Beyond the Reflection’s Edge (32 page)

Nathan nodded toward Kelly and Francesca. “That’s because we went to another dimension. We were only gone a little while, and time moves faster here than it does there.”

Gunther lowered the tire iron. “Another dimension?”

“Look,” Nathan said, spreading out his arms, “I know it sounds crazy, but I told you the truth before, and you believed me, and I’m telling the truth now. Didn’t we just appear out of nowhere? Where do you think we came from?”

“Well, she doesn’t look even a day older. They change pretty fast at that age.” Bending over, Gunther stared at Francesca. His eyes began to glisten, and his anger seemed to melt away. Suddenly, his brow scrunched low. “Wait a minute!” He turned abruptly and jogged to his van. After climbing into the back double door, he returned with a poster, unrolling it as he walked. “Here’s a blowup of the photo. I noticed something…”

“You carry around a poster of her?”

“Yeah … well … After searching for her for so long, she kind
of grew on me.” He handed one end to Nathan and stretched out the slick paper. He touched Francesca’s poster image, rubbing his fingertip along her nose. Then, after rolling up the poster, he crouched in front of her, drawing close and studying her face. “She still has exactly the same scratch, after all this time.”

Gunther reached out slowly and drew Francesca into his arms, his movements smooth and gentle. She returned the embrace, her eyes focusing on Nathan as she looked over Gunther’s shoulder. She seemed confused yet delighted.

As Gunther pulled away and rose to his feet, he turned back to Nathan and extended his hand. “Welcome back.”

Nathan shook his hand. “Great to be here.”

“How’d you get here?” Kelly asked. “Or, better yet, how’d
we
get here?”

“I just drove out to a deserted road on my way to my folks’ house and waited.” Gunther shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea how you got here. Like Nathan said, you just kind of appeared here out of nowhere.”

Kelly scanned the forest. “Where are we, anyway?”

“Near the Iowa and Illinois border. I had just finished a class at school, and this professor-looking type came up to me in the hall. He showed me a photo — the same one we used to make the poster — and asked if I knew the two of you and Francesca. I wasn’t sure I could trust him, so I said something like, ‘What’s it to you?’

“He told me your names. He also knew about me being in the house when it all went down, and he wanted me to help him find the three of you, something about saving your lives. He said he needed someone Nathan could trust, but this guy was sure you wouldn’t trust him. So he couldn’t do it himself.”

“What did he look like?” Nathan asked.

Gunther made circles with his thumbs and forefingers and set them over his eyes. “He wore those owl glasses, like John Lennon wears, and he’s short with kind of a round head.”

Nathan looked at Kelly. “Sounds like Dr. Simon. Must be his counterpart in this dimension.”

“He didn’t tell me his name,” Gunther continued. “He said that if I wanted to” — he drew quote marks in the air — “be of service, I should drive to a safe place and wait for you there.”

“What safe place?”

“I asked the same question. He said it didn’t matter where I went as long as I was there within a certain time frame that he wrote down.”

Nathan raised his eyebrows. “So he knew when the three of us would arrive?”

“Well, not exactly. It was a two-hour window.”

“How long did you have to wait?”

Gunther glanced at his wristwatch. “Only twenty minutes. I brought my textbooks to study, so it wasn’t a problem. When I went to jail, I got fired from my delivery job, so I decided to concentrate on school. Figured it was about time I graduated.”

“What about the tornado?” Kelly asked. “Didn’t it affect you?”

“The radio said it was a hundred miles to the northeast. Just caught a little thunderstorm on my way over here.”

“We were right in its path.” Nathan said. “It nearly blew us to kingdom come.” He looked over at Kelly. With her hair frizzed out and her clothes ruffled, he realized that he probably looked just as mangled. He brushed through his hair, knocking out a shower of leaves, twigs, and dirt. Kelly took his cue and combed out her own hair.

One question still bugged him. How could they possibly show up in a place that Gunther just pulled out of a hat and at exactly the time they were about to get plowed by a tornado and a tree? If they could find Simon, whatever color he was, he’d have a lot of questions to answer.

Gunther backed away, looking around as if worried about someone watching. “This dimensional stuff is too deep for me.
I’m just your driver, so if you want a ride somewhere, let’s get going.”

They piled into the van, Kelly and Francesca in the front and Nathan in the cargo area in the back. Nathan leaned forward, bracing himself on Kelly’s headrest. Although her hair smelled of pine mixed with toadstools, it carried the aroma of safety after a storm, a good, safe sensation. “Think we should check out your house?” he asked.

Kelly shook her head. “It’s hours away and it’s too risky. That’s the first place they’d look for us. And, besides, we don’t know how much time’s left before we have to get back for the funeral.”

“True.” Nathan glanced at his wristwatch, but, of course, it couldn’t possibly keep track of time on Earth Red. “I wish we had a cosmic clock.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. No signal. But what did he expect? It was 1979. “Gunther, can you take us to a telephone? I want to make a few calls to see what’s going on.”

“Sure thing. There’s a Texaco station and a McDonald’s a few miles up the road. You hungry?”

“Starved.” Nathan pulled out his wallet and showed Gunther a twenty-dollar bill. “They probably won’t take these new-style twenties, will they?”

“What’s this?” Gunther took the bill and narrowed his eyes. “Are you into counterfeiting now?”

“Never mind.” Nathan pushed his wallet back into place. “I have some older fives and ones. The McDonald’s clerk probably won’t look at the dates.”

After eating lunch and using the restroom, Gunther, Kelly, and Francesca returned to the van while Nathan used the pay phone at the gas station. When he hung up the receiver, he motioned for Kelly.

She hopped out, and while she ran toward him, he adjusted his watch to match the time on the station’s outdoor clock.

“What’s the news?” she asked as she came to a stop.

Glancing over her shoulder at Gunther and Francesca, Nathan whispered. “I talked to Nikolai, Francesca’s violin teacher. He and his wife raised her in our world after her mother died. I asked him if Francesca were ever found, would he take her in.”

“What did he say?”

“He went nuts. He even started crying. Of course he’d take her. He and his wife were never able to have children.”

Kelly looked back at the van, her face drooping sadly. “By the way, Francesca figured it all out. She knows her mother’s dead. She’s been crying ever since you got on the phone.”

Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he stepped toward the van and looked through the front passenger window. Gunther was helping Francesca climb into the back. Even from where he stood, he could see her reddened, tear-streaked face.

Nathan took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Just let her cry. I know how she feels.”

“How long did you cry when your parents died?”

“I don’t know.” As a slight tremble crossed his lips, he firmed his chin to quell it. “I haven’t stopped crying yet.”

“Sorry. Stupid question.” She brushed her hand tenderly along his forearm. “Where does Nikolai live?”

Nathan ambled toward the van. “He’s in Iowa City, but he insisted on meeting us in Davenport in an hour to save time. He gave me an address, and he’s already on his way.”

Walking beside him, she nodded toward the highway “Davenport is right across the river. Gunther said we’re near the border, so it shouldn’t be far at all.”

“Yeah, that’ll help.” Nathan continued his stroll toward the van. He wanted to complain about having to wait even an hour but it’d just be empty grousing. He had thought about getting
Gunther to take them straight to the observatory site. Then he could drive Francesca to Iowa City, but that would be too much of a risk. What would happen if he got caught with her, or something happened to her, and she couldn’t vouch for him? He’d be in jail the rest of his life … or worse. They’d just have to take their chances that this dimension’s time was screaming along.

When Nathan opened the van door, Gunther was sitting alone in the front, reaching over the seat and caressing Francesca’s head as she lay on a mat in the back. Curled in a fetal position and heaving an occasional spasm, she clutched a stuffed rabbit tightly in her arms.

“I told her about Mr. Bunn,” Gunther said. “My little sister left him here months ago. Francesca climbed back there and laid down, so I sang her a lullaby. I guess she went to sleep to escape my voice.”

Half closing his eyes to ward off the tears, Nathan smiled weakly. “Thanks, Gunther.”

Kelly slid in first, followed by Nathan. “I found a place for Francesca,” he said.

“You did?” Gunther’s brow arched up, but his tone seemed less than joyful. “Where?”

“Her violin teacher in Iowa City. They’re childless, so they’re really excited.”

Gunther started the van. “That’s not too far. Little over an hour.”

“He said he’d meet us in Davenport in the Galvin Fine Arts Center at St. Ambrose University.”

“I know where that is.” Gunther shifted the gear and twisted to see behind him as he backed out. “Fifteen minutes. Twenty, tops.”

“Better take it easy, though. If anything happens and we’re caught with a supposedly kidnapped girl, we’d never see the
light of day especially you. If you want, we could drop you off somewhere, then take her to Nikolai, and pick you up later.”

“Don’t worry about me.” He shifted again and punched the accelerator. “This little girl lost her mama. I’d do anything for her.”

While traveling just under the speed limit on Interstate 88 westbound, Nathan told the entire story as quickly as possible, relating every detail he could remember, finishing with the disarming of the shotgun-wielding murderer and their transport to the future location of Interfinity Labs, which happened to lie right in the path of the tornado. “So, now we have to try to get Francesca’s life back in order. She has to eventually meet Solomon Shepherd and marry him on the twentieth of December in nineteen eighty-six.”

Gunther glanced at his rearview mirror. “So do I tell all this stuff to her violin teacher … what was his name? Nikolai?”

“Nikolai Malenkov. I guess you’ll have to. He needs to know that someone’s out to kill Francesca. He can’t protect her otherwise.”

“True, but I could keep an eye on her, too, help her find Solomon, kind of guide their steps until they meet each other.”

“You want to be her guardian angel?” Nathan asked.

“Sure. Why not?”

Francesca let out a whimper from the back but soon quieted.

Kelly lowered her voice. “Wouldn’t that take too much time? I mean, you have your own life to live.”

Gunther matched her low tone. “You probably noticed that I’m not exactly a normal guy. I mean, I’m a truck driver who believes this crazy story you’re telling me. I might not be the best student around, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that there’s a higher power behind all this cross-dimensional weirdness, so maybe this is exactly what I was meant to do.” He gave
his shoulders a light shrug. “I only have a semester to go. I’ll find a job near Iowa City and be her invisible guardian.”

Kelly gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’re a special man, Gunther.”

“Yeah,” Nathan said. “We’ll never forget you for this.”

Gunther’s face flushed. “Just stay away from twisters for a while. I can’t be waiting for you out on wilderness roads every time you pick a fight with one.”

When they arrived at the university, Gunther parked in the Galvin Center’s nearly empty lot. Only an MG roadster, an old red pickup truck, and a motorcycle occupied any of the fifty or so spaces.

Nathan jumped out and searched the area for Nikolai, hoping he could find a much younger version of his mother’s gentle music teacher. As he crossed the parking lot, Kelly hurried to join him. “Any sign of Nikolai?”

“Not yet. I remember seeing the Earth Red version of him driving a nice BMW, so I don’t think he’d own anything like what’s already parked here. I told him what the van looks like, so maybe he’ll find us.”

“Has it been an hour?”

“Just about. He should be here soon.”

She nodded toward the building. “Won’t hurt to take a look inside, will it?”

“Wait!” Nathan pointed at a light blue Volvo turning into the parking lot. “That looks more his speed.”

As the Volvo pulled in next to the van, the driver rolled down the window. A thin-faced man with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair glanced around nervously before speaking in a friendly but serious tone. “Are you Nathan Shepherd?”

“Yes.” Nathan bent over to address him directly. “Nikolai?”

“Yes, yes.” He craned his neck, sticking his head farther out the window as he lowered his voice. “Where is Francesca?”

Nathan pointed at Gunther’s vehicle. “In the van. I thought you said you were bringing your wife.”

He gave a rapid nod, still speaking softly. “I was, to be sure, but I received a call immediately after yours warning me not to retrieve Francesca. It was a man, a friendly man, actually, who said I would be endangering her life.” He checked his rearview mirror and glanced at the fine arts center before continuing. “I couldn’t leave you waiting for me, so I sent my wife to a safe place and came alone.”

“Do you think someone’s watching your house?”

“I believe so, and perhaps for quite some time, but I was unaware of it until that moment. When I left my house, I became much more watchful and noticed a green pickup truck parked at the curb two blocks away. I am quite sure I saw the same vehicle later on the interstate, but it passed me, and the driver did not even offer a glance.”

Nathan straightened and scanned the area, stretching his arms to make it look like he was yawning rather than conducting a search. “No sign of the truck, but I’ll bet —” Although he stopped talking, he kept turning. “Don’t look now, but I spotted a guy with binoculars behind a tree near that house across the street.”