in.” He stepped aside. “Cocoa?” He

pointed to two cups steaming beside the stove.

o193

I realized a cup of cocoa would be just the right thing. Had it

been this way all along? Jackson always knowing exactly what I

would want before I did myself?

We took our cups and settled on the couch. I wrapped my

fingers around my mug, feeling it too hot, but wanting the

warmth that spread inward from the contact. Jackson waited

for me.

I watched the frothy film on the surface of the cocoa swirl

clockwise.

I wanted to apologize, wanted to tell him how right he had

been, that things needed to be changed. But now that I was here,

I couldn’t find words to say what I had remembered about that

other time. A better time. Not for me and my family. Or

Richard. But for everyone else. I bent over my cup so that

my hair hid my tears, and struggled to swallow the knowledge

that had lodged like a stone in my throat. And still Jackson

waited.

I found my voice again, and I started to talk. I told him every-

thing I could remember about a different world, where things

had been more advanced — science, medicine, technology —

and everyone had been more liberal, more equal, blacks and

whites, men and women. When I finished, I said, “I’m the only

one who remembers that other past. I think that must mean

something.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“My great-grandmother, Fiona, thought the change involved

her grandmother and the little girl she adopted, but it didn’t.

They took Amber away from here and she never came back. She

died in New England. Young.”

“The child in the picture with Maeve McCallister.”

“Yes,” I said. “And really, she didn’t live long enough ago to

have caused all the changes I’ve seen.”

“Because they started in the seventeen hundreds.”

194 O

“Yes. With the failed revolt. It didn’t fail in that other time.”

Which, oddly enough, I was beginning to think of as the
real

time, before I’d messed it up somehow. “There’s something else

you should know. In that other time, your parents still died. The

accident still happened.”

He closed his eyes, his face constricted. “That’s a terrible

thought, isn’t it? Like they were burned alive twice.”

“What are we supposed to do? Try to change it back?” I said.

“I don’t think we can change it back,” he said. “But — maybe

we can change it again,
to
something else.”

“I’m afraid,” I said. “Look at what happened last time. What if

there’s something worse than this?”

“I
see
something else, Sarah. Something
better
. A lot like the world you describe, but better. Do you believe me?”

Of course I believed him. “What do we have to do?”

“Seems to me, first things first, we need to track down the

point where time changed. We need to search the house, hunt

for memories from the other time.”

A treasure hunt
, I thought. “You’ll help me?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said.

N

We agreed we would begin in the morning. Somewhat com-

forted, I walked back to Amber House.

My mother descended on me when I entered the front door.

“Didn’t I hear Richard’s car about forty minutes ago? Is every-

thing all right?”

I smiled and nodded and told her it all went exactly as planned.

“I just went for a walk. I needed to think.”

“To think?”

“I’m not feeling well, Mom. Can we talk in the morning?”

“I saved you some dinner.”

o195

I shook my head. “I can’t eat.”

There was worry in her face. But she let me go.

I stopped in the library before I went upstairs. There was

something I had to do, something I had to know. Someone I had

remembered.

The woman’s voice on the other end of the telephone line was

bright and cheerful: “Information. May I help you?”

I asked for a Seattle listing. I dialed the number. “Hello? Mr.

Wanderscheid? Can I please speak to — Jessica? Jecie?”

But he didn’t have a daughter. Or a wife whose name had been

Deborah Goldman. When I called information again, they didn’t

have a listing for her either.

The Reich had been so thorough
, I thought bleakly. There weren’t many Jews left in the world. Including the girl who once had

been Sarah One’s best friend.

CH A P T ER TW E N T Y-ON E

K

Mom and Dad were waiting for me when I went down in the

morning. They were drinking coffee, chatting, making altera-

tions to a list — but still obviously waiting.

My mother looked up with a carefully neutral smile. “You

never gave us your report, hon. How was the capital?”

I turned for the refrigerator, busied myself with pouring

some juice. “The whole thing was kind of” —
Unbelievable?
—

“amazing.” I put the juice away. Went and sat in a chair. Took a

sip. “Yeah. Amazing. Did you know Richard is a pilot?”

My mother’s face fell. “
He
flew you there?” She turned to my

father. “When Robert said they’d fly —” My father held up a

hand to stop her train of thought. He turned back to me.

“Yeah, a really great pilot, as it turns out,” I said. “That was

pretty — amazing too.” Another sip. “And you know who handed

Richard that tape? Stevenson.”

My father: “The
president
?”

“I know, right?” I nodded with widened eyes.

“So why did you seem so upset last night?” my mother pressed.

Another sip. “Well,” I said, my eyes searching down and to

the left for an answer to that one, “he said some kind of disturb-

ing things. The president.”

“What did he say?” My dad.

“I’m really bad with remembering conversations,” I hedged.

“What did he say?” My mom.

“Like, ‘time is running out,‘ and he was too old to ‘do what

had to be done,‘ and . . .” The phrases smacked like slaps. I

o197

recovered my line of thought: “He said Senator Hathaway had to

stop another world war.”

This did not seem to surprise my parents. They looked at each

other, even while my father said, “Don’t worry, honey, it’s not

going come to that.” He reached out and gave my hand a little

squeeze, then he and Mom stood to go.

She pushed a list toward me across the table. “A few

pieces of the furniture are going north to help decorate the

exhibit — I need you to empty the stuff inside them into boxes.

Please?”

N

It was almost nine o’clock and suddenly I had a list of jobs I had

to do. Instead, of trying to figure out how to — I shook my

head — what? Change history, correct time, save the world?

I went to find Maggie.

She was curled up with a book in an armchair in her room.

She looked up at me when I stuck my head in, her usual simple

smile in place. It froze me for a moment. I recognized I hadn’t

thought through what I was going to say to her.

She helped me. “You’ve seen more, you’ve remembered more.”

I went in and closed the door behind me. I sat in her desk

chair. “Yeah, Maggie, I have.”

She closed her book. “Tell me,” she said.

So I told her. The whole thing. The terrible changes. And the

fact that I needed to change things again.

“It’s all right,” she said quietly. “I don’t mind, really.”

I was confused. “Mind what?”

“I’m grateful I had this chance to grow up, you know?” she

continued in a soft voice. “But it’s all right if you have to undo it.

I won’t disappear totally. The house will remember me. You’ll

remember me.”

198 O

I couldn’t speak for a moment. The pain in my chest was ter-

rible. Maggie was willing to be
erased
to make things right. She was so brave. Why was I such a coward?

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “The world is better with you

in it. I won’t lose you. Jackson’s going to help me figure it out.

How to make things right. And right includes you, Maggie, you

hear me?”

N

Maggie said she and Sam would empty out the stuff stored in the

furniture so I could work with Jackson. I left the list with her

and hurried to the conservatory. He was waiting by Pandora’s

pool. I sat next to him.

“Where do we start?” he said.

“I don’t know. It seems like the change happened all at once,

just that one time, when I went to find Sam. So I guess we should

go to the attic.”

He smiled at the grim look on my face. “Your favorite place.”

He stood and held out his hand. I put mine in his. It was so much

larger than mine, warm and smooth and strong. He pulled me to

my feet. “Let’s go.”

N

I stood in the open door of the attic, looking at the dusty contents of the room, wondering how to make something — anything —

happen. I spotted an old crate that seemed familiar.

“Can we move this to the middle?” I said, starting to tug on a

handle, trying to drag it.

Jackson stopped me. “Let’s try to be as quiet as possible.”

He lifted the whole crate and set it carefully, silently, where

I pointed.

o199

I knelt down before it and placed my hands on its surface.

Nothing happened. I felt like an idiot, a fraud. I looked up at

him. “I don’t know how to make it —
go
.”

He crouched down by me. “You can’t force it,” he said. “You

have to open yourself up and let it happen.”

I nodded. His gift was different, but in some ways the same.

He knew.

I tried to relax, sitting back against my heels, closing my eyes,

letting my arms, my fingers, go limp, resting on the crate. I felt

something coming on — a different space that I pushed into,

like a stick being forced into a marshmallow.

It closed around me. I opened my eyes to candlelight, the

night I’d gone into the mirror world. They were there before

me — those two dear little faces. Sam and child-Maggie. “Sarah

too,” she was saying. I listened to myself trying to reason with

them, trying to convince them that their mirror world was a

dream and that they needed to wake up.

I saw my hands holding the box that had been the key to

changing time in that other past — the box that Sarah Louise’s

dead twin brother had made. I saw Sammy stand and trot off on

sturdy legs, fading away as he went. And I felt a wind rising, as if my hair should be lifting. But nothing moved. The other Sarah

set a brooch on the crate, and Maggie too stood and disappeared.

Then Sarah One fell sideways.

I stood over her, observed her. She’d been bitten —
I’d
been bitten — by a Good Mother spider. I understood she was dying.

The roaring of a tornado filled my senses, but she just lay there,

unmoving, in the dust.

Her eyes cracked open —

she was looking at someone

else.
Who?

Hands. I saw soft white hands stroking the other Sarah’s face.

Hands that belonged to a woman with long, iron-gray hair hang-

ing in tangles around a sweet but ravaged face.

200 O

“I am sorry for you,” she said to the girl on the floor, “but I

have to go now. Sarah-Louise needs me.” She disappeared.

I saw myself a moment more.
All alone
, I thought,
at the end of
time.
Then gray daylight hit my eyes.

“What did you see?” Jackson asked.