Tin Men (The Clay Lion Series Book 2) Read online

  Downstairs, I found Melody engrossed in a novel on the family room sofa, our cat Felix curled up on her lap.

  “Hey, Charlie,” she said absently as I entered the room.

  “Hi.” My mind raced. I tried to remember my training. “What do you have going on tonight?” I blurted out.

  She peered at me over the top of her book. “I thought I was going to the movies with you and Brooke. Did you change your mind about taking me?” she asked.

  Much to my surprise, I immediately remembered some of what happened during the previous timeline. I’d worked the breakfast and lunch shift at the country club, and taken both girls to see an abysmal chick flick that night. We stopped to pick up fast food on the way to the theater where I ate a chicken sandwich, and Melody spilled ketchup on her shorts.

  I tried to recover. “Of course not. I just didn’t know if something might have changed for you. You and your friends always have impromptu slumber parties popping up out of nowhere. It’s hard to keep up!”

  “No way. I really want to see Love Sparkles. I’ve been looking forward to it all week.”

  I suppressed a groan, remembering how much I hated Love Sparkles. “Okay. We’ll leave in half an hour. I’ll treat you to dinner before if you want.”

  “And Brooke too?” she asked excitedly.

  “Yes, and Brooke too.”

  She closed her book and tossed it on the floor. “I’ve gotta go get ready. I’ll meet you outside.”

  Dinner went exactly as it had the year before. I ate a chicken sandwich. Melody spilled her ketchup. I smiled as she did it, knowing it was coming. I hoped the majority of the timeline I wasn’t planning on changing would be enough to counterbalance the parts that I was. I considered allowing Melody to spill the ketchup a small victory.

  After I dropped Brooke off at home, I made the first significant change to the timeline as I placed the letter to herself in her own mailbox. My hands shook as I slid the envelope inside, knowing there was no turning back.

  “What was that?” Melody asked as we pulled away.

  “Nothing important,” I replied. “Just a love note.”

  She scrunched up her nose as if she smelled something rotten. “Gross,” she said.

  I chuckled to myself, knowing how her opinion of love would change over the course of the next year.

  At lunchtime the following day, my cell phone rang in my pocket as I was reprimanding the kitchen staff about the cleanliness of their stations. I excused myself into the dining room where I immediately checked the caller ID and saw it was Brooke.

  For a split second, I didn’t want to answer the call. I was scared she was angry. I was nervous she’d be unwilling to help. I was petrified of losing her.

  I pressed the call button.

  “Hello,” I said cautiously.

  “Is this real?” she asked, bypassing all formalities.

  “Yes.”

  “So what you’re telling me is that a year from now your father is dead, but he’s not really your father because you were adopted, and so we’ve been trying to find your birth mother, but she’s dead too, and now you’ve come back here to find her and you want me to help?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea how many problems you’ve just created for us?!” she screamed at me without raising her voice.

  “Yes. You told me.” I paused. “You told me everything.”

  There was dead silence on the other end of the line. I thought for a moment she hung up.

  “We have to do this carefully. And you can’t tell me stuff like that. That I told you about my trips. You can’t tell me anything more about the future than is absolutely necessary. Knowing too much about what’s going to happen can ruin both our lives. It’s the reason not telling people you’re from the future is such an important rule. You remember that section of class?”

  “Of course,” I acknowledged, remembering the lecture on the dangers of knowing too much and the lives it destroyed.

  “And we have to meet during times when we weren’t with other people the first time around. If you skip out on lunch with your mom to meet with me, you may be causing something catastrophic to happen in her life. You get that, right?

  “Yes.”

  “So then the best time to do this would be when we were already together, by ourselves, in the initial timeline. I’ll only do this with you if we try to minimize changes in other people’s lives. Promise me.”

  “Agreed.”

  More silence.

  “This is crazy,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Whose idea was it to come back?”

  “Melody’s.”

  “And whose idea was it to use the letter to tell me what was going on?”

  “Melody’s”

  “Smart kid. You’re gonna need my help so you don’t screw this up.”

  “I know. That’s why we knew I needed to tell you. Or you needed to tell yourself.”

  She paused again. “You were already coming over tonight to watch the ballgame with my dad, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you stay for a while after the game last time?”

  I smiled, remembering our evening together. “Yes.”

  “Were we alone?”

  “Yes.”

  She sighed. “Then I guess we can start searching tonight. Try to keep as much as possible the same with my family while you’re here before then, okay?”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “So does this mean you’re helping me?”

  “Of course I’m helping you,” she replied. “What other choice do I have?”

  She was right. I hadn’t really given her any other options.

  “Tonight then?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “See you tonight. And Brooke… I love you.”

  “Love you too,” she replied.

  It was difficult to carry on a normal conversation with Brooke’s dad as we watched the baseball game together. He kept trying to spark discussions about individual player’s batting averages, and who should be pulled from the bullpen, and why the team needed a new manager. I remembered our animated dialogue during the first timeline, and tried to recall what I had said before, but unfortunately this time around, baseball was the furthest thing from my mind. By the end of the game, instead of being on the edge of my seat, screaming at the television as I had in the previous timeline, I found myself distractedly watching the clock, despite the fact our team was ahead 3-2 in the bottom of the ninth inning.

  As soon as her father excused himself to bed, Brooke curled up beside me on the sofa with her computer propped on her lap.

  “Well,” I commented offhandedly, “this is a far cry from what we did together after the game last time.”

  “Oh yeah?” She smiled knowingly at me. “Just what are you making me miss out on?”

  “Not internet research, that’s for sure,” I laughed, pulling her into my arms. “As much as I’d like to focus more on you and less on this, I only have two weeks, so we need to move as quickly as possible. There’ll be plenty of time for canoodling once I get back.”

  “Is that what we spent our time doing? Canoodling?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “That’s disappointing,” she said. “I feel like I’m getting ripped off.”

  “Welcome to my world! Now you know how I felt when you told me we had an entire relationship I never knew about!”

  “Touché,” she said, punching me in the arm. “I guess I can give up a night of canoodling. You owe me though.”

  “Noted.” I kissed her safely on the forehead so as not to cause us any further distractions. “So, can we finally get started?”

  “Yes,” she replied, pulling up her web browser. “I spent some time alone this afternoon while Mom and Dad were at work and snooped around online for Victoria.”

  “And?”

  “And I found some stuff.”

  “You did? I can’t believe it. There wasn’t a tr
ace of her in the future.”

  “Well, there is now. I found a couple of random pictures of her from high school, and then I found the bank account.”

  I was puzzled. There hadn’t been a single photograph of her when we searched together in the present timeline, but there she was, a very young looking Victoria in front of me on the screen. I took the computer from her.

  “What the heck?” I said, tracing her image with my finger. “We never found these. They’re gone a year from now.”

  “You really shouldn’t tell me stuff about the future, remember?” She leaned her head back against the sofa and stretched out her legs. “But that is awfully strange.”

  “Tell me about it. Someone must have taken them down between now and then.” I handed her back the laptop. “So what’s the deal with the bank account?”

  “The deal is it gets money directly deposited into it every month.”

  “For real?”

  “For real.”

  “How in the world did you get into this? You need a password.”

  “I had a password.”

  I shot her a look of disbelief.

  “Finding the account was easy using the social security number you gave me. I just cross checked it with all of the large, national banks and it came right up. I cross referenced it with the other information we have on her, and once I knew it was her account, I just started trying passwords. Got in on the third try.”

  “Don’t tell me…”

  “VICTORIA1234.”

  “No.”

  “Yup.”

  I stared at her incredulously.

  “That was almost too easy. So does it have her address and telephone number?”

  “No.”

  My shoulders slumped.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s no address. Or phone number. I couldn’t find a listing for her anywhere.”

  “Then we’ve hit another dead end.” I felt a knot forming in my stomach.

  “Not necessarily,” she said, turning the screen toward me. “Take a look at this rather long deposit and withdrawal history.”

  I began scrolling down the screen, scanning my mother’s account record. Every month, on the first of the month, $1500 was deposited into her account from an unnamed source labeled ‘offshore.’ Withdrawals were made frequently, in $500 increments, from an ATM in South Carolina. I searched through nine pages of history before turning from the screen.

  “How far back does this go?” I asked.

  “Eighteen years.”

  I quickly calculated that I was two years old when my mother began receiving money into the account. The amount had never changed. Every month, on the first of the month, she received $1500. I cringed.

  “What do you think all this means?” she asked.

  I shook my head. It was throbbing and my nausea continued to grow. “It means someone’s been paying my mother off for something since I was two years old. Around the same time my parents adopted me, she started receiving these payments. Something’s not right.”

  “No,” she agreed. “Something’s not right.”

  The light-hearted mood we shared only half an hour before was washed away by a wave of suspicion.

  “More secrets,” I said, unable to keep the frustration out of my voice. “Every time I think we’re getting closer to finding some answers, we just end up uncovering more secrets. My father’s secrets are still following us around, even now that he’s gone.”

  Brooke reached out to take my hand. “I can’t believe he actually died,” she said.

  “Well, he did. And it’s been a real party ever since,” I replied, my voice thick with sarcasm.

  She hesitated and I could tell that she was gauging my mood. She laid the computer on the floor and crawled into my lap, her legs straddling my hips. The weight of her body immediately grounded me and I pulled her into my chest, grateful for her presence. For a moment, the reality of what I was doing seemed unfathomable, and I imagined if I wished hard enough, I could make all my troubles simply disappear.

  “So what should we do now?” she asked finally.

  I considered our options. With the help of her research, we finally identified where my mother was living. We also knew each time a deposit was made into her account, she showed up to the ATM at her local branch to make a withdrawal within 48 hours.

  The first of the month was only two days away.

  “You up for a road trip?” I asked her.

  C HAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Twenty minutes into our drive south on I-85, neither of us spoke. I knew Brooke was nervous about diverting from the original timeline in order to make the trip to South Carolina. Although we vowed not to spend time away from the people we were with the first time around, when we discovered my mother living so far away, she couldn’t stand the idea of being left behind. She changed her mind 15 times before deciding at last to join me, but in order to minimize the impact on the timeline, she only took two days off work. We also decided to reserve a rental car for her to drive back in the event my mother didn’t make an appearance by the time she needed to return home.

  Even with meticulous planning, her furrowed brows revealed her anxiety, and after nearly half an hour of silence, the droning hum of the tires on the asphalt began to drive me insane.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said reassuringly, reaching over to tuck a tendril of hair behind her ear.

  “I hope so,” she said without tearing her gaze from the sea of lodgepole pines out the window.

  “You’ll see. Nothing catastrophic is going to happen because we aren’t where we were the first time around. You said yourself your parents have been working long hours. I’m pretty sure it was just the two of us these two days the last time. Have a little faith, huh?”

  I studied her profile as she continued to stare out the window. There was a sadness etched in the lines of her face that had been there since the day I met her. Only after learning about her trips did I come to appreciate that the artist behind those lines was an unbelievably tragic series of events which included more heartache than any one person should have to endure. As the sun poured through the window, transforming her hair from chestnut to the color of a newly minted penny, it occurred to me that I’d never seen her looking more beautiful.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  There was nothing I could say or do to convince her that our timeline would be unchanged when I returned to the present day. It was a testament to her love for me that she had even agreed to come along to find my mother. I knew how difficult it was for her to risk making changes after everything she’d been through in her own life, and I was suddenly overcome with pure adoration. I didn’t deserve her and I knew it.

  “Brooke?”

  She turned to face me, hearing the concern in my voice. “Yeah?”

  “Marry me.”

  For a moment, she was in total shock, as if a rug had been pulled from beneath her and she was now struggling to regain her footing. As I watched her recover, a series of emotions - disbelief, joy, and excitement, flitted like a movie projection across her face. I was discouraged to see the emotion she settled on was fear.

  “Are you serious?” she cried. “You can’t ask me that! Not now! Not here in the past! You’re going to change everything!”

  “I can’t help it,” I replied. “I love you. I want to be with you. Forever.”

  She hesitated but a small smile played at the corners of her mouth. “You do?” she asked, softening.

  “Yes. I do.”

  She considered me from the passenger’s seat and leaned over to kiss me curtly on the cheek.

  “I love you too, Charlie. But we can’t have this conversation now. Maybe when you get back. But not now. You’re just going to have to be willing to put this topic on a shelf until later. Can you do that?”

  I looked at her. She was grinning now. Smiling for the first time in four days. It was a beautiful sight.

  “So is that a yes?” I asked.
>
  She punched me in the arm. “If you want your answer, you’re going to have to make sure I’m still around when you get back so I can give it to you. That means no more craziness!”

  “So I get an answer when I get back?”

  “If you haven’t ruined everything with your pigheadedness, then yes.”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  We drove in silence for several miles, but I felt pure joy radiating from her side of the car as we continued on our journey south. I stole a glance at her out of the corner of my eye, and knew immediately that I didn’t have to wait for my answer until I got back. My answer was written all over her face.

  Our stomachs were growling by the time we stopped the car a few miles short of the Georgia border. We found a fast food restaurant just off the interstate and ordered from the drive thru so we could take our food to recon the bank before it got too late.

  We pulled up across the street from the address listed on Brooke’s GPS and parked in a side lot.

  “That’s it,” she said, nodding toward the bank entrance.

  I stared at the nondescript front door flanked by two decorative urns. The bank could have been any bank, in any town across the country. But it wasn’t just any bank. It was special. It felt almost sacred as I watched patrons coming and going through the entrance. I knew the only person on earth who held the knowledge of my past would be coming to this particular bank, and as we got out of the car and crossed the busy four lane street, I approached it with reverence.

  The ATM was on the corner of the building, facing the opposite street. There was no line, and I strolled by casually in an attempt to keep from drawing attention to myself. However, as I passed before it, I felt as though it was pulling me in. I stopped and tentatively touched the screen.

  “She comes here all the time, Brooke. My mother, Victoria Weddington, uses this very ATM to withdraw the money from whatever benefactor sends it to her.”

  She wrapped her arms around my waist.

  “And she’s not dead yet. She’s still alive here in the past.” I took a deep breath, reflecting on the enormity of what I was hoping would transpire in the days to come. “I might meet her tomorrow.”