Timekeeper (4 page)

The chauffeur eyed her with confusion. “What are you talking about, miss?”

Michele pointed straight ahead. “That—that person, or
thing
, in the window. Don’t you see?”

Fritz glanced at the window and turned back to her with concern. “I don’t see anything.”

She looked up at Fritz sharply. How could he
not
see the strange being? And suddenly an incredible thought occurred to her, remembering the times when she herself had gone unseen:
Maybe it’s a time traveler
.

Michele let out a nervous laugh. “Whoa, that’s weird. I—it must have just been a shadow or something.”

Fritz frowned, looking closely at her. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

She forced her voice to a more casual tone. “I’m fine, honestly. If anything I just need a new contact lens prescription.”

As she followed Fritz into the house with trepidation, the veil of fog lifted and the creature at the window became clear. She was a real person—a girl about Michele’s age. Her back was still to them as she stared out the window, so all Michele could see was a pile of slithery dark curls atop a tall body dressed in a nineteenth-century black velvet gown.

So there are other time travelers besides me … and my father
. The realization hit Michele with full force and her heartbeat quickened as she thought of Philip. If this stranger in the Windsor Mansion was a time traveler … what if Philip was one too? But that wouldn’t explain why he didn’t know her. Whenever Michele had traveled through time, she always remembered everything.

“Excuse me,” Michele said quietly, when Fritz was out of earshot. “Who are—”

But before she even had a chance to finish her sentence, the girl’s image flickered and vanished into the air. Michele felt a cold wave of fear wash over her. Somehow she knew that the girl hadn’t wanted Michele to see who she was.

What
was
that? What in the world is going on?
Michele thought frantically. Were her instincts right—the girl was a time traveler—or had Philip Walker’s appearance at school turned her into a mental case, complete with hallucinations?

“Michele, hi!”

Her panicky thoughts were interrupted by the middle-aged housekeeper, Annaleigh, striding into the room.

“Hey, Annaleigh.”

Annaleigh’s pale blue eyes peered at her closely. “Are you all right? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Maybe I have
.

“Oh—I’m fine.” As she spoke, Michele realized that all day she’d been reassuring different people that she was okay. What was
happening
to her? She took a deep breath, unnerved as ever, but determined to at least fake normalcy until it felt real. “How’s everything over here?”

“All right, I suppose. I noticed your grandmother having trouble with her breathing this afternoon. She and your grandfather didn’t seem to think anything of it, but I encouraged him to take her to the doctor. They just left ten minutes ago.”

Michele swallowed hard. “Do you think she’s going to be okay?”

“Of course,” Annaleigh said soothingly. “I only suggested the doctor visit to make sure.”

Michele nodded hopefully. For all the issues she’d had with her grandparents upon moving into Windsor Mansion, she had grown to love them. They were her only family in the world, and though she knew they were getting older, she couldn’t imagine ever losing them.

“They instructed me to make sure you stay put until they get back,” Annaleigh told her with a wry smile. “They were quite insistent. I hope you don’t have plans to go anywhere.”

“No plans,” Michele told her. “They picked a good day to have me on lockdown.” She felt a flicker of worry that her grandparents’ request might have something to do with her grandmother’s health, but she pushed the thought away, reminding
herself of the many other overprotective moments she’d experienced with Walter and Dorothy since moving in.

Michele clambered up the curving, red-carpeted marble staircase to her room. When she reached the third floor, she briefly leaned over the railing and looked down at the lavish foyer she had just come from, called the Grand Hall. Designed like an indoor open piazza, the Grand Hall was the focal point of the mansion. Marble columns soared up to the gilded, hand-painted ceilings, and plush chaise lounges and armchairs surrounded a large, carved fireplace. Portraits by the masters graced the walls, while a bronze statue and glittering fountain stood beneath the grand staircase. Those who entered the mansion usually drew a gasp at their first sight of the Hall, and even after living there for two months Michele still felt the same sense of awe. Yet she considered her bedroom the most special place in the mansion, having belonged to her mother and a century of Windsor daughters before her.

She’d been shocked by the suite at first, unable to imagine her low-key mom living in this lilac-and-white bedroom fit for a princess, with its delicate eighteenth-century French furnishings, full-size dressing room, marble bathroom, and sitting room large enough to throw a party in. But when she discovered the key from her father and traveled back in time, she met three formidable Windsor daughters from the past who showed Michele that their name stood for something far more important than money or privilege. There was a passion and strength passed down through the Windsor girls, a desire to break past the constraints that bound them, and Michele had watched as they fought for their dreams and used their
positions and fortune for good. While she’d grown up ashamed of her secret family identity, she now looked upon the portraits of the bedroom’s past inhabitants with a surge of pride.

Closing the bedroom door behind her, Michele opened the top drawer of her white mahogany desk, and pulled out a small box. Though she knew its contents by heart, she still felt a flutter of anticipation upon lifting the lid.

Nestled carefully inside the box were pieces of a man’s life. An October 1910 newspaper clipping from the society pages of the
New York Times
, which Michele had scanned from the public library, gave a breathless account of the Windsors’ Halloween Ball—the setting where she and Philip had first met. Grainy black-and-white photographs of the ball’s most eminent guests were printed alongside the article, and Michele felt her heart constrict whenever she looked at the image of eighteen-year-old Philip Walker. Despite the poor quality, she could still make out his expression. He was looking off into the distance, his gaze intent. There was something beyond the camera that held his full attention, and Michele knew every time she looked at the photo that she was the one he was gazing at.

Underneath the newspaper clipping was Philip’s handwritten sheet music for one of the songs he and Michele wrote together in 1910, “Bring The Colors Back.” She had written the lyrics and he had composed the music, the two of them falling in love through a composition that expressed to each other what mere words couldn’t.

At the bottom of the box were remnants of Philip’s later life under the alias of Phoenix Warren, the famous composer
and pianist of the mid-twentieth century. A photo from a 1940 back issue of
Life
magazine showed him looking debonair in his middle age, holding up a gold record plaque for his symphony
Michele
—the song that had given Marion Windsor the perfect name for her daughter. Michele still felt goose bumps rise on her neck whenever she thought about it.

The last item in the box was his obituary from December 12, 1992. He had lived a long, fulfilling life, just as he’d promised Michele when they last met. But he had never married, and Michele couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d spent the rest of his days looking for her. Had his search finally brought him here? Or was this new Philip Walker just a descendant?

As Michele placed the lid back on the box, she thought there might be one person who had the answers to all this: her father, the very reason she was able to time travel. But Irving Henry was lost in the past, unaware of her existence.

I can go back in time
, Michele reminded herself.
I can find him
. The thought both thrilled and terrified her. He was the most important person from her past. She would have to be ready.

When the clock struck six, signaling dinner hour at the Windsor Mansion, Michele was still immersed in her online search for any information she could find on the present-day Philip Walker. While most people nowadays had practically their entire lives laid out online for the world to see, Philip was just as elusive on the Internet as he was in person. She couldn’t find him on any social-networking sites, and with one of the
most common surnames in the country, it took hours to weed through all the search results leading to other Philips. She got up from her desk with a frustrated sigh just as her cell phone beeped with a text message. Caissie’s name popped up on the screen.

What if he’s Philip’s great-great-nephew or something? That would explain the resemblance, and why the ring was passed down to him
, the message read.

But Philip’s family believed he died in the 1920s.
He wouldn’t have just shown up and handed the ring to one of them
, Michele thought. There was no explanation—only the undeniable fact that the eyes she’d looked into today were the very same she’d gazed into in 1910.

She slowly made her way to the dining room, lost in her thoughts, but when she stepped in and saw her grandparents, her mind was jerked back to the present. It was clear that something was wrong.

Michele had never before seen her grandparents slouch. Their razor-straight, proud posture was a mark of regal upbringing and seemed to announce their identities whenever they entered a room. But tonight, as Michele stood in the doorway of the marble-pillared dining room, she found Walter and Dorothy wearily hunched over in their seats, Dorothy trembling while Walter murmured something in her ear.

“Is everything okay?” Michele asked, though she was afraid she knew the answer to the question. “What did the doctor say?”

The two of them looked up, both attempting to smooth their expressions into a pretense of calm.

“My health is fine,” Dorothy said shakily. “It was nerves. We only went to the doctor to appease Annaleigh. She is very kind, the way she fusses over us.”

“What were you nervous about?” Michele asked, taking her seat across from them at the long oak dining table. Before they had a chance to answer, the kitchen maid, Martha, entered, carrying a steaming tureen of soup. That was when Michele saw the photo album resting between her grandparents, and she stifled a gasp.

Since the day she’d moved in with them, Michele had sensed that Walter and Dorothy were hiding something from her. The burden of their secrets shadowed their faces whenever they looked at Michele and stilted all their conversations. She gleaned her first major clue about what they were hiding the night she found this same antique Windsor photo album in the library, opened to a black-and-white snapshot of Irving Henry—depicting him as the family’s lawyer circa 1900. Her grandparents’ flustered reaction at finding Michele with the photo album confirmed her suspicions that they’d known—and kept hidden—her father’s true identity as a time traveler from the past. In recent days, Michele had found herself waiting for the right time to tell her grandparents that she too knew the truth … but so far, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to speak the words. She was afraid to crack the shell of their secrets, afraid of what they might do when they learned that she was a time traveler too.

Michele gazed at the worn leather cover of the album, engraved with the words
Windsor Family History, 1880–1910
. She had only ever seen the one picture of her father in the book,
but it struck her now that there might be more, and she felt her pulse quicken at the thought. As Martha left, her grandfather cleared his throat nervously.

“We have something to tell you.”

Michele held her breath as she looked up at them.

“Are you wearing it?” Dorothy asked suddenly, her voice oddly high-pitched.

“W-wearing what?”

“The key!”

Michele stared at her grandmother in incredulous silence.

“She knows you have it—she knows
what you are—
and she’ll stop at nothing to destroy you. You’re not safe, not so long as you’re anything like him—but you can’t let the key out of your sight! It might be your only protection.”

Chills ran down Michele’s spine, and she found she couldn’t speak. For a moment the only sounds in the room were the short gasps of Dorothy’s panicked breathing.

“I’m not safe from who?” Michele whispered.

Dorothy doubled over in sobs at the question. Michele shrank back at the alarming sight, her heart racing with panic.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked frantically.

Walter pushed out of his chair and leaned over Dorothy, rubbing her back. “You’re okay, honey.… I t’s going to be okay.” He turned back to Michele, his expression tortured. “This has driven your grandmother mad for more than seventeen years. I had hoped it was over, that we would never have to discuss it with you. But I’m afraid we can’t keep you in the dark anymore.”