One Month Later

E liza walked into the room and felt cold takeover her whole body. She knew the room wasn't any colder than the hallway she'd just come from; it was more her shock taking over at seeing him again. Lydia had wanted to come in with her, but Eliza had kissed her outside and told her that she needed to do this part alone.

She sat down across from the man they'd caught three days prior and glared at him. He had a five-o'clock shadow, wasn't wearing glasses, and his hair was short, but not as short as it had been at the wake. He looked right back at her with an unreadable expression on his face.

"You killed my father," she stated.

"I agreed to meet with you, but if it's confession you're after, you won't get one from me," he replied.

"I need to know why," she said.

"Why what?"

"Why you killed him."

Albert looked at the two-way mirror and said, "I didn't kill anyone."

"Call it hypothetically , then," she suggested. "And there's no one back there. Your attorney demanded it right after he told me that I had ten minutes."

"Hypothetically?" he checked with a lifted eyebrow.

"If someone were going to kill my father…" she began for him.

"Maybe he had something that didn't belong to him."

"Something?" she asked.

"Yes. Something that the government wanted back."

"You're saying that my father, hypothetically, stole something?"

Albert leaned over the table and asked, "Do you know what I'm talking about?"

Eliza swallowed and said, "My father wasn't a thief."

She hoped that would be enough to convince this guy that she had no idea what was going on so that maybe he'd open up a little more.

"You didn't know your father like I did, then," he said and leaned back in the metal chair. "Let's just say that there was something taken from my father a long time ago. It cost him his life, too. So, maybe your father deserved what was coming to him."

"Your father?"

"That's all you'll get out of me. Hypothetically speaking, when someone dies, and someone else has the power to bring them back from the dead, they should just do it and not let that person stay dead."

"Back to life? What are you talking about?" she asked, pretending like she had no idea what he was talking about.

"You know, I showed up at that university of yours once. I mean, hypothetically . Your mom was there dropping you off, and I listened in to a few of your conversations that day and some other days, too. It was so easy to plant a bug in your phone. You were both just so clueless." Albert shook his head. "He was telling the truth: you didn't know. And I was going to leave you alone. I wasn't going to come after you, too. But I should have just killed all three of you." He smirked. "Hypothetically speaking."

"Your attorney didn't actually tell them that no one could be back there. There's no reasonable expectation of privacy in a police station, let alone an interrogation room. So, before you start calling me clueless, you might want to understand that I'm a visitor, not your lawyer, so you have no privilege here, and two detectives just heard and recorded everything you just said to me." Eliza pointed to the camera in the right corner of the room. "And this video can be used against you at your trial."

"What the–"

"My girlfriend is a lawyer. And I've got you, asshole."

"It won't go to trial." Albert smiled back at her as if he knew something she didn't. "I won't make it that long."

"What are you talking about?"

"I disappeared for a reason. I owed them, and I couldn't find it. You'll never see me again. If you really don't know what I'm talking about, though, you'll be fine." Albert stood then, turned to the mirror, and added, "Let me out of here!"

When the door opened, a guard escorted him out. Eliza stood and left the room as well, seeing Lydia leaning against the opposite wall in the hallway.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Let's go outside," Eliza replied, taking Lydia's hand.

They headed out, but when Lydia went toward her car in the parking lot, Eliza pulled her over to a small creek that was in the wooded area just beyond the station.

"What are we doing?" Lydia asked her.

"Turn your phone off," Eliza requested and pulled her own phone out of her purse.

Lydia took hers out of her back pocket, and without question, she turned the thing off and put it back. Eliza did the same and walked closer to the creek.

"El?" Lydia followed her until they were at its bank.

"He said he had a bug in my phone. Not this one, but years ago, I think. He said he listened in on my mom and me. He was also there when she dropped me off at college. I think he spied on us for years to see if we knew anything."

"He did what ? Why?"

"I was right: he thought my dad had it. That night, my dad told him he didn't and that we didn't know anything."

"So, he listened in to be sure?"

"I think so."

"Jesus! Do you think it was just the phone calls?"

"I don't know. He could've bugged anything, I guess."

"Shit, El. We had sex in that house."

"I can't even think about that right now."

Lydia turned toward the station and asked, "Did you get him to confess?"

"I'm not a professional interrogator, Lydia. I did get him to say something like that, so they should be able to use it, like you said. He said it wouldn't matter, though."

"Why not?"

"He told me that because he couldn't find it, he had to disappear. He's stayed gone this whole time for a reason. I think someone else is out there looking for the device."

"El, it's time. We need to get rid of that thing," Lydia suggested.

"I know. I just don't know how."

"We bash it with a baseball bat or something."

"The note," Eliza reminded.

"The note mentioned something about energy, yeah. But what does that even mean?"

"I don't know, exactly, but energy has to be involved somehow."

"I failed physics. Is physics the energy science? "

"Energy has to be there to transport us literally back to the past. I don't need a physics class to tell me that. If we try to destroy it, the energy could potentially do something worse, though, or we could get stuck somewhere."

"Like, I could end up in my own personal hell watching you have sex with an ex-girlfriend," Lydia guessed.

"Or, I could end up having to watch my father getting murdered on a loop."

"Yeah, that would be way worse," Lydia replied and took Eliza's hand. "Okay. What do we do now?"

"I want to get one of those bug-checker things online and make sure that no one's listening to us at home or at my mom's place."

"Okay. We can do that. Then, what?"

"We bury it," she said.

"Where?"

"Where no one can find it."

"You mentioned the water before," Lydia reminded.

"Yeah, but I worry about that because unless it's in the Pacific Ocean, and we're out really far, there's still a chance someone could dive and find it."

"So far, all this thing has done is help you solve your father's murder and bring us back together. It's been good to us, when you think about it."

"Not if someone comes after us because we have it. My dad died because of whatever this thing is. I'm not going to let anything happen to you because of it, too."

"Okay. Okay," Lydia said and put her hands on Eliza's hips. "You're scared."

"Of course, I'm scared. I'm talking to you by a creek because it's noisy. I don't know if they bugged our phones or anything else and can hear us right now."

"El, we're not spies. We're not exactly equipped to know what to do about this."

"I think we need to get rid of it, Lydia." She pressed her forehead to her girlfriend's. "If something happened to you because of me, I'd never forgive myself. I really would turn into my mom."

"Hey, it's okay. I'm okay. We're okay." Lydia cupped her cheek. "Let's go on a cruise."

"What? A cruise? Where did that come from?"

"Hear me out. We take a road trip, so baggage doesn't need to go through the rigorous security, and we drive to a port where a cruise ship is leaving from. Pick a coast. Then, we put the thing into your purse and bring that damn metal box with us. Maybe we find something that's watertight for it; I don't know. We don't want it destroyed for some reason I don't understand, but we can throw it off the ship when we're in deep enough water."

"Oh," Eliza said.

"I'd suggest just renting a boat, but I don't know how to handle one, and neither do you. We don't want to have someone else drive it because they'll ask what the hell we're dropping over the side of their boat. A cruise makes us one in hundreds. No one will pay attention to us. We can also wait until it's the middle of the night to do it, just in case. We can be rid of the thing, watch this asshole get convicted of killing your dad, and then, maybe you can finally put this thing behind you."

"That all sounds really nice."

"Still scared?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"Then, I might as well do this now," Lydia said.

"Do what?"

Lydia stepped back and knelt in front of her. She pulled something out of her front pocket and held it up.

"El, I bought this about two weeks ago, and it's been burning a hole in every pocket since. I've wanted to ask you this question maybe since we were teenagers. I know it's fast because we only got back together a month ago and I moved in at the same time, but you have to know that you are the absolute love of my life. We can wait as long as you need, but I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?"

Eliza smiled down at her and shook her head.

"No?"

"What?" Eliza asked.

"You're saying no," Lydia pointed out.

"Oh, no, I'm not. Sorry." Eliza laughed a little. "It was a disbelief thing. I can't believe this is happening."

"So, you're not saying no?"

"No, I'm saying yes," she replied.

"You're confusing me."

"Stand up, my love," Eliza requested, laughing again. "Kiss me and put the ring on my finger already. "

"Yeah?" Lydia stood up. "Really?"

"Really," she replied and held out her hand.

Lydia placed the ring on Eliza's finger and lifted her hand to her lips, kissing the ring finger before she pulled Eliza into her and kissed her slowly. Eliza kissed her back and felt all the tension leave her body again. That was part of her new normal with Lydia now. Just being in this woman's arms, waking up next to her this past month, and realizing that she could finally let herself be happy meant that the tension could go away and leave her with the joy of being in love with the only person who was meant to hold her heart.

"We should take the cruise soon," she added as she pulled out of the kiss. "But that's not our honeymoon, Lydia. I want a real wedding with you and an actual honeymoon that doesn't have anything to do with whatever the hell is going on here. I want it to be only about us. I want everything from the moment we dump that thing into the water to be about you and me and our life together."

"You and me," Lydia repeated. "Deal. Well, until there are little ones running around the house." She wiggled her eyebrows.

"One thing at a time, my love," Eliza told her.

"Should we use it one more time before we toss it?" Lydia asked. "Like I said, it's only done good for us."

"Why would we risk changing anything we have right now? This is what I've wanted my whole life. My dad can rest in peace now. My mom can get closure, and maybe that helps her move on. I have you. I love you." She kissed Lydia on the nose. "I don't know what's going to happen to the man who did this, or who else might be out there looking for the device, but if we don't have it, we'll be safe. We'll never tell anyone about it, and we won't risk anyone else getting hurt. We'll have the life we want. I don't want to risk anything bad coming out of another press of that button."

"Okay," Lydia agreed. "Let's go home, baby."

"Lead the way, my love," she replied.