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“Yeah.”

He cranes his neck to see his wristwatch, which is on the coffee table amid a nest of stuff: a mug of cold coffee, his computer, an apple core, nail clippers and a scrawled list of jobs he needs to do for Gomez—Zach loves lists. It’s 5 a.m. I say, “You go back to sleep, I’ll take a bath.” I begin to get up, but Zach says, “C’mere,” and pulls me toward him. I lean down and kiss him.

“That’s weird,” Zach says.

“What’s weird?”

“You taste like cigarette smoke.”

“Yeah.” Here it is, the first lie about Oliver. I’ve lied to Zach before, but now I will lie and it will be for my own protection, not his. “Well, you know, the ’60s. I was in the employee lunchroom, people smoke in there. I found half a pack and felt like having one.”

“Huh.”

“I’ll have a bath, you sleep.” I get up, and Zach pulls the blanket around him. As I walk down the hall I see him reflected in the mirror on the bathroom door. He’s staring at the ceiling, frowning.

I run the bathwater as hot as I can stand it and immerse myself. I do not turn on the lights, so the bathroom is pinkish-gray in the early light. The hot water is a relief on my skin. I need to get my story straight. Why not tell Zach about Oliver? Because Oliver has suddenly become part of the Yellow House, and I do not tell people about the Yellow House unless I have no choice.

My heart is racing. I’m sure there are things Zach doesn’t tell me. Surely no married people ever tell each other everything? And I know Zach is tempted, tested daily: Zach is the kind of handsome that turns heads, female and male, as we walk down the street. He used to say that it was me they were looking at until a street vendor called out, Hey lady with the pretty husband, come on over here, we got watermelon! and everybody laughed. I am fine with the way I look; I look like my dad, but I have my mom’s gray-blue eyes. I’m angular and pale and my eyebrows are straight and a little heavy so I always look serious. Zach worries when people admire his looks. He feels a little funny about it. I’m proud of him, my sweet-tempered, bookish, beautiful husband. So why am I hiding an entire house and a time-traveling pianist named Oliver from him?

I exist in the space he doesn’t know about. What if I tell Zach everything, right now, before it happens? It’s obvious what’s going to happen. I could stop it, couldn’t I?

My dad always said no, you can’t change anything. It will all fall into place, the same again and again, or, rather, it happens once and we can’t change it. And I have never been able to disprove that. Even those of us who are let loose in time must abide by the rule: everything has already happened, and we cannot ever change it.

Has Oliver already happened to me?

When I am dried off and dressed I wander into the kitchen. Zach is making French toast, my favorite. I pour orange juice and make coffee. I wonder if Zach could taste the alcohol on my lips. We sit at the table in the breakfast nook and eat quietly. Tell him, I think. Tell him now.

“Look, Alba, it’s a pair of cardinals,” Zach says. Bright and dull red, the birds are at the feeder, which leans at a funny angle not far from our kitchen window. I look back at Zach—his hair is wild, he is unshaven and wearing yesterday’s clothes. I love him.

But I can’t tell him. It’s already too late.

Oliver Arrives

Wednesday, May 12, 1999 (Oliver is 16, Alba is 30)

Alba: It’s the middle of the night. I’m in bed in the Yellow House, not asleep but waiting for sleep. It was morning when I left my present and night when I arrived here and for the past three days I’ve been wildly at odds with daylight.

It is raining, a lashing spring rain that sounds as though the house is moving through a car wash; I can hear water pouring across the roof and overflowing the leaf-choked gutters. And then the rain slackens and I hear something else, a sound I have hardly ever heard in all the years I’ve been coming here: the doorbell.

The sound makes me afraid, and I think I might ignore it and stay in bed. But on second thought, I’d better at least go and peek at whoever it is, find out who’s drunk or desperate enough to stand on my porch ringing the doorbell (I’m surprised it still works) at three in the morning. I put on my bathrobe over my T-shirt and sweatpants and go downstairs in the dark.

The porch light isn’t on, of course, so I carefully part the blinds and peer into the darkness. There’s someone there, an indistinct shape slouched against the doorframe. It can’t be Oliver, he’d just come in the back door. But this is a man, drenched and naked, and something about him says Oliver, even though that can’t be right. I open the door, just a crack.

“Who is it?” I say.

“Yang Qing,” he says back in a scared whisper. I open the door wide and beckon Oliver into the house. He comes in hunching with his hands protectively crossed over his privates, cowering under my gaze; I avert my eyes. I take off my bathrobe and hand it to him. “Come in, get warm.” I flip on the hall light.

Gawky is the only word for him. He’s not as tall as he will be, but he’s so thin; he’s all ears, feet, enormous hands. His hair is as long as always, but soaking wet.

“Have you ever been here before?” I ask him.

“No,” he says. “It’s safe?”

“Yes, of course,” I say. “Come upstairs.”

He follows me up the stairs and along the hall to the end of the corridor where his bedroom is. I gesture to him, in here. He enters the bedroom with hesitation. I open the closet door. “This is yours,” I say. “The clothes. The room. All for you.”

Oliver has been stuffing this room with possessions since the 1950s. For the first time I see it as he must have, as an egg, a small contained space full of everything his young self will need or want, all the nutrients this starved boy requires to inhabit his future.