5
An hour ago, I was barely able to draw breath past the all-consuming anxiety. Now I am darting about like a child, showing my son and husband all the wonders of a twenty-first-century home.
We were able to pass through twice, and so I have accepted that the way is open to us henceforth, and upon realizing that, a giddy excitement possessed me. It is as if the modern world was a wondrous land I thought I could never share with my family, and so I told myself it was not so wondrous after all. In fact, I was quite certain crocodiles lurked in every corner, waiting to snatch us up. Now that we are here, I can acknowledge the wonders and how much, deep down, I longed to bring August and Edmund here.
I begin, naturally, with Christmas. The Thornes have decorated on this side, and I explain the differences between their celebration and ours. The tree is already up, while we don’t erect ours until Christmas Eve. Rather than being in brown wrapping, the presents are brightly colored with festive motifs. The decorations are also more elaborate here. I know Bronwyn loves the holidays, and she and William have indulged that love here.
I am so engrossed in my animated discussion of the Victorian celebration versus the twenty-first-century one that I overlook the very obvious question, which Edmund finally asks, somewhat tentatively.
“How do you know so much about this world if it has not happened yet?” he asks. “Did you read it in a book?”
I freeze.
August catches my eye, and his expression asks whether we want to explain now or wait. We have tiptoed around the reason for my absence with Edmund. Yet we didn’t want to lie and use the “amnesia” excuse we’ve employed with others. We’ve said only that I suffered an accident and could not get home, however desperately I tried.
I take a deep breath, and then I nod, and August lays a hand on Edmund’s shoulder before saying, “Your mother has a story to tell.”
Edmund requires remarkably little detail to understand what happened to me. He is a child—one who also sees ghosts. There is magic in his world, and so he has readily accepted that we stepped through time. When I say that I fell through and could not get back for years, it is as if I’m saying I was trapped in another country. It makes perfect sense, and as August points out, it also explains my earlier panic.
Edmund has questions, mostly about whether I am still afraid, whether I want to go back to our time now. He is his father’s son, in all the best ways. I assure him that I am confident that the door is fully open for us, and so we will stay a little longer.
After that, we find warm outerwear in the wardrobe, bundle up and head outside to see that object of greatest wonder: The Car.
“Is there no snow in the future?” Edmund asks, looking about in obvious disappointment.
“I believe I see a little over there.” I point beside the garage, where William has shoveled snow to clear the driveway. “The rest seems to have melted. They may have a green Christmas.”
Edmund nods. “It is still very pretty with such decorations. It only needs snow.”
“Well, then, you must do the snow dance.”
His nose scrunches.
“What?” I say. “You do not know the snow dance? Then how shall we summon snow for baby Grace’s arrival?”
August clears his throat.
I spin, clapping my hands together. “Your father says he knows the snow dance. Excellent. See that you do not forget the pirouettes, my love.”
My husband fixes me with a look.
I bend to Edmund. “I believe he thinks I am stalling, keeping him from seeing The Car. How terribly unfair. I was only thinking of snow for the baby’s first Christmas.” I turn to August. “Fine. You may delay the dance until you have seen the motor vehicle.”
I walk to the garage side door and unlock it from the set of keys we found in a drawer. “You know, it may not be in here. They did go to York in quite a hurry. They could have taken the fancy car and left the rather dull little one.”
“Having never seen a car before, I would not know fancy from dull.”
“Oh, I think you might.” I flick on the light. “And you are in luck. They took the safe and practical vehicle, naturally, and left this one.”
The car is an “antique,” which is laughable to someone from our world. It’s an Austin-Healey convertible, cherry red with gleaming chrome. I may lean more toward practical conveyances myself, but even I cannot look upon this car without sighing, ever so softly, and imagining Bronwyn and me ripping about the countryside in it.
Which we might actually be able to do, now that I have conquered my fear of crossing over.
Have I conquered it?
I shove the doubt aside to revel in the look on my husband’s face, staring at the convertible the way I stared at my first cherry-red, gleaming-chrome stand mixer.
“That—that is . . .” August steps toward the car and reaches out a hand, pulling back before he touches the metal.
“Go on,” I say. “Caress her to your heart’s content, and I shall endeavor not to be jealous.” I pick up a polishing cloth from a workbench. “But you’ll be the one cleaning off the fingerprints.”
He tosses the rag over his shoulder and strokes the car bonnet.
“I suppose you would like to see the engine,” I say.
The look he gives me . . . There is a moment where I might actually feel a pang of jealousy, right before I must admit that I’ve enjoyed that same look every day of our marriage. This dalliance will be allowed. It is Christmas, after all. The season to be generous.
I open the car and pop the bonnet. Then I sit back while my husband explores the wonders of the combustion engine. An interest in mechanics is most unbecoming for a man of his social stature—much like an interest in baking had been unbecoming for mine—and he did not have my tolerant parents. It is only now, as he approaches his fourth decade, that he has finally allowed himself to admit his interest in the mechanical, beginning with that mixer project for me. I am delighted to see it and to see him pointing out components to our son, August’s face shining the way I’m sure mine must when I give Edmund a baking lesson.
“Tell me when you would like me to start it up,” I say.
August blinks over at me, so adorably that I have to laugh. It is as if, in his excitement, he forgot that the car is not an exhibit in a museum.
He lifts Edmund in one arm, our son sighing in a way that tells me he will not allow such childish handling much longer, which also tells me that we must pick him up and cuddle him and carry him as much as we can before it is too late.
August backs up until he is practically plastered to the garage wall and then he waves for me to start the engine. I walk to the other wall and press a button. When the garage door begins to rise, they both jump, Edmund giving a squeak of alarm, suddenly not nearly as annoyed to be in his father’s arms.
“Sorry!” I say. “I did not think to warn you. I have to open the garage door before we turn on the car, on account of the fumes.”
“Carbon dioxide,” August says. “It would be formed by combustion—the carbon from the fuel combining with the oxygen in the air.”
“Car-bon d’oxide,” Edmund says. “Isn’t that what makes bread rise, Mama?”