Page 90 of Timeless

“Maybe,” she replied. “We should walk. I feel like he’s here somewhere, Cheryl.”

“Me too. Come on.”

Without saying which way to go, they both seemed to know and turned right, walking down the sidewalk until they hit a little ice cream shop that reminded Diana of the sodashoppe they’d spent time in as teenagers before they’d left their old town.

“He’s…” Cheryl pointed. “That’s him.”

Diana had seen him, too. Paul looked just like Deb. He had a nose like his father’s, she supposed, but there was no mistaking that he was Deb’s son. It was still odd to both of them how the women looked just like them to each other, but when they’d seen the one portrait of Maria that they’d been able to find, she looked nothing like Diana. Many of the couples hadn’t even been white women, but in their visions, they’d both known that and still saw them as each other.

“He’s handsome,” Cheryl added.

“He is, yes.”

Diana smiled at the man who was sitting at a round table outside the shop. He had an ice cream cone in his hand, and there were two girls sitting there with him and the woman who was probably his wife. The girls looked to be around eight or nine and twelve or thirteen, if she had to guess.

“They’re our grandchildren in a way,” Cheryl said.

“They are, yes. They look like you.” Diana smiled.

“Really? I think the younger one looks likeyou.” Cheryl bumped her shoulder playfully.

“That’s not possible,” Diana replied.

“She has your hair,” Cheryl pointed out, causing Diana to smile at the thought of someone out there looking like her.

Simon had been adopted and took more after his birth mother than either of them, but as she looked at Paul, who was smiling down at one of his daughters, she saw a bit of Harriet in him now. She couldn’t explain it. Maybe it wasn’t tangible and was just how he was or carried himself, but it was there, and it made her smile go wide.

“He’s okay,” she said more to herself than to Cheryl.

“He’s happy,” Cheryl added. “Harriet, he’s happy.” She looped her arm through Diana’s.

“Yes, he is, sweetheart,” Diana replied, but she knew it wasn’theractually saying those words.

Harriet and Deb were right there with them. They werewatching this, too. She could feel the two of them watching their son right along with Cheryl and her, who were seeing him for the first time.

“We should probably–” Cheryl stopped.

Diana saw it, too. Paul was looking around the street, confused. His head turned toward them then, and his eyes met Diana’s before he noticed Cheryl as well. He tilted his head a bit as if considering something.

“We should go,” Cheryl suggested.

“I think…” Diana nodded at Paul, and when he nodded back and gave her a confused smile, she added, “He recognizes us without recognizing us.”

“We should go, Diana. He’s happy. I can’t…”

Cheryl turned into Diana’s body, and Diana held on to her tightly. She turned to see that Paul was still looking at them in curiosity. She knew it could be a bad idea, but when Paul was little, Harriet used to sit with him by the radio, and he’d listen to his favorite adventure programs. One of the characters used to have a line about putting on his thinking cap, so they’d pretend to put on theirs, too. Diana removed one of her arms from around her wife and pretended to put on her own thinking cap. Paul’s eyes widened. She winked at him, gave him another nod with a motherly smile, and pulled Cheryl away back toward the car.

“Now, he knows that they’re all right too,” she said to her wife as they hurried away.

CHAPTER 32

Abby sat there, staring at her screen in a daze, so when her phone rang, she jumped. She’d more than been in a daze. She’d been in a vision of Cheryl and Diana as they met Paul as an adult, which meant thatshe’d met Paul as an adult.

“He was happy,” she said to herself as she sniffled, realizing at the same time that she’d been about to cry.

Then, she picked up her phone and noticed the name of her publisher on the screen.

“Okay. I’mlovingthese pages,” Margo said by way of a greeting.