The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster Page 11

  Of particular interest, and the focus of my study, are the “spirit walks” of the Cherokee. I believe that through an extraordinarily complex ceremony that has been passed down from teacher to student and using an arcane combination of distillations, symbols, rituals, and mental exercises, they discovered how to dislocate time. Their spirit walks do not take them to another realm but, more significantly, reach beyond the three dimensions with which we are familiar to another time within our own.

  From the first word, the writing struck a chord with Edmond. But as interested as he was in the text, a strange drowsiness took hold and the words began to blur on the page.

  His head dipped, and he became aware of a mechanical hum that had no external source pulsing from within his ears. His body began to vibrate while an oddly soothing light bathed him in rapid bursts like a strobe.Just when he was certain the mounting vibration would disperse his body into a billion flecks of potential, the hum, the light, and Edmond were sucked into a pinhole and vanished.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  The Unintentional Orphan

  The infinite complexity of the universe can be boiled down to two simple forces— pushing and pulling, creation and destruction. And the war between the two is evident in even the tiniest interactions.

  Consider the universal building blocks. Protons, neutrons, and electrons are irresistibly pulled together to create the atom. From there, the atom goes on to build, well…everything. Despite the obstacles that impede the particles’ attraction, the drive to construct the atom out of its component pieces is relentless. In the end, the atom, and creation, always win.

  “Mail call,” Annie said as she reentered the kitchen waving a letter. She had what appeared to be a book in her other hand.

  “From Elsbeth?” Christian asked, startled out of his thoughts. His mind was still locked on her obscure responses to his retelling of the conversation with Edmond. He hated it when she was obscure. Usually it was because he was left with the vague feeling that she knew something he didn’t. Why can’t people simply say what they mean, he wondered.

  “Who else?” Annie sat in the kitchen nook and ripped open the envelope. Her smile disappearing as she read. “Oh…no.” So quietly that Christian could barely hear her, she added, “No, this is not what I intended at all.” She rested her head in the palm of her hand for a second before glancing out the window, clearly upset.

  Christian eased the letter from her hand and began to read as she picked up the book, flipping furiously through its pages.

  Putting the letter aside, he massaged his forehead. “You can’t blame yourself,” he said. He waited until her eyes meet his. “You tried to stop a murder. Your intentions count for something.”

  Annie was unconvinced but touched his hand in thanks before returning to the book.

  Not happy with her response or lack of one, he grabbed her arm and squeezed. “Maybe nothing you could have done would have changed the outcome. The article reported a suspect. Isn’t it likely that your actions were already accounted for?”

  “But that’s just it,” she said. “Don’t you see? I did cause this unholy mess. By convincing El to intervene, I created the circumstances that led to her being implicated in the very crime I urged her to prevent.”

  “Annie, Elsbeth is a grown woman.”

  “She’s also my friend.”

  The way Annie made the last comment, almost inviting him to contradict her, chilled Christian. “Yes, she is,” he said. “And like you, she obviously knows her own mind. You may have brought the murder to her attention, but she made the decision to act.”

  Annie’s gaze had drifted back to the book during Christian’s last comment, and he wondered if she was even listening to him. Christian knew better than anyone how Annie could lock on to an idea. He asked himself a simple question. What would Annie do if she felt she’d created the problem? The answer came to him all too quickly, and he let out a little moan. She’ll try to fix it. Christian didn’t like the idea of what fixing the problem would entail, but just as he was about to voice his concern, he heard Annie quietly say, “Good Lord.”

  “What now?”

  “His diary,” she said. She held up the book. “This is his diary. David Abbott.” She flipped through the pages with increasing excitement. “It describes how he made the door. And there are instructions…” She looked at Christian in awe. “We have David Abbott’s blueprint for time travel here.”

  Christian peered over her shoulder as she flipped through the diary. The title on one of the pages commanded their attention. It read: How to Triangulate Location.

  “Does that mean…” Annie tapped her finger over the title, looking to Christian for some sort of confirmation. She slid the book in front of him as he eased into the nook next to her.

  He wrapped his hands around it and looked over his shoulder, suddenly fixated on the door situated not six feet from where they sat. “It looks as if Mr. Abbott is telling you how to set a location, Annie,” he said. “This isn’t just a door to ‘when,’ it’s also a door to ‘where.’”

  Even as Christian confirmed her suspicion, the implication of the discovery sank in, and Annie knew what she had to do. She tabled the thought, not ready to share. There would be time to consider it later when she was alone. Instead, she went to a cabinet over the stove, pulled out a directory, and started rifling through its pages.

  Christian followed her across the room. “Annie, what are you doing?”

  “Genning uh ummer for uh hoshpiral,” she said with a pencil between her teeth.

  “What?”

  She took the pencil out of her mouth and repeated. “Getting the number for the hospital. El asked me to do something. I don’t intend to let her down. Besides, aren’t you even the least bit curious about Abbott’s son?”

  Christian put his hand over the directory. “For one thing, that’s the wrong directory, and let’s be realistic. Do you really think you’re going to be able to get records on a child born in 1890? In Kansas?”

  “It’s 1894 and why not?” She gently moved his hand and went back to rifling through the pages.

  “Stop, stop,” Christian said, taking the phone book and holding it to his chest. “It amazes me how people choose to take the longest route to get from A to B. You have a perfectly good computer in your study upstairs.” Annie blinked, so he added, “I linked it to the Internet for you.”

  “But it’s dial-up!” she said, as she followed him upstairs.

  Christian booted up the computer and dialed into AOL, patiently waiting out the electronic touch-tones, burps, and feedback. “What’s the name of the hospital again?” he asked.

  She looked at El’s letter. “Our Lady of Lourdes.”

  He opened a browser, typed in “Our Lady of Lourdes, hospital, Kansas City,” then hit the enter key. A list of references appeared. It included several hospitals, but none of that name.

  He was about to try another search when Annie grabbed his hand. “Wait!” She pointed to the screen. Under the heading of “Saint Luke’s Hospital,”a subheading read,“Since purchasing Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in 1943, Saint Luke’s has become the region’s leading nonprofit provider.”

  Christian grinned. “Let’s see you find that information in a phone book.” He clicked on the icon even as Annie gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

  An internal directory for Saint Luke’s appeared. Among the numbers listed was one for the records department.

  Christian tapped the screen. “Bingo,” he said, then slumped back into the chair.

  Five minutes later, Annie had completed a phone call to Saint Luke’s records department. “Now we wait,” she told Christian as she hung up the phone. “The records for Our Lady of Lourdes are stored off-site. But the lovely man I spoke to is going to ask a friend who works at the archives to give me a call.”

  They headed down to the kitchen to get some tea. Annie had just put the ice in the glasses when the phone rang. “Annab
elle Aster here.”

  After a brief exchange, Annie put her hand over the phone and mouthed, “He has them by year on disk.”

  Christian was not surprised. This was part of the magic of being Annie. Things simply fell into place for her. He’d witnessed it time and again.

  Annie hung up the phone and turned to him.“He’s emailing the information as we speak.” She sipped her tea and hummed tunelessly until her eyes wandered to Christian’s face. He was grinning.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’re a flirt.”

  She rolled her eyes,feeling disinclined to comment on the obvious.

  Even so, Christian watched her take a few more sips before leaning forward to whisper, “What are you waiting for?”

  “Oh!” Annie sprinted upstairs with Christian following more slowly. By the time he arrived, she had downloaded an eleven-page attachment from Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital and pulled up the barely legible image of a birth certificate for a Beatrice Lansing, born June 16, 1894. She stared at it curiously before scrolling through two more birth certificates. Neither was an Abbott. The screen came alive with the next birth certificate, one for a Walter Moore, born June 19, 1894, causing Annie to start.

  “Find it?” asked Christian while looking over her shoulder.

  “No, but there’s something familiar about them. All of them. Something…” She shrugged, at a loss for words, and scrolled to the next.

  Christian decided this might take a while and settled himself on the floor. The next document was reluctant to appear, and Annie made an impatient sound as it stubbornly refused to resolve on the screen. When it finally did, she leaned in to get a closer look, hit a key, and walked out of the room without a word.

  Over the clack and hum of the printer, Christian heard Annie throwing boxes around in the bedroom closet down the hall. He lumbered to his feet and retrieved the document from the printer.

  Born June 23, 1894 Annabelle Abbott to David and Florence Abbott at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Kansas City, Kansas

  “Sweet Jesus,” he whispered. Dropping the printout, he chased Annie into the bedroom. “Your birthday, it’s the twenty-third of June, right?”

  She appeared from the closet with a piece of torn parchment clutched in her hand, her knuckles white from gripping it so tightly. She flashed it at him and nodded before hurrying back into the study.

  He found her kneeling on the floor beside the printout. After a moment, she murmured something unintelligible and laid the parchment she’d retrieved from the closet on the floor beside the printout. The artwork and cartography were identical, that was plain to see, but the top right side of the parchment was missing. Annie started to chew on her thumbnail as she studied the documents. She shook her head, then slid the printout over the parchment and held the two to the light of a table lamp. The words from the original merged seamlessly with the copy—the number “1894,” as well as “lle Abbott” and “id and Florence Abbott” now filled the remaining areas that were torn away.

  Reaching numbly behind her, Annie pulled herself into the desk chair. She started to say something but instead cupped her forehead in her hands atop the desk.

  A sound like a quick intake of air, or perhaps a hiccup, escaped her as Christian stood,taking two uneasy steps to reach for the wall. He leaned with his back against it and blinked, his features frozen in disbelief, before sliding to the floor with a thud as he tried to make sense of their discovery. He could rule out coincidence; the matching birth certificates made that clear. The only reasonable explanation, if reason could be applied in any way, was that his best friend had been born before the turn of the century. Beyond that shocking bit of news, they’d also learned the identity of Annie’s birth father and that he’d been murdered.

  It was almost too much to take in, and from the look of things, Annie was not faring any better. Christian knew he needed to snap her out of her thoughts before she sank too far, so he got up. Tucking a forlorn strand of hair behind her ear, he whispered, “He never intended to abandon you, Annie.”

  She looked up, clearly startled. As the implication sank in, she put her hand over her mouth.

  Christian nodded. “He was trying to protect you all along.”

  Despite the certainty of his comments, Annie needed to speak the words aloud to lock them to the truth. “Elsbeth must have been mistaken,” she said. “The baby wasn’t a boy.” She looked from the birth certificate to Christian, speaking slowly, “I was that child. He—” She stopped, collected herself, and started again. “My father moved me to the only safe place he could think of. The future.”

  She gazed at the wall behind the desk, her eyes unfocused. Amid the torrent of thoughts that followed, one bubbled to the surface. “I wasn’t supposed to be an orphan.” Saying that, putting the thought to words, suddenly lifted a weight she’d never known existed. And once that weight was lifted, the hole was filled by guilt. “But I love my parents,” she whispered.

  “Of course you do!”Christian said, dropping on his knees beside her. “This has nothing to do with them.” He squeezed her leg.

  Just as she nodded, her eyes widened again. “Elsbeth!” she cried. “I have to write her!”

  She lurched upright, perhaps a little too quickly, and lowered herself back into the chair, her skin going white as soft-paste porcelain. The loss of color seemed understandable under the circumstances, but a slick, roseate bubble flowered and burst at the base of her nose.

  Cursing under his breath, Christian flew into the bathroom for some tissue, returning only to find Annie already holding one to her nose while nibbling on a cracker. Her expression made it clear that questions were not welcome.

  He waited out her silence and did the only thing he could think of when she stood. He wrapped her in an embrace before she could take a step. They rocked back and forth until he felt her body relax. “Would you like me to stay with you tonight?”

  She hugged him a little tighter before disengaging, her features unreadable. “No, I’ll be fine.” Christian tilted his head, frowning, so she added, “Really, I will. But I need to wrap my head around this. I’ll write El and try to rest my head a bit.” She squeezed his hand and headed downstairs.

  Christian followed, watching as Annie took a seat at the rolltop desk.

  Before writing anything,she turned to him.“This changes nothing…” Looking a little surprised, she added, “… and everything.”

  Christian was about to ask her to explain her meaning, but it seemed clear enough. This knowledge did not change the way she felt about her parents, but it changed everything in the way she felt about herself. He wandered to the sofa as she started to write.

  May 30, 1995

  Dear El,

  I got you into this mess, and I intend to get you out of it. At the moment, I haven’t the foggiest idea how. The challenge is made all the more complex by the not-so-insignificant factors of geography and time, but I now have the door’s instruction manual in my hands.

  Christian suspects my intent, of course, and is worried. He knows how single-minded I can be. But you’re my friend! And I do not abandon friends.

  I have done as you requested by investigating the mystery of David Abbott’s child and must regretfully inform you that, despite what you thought you saw, Mr. Abbott had no son.

  He did, however, have a daughter.

  It’s me, Elsbeth. As crazy as it sounds, I’m the child you witnessed disappearing through the door.

  My mind is a tangled mess, and you will not be pleased to read that I find myself struggling with dueling motivations. The first is as I’ve already mentioned. I plan to get you out of this mess. The second is more primitive.

  Revenge.

  Sincerely,

  Annabelle Abbott Aster

  The letter delivered, Annie walked arm in arm with Christian back up the stairs and to her bedroom, while trying to contain her growing anger. She disappeared into the bathroom and came out wearing a dressing gown.


  “I’m not comfortable leaving you like this,” he said, as she pounded a pillow into submission.

  “I’m fine,” she lied.

  Christian looked doubtful, so she shoved him lightly on the shoulder. “Go on,” she said. “Don’t you have plans with Edmond?” She dropped back against the pillows, began to smooth the covers with a quick glance in his direction, and said quietly but firmly, “Go on.”

  “Annie?”

  She looked up to see him standing in the doorway.

  “What are you up to?” he asked.

  “Just sleep,” she said, smiling. “That’s all.”

  Despite her assurances, Christian knew that Annie was anything but fine.How could she be after everything she’d learned? An aura of distress surrounding her, but knowing better than anyone that some demons were best tackled alone, he nodded reluctantly. The bloody nose and its implications would have to wait.

  She listened to his tread on the stairs, saddened that she’d taken advantage of Christian’s trusting nature, but he would only get in the way. Sighing, she reached under the covers and pulled out the diary.

  February 3, 1893

  There is more magic in the natural world than any one person can imagine—magnetism, crystallization, photosynthesis, gravity, and now this. I have been able to confirm that the earth’s surface is dotted with countless discrete, interconnected resonances, tiny folds in the time-space horizon that can be tapped and manipulated. These “interruptions” are apparently caused by variances in the topography as they interact with mineral content in geological structures. I can’t take credit for this breakthrough, however. Mayan and Aztec civilizations discovered them before me. The Cherokee have mapped a few locations but have mistaken them for bridges to the spirit world.