"How? Your younger self didn't know about Jenny."

"I know. And Richard's younger self won't know about the coin in the suit pocket. I'm destined to tell him to 'Come back to me' in 22 years' time, but for my new plan to work, we may never have that meeting. You'll still be fit and active in 1972, and even in 1980. You could do it, Eben. You could remember to go to that hotel in 1980 and tell Richard about the coin. Tell him I sent you by meeting you back in 1950 and sharing my story. Tell him to do the time travel by hypnosis, but to make sure there's nothing from 1980 in any of the suit's pockets. Then when he goes back all those years to my early career days and meets me at the seaside hotel, he'll stay there. We'll live our lives out in my time."

"And I could also tell him my story! I get it!" said Eben, "I'll ask him to find Jennie in the days when you and she were younger, to tell Jennie my story, to warn her not to sail out to Lands End Light in the first place. He'll have to persuade her of just how much we'll both lose if she doesn't conquer the curious urge she had to brave an approaching sea storm that existed in her current timeline. I couldn't even persuade her to flee to the lighthouse when the danger was almost upon us. It was as if she knew what would happen and went into the danger anyway. It could work!"

"For now, we both live another 30 years of loneliness, but then when Richard goes back, it all changes."

"I wonder if Jennie and I will live out our married life together in my time or hers, once the timeline gets altered," said Eben.

"Does it matter?"

"Not at all, just so long as time doesn't keep separating us for months on end."

"I don't think it will after this," said Elise, "You remember telling me how she believed in God? Romans 8:28 says that God works out everything for the good of those who love Him. In other words, He allows every bad thing to happen for a reason. If you hadn't faced your loss in the first timeline, you'd never have been able to help me now, and the vice versa is probably true too."

"Does God approve of time travel? I'd never thought about that," said Eben.

"I asked a Seventh Day Adventist pastor once, hypothetically. I'd heard him preach about the evil of occult focussed stories, and asked if time travel novels were alright to read. He said there was nothing wrong with it. I doubt he'd have believed that I'd loved a man who'd done it though."

"So I sit on our secrets for 30 years and then go into action with Richard Collier," said Eben.

"You don't have to sit on them alone," said Elise, "I'll still be alive until some time in the 1970s. I won't be around in 1980, according to what Richard knew of the timeline, but definitely at least until 1972. A burden shared is a burden halved."

"It sure is, especially since our plan will eventually rewrite that burden out of existence."

"Can you handle being just fellow time tricked friends all those years?" asked Elise, "Your friendship would be dear to me, but I wouldn't even think of us replacing Richard and Jennie with each other."

"Nor would I," said Eben, "Jennie said it herself. There would be nobody else for either of us, not in any time. The same was true for you and Richard, or you'd have married another long before 1972."

So keeping their secrets, telling nobody among their growing number of social contacts why neither of them ever married others nor each other, they walked through Central Park whenever Elise could be in New York. They visited the seaside hotel, whenever Eben could venture down there. He painted pictures of the hotel, and the lawn overlooking the ocean, which rivalled any of the early landscapes that Matthews and Spinney had once rejected.

In the 1970s, Eben attended the funeral of Elise McKenna, knowing that she had told him her last wishes as early as 1950. Now he had to wait a few more years, before he could carry them out, for both her benefit and his own.

Early in 1980, he found it easy to obtain the telephone number of an as yet unknown junior playwright. Richard Collier was still listed with directory assistance. Eben telephoned him and said, "I have an amazing story to tell you, one that concerns a lady from the past whose life will soon be inextricably linked with your own … a lady called Elise McKenna."

Richard Collier agreed to meet the elderly Eben Adams at the museum, where his Portrait of Jennie still hung. Eben Adams told Richard of his series of encounters with Jennie, of her death, of his subsequent meeting with Elise McKenna, of the secret pact that they had made to alter the outcomes of the tricks that time had played on both of them. He outlined their plan, and Richard thanked him for all of his help.

"I can never repay you in any way other than by doing what you ask," said Richard, "If you're right, I'll never be back in the 1980s or any subsequent decade again. I might live a few years concurrent with my younger self, when I'm getting old, and have to avoid meeting him, but I doubt I'll make it past 1979. You have my word. Once united with Elise, I'll tell her everything you've told me from the previous timeline. We will not rest until we've found your younger Jennie and made absolutely sure that she doesn't take that trip to Lands End Light."

"I can ask no more," said Eben, "As things are, I'm not long for this world. Matthews and Spinney have both passed on. Elise as I knew her has passed on. You're the only one left in the world who understands the importance of what has to be done, if we're all to be united with our loved ones across the reaches of time."

"I wish you could be with me, to see me off, when I do the time travelling, but you'd probably be a part of 1980 that would prevent me from succeeding. Are you sure you don't want me to introduce your child self to the young adult Jennie instead?"

"The age difference wouldn't make me love her any less, but it would interfere with all of the time events that enabled her to interact with my 1930s self," said Eben, "For things to go as they did, with the one exception of her living, Eben Adams, depression era struggling artist would have to meet Jennie Appleton for the first time in Central Park in the Winter of 1934."

"Then he will, and this time he won't lose her," said Richard, "I'll speak to the professor and learn the technique, and then head down to the seaside hotel."

"And I'll stay right out of your way," said Eben.

Chapter End Notes: In the movie "Strangers on a Train", a man asks tennis star Guy Haines to murder the man's mother, and offers to murder Haines' divorcing wife. Rather than assisting each other with murders, the characters in this story assist each other with time travel romances.