Page 68 of Intersect

I don’t even know where to begin, but Nick does, apparently. “Did you know the plan all along?” he asks. There’s a hint of accusation in his voice—I think it’s going to be a long time before he gets over what we went through—but it doesn’t seem to bother her in the least.

She smiles. “Oh yes. That was my niece you chased out of the basement. Don’t worry. She loves helping.”

Nick shakes his head. “Why all the insanity though? Why make us come to Paris?”

Sadness flickers across her features for a moment. “Sarah wanted to be near Quinn’s father. She worried, in her weakened state, that she might not be able to master traveling through both time and place. That basement was where he died.”

It saddens me that my father is dead, and I’ll never know him, but not as much as it might under other circumstances. The truth is I had a father, a good one. And I would never want to change that. “Did you…know him?” I ask.

Her eyes go a little brighter. “Not well, but yes. He was a wonderful man.”

“I don’t even know his name.”

She twists a ring on her finger. “All good things in time, Quinn. You’ll learn everything when you’re ready for it.”

The temptation to argue with her is strong. Why do I need to be ready just to learn my own father’s name?

“Things could have gone wrong so easily,” Nick says. “If just one of those steps hadn’t worked or if it had gone on a week longer, Quinn might have died.”

“Sarah would have just changed the timeline again,” Cecelia says. “In fact she had to change several things…Nick’s little scuffle at the bar went a lot worse the first time. She went back and had the cops appear before it could go too far. But you did cut it very close with that tumor, didn’t you?” she says, turning to me. “We bought you more time with the herbs in your IV, but the future seemed to change on a daily basis. Anyhow, it all worked out. Your mother will be pleased.”

My head jerks. “Will be?”

“I have no doubt she jumped to the future too. You’ll see her again there, as will I.”

My pulse takes an excited leap. I thought we’d have to struggle to find someone to help Darcy. Perhaps we won’t. “Then can you also…?”

She shakes her head. “No, no. It’s quite rare, you know. My grandmother and aunt could, but the ability to reproduce among your kind seems to be dying out rapidly. Fewer and fewer of you are born, and your survival…well, you know.”

“I’m having two time travelers by accident,” I reply quietly, pressing my hand to my stomach. “It can’t be that hard to reproduce.”

“Twins among your kind are unheard of,” she says softly. “They are special, your girls. Your mother and I, we both thought they must have a purpose.”

“What kind of purpose?” Nick asks with an edge to his voice. His chair slides backward. Already he’s thinking he needs to find a way to protect them from whatever lies in their future. I’m pretty sure he can’t.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. That’s for them to discover.” She looks back at me and her eyes soften. “The last time I saw you, you were an infant. Before your mother gave you away. Oh, how she wept when you left. But I’ve followed your life through all the pictures her brother sent.”

I swallow hard. It hurts a little, that he knew and kept it a secret. I know he did it for me, and that hurts in another way. I wish I could thank him. It had to have been so difficult to keep it all to himself. “Did he know? That I could jump?”

She nods. “Oh yes. He believed you would learn to time travel when you became a teenager, that you’d save yourself.”

“But I didn’t,” I reply, feeling that all-too familiar grief in my throat. All the stories he told me as a kid…they were allegories. He was trying to convince me not to fear it. Perhaps it’s why, at the end, he pushed me so hard to marry Jeff. He thought he could save me by keeping me from Nick instead. “He never lived to learn that it all worked out.”

“You can go back and tell him,” she says.

Nick tenses at that but I lean forward. Even if I can’t time travel right now, we’ve got to find someone who can. “We have a friend, a little girl. We need to find someone who can go back in time to warn her about something, but I can’t risk trying it while I’m pregnant. Do you know of anyone who can help us?”

She shakes her head. “There is much secrecy, you know. You can only tell someone with whom you share blood.”

“But…you’re discussing it with me now. And my mother discussed it with you.”

Her smile is gentle. “A mystery for another time, mon cheri. You have a plane to catch, yes?”

We nod and rise reluctantly, thanking her, though the visit was hardly enlightening. When we reach the door, she stops and grabs my hand, whispering to me in rapid-fire French. Saying words she already knows Nick will object to.

He waits until we’re walking to the car before he asks what she said.

“You won’t like it.” I can’t say I liked it much myself.