feared I’d never get back to William. I learned that he died an old man in his nineties and never married.
If I check again, will that have changed? Even if it has, does that prove this is one uninterrupted timeline? I’m not sure it does. Maybe only my timeline changes, the effects I’ve wrought appearing in the archives in my own time, but not in the future one of his. Yes, it makes my head hurt just thinking about that.
But even if I could prove, beyond a doubt, that it is a single timeline, does that also prove that me hiring a girl in nineteenth-century England will have unforeseeable—and disastrous—effects on the modern day? Of course not.
These answers do not exist for me to find. I need to make choices on my own. To decide for myself what I believe and what I’m going to do about it.
Despite my busy day, William is careful not to keep me out too long. By dinner, we’re back in Thorne Manor, and then it’s a quiet evening and off to bed early. Which would be lovely if my racing brain would actually let me sleep. It’s not just my brain. Little Melvina is restless too, kicking and squirming, as if she senses my disquiet.
This is, of course, all her fault. Yes, I’m already shoving blame onto my poor unborn child’s shoulders. The fault, I think, lies with impending motherhood. Or maybe just hormones. All I know is that five months ago, I enjoyed a glorious newlywed summer with William, unhampered by thoughts of what havoc my existence might wreak on history. We spent most of our time holed up in Thorne Manor—on one side of the stitch or the other—and we interacted with the outside world no more than we needed to do to establish our story as a newly wedded couple.
But then I returned to Toronto, and as my belly grew, I began to think more and more of myself as a mother, and with that came an additional sense of responsibility. It didn’t help that I was teaching Victorian history, constantly reminded of the impact people and their actions have had on our past.
Lying in bed that night, my brain ping-pongs from one side of this debate to the other.
One minute, I decide I’m overthinking it. Making too much fuss out of nothing. Hubris, even, to think that my actions could impact history.
Then the next minute, I’m a fretting ball of nerves, setting guidelines and rules for myself, treating William’s world like a museum I’m visiting. Stay on the paths. Do not touch the exhibits. Do not cross the ropes. Remember that I am a guest in their world, there to observe and . . .
And do nothing that might actually make a difference, even a difference for the better? If I do that, am I not like a wealthy visitor to the V&A, walking right past the donation boxes to take advantage of the free admission?
William has money. No, he’d correct me—we have money. His family had been in dire straits when his mother passed on. He’d barely been able to keep Thorne Manor, which had always been the family’s holiday house, with their primary residence in London. William had taken what little capital he still owned and invested in . . . well, he invested in me. In my words. In what he remembered me talking about when we’d been teenagers, all the advances of the twentieth century.
William figured out what industries would become most important, what new inventions were likely to succeed, and while he made a few ill-timed choices, his instincts and his intelligence were enough to make him a wealthy man, all his family’s debts repaid with a cash flow that would be the envy of his peers.
Ask William what he does with this fortune, and he’ll joke that he uses it very wisely—to allow him to hole up in his beloved moors, with his beloved horses, playing the reclusive eccentric and never needing to set foot in London except by choice. That’s true, but he also uses it for good. To help where he can in High Thornesbury.
How do I follow his example—which I desperately want to do—without interfering in history? Or, in worrying about interfering, will I do less good than I could?
These are the thoughts that have me tossing and turning. I wake with a few ideas for other ways to help Mary, but it doesn’t solve the problem long term. That I