The Time of the Clockmaker (2 page)

ONE

MY FINGERS FUMBLED
with the keys for a few seconds before I managed to unlock the door. I propped it open with my hip, clutching at two large grocery bags.

“Good God,” I muttered as I struggled to get the heavy, handleless paper bags through the door.

The more eco-friendly Manhattan became, the more of a pain it was. Don't get me wrong; I thought going green was a very admirable thing, but there was such a thing as
too
green.

I shuddered as I recalled the look the cashier had given me when I told him I had forgotten to bring my reusable cloth bag. He glowered, looking down at me past his fleshy eyelids. His condescending stare immediately brought back memories of Christine—a girl I had known a long, long time ago.

As beautiful as Christine looked, with her Southern-belle golden tendrils of hair framing her dainty face and azure eyes, when it came to dirty looks she seemed to have mastered every
variation. Last summer—or a little bit more than a century ago, since that was practically the same thing to me now—Christine had believed that I was stealing her future husband away from her. Henley. Oh, Henley. That summer I had received far more than my fair share of her scowls. But it was worth it. I just couldn't think of it now. It hurt too much.

There were still memories to chuckle over. I walked to the kitchen and set the bags down on the countertop. In the end, the man Christine saw as essentially her fiancé had married her sister. My smile dissolved into a long sigh as I remembered Eliza.

If Christine was one of the most unpleasant people I had ever had the misfortune of meeting, Eliza had to be one of the best. She was unassuming and didn't have lofty expectations about life. She wasn't resentful that she wasn't as pretty as her sister. She wasn't bitter that a sickness in her childhood had left her blind. Eliza was content merely with her devout thoughts. She found God in everything, and she believed in a greater plan that he created for all of us. . . .

All of us except me,
I reminded myself.

Eliza believed in heaven—a heaven that would take all good people.

I thought back to a time long ago, a time that felt both foreign and familiar. I remembered walking into Eliza's room to see her kneeling in reverent prayer. When she had finished, she told me something that had stuck in my mind ever since.

“I'll see you in heaven someday, I know it. It doesn't matter whether you believe, you see,” she had said. “God loves you whether you believe or not.”

In that moment, hearing Eliza's devotion, I had wondered
whether that might be the case. Was there someone out there looking out for me? Was there really a greater plan that we all fit into?

I had desperately wished for that. I had wished that I wouldn't always be as lonely as I felt, and Eliza's words only fueled that dream. Maybe there really was a greater plan in which I just needed to trust. Maybe there was a reason for all the strangeness in my life.

But I knew now that wasn't the case. Eliza might be in a place she called heaven, but I would not be joining her. She hadn't known everything.

She hadn't known I wasn't like her.

She hadn't known I wasn't meant to be there.

She hadn't known that I wasn't human.

I slumped against the countertop, feeling the cool tiles against my palms. She hadn't known that I would never die. Although Eliza has now been dead for almost a century, I was immortal.

“Miss Hatfield?” I called out in the empty kitchen. I quickly corrected myself, remembering that she would sometimes refuse to answer if I didn't call her by her first name. “Rebecca? I'm home with the groceries.”

A silent house responded.

Realizing that Miss Hatfield was out again, I put away the groceries leisurely, all the while wondering what I would do to occupy myself till she returned. My body seemed to answer my question for me when I found myself staring at my keys on the counter again. Next to them was a simple ring with a blue stone set in the middle of it.

I was surprised. Not because I had never seen the ring before—no, it was a ring I wore often, practically every day—but because I thought I had put it away. It had been a gift from someone a long time ago. Someone I wanted to remember and someone who wanted to be remembered. Henley.

Shaking my head, I put it on and grabbed my keys again. I knew I had to get out of the house. It was as if I couldn't think clearly while inside.

Miss Hatfield's house certainly wasn't unpleasant. It looked like a normal New York brownstone on the outside. Perhaps a bit run-down, with cracks leading up the cement steps to the worn-out front door, but it looked like all the other houses in the neighborhood.

Maybe that was the reason I hadn't suspected anything when I had first met Miss Hatfield. The house seemed like an ordinary house, and she seemed like an ordinary woman.

The year was 1954 when I first met Miss Hatfield. I was eleven years old and everyone called me by a different name from the one I used now—Cynthia. Perhaps I was gullible, being so young. Perhaps Miss Hatfield had perfected her lies. . . . Whatever the case, I accepted when Miss Hatfield invited me for lemonade in her house. Agreeing to that changed everything.

Once she had me inside the house, Miss Hatfield adjusted a large golden clock she had hung on the wall and snuck the last drop of an odd clear liquid into my drink. I noticed her doing these things with great curiosity—even a bit of suspicion—but, not wanting to be an ungrateful guest, Cynthia—I—played along. Little did I know that by turning the hands of the clock, Miss Hatfield had advanced time, aging me in my mortal body,
before putting a drop of the Fountain of Youth's waters into my drink, making me immortal.

I didn't find out until I looked into a mirror. I laughed to myself now as I remembered how I had at first believed that Miss Hatfield had somehow put me in another person's body. The real answer of time travel and immortality seemed as silly as body swapping, but in that moment, I was terrified.

Bit by bit, Miss Hatfield explained to me how I could never go home again. My parents wouldn't believe that this mature body was now me, and I wouldn't be able to stay in one time period for long either. She explained how I was now a visitor in all time periods. I didn't have a time or place in which I belonged.

When she had first explained it all to me, I felt like my head was going to implode. I still felt like that sometimes, but I was slowly getting accustomed to it—well, as accustomed as one can get to never aging.

I opened the front door for the third time that day. I was greeted by the same ruckus of the streets as that morning. The cars honked, and the people, huddled in spring coats, pushed past. There seemed to be more people than usual. Everyone went about their lives, choosing to ignore everyone else, and they were happy.

How many couples would I see today? Thankfully, Valentine's Day had come and gone, but I still spotted at least three couples on the opposite side of the street.

I looked closer at the pair nearest to me. A tall man in a gray coat with a blond woman on his arm, throwing her head back as she laughed at something the man must have said. They were walking away from me. Arm in arm. Hands entwined. Steps in
sync.

I shook myself out of it and started down the street. Police officers were helping put up metal bleachers to close sections of the street. The St. Patrick's Day Parade was tomorrow—of course! That also accounted for the extra people who had seemed to descend upon the city out of nowhere.

I let myself blend into the crowd as Miss Hatfield had taught me.
Act as they do. Walk as they do. Feel as they do, and you become them.
I didn't pause. It was just like being in a play. I was merely acting different parts, but somehow that made me feel less alone. For once it was as if I knew what was expected of me, and what I had to do. The half hour walk was a familiar one, and the cold spring air made me walk all the faster. I passed St. Paul's Chapel at a brisk pace, dodging the tourists.

The concrete gave way to what looked like a small park in the city. Surrounded by trees as it was, you wouldn't know it was the New York City Marble Cemetery until you entered it. There was only one path through, as if those who built it didn't want people lingering and loitering about, but I knew my way well.

I didn't even have to count the rows of headstones to know where to turn. I hadn't memorized it. It was instinctive.

At last, finding the large gravestone with its marble slightly worn away, I let myself fall to my knees. My head hung low. I was unable to bring my hands up to cradle it.

I knew the words on the tombstone by heart.
Henley A. Beauford,
they read.
Innovative Businessman & Loving Husband.

My fingers found the ring I wore on my left hand and fiddled with it, turning it quickly three revolutions.

It felt as if it hadn't been that long ago. A few months, perhaps? But in regular, mortal time it was almost a century ago that I had met Henley.

I let my fingers come up to trace his name. I felt I had known everything there was to know about this man when I fell in love with him, but I still found there were little, trivial things I knew nothing about. Like his middle name. What did the “A” stand for? I hadn't thought to ask him.

I turned to the tombstone beside his.
Eliza P. Beauford, Loving Wife & Daughter.
I smiled because Eliza would have known those things about her husband. She would have taken good care of him, too.

If there was a heaven, I wondered if they were both watching. Did they forgive me for keeping so much from them? Did Henley forgive me for all that I put him through?

I turned away from the graves and looked around. I wasn't sure what I was looking for. All I saw were trees around me, and all I heard was the wind.

I stood up on my shaky legs and walked a few feet to a nearby bench. From where I sat, I couldn't see the cars and buildings of the city, and I was at peace.

There, on the simple wooden bench, it could have been any time period. I half expected Henley to saunter over in his usual way with that gleam in his eye I had grown to adore. I closed my eyes.

He would bring a hand from out of his pocket to brush a strand of his dark hair from his eyes. His touch was always so gentle. He would sit mere inches away from me, almost, but not, touching. And he would look at me the way he always did, with
those clear eyes of his seeing directly into me.

I wondered what I would say if he were here.
Sorry, I forgot to mention that I was immortal? By the way, since I found out that Miss Hatfield is your mother, you're actually half-immortal too. . . . Not that that would matter, since you're dead.

I sighed and opened my eyes. I reached into the pocket of my jacket to pull out a slip of charred paper. I always carried it with me, and taking it out just to hold it had become a habit. I already knew the words on the piece of paper.
To my darling Charles. With all the love in the world, Ruth.
It was a note from Henley's mother, Miss Hatfield, to his adoptive father. I was careful as I unfolded it, given that it was now a hundred years old.

I remembered how my hands shook upon first seeing the photograph the piece of paper contained. There, in a lavish dress with her beautifully curled hair piled on top of her head, was Miss Hatfield. There was no mistaking it, yet every time I saw that photo, I couldn't help but draw a sharp breath.

It did make sense, how Miss Hatfield had encouraged me to pose as Henley's father's niece, and didn't mind too much my staying with the Beauford family much longer than expected. I recalled how she had even asked about Mr. Beauford's son once. It all made sense, yet I couldn't muster the courage to bring it up with Miss Hatfield.

I knew it was silly, since I had already uncovered what I thought was most of it. And I did have a right to know, because it did concern me. . . . But for some reason it felt horribly wrong. As if I would be trespassing where I didn't belong.

Besides, Miss Hatfield always seemed to be rushing out of the house, even disappearing for a couple of days at times.

I heard a sudden sound near me and my head snapped up. I slipped the piece of paper back into my pocket. It had sounded like the crunch of leaves under someone's foot. Normally the noise alone wouldn't have startled me, but it sounded like it was so close.

I looked around, but all I saw was an alarmed bluebird, hopping out onto the path in front of me. I guess I was just being more paranoid than usual.

“I knew I'd find you here.”

Hearing the familiar voice, I turned my head in the opposite direction. Miss Hatfield was walking toward me between two rows of graves. It didn't faze her that she was in a cemetery, or that she was walking above bodies of those who had probably been alive when she was living.