If you were to read a record of this new life, would that change things? Were someone from your objective past, now the future, to read of the intervening years of which Ellen and I know, would such knowledge be for good or bad? Would such a record fall into the hands of some unscrupulous person who saw opportunity for wealth and power in changing the past to alter the future or the present?
“I don’t think history is locked in bronze; or, perhaps, graven in stone would be putting it better. Not now, not anymore.
“Ellen and I discussed this a lot, and she’s less of a buttinsky than I am, as you well know. We finally agreed to let people know—before it was too late—what your today and my yesterday/ tomorrow were/will be like. Ellen and I wrote. I became afraid. In frustration, I nearly burned all that we wrote, the videos which we taped, the still photographs. But I didn’t.
“I don’t know how to tell you to determine whether there’s something odd about the world of your present, whether time seems out of order or something like that. When you enter the past, you’ll have to make that determination for yourself, whether or not to leave a record.
“As I was about to burn our work, the records of everything, I came across where Ellen and I had noted that more than eight million Jews, not to mention the Poles and the Gypsies who also died, were killed by the Nazis during World War Two. If our writing could save only one of those innocent women and children, by alerting the future to Hitler’s evil intentions, I couldn’t pass up that opportunity and, instead, have even one of those deaths on my conscience.
“Once you’ve entered the loop, you and Ellen and David and Lizzie will have to determine such matters for yourselves.
“I am running out of time. If you are careful, you may have more of it than I.
“On the plus side, at least Ellen and I figured out why this happened/will happen. Maybe.
“There were/are/will be a lot of things wrong with the last half of the twentieth century. By changing events just a little—without trying— people who knew what was going to go wrong might be able, a little at a time, to make things go right.
“Maybe.
“Why is it us, the Naile family? Ellen and I don’t have a clue.
“Our advice?
“We have no advice to give you, really.
“It would be wrong to tell you specifically what happens; or, at least, we think it is/was/will be.
Anyway, just reading this will change your future in the past.
“I think.
“Suffice it to say, we can note three things which will hopefully ease your mind:
“1. Love does endure beyond the confines of time.
“2. Keep your faith in your family.
“3. Cheat time; you’re good, but not as good as
the knight of the sorrowful countenance. Bring the
Seecamp.
“Point three is included because I believe that I am dying and wish for you to avoid that fate; there is still too much to do.”
Lizzie looked up and there were tears at the corners of her eyes. “It’s signed ‘Sincerely, who else but me/you?’ He was—you—dying?!”
Ellen folded her daughter into her arms.
Jack cleared his throat.
The reference to the knight was, obviously, to Jack’s fascination with Richard Boone’s character in the television series Have Gun—Will Travel.
Jack, his voice little more than a whisper, said, “Shine the flashlight on my hand.” David and Lizzie turned the two flashlights on the palm of their father’s right hand. In it was the little pistol he had carried for so long and had thought about leaving behind: the Seecamp .32.
David moved the flashlight to shine on the palm of his hand. He held part of a wall outlet. “Just like the ones in the Suburban.”
Lizzie was into full-scale tears. David—almost tentatively—touched at his sister’s shoulder. Ellen felt Jack’s head come to rest against her own.
CHAPTER
FOUR
There were two messages waiting for them at the motel. The first was from Arthur Beach. Jack read it aloud, raising his voice over the drumming rain cascading down on three sides of them from the covered portico where the Suburban was parked outside the motel lobby.
“I finally discovered ownership of the property in question. I can’t imagine how you wouldn’t have known, since, from the name at least, the owner would sound to be a relative. The listed ownership is Horizon Enterprises. Horizon is a corporation wholly owned by Alan Naile. Because of the similarity of names, I checked