Page 73 of Time for You
“Oh, this is impossible,” Anne groaned. She had been immersed in calculations for the better part of an hour, determined to crack it for him. “This makes nosense.”
George grinned at her. “Never thought I’d see the day where Annie MacDonald gives up.”
“I am notgiving up; I am declaring this an utterly impossible tangle of numbers that only a mathematical genius could decipher.”
“I thought you were a genius,” Henry teased. “I believe you used to tell me so daily.”
Anne fixed them both with an irritated look. “Iama genius, but not this particular type of genius. I am a scholar of anatomy and medicine, not numbers and symbols. Those I’m merely brilliant at.”
Henry snorted, and wished for the hundredth time she could meet Daphne and her friends.
George, however, was looking thoughtful. “Who could do it, then? Maggie?”
Anne shook her head. “Mags is good at business, but it’s Mama who has handled all the numbers. Besides, Maggie would never consent to help get Henry back to the future; she doesn’t want him to leave again.”
“And you do?” Henry asked mildly.
“Of course. How else will I get uninterrupted use of your books?” Anne replied mischievously, but then she sobered. “George is right, though. We need someone else, and the only one who could do it is Mama.”
The three of them shared a look. None of them much fancied approaching Lydia with this, but Anne was right—she was their best shot.
“Then we ask her,” Henry said.
“Good,” Anne said, handing her stack of calculations over. “But you have to tell Mama you want to leave again alone, because I don’t want to be there when you do.”
Henry knocked on the door to what had been Father’s study and waited for Lydia to bid him to enter. She had a ledger open on the desk, a set of spectacles perched on the tip of her nose. It was odd, seeing her in the place Henry had seen as his father’s, but it fit, somehow.
“You’re back,” she announced, somewhat unnecessarily. “I assume it was a productive trip? Was Anne satisfied, or will she continue to wear the same three drab dresses I bought her two seasons ago?”
They hadn’t told her the real reason they were going to London, using Anne’s need to go shopping for the latest fashions—something she had never once expressed interest in—as their excuse. It was a flimsy pretense, and one he should have realized his mother would see through immediately.
Henry sank into the chair across the desk, chagrined. “It was, but Anne did come home empty-handed.”
“Ah. What did you discover, then?”
“A way back through the time veil. Or a possible way back. We hope.”
“You hope?”
“Anne started on the calculations, but she couldn’t get them to work.”
Lydia pursed her lips, sighed, and held out her hand. “Let’s see it, then.”
Henry hesitated. “If I leave, I am likely not coming back.”
“I know.” Lydia kept her hand extended, a stern look on her face. “If I could go back in time to see your father, just once more—I would do it. In a heartbeat. So stop stalling and let me see what your sister came up with.” Her voice shook ever so slightly as she spoke, at odds with her matter-of-fact tone.
Henry pulled out the book and map with Anne’s work scribbled on them and handed them over. He explained the rough outlines of how it worked, but before he could finish, Lydia was nodding to herself, crossing out a few notations, and scribbling down more numbers.
She consulted the map, made one more correction to Anne’s calculations, and then nodded once more, satisfied. “There.”
“Are you—”
“Of course I’m sure.” She handed the map back to him, with an X over a graveyard in a map of Manchester. “It opens outside Manchester three days from now, and will take you to—” She broke off and consulted the book, flipping pages back and forth. “Florida. Isn’t that place beastly hot?”
“It is,” Henry confirmed, his brain struggling to keep up. “And it’s a long way from Minneapolis, but travel is much faster there.”
“Then our only real problem is the timing.”
