“We are doing amazingly,” I say. “We were not doing nearly as well when I left, as much as that pained us both. While I never would have wanted to lose four years with you and Edmund, if some deity offered me the choice—give up four years or lose the love of my life—I would have stepped through that time stitch myself. That is how I see it. I went away, and I came back changed and found you also changed, and we are so much better.”
“You didn’t need to change, Rosie. It was me.”
“And I needed to see that—stop blaming myself for your jealousy and insist we work together to save our marriage. That’s what I learned. Confidence and strength.”
“I’m quite certain you possessed plenty of both already. But yes, I understand your meaning, and I will allow you, temporarily, to pretend you suffer no lingering trauma from the experience.”
“Or you could just accept that I don’t suffer any.”
He turns and heads down the hall. “We ought to find William before he gives Edmund a fright.”
I sigh, shake my head and follow.
3
William is not in the house.
And neither is Edmund.
It takes at least ten minutes for the truth of that to sink in. It was such an obvious answer. William is in the modern world, and it’s less than a two-hour drive from York. If he realized Bronwyn needed something in the Victorian world, he’d have gone home to get it. Or if he realized he needed to tend to a matter of business, she’d have sent him back to do it. He comes through the stitch. Unlocks the office door. Doesn’t notice us because he’s distracted and not expecting guests.
When we don’t find him in the house, we check outside, presuming he went to the stables to visit his beloved horses, but the only tracks in the snow are from our boots and Mrs. Shaw’s.
That is the moment when we both realize we haven’t seen Edmund. We didn’t forget about our son. We’d briefly noted that the nursery room door was shut, and noises from within suggested he was still hard at work.
Once we accept that William hasn’t come home early, we race upstairs. I let August go first, his less cumbersome attire allowing him to take the steps two at a time. He soon disappears from sight. This is the lingering effect of his traumas—a terror of losing his loved ones. Yes, I lost my parents, but I have two younger sisters I adore. He lost his mother and his sister, the only people who cared about him. He also lost his fiancée through circumstances that now make me shudder in relief that he hadn’t married her. And he lost his wife—me—for four years. So he is up those stairs so fast I doubt he even draws breath.
A crash sounds from above, as if he’s burst into the nursery.
“Edmund?” he calls. “Edmund!”
Skirts hiked, I tear down the hall and swing into the nursery. There are no decorations save two porcelain angels, one now on the carpet. That’s the noise we heard. Not Edmund moving about but Pandora trapped in the nursery and none too pleased about it.
I race in and spin. “Edmund? Edmund!”
He’s not here. There’s a crib and a trundle bed and no place for our son to hide.
I run out, skidding around the corner and down the hall and into the office. I wildly search the room as if Edmund will pop from behind the chaise longue.
Then I see it.
A painted acorn on the floor.
I scoop it up, and in my mind, I see the two of us in the nursery at Courtenay Hall, painting pine cones and acorns and walnuts, making them into Christmas ornaments.
I stare at the acorn. Then I stare at the spot on the floor beside where it had lain. An empty spot with wear marks in the wood from a chest being moved back and forth, covering the stitch when it was not in use. Moved aside for the Thornes to pass through last week.
Before I even know what I’m doing, I lunge for the spot. I envision my son tumbling through time, hear him screaming in fear as he goes, and I lunge, as if I can still catch him. I fall, my foot twisting, and I land on my knees, pain slamming through them. I’m on all fours, gazing down at the wood floor with the wear marks.
As I see those familiar wear marks, tears spring to my eyes. I didn’t pass through.
I scramble to my feet to try again. Then I see the desk. It looks like the same desk as before, yet this one has a laptop on it.
My heart stops. It beats twice, like a panicked bird, and then it seems to stop, and I can’t breathe.
Oh God, no. No, no, no. I spent four years trying to escape this world, and now I’m back and . . .
And I wanted to be here. I jumped through the stitch on purpose. I am certain Edmund crossed, and so I came after him.
But what if he didn’t?
Or what if he did, and we can’t get back, and August can’t get through and—
Stop.
I rise, breathing deeply and fisting my hands to control my shaking. I’m being ridiculous. I passed through intentionally. I’ll find Edmund and return. Why am I in such a state?
You reacted exactly as one might expect, given the trauma you endured.
I shake off August’s words. Enough of that. I am fine. Perfectly fine.
“Edmund?” I call as I walk to the door. It’s wide open. Proof that he’s been here? I can only hope so.
I lift my skirts and jog into the hall. “Edmund? Edmund!”
A noise below. A soft noise, and I almost ignore it. Just one of the cats again. Then I remember that all three cats are accounted for on the other side of the stitch. I run down the stairs, skirts hiked up in both hands, neither on the railing, and I stumble, my soft boots slipping. My hands fly up, and I crack down on my tailbone and howl as pain rips through me.
“Mama!”
That voice. That word. It sends me levering up, ignoring the screaming in my back, even as a voice behind me says, “Rosalind!”
August’s footsteps thunder down after me, but I’m already flying to Edmund. I snatch him up and squeeze him, my heart still threatening to pound straight from my chest. Then August is there, his arms around us, murmuring, “It’s all right, Rosie. We’re all here. We’re all fine.”
“We need to get home,” I say, my voice so breathy it’s barely audible. I hoist Edmund into my arms and break from August’s embrace. “We need to go. Now.”
“But—” Edmund begins.
“No!” I say, and my voice is sharper than he’s ever heard. He flinches. I scatter kisses on his forehead as I begin to climb the stairs. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout.”
“Let me carry him,” August says.
I hesitate. It’s only a split second, but it is enough to shame me. Do I expect a trick here? For August to take Edmund and not let me flee through the stitch with him? In my heart, I know that would never happen, and yet for that split second, I am in the days before our reunion, when I feared exactly such a thing. That August might not believe my story and might keep our son from me for “abandoning” him.
That fear had been borne of nightmare, a worst-possible scenario that I did not truly believe possible of the man I knew. But there’d been moments there when I’d wondered whether August was the man I knew. Whether he had changed or whether I had only seen what I wanted to see.
I know better, but that doesn’t keep the fear and doubt from rising, if only for a moment. A flash of remembered pain, sharper than the throbbing in my back as I clutch Edmund to me. Then I turn, carefully, and hand him to his father.