Merry Christmas! This week's post is both a delightful, um, romp to the finish and a fond farewell to a story that has been incredibly fun to write and share. It's a bit longer than the previous chapters but I didn't want to break it into two short sections so think of it as a Christmas bonus. Thank you for all your support through the last five chapters. Your reviews have brightened my days – thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment. Thank you most for enjoying the Black Sheep world with me.

Chapter 6

I called Nick as we drove back to my place and extended the same vague invitation I'd given Robbie.

"Um, sure, I can come over. What's up?" There was a note of worry in his voice and I didn't blame him. I was worried, too – that I'd gone off the deep end with this hair brained scheme.

I avoided his question. "It's about the storm system tomorrow. Bring your laptop. I need you to get your weather geek on."

Robbie pulled up five minutes after we got home. Greg let her in and welcomed her with a quick kiss, confirming what I'd suspected the night before.

Jim raised his eyebrows and grinned. "Looks like we weren't the only ones."

"Stop." I elbowed him but he dodged easily and settled an arm around my waist.

"What's up, Alex?" Rob asked.

"Gotta wait for Nick." I was only going to say this once.

We didn't have to wait long.

"Get in here so I can shut the porch light off." I said when he arrived, practically dragging him inside. The house would be under siege by trick-or-treaters if I left the light on. I wished handing out candy to costumed ghosts and goblins was the only thing I had to think about.

Nick followed Jim and I into the living room. Greg and Robbie sat on the couch, his arm loosely over her shoulders. Jim sprawled in one of the recliners. I motioned Nick toward the remaining chair and perched on the end of the couch, too nervous to relax against the cushions.

"First, there's something you guys need to know," I said to Robbie and Nick.

There was no good way to say this without sounding like a complete lunatic so I just said it, my delivery straightforward and unemotional even though my heart pounded like a freight train. If they thought I'd totally gone around the bend and walked out, Jim, Greg and I would be facing this thing alone.

"And if they don't get back by Nov. 1 - tomorrow – in 1943 - there's a really good chance my great-grandfather is going to end up flying in a major offensive with complete strangers," I concluded. "And he's, uh, not a very good pilot yet."

Nick and Robbie stared at me, then at the men, then back at me. Their faces were a canvas of confusion.

"No," Robbie said. "That's not possible."

"It's possible, sweetheart," Greg said.

I took the photo of the squadron off the wall in the dining room and handed it to her. Nick took my spot on the couch next to her and they both studied it.

"This is my great-grandfather." I pointed to TJ. "Look on either side of him."

Robbie looked from the photo to the men, then back at the photo. Nick just stared at the picture in disbelief.

"Vella La Cava, 1943," I said. "It was taken right after Greg formed the Black Sheep. My Great-grandpa Wiley sent this picture home from the South Pacific to his parents."

Silence echoed through the room.

"Oh my God, you're serious," Robbie said softly. Her fingers trembled as she gave the picture back to me. Greg took her hands and she laced her fingers through his. Her face was pale but her jaw was set.

Nick opened his mouth but no words came out. He looked at me as if I'd contrived this whole situation on purpose. Slowly, he rose from the couch and stumbled back to the chair.

"I – they – how did . . .?" he started, then gave up and stared at the men. "All those stories you told me yesterday were true, weren't they?"

Jim nodded. "Every one of 'em."

"Holy shit," Nick said.

"At least neither of you fainted when you found out," I said darkly. I hung the photo back on the wall. Too edgy to sit still, I paced the length of the room and back until Jim snagged my arm as I passed him.

"Sit down, woman. You're making me tired." He pulled me onto his lap. I didn't argue. The solid warmth of his body was comforting.

"How are you going to get back?" Robbie asked the question of the room in general. Her voice was as calm as if she were inquiring about the itinerary for a weekend trip.

"Alex has an idea," Greg said. "Let's hear it."

"If you guys flew into a storm and ended up here, why couldn't you fly into a similar storm to get home?" I blurted it out, knowing it was impossible in a thousand ways but then, so was the fact they were here in the first place. "Tonight is Halloween. Samhain. Lots of cultures believe the veil between the worlds thins between sunset tonight and sunrise tomorrow morning. If spirits can pass between worlds, I think it would hold true for time travel, too."

Nick found his voice first.

"Are you freaking serious?" he ventured. "You want them to deliberately fly into a supercell thunderstorm just because of some old folklore?"

I was off Jim's lap and across the room in two strides, my index finger jammed in Nick's chest.

"I'm serious as a heart attack. If these guys don't get back and my great-grandpa doesn't come home from the war, I won't exist." I spun on my heel and started pacing again.

Behind me, Nick muttered, "Okay, okay, Alex, chill. Sometimes you scare me."

"I kinda like that in a girl," Jim mused.

"Only we didn't deliberately fly into it," Greg said. "We were trying to outrun it but it overtook us."

"That's how my bird got so beat up," Jim added. "She was in fine shape when we left La Cava, give or take a few bullet holes, but fighting the storm's what chewed her up. It got me first. Greg was still in control when I heeled over and couldn't pull out of it."

"If you intentionally flew into the storm system and didn't fight it, do you think it would take you . . . home . . . in one piece?" Robbie asked. "Getting back to your base but being too damaged to land safely would defeat the point."

"We gotta try," Jim said. "If we ain't back by tomorrow, Lard will split up the Black Sheep and send the boys into other squadrons. They'll launch in that offensive on Nov. 2 with pilots they ain't ever flown with before."

"Jim's right," Greg said. "There's no guarantee he hasn't done it already but I think Moore would stall him for a couple of days. If we can get back tomorrow, we'll be good."

If.

There were a staggering number of ifs.

If my insane idea worked. If it didn't kill them outright. If they could get through the return portal of the time vortex without damaging their aircraft so badly they disintegrated on landing. If the top brass hadn't already dismantled the Black Sheep, leaving my great-grandfather to start over, trying to find his place amidst the madness of the war.

"The GFS and European forecasting models are coming together on the system for tomorrow morning," Nick said, his voice warming with confidence. "The latest runs are showing almost unheard of consistency." He flipped open his laptop and clicked through a series of screens, his face tight with concentration. "I've been studying the radar signature of the storm that hit Thursday night. The storm that's forecast for tomorrow morning has evolved into a carbon copy of the one that brought you guys here."

We moved to the dining room and sat around the table to study on-line weather charts and maps.

"What time would they have to lift off to intersect with it at its peak strength?" I asked.

Nick gave me a thoughtful look and started muttering about updrafts and windshear. He asked Greg and Jim about air speed and altitude, then all three of them did a lot of complicated math that made my head spin.

Finally, Greg looked up from the series of calculations and said, "If we leave at 0530 and reverse the coordinates, we should fly right into it, only this time, we don't fight it. We let it pull us in. If Alex is right, it will take us back to La Cava."

I prayed I was right. It was completely illogical but so was forming a squadron from pilots awaiting court martial. If anyone could understand taking a chance, it would be Greg.

"What were you thinking about when you got pulled into the storm?" I asked, "when you knew you weren't going to be able to outrun it?" I couldn't explain why this was important, only that it was.

Greg considered the question, then said slowly, "At first, I was wondering how in the hell I was going to convince Lard I hadn't done it on purpose to avoid the de-brief. Then I was just trying to keep my bird in one piece."

I looked at Jim. "You?"

He chuckled. "You're not gonna believe me, darlin', but I was thinking about TJ and wondering what would happen to him if I wasn't there to whip his sorry ass into shape."

"That's it!" I stabbed the air victoriously and the other four looked at me like I'd gone nuts. Or more nuts. "You were thinking about TJ and you dropped out of the storm at an airfield named for him, in the town where he grew up, in the middle of an event being run by his great-granddaughter."

Silence. Maybe I really had gone nuts. Had I stretched the elastic of rationality beyond its limits?

"You think Jim's thoughts pulled them here, like some kind of psychic road map?" Robbie asked.

"It provided a locus for whatever power jumped them through time." I couldn't have explained it if my life depended on it but confidence rose through me as I said it. I was the connection that brought them here. I had the power to send them back. My plan would work.

"So, you think that will work in reverse?" Nick mused. "They can get where they need to go by thinking about it?"

"It worked for Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz," I said, not trying to be funny but feeling in my gut this was the answer. "You got pulled into the first storm by accident and ended up here. If you fly into the one that's coming on purpose with a clear destination in mind, you can control it. Instead of fighting it, keep your mind focused on where you want to go."

No one spoke. I started pacing again. What if instead of sending them back to the right place and time, the storm spit them out somewhere else? Or worse, not at all. But I didn't say it and neither did they.

Nick closed his laptop. "I'll check the model runs again in the morning but they're so tightly aligned I don't think they're going to change."

"Your planes are fueled and ready to go," Robbie said. "All you have to do is lift off."

We sat there and looked at each other. So this was it. The wheels had been set in motion and there was no stopping them. If Greg and Jim intersected the storm at the peak of its ferocity, their loyalty to the Black Sheep would pull them back to their base. I refused to believe anything less.

No one got up to leave. The reality of what was going to happen in less than twelve hours was too much to bear alone.

I ordered pizza. Robbie went on a beer run. Nick tried to excuse himself, saying he was a fifth wheel, but Jim and Greg each took him by an arm and frog-marched him back to the living room where they deposited him in a chair.

"Damn press corps," Greg muttered. "Sit down. You're part of this. You're staying."

We ate pizza and drank beer and listened to stories about the insane things the Black Sheep had done. Given the length and breadth of their escapades, I thought it was a wonder any of them were still alive. The boys were pilots from varying backgrounds, with questionable character traits, but when Greg molded them into a fighting unit, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. Their victories did not come easy and they often came at a price but the squadron was a force to be reckoned with in the air or on the ground.

Finally, the pizza boxes were empty and the beer was gone.

"Alex, is there anything we should know?" Greg's voice was serious, all traces of joking gone.

"We ain't all speaking Japanese and eatin' rice, so I guess things didn't go so well for them in the end," Jim said.

"Japan surrendered," I said. "The Allies won. The war ended in Europe in May of 1945 and in the South Pacific in August the same year." I hesitated. What more could I tell them? My historical knowledge was limited to the dusty academics of college lecture halls and tales told during family reunions. I'd promptly forgotten most of the former and not paid a great deal of attention to the latter.

"If you tell us, will it change anything?" Greg asked. His eyes were steel blue and I knew if anyone could change the course of the war, he'd be the one to make a go of it.

But I'd read Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. No good came of trying to change history, no matter how hard you tried. You couldn't mess with the past. It was as carved in stone as the names on the veterans memorial in the city park.

"I – I don't think so," I stammered. I thought about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the American victory that had come at such a horrendous price. But Jim and Greg were fighter pilots, not the upper echelon of grim-faced generals and admirals in Washington, D.C., making life or death decisions on behalf of the world. Even when they returned to 1943, the Manhattan Project would have already been underway for years. The chain of events leading to the final crushing blows that brought Japan to her knees had already been started. They would be helpless to stop it.

More immediately, I thought about Greg's own partially doomed future. I knew from the endless history lectures that accompanied holiday gatherings with the Wiley side of the family that on Jan. 3, 1944, Greg Boyington would be shot down while on a fighter sweep over Rabaul. He would spend the rest of the war as a Japanese POW before being released in the summer of 1945.

I didn't know what the coming months held for Jim. I had no idea if he made it through the war and like TJ, went on to enjoy a civilian life with a family and grandkids to listen with wide-eyed wonder to his stories. It didn't seem right to tell one man his fate when I couldn't do the same for both. And what if I did tell Greg what Jan. 3, 1944, held in store for him? If he attempted to evade fate, would something far worse happen? What effect might it have on TJ or Jim or the rest of the Black Sheep?

While I struggled with the ethics of this, Jim wrapped an arm around my shoulder and shook his head.

"It ain't right to expect you to tell us what happens," he said. "There probably ain't nothin' we could do about it anyway. Just get us home and we'll take it from there."

Just get us home.

He made it sound so simple, like taking a bus to a predetermined stop. I put my hand over Jim's and felt his strength resonate through my fingers. Could something as simple as faith and loyalty defy the laws of physics?

Nick left, promising to monitor the system through the night and let us know if anything changed.

In the kitchen, Robbie and Greg said good-bye. This turned into not a good-bye when I heard her whisper softly, "Come back to my place?"

"Zero-five-thirty, Gutterman," Greg said. He looked at me and winked, then followed Robbie out the door.

I watched the tail lights of her car until they faded at the end of the street, then locked the door. Jim picked up the bottle of Laphroaig. The level was substantially lower than it had been on Friday afternoon. He splashed whisky into two glasses.

"Have a drink with me," he said.

I took the glass and didn't argue. If I'd ever needed a drink, this was it. Jim dropped onto the couch and I sat next to him. He looked as tightly strung as I felt. The scheme we'd hatched to slingshot him and Greg back to their place and time ricocheted from brilliance to lunacy and back in a heartbeat. It had to work. It simply had to.

"When you get back, will you tell TJ about me?" It was an awkward question but it lightened the moment.

Jim smile was amused. "How much would you like me to tell him?"

I blushed, remembering. "A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell."

"There you go again, calling me a gentleman."

When I didn't reply, he asked, "What's the matter, darlin'?"

"I'm scared for you. What if this doesn't work? What if you guys don't get back to your base? What if you end up somewhere else?" Or nowhere at all? The thought of him and Greg being torn apart because of my insane idea to have them fly straight into a severe thunderstorm gnawed at me with cold teeth.

Jim took a long swallow and set his glass down.

"It's okay to be scared. It keeps you alive," he said fiercely. "Every day I get in that plane knowing I might not come home at the end of the mission. If that's all you think about, it'll eat you up. I plan on doin' everything I can to get out of this war in one piece but in the end it ain't my choice. So tomorrow's just another mission. We all do what we gotta do."

I set my glass down on the coffee table and took his hand. He twined his fingers through mine and our joined touch sent a rush of emotion through me. I couldn't stand the thought of him putting his own life at risk to ensure TJ's continued existence.

"I am grateful," I started, then stopped, not liking the way it sounded. "I appreciate . . ." No. Damn it. That wasn't it either.

"What are you trying not to say?"

"I'm glad you're looking out for TJ but don't be so busy taking care of him you forget to look out for yourself." The words tumbled out in a rush, falling over themselves and not sounding nearly as elegant as I'd hoped.

"Don't worry about me, darlin'," Jim said. "The boys got my six, just like I got theirs." He studied me, eyes dark and searching. "Who's gonna take care of you?"

"I can take care of myself," I said promptly.

"I don't doubt that." His voice was a mix of amusement and regret.

My pulse jumped as he pushed my hair back from my face, then traced my jaw with light fingers. I leaned into the caress, letting his touch stir the still-smoldering ashes from the previous night. We were both searching for something to anchor us in the present and the energy swirling between us told me we'd found it.

Jim leaned forward and brushed his mouth over mine, gently at first, then without hesitation as he pulled me into his arms. Sensation ignited low in my belly and I threw caution to the wind. Everything about this screamed bad decision but I didn't care. My lips parted and the kiss deepened, the scent of his skin and the heat of his hands driving everything else from my mind. We had this moment. That was all that mattered.

He spread the collar of my shirt to press his mouth against the V of my throat. Liquid heat surged through me as his lips found my pulse point and his hand slid under my shirt, fingers deliciously rough.

"If this ain't what you want, darlin', you better tell me now." His words hummed against my skin.

Without speaking, I shifted until I straddled him on the couch, my knees on either side of his hips, and caught his mouth again. The kiss was slow and deep and the rush of it left me dizzy with wanting.

"That's what I thought," he said when we broke apart. I matched his self-assured smile with one of my own. This was a game meant for two and for the first time since we'd met, we shared a common ground.

Jim's hands ran down my back, caressing my hips and thighs, then closing around my waist, pulling me down against him and leaving no doubt of his need. I met the pressure with a soft moan and rotated my hips, heightening sensation. His mouth was hard on mine, then with a determined growl, he pushed me back.

"I don't want to leave you in a situation." He paused, then added, "That I won't be around to take responsibility for in nine months."

Oh.

Sensuality and reality collided head on, grinding things to a halt.

"It's okay." What I was about to say would only slow things further. I said it anyway. "I'm on the pill."

"You're what?"

Yep. That did it. Jim gave me such an incredulous look I fought with the juxtaposition of our centuries. Birth control pills hadn't come into common use until the 1960s. In the 1940s, men would have used condoms or other less reliable methods.

"I take an oral contraceptive." I hoped the clinical term would clarify things. It didn't.

Jim considered this and his easy grin widened. "They got a pill for that now? 'Cuz that ain't the first thing comes to mind when you say oral contraceptive."

"Stop it." I was laughing now. "Yes. There's a pill. Lots of women take it."

"And it works?" He seemed doubtful.

"It works very well."

"Then you better go take it."

"I already did. This morning."

His eyebrows shot up. "Planning ahead, were you? I do like a girl who's prepared."

"No! It's not like that. I take it every day." Oh God. That only made it sound worse. "That's how it works. I can't just take it whenever, you know."

Jim shifted under me, a not-so-subtle reminder of what was at stake. I tried to slide away to ease the pressure but he gripped my backside and held me firm.

"I trust you, darlin'."

Those four words launched us right back where we'd been moments before. I pressed down onto him and he groaned as I brushed my tongue across his lower lip. Even if we had nothing beyond this night, trust shared across three-quarters of a century burned with an unquenchable flame.

There was no reason to stop. I slid off him and held out my hand. Neither of us spoke as I led him up the stairs and down the hall into my bedroom. I stepped through the door and laughed. Even in the dark, I could see Greg had made the bed. It looked tight enough to bounce a quarter on.

"Thoughtful of him," I managed.

"I'd take you on the floor if you'd have me." Jim's words were so low I barely heard him.

Would I have him? I wanted every last inch of him and he knew it. His hands slid under my shirt and circled my waist, bringing heat to simmer on the surface of my skin. His lips brushed the corner of my mouth and moved along my jaw with a lightness that set every nerve tingling.

"Never unzipped a girl out of a pair of trousers before," he said softly as his hands slid between us to unzip my jeans. His fingers moved with an ease that told me this wasn't the first time he'd undressed a woman.

I stood, enjoying the feel of his hands as he worked the denim down over my hips. When my panties started to slide down with them, I tugged them back up. That earned a low chuckle.

"I'm not that easy, Captain," I said trying to maintain some semblance of control. That lasted until Jim slid one finger under the lace edging the waistband and ran it across my belly.

It took effort, but I stepped out of my jeans, my fingers already on the buttons of his shirt. I flattened my palms against the smooth, bare skin of his chest, feeling his heart beating in rhythm with mine, fast, strong, sure. My fingers stumbled on his belt buckle. The object in question wasn't the problem but Jim's thumbs were tracing the lower swell of my breasts, grazing my nipples and sending an agonizing rush of pleasure through me that made it hard to focus on anything else. Finally, the buckle gave way and I made quick work of button and zipper. It took little effort to tug his pants down over his lean hips.

"You can take my skivvies with them if you want, darlin," he said, humor humming under the words.

I hooked my fingers into the waistband and slowly teased open the top button. "Mmmm. You are easy."

He slid my shirt over my head as he walked me backward, pulling it free just as the backs of my knees hit the mattress and we toppled onto the bed. The waxing gibbous moon cast enough light for me to make out the dark, sleek planes of his body. I ran my fingers over the bare skin of his back, stopping at a ridge of scar tissue. It extended in a jagged line that ran from mid-shoulder toward his spine.

"What happened?" I asked. It was healed but didn't have the smooth, worn feel of an old wound.

"Shrapnel," he said. "Got hit during an air raid on the base a month ago." He spoke of the violence almost casually, as if bodily harm and the endless possibility of death were merely the price of doing business. And I was sending him back to that in the morning. The thought made me sad for a flickering instant until I realized he didn't see it that way. He and Greg and TJ had volunteered for their country. Never mind the businessmen or grandparents they'd become in later years, they were warriors now, united in a collective force. It made these moments together, stolen from time in a way the universe could never reclaim, all the more powerfully intimate.

Jim's fingers traced across my back, searching. I knew what he was looking for. He wasn't going to find it. I rolled onto him, pinning him between my legs, and pushed his hands down to my waist. He was hot and hard under me, the thin fabric between us doing nothing to conceal either of our hunger.

"Let me." I unhooked the front clasp of my bra, then brushed my hands across his in invitation. Jim slid the straps off my shoulders and slowly tugged the thin nylon free.

"Damn, girl," he murmured and caressed me as I leaned into his hands.

He wasn't rough but he wasn't gentle, either, and every touch brought me higher and hotter. We explored each other with hands and mouths in the silver moonlight until we were both tormented almost beyond endurance. Jim pressed me down onto the blankets and my body welcomed his, our joining completing a circuit that defied the laws of time. I wrapped an arm around his neck, tangled the other hand in the sheets and held on for the ride.

My phone pulled me from the depths of a sleep that comes from being loved long and hard. I reluctantly pulled away from Jim's warmth and fumbled the device off the nightstand. It was barely 4 a.m. Nick? What the hell?

"Alex?" He started talking even before I could manage a croak of acknowledgement. "Alex! God, sorry, hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Nick, it's 4 a.m." I appreciated his confidence that we would still be awake at this time of day, let alone doing anything.

"You gotta get out to the airfield. I just checked the model runs. That system's moving faster than anyone imagined. It's coming in like a house on fire. If your boys don't get those planes in the air, they'll never intercept it in time. "

I sat up, suddenly, brutally wide awake. "Call Robbie. Greg's at her place. We'll be there in fifteen."

I clicked off. Jim was awake.

"Nick says the storm system is moving faster than he thought," I said.

"I heard him," Jim said and pulled me to him. "We'll be there in twenty."

We drove silently through the darkness to the airfield. It was Nov. 1, All Saints Day. If there were ever two men who needed the intervention of saints, those two were it. Robbie and Greg met us at the main hangar. Nick pulled in right behind us. The sky was black as ink. My hair lifted on the wind as a current of wild energy pulsed through the darkness. This was going to work. It had to.

I walked with Jim to his plane. He kissed me, gentle now.

"I'll take care of TJ," he said. "That little menace won't get himself killed on my watch."

I wanted to tell him not to get himself killed, either, but that wasn't for me to say.

"Wait." I bolted back to my pickup and grabbed the envelope of photos I'd left on the dash the day before. With trembling fingers, I fumbled out the shot Nick had taken of me, alone, in front of Jim's Corsair.

I dug a pen out of my bag. Turning the picture face down on the pickup's hood, I wrote, With love, Alex, October 2018. Just as I finished the 8, a tear splashed onto the date, blurring all four digits into an impossible smear. I hadn't realized I was crying. Fiercely wiping the tears off my cheeks, I handed Jim the photo.

"Keep it for yourself or give it to TJ if you think he needs to know." I choked back the emotion rising in my throat. "If you think he needs to know - well - anything."

Jim studied the picture, then tucked it into a pocket on his flight suit.

"I will," he said. I didn't know if he meant he'd keep it or give it to TJ.

Suddenly I wasn't sure it was a good idea. Was that tampering with the rules of time travel? How in the hell would he explain something like that? TJ would think his wingman was bucking for a psych eval if he handed him a photo of a girl, claiming she was not only from seventy-five years in the future, but his great-granddaughter.

But it was already done. I couldn't – wouldn't – ask for it back. Chances were, Jim would keep it, reluctant to share it even with TJ for exactly the reasons I'd thought of.

A few feet away, Greg and Robbie said their goodbyes. Finally, Greg walked past us and clapped Jim on the shoulder.

"Time to go. Thank you, Alex, for everything," he said and climbed into his plane.

Jim kissed me again hard. I buried my head against his chest and stood without speaking as he held me. I pulled away when Greg yelled, "Clear!" followed by the sound of his engine turning over.

"Go," I said. "Focus on La Cava and the Black Sheep. Don't think about me."

"Bossy woman." He stroked the side of my face. "Thank you, darlin'." Then he was gone.

The sound of twin Pratt and Whitney radial engines split the morning chill, music to my ears as their power rumbled through my blood. It was agony to sit and watch as the engines warmed up, knowing every cycle of the pistons took the men closer to departure. I reached out and took Rob's hand. She squeezed mine back and didn't let go. Nick stood behind us, his hands around both of our shoulders.

The planes taxied onto the runway, then turned and in tandem, barreled down the tarmac, engines roaring as RPMs increased. They lifted off with the grace of shorebirds, skimming the harvested cornfield at the end of the strip, indigo shadows against a dark sky. We watched as they grew smaller and smaller. A single flash of lightning split the sky and they were gone.

None of us spoke. Someday, Rob and I and Nick were going to get outrageously drunk and tell stories and wonder if anything that had happened in the last three days was real.

"We'd better get out of here," Nick said finally. "It's gonna be storming like hell in about twenty minutes."

"Yeah," I said. "But humor me first." We all got in Big Red and drove down the air strip to where Jim and Greg's planes had been staged. I pulled a flashlight from the glovebox and got out.

"What are you doing?" Nick asked.

"Looking for my stupid earring," I replied, shining the light around, hoping to see the gleam of silver reflected in the beam. "I lost it Saturday night. It's solid sterling, I'd like to have it back."

"How'd you lose an earring out here?" Nick asked. When I didn't answer, he said, "Oh. Never mind." He flipped on the flashlight app on his phone and helped me search.

We didn't find it. When the first forks of lightning began to flicker steadily in the southwest, we went home.

Eplilogue

For the first few days after Jim and Greg's departure, I woke each morning and ran through a litany of affirmations in my mind. I was still Alex Remington. My great-grandfather was still Thomas J. Wiley. I was alive and well and the same person I'd been a week ago. My insane theory about reversing time travel must have worked. The men must have returned safely to their island base and the Black Sheep launched as part of Operation Cherryblossom on Nov. 2, 1943. Jim's words still ran through my mind. I'll take care of TJ. That little menace won't get himself killed on my watch.

Since I was still here – and was still me and the air field was still named after my great-grandfather – he must have done exactly that. But what had become of Captain James Gutterman?

I could have gone to the library. The librarian would have loaded me up with a dozen volumes about the war in the South Pacific. Thanks to Thomas J. Wiley's legacy, the Cedar Junction library had more its share of history books and I'm sure they covered the pilots of the Black Sheep squadron in painstaking detail. I could have gone online. Sixty seconds with a search engine would have provided me with thousands of resources to tell me what I wanted to know.

But I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

My great-grandfather had come home safely from the war to start the family lineage that eventually produced me. If that was the case, it stood to reason Greg's history also remained unchanged. I could have told him what would happen on Jan. 3, 1944, but it wouldn't have changed anything. He would have flown the mission anyway – there was no way he would have begged off. That wasn't who he was. And if by some happenstance, he had avoided Rabaul, would fate have caught up with him somewhere else?

But what about Jim? I strained my memory for any reference to his name at the family gatherings when talk turned to my great-grandfather's tales. Surely he would have spoken about his wingman. Why the hell hadn't I paid more attention?

We hadn't known each other long enough to be in love. We might have gotten there, if we'd met under vastly different circumstances, but that had never been an option. We'd given ourselves to one other as the result of a mutual attraction that burned hot as a prairie wildfire. I didn't regret a minute of it but I wanted desperately for him to have survived the remaining years of the conflict he'd so willingly returned to.

He'd been twenty-one in 1943. If he were still alive, which wasn't likely, he'd be ninety-eight now. I wasn't a stalker and had no intention of tracking down his family to get a firsthand account of his post-war life. I just wanted to know he'd had the future that was denied to so many of the boys who fought for our country.

But I was afraid to look.

I found the box on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day. The first heavy snow of the season was falling, cloaking Cedar Junction in a silent white veil.

The snowy afternoon was the perfect opportunity to finish some of the cleaning I'd started six months ago when I moved into Great-aunt Eleanor's house. The smallest of the second-floor bedrooms was the final frontier of battered boxes tied with twine and jumbled bits of old furniture. I waded through the piles and hauled open the closet door. I'd start here first and make space for anything I found worth saving in the rest of the room.

Half an hour later, I'd hauled out armloads of clothes that could be donated to the community theater and several boxes of time-wrecked kitchenware destined for the dump. I drug a rickety chair into the space and climbed up to inspect the top-most shelf.

I hadn't expected to find anything and my heart gave a leap when I saw the flat box shoved to the furthest back corner, invisible from anyone standing on the floor. Cautiously, I pulled it toward me. An odd little tingle of electricity shot through my fingertips and I nearly dropped it.

The ivory cardboard was embossed with the logo of a long-closed local department store. Perhaps it had held ladies' gloves and scarves in its previous life. It was tied with now-gray string and coated with dust.

I scrambled down from the chair and standing in the snowy light of the window, brushed dust from the lid. I recognized the faint handwriting as my Great-aunt Eleanor's.

Father's Miscellaneous Photos

I set the box on the chair and stared at it. When I picked it up again, my fingertips tingled with that imperceptible rush of electricity. It reminded me of the subtle aura of energy I'd felt from Jim and Greg before I knew who they were. They were always on my mind. Each time I passed the photos on the dining room wall, I whispered a prayer for their safety. It was silly and I knew it. The war was long over, what was done, was done, and no modern day prayer would change it, yet the connection lingered. The thread that bound us was like steel gossamer and I refused to let go of my end.

I carried the box down to the kitchen and put it on the table, where I could spread out the contents. I tugged the ends of the carefully tied bow knot and they slid loose with a poof of dust. I lifted the lid. There wasn't much inside, just a scattering of old photographs. I wasn't sure what I'd expected and didn't know if I was disappointed or relieved.

The black and white photos had been tossed haphazardly in the box with no apparent care for chronology or organization. Half of them slid from my grip to scatter across the table when I carefully picked up the top few layers. A small object fell from between them and landed with a tiny metallic clunk.

The sterling silver was black with decades of tarnish. I picked it up, barely daring to touch the sleek curve of the hoop caught to a Celtic knot. Its mate was in the jewelry box on my dresser, as shiny as the day I'd bought them at the art fair.

My hand closed over the earring as euphoria soared through me. Jim had made it back. He, Greg and this tiny piece of the twenty-first century had returned safely to the South Pacific. I sat for a minute, staring out the window at the falling snow and holding the earring like it was a talisman. He must have found it on the line Sunday and forgotten to tell me. Accidentally or on purpose?

Slowly, the euphoria faded. I opened my palm and traced the tarnished hoop with my index finger. Its presence here and now confirmed nothing beyond the fact Jim and Greg had returned to their island base on Nov. 1, 1943. Then what happened? How had TJ come into possession of it? Its presence seventy-five years later was unarguable evidence it had come into my great-grandfather's possession to be passed down with other bits of family detritus. Had Jim given it to him? Or had Jim tucked it away in his own footlocker where it had been part of his personal effects, things his wingman would have cleared out if he'd not come home from a mission. In the months of bitter fighting that turned the tides of the war, had Jim sacrificed himself to keep TJ - and conversely, me - alive?

I laid the earring gently on the table and tidied the scattered photos into a stack. One by one, I looked at them. They were all of my great-grandfather – standing near his plane, lifting a beer with other pilots, standing with a group of smiling women, all in military uniform. With infuriating annoyance, none of the photos were labeled beyond a hastily scrawled date or, if the transcriber of history had been feeling elaborate, a location. Vella La Cava. Espritos Marcos. Rendova.

My eyes ached as I searched for Jim among the snapshots. There! Standing in front of a canvas tent with TJ. Another showed Jim, TJ, Greg and several other men in a Jeep. Dates on the backs read La Cava, September 1943. They'd been taken before he'd dropped into my world.

That didn't mean anything. Maybe pictures taken after October had been filed in a different box, one I hadn't found yet. I lifted out the next handful of photos and thumbed through them. My heart stopped when I saw my own features smiling at the camera, laughing as I brushed hair back from my face, my eyes on someone just out of frame.

It was the photo Nick had taken the night of the banquet. The one I'd given to Jim the morning he left.

With trembling fingers, I turned it over. My bold scrawl had faded after three-quarters of a century but it was still perfectly legible: With love, Alex, October. The year remained a blurred mess, the tear that fell on it barely a month ago having turned into a watery brown splotch, obscuring the date.

Had Jim given it to TJ? Had he tried to explain any of the missing days he and Greg were AWOL from 1943? Or had the photo, like the earring, been among his own personal things and come into TJ's possession only when Jim failed to return from a mission?

I set the photo of myself next to the earring. The box was empty now. If I'd expected answers, I hadn't found them. Jim's future remained as much of a mystery as it had been the morning of All Saints Day when I watched him lift off in the predawn darkness. Did it matter, I asked myself for the thousandth time. My own life was going forward but it felt selfish to embrace it without knowing what happened to the man who'd been - at least in part - responsible for ensuring I existed.

I started to return the photos to the box. Wait. It wasn't empty.

A large manila envelope was fitted so tightly into the bottom it had given the impression of actually being the bottom. Carefully, I tugged it loose.

On the front, a neat hand had written Black Sheep 214 Reunion, Summer 1960.

That would have been fifteen years after the war. With trembling fingers, I opened the string wound in a figure eight around two cardboard buttons and spilled the contents onto the table. A newspaper clipping, brittle with age slid out, followed by a black and white eight-by-ten photo of men and women, some standing, some seated, on the front porch of a farmhouse.

I pushed the newspaper clipping around with my fingers until I could read it. I was afraid to pick it up. Newsprint was never meant to last and nearly sixty years after the fact, it looked as frail as a dry autumn leaf. There was a photo with the news story, the subjects' faces rendered nearly indistinguishable via the old-fashioned printing method that reduced photographs to a matrix of dots. Or maybe my eyes were blurred with tears. I blinked them back and read the caption beneath.

Surviving members of the United States Marine Corps Black Sheep squadron, whose heroism helped turn the tide of World War II in the South Pacific, gathered at the Tahoe Vista, Calif., home of USMC Lt. Col. Gregory Boyington, Ret., and his wife, Katherine, for a reunion recently. The men and their wives and families joined to reminisce about their years of service.

I tried to focus on the photo in the clipping but the faces all looked the same, like a badly pixelated, low resolution reproduction determined to eliminate detail. I couldn't tell who anyone was and pushed it away in frustration.

By comparison, the eight-by-ten studio print of the same photo retained its crisp focus. I picked it up, fingers trembling as I studied the images. Women stood near most of the men, doubling the number of faces. I scanned slowly from one man to the next, analyzing and discarding them, wondering if I would recognize the older version of him. If he was there.

I saw Greg first, every bit as handsome as he had been the day he'd complained about landing in a cornfield and being greeted by the press corps. The woman by his side was gracefully slender, her riot of curly hair caught back by a rolled bandana.

There was my great-grandfather with his wife, a smiling, dimpled woman with stylishly-cut dark hair. I did quick math in my head. He still looked impossibly young, even though he must have been around thirty-five when this photo was taken. He'd have returned from the war, finished college and begun his teaching and coaching career here in Cedar Junction.

I searched the faces of the other men. Tall, short, stocky, lean, none of them in uniform but all radiating the sense of brotherhood that bound them during the war.

Then I saw him.

I knew him instantly. His features were stronger, ruggedly defined by age, no longer the youthful face of the pilot who'd held me in his arms in the moonlight, but the smile was the same. That sardonic, good-old-boy grin echoed from the black and white photograph with an intensity that made my heart skip a beat.

He'd survived.

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. My entire body sagged with relief. He'd come through the war in one piece and, like my great-grandfather, come home. He stood with his arm around the waist of a tall woman with a teasing smile who rested her head on his shoulder. So he'd married. I felt not jealousy but a sense of peace. Good. Jim Gutterman needed a girl who would make an honest man out of him.

The story was over. If I tried, I could find out more – where he'd lived, who he married. The internet had removed anything resembling posthumous privacy. If you clicked down enough rabbit holes, you'd eventually hit pay dirt.

But I didn't want to. I didn't need to. The time Jim and I shared would not be part of that cyber trail, unless, perhaps, he and Greg had been reprimanded for going AWOL. I doubted it. If called on the carpet in front of a superior officer, both men would have spun a plausible story about setting down to ride out the storm. They would walk away unscathed by any taint of misconduct.

I picked up the earring and dangled it, wondering about the miles it had traveled. Jim must have given it to TJ, along with the photo, at some point. What had he told him? I thought of our night together and bit my lip. How much had he told him?

Had my great-grandfather believed him? Had Thomas J. Wiley come home from the war with the earring and photograph of a great-granddaughter still two generations in the future? Had he passed them along to his daughter and told her the story? Great-aunt Eleanor had never breathed a word of it to me, not that I blamed her. But she'd left me her house and all its contents. Had she left the box tucked on the shelf as the solution, knowing I'd find it eventually?

If she knew what would happen in 2018, she could have given it to me when I came of age and told me not to open it until Jan. 1, 2019. Of course, I would have opened it immediately, not understood the meaning of the contents and wondered why the hell my great-grandfather wanted me to have a tarnished earring and a tear-stained photo of a woman who looked an awful lot like me.

There were so many questions that would never be answered. And they didn't need to be. Jim and Greg had proven the tapestry of time could be frayed and re-woven. The knowledge I'd been the weaver, maneuvering warp and weft until it blended seamlessly, was all that mattered.

I remembered seeing a jar of silver polish in the pantry. It wouldn't take much to have the earring renewed to its original gleam.

No. Not yet.

Instead, I picked up my phone and texted Robbie and Nick.

Hey – wanna come over? Bring beer. I've got a war story to tell you.

THE END

Author's note: Thanks for joining me on this adventure. May we all find clear skies in 2021.