The seven kids had already arrived by the time Angela turned onto the Skidmores' street. She could see their silhouettes up ahead in the fading sunlight—three of them sprinting away, the remaining four diving for the bushes on the side of the road. Angela drove slowly until she reached the bushes, then shifted into Park and rolled her window down. "Maria?" she spoke softly. "Leonid?"
The first to emerge from the bushes was the girl Angela recognized as Daniella McCarthy, followed by an unfamiliar boy and girl who must have been Leonid and Maria, and finally, Gavin. Gavin made eye contact with Angela for a split second before shifting his gaze to the ground. "Hey, I'm sorry for, you know, tricking you and stealing your Elucidator. And for spying on you. And all the other rotten stuff I did. I was a total idiot. And selfish."
"It's all in the past now," Angela reassured him, slightly surprised at how much he seemed to have changed from the sneering, angry rebel she'd known him as before. Well, she reminded herself, going back in time and becoming Alexei Romanov, and then being betrayed by Gary and Hodge and narrowly escaping death in the cellar, and then spending however many weeks recovering in the future… all that stuff was bound to have a lasting impact on him.
Gavin nodded. "I'm not working with Gary and Hodge anymore. I'm going to help you guys catch them, if I can."
"Me too, if I get the chance," Daniella added. "By the way, we haven't met because I wasn't in the time cave with everyone else. I'm Daniella. This is my sister Maria, and this is our good friend Leonid."
"Leo," Leonid corrected. "I'd like to be known as Leo here."
"It's nice to meet you all," said Angela. "I'm Angela. I'm friends with JB and Jonah and Katherine."
"We know," said Maria. "Katherine showed us some video clips of you while we were in the time hollow. On—YouTube?"
"Not YouTube," Daniella negated, shaking her head. "YouTube was the funny cat videos and the movie trailers, remember? We watched Angela on—well, whatever time-traveler thing we watched parts of our own lives on. I don't know what it was called. We don't have access to it anymore now that we're in the twenty-first century."
Angela really wanted to know what "videos" they'd watched of her—thirteen years' worth of her doing the same thing every day? The last few weeks of her spying on all the kids?—but now wasn't the time to ask. "It's starting to get dark," she pointed out. "We should probably all start heading home. Daniella, Gavin, do either of you need a ride?"
They both shook their heads. "I'm good, but before you leave, do you have a pen and a piece of paper so I can give Maria my cell phone number?" Daniella asked.
Angela found the materials Daniella had asked for, and Daniella and Gavin both wrote their numbers down for Maria and Leo. "Angela can show you guys how to use modern phones," Gavin told them. "You'll get the hang of it pretty quickly."
The kids said their goodbyes to each other, and then Leo and Maria got into the backseat of Angela's car, and Gavin and Daniella started walking away.
Wait—should I have insisted that I drive them to their houses? Angela thought suddenly. Should I pull up next to them right now and tell them they have to get in the car, for their safety? Gary and Hodge were on the loose, and Angela didn't even have an Elucidator to monitor Gavin and Daniella remotely…
She remembered what Kylin had told her about all the safety measures that had been put into place—a personal time agent to watch each individual kid, and some sort of sensor to notify the time agency if Gary or Hodge entered the twenty-first century—and decided that Gavin and Daniella would most likely be fine. Besides, JB had told her to pick up Maria and Leonid and bring them straight home. He hadn't said anything about the others.
It was maddening, not having an Elucidator she could use to call JB and make sure.
"So," Leo spoke up as Angela shifted the car into Drive. "We are going to your house, is that correct?"
"Yes," Angela answered, starting to drive. "It's going to be your house too."
"Do you live all by yourself?" Maria asked.
"I did," Angela told her. "And just the other day I was thinking about how quiet and lonely it was starting to feel. I'm glad I'll have you guys now to keep me company."
"The tsa—Ale—Gavin said we get to go to school here," said Leo. "I have never been to school before, though I know how to read and write. Gavin said I will get to take an assortment of classes."
"You will," Angela assured him. "There are a lot of classes you can choose from, based on what you're interested in. And in a couple years, after you graduate, there will be even more options available for what you want to do with the rest of your life."
"They said we can become whatever we want," Maria said, a little dazedly. "Leonid doesn't have to be a cook forever if he doesn't want to. I can have a career if I so choose." She laughed like she couldn't believe it. "Of course, I would much prefer just to marry a kind, handsome man and raise a large family. Which they said is also a possibility here."
"Anything is possible for us here," whispered Leo, and Angela felt a surge of protectiveness for both of them as they sat there, hope and wonder mixing in their expressions as they stared out the windows at all the twenty-first century sights passing by.
I will take good care of them, Angela promised herself. I'm their mother figure now. I have hardly any experience taking care of other people, and zero experience being a mother. But I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that they have the opportunity to lead great lives here in the twenty-first century.
"I'm sorry it's so small," Angela apologized as she, Maria, and Leo stepped into her house. She had bought the house ten years ago, back when her life had consisted of research, research, and more research. It had only a kitchen, living room, bathroom, and two small bedrooms, one of which Angela had used as an office.
"Leo, you'll sleep in here," Angela told him, turning on the light in the room that had formerly been the office. The time agents apparently had already stopped by, because the desk had been moved to the side to make room for a bed and a small chest of drawers.
"It's nice," Leo commented, looking around at everything. "Much better than my old sleeping quarters. More—complete."
Angela then opened the door to her own room, to which an additional bed had been added for Maria. Angela, JB, and Kylin had decided together that Maria and Leonid would probably both find this sleeping arrangement the most acceptable, given the available options. "You'll be sharing my room. I hope that's all right," she told Maria.
Maria smiled. "I've shared a room with at least one of my sisters practically all my life. I don't mind." Her smile suddenly faded, replaced by a heavy sort of sadness, probably triggered by thoughts about her sisters.
Angela opened the closet, revealing an assortment of dresses, each a different modern style. "The time agency dropped off several twenty-first century outfits for each of you," she told Maria and Leo. "Dresses for you, because they figured that's what you'd be most comfortable in right now," she added, looking at Maria. "But you're welcome to try on any of my clothes. They probably won't fit, but they'll give you an idea of what else is available for you in this time period. And I can take you both shopping tomor—" she broke off, remembering what tomorrow was. "I can take you both shopping at some point coming up, so you can pick out more clothes if you don't like what we have here," she amended.
"At Wal-Mart?" Leo asked, and Angela had to laugh. Clearly JB had been right about the other kids filling these two in about twenty-first century America.
"Sure, maybe at Wal-Mart," she said. "That's a good place to start."
Angela gave Maria and Leo some time to settle in to their new rooms and adjust to their surroundings, then brought them to a buffet for dinner. Their eyes widened at all the choices. "It's been a long time since I've seen this much food," commented Maria.
"Do people in this time period go to places like this for all their meals?" Leo wanted to know.
"No, most of the time we cook our own food and eat at home. I just brought you here because I don't know what you like yet and we don't have a lot to choose from at home right now," Angela explained, making a mental note to go grocery shopping as soon as she got the chance.
"Once we get more food at our new home, I can cook the meals," Leo offered.
"You can if you want to, but you don't have to," Angela told him. "I can cook meals for us too. Maria may even want to cook something sometime."
When everyone had eaten their fill and Leo had declared the meal "a spectacular feast", they headed home once more and sat around awkwardly, not really sure how to pass the time. Then Maria asked if Angela had any playing cards, and, relieved to have found something to do, Angela rummaged around in a drawer of odds and ends and found some. They played several card games, and then Angela checked her watch and saw that it was 8:52. See? she told herself. That wasn't so bad, all that time without an Elucidator. And now Hadley will be here in eight minutes, and he'll give you one for tomorrow.
As long as he was able to show up.
As long as he was able to procure an Elucidator for her without alerting the rest of the time agency or getting in trouble.
What was going to happen tomorrow, anyway?
Angela found she could no longer concentrate on the card game. "I'm expecting someone at nine," she told Maria and Leo. "I'm going to call it quits for now, but you two can keep playing."
Leonid eyed the TV on the wall. "Is that the thing the other kids were calling a TV? Can we see what's on there?"
"Sure," Angela replied, handing him the remote. "Press this button to turn it on, and then you can use these buttons to get to the different channels."
As Leo and Maria experimented with the TV, Angela went to her bedroom and found her wallet. She took out the note from her first and only day at SkyTrails, wrinkled and worn now from all the times she'd read it over the years, wondering what it could possibly mean. Now she knew what it meant. All of it. And tomorrow was the day she'd been speculating about for nearly thirteen years.
She headed back out to the kitchen, where she sat down and checked her watch again. 8:57. He should be arriving in three minutes. Well, if her watch was set to official, time-agency standard time, which it probably wasn't. So he could actually be arriving at any moment now.
And suddenly, without any warning, there he was. Standing over by the refrigerator. Angela jumped, startled by his appearance even though she'd been expecting him.
"I'm sorry!" He held his hands up in a show of innocence. "I didn't mean to scare you."
"It's fine," Angela said, getting up and going over to him. "Thank you for coming."
"Are the kids settling in okay?"
Angela peeked over to where Maria and Leo sat on the couch, both enraptured by whatever was happening on the TV screen. "They seem fine."
"That's good." Hadley shuffled his feet, and Angela knew that regardless of how good it felt to have him here visiting her, he probably had other, more important things to be doing right now. She cut right to the chase.
"I told you I had something to show you," she said, unfolding the note and handing it over to him. "Here it is. Someone gave it to me that night at the airport, before the plane appeared with all the babies."
Hadley took the note and read it, his expression becoming more serious by the second. "Do you remember who gave it to you?" he asked.
Angela shook her head. "Not really. It was a young teenage boy… I think he had a baby with him… he was wearing weird clothes… but I don't remember his face at all." She looked up at Hadley. "Do you think it could have been one of the Missing? Maybe Jonah?"
"I don't know," said Hadley, still staring at the note. "It's definitely someone who knows you now… which of the Missing have you had face-to-face contact with, outside of the time cave?"
"Mostly just Jonah," Angela answered. "A little bit with Chip, and Gavin just recently… actually, wait, I wonder if it's Gavin. He had an Elucidator; he could have gone back to 1999 before letting Gary and Hodge out of time prison… but wait, that wouldn't make any sense."
"He didn't go anywhere other than the time cave, Jonah's street, and 1918 with that Elucidator," said Hadley. "Besides, judging by this note, it sounds like you and this boy and JB are going to end up in a situation tomorrow where you'll need an Elucidator, and then he's going to go to the scene of the time crash and give this note to you."
"Like what happened with JB and Jonah and Katherine when Second messed up the 1600s," Angela realized. "Or even the situation with Mileva."
"Right." Hadley's face was grim. "My bet's on Jonah. It's always Jonah."
Angela thought about the exact way the previous two situations had had to work out in order to avoid causing paradoxes. "So, when I see JB and Jonah tomorrow… I know I can't mention the note or the Elucidator, but what can I do? When I'm faced with making a choice… how will I know what's the right thing to do to without ruining time?"
She realized these were the exact same questions JB had been wondering about after finding out he was Tete Einstein.
Hadley looked just as flummoxed as Angela felt. "I don't know," he answered. "I guess you'll just have to go with your gut and trust that everything will work out the way it's supposed to."
They were quiet for a moment, the only sound around being artificial audience laughter in whatever show Maria and Leo had decided to watch. Then Hadley pulled out his Elucidator and consulted it. "I'll go to my native time period right now and get you an Elucidator. I just ran a quick projection on how likely it is that I'll be able to get back here without any time passing for you, and the chances are good. I just wanted to let you know in case… just in case."
Before Angela had a chance to respond, Hadley flickered out of sight. He was gone for barely an instant before he reappeared, holding what looked like an ID card attached to a lanyard. "This is your new Elucidator," he explained, handing it to her. "I figured a wearable form that you can keep hidden under your clothes would be less conspicuous than a cell phone lookalike that would change into something else when you got to 1932. Of course, this will still change form when you enter a new time period, but it'll change into a necklace or something similar."
Angela hung the lanyard around her neck.
"I'll be monitoring your travels," Hadley assured her. "I linked that Elucidator to the workstation in my office. None of the other time agents will be able to see what's happening, but I'll be receiving live updates. You can contact me if you need to, but I'm not going to intervene unless it's absolutely necessary." He frowned. "Of course, with all the uncertainty surrounding this mission, and all the uncertainty regarding time in general… I really don't know what will turn out to be possible."
Angela nodded, trying not to let Hadley see how nervous she was. None of us know what this mission is or how it's going to turn out, she thought. Or how disastrous to time it will be if I make one wrong move. Or how long I'll be away… She remembered how JB had gotten stuck in the 1600s for five years. What if something like that happens to me?
She took a deep breath and gazed at Hadley, trying to memorize his face. Who knew how long it would be before she saw him again? "I'll bring the Elucidator to your office when I get back," she promised. "Or—you can come here and get it. However it works out." She smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring manner. "I'll be fine."
"Yes, you will," Hadley agreed with conviction. "You're smart, you're brave, you're resourceful, and you care. Whatever you end up having to do, you'll do it well. I'm sure of it."
They stood there looking at each other for a long moment. Then Angela cleared her throat. "Well," she said. "I should probably let you get back to the time agency. I'll… see you later."
"Of course. Good luck on your mission—not that you'll need it." Hadley started extending his hand for a handshake, then changed his mind and went in for a hug instead. Angela gladly hugged him back, savoring the feeling of his arms around her. Holding onto his warm, sturdy frame, Angela felt truly safe for the first time since that fateful day at SkyTrails.
Eventually, they eased apart, but Angela wasn't quite ready to let go yet. She kept her arms around Hadley's shoulders and looked into his eyes.
Hadley tenderly brought his hand up to caress Angela's cheek. Then, ever so slowly, he leaned in and kissed her on the lips.
Angela closed her eyes and kissed him back, letting go of her worries about the kinds of decisions she'd have to make tomorrow and how she was going to rescue Jonah and JB and whether she would be able to avoid creating a paradox that would end all of time. Those were all things she would have to think about in the near future, but not right now.
For right now, she could just live in the moment.