“Why not just go back and take Jameson out of the picture long ago?” Emmy interjected. “Then none of this would have happened at all.”
“Ye’re all alive, are ye no’, lass? ‘Tis the best I could manage. I’m nae god.”
“So we’ve heard.”
“In truth I would hae liked to remove him, lass,” Donell admitted. “If I’d been able to pinpoint him, I would hae. I told ye Jameson wisnae the only one working against me. Others made it impossible for me to track him. Until today when I was able to follow him to his motel. With the same information ye had. The address.”
Hugh tapped his forefinger against his lips. “How is that possible when ye can see everything else?”
“As Emmy has forced me to admit many a time, I’m nae god,” Donell answered. “Or a magician.”
“Then I think we’d all appreciate finally knowing what you are,” Emmy told him. “I think we deserve to know.”
They all turned to him expectantly, waiting for a response. When it came, it was not the answer Scarlett anticipated.
“I’m a mere man, lass,” he said. “Human, same as ye.”
“But?” Scarlett prompted him for more.
“But from a future time. Far from now.”
The revelation elicited gasps around the room.
“I spent my life wi’ one hand up to my elbow in science and wi’ love of history in my heart,” he went on. “Together wi’ other inventors, we developed the technology to travel through time. Rudimentary, at first, like the elementary device Hugh and Claire are familiar wi’ from Dr. Fielding’s experiments. Refined o’er time to be able to move a man through a manifested quantum singularity nae larger than a speck of dust. ‘Twould look like magic to any who witnessed it. I’ve spent many a year traveling through time. Living in the past, meeting all of ye…and others.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew the object Scarlett had retrieved for him earlier. They all moved closer to see it. It lit up again at his touch.
“A push of this will return me to my time. From there I can program any destination. Or pre-program other points in time to take me directly from one to the next.”
“What about sending me to the past and back again?” Scarlett asked. “You were nowhere near me when that happened.”
“Me either,” Emmy added.
Donell shrugged as if he were tiring of the whole conversation. “In yer bag ye’ll find a gold disk aboot the size of a pound sterling. If ye could find it among all that nonsense ye carry aboot wi’ ye, that is. ‘Tis a marker I slipped in there when we first met. Wi’ it, I can track or move ye anywhere from my home base.”
Appalled, Scarlett wanted to dig it out of her purse immediately and stomp it into bits. She might feel for Donell now, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to be able to yank her chain whenever it pleased him.
“Why? Why have you done all this?”
It was the final piece of the puzzle. The final question she had for him. The one they all had.
“I’ve had a second chance to set my failures to rights,” he said, which was no answer at all. “’Tis no’ for ye to ken or to worry aboot. I’ve spent years browsing through time. Tweaking this and that to set time straight. I look at ye and I’m proud of what I’ve done. Proud of ye.”
“And our baby?” Claire inquired, returning to Hugh’s bedside. “Hugh insists our baby is part of all this.”
“Aye, lass. It is.” Donell nodded, his elfin features folding into a smile for the first time. “Because of yer bairn, my time will be saved. Billions of people saved.”
One over the other, they all besieged him with more questions, but Donell was finished with being so forthcoming. They had the necessary answers, he insisted. More than they really needed to know.
“Now the time has come to send ye all back home,” he said at last. “Then I believe I’ll take a much-earned vacation in the early-nineteenth century, far away from all of ye and yer constant nattering. Are ye ready then?”
To Scarlett’s surprise, Emmy and Connor both hesitated. Reluctant to leave. As was she. They’d become a family over the past few weeks. Close as brothers and sisters. It would be heartbreaking to leave them all behind.
“I can’t believe I’ll never see all of you again,” Emmy said.
Unexpected tears filled Emmy’s eyes. Scarlett had never thought to see the usually bold woman so emotional. But then, she was too. Sorrow tugged at Scarlett’s heartstrings.
Emmy brushed her tears away then glanced up at Connor with a tender smile. “Yes, I’m ready to go back where I belong.”
