Page 51 of Intersect
He frowns. “But that’s…” He stops, shaking his head. “And do you believe her? That you were timetraveling?”
I nod. “Yes, but it only seems to happen when I pass out and maybe at night though I’m not sure, andthenit’s completely effortless. When I’m awake nothing happens. I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong, or maybe I’m just not relaxedenough?”
He leans forward, tapping a pen against his lips. “Or perhaps your conscious mind fears it, so the ability sneaks around in the background instead. Time traveling PTSD, if youwill.”
“Why would I fearit?”
He shrugs. “Maybe you were raised in a very religious household? Or it had some negative association for you? I’m notsure.”
The funeral. Nick’s hand clenching mine and the certainty it was my fault. “Like maybe if I caused someone harm.” I pose it less as a question and more as an admission ofguilt.
He’s quiet for a moment. “It’s always a struggle for people with your gift. For all the good you can do going back in time, you risk causing just as much harm. What you don’t realize is that any human’s life is just as full of choices.” He leans back in his chair and observes me solemnly. “Say you set up two friends on a date and they marry. People will pat you on the back, but you’ve alsodeprivedother people of marrying them. The children they might have had with those other people are now not born. Every action we take, even the best ones, may cause harm. Time travelers just have the unhappy side effect of knowing what they’vedone.”
My eyes flicker to his. “What if I’m the reason someone died?” I venture. I sound as guilty as I feel. “There’s no good sidethere.”
“You have no idea what would have come of that person’s life,” he argues. “If you caused a murderer to die early on, would you have done the world harm or performed it aservice?”
Except Ryan wasn’t a murderer. He was a brilliant, funny boy who looked so much like Nick and had just as much potential. He might be a doctor now. He might have kids. And I took all of it away from him. It makes perfect sense to me that I’d have decided, long ago, that I would never risk using my abilities again. “I was hoping I could talk to someone about this. I’m obviously not the only one of your patients with this,um…”
“Talent?” he offers. I was going to sayissue, but I nod. “Unfortunately, my files are organized by identifiers but there are no names or contact information, for yourprotection.”
My brow furrows. “Protection?”
He nods. “Even the fact that we sit here now, discussing it, is a threat. Time travelers are like the rest of us in that there are some good and some bad. And the bad ones…are very bad. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who showed signs of unusual ability, something greater than theirs. And I suspect, based on your ability to jump between different timelines, you’d fall into that category. Which reminds me…the DNAtest.”
“What will that tellyou?”
“Right now I’m just trying to keep a database, determining family lines, trying to see what makes some so much more powerful than others. There are those of you who excel at jumping back through time but struggle to change your location. Some can direct themselves anywhere, but can’t quite pinpoint time. And then there’s someone like you, who can jump back through worlds that no longer exist. It’s…rare. No, not just rare. It’s unheardof.”
A chill crawls up my spine. I think of that voice whispering to me in a darkened room, saying my powers make hers look childlike bycontrast.
“Full disclosure,” he says, with a heavy sigh, “I’m also trying to get information about my wife. She was pregnant when she got lost. I don’t know where she went. I don’t know how far back she went. I just keeping hoping that…if I find a time traveler with our DNA, it might mean our child survived. It might even mean she stayed there and led a happylife.”
I sit with that, feeling heartsick. I could do this very thing to Nick if I jumped. “I’m sosorry.”
He stares at his desk before finally raising his head to meet myeye.
“Make no mistake, Quinn: being able to time travel is both a blessing and acurse.”
25
NICK
Two days pass. Two long days during which I do nothing but miss Quinn and imagine the worst. What if I come up empty-handed? What if something happens while I’mgone?
I walk for hours without seeing anything. I’ve been to Paris before, and there are places I’d like to go again, but right now this city is only a reminder of all the things I’ll never be able to show Quinn—restaurants I can’t take her to, museums she would love. A whole world I might be able to offer if I could just fucking fix this, which looks less likely with each hour thatpasses.
I’ve searched for the name Amelie Bertrand, but there are thousands, and ostensibly this one is cautious about giving out her address, though it seems she had no issue with giving it out as Sarah Stewart. With every new piece of information, the questions onlygrow.
* * *
Quinn callswhen she wakes up. We try not to talk about Sarah, about the tumor, during these calls. I want just a few hours of seeing what it might have been like to have a normal life with her, and I think she does too. So she tells me about the garden, about the bulbs she’ll plant once the weather cools, and the small blueberry bush she found in the back corner of the yard. I tell her about Paris, about the things I’d like to showher.
We talk about where we’d move if we had a family, whether we’d put a pool in the back yard, where we’d go on trips. I’m smiling throughout all of these conversations, but they cut like a knife at the sametime.
That night I go to a bar down the street. Though I’ve never been a big drinker, I’ve become a regular here during my short stay. The weight of missing Quinn, of worrying about her, is killing me. I need to take the edge off. I’m on my second bourbon when another American shows up. He’s already drunk at 10 p.m. and loud as fuck, which I’m not in the mood to put upwith.
“Check, please?” I ask the bartender.“Billet, s’il vousplait?”