Page 76 of The Girl Out of Time
“What?”
“I left it at home. I didn’t want to risk taking it on vacation, in case it got stolen, and it wasn’t as if I was going to do time travel while conducting business …”
“Well, then, you’ll have to work in the present.” Emily went back to the laptop, trying to focus. “What time is it over there?”
“It’s evening. It’ll be seven soon.”
She nodded to herself. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do. Right now, it’s November 15 for me. In your time, you have about five hours before the ship hits the iceberg. Call me back before that happens, but make the call to December 8, okay? That will give me enough time to study the event and give you a briefing on what to do.”
“All right.”
“Will?” She gripped the tablet tighter, as if that could make her steady him. “Hold on.”
He nodded and ended the call.
Emily deposited the tablet on the coffee table and turned to the laptop. Now that the call was over and she couldn’t hear Will’s voice anymore, tears overwhelmed her, as if the break of connection had somehow secured his doom. She hid her face in her hands and cried out.
For a second, everything around her stilled. The soft humming of her laptop stopped; the car driving past went silent; even the airflow, it seemed, had paused. Emily took a gasping breath—and all returned to normal.
A time freeze?Impossible. She’d been imagining it. It’s been twelve years since she’d last done one, so most likely, she didn’t even remember its signs correctly. But still, she tried—flexed her fingers and tentatively reached out to her old mantra, whispering it in her mind.
Heartbeat, wait. Heartbeat, stop.
Nothing.
“Emily?” James’s voice came from somewhere behind. She looked at him through a curtain of tears, and he ran from the doorway to her, kneeling in front. “Flicker? What’s wrong? What’s happened? Is it the baby?”
“No, the baby is fine,” she choked out. She grabbed his hands to steady herself.
James pulled her into a hug instead.
“It’s Will,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “They’re on theTitanic.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The ship. They’re coming back to the States.”
“I know that, but what’s the problem?”
“It’s theTitanic!” She pushed away. “Oh, of course.” Despite being from Will’s time, James had adjusted so well to her era that sometimes, she forgot he wasn’t born here and didn’t live through the same experiences—and anniversaries of events past—as she did. “You remember that Valentine’s Day when you planned a date for us, and you were looking for romantic movies to watch, and someone recommendedTitanicbecause ‘the love story was so cute,’ so you chose that one, but you didn’t know—”
James’s eyes rounded as realization struck him. “No.”
“That’s the ship.”
“But … it sank, it was a great tragedy, everyone, almost everyone—” He gaped. “Sylvia—my sister is on that ship.”
“I know! They’re all on it.” She stood and worried her nails. “We have to do something.”
“Can’t we check if they made it off safely?”
Of course. She was so stupid. Put that on the pregnancy hormones, as well. Thank god she had James. “Yes! You can go check.” Will, Sylvia, and the children would’ve lived in New York at that time, but his parents werestill in Connecticut. “We’re in the right house. You only need to pop back and ask Fabienne if the family is all right.”
James nodded and, without words, left the living room and ran upstairs. He returned with his watch a minute later.
“Any date after April 15, 1912,” Emily said. “Do a few months, just in case.”
He set the watch, blinked out for a second, and came back.
