Richard bade the old man farewell and made his plans. He recorded a speech to hypnotize himself into a journey many decades into the past, and hid the tape recorder under his bed in the hotel room in 1980. Now he could hear his hypnotic voice, saying "…. Your mind accepts this." Yet he could not see the 1980 recording device. He travelled back to the past, met Elise and saw the events unfold as they had done in the first timeline. This time there was no 1979 coin, nothing to draw him back to 1980. He told Eben's incredible story to Elise, and she agreed to help him find Jennie Appleton.
The next time Elise was performing in New York, they tried Hammersteins, but Jennie had already lost her parents and moved on from there. It was at the convent that they caught up to her. She had already met Eben Adams several times, by traversing time in ways she did not understand.
"We too are from different times," said Elise, "I still don't understand all this myself completely, but Richard came to me from the year 1980…"
Richard and Elise explained the full details of the story which had been passed from the previous timeline's 1950 Elise McKenna to its Eben Adams, to the January 1980 Richard Collier. The dire warning not to sail to Lands End Light, and the state that Eben had fallen into after losing Jennie, were explained in graphic detail. Ironically, Richard Collier would now never know that, in the previous timeline, he had lost the will to live after losing Elise, when he had been returned to 1980. He had been found in his hotel room sitting in death. That would now never happen. Both Jennie's and Richard's deaths were averted. Jennie promised that she would never take that sailing journey, and Richard and Elise were married. She starred in a number of his plays as the years went on.
1935….
Eben Adams went to the convent to learn more about Jennie. She was away for a three month period, visiting a sick relative, and Eben was talking to an elderly sister about the Jennie, whom to her, was a distant memory. She had lost touch with Jennie, but did not mention the girl's death, because it didn't happen. Eben thanked her for her time, and walked out onto the verandah, and there was Jennie standing in an elegant feminine dress, smiling at him.
"From now on we'll always be together, Eben," she said, "You'll never have to wait for me again."
She did not wish to confuse Eben by telling him what she'd learned of the previous timeline from Richard Collier. She had avoided Lands End Light, and lived on. She did consider one thing. Richard Collier had stayed in Elise's time, in his past, her present, where her career was the focal event that had locked her place in time, and enabled the 1980 Richard Collier to learn of her existence in the first place. Jennie guessed that the late 1930s was the time that she must live in, where Eben's portrait would launch a painting career, where his picture of her would begin its long stay in the museum. She knew that she would not be pulled back into her own time again. As an adult, she had not lived that much earlier than Eben, only 20 years. The time differential between Richard Collier and Elise McKenna had been much greater. In Jennie's time, her parents were deceased, her time at the convent concluded, and her career at Hammersteins no longer possible nor desirable.
In 1937, she married Eben Adams. They were skating nostalgically in Central Park one day, when Eben suggested that they have lunch in a restaurant, which overlooked the park. He did not know that it was the restaurant that he and Elise had used to share their stories in the 1950 of the previous timeline.
"That sounds like a lovely idea, Eben," said Jennie, "I wonder what made you think of it."
They walked across the street, and were soon within earshot of a teenaged boy.
"Paper, Mister?" called the boy.
"Sure, why not?" said Eben, and bought one.
They went up to the restaurant and sat down. Jennie gaped at the front page of the newspaper.
ELISE MCKENNA TO
STAR IN ANOTHER OF
HER HUSBAND'S PLAYS
IN NEW YORK THIS MONTH.
"Can we go and see it?" she asked, "I knew them. I met them while I was still growing into the woman you eventually married."
"In the enterainment industry?" asked Eben, recalling her teenage years at Hammerstein's.
"No. I think I should tell you something I've kept from you. It was a mistake not to tell you, if it turns out that we'll be friends with the Colliers for the rest of our lives."
Jennie Adams told Eben of the warnings she'd had from Richard and Elise, the warnings that prevented her otherwise fateful sailing journey to Lands End Light.
"No wonder you were frightened of my lighthouse picture that night in my apartment," said Eben, "You didn't know why back then."