Timepiece (Hourglass 2)

“Did Lily’s father”—I hesitated, meeting Abi’s eyes—“did he have to know what the things he was searching for looked like?”

“How could he? They’d been on the bottom of the ocean floor for decades….” She trailed off. “You didn’t know that.”

Lily’s shock coursed through my body as if it were my own. “I thought I had to have seen a thing before I could find it.”

“No, my love. No,” Abi explained wearily. Defeated. “Not if you’re searching on a map. Touching it.”

“Abi, I have to help Kaleb find someone. So many bad things could happen if we don’t.”

“So many bad things could happen if you do. They think we died on a raft in the ocean. But what if they found out the truth? We’ve been safe for a long time in America, Lilliana, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been found out.” Abi held her fist up to her mouth and paused for a few seconds. “Any suggestion that you are alive and have a hint of your father’s ability, and the people he works for will be here on our doorstep.”

darted a glance at me. “Yes. A friend. Kaleb, this is my grandmother. Everyone calls her Abi.”

“I’m pleased to meet you.” I held out my hand.

She eyed my hand before she shook it, as if she were checking me for fleas. “I’ll put on some coffee. And then we’ll talk. Sit.”

I sat down at the kitchen table and waited.

An hour later, I didn’t know what they were saying, because they were doing it in Spanish, but their combined emotions rolling in my gut made me glad I hadn’t gotten around to lunch.

“Es demasiado peligroso.” Abi stood and slammed her hands down on the table. “¡Dije que no … y eso es final!”

“Obviously, it’s a no,” Lily said to me, tears of frustration welling up in her eyes.

“She’s scared,” I replied without thinking.

That earned a heated response in Spanish from Abi that I’m pretty sure disparaged my manhood and my intelligence.

I let Abi finish before I spoke directly to her. “What I mean is, if your fear is rooted as deeply as it seems to be, I don’t want Lily to be involved, either.”

She dropped back into her chair, crossed her arms, and said some more words in Spanish. Then she said, “I didn’t peg you for honorable. Unless you’re playing some kind of game.”

“I’m not playing a game.”

“Why doesn’t any of this surprise you?” Lily asked. “I just told you about time travel, and people with special abilities, and rewinding time. You should be shocked, or at the very least doubtful.”

Abi picked up her coffee mug and sat back in her chair. “There are many things in this world I don’t understand. It doesn’t mean they aren’t true.”

Fear. Guilt. The guilt confused me. I leaned forward in my chair, concentrating on trying to read Abi.

“What?” Lily asked, looking back and forth between the two of us.

Sharing Abi’s emotions with her granddaughter wasn’t my place.

“I just told her you can sense emotion. So she knows she can’t hide anything.” Lily had covered a lot of information in an hour. She turned from me to Abi. “If you knew something about all this, you’d tell me. Wouldn’t you?”

More guilt.

“There’s no reason to discuss it.” Abi’s voice was full of grim determination. “It’s the past, and we left it behind when we left Cuba.”

“We never discuss Cuba at all. There are things I want to remember. Our home. Our family.”

“I do remember. And you are better off not knowing.”

“I don’t accept that.” I saw Abi’s fierceness in Lily’s eyes and anticipated she’d make grown men piss their pants one day, too. “If you know something, you have to tell me. ¿Por favor? Please.”

Abi put her coffee cup down and walked to the wide, arched double windows that overlooked the town square of Ivy Springs. “People lose things, they look for them. Ask for help. ‘Help me find my house key. Where is the grocery list?’ It was always funny that your grandfather seemed to know where things were. He just … knew. Then your father was born, and he could find things, too. Your father was five when I discovered el truco de magia—that’s what we called it—wasn’t a magic trick.”