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But Amy was absolutely alone in trying to save Tristan. Zoë spent every day with her clothes off, drawing nude pictures of her boyfriend, and Faith was the local healer.
“Tell me what secrets are eating at you,” Tristan said as he sat down by her and took her hand in his.
“I can’t—”
“Yes!” he said. “Amy, you cannot keep this up.” He put his hands on her shoulders and
turned her to look at him. “I know I am not your husband—would to God that I were—but I am not. But I am here and he is not and I am taking his place.”
When she moved back from him a bit, his fingers sank into her shoulders. “Do not look at me like that. I think I have shown you that I will not force myself on you. If nothing else, I have too much pride for that. Amy, do you think that I do not see what is happening to you? Have you looked at yourself in a mirror?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer. “You have lost over a stone of weight and your face is drawn. Your clothes hang on you. Your eyes are sunken into your face and you look twenty years older than you did just a week ago.”
He moved his face closer to hers. “I admit that I want you for my lover, but if I cannot have that, then I want you for my friend. You tell me that you have a recurring dream that I will be found dead, but I think it is more than that. Dreams fade with the daylight. I want you to tell me what is making you so ill.”
“Or what?” she said, her face just inches from his.
“Or nothing,” he said. “There is no threat between friends. I care about you and I want to know what is wearing you down.”
She wanted to talk to someone. She wanted help from someone. She’d tried to get that help by bringing two women with her, but she may as well have come alone for all they were interested in Tristan.
“Everyone thinks I’m so strong,” she said. “My husband, Stephen, and now Zoë and Faith, think I’m a bulwark of strength, but I’m not. I lost a baby and…”
When she trailed off, he moved back on the blanket until his back was against a tree, then he extended his arm to her. “Come and let me hold you while you tell me all of it. I know what it is like to lose a child.”
She told him. The sun set, the stars came out, they finished the wine and the food, but still, they stayed there and Amy talked. She told him about losing the baby, then how her husband arranged for her to go to a cabin in Maine to stay with strangers.
Tristan said nothing. For a long while he didn’t ask a question. She told him about the bookstore and the book that said he’d been killed.
“It was not a dream,” he said, as though reassuring himself that he’d been right all along.
When she got to the part where she found herself in a barn and she was in another time, his arm tightened around her, but he said nothing.
When she finished, she turned to look up at him. The moon was out and it bathed his face with a silvery light.
“If all that I know did not fit with what you have told me, I would not believe you. But I have noticed more than you think and I believe that what you tell me, impossible as it is, is true.”
He moved so he was facing her. “I want to hear every word about your world. What is different in your time?” His eyes were bright with excitement.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Amy said. “If I tell you about my world you’ll write it all down and it’ll mess up the future.”
“Is the future so perfect that it could not stand a little of what you call ‘messing up’?”
“Actually, I think it could stand a lot of changing, but I don’t think I’m supposed to do it.”
“What makes you think that? Did the witch who sent you here warn you of doing anything to hurt the future?”
“No,” she said. “We were given three weeks to change the future. My future, that is, and I truly believe that you’re somehow connected to my future. Faith and Zoë get to go on their own trips back to whenever they want. From the way things are going, maybe they’ll want to come back here for three more weeks.”
“Perhaps I’m to go to the future with you.”
Amy looked at him in horror. “And do what? Sleep in my guest room? I don’t think so.”
Tristan got up to stand on the grass. He put his hands behind his back and began to pace. “If what you say is true—”
“As opposed to my being a lunatic.”
“Exactly,” Tristan said. “If this is true, then you are to change something here. To that end, you already have.”
