A Matter of Time Read online

  “Everything all right?” asked Chad. The look of genuine concern that crossed his face made Eric feel guilty about lying, but Isabelle was right. He needed to look into this.

  “Karen’s having some car trouble. I need to go and help her out.”

  He sat up, as if suddenly very interested in the subject of car repair. “Need any help?”

  “No. I’ve got it.”

  Chad looked disappointedly at the mountain of papers in front of him. “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry about this,” he said, motioning at the boxes. “I promised to help and I will.”

  “I’m not worried at all,” said Chad. “I’m about ready to give up for the day anyway. I’ll stick around for a little while longer, then I’ll just head home early. We can finish it on Monday.”

  Eric started toward the door. “Sounds good. I won’t let you down.”

  “I know you won’t. Good luck with the car. Tell Karen I said hi.”

  “Sure. See you later.” He walked calmly out the door and then hurried out to the parking lot. He couldn’t go straight to see Mr. Silver. He was going to need to stop at home first. And all the way there, he pondered the boy’s letter.

  Even accepting that the boy really did dream about him and his strange adventures (which, in itself, was no stranger than those very adventures, after all) and that the letter really was meant for him, what were the odds of it actually finding him? Sure, Hector would’ve probably known that his English teacher kept all these assignments and that someone, someday, might come across it. Might. That was assuming someone didn’t just throw out the entire box without looking through it, which would’ve made more sense than going to the trouble of sorting through it all, in Eric’s opinion.

  But it wasn’t as if Gawes, himself had sought him out to deliver the letter. He’d happened to befriend a former student, who, like Eric, wasn’t even born when the letter was written. If Chad hadn’t been in Gawes’ class, or if the two of them hadn’t both been members of the Creek Bend Historical Society, or if Chad and Eric had not been friends, or if either of them had done something different with their lives than choosing to teach at the same high school, it never would’ve found him. Chad probably would’ve tossed the letter in the trash without another thought. For that matter, what if Mrs. Gawes hadn’t entrusted her late husband’s intellectual estate to Chad? Or even if Eric had not been free to help him on this particular day?

  I THINK YOU’RE OVERTHINKING IT, said Isabelle. The phone was resting in the PT Cruiser’s cup holder, where he could see the screen.

  “Am I?”

  HE SAID IN THE LETTER THAT HE SAW IT FINDING YOU IN HIS DREAMS. HE SAW THAT IF HE TURNED THE LETTER IN AS AN ASSIGNMENT, THAT YOU’D ONE DAY READ IT

  That was true, he supposed…

  NOTHING THAT CAME BETWEEN MATTERED. ALL HE NEEDED TO KNOW WAS THAT YOU’D READ IT IF HE GAVE IT TO MR. GAWES

  “It just seems a little convoluted to me.”

  YOU WERE CHOSEN TO HAVE THE DREAMS YOU HAD, she reminded him. YOU WERE CHOSEN FOR ALL THE AMAZING THINGS YOU’VE DONE. WHY COULDN’T YOU BE CHOSEN TO FIND HECTOR’S LETTER?

  “You’re right.”

  OF COURSE I AM

  Eric frowned at the screen. “You’ve been spending too much time talking to Karen.”

  THAT DOESN’T CHANGE THE FACT THAT I’M RIGHT

  No, it certainly didn’t. But it was still annoying.

  Chapter Two

  Karen was in the kitchen, as usual. A half-dozen strawberry pies were cooling on the countertop (her modest contribution to the big bake sale at the library tomorrow morning) and she was tidying up after herself. She was understandably surprised to see him.

  “Home already?” she asked.

  Eric walked past the kitchen and into the hallway. “Only for a minute,” he replied. He opened the closet door and began rummaging inside.

  Karen leaned against the doorway and watched him. “Is this one of those surprise inspections to try and catch me and my illicit lover red handed? Because he usually hides under the bed.”

  “That’s right, I always forget he can fit under there. Where’re the garden tools?”

  “In the basement. You going to chase him off with a rake?”

  Eric closed the closet door and walked back through the kitchen, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek as he squeezed past her. “I need a shovel.”

  “Now you’re just getting ahead of yourself.”

  “Well, I do like to plan ahead.” He opened the basement door and hurried down the steps. Karen’s gardening basket was there in the corner.

  “You’re acting weird. Is everything okay?”

  He grabbed a hand trowel and then turned and started up the steps again.

  “You might want to grab a bigger one,” she told him. “I’m no expert, but I think it’d take a long time to dig a grave with that.”

  “I only need to make a little hole.”

  “Ouch. You’re scary good at this jealous husband thing.” She took a step back and let him pass. “I’m not sure whether to be really disturbed or really turned on.” She brushed a loose strand of brown hair away from her lovely face and followed him. “Is it weird that I’m pretty sure I’m leaning toward ‘really turned on’?”

  Eric placed the trowel on the table and checked his watch. It was almost one o’clock in the afternoon. “Huh?”

  “Seriously,” she said, taking him by the arm. “You’re starting to freak me out. What’s going on?”

  He turned and met her gaze. “It’s…um…”

  Those beautiful, brown eyes narrowed. “Weirdness?” she asked.

  Eric sighed. “I think so.” He pulled Hector’s letter from his pocket and handed it to her.

  She unfolded it and read the first line. “Mr. Future?”

  “Chad found that in one of Mr. Gawes’ boxes. It was written by a sixth grader more than fifty years ago.”

  Karen began to read. After a moment, she creased her eyebrows and said, “Wait… Is he talking about you?”

  “About me and to me.”

  She finished reading the letter and looked up at him again. “Who’s Mr. Silver?”

  “A clue to tell me where to find another letter.”

  “And you know who he’s talking about?”

  “I can’t be positive until I check. But yeah. I think so.”

  “So you’re just going to run off and do your thing again? Get yourself hurt? Scare me to death?”

  Eric stood staring at her. “I’m sorry.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know you are. You’re always sorry.” She looked down at the letter again. “These are agents, aren’t they?”

  Not much got by her. She was a very bright woman. And he didn’t keep secrets from her. She knew everything about every one of his adventures, with the sole exception that he sometimes told her that his close calls weren’t as close as they really were. And he was pretty sure he wasn’t even fooling her about that.

  “What does Isabelle say about this?”

  “She says I have to look into it. She doesn’t believe in coincidences.”

  “And neither do I.” She read through the letter again and then handed it back to him. “I’m coming with you this time.”

  He thought for a second that he must’ve misheard her. “What? No. Absolutely not.”

  But he might as well have been talking gibberish, because she ignored him and hurried off to put on her shoes.

  He called after her: “I’m serious. It might be dangerous.”

  “You said yourself that letter is over fifty years old,” she called back from the hallway. “What could possibly be dangerous about it?”

  Eric looked down at the letter again. He had a very vivid imagination. He’d always had a very vivid imagination. And he could think of a lot of things that might be dangerous about it. There were agents involved. Those guys were always bad news. For all he knew, they might still be alive and lurking around. He doubted if elderly agents would
be any less dangerous than young ones. Or for all he knew, some agents might not even age. He’d met a man just a few weeks ago who claimed to have been alive for several hundred years. “These things always turn out to be a lot more than they first appear.”

  “We’re just looking for a second letter,” she reasoned.

  She wasn’t backing down, so he changed his strategy to one that never failed. “You have too much to do,” he argued. She was a freelance cake decorator and caterer, and a damn good one. She made good money off her talents, and they typically kept her busy. Especially on the weekends.

  But today was going to be different. “I’m already done with everything,” she countered.

  “The bake sale?”

  “Done.”

  “What about that potluck at the church?”

  “That’s not until Sunday. I won’t even start that until tomorrow.”

  “Didn’t you have a graduation cake, too?”

  “Two of them. I delivered both of them this morning.” She walked back into the room and took her cell phone from the charger, then she turned and gave him a quick kiss on his lips. “Bonus points for paying attention to my life, though.”

  “I don’t want bonus points,” huffed Eric as she hurried out of the room to grab her purse. “I want you to stay home where it’s safe.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and said, “Tell her she needs to stay home where it’s safe.”

  I’M NOT THE BOSS OF HER, replied Isabelle.

  “Isabelle agrees with me,” said Eric.

  HEY!

  But Karen didn’t seem to be listening. “So do you think this Hector kid is like you? Your stuff started with dreams, too.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t dream about things that wouldn’t happen for fifty years.”

  She walked back into the room, already slipping her sunglasses onto her face. Her hair was tied back now. It was amazing how good she managed to look in something as simple as a pair of khaki shorts and a scoop neck tee shirt. “No, but you dreamed about things that would happen in the next few hours. Sort of…”

  Eric gave his head one of those wobbles that wasn’t quite a yes or a no. The first time the weirdness crashed into his life, it started with a dream that woke him in the middle of the night with a pressing urge to get up and leave. But he couldn’t remember what the dream was about, so he ignored it. After three nights of this, he gave in to the compulsion and took a drive. What followed was a terrifying trek through a monster-infested fissure between two worlds. It turned out that the dream was showing him the things he would see and do, but only as they would’ve happened if he’d left the first time he awoke. By leaving two days later, things had changed. So technically, that had been a dream about the future. It just wasn’t the future that actually came to be. And it had only revealed a few hours to him, less than a single day, not even close to Hector’s fifty-four years.

  “Maybe he had adventures like you do,” suggested Karen.

  “Maybe,” said Eric.

  “It’s really interesting.” She picked up the trowel and handed it to him. “I want to see what you dig up.”

  “I always keep you posted,” he reminded her.

  “This time you won’t have to. And, I can keep an eye on you. Make sure you don’t go visiting any strip clubs.”

  Eric groaned. “One time! I didn’t even want to be there! Isabelle even told you I didn’t want to be there!”

  But she’d already turned and was on her way out the door.

  Eric followed after her. “I’m serious. This kid mentioned agents, remember? Those guys are bad news.”

  “Those guys are probably collecting social security by now. If they even live that long. It’s got to be a hazardous line of work. You killed three of them yourself.”

  Eric glanced around, startled. “Can we not talk about that outside?”

  Karen opened the passenger door of the silver PT Cruiser and climbed inside. “Sorry, killer.”

  “Seriously?” He sat behind the wheel and slammed the door. “And I didn’t kill any of them. I just…didn’t save them…”

  “What does it matter? They all had it coming.”

  “Did they?” asked Eric.

  She lowered her sunglasses and met his eyes. “You never had a choice. Not even in Illinois. You did what you had to do every time.”

  He shook his head and started the engine. She was right about the rest of them. The foggy man in Minnesota, the two agents here in Creek Bend last year, even the psychotic and inhuman Jonah Fettarsetter in Michigan…all of them had been cold-blooded killers with deadly agendas. He had no choice but to stop them. But the girl in Illinois was different… He was sure there was another way. He just wasn’t wise enough to find it.

  Karen didn’t say anything else about it. She knew it bothered him how those encounters went down. Instead, she pushed her sunglasses back into place and said, “So where’re we going?”

  Eric began backing out of the driveway. He wasn’t going to win this one. He’d known that from the start. She was coming with him whether he liked it or not. Few forces on this planet were as powerful as his wife’s stubbornness. “Boxlar Road,” he replied. “To see Mr. Silver.”

  Chapter Three

  Eric had no trouble finding Sterling Geldrin. The residents of 117 Boxlar Road didn’t move around very much, after all.

  “So this is Mr. Silver…” said Karen. She was staring down at the headstone, looking a bit uneasy. “He’s…um…deader…than I expected…”

  They were at the back corner of Donnelfolk Cemetery, where the oldest graves were located. Separated from the adjoining properties by a barrier of thick trees and brush, they were well hidden from sight, which was good, since Eric didn’t care for the idea of doing what needed done next in plain view of anyone who might happen by.

  “This was where Paul and I found Aiden Chadwick digging up one of his mentor’s journals last year,” explained Eric.

  “Oh yeah. I remember that. You guys thought he was actually digging up the grave.”

  “We did. Scared the hell out of us. Thought for sure we were going to get arrested.” He checked once more to make sure no one was around and then pulled the trowel from his pocket and knelt over the grave. “But the journal was buried in a box only a few inches below the surface. The idea was that no one would ever accidentally dig up something that was buried directly over somebody’s grave.”

  “I would hope not.”

  “Hector must’ve seen that in one of his dreams and known I’d be able to find it again.”

  “How’d he know Aiden wouldn’t find it first? Or his mentor? What was his mentor’s name again?”

  “Glen Normer.” Eric knelt down in the grass and looked over the grave. It was a good question. “I suppose if he saw me find it, then he knew where Glen and Aiden would be digging.”

  OR IF HE SAW YOU FIND IT IN HIS DREAM, offered Isabelle, THEN HE KNEW YOU’D FIND IT. AND IF YOU FOUND IT, THEY OBVIOUSLY WOULDN’T

  That made sense, too. At least, he thought it did…

  “You haven’t heard from Aiden since that day, have you?”

  He shook his head. “Not a word.” Seven years ago, seventeen-year-old Aiden Chadwick went missing under mysterious circumstances. Almost exactly one year ago, Eric found Aiden. He also found a shocking truth: All over the world there were mysterious structures that most people simply couldn’t see. Aiden called them “the unseen.”

  “I hope he’s all right,” said Karen.

  “I’m sure he is. He’s a survivor. He knows how to take care of himself.” At least, he hoped so. The hard truth was, he had no idea if the boy was even alive, but there was little he could do about it. Aiden set off for Baton Rouge in search of a profound truth he believed was hidden in the unseen places around the world.

  He stabbed the trowel into the ground a few times, looking for something that shouldn’t be there. Another box, probably. It would have to be sturdy to last fifty-four years buried in the di
rt.

  Karen examined the tombstone. “I know some Geldrins.”

  “Do you?”

  “They own the family restaurant next to the Chrysler dealership. And one of them is on the school board.”

  “Oh.”

  “He wasn’t married.”

  “What?”

  “Sterling Geldrin. He’s buried alone.”

  She was right. It was only Sterling down there. There didn’t seem to be a Mrs. Geldrin. Most of the stones had two names carved on them.

  “‘1883’ to ‘1931,’” she read. “He was only forty-eight.”

  Eric looked around again. This was taking too long. Where was it? Surely Hector wouldn’t have buried it more than a few inches below the surface.

  Karen turned and examined the surrounding stones. Many of them were much older than Mr. Geldrin’s. Several of them were little more than thin slabs of faded, white stone, the names and dates barely legible. A lot of these people had died around the turn of the twentieth century.

  She couldn’t find any more Geldrins. “Seems kind of sad that he’s all alone out here.”

  “Maybe he liked being alone. Some people do.” He moved farther from the stone. Could he have been wrong? Could Hector’s letter have meant for him to look somewhere else? Or had he been wrong about everything? Maybe the letter was nothing more than a clever bit of fiction after all.

  But then he found it. The tip of the trowel struck something hard just below the surface.

  “I wonder who he was.”

  Eric began carefully peeling back the grass. He didn’t want to do any more damage than necessary. “Who?” he asked, distracted.

  “Sterling Geldrin,” she replied again.

  “Oh…” He glanced up at the headstone. Truth be told, he’d never thought about it before. It didn’t seem to matter. He was just a name on a grave, and had been since he was planted here in 1931, more than fifty years before Eric was even born.

  And yet…wasn’t he here now because of a letter written twenty years before he was born?

  “I mean, he was a person, right? He probably lived right here in Creek Bend, just like us.”