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“You set a limit.”

“You agreed!”

“Actually, I don’t recall responding at all. I may have said, ‘Hmmm.’” He stops and gently guides me one more step from the hardwood floor to the thick rug in the middle of his living room. Putting both hands on my shoulders, he turns me toward him. A second later, he grazes my lips with his. “Let me spoil you.”

“Ben—” I whisper.

“I don’t care about what you get me. I’m a quality time guy. Every second we’re together is a gift to me.” He cups my cheeks in his hands, bringing me toward him for another kiss.

“I so regret making you take that love languages quiz,” I murmur, making him laugh. “Especially since you didn’t pay attention. Gift giving is not my language.”

“Yeah, but it’s the one I speak.”

I roll my eyes, which he can’t see underneath the blindfold, and lean forward into him.

“Okay,” he says, pulling away. “I can’t wait any longer.”

He spins me around, and I laugh at his impatience to give me this gift. He undoes the blindfold.

I furrow my brows as I stare at the mirror leaning against the couch. It has a gold, French-looking filigree pattern around the edges, and like so many I encounter these days, it’s spotted black with age.

I turn to look at him, skeptical. Ben wouldn’t toy with me, but… “Surely Burke and Cooper haven’t agreed to let you take me on a trip in the past just for a Christmas present?”

“Not just any trip,” he says, fighting a smile.

“What’s going on? Where does this lead to?” Then the answer hits me like the final, crashing notes of Stravinsky’s “Firebird.”

“Your mother.”

I shake my head in response. We can’t travel. Not without specific permission that Dr. Cooper and Burke are unlikely to give unless they need something. “We can’t,” I say in a choked voice. No way would the two men allow this. I remember Dr. Cooper’s words to me in New York. Definitely not until we know more. Ben has researched everything he can, but we still have no more evidence than we did before about my parents’ ability to time-travel—a forged birth certificate and a county record of my birth long before it should’ve been recorded.

“We can.” He reaches for my hand, gripping it in his. “You were correct in guessing that your mother used her time-traveling ability in consulting for her job. I looked over her records and then researched the time periods she may have gone to. Six years ago, she wrote up a detailed account of a women’s suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., that took place in 1913. Recognize anything?” He holds up a grainy picture, a square of what looks like a section of a larger picture, blown up, and circled in red pencil—a very familiar hat.

I can’t help the laughter that bubbles up. “How did you find this?”

Ben grins. “Searched for a hat instead of a face during the time period. From all the research I’ve had to do, she was meticulous about staying invisible in the past. The only picture her face appears in in the past is the one Quint showed you.”

“You must have spent so much time doing this,” I whisper, turning from the picture to study him.

“I knew Burke and Cooper would only let you go back if we had specifics and a plan that won’t interfere with too much in the future. If you went back to The Villa in 1911, you’d run the chance of seeing the Allens and yourself in the past—same as if you go back to your recent past just before they died—but that was the only time we knew your parents were in the past for sure. I had to find another time.”

“I can’t believe you convinced them…”

“I had to present them with a specific plan and argue the merits of the information you’d gain,” he says with a somber laugh. “We have two hours in Washington, D.C., on March 13th, 1913.”

I gape and look back at the picture crowded with women. “Two hours to find her in this?” My heart clenches, as though the chance to see my mother is slipping away.

“Agent Porter made some calls to analyze the full picture. Based on shadows and some math concepts I can’t understand, she was here just after four p.m. We’ll find her, I promise.”

I throw my arms back around Ben. “Best Christmas present ever, Ben. I don’t know if you can ever top this.”

He winks as he hands me a box. “How about this?” he teases.

I shake my head as I lift off the lid. “If I could go back in my jeans without Burke and Cooper tossing me in prison, you know I would.”

He nods to the corset lying on top of the lacey white blouse and straight green skirt with three buttons on the side. “At least this time you get a corset that fits you. And authentically vintage clothes that Willis found.”

“Merry Christmas from the whole team,” I murmur. I set aside the box and throw my arms around Ben. “You are amazing,” I whisper.