He was staring at his shoes as he walked me to my car. “So you have decided? You want to die and be famous in the world you leave behind?”
“No, Per. I just want to know there’s something worth living for.
I had to go back to my place. My gut demanded it, but my mind wouldn’t say why.
I couldn’t run away. Well, I could – running away had been what I’d been best at my whole life, frankly. Foster homes, jobs, relationships . . .
But holding the book I’d written in my hands and knowing I hadn’t lived to see it published, that someone I didn’t like much had taken my work and my passion and made it successful after I was dead because I hadn’t had the guts to eventrywhile I was alive . . .
Yeah. I had to go back to my place. I didn’t know what was going to happen there, but I wanted to have a say in what did.
Per didn’t talk much on the drive over.
He sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. When I glanced over at him I could see the muscles in his jaw working. I realized he was angry. I wasn’t sure why.
Finally he said, “You know why I came back?”
I should have asked that. “No.”
“I’ve been reading and rereading your books since I was fifteen. They changed me. They gave me a way of looking at the world that I don’t think I could have found on my own. I’m a better man because I read you than I ever would have been without you. And there are a lot of people like me out there, which is why your books are still selling. You said something that mattered.
“But,” he continued, “the whole story of how you died never felt right to me. Your lawyer fiancé—”
“Tyler has never been my fiancé. He’s someone I’ve gone out with about maybe six or seven times in the last four months. He belongs to the same writers’ group I do. That’s it.”
Per bit his lip and took a deep breath, and I realized my relationship with Tyler was beside the point at the moment.
“The maneveryone in my time thinkswas your lawyer fiancé told a good story. He had all the paperwork to prove you’d made him your designated heir and the executor of your estate. The signature on your publishing contract perfectly matched the signatures on everything else he had on his desk—”
“I never signed a contract,” I said.
“I know that now,” he said, and the muscles in his jaw jumped harder. I told myself to shut up and let the man finish. He said, “In my time, I went through everything available on your life, because there was this air of wrongness about your lawyer.”
I forced my mouth shut, but I thought, He’s not my lawyer, as loudly as I could.
“When I read the interviews that didn’t get wide coverage, I realized your Thorsday Night Writers were too surprised that the two of you were engaged, and absolutely flat-footed that you’d sold a novel and hadn’t even mentioned it at the last meeting you attended.” He glanced over at me, his expression unreadable. “So I became a field historian – a time-travelling researcher – because I needed the truth. Always in the back of my mind I held this tiny hope that one day I might be able to travel back to see you while you were alive. Maybe even talk to you. Nothing consequential, nothing that would change anything. But just . . . I held that hope.” His voice broke, and his body tensed.
I sat silent for a moment. “And now you’re doing something that is almost certain to change the future,” I said. “Why?”
“One week ago in my time, I made a registered trip back to this morning. A few hours from now. To your apartment. I’d spent the last two years building a case against Tyler Boothe Mayall being your legitimate heir, and I presented my case to the Head of Literature Research. Because you’re an important historical figure, my request to validate Tyler Mayall’s story about his association with you went through. I was allowed to come back here, set up recorders in your room and in Tyler’s home and office to document the specific details of your death and his actions following it. Once the recorders were in place, I had to leave. I couldn’t be in the room because just my presence could break the rules of historical engagement.
“I did the standard three-month forward-time transfer to a point when I knew both apartments and the office would be empty, and I dropped myself in, extracted the recorders, and went back to my own time.”
“One week ago – in my time – I saw the man who killed you break into your room, almost the way Tyler said it had happened. Except that prior to his breaking in, Tyler used his key to let himself into your apartment while you were still at the meeting, and unlocked your bedroom window. I saw him do it. And I saw the intruder . . .”
Per’s voice broke again. He took a deep breath as I pulled into the parking lot in front of my apartment. The apartment in which an unlocked window would be used by a murderer intent on killing me.
I’d never given Tyler a key to my place. But he had spent a night over. Had brought me breakfast the next morning. Had left the house to do it.
Per said, “The intruder slapped duct tape over your mouth while you were sleeping, and then . . .” He shook his head. “He brought both a knife and a gun. You didn’t die quickly. It was the . . . horrific details of your murder that made your death famous enough to guarantee immediate public recognition when your publisher overnighted your book to the stands. Several million copies of your first novel sold. The quality of your work – and Tyler flogging the tragedy of your death every time he and your publisher brought another one of your trunk novels to print – kept you a household name. But . . .”
He turned and stared into my eyes. “You weren’t yet dead and your killer was still busy with you when Tyler got there.”
“And tried to save me?”
We sat there in the parking lot, in the dark, and Per took my hand, and held it tightly between both of his. It was as if our hands had been created just to fit into each other like that.
He said, “No. Tyler told the killer to hurry up, because he had other things to do.”
