Amber House: Neverwas (44 page)

I popped Sammy’s subway token in the slot and shoved the

bulk of my skirts through the turnstile. The guard stepped for-

ward, eyeing this crazed Cinderella slipping past him, but he did

not stop me. I shot into the open doors on the subway car and

whirled.

I saw Richard vaulting the turnstile, arcing through the air. I

saw a clock on the wall, the second hand crawling to 12:15.

Richard was going to make it. He was going to catch me. He was

going to ruin everything.

His hand caught my arm through the open subway door, his

eyes full of confusion. I begged him, “You have to let me go,

Hathaway. It’s more important than you can possibly know. You

can
trust me. Please.”

He held my eyes, as if he were trying to read something

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hidden inside them. Then he smiled — square with just a bit of

crooked — and he let me go.

N

I reached Penn Station in time for the one o’clock New Year’s

special, heading for all points south. I’d brought enough cash for

two tickets, but now I needed only one.

The train car held a fair number of passengers, many in fancy

dress, most of them showing obvious signs of too much alcohol.

It was a measure of how thoroughly all residents and visitors to

New York had been indoctrinated to mind their own business

that no one gave my torn, mud-stained cloak and gown a second

glance. I shoved over to a seat by the window to hide my clothes

as much as possible.

I huddled there, letting the rhythm of the train lull me. I was

weary of body, mind, and spirit, and all I wanted was to look up

and see Jackson magically rejoining me. Telling me what to do

again. Making everything go right.

I remembered then I had never told Jackson about Fiona and

her poem. I had never told him he was the same, time after time.

The same Jackson — whom I loved.

I became aware of the staticky voice of a radio newscaster

coming from a portable radio someone had turned up too loud.

“. . . But reports confirm the blaze was confined to the por-

tion of the Metropolitan known as the Atrium. Because the

exhibit was an ambassadorial gesture by Robert Hathaway,

who is widely predicted to become the next president of the

Confederation, there has been some speculation that this was a

terrorist attack. Again, the only known casualty is a young black

male who is presumed to have set the blaze. . . .”

I didn’t hear anything after that. I sat alone, apart, absolute

silence filling my ears.

o295

I couldn’t let the thought in. I couldn’t face it, pick it up, let it be inside me. Two rivers ran down my cheeks and wouldn’t stop.

It was too horrible to let it be the truth:
He knew all along he
wouldn’t be coming with me.

N

“Miss?” A hand on my shoulder made me turn, made me look up

into kind eyes. A black porter. “Your stop is next.” He watched

me a moment, trying to decide if he should say or do any-

thing more.

I nodded, brushing at the tears. His words hardly made sense

to me, as if they came from a great distance, difficult to hear. I

moved obediently to the aisle seat to show that I was ready,

that I would get up when it was necessary. That is what he wanted

of me, wasn’t it? I watched his pants, his shiny black shoes,

move on.

The train lurched to a stop. I made myself stand. I moved legs

I couldn’t feel, walking in short, wooden steps. I made my knees

bend to take the stairs, almost fell, caught myself on the metal

rail, slipped and staggered the rest of the way to the ground.

Then I started walking. My body knew the direction.

It was still dark, but the sky was growing gray. Dawn was

coming.

I was cold to the center of me, an interior of snow and ice that

hurt like fire. I didn’t want to move anymore, but I didn’t want

to stop moving. I just kept walking and pulling in air through a

throat squeezed tight.
I have to see it through
, I thought, but I didn’t know what that meant. I hadn’t ever known what that

meant.

At the edge of town, I began to jog. Down the trail through

the park. That would take me back to Amber House. Where I

would see it through.
Because Time without him in it must not be.

CH A P T ER THI RT Y-TWO

K

The sky in the east, out beyond the Chesapeake, dreamed of day

in shades of pink and plum. I didn’t know how long I ran, stiff

plodding paces in constant rhythm, on and on. My breath flew

from me in cloud serpents. My velvet slippers were soaked

through from the thin blanket of snow that held the world in

quietude. My toes became dull things of ice.

I felt a stricken spot on my hip and recognized that the gun in

the purse was beating upon me mercilessly. I drew it out and ran

with it in hand.

He knew all along he wouldn’t be coming with me.
I reached at last the road that bordered Amber House. I had come home. The sky

was shot with gold.

I shoved through the hidden gate, hardly slowing, onto the

path that led across the fields.

I came out of the trees — And Jackson was there, waiting for

me at the path’s end. He was sitting on the top rail of the fence,

looking out over the hilltops. He held in his hand a yellow hand-

kerchief exactly like the one I had tied around my wrist. He did

not see me yet.

“Jackson,” I said, and a space opened around us, and then

he saw.

He smiled. “I promised you I would be here.”

I stood with my hand kneading my side, gasping white breaths,

finding enough air to accuse him. “You knew you were never

coming back.”

“I knew,” he agreed.

o297

“We should have found another way.”

“There was no other way.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t speak. It sat like a sickness inside

me. How could he have made himself face death?
That
death, by burning?

I felt terribly cold. I wished he could hold me.

“I waited here to tell you that I love you,” he said. “I have

always loved you. It’s part of who I am.” He slid down from the

fence then and came close. His face had a sheen of prismatic light

that testified to the time between us, that proved he was an

echo, intangible. We could not touch, but he could meet my

eyes. “I wanted you to know — the future that I’ve seen is worth

fighting for. I judged it worth dying for. Now you have to keep

your promise and see it through.”

“What if I fail?”

The smallest sad smile. “It’s a possibility,” he said. “I’ve seen

that also. You become first lady of a new nation.”

“Richard,” I said.

He nodded. “He loves you too.”

I couldn’t let myself think about that. There was something

else. Something I had forgotten to tell him, something he needed

to know. Then it came back to me. “Fiona remembered a poem

from the other time. She found it in the déjà vu. It proves she’s

the same person. You are too. And I’ll remember you. I’ll tell

you every detail.”

“I know,” he said.

“I love you,” I said.

He smiled and nodded. “I’ve seen you and loved you a whole

lifetime’s worth, Sare.
You
were worth dying for.”

Pain filled my chest like an iron bar, cold and dull and heavy.

“You have to go now,” he said.

I forced myself to turn. I forced myself to walk on. When I

looked back, the snow on the rail was undisturbed.

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N

Sam and Maggie opened the door for me when I climbed up the

front steps. The house was warm, so warm my skin was on fire

with the rush of blood returning. “Where’s Jackson?” Sam asked.

I started to sob. Maggie took me in her arms and I rested

there. After a while, maybe a long while, I said, “I don’t know

what to do.”

“You don’t know what happened yet, what was changed?”

Maggie asked.

I shook my head.

“The house will tell you.”

“Why me?” I asked.

“Because you were the one who was chosen.”

I shook my head again. “You say that like there’s something

behind all this, some intention, some reason. How do you know

it’s not all just random? How do you know I can do
any
thing to make it better?”

She hugged me close again and leaned my head against her

shoulder. She stroked my hair to soothe me. “When I write sto-

ries,” she said, “it’s like chiseling a statue. I go back and find

something deeper, layer after layer, until the story is all shaped,

all laid bare.” She lifted me away from her so she could take my

face in her hands. “Maybe God is an artist. He saw something

deeper. And you were chosen to help Him lay it bare.”

Sammy came up and slipped his hand into mine. “Jackson told

me to make sure you remembered your promise.”

I wiped my face with my fingers. I nodded. “I remember,

Sam.” I picked the gun up from where I’d let it fall.

“You’ll make him come back, Sarah,” Sam said.

I didn’t know where to go, what to do, so I started walk-

ing. Living room, library, gallery. Kitchen, dining room, hall. I

would let the house tell me. I would
make
the house tell me.

o299

Ground floor of the east wing, back to the entry. Up the stairs

to the second floor.

Where the light shifted.

Ahead of me, I saw the Captain hauling Deirdre to her

room by one arm. She was protesting, “But I must get ready,

Joseph. Make sure the luncheon is laid, put on a frock. He’ll be

here soon.”

“No,” he said, shoving her through the door. “He’s not

coming.”

“He’s not?” she said. “Did he write again? Send his regrets?”

“He’s not coming,” her husband said again firmly and pulled

her door shut. As he walked past me, he pulled Claire Hathaway’s

pistol from his waistband and checked its touch hole for

powder.

He was on his way to murder someone, I realized, dropping

out of the vision. The man he made Deirdre invite to Amber

House. The man whose name he chose on the flip of a coin.

That’s how time changed.

I rushed back downstairs with renewed purpose. “The

Captain killed someone who wasn’t supposed to die,” I told

Maggie as I continued past to the kitchen. She and Sammy fol-

lowed me.

“Someone who came here,” Maggie said, “because you woke

the other mama up.”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said, “but I think I know how to find

out.” I scrounged a screwdriver out of a bottom junk drawer and

sat down at the table with the pistol. I needed the coin free of

the gun.

I gasped when I picked it out of its socket in the gun. It was

cold in my fingers, and it seemed almost to
squirm
. In a telescope of images, I saw faces, an endless series of them, one supplanting

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the other, each one twisted with some kind of ugly hunger. The

last face was the old man on the coin, lying in dirt among other

coins, his bare feet swinging just above them.

“Maggie,” I cried, and she took my hand. And my vision

cleared. I wrapped the coin in a dishcloth. Then I took it and

went back upstairs, into the Captain’s front room.

I unwrapped the coin, took it again in my fingers, and con-

centrated with all my might, willing the Captain to appear. I

went to stand behind his chair. Nothing. But I was certain this

had to be it.

I put the Janus coin on the side of my curled index finger, atop

the tip of my thumb. Then I flipped it into the air.

Another hand shot out to catch it. The Captain’s. He checked

its face — it was the grim old man. He used his quill to cross

another name off his list. He flipped the coin again. The young

and smiling god.
Yes.
The Captain circled a name in his log and sat back, contemplating. I leaned forward to see.

Washington. The owner of Mount Vernon. The rebel gen-

eral. The father of a lost nation in a time that didn’t exist

anymore.

And the word at the top of the page, the action the Captain

had consulted the Fates about whether to take:
Assassination.

N

The vision dissipated. I was back in my own time. The

wrong time.

How could I stop the assassination? Nyangu was the key.

Through her, I could touch the past. I needed to find Nyangu

again. But I needed her from a specific time, the exactly right

time. No other would do. How could I find her?

“Here, Sarah.” Sam stood in the doorway, holding out his

hand, palm up. On it sat the mottled green stone.

o301

My sweet, strange little brother. Who knew things. And

wasn’t afraid. Who looked forward to the “new years” coming.

I took the stone from his outstretched hand. “I love you, Sam,”

I said, barely able to squeeze out the words. I leaned down and

kissed the top of his head.

“I love you too, Sarah.”

“See you,” I whispered into his hair.

Then I went in search of Nanga. Deirdre’s room, the Nautical

Room, the flowered room, the tower room. I found her in the

little eight-by-eight-foot chamber next to that. I heard her before