The patron sprang to his feet, almost knocking over his table. Yes. There was definitely a connection between them. “Where did they go?”
“They left, Please sit!” she called out as he took off, leaving the chimes ringing. She wanted to ask him if he knew Dorothea West. “There is something I need to tell you.”
#
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” Fable demanded again while she hurried to keep up with the traveler’s steps. Oh, he couldn’t be Ben’s father, she lamented. Ben’s father was killed–seventeen years ago.
“Now you know it,” he replied impassively.
“But how?” she asked, following him into a building on the other side of the street.
“I told you how. The pocket watch brought us to the future–to this time. Our disappearance, according to what you told me, was believed to have been caused by the Jacobites.”
“So you didn’t die,” she said, following him into the lobby.
“We did not die,” he agreed.
Fable thought she must be going mad. Was any of this even real? No one ever proved to her that it was. No one but Ben by making her fall in love with him. Love was the proof.
And if it was all real, then this was the man who had written his last wish into his will. A wish Ben might have granted out of his deep love for his father.
“Your alleged deaths put your son on a death-defying path. He lives his life with regrets and guilt no little eleven-year-old boy should have experienced. I think he misses your wife as much as you do.” She sniffed and wiped her tears from her cheeks. She didn’t realize that he stopped moving and turned to stare at her. “I can’t imagine the joy you’ll bring him when he sees you and his mother alive.”
“You seem to know much about him. Did he tell you these things?”
She nodded. “He told me what you wrote in your will. Don’t be so terribly disappointed, Your Grace. You’ll be happy to know that your daughter is desperately trying to see that your will is done and making your son miserable in the process. But your son loves you and without me there, he won’t deny your last wish.”
His gaze on her grew warm for an instant. “Since I live, that is no longer my last wish.”
He turned away from her before she could ask him what he meant. He walked up to the concierge and paused. Fable hurried forward and grabbed his sleeve, stopping them from probably getting arrested.
“I wonder if you can help us,” she said quickly, turning to the stern-faced, sixtyish-looking man behind the desk. “Do you know the people who live here?”
“Of course,” the concierge replied.
“Can you tell me if Dorothea West lives here? She may…” Fable let go of Ben’s father and moved closer to the concierge “...go by another last name.”
The concierge typed something into his computer, waited a moment spent staring at Fable, then read. He shook his head. “No one here with that name or any other variation.”
His smile lingered on Fable until she cringed in her skin and turned away.
The lieutenant followed her out and to the other buildings in the four corners, checking everywhere for Dorothea. No one knew of her. When night came, Fable made enough for a cheap dinner from a nearby fast food place. They walked to the park and sat on a bench to eat.
She picked at her fries and remained quiet while he scarfed down two burgers. How could she eat when this man, this kidnapper, was Ben’s father? She almost laughed and turned away to cough into her hand instead. Could it really be possible that his parents had traveled through time and have been lost ever since?
“Are you crying for him again?” Lt. Colonel West asked with a sigh.
“I’m crying for you,” she told him truthfully, “striving to find her must have been very hard all these years. But look, you did it. She doesn’t live on the corner or work at that diner. That doesn’t mean she won’t visit there. That is where you were led, Lt.. I think we should stay around there and wait.”
“Very well,” he answered without hesitation, and dug into his burger again.
Fable knew he had no other choice really. His dreams hadn’t told him what to do if his wife wasn’t found immediately.
“But I’ll have you shed no more tears over me, do you understand?”
“I’ll cry for whom I please.”
“You are quite a belligerent little thing.”
