Timepiece

Lily darted a glance at me. “Yes. A friend. Kaleb, this is my grandmother. Everyone calls her Abi.”

“I’m pleased to meet you.” I held out my hand.

She eyed my hand before she shook it, as if she were checking me for fleas. “I’ll put on some coffee. And then we’ll talk. Sit.”

I sat down at the kitchen table and waited.

An hour later, I didn’t know what they were saying, because they were doing it in Spanish, but their combined emotions rolling in my gut made me glad I hadn’t gotten around to lunch.

“Es demasiado peligroso.” Abi stood and slammed her hands down on the table. “¡Dije que no … y eso es final!”

“Obviously, it’s a no,” Lily said to me, tears of frustration welling up in her eyes.

“She’s scared,” I replied without thinking.

That earned a heated response in Spanish from Abi that I’m pretty sure disparaged my manhood and my intelligence.

I let Abi finish before I spoke directly to her. “What I mean is, if your fear is rooted as deeply as it seems to be, I don’t want Lily to be involved, either.”

She dropped back into her chair, crossed her arms, and said some more words in Spanish. Then she said, “I didn’t peg you for honorable. Unless you’re playing some kind of game.”

“I’m not playing a game.”

“Why doesn’t any of this surprise you?” Lily asked. “I just told you about time travel, and people with special abilities, and rewinding time. You should be shocked, or at the very least doubtful.”

Abi picked up her coffee mug and sat back in her chair. “There are many things in this world I don’t understand. It doesn’t mean they aren’t true.”

Fear. Guilt. The guilt confused me. I leaned forward in my chair, concentrating on trying to read Abi.

“What?” Lily asked, looking back and forth between the two of us.

Sharing Abi’s emotions with her granddaughter wasn’t my place.

“I just told her you can sense emotion. So she knows she can’t hide anything.” Lily had covered a lot of information in an hour. She turned from me to Abi. “If you knew something about all this, you’d tell me. Wouldn’t you?”

More guilt.

“There’s no reason to discuss it.” Abi’s voice was full of grim determination. “It’s the past, and we left it behind when we left Cuba.”

“We never discuss Cuba at all. There are things I want to remember. Our home. Our family.”

“I do remember. And you are better off not knowing.”

“I don’t accept that.” I saw Abi’s fierceness in Lily’s eyes and anticipated she’d make grown men piss their pants one day, too. “If you know something, you have to tell me. ¿Por favor? Please.”

Abi put her coffee cup down and walked to the wide, arched double windows that overlooked the town square of Ivy Springs. “People lose things, they look for them. Ask for help. ‘Help me find my house key. Where is the grocery list?’ It was always funny that your grandfather seemed to know where things were. He just … knew. Then your father was born, and he could find things, too. Your father was five when I discovered el truco de magia—that’s what we called it—wasn’t a magic trick.”

“¿Como?” Lily asked, her face softening with understanding..

“I asked questions. Women didn’t ask questions back then. I was silenced, and I never got any answers while your grandfather was alive. I didn’t get them until about ten years ago. They came directly from your father, when he started doing survey work.”

“I didn’t know he did survey work,” Lily said. I couldn’t imagine not even knowing what my father did for a living.

“Cuba was a trade hub for over four centuries. Ships sank. Many riches were lost. Imagine what someone with a supernatural ability could find with the aid of satellite imagery. Your father saw things he should not have seen, but it was part of who he was. Who he is.”

“What kind of things?” Lily frowned.

“The gift seemed to increase in strength with every generation.” Abi returned to the table. She traced the rim of her cup. “One of the first things the realtor gave us when we moved in here was a town map with tiny little cartoon drawings of all the planned renovations. He tried to hand it to you, I guess because it was colorful and he thought you’d like it. I jerked it away, telling him I wanted to make it a keepsake, that you were too little and you’d tear it up. I always taught you to touch the maps in your schoolbooks with the eraser end of your pencil. Remember?”

“Yes,” Lily answered, remembering. “And when I had to make a topographical map of Tennessee, you wouldn’t let me.”

“The only time I’ve ever done your homework.” Abi stared into her coffee cup as if it held all the answers. “Your grandfather couldn’t find things on maps, but your father could. I didn’t know what you’d be able to find.”

“I can find things on maps,” Lily confessed. “And … people, too, I think.”

“I suspected as much,” Abi said, resigning herself to the truth. “Please understand, my love, I thought by keeping your ability dormant, I was keeping you safe.”

“Safe from who?”

Dread settled in the bottom of my stomach.

“From the people your father worked for. They knew about your grandfather, too. It would only make sense that they’d look to you one day. We considered lying, saying that the gift had skipped a generation, but it was so strong in you. You couldn’t control it, not at that age. So we left Cuba, and I swore I’d do everything I could to make you forget.”

Lily leaned forward. “Papi looked for things on survey maps. On the ocean floor?”

“Knowing the history of a piece of treasure, its origin, and the path it’s traveled can increase the worth by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Priceless to museums, collectors, historians, or anyone with money and interest.”

“Lily’s father can trace provenance?” I asked. “Can Lily?”

“I don’t know.” She was lying.

If Lily could trace ownership of artifacts, it would make the artifacts more valuable. It would make Lily more valuable.

“Did Lily’s father”—I hesitated, meeting Abi’s eyes—“did he have to know what the things he was searching for looked like?”

“How could he? They’d been on the bottom of the ocean floor for decades….” She trailed off. “You didn’t know that.”

Lily’s shock coursed through my body as if it were my own. “I thought I had to have seen a thing before I could find it.”

“No, my love. No,” Abi explained wearily. Defeated. “Not if you’re searching on a map. Touching it.”

“Abi, I have to help Kaleb find someone. So many bad things could happen if we don’t.”

“So many bad things could happen if you do. They think we died on a raft in the ocean. But what if they found out the truth? We’ve been safe for a long time in America, Lilliana, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been found out.” Abi held her fist up to her mouth and paused for a few seconds. “Any suggestion that you are alive and have a hint of your father’s ability, and the people he works for will be here on our doorstep.”