Tessa remembered James' birth. After the midwife handed her the little bundle, she asked the new parents, "Nah, do you have a name for the little one yet?"
"James," she and Will answered in unison. They looked at each other and smiled.
They hadn't discussed the name once, but another would have been unacceptable to either of them.
The head of the institute at that time had tears in her eyes when she heard the name for the first time. To her, Jem had been just as much family as the other children at the institute.
Jessamine, a well-to-do orphan who also lived there, had made a face. "You really want to name your son after your wife's ex-fiancé?", she asked Will.
Will was obnoxious to most of the other members of the Institute, but he was particularly belligerent with Jessamine. There was hardly a statement that one made that didn't piss off the other.
That day, however, Will had been particularly calm. "Who would I be to question her love for him when I love him just as much."
He had never spoken of Jem in the past.
"That's not the same, you wouldn't have married him."
Will just shrugged. "But only because he turned me down." Tessa laughed at his pout because she knew he wasn't being entirely sarcastic. She knew that prior to her time at the institute, there had actually been a moment when Will had proposed to Jem.
"Maybe he just had higher standards."
Will then snorted. "Standards? I think I should have just burst into his room in my nightgown, paid him a few friendly compliments on his late-night fiddle play, and whoops, he would have done anything for me."
Tessa laughed again. When that happened to her back then, she was terribly ashamed of it. It really was against the rules of propriety to walk into the room of an unrelated gentleman, without being asked, in thr evening dress, and then he even had been a stranger to her at the time.
But the sweet music of his violin had lured her, woke her up in trance, so that she only realized the mistake when he had stopped playing and looked at her.
Tessa wanted to turn on her heel, go back to her room and collapse on the floor in embarrassment. But then he spoke. He had a voice as lovely as the melody of his violin. He didn't take offense at her behavior, didn't even seem to realize that the situation was unseemly.
"Oh come on," she said to Will afterwards. "You couldn't have complimented his violin playing if your life depended on it."
Now he laughed too, kissed her head and pulled her lovingly to him.
Jessamine just shook her head at the two and left them standing.
There weren't many people who understood the relationship between the three. How it was possible to be so close, to feel such a strong love, without even a single spark of jealousy igniting between them.
Yet it was precisely this intimacy that made such love possible.
If Tessa didn't love Will so much, she couldn't have loved Jem and vice versa. The boys were connected in a way that they were two sides of the same coin.
Tessa loved the whole coin.
She did till today.
"Tessa?"
She had to control herself not to flinch when Catarina spoke to her.
This also happened to her more and more often. Lost between past and present.
"Yes, dear?"
Tessa knew Catarina noticed the little things that went from bad to worse, she'd just been a nurse for too long to not have been. But as always, she said nothing about it.
"Your grandson wants to speak to you."
Tessa sat up from her chair and immediately regretted it.
She actually intended to go to her chamber and go to sleep before they could start the real pain.
"Owen? Why aren't you at the party?" She asked the question before she could finish turning to the front door.
As always, she felt a pang in her heart when she saw him.
He looked so much like Will that it took an effort to convince her old brain that he wasn't him. She felt the past trying to pull her back with it. She could almost believe it was 1890 again. At home in the institute in front of the fireplace while her two children crawled around on the floor.
She blinked a few times and looked away from him to Jem.
Jem, her Jem. He still looked exactly as she remembered him. A friendly smile on his face, open and without any walls. The opposite of Will next to him.
There was a familiarity between them that Tessa had never seen before. It was 1878 and they were all so young. They just met. As different as they were, day and night, both agreed to help her.
She must find her brother.
"Grandmother?" Will asked her.
Grandmother?
She looked at him.
No, not Will, Owen, her grandson.
Will was dead. And Jem was...
She looked back at the other man. Old, like her. Marked by wrinkles and gray hair. He looked at her with a love she hadn't seen in a long time. Knowing, as if he knew exactly who she was.
Jem, she thought.
She shook her head. Now she went completely nuts.
It was not possible.
Jem was...
"Tessa," he whispered. His voice was throaty, old and lovely as it had always been.
"Jem?" she asked. But his smile was answer enough.
Jem It was Jem! Her Jem! After all these years, here he was. He had found her again. He survived.
He was here!