Timeless

CHAPTER 20

“A bby, do you want a slice of pie?” she asked again.

“Why is blackberry your favorite kind of pie, Quinn?” Abby replied.

“What, are you an apple pie snob or something?” Quinn asked as she hurried to find her bag, where she was pretty sure she had a T-shirt she could change into.

The tea had been over ice, which meant that she was now wet and freezing, but she was also very grateful that it wasn’t hot tea or coffee.

“Not an apple pie snob. Just wondering something.”

“I guess I was just born this way. Kind of like I was born gay, you know? Gay and a blackberry pie fan. Thank God!” she exclaimed as she found and pulled out a vintage T. “I only have one shirt in here. How wet are you?”

Abby’s eyebrow lifted, and that was more than enough to make Quinn blush, but she cleared her throat and returned to the task at hand, which was not thinking about Abby being wet for reasons other than their crash with sweet tea.

“Not what I meant,” she added. “But do you need this instead?”

“No, you’re worse off than me. And I’m going home after this. You have to work.”

Quinn nodded and lifted her wet shirt up and off her body, looking down at her sports bra and finding that it was wet, too, but not soaked through, so it would be salvageable until she could take it off later.

“Uh… Quinn?”

“Yeah?” She slipped on the dry shirt and looked over at Abby, who seemed perplexed.

“You just took your shirt off in front of me.”

“Sorry, are you an apple pie snob and a prude? It’s a shirt, and I had a bra on. ”

“No, but there’s a bathroom right there.” Abby pointed. “Why did you do it out here? Change, I mean.”

“I don’t know, Abby. I’m a little freaked out because I wasn’t expecting you to rush in here. I also stubbed my damn toe for at least the third time this week, so there’s that. It might even be bleeding this time. I get iced tea spilled on me, and then, I’m questioned about why I like the pie I like as if I’d committed some sort of pie crime, which I didn’t realize was a thing. So, I took off my shirt and put on a new one in front of you without thinking. Sue me.”

“You’re missing my point.”

“You have a point? I was convinced you were just trying to kill me with iced tea.”

“Why do you always smell like honeysuckle to me?”

“What?” Quinn asked, slowing down a little at that while she hung her old shirt over the side of a chair to dry.

“You always smell like honeysuckle.”

“I have no idea.”

“You smell it, too,” Abby stated.

“Yes, I do,” she replied honestly, wondering where Abby was going with this.

“And only when I’m here?”

“Yes.”

“Come outside with me.”

“What?”

Abby dropped the bag of food that Quinn hadn’t even noticed she was holding onto the packing counter and said, “Just… an experiment, okay? I’m freaking out, too. Big time. I need to see about something.”

“An experiment? Abby, what the hell is going on?”

“Please,” she begged.

“Okay. Okay. I have iced tea on my pants, and I think in my socks and shoes, but sure, let’s walk outside for some weird experiment.” Quinn motioned for Abby to go first.

“Thank you,” Abby replied on a sigh and walked toward the front.

“What the hell is going on?” Quinn whispered .

Ever since this woman stopped by for lunch and saw the second photo, Quinn had been confused, overwhelmed, and trying to get Abby to stop her relentless quest to locate some realtor who had dropped off some pictures. There were just too many coincidences where Abby was concerned, and while Quinn was normally someone who ran on vibes, she wasn’t sure if these were the right kind. Everything in her was screaming to follow Abby Brennon anywhere, but the visions, images, and coincidences around her were just too much for Quinn to handle. When her mother called to ask about Abby, Quinn had managed to put her off, telling her that Abby had gone out of town for work but that they were messaging and that she liked her. Most of that was true, at least, but she’d never felt this kind of connection to another person before, so while that was exciting, it was also a little scary.

“Okay. Here.”

Quinn turned and saw that Abby was standing in front of the shop next to her own and pointing to the sidewalk.

“Here what ?” she asked. “What is going on, Abby?”

“Come over here.” Abby motioned again for Quinn to move toward her.

Quinn let out an exasperated sigh and walked over.

“Okay. Now what?”

“What do you smell?”

“What? Abby, come on… I was working, and you just walked on in.”

“Quinn, please. What do you smell?” Abby repeated a little slower this time.

Quinn rolled her eyes and inhaled.

“I don’t know. Flowers.”

“What kind of flowers?”

“You know what kind,” she replied, staring into Abby’s gorgeous eyes. “Are your eyes brown or hazel?”

“What?” Abby asked.

“They look brown, but they’re, like, a different kind of brown.”

“Well, on my driver’s license, they’re brown, so there’s your answer, I guess. Now, can I have mine? Say it, Quinn; the flower.”

“Honeysuckle. No, I don’t know why I keep smelling it when I’m around you. I’ve probably only smelled that flower a few times in my life. So, unless you bathe in the stuff, I don’t–”

“I don’t even know that I’ve been near a honeysuckle flower unless I was in a flower shop and they had one, but I didn’t buy it. I don’t even know what that flower smells like; I just know that that’s what I’m smelling. And I have nothing at home that smells like honeysuckle. I know that because I’ve looked at every single bottle in my house twice.”

“Okay. Well, I don’t have anything that’s honeysuckle-scented, either, so…”

“Quinn, I only smell it when I’m around you, and we’re not in the shop, where we were also smelling it, so… process of elimination: you smell like it.”

“No, I don’t because I only smell it when I’m with you .”

“Something’s strange about that, don’t you think? The fact that we smell a flower, which we shouldn’t even know what it smells like, only when we’re with the other person. We both identified it as the same flower, and it’s not just floral to us because it’s a specific flower. That’s weird.”

“I guess so, yeah.” Quinn shrugged a shoulder, feeling her heart rate pick up and wondering why she never wanted Abby to leave.

She also wasn’t sure she could let Abby stay because if she said what she thought this was out loud, it might make it real.

“Can I borrow your computer?”

“What?” Quinn asked, unable to keep up with all the changes that were coming so quickly. “Abby, what?”

“Can I borrow your laptop? I need to look something up. Then, you and I really need to talk. Can you close the shop for a bit?” Abby brushed by her and hurried back into the shop.

“Sure, Abby. Let me just close my place of business to entertain the idea that you and I might have lived other lives together,” she muttered to herself and followed her inside.

She grabbed her computer while Abby knelt to clean up the cups and the melting ice off the floor, tossing everything into the trash before she washed her hands in the bathroom. When Quinn looked over, she caught the woman checking the damage to her clothes in the mirror before she wiped at her shirt with a paper towel as if that would fix anything. Then, Quinn got a vision of Abby standing in a different bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror.

“I have wrinkles now. I’m old,” Abby said in her mind.

Quinn walked up behind her and replied, “Well, I told you that I wanted to grow old with you.” She kissed her on the neck and wrapped her arms around her wife from behind.

“What the fuck?” she asked herself.

“What?” Abby said as she walked out of the bathroom and headed her way. “Can I search for something real quick?”

“Uh… Sure,” she replied and logged in, turning her computer to Abby as they both stood at the packing counter. “What are you looking up?”

“Them,” Abby replied.

“Huh?”

Quinn watched as Abby then entered a name that she recognized into her computer browser’s search bar.

“You’re looking up Deb?”

Abby turned her head to her quickly.

“Why did you call her Deb?”

“Why do you keep asking me why I’m doing anything?” she returned.

“Quinn, I’m serious. I just typed her full name. Why did you call her Deb?”

“I honestly don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know why I like blackberry pie, either. My mom never made it. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve even had blackberries outside of a pie. When I moved here, though, Mr.Potter brought me one in exchange for a stamp, and I’ve been addicted ever since. ”

“You could’ve called her Deborah or Debbie, but you called her Deb.”

“Yes, and I told you that I don’t know why.”

Abby tapped enter, and the search for Deborah Mary Stevens, née Wilson, returned several results. Quinn watched as she scrolled. Some of the results were obviously not the Deb she was looking for, but it was a common name, so that made sense. Then, Abby stopped and clicked a link.

“This is her.”

Quinn moved in closer and breathed Abby in. The flower was still there, but there was something else, too. It smelled like pine. She got a vision of trees and a river. There was an old-style lantern with a blanket and a basket.

“Oh, my God,” Abby said, bringing Quinn back to the present.

“What?”

“They died together.”

“Huh?”

“I wrote the ending of my book. I have more to write, but I wrote the ending because I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind.”

“We’re talking about your book again?”

“We’re talking about my book and this.” Abby pointed to the screen. “Quinn, Deb was a real person. She married a man named John David Stevens. She had a son named John Paul, just like in my story. She also loved a woman named Harriet. Look.”

It was an obituary from the town’s only newspaper that had been around since the early 1900s.

“Oh,” she said softly.

“Yeah, oh.”

“In a tornado?”

“The door on their cellar broke, according to this,” Abby said. “The two of them died. They were survived by their son, Paul.”

“Weren’t you just telling me that you’d prefer a tornado to an earthquake? ”

“I don’t even know why I said that. It felt weird. But the truth is that I would prefer a tornado to an earthquake. The moment I said the words, though, it felt wrong to say that out loud. I can maybe guess why now. But, also, in an earthquake, what are the odds that I’d die in the arms of the woman I loved?” Abby asked as she continued to stare at the screen. “They were found holding on to one another.”

Neither of them said anything for a while. Likely, they both needed to process the fact that Abby had basically written the real-life love story of two women, with neither of them knowing that they were real people, along with the fact that they were also having visions of things from the past, which neither of them could explain. Then, Abby nervously cleared her throat, and Quinn waited for what she’d say next, hoping that Abby had the answers that Quinn had been searching for herself.

“Why did you just compare me to Deb, Quinn? You said that I’d just told you that thing about tornados.”

“At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I don’t know.”

“But don’t you?”

“No, because I can’t know that.”

“Quinn, you do. You know what this means, just like I do.” Abby turned to her.

“When did they die? What was the date on the obit?” Quinn asked.

Abby looked back at the computer and said, “Oh, no.”

“What?”

“1950. They only had a few years together. God, in my mind, they grew old together, but it looks like Harriet came back from the war, and they only had about five years.”

Quinn swallowed and asked, “Are you getting them, too? The visions?”

Abby turned to face her and replied, “Yes. You?”

Quinn nodded and said, “I don’t know what it means, Abby. It could all be a coincidence. Those women in the photo don’t even look like us. But when I get the images in my mind, it is us. It’s you and me, and we’re–”

“In love,” Abby added softly.

“Not just in love. I thought I was in love once. But if this is love, I was very, very wrong because the way I love you, it’s–” Quinn stopped herself. “The way Harriet loved Deb, I mean – it’s different. It feels special, epic, soulmate-level stuff, meant to be, or, I don’t know, timeless.”

“That’s how it feels when I’m back there, too, wherever there is. It’s like I’m so madly in love with Harriet, or Deb is, at least, but I’m here, and it’s too much. All I can do is write down their story, and even then, it’s still all too much.”

“At least you can write it down. All I can do is think about it.” She looked over at the bathroom. “I just got this vision of you standing in front of a mirror. It’s you, but not, and it’s me, but not. You’re telling me that you have wrinkles and are getting old, and I come up behind you and–”

“Tell me that you’ve always wanted to grow old with me?”

Quinn took a step back. Abby covered her mouth with her hand.

“I got that one on the way here,” Abby revealed. “In my car. It was so real, Quinn.”

“Did it… actually happen?”

“Did you see it?”

“See what?”

“In the corner of the room, there was a calendar.”

“No, I was… I was too busy staring at you. Or Deb, I guess.”

“It said that it was 1919. That’s what I could make out, at least.”

“1919? Then, it’s not Deb.” She pointed to her laptop. “This says she was born–”

“It wasn’t Deb,” Abby interrupted. “Whoever it was would’ve been at least forty or forty-five in that vision. It felt like she just started noticing her first wrinkles to me. It can’t be Deb.”

“So, who is it, then? Abby, who the fuck are we seeing like we’re them or they’re us? What is going on here?”

“We can keep digging, keep trying to find out. Maybe Paul is still alive. He would be pretty old, but there’s a chance he’s still around. We could ask him.”

“Ask him what , exactly? If he recognizes us? How would he? We don’t look like the women who…”

“What?” Abby asked when Quinn faded out.

“Was Harriet a nurse?”

“Yes, in World War II. She was a Marine. Why?”

“I went to nursing school,” Quinn reminded.

“Right! I forgot. Wow! And your mom’s middle name is Louise. If we keep digging, I’m guessing we’re going to find a lot more like that and the blackberry pie.”

“What does the pie have to do with any of this?”

“Just think for a minute. I’m sure it’ll hit you.”

And there it was, an image of her making a pie with someone who she knew was her mother, only it wasn’t Quinn’s mother. The house wasn’t Quinn’s house, either.

“Did I make them for you?”

“I think so, yeah,” Abby confirmed. “And Paul, too.”

“Abby?”

“Yeah?”

“Is he still… alive?”

“Do you want to find out?”

Quinn nodded. Something inside her was imploring her to find out if Harriet and Deb’s son was still alive. It felt like he wasn’t just the son of those two, though. He was her son, too, somehow, and Abby’s as well. It made no sense, yet it made perfect sense at the same time. Quinn hadn’t ever felt so connected to another person before, romantically or not. It was as if she and Abby were actually meant to be connected.

Abby turned back to the computer, and after she typed his name into the search bar, Quinn took Abby’s hand into her own, entwining their fingers, and there was that feeling, even stronger now.