When Mrs. Darling offered him a seat on the couch, he gave it a curious look first. It seemed to be bursting at the seams with cushioning. Was there any wood used to keep it from sinking into the floor? He sat down cautiously and then smiled and snuggled into the deep cushion and closed his eyes. A man could sleep well on this fat couch.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Aria said and tugged on his arm. “I have a million things I want to show you.”
“Oh, sightseeing?” Mrs. Darling smiled at them. “You’ll need energy. Let me make you some lunch.”
Aria agreed and Gray knew she wanted to spend more time with her mother, whom she feared she had lost.
He was surprised to find Mrs. Darling so accommodating, without a trace of sourness in her tone when she spoke. He wondered if his mother would have been so pleasant had she lived. In his most recent dream of her, she seemed thoughtful and kind, stroking his tired head in her lap. Would he have learned her modern English and called her mom? Would he have had a couch?
“I made tuna salad for sandwiches with the boys, but—well, now, where is that boy? Connall, you’re going to be late!” She turned to tell them, “He’s leaving today for the week on his hiking trip with Charlie and Jack Bantor. I told him I’d pack a launch.”
“Hiking trip?” Aria echoed in a shaky voice. “He can walk,” she said in a quiet whisper and wiped her tears in a heedless attempt to stop her tears.
When no answer came from her son, her mother shrugged her shoulders softly. “I guess he left already. He was here a minute ago.”
Gray’s heart skipped in his chest when he looked over his shoulder at where the rift had been.
“But don’t worry, you two,” Mrs. Darling declared on her way into the kitchen. “I made plenty.”
Aria looped her arm through his and locked him in entwining her hands when he began walking. “Gray, you gave my brother back his legs and my father his life.”
“I’m glad, my love. Do you think your brother left already for his trip?”
She nodded and smiled. “He was always…is always very active.”
Gray smiled with her and looked over her shoulder one last time at where they had entered and swallowed his panic that the shadow might have been…
“You’re going to love my mother’s tuna salad sandwiches.”
And Gray did. He’d had fish before but never crumbled bits of tuna fish and chopped onions with delicious white sauce Aria called mayonnaise—and all of it spread out onrye toast.
It was the first of many wonders of the twenty-first century Gray experienced that day. After they changed clothes—her into her own garments, and him, intojeansand a button-down shirt that belonged to her brother, Gray discovered that there weren’t any candles beneath the cloth covered candle stands—which was a good thing because the cloth would have surely caught fire. Almost everything worked off electricity. He’d heard of it before, but it was a relatively new marvel in his century, and there was nothing like personal electricity to power a home’s lighting, among hundreds of other things that needed electricity to run.
It was almost nothing compared to what he saw when he stepped outdoors with Aria to go meet her father at the batting cages.
There were people…everywhere. And modern, metal behemoths rolling to and fro, called, according to Aria, cars. Modern vendors ownedstores, where they sold everything from food to clothing, cigars, and footwear. Everything moved at a quickened pace.
When music began to play from somewhere around him, he stopped. “What’s that?”
Aria stopped with him and smiled. “It’s music coming from that electronics store. Pink Floyd. Great soundtrack.”
He closed his eyes and began to sway. Aria took his hand and pulled. “Not in the middle of the street. I’ll take you to the school later.”
Following her, he asked a dozen questions about the musicians from the electronics store, then stopped again in front of a hotdog cart. His eyes opened wide and then closed again to take a deep breath.
“Hot dogs,” she told him.
He made a look of disgust. “People eat dogs now?”
She explained, as best she could, what hot dogs were and brought him one from the odd green paper money she found in her pocket. He scarfed it down, then requested another. Twenty-first century food was truly a wonder!
While she paid the vendor, a male voice called out her name. When she heard it tears immediately filled her eyes. She turned to see her father coming toward them.
“My father is walking, Gray,” she said with such joy in her voice it almost brought tears to his eyes, as well. “It’s been almost two years since I saw him walk to me.” She turned to Gray and her gaze on him warmed. “I’ll never forget this. He was given a death sentence and now he’s alive and well.”
“It sounds a bit how life left me until I met you,” he told her softly. If her father hadn’t almost reached them, Gray would have kissed her.
“Sweetheart, what are you doing home early?” Her father stepped up to her and put his arm around her, then kissed her forehead.