Show, The (35 page)

"What is this?" he asked.

"It's a letter that contains the answers to all your questions and information you'll find useful in the years to come. I want you to give much thought to what I've written, Uncle. Your life and the lives of the people you love will depend on it."

"What kind of information? Please tell me."

"I don't have time to get into all of it now. I've explained everything in the letter."

Alistair looked at Grace with serious eyes.

"Please tell me, Grace."

Grace took a breath and brought her hands to her mouth. She glanced out a small window and watched the rain splatter the glass before returning to her uncle.

"OK. I'll tell you a few things – things that are important now, things I don't want on my conscience when I leave."

"What things?"

"The first pertains to the Palladium. Sometime this evening, shortly after midnight, when the theater is free of people and the streets are quiet, an electrical circuit will fail. A spark from that circuit will result in a fire and that fire will destroy the building and everything in it. It will destroy the very portal that brought me to this time and sent Bill and Lucy to another."

"Dear God."

"What you do with that information, Alistair, is up to you. You must now decide whether the loss of a great building is worth the loss, or at least the serious disruption, of future lives. I can live with the loss of a theater. I cannot live with the knowledge that I allowed someone else to experience the kind of pain that I have suffered since leaving my family."

"What else is in the letter?"

"I've disclosed what I believe to be the secrets of the portal. I hesitated writing them down. I don't want anyone to follow me. I don't want to be responsible for sending someone else to an uncertain fate. But I can't in good conscience sit on this knowledge. If, for some reason, the theater does not burn tonight, you and you alone will have custody of the secrets. I trust that you will use that knowledge wisely and hopefully spare others from unfortunate fates."

"Are there other things?"

"There are many more things. I'm leaving you with a lot, Uncle, but perhaps nothing more important than the details of another fire to come."

"Please continue."

"When I traveled from Montana to Seattle in the year 2000, I met a woman on a bus. She was a kind woman, an elderly woman who gave me a home and helped me get on my feet at a time when I had few acquaintances and even fewer friends."

Grace paused for a moment.

"During the course of getting to know this woman, I learned that we had many things in common. Like me, she had lost her parents as a teenager. Like me, she had lived in this area in the late thirties and early forties. Like me, she was related to the man in this room."

Alistair looked at Grace as if in a daze.

"The woman's name was Penelope Price, Penelope Green Price. She had lost her parents in a house fire in 1926. The details as I know them are contained in the letter. Please take care of this information, Uncle, and take care of your family."

"I'm so sorry, Grace. I can only imagine the burden that you've carried. Is there anything I can do for you? There must be something."

"There is," Grace said. "There is. You can assemble the others in the living room and help me explain something that defies explanation. It's time for me to come clean with all of them. It's time for me to say goodbye."

CHAPTER 67: GRACE

The trip to the theater went mercifully fast. Few cars plied the Red Brick Road and even fewer clogged the streets leading to the Palladium. Seattleites, it seemed, had better things to do this Sunday than go for a drive in the city.

Grace counted that as a small blessing. She wanted the experience over as quickly as possible, even if it meant cutting short her remaining time with a man she had come to love.

John helped her out of his Cadillac and offered her an arm as they began a two-block walk down Pike Street to the movie house. He pulled her close as a light drizzle turned into a soft rain.

"Are you ever going to tell me what happened last night?"

"I will," Grace said. "I will a little later, once we get inside."

Grace looked at his reaction to her answer and saw puzzlement, disappointment, and more than a little hurt. It was clear that he interpreted her lack of communication as a lack of trust. He no doubt wondered why a woman who had agreed to marry him seemed determined to keep her thoughts to herself and perhaps some secrets too.

Grace regretted not being more honest and forthright with John Walker. She had not given him the truth that he deserved and the truth when he deserved it. She had instead kept him in the dark for weeks as she tried to determine whether life with him was something she wanted.

She knew, of course, that the truth now would provide no comfort, just as it had not provided comfort to Margaret, Penny, and Edith when she had told them she was leaving them forever. Margaret cried but said she understood. Penny cried and ran to her room. Edith sat in silence as she considered losing not only Grace but also the only sibling she had ever had.

Grace tried to convince herself that this was the way life worked. You were born into the world, you lived, you loved, and you died. Parting with loved ones was simply part of a normal process that had started long before she'd been born and would continue long after she had died.

The pep talk, however, only went so far. There was nothing normal about stepping into a time portal and plunging eighty-four years into the past. There was nothing normal about meeting your parents before your time or being torn from the husband and daughters you loved and had planned your life around. There was nothing normal about that at all.

Grace thought of these and other things when John led her down an aisle to center seats and again when she settled in. She thought of them when
Stella Maris
hit the screen and when silent tears began to flow, tears that continued through the first thirty minutes of the film.

"What's the matter, darling?" John said. "You haven't stopped crying since we arrived. Surely it's not the movie."

Grace looked at him with a wet face and shook her head but said nothing. She instead grabbed his hand and held it and kissed it as if it were the most precious thing on the planet. In a sense, it was. It was a hand that she had grown accustomed to holding, a hand that she would soon have to give up in exchange for another.

She didn't expect the parting to be this difficult. Even though she loved John Walker dearly, she knew she really didn't have a choice. She had an opportunity, her last opportunity, to return to a husband and two daughters that she loved even more. What fool of a woman would pass up that? Yet as the minutes passed, doubt began to take hold.

What if she was not about to trade John for Joel and her present for her past? What if she was instead about to trade a comfortable life with a man she loved for instant death or a trip eighty-four more years into the past? Did Seattle even exist in 1835? She didn't think so.

Then there was the other outcome. What if the portal shot her too far into the future? What if she arrived in Seattle after Joel had moved on, remarried, and perhaps had more children with another woman? The possibilities could make one sick.

Grace knew, in the end, she would have to take a leap of faith, just as she had taken a leap when she had picked Joel over Paul McEwan and later entered a cold Montana mine. She knew she could not live with herself if she did not at least try, so try she would.

A moment later, she dried her eyes, smiled at John, and looked again at the screen. When she saw Mary Pickford bathed in a purple tint, she grabbed her purse, and got out of her seat. It was time.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to the lobby. I want you to come with me."

Grace grabbed John's hand and led him past several people in their row. When they reached the aisle, she kissed him on the cheek, retrieved his hand, and guided him to the door. She did her best to maintain a smile she felt he deserved.

When they entered the lobby, Grace stopped for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the brighter lights and then proceeded directly to the nook between the restrooms. Seconds later she eyed the entrance to the women's room and saw a Braille sign she had expected to see.

Grace returned her attention to John, smiled sadly, and wiped away the last of her tears. She grabbed both of his hands and pulled herself together for the toughest speech of her life.

"This is where I say goodbye."

"Goodbye? I don't understand."

"I know you don't. You don't understand because I haven't been honest with you. I haven't told you who I am or how I got here, but now I must."

John stared at Grace with a face that betrayed not only confusion and concern but also fear. He seemed to realize that something permanent was taking place.

"I'm not from Wisconsin and I'm not running from a man. It's true that I did something by accident that separated me from that man, the father of my child, but it's not true that I no longer have a future with him. At least I don't believe so."

"I still don't understand."

Grace put a hand to John's face.

"The door to the ladies' room, the one you see behind me, is not just a door to a restroom. It's a portal to the year 2002. It's where Bill and Lucy have gone and hopefully await. It's where I have a husband and two daughters and a life I miss."

Grace looked at John and saw a man who finally understood. She lifted her other hand to his other cheek and wiped away tears that had begun to flow from his eyes.

"When I told you that I loved you, I meant it. I still mean it. You're the most honest, decent, honorable person I have ever known. I love you. I will never forget you. I will always hold a place in my heart for you. But I cannot stay," she said. "It's time for me to return to the place I belong. It's time for me to go home."

Grace leaned forward, kissed her fiancé long and hard, and threw her arms around his broad shoulders. She could feel his strength but also his weakness. He was trembling. A moment later, she stepped back, smiled at him through fresh tears, and slowly let go of his hand.

"Remember me always, John Walker."

She took a step backward.

"Goodbye."

CHAPTER 68: JOEL

Seattle, Washington – Saturday, October 5, 2002

Joel looked at his watch and wondered for the third time in twenty minutes how long it took to remove an irritant from an eye. A wandering contact lens might take a while. He remembered the time Adam needed a half hour to dig out his. But Grace didn't wear contact lenses. She rarely wore mascara. Something was wrong, he thought. It was time to check it out.

He got up from his seat, headed down the balcony stairs to a walkway that ran behind the last row of main-level seats, and took one last look at the auditorium. The Palladium was an impressive place. He would be back sometime soon to explore it in more detail, but not tonight. He had an AWOL wife to find.

When Joel wandered into the lobby, he found it nearly empty. Barely a dozen people roamed the open space and two of them operated push brooms. The great theater was shutting down.

He took a moment to observe the other patrons and noticed that most were dressed in period costume. One of the men looked like Charlie Chaplin and two of the women like Mary Pickford.

All seemed to be having a good time, particularly a couple near the concession stand. The better looking of the two, a pretty redhead in a purple dress, kissed her significant other like he was the last man on earth. Joel envied any man on the receiving end of that kind of greeting.

Two others by the pay phones also held each other tightly, but their embrace seemed more protective in nature than amorous. He studied them for a moment and noticed that the woman was crying. He wondered what could make someone cry on such a festive night.

Joel finally turned his attention toward the ladies' room, where Grace was no doubt hiding. He laughed to himself when he thought of a stereotype. Only a woman could spend more than thirty minutes in a restroom and his wife was no exception. He took several steps toward the facilities but stopped abruptly when he saw a familiar woman wearing a not-so-familiar white dress and purple bow emerge from the ladies' room.

"Grace? Is that you?"

The woman turned his way when she heard his voice, stopped to look at him for a moment, and then charged forward like a bull in a ring. When she reached him, she smothered him with hugs and kisses that made him far less envious of the man with the redhead.

"I love you too, dear," Joel said with a laugh.

He kissed her glistening cheek as he held her tightly.

"Did you change your clothes in there? What happened to your purple dress?"

When Grace didn't answer immediately, Joel stepped back to get a good look at his runaway bride. What he saw sent his stomach to the floor."

"Is that . . . is that a baby bump?"

"Yes, it is."

"Umm, Grace. I think you have some explaining to do."

"Yes, I do."

Joel looked his wife like she had just beamed in from Mars. In less than half an hour, she had changed into clothes he had never seen and become at least four or five months pregnant.

"Are you crying?"

Grace nodded and sighed as the floodgates opened. She rushed back into his arms and hugged him tightly.

"Sweetheart, what happened?"

"I'll tell you later. Just hold me. Don't let me go."

Joel held Grace and kissed the top of her head as a dozen questions swirled through his mind. How did she get noticeably pregnant in minutes and find a maternity dress from the Progressive era? Why the tears? Had someone harmed her? He didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but he did know that his questions could wait.

For more than a minute Joel wrapped Grace in his arms and kept others away, including dozens who spilled out of the auditorium and into the lobby. Some went straight for the exits. Most hung around to fill a chamber that had been all but empty moments earlier. Joel was about to step back and get a better look at Grace when the redhead in the purple dress raced forward.