I said, “Yeah, I’m sorry, you’re right. I was about to lecture you and that’s not cool.”
“It’s not. Please don’t. It’s hard enough to go from having a Big Plan to being an employee, but I need to do it. I’m actually looking forward to it. It’ll be fun to bang nails with Andrew again, like being back in college.”
Jen laughed. “Funny that college to you is carpentry,. For almost all the rest of us it was book learning.”
He shrugged. “I had to put myself through college. I wasn’t rich like you guys.”
“None of us are as rich as Lexi. She’s royalty money.”
I said, “I guess I’m picking up the tab…?”
“Of course.” Then she asked, “So, I’ve been wondering, where does the money come from,really?”
“I don’t know, it’s a trust, it goes very far back. I don’t even know where or how to trace it, it’s just always been there.”
“Weird.”
I nodded.
I cut my eyes at Coop and then said, “Last night I looked up Torin and Max with my genealogy search.”
Jen leaned forward with her eyes wide. “I didn’t even think of doing that! What did you find?”
“…I found mention of a man with the same last name as Torin, Elphinstone, in Dollar, some part of Clackmannanshire, I think, if I remember it right. And that’s where Castle Glume is. The year is 1620 though. So that’s confusing… but no mention of Max or Maximillian at all.” I looked around. “Sorry, that was a little stream of consciousness, I was researching a lot.”
“So no Torin or Max?”
I shook my head. “Kind of disappointing. I searched for a long time, the closest I got was a man named Elphinstone, with no first name, and not the right year…”
Jen said, “Well, that’s not good.”
Cooper just raised his brow as he drank a sip of margarita. “Maybe you learned something. Maybe, just maybe, this proves the story doesn’t quite fit.”
I said, “Maybe… but 1558 is very far back, you know. There aren’t many records, at least not compared to now, and they tend to be scattered, hard to find. That man, Elphinstone, was a dead end, there weren’t any ancestors I could find, it was frustrating… But I guess if I think about it, at least there were no death dates.”
Jen said, “Oh, yeah, I hadn’t thought of that, good news, right?”
“Yeah, most of the genealogical research is finding the grave, the death record, the churchyard location. If those don’t exist, it’s like the people don’t exist.”
Coop said, “Maybe they’re not from that time.”
“They’re from that time, I was there in that time. I know it.”
Jen said, “But they’re time travelers! Maybe they didn’t die there, maybe they died in another place all together.”
I frowned. “Yeah, but that’s distressing, I prefer to think that they are time traveling, still alive, and that’s why there isn’t a record.”
Cooper said, “I hate repeating myself, but you just met him.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want anyone I know to die, so don’t read too much into it, Coop. I’m just glad there wasn’t a death date, there’s been enough of that in my life.”
He said, “Yeah, I’m sorry.”
Our food was delivered and we set about eating our dinner.
Then Jen asked, “Why do you think he hasn’t come back? He was coming every day, why not now?”
“I don’t know.”
