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For a little while, they remained quiet, darting out of town and out toward the rolling hills of daffodils and the beaches they’d once loved. When the silence got too powerful, Eloise turned on the radio, and, miraculously, The Beatles’ “She Loves You” was on, as though the past had come up to bite them and remind them of where they’d come from.
“I can’t believe it,” Herb said with a laugh.
Eloise smiled and bit her lower lip. After a long pause, she said, “I couldn’t listen to The Beatles for years.”
“Me neither,” Herb told her, his smile falling. “It hurt too much.”
Eventually, Herb parked the truck at the edge of a gorgeous beach, then got out and beckoned for Eloise to follow. It was now, miraculously, late in the morning, nearing noon, and April sunlight was powerful and glittering across the sands. Eloise hurried toward him and walked alongside him, her hand swinging just a few inches from his. Again, just in case, she checked his left hand for any sign of a wedding ring, then remembered he’d told her that his wife had left many years ago.Was his ex-wife insane? Hadn’t she known what she’d had?
“I can’t believe you’ve been in Nantucket all this time,” Eloise said softly, surprising herself by getting so close to the subject they both seemed bent on avoiding.
Herb glanced her way, his expression pained. “You should have been here, too.”
Eloise remained silent.
“I tried to look for you,” Herb continued.
“When?” Eloise was surprised.
“When I was eighteen,” Herb explained. “I finally got it out of your father where you’d gone, and I called your Aunt Maude. But she told me that you had gone to community college and that you’d met someone else. She told me to leave you alone.”
Eloise’s throat was tight. “And you listened to her?”
“No,” Herb said. “I did everything I could to find you after that. I called several community colleges in her area. I scoured telephone books. But after a year of searching, my parents begged me to give it up and move on. It seemed clear to everyone that you didn’t want to come back to Nantucket.”
Eloise’s eyes filled with tears. She’d always thought that Herb had washed his hands of her.
As they walked in silence, a dramatic wind surged off the Nantucket Sound and ripped through their gray hair. Eloise was reminded of a long-ago day when they’d walked just like this, swapping stories about Paul, John, George, and Ringo as though they were their dearest friends. How could she create a portal and go back to that day—before so many things had changed?
“Gosh.” Eloise stopped short on the beach and peered down along the water. “I didn’t realize we were so close to The Copperfield House.”
Herb laughed gently. “I hadn’t realized we’d been walking for so long.”
“When I’m with you, it’s like time doesn’t exist in the same way. Does that make sense?”
Herb locked eyes with her. “I always felt like that when we were teenagers. It’s weird to feel it again. I thought I’d left that way of thinking deep in the past. But here it is. It must just be you. You’re the secret to time travel.”
Eloise’s cheeks burned with embarrassment. “I’m not the secret to anything.”
Herb and Eloise remained staring at one another as the Nantucket Sound winds cut through them and wrinkled their jackets. Eloise felt the question billow up from her stomach and surge into her mouth. Before she could stop it, it entered the air.
“Did you ever find out what happened to her?”
Herb’s eyebrows were low. “What do you mean?”
Eloise was nervous, shivering. “Our baby. What happened to our baby after we gave her up for adoption? I asked about her at the downtown records office, but Jeremy Farley said there was nothing.”
Herb’s eyes swam with tears. His face was tight, filled with wrinkles, and he turned to continue walking down the beach, as though he wanted to run away from the question. This filled Eloise with dread.
“Herb, please. Tell me. What happened to her?” Eloise begged, her voice a whisper. “I’ve dreamed of her every single day. I was never able to have children with Liam, even though we wanted them so badly. She’s the only baby I ever had. She’s it. And my love for her is so hard to carry because there’s so much I don’t know about her.”
Already, they were nearly in front of The Copperfield House. Herb remained quiet, his feet moving forward through the sands. His face was gray with panic.
“I imagine her as a teacher or a lawyer or a musician or…” Eloise stuttered with disbelief, unsure of how to illustrate any of this pain. “I never even told Liam about her because I didn’t want him to know that he was the problem. It was his fault that we couldn’t get pregnant. And that was okay! I told myself that God had other plans for us.”
Eloise was rambling, and she felt that Herb no longer wanted to hear anything she said. But then, just as Herb turned to her, his eyes strange, there came the sound of a woman from the back porch of The Copperfield House.
“Dad? Dad, is that you?”
