As Jeffy jumped out of Wikipedia and found a reliable list of Ed Harkenbach’s book-length publications at another site, he became aware of movement at the periphery of his vision. He looked up to see another patron, maybe forty feet away, settling in a chair at a long reading table flanked by eight-foot-high rows of bookshelves. Dressed in soft black fatigues, wearing a black knitted cap, the man had taken a newspaper from a nearby rack.
As Amity returned Snowball to a pocket of her denim jacket, she whispered, “That weirdo guy was watching us for like maybe a minute before he sat down. I got a bad feeling about him.”
“He’s just some harmless kookster,” Jeffy said, an expression of hope rather than fact. “We have them back home, too, except they dress different.”
Scanning the list of books by Ed Harkenbach, he settled on one published eight years earlier—Infinite Worlds: Parallel Universes and Quantum Reality.
Reading a brief synopsis of it, Jeffy said, “This is it. This is what we need. I wonder if they have a copy of it here.”
As he was about to drop off the internet, Amity said, “Wait! One more thing, Dad. Before we figure out what the three buttons mean, the buttons on the key to everything, before we leave this place and go home . . . if we can go home . . . I want to google her.”
“Who?” he asked, but he knew. He knew, and the prospect of such a search both charmed and unnerved him.
Amity’s face was as smooth and expressionless as that of a bisque doll, but her blue eyes were pools of longing when she said, “Michelle Melinda Jamison.”
“Honey, we’re in deep trouble here.”
“Yeah. I know. I’m scared.”
“I’m scared, too. Finding another version of your mother, one who would want to come with us . . . that will never be as easy as you think.”
“It might be.”
“It won’t, honey. And maybe she’s married to the me who was mowing the lawn. She’s not going to leave one me for the other.”
Amity shook her head. “There weren’t any womany things back there, in that house. It’s just you living alone there.”
“Figuring out what those three buttons mean—that’s urgent, that’s everything.”
“I know. But then . . . if she’s here and she’s alone . . .”
“Something’s wrong with this world,” he declared. “We don’t want to stay here more than we absolutely have to.”
She bit her lip and looked away from him, forlorn and full of yearning.
He loved this child desperately. He would die for her. But such intense love could inspire foolish acts as well as selfless courage.
After a hesitation, he googled Michelle Melinda Jamison.
And there she was. In this parallel reality, she resided in Suavidad Beach. It was the house on Bastoncherry Lane, where she’d lived with Jim Jamison, her dad, before she and Jeffy married.
“We’ve got to go see her. Daddy, can we go see her, please?”
He hesitated. In spite of all the imaginative fantasy stories by which she had been enthralled and entertained, Amity was too young to be able to understand the many reasons that such a meeting could go wrong or to foresee the regrets it might inspire. Unlike his daughter, Jeffy knew
too well the potential heartbreak that could result from a visit to Bastoncherry Lane. However, he was nothing if not a romantic. And he had waited seven years for the miraculous return of Michelle. Although apprehension weighed so heavily on him that he couldn’t quite draw a deep breath, he said, “All right. If we can find Ed’s book, if we can figure out how to use the key, then we’ll see what her situation is.”
Her smile was all the reward he ever wanted.
His smile wasn’t as genuine as Amity’s. What he promised her was reckless, a wild-heart imprudence that simultaneously gladdened and disquieted, that was brewed in the cauldron of parental love.
“You’re the best,” she said.
He wished that he were worthy of those words.
As he and Amity went into the stacks, looking for the science section in which Ed Harkenbach’s book might be shelved, they took care not to glance at the man sitting at the table with a newspaper that he wasn’t reading.
15