Chapter Thirty-One

The funeral is perfect, of course, because Mom's in charge, and part of that means that every detail is covered, but it also means that she asked what Nan wanted and made sure she got it. The result is a Scottish funeral that's really more of an Irish wake, with lots of laughter and lots of whisky, and a parade of people telling me what a wonderful woman my grandmother was.

The next day, I'm in the rented apartment, trying to catch up on work emails, but my brain keeps turning to the mummy case. I remind myself that is not my responsibility. It's long solved, and I promised Nan I wouldn't look up anything from that time.

I'm trying not to worry about that. Did she find something in her research that she didn't want me to see? If she did, then is it something I can change? Should I look?

No, my gut tells me that I should not research anything or anyone from that time, if only to avoid knowing something I shouldn't, good or bad. Also, I remember Nan's final words to me.

I've seen what you will do there, the life you will lead, and I could not be happier for you.

That's good, right? Of course, it does make me wonder what she saw—

"Mallory?" Mom calls from the living room. "Tea?"

I walk into the room to find a full spread waiting. I take my seat at the tiny dinette with my parents, and we dig into a plate of scones with clotted cream and jam. The quintessential British "afternoon tea," even if it wasn't what Mrs. Wallace served on Robert Street.

I think of saying that, but we haven't discussed my "trip" since that day on the monument, and I've decided that's intentional. My parents let me know they accepted my truth, and we've moved on, and they aren't comfortable discussing it again.

"I've been thinking of your nan," Mom says. "Well, obviously, but about something in particular. When I told her I was staying in Canada. I wrestled with that for so long. I…"

She glances at my father, and then back at me. "I almost broke it off with your dad because I couldn't bear to tell my mother that her only child had moved across the ocean forever."

She reaches for my dad's hand. "That would have been the biggest mistake of my life, but it shows how upset I was. Your nan was disappointed, obviously. She'd hoped we'd move to Scotland together. But your dad's roots were in Canada, and my new roots were there, and the opportunities were there, and it was where I wanted to be. That was what mattered to her—that was where I wanted to be. There were phones and there were planes, and we'd be fine."

Mom shifts in her seat. "But that got me thinking about what it was like for families in the past. Like when your dad's great-grandparents emigrated to Canada. It was permanent. There were no phones and no airplanes and no money for monthlong steamship voyages. People went to Canada, and they never saw their families again. All communication was by letters. I couldn't imagine what that would have been like for parents. But now, having a daughter of my own, I think I understand. We want for you what my mother wanted for me—for our child to be happy and free to find her own joy. We don't raise our children to look after us in our old age anymore. We raise them to fly on their own, to soar if they can."

Her eyes meet mine, and they glisten with tears that she quickly blinks back.

"What would be keeping you here, Mallory? What would keep you from going back to 1869?"

"I can't get back—"

She lifts a hand. "Pretend you could. Consider this a thought exercise. Would you stay here for your job?"

I shake my head.

"For your friends? I know you have plenty, but I also know you've drifted from the truly close ones you had as a girl. Would you stay for them?"

I shake my head.

"So, imagine you could walk through that door." She points at the front entrance. "And be back in 1869. Would you do it?"

"No."

"Because of us."

I pull away. "No, it's just… a lot of things. It isn't my world and—"

"What if you could walk out that door, but every now and then, you could come back, and we'd be here. Would you leave then?" Her gaze cuts into mine. "Give me honesty, Mallory. Would you leave then?"

My throat closes, but I nod.

"So we are what would hold you back," she says, with the decisiveness of delivering the final argument in a court case. When I go to protest, she continues, "Your Dr. Gray wouldn't hold you back, would he? If he were sitting here, and that door was the way to the twenty-first century, he'd tell you to go because it's what you wanted."

I don't answer.

"You can say he just didn't want to lose a new assistant, but that's not it. That's not it at all, and yet, if the way opened, he would have told you to go. Knowing he'd never see you again, he would want you to go because he wouldn't hold you back. Your happiness is more important than any happiness you might bring him."

Her gaze locks with mine again. "It's the same for us, Mallory. We raised you to soar, and we want to see you soar… even if it means you leave us behind."

I love my parents for saying that. Lots of tears follow. It's a moot point—there is no door for me to walk through—but I love that they would let me go, even knowing I might never come back.

When the tears—and the tea—are done, I say, "I should call my sergeant. I need to discuss my return to work."

"Not yet," Dad says, gathering the teacups. "First, we need to try getting you back to 1869."

I look over, certain he's joking, even if a squeeze in my gut whispers it would be a cruel joke, and my dad is never cruel.

Mom makes a face and then sighs. "Don't get her hopes up, Glen." She looks at me. "Your grandmother had dreams before she died, about you and how you passed back through. She left a video for you to watch."

"With a method for returning that came to her in a dream?"

"I know." Mom rolls her eyes. "Mostly, I just want you to know that if it ever happens, for any reason, and you end up in the nineteenth century…" She trails off and takes a deep breath. "I want to have had this conversation. If you disappear or fall into a coma again, we understand where you are and you have our blessing to stay there. Also…" She stands. "I want to have a way for you to communicate."

"Uh…"

"You will take out personal notices in the papers."

Dad says, "Because, as I know from Victorian novels, personal notices were a common way of communicating."

"I will also require your name in that world," Mom says, "and any personal information you can supply."

"Well, someone's been chronicling our cases," I say. "You can just read those… if you don't mind seeing your daughter portrayed as a pretty and empty-headed magician's assistant."

Mom's brows shoot up.

I sigh. "We were working on putting an end to them. I'm sure there wouldn't be any trace of them these days. They were just serialized stories. The Mysterious Adventures of—"

"The Gray Doctor?" Dad says.

Now my brows shoot up.

"Your nan found a reference to it," Dad says, "in relation to Dr. Gray. She wasn't able to find any actual copies online. I can search my sources. There might be something in an academic collection somewhere."

I shudder. "I hope not. All I do is exclaim over how brilliant Duncan is and bend over to check nonexistent evidence, as an excuse for the writer to wax poetic on my ass."

"Your…?" Mom says.

"Catriona is blond, buxom, and very pretty." I sigh again. "It is a trial. Useful, though, in its way." My head jerks up. "I wonder what happened to her. I thought she might have crossed into my body, but it doesn't seem she did."

Mom shrugs. "If she did, then she was not there when you woke."

"There was another coma patient," Dad muses. "It was the oddest thing. She woke up and…" He waves a hand. "And that has nothing to do with getting you back to the past." He smiles. "I will need to find those adventure serials, though. If only to get a laugh."

"You will," I say. "You get to see your daughter bumble about while her boss changes history."

"At least in part because he met my daughter."

I frown. "Is that a problem? Is it all a problem? All the changes I might have wrought? That damned butterfly effect?"

"Well, according to the latest quantum physics theories, changing one thing in the past would not have endless ramifications in our time. So you're safe there."

"But how does it work?" I say. "Six months passed there and two days here, which suggests separate universes. Is it the same timeline? Parallel ones that overlap?" I rub my temples. "It makes my head hurt."

"And, not being a quantum physicist or a philosopher," Dad says, "I'm not even going to try to answer that question."

"Don't look at me," Mom says. "All I can see are enough loopholes and inconsistencies to make my lawyer's brain scream."

"How it works isn't important," Dad says. "It does work. At least for you. Now, you should watch your nan's video."

"Don't get your hopes up," Mom warns. "She was on a lot of drugs."

Dad looks at me. "What your mom isn't saying is that your nan has had prophetic dreams before."

Mom snorts. "If by ‘prophetic' you mean things like dreaming I made a surprise visit and then I actually did… a month later."

"Your nan believed she had a touch of something," Dad says, "and she thinks that might explain why you crossed over."

"So many drugs," Mom mutters. "Also, remember she was a young adult in the sixties, which meant more drugs and all that mystical counterculture nonsense—"

Dad cuts in, "Your nan also believed that, being on the cusp of passing into her next life, her dreams—which were particularly vivid—meant something. That she was seeing across the veil."

Mom continues to mutter, only half under her breath. She's never had any patience with Nan's more colorful beliefs, and when I was young she'd have Dad take me aside to explain the role of superstition and folklore in people's lives. This time, though, she only says, "I don't want to get your hopes up."

"If I stay here, I'll be fine, Mom. I expect to stay, and that's okay." I manage to say it like I believe it. "But I agree with figuring out the personal ads, in case it ever does happen."

It takes a while before I can watch the video through. Hell, it takes a while before I can even process what I'm hearing. I see Nan and hear her voice, and the grief washes over me, and not a single word sinks in. But eventually I'm able to watch, and when I can, I focus on her theory for getting me back.

Is it wrong to say I'm disappointed?

I'm struggling with the idea of going back. Struggling with wanting to. For six months, I've been saying my life is here.

It's rational to make plans in case I accidentally go back. But to pursue it as a goal?

I think, in some way, I like not having an actual choice, so I don't have to make it. On a deeper level, though? When I think of never going back? Of never seeing that world and those people again? I start to panic.

So when Nan says she thinks she knows a way, part of me spirals in panic… and a deeper part leaps in hope. Then I hear her plan.

I want her to give me magic. Do this special thing to go back. I'd even settle for the obvious answer of having someone throttle me until I pass out. Instead, what she says is too close to all the failed things I tried to bring me back to this world.

The entirety of her plan? Go to Gray's town house.

Return to 12 Robert Street, go inside, and the veil, as she calls it, will thin, and I will be able to step through.

I appreciate that she did this final thing for me. I'm also really glad she told Mom not to give me the video until she was gone, so I never had to tell her it didn't work.

When I stop the video, Mom comes in.

"I was kind of hoping for something a little more creative," I say. "Given all the drugs."

Mom chokes on her laugh and hugs me. "I know."

"Even if I did think that would work," I say, "how would I do it? Knock on a stranger's door and ask to come inside?"

Mom's quiet. When I look up, she says, "The town house is a vacation rental. A very posh vacation rental. The family renting it leaves tomorrow morning, and there's an opening."

My heart leaps with that hope before I cast it aside with a hard shake of my head. "It won't work, Mom."

"Probably not, but I've reserved it. At the very least, you can show us where you lived for six months and we'll all have a lovely night in a posh house." She pats my shoulder. "Now, your father has compiled a list of the newspapers and how best to compose Victorian personal ads."

I want to say it won't work. I want to sink into a chair and wallow in my grief over Nan and my disappointment over her "solution" and my guilt over being disappointed.

Instead, I just say, "Thank you," and kiss Mom's cheek. She hugs me again and then says, "After the personal-ad lesson, I want you to tell me about this latest case, with the mummy. See whether we can solve it together."

That night, we do indeed discuss the mummy case. Mom and I hash it out until we see Dad on his cell phone.

"Boring you already?" I say. "I thought you liked detective stories."

"I'm not sure he actually does," Mom says, "since he always skips ahead to the end."

"What?" I squawk. "Seriously, Dad?"

He looks offended. "I go back and finish the book. I only skip forward to check my answer."

"That's still cheating." My gaze goes to the cell phone in his hand. "Wait. Were you trying to skip ahead? See whether the crime was solved?"

"Possibly."

"Did you find it online?"

"It's a unique case. Got a fair bit of press at the time."

"So whodunit?" I say.

"Now who's skipping ahead?" he says, tucking his phone into his pocket.

I take out my own phone, but Dad snatches it.

"No spoilers," he says. "Your nan didn't want you looking up anything about your life there. As for who was convicted, it's only a spoiler if this person actually committed the crime."

"So who was it?"

He hesitates, and then says, "Selim Awad was convicted of killing his brother-in-law and Dr. Gray's young assistant, whom he strangled in a tunnel. A week later, she died of her injuries."

The breath goes out of my lungs. "Me. He was convicted of murdering me, which made him seem to be Sir Alastair's killer, too."

Dad nods. "The housekeeper testified that you two went to the tunnel after hearing that Selim had been stealing artifacts from his brother-in-law."

Mrs. Wallace testified. That means she survived.

My father continues, "She was knocked out and you were strangled. While she didn't see your attacker, Lord Muir spotted Mr. Awad fleeing the scene."

"Lord Muir being the actual person who strangled me."

"He framed Selim Awad," Mom murmurs. "Starting with what you overheard at the market."

I glance over and then wince. "Of course. It was strange that the market seller knew so much about who was supplying the artifacts. He'd been fed a story that, if uncovered, would lead back to Selim. So what happened to Selim—?" I stop.

I know what would have awaited Selim Awad. What awaited all convicted killers in that time period.

The hangman's noose.