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“May I help you?” he spoke.
“Yes,” Isabella said, walking up to the vitrine he stood behind. “I was hoping you could take a look at a coin for me.” She pulled her shilling out of her jeans pocket. Liam, who was browsing the shop a moment ago, joined her by her side. Isabella placed the coin onto the glass countertop.
“I sure can.” The man leaned over with his beard touching the counter, squinting with one eye while the other one widened. “Let’s have a closer look, shall we?” The shop owner pulled out a pair of thin, round glasses from underneath the countertop. For some reason he didn’t put the glasses on, but simply held them in front of his eyes. “Hmmm…” He picked up the coin, holding it between his thumb and index finger and against the ceiling light as if he was staring at a diamond. “Weird…” He was scratching his head with a dazed look on his face, then shifted his gaze to Isabella. “Where did you get this coin?” he asked, turning the coin several times.
“Inheritance,” Liam said before Isabella could respond.
“Will you excuse me for a moment?” The man disappeared through the doorway just to pop back out again, now followed by a tall, skinny man in his forties. “Sorry about that. This is my son, Benjamin. I just wanted him to take a second look at this.” The old man handed the coin to his son who, just like his father, held the coin against the light. Both of them seemed intrigued.
“Is there something the matter?” Isabella tilted her body over the vitrine, trying to get a better look, curious to see what had caught their attention.
Benjamin laid the coin on a dark-blue satin cloth on top of the vitrine. From underneath the countertops, he pulled out some sort of a lamp and placed it over the coin. It lit up the coin, engulfing it in a bright white light. “To be honest, I have never seen anything like it…” Benjamin was now scratching his head, just like his father.
“What do you mean?” Liam stepped in to get a better look as well.
“Here.” Benjamin handed Isabella a magnifying glass.
She grabbed it and leaned over the coin with it. “You see,” Benjamin pointed at the coin, guiding her gaze toward the top edge of it. "This is an 1881 Victorian ‘Young Head.’ A shilling with Queen Victoria on it. There is no doubt about it. I’ve held hundreds of those in my hands before…” He pursed his lips into a contained smile like he was proud of it.
“Okay… So…?” Liam wondered about the ‘but’ that had to follow soon, considering the fuss the father and son were making here.
“But… Here is what makes absolutely no sense.” Benjamin pulled another coin out of the vitrine and placed it next to Isabella’s. They looked identical in size and shape, but the colors of the two coins were totally different. “This is an 1884 German Mark coin. Those two coins are identical in weight, size, and silver content.” Isabella looked up at Benjamin. “But they look so different…” Benjamin’s father stepped in.
“Precisely why it makes absolutely no sense. The Young Head should have similar tarnish stains to the German Mark.” Liam now raised his eyebrows.
“But look. The Young Head looks brand new. Not the slightest scratch or tarnish. No matter how well you take care of a coin, there will always be some sort of discoloration. It’s inevitable. It’s the course of time.” Benjamin chuckled in amusement. “This makes no sense. I have never seen anything like it.” His father nodded in agreement.
“Is the coin real? Possibly fake?” Liam asked, which made Isabella for a moment look at him a certain way.
Benjamin, on the other hand, seemed offended. “Sir, I have held thousands of fake coins in my hands before, and I can tell this to you, this one is a legit 1881 Young Head.” Benjamin now crossed his arm to his chest. “I happen to know a thing or two about coins you know.”
“Yes, of course. We never doubted that,” Isabella said with a warm beaming smile from cheek to cheek, breaking the tension which had made Benjamin somewhat flustered. He took the coin back in his hand, looking confidently cool with a touch of swag.
“I agree with my father. This coin is real. But you are more than welcome to have the silver tested. This coin is 92.5% silver, unlike today’s coins. I bet my shop that it will come back as Heathrow silver, a mine in the north of Scotland that has long been shut down.”
Liam’s hand twitched in disbelief. Undeterred, he asked just to be sure. “But what if somebody melted another coin and made a new one from the same silver?”
Benjamin handed the coin back to Isabella. “A forgery?” Benjamin’s gaze shifted to Isabella who seemed displeased. “It would be close to impossible to replicate this exact print pattern to this level of perfection. The effort and money that would have to go into it… I doubt anybody would go to that much trouble. As I said, it’s highly unusual to see a coin like this. In this condition, it’s worth a fortune.”
“There is nothing like it,” Benjamin’s father chipped in. “It’s almost like it leapt through time,” he joked with a big grin. Isabella smirked with a slight ‘I told you so’ look on her face as she peered over to Liam, who seemed to struggle grasping all of this. She knew why. He brought her here to be told that her coin was just a regular collector’s item. He brought her here to get her one step closer to the doctor’s office. A step further away from the crazy idea of time travel. In his eyes, all of this must be going horribly wrong.
“Thank you. I really appreciate your help,” Isabella said, sliding the coin back into her pocket.
“Would you consider selling it? Name any price, I’ll pay it,” the owner said with bright eyes, eager to hear her response. Money was a struggle for her right now. She hated the fact that she had to live off of other people’s kindness. However, selling the coin was beyond unwise. What if there was more to it? This coin was the only thing that tied her to her own time, besides her dress and the jewelry set she had given Dan, who still argued with her over it as she refused it as payment for her clothes and insisted she was safekeeping it for her.
“I’m afraid I am very attached to the coin. It was my mother’s—” The memory hit her like a carriage speeding down the road at full speed, literally. For a moment her heart stopped. Her throat felt rusty and her mind was running in circles again.
“I understand.” Benjamin said, pulling her out from the murky depths of her mind. “But please come back to us first if you ever consider selling.” He nodded, with pursed lips that contained his disappointment.
“I will. Thank you again for your time.” Isabella, and an awfully quiet Liam, walked out of the shop. She didn’t dare to look at him. She wondered what was going through his head right now. He must be as confused about all of this as she. At least now she was certain she wasn’t insane. For the past few days, her mind had started to waver. But now she could finally put that to rest and focus on the most important part. How in the world did she get here?!
Liam opened the car and got in. Isabella took a deep breath before joining him inside. There was thick air around them, suffocating both of them, demanding to be cleared away.
“Liam, I’m sorry.” That’s all she was able say.
He let out a heavy sigh. Wide eyed, he shook his head while staring out of the side window. “There is nothing you have to apologize for. I just don’t understand…” Isabella leaned toward him.
“I don’t understand any of this either. I really don’t. One moment I was in my time, the next, I was here, with you.” She caught a glimpse of his face from the side mirror. His lips were pressed together, eyes furrowed. He was utterly lost. Isabella hated seeing him like that. She would do anything to get him out of this state of desperation. And she knew just the thing to do that.
