Chapter Twenty-Three

Normally while driving down I-95, my biggest concern is hitting a moose and either A. Killing myself or B. Killing my car. This time was different; my only thoughts were of Lisa. I tried to think of more important things, but she seeped her way into my brain each time. I tried to focus on the radio and a love song came on. I pulled out my phone and began scrolling through photos when I came across the one I had of Lisa. I sighed loudly and threw my phone into my open bag.

Tarryn was driving, and Becca had the radio on so loud that the love song was now pounding my skull. I needed to get out of this car, but we had an hour to go still.

"Are you okay back there?" Tarryn asked me from the rear-view mirror.

I nodded, but it was a lie and she knew it. She shut off the radio, thankfully, and pressed me for answers.

"What's really going on?"

How did I explain that I was in love with someone from the past, who I visited in a book, that I had no future with? I couldn't tell her all my feelings because even I didn't know what was going on inside my head.

"I am just confused about Lisa and, well, my task really. Remember when you asked me if I was falling in love with her?"

She nodded.

"Well, I am. And I've never been in love before. I just don't know what to do about my situation. I want nothing more than to be with her, but on the other hand, I don't know her that well. I've never met her family and I've never spent more than one night with her. How do I give up my life, for that?"

Tarryn squealed and Becca yelped. "You're going to live with her?" Becca asked in shock.

I rolled my eyes because that's not what I said.

"She asked me to, but I don't think I can. Then again, I didn't think I could run a library either. You guys don't get it," I sighed. "I've never been in love or had a serious relationship. The way Lisa makes me feel is special to me. I can't decide what to do about it or her."

Becca nodded and her face calmed a bit more.

"You need to do what your heart tells you, Jennie," Becca began. "I tried to give this one love advice and it didn't go so well." She pointed her thumb toward Tarryn, who snorted.

"Take it from me, Jennie, once you find love, don't let go. But if it means giving up your life to be with her, it isn't worth it," Tarryn said as she stared out the window. "I gave up a lot for my ex. Even my own self-worth. He ended up treating me like dirt and left me feeling worthless and unloved."

For the rest of the drive I thought about what Tarryn had said. I would have to give up my life to be with Lisa. I would have to leave my whole world to join her, and I wasn't sure I was ready to do that. I would be joining a time where women had basically no rights to anything and no voices either. I couldn't handle not being able to be myself in a time where a girl like me was an oddity.

I loved her, but did love mean giving up everything?

The small library just outside of Providence, Rhode Island, sat back from the street and was surrounded by large trees. We had arrived early enough to meet with Ariane, but I was tired as if it were night. I sipped my coffee as we walked into the library, and I suddenly felt nervous.

Tessa Kim Hancock had left her life behind, including her own daughter, and I was about to learn why. Somehow I felt like this day would either make or break my future with Lisa.

A petite woman sat at the desk, and I knew right away it wasn't Tessa's daughter. I remembered Tessa from the photograph, and this woman was not related. She greeted us politely and Tarryn told her who we were here to see. While we waited I meandered over to a large glass case where pictures were pinned. I noticed Tessa's face right away. She was standing with a baby in her arms and her curly light blonde hair was pinned to her head fashionably.

"I love that photo of her, but I can't say that I remember her like that at all." I turned around and knew that this woman was Ariane.

"How do you remember her then?" I asked.

She sighed. "Gone. I remember that she left me a lot, and then one day, she didn't come back."

Ariane was older than I thought she would be with curling white hair and soft wrinkles that spread along her face.

"I'd love to tell you about my mother, Miss Kim. We are family after all." That was true, but I didn't feel right calling this woman, I hardly knew, family. "Follow me into the meeting room and we can talk about everything."

We followed Ariane down a small staircase and into a bright room that held several bookcases full of books. She tapped a button on the wall and the bookcase that was there opened to another set of stairs. This library had a secret room just like mine did. We followed her in silence as we descended into a dark room. My heart pounded in anticipation of what was to come next when a light came on. The room was a lot like Gram's, with the photographs of Librarians and books that no doubt they'd traveled in.

"Have a seat, ladies. Would anyone like tea or coffee?" Ariane asked.

"I think we just want to get some answers about how Tessa disappeared." I spoke for all of us.

We sat at a large stone table, and Ariane sat down slowly with a grunt.

"It's not as easy getting down here these days. It used to be easier when I was younger. I used to follow my mother down here when I was a toddler, and she would let me play in here when I got a little older," she said, her eyes downcast. "Then one day she told me about who we were: The Kim women. She told me the importance of our tasks and that I would be able to travel and preserve just like her. But I never was taught how because she left me too soon."

I wondered if Ariane ever got over this fact or if she thought about her mom every day. I used to think about mine all the time and then one day I just stopped. I didn't cry anymore and I didn't wish for her to come back either. I wasn't going to change the fact that she died, no matter how much I cried or wished. But disappearing was harder, I supposed. You never knew where they were, not exactly.

"What about Beverly? Didn't she try to teach you?" Becca asked.

Ariane shook her head. "Sadly, no. Beverly didn't take my mother's disappearance well. She died about a year after she left us."

The whole room went still. I suppose that a protector really was linked to the traveler, and now I understood how scared Tarryn was when I didn't come back. It made me feel awful.

Ariane looked at me then and her eyes got very serious.

"Jennie," she began, "you are a visitor in her life and you've been given a huge responsibility to preserve her book, not to have a relationship with her."

I shook my head confused on several levels. How did she even know about Lisa at all?

"How do you know that I'm having a relationship with her?" I asked.

"I can see it in your eyes—the look of love. And your friends told me over the phone, but do not be mad at them. You have to see that a relationship of this magnitude could ultimately damage not only your life but her."

I couldn't see how I would be damaging Lisa's life in any way.

Sure her mom left her, but I didn't have a child to leave behind. I wouldn't be hurting myself in any way other than leaving what I knew and loved behind. But when I thought about what I had here in this time, I knew that if I left it all would be okay. If anything, I would be the one who would have to adjust to the harsh time of Lisa's life. Besides, I never set anything into motion about leaving this world for Lisa's. All I knew at that moment was I loved her and we couldn't be together like I wanted.

"My mother was married to my father for many years, but over time I suppose the romance faded. My mother had a job to preserve books that had come in from a colleague of hers overseas. She took to the task right away, and I was with my father most of the time. He didn't know what Mother was doing; he thought she was only preserving old books, not the actual history inside them. She was one of the first to form The Librarians along with her cousin, Grace Kim."

My great-grandmother.

"Grace and Tessa formed a tight bond and soon began visiting one another inside the stories themselves; they would read about similar historians at the same time. I don't exactly know how they did it, but they loved what they did."

Ariane took a drink of water and settled into her chair. I sat back and realized I was biting my fingernails in anticipation.

"For a while, this appeased her and she didn't really mind that my father was gone while she was tending to me. But when I was ten, that all changed. Grace Kim sent a package to my mother, and I remember that I was sent upstairs to my room to play while she worked. She did her job, and when I was called down for dinner, she seemed happy. Happier and more delightful than I had ever seen her."

I gasped. "She met someone inside the pages, didn't she?"

She nodded solemnly. "Indeed, she did. Alberto Ruiz was an explorer from Spain, and my mother fell in love with him from page one. She started traveling without Beverly, and I'll never forget the last time they spoke. They had a huge argument over him and my mother told Beverly to leave. Before she left, Beverly warned Tessa that she was going to regret leaving this world for his. That not only would it hurt me and my father, but that it would alter his future and he would never be known as an explorer. His future would change upon the arrival of my mother into his life, and this would damage the world around him and her. I didn't understand until after my mother left me. I couldn't comprehend the warning then."

I was sitting at the edge of my seat, curious about the warning as well. I bit my cheek dying to hear what happened to Tessa.

"Well, what happened?" I blurted.

"My father searched for her for years after she left, but I knew where she was. And when I was twelve years old, we learned about the Spanish explorers in our history books. I wondered what I would learn about Alberto Ruiz and if I would see or hear about my mother as well. It was the only connection I had to her now that she had left me.

"When my history teacher taught us all there was to learn, I asked him one day after class about Alberto, and he told me that there was never a Spanish explorer by that name. I thought maybe he was wrong, so I took my search to the local library where I learned the fate of Alberto Ruiz. After my mother joined him in the book, she had altered his life so dramatically that he never became the amazing historian and explorer he was meant to be. I found out by books and by meeting with a fellow Librarian of our sect that she had swayed his path just enough that he never became the great man he was supposed to be."

She leaned closer to me and took my hands in hers. Her soft skin reminded me of Gram, but nothing could calm my pounding heart at that moment. Hearing what Tessa had done to Alberto's life made everything different. I could see now the life-altering effects of what Tessa had done and of what I could have done if I didn't come back from the last trip.

"Jennie," she began, "your job is to preserve her story, a story already set in motion. You go into her books at the most pivotal points in her life. Times when she is making amazing changes that could impact who she becomes in the end."

I thought about all the times I entered the book and saw Lisa.

Having her goodbye party; right before she left for America; boarding the ship; her arrival in Maine. All times that would be important in shaping who Lisa was to become, and I could have ruined it for her. Suddenly, I thought of the things I said to her about being her own person and not letting her father run her life for him. And also about the times I kissed her and when it was more than kissing. Could I have ruined the person Lisa became by doing those things? I was just there to observe and report, not to fall in love.

An idea popped into my head in hopes that it wasn't too late.

"She's already famous, isn't she? How would I change her future if it's already happened?"

That was the most confusing part of this whole journey I was on. Thinking about it literally gave me a headache.

"Harold Lockhart explained it best in his fourth guide book," she said, before pulling out the book and placing it into my hands. "He explains that even if it's already happened, the past isn't fixed. Nothing is set into stone. A preserver can alter the future because how would we, in the present, even know if something changed? We only know what we remember and if the past is changed. If a historian's life is wiped-out, then that alters our memory as well."

My head swam at just the thought of such a thing occurring. I could have screwed up her life and never knew it.

"Yeah, like if you went back and stopped my birth, how would you know I was ever alive?" Tarryn said to Becca, who laughed.

"Sometimes I wish I could change such things," Becca teased.

"The most important thing to remember is that you are there to record and to learn. Do not alter her life in any way, Jennie. It's normal to have feelings for her, but you mustn't let those feelings change her course. Nothing should stop her from becoming the person she is to be," Ariane said finally.

I took her warning, and I wouldn't forget it. I stood up from the chair on wobbly legs and shook her hand.

"Thank you," I mumbled. "I think we should be going back now. It's getting late."

And before I could hear any argument, I left.