Jack felt humor fade.“I’m not sure.Something is happening out there.Time keeps changing.We didn’t choose to come here.”
His dad’s brows rose in surprise.
“Some other force brought us here,” Mel agreed.She half frowned.“Could it be about the girl, the first one?”
“Ness?”Jack’s dad looked surprised, then thoughtful.“I remember I was afraid of her dad.”
Jack hesitated, then asked, “Her name?”
It was his dad’s turn to hesitate.He well knew the dangers of someone knowing your name, your date of birth.
“Ness Alastor,” he offered with clear reluctance.“Are you going to try to find her?”
Jack and Mel exchanged looks.
“We do love impossible tasks,” Mel said.“Anything else about her that might help?”
“I mostly tried to forget about her,” Jack’s dad admitted with clear guilt.
“It was a very human of you,” Mel said gently, patting his hand.
His dad patted her hand in return and Jack realized that he hadn’t introduced Mel, and his dad hadn’t asked her name.
“It’s better I don’t know,” his dad said.He looked at Mel.“I’m glad Jack has someone like you.”
Mel smiled and then half glanced in the direction of the house and Jack knew it was his mother she thought of now.“Do you want…”
“No!”They spoke together and then laughed, but Jack sobered.
“No.That pesky grandfather paradox.”
“Oh right.”Mel gave a sigh.“Well, I hate to break up the party, but I think we’ve learned all we can here and we’re liable to miss our ride if we linger.”
His dad looked like he wanted to ask, or perhaps see it, but he didn’t.
“Yes, you should go.”His gaze seemed to be fixed on Jack’s face.
“Will you remember this?”Jack asked.If they made it back to the future they’d left, his parents were gone.
“It’s hard to say, son.It’s hard to say.”
They started to leave and then his dad spoke one last time.
“I do remember one thing about Ness,” his dad said.“Her mother was Japanese, pure blood.It was a thing then.”
“A thing?”Jack wondered if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
“It made her special.It made Ness special.And beautiful.She was really beautiful.”
For a moment, Jack felt a pang for his mom, but Ness hadn’t been his dad’s first love.She’d been his first crush.
As they started back in the direction they’d come, Mel said, softly, “Japanese.”
He looked sharply at her then and after a few steps and some thinking.“Japanese.”He took a deep breath.“Surely not.”
“We need to find a way to check on Ty and Alice,” was Mel’s answer.
While Ness ate a sandwich and drank some soda, stopping several times to study the bottle as if it intrigued her, Alice considered the problem of how to find out what had happened to her.
