Timeless

CHAPTER 33

“I did that for about a year, hated it, quit as soon as I could, and got a job at a used bookstore off-campus, which I liked more, but by then, I was pretty sure I was going to leave school, so I only stayed for a few months. I used to think that’s when I started getting into old things. Some of the books we sold were first editions. Those were rare. Most of what we sold were just old books that people didn’t want anymore, but it was a good job for me. And when I found the antique shop here, I wondered if the reason I was so interested in it was that I loved the old books we sold back then,” Quinn shared before she lifted her wineglass to her lips and took a sip.

“You know how I’m writing Cheryl and Diana’s story?”

“Yeah.”

Quinn pushed her plate a little toward the middle of the table to indicate that she was done eating.

“Well, I have to tell you something.”

“Abs, I thought we weren’t doing this tonight.”

“We’re not. Not really. You just brought up the shop.” Abby picked up her own wineglass and drank the last sip. When Quinn reached for the bottle and refilled it for her, Abby smiled softly at her and added, “Diana and Cheryl were here. They came to town to see if they could find Paul, just to see him one time. When they were here, though, they saw whoever must have owned the shop before you. The man was painting the name on the window.”

“They saw my shop?” she asked.

“Well, it wasn’t yours then, but yes.”

“I haven’t seen that vision myself. I wonder why you did.”

“Probably because I was writing their story, and it sort of just fell out of me.”

“They saw Paul…” she whispered to herself.

“He was happy, Quinn.” Abby smiled wide. “I saw his daughters and his wife when they did. He was happy. They were having ice cream, and you – well, in this case, Diana and even Harriet more than the Quinn you – gave him a sign so that he would know that his moms were okay, too. It was beautiful, and I cried. Then, my publisher called me, and I owe her Harriet and Deb pages, which I haven’t written yet because I can’t focus on them while Cheryl and Diana are talking to me.”

“I want to see him, too,” Quinn said.

“You will. I’m sure you will. Maybe when you read what I wrote for their ending, you will. I can bring my laptop in, or you can read it on my phone, if you want.”

“Abs…” Quinn shook her head.

Abby nodded and replied, “Right. Sorry. Not tonight. Tonight is about us.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about them… I love thinking about how you and I are connected. But, at the same time, I still want to know who you are now. I mean, here I was, thinking I’d chosen to buy that shop of my own free will, but, apparently, I only bought it because Diana and Cheryl came here once and saw it.”

“Hey,” Abby said softly as she reached for Quinn’s hand on the table and placed her own on top of it, giving it a comforting squeeze. “That’s not true.”

“You just told me it was , Abs.”

“It might be the reason you came to this town, and when you saw it was for sale, you had a previous connection to it, so you were interested… But do you honestly think that you would’ve bought a shop that they only saw in passing and made one comment about in their entire lives and still own it to this day? You were a pretty young business owner, babe; especially when it comes to owning an antique shop. You’ve had it for about five years now, and you just told me that you love it. You could’ve closed it down whenever you wanted. That building would’ve sold easily, given the town’s growth. Or, you could’ve leased it out by now, pocketed the money, and done something else with your life, but you haven’t done that. From what I can tell, no one in our past was an antique shop owner. You’re the first. Besides, you could’ve stayed in nu rsing school. Harriet was a nurse in the war. Diana was a nurse her whole life until she retired. I still haven’t looked them up yet, but that feels right to me; that she was a nurse until she retired. Anyway, you could’ve been a nurse. You went to school for it. But something told you that it wasn’t for you.”

“Yeah, probably that I had to be here to meet you,” Quinn suggested, stood, and picked up her plate as well as Abby’s to take to the sink.

“But you don’t get it, Quinn. You still could’ve met me. This town is growing, yes, but it’s not a thriving metropolis. We would’ve met. I was a bit of a recluse the first year after moving back, but you didn’t have to own that shop for us to meet. We almost ran into each other while getting coffee. We shop at the same grocery store; walk the same streets. We would’ve seen each other at some point. You don’t have to own that shop. You choose to own it as Quinn.”

Quinn put the plates in the sink and placed her hands on the edge of the counter, looking out the small window above it.

“This is what bothered you at first, isn’t it? That we can’t ever know if we’re meant to be as Quinn and Abby today or as them.”

“A little. I had the same thoughts about Cheryl being a reporter, a journalist. She’s a writer. I’m a writer.”

“Deb was a farmer,” Quinn countered.

“Because she had no other choice. Most of the women before her probably didn’t even know how to read, so there’s that.”

“Maria taught Isabella how to read. She knew because she was royalty. It was–”

“Something they did every night, whispering in their small room at the convent?”

“You saw it, too?” Quinn asked.

“No, but I felt it when you said it.” Abby stood and walked over to stand a few feet away from Quinn. “I know we weren’t supposed to talk about this tonight… I’m sorry for bringing it up. I just thought you’d want to know about Pa ul and the shop, but maybe it was the wrong time.”

“No, it’s fine. In a way, it’s nice. I can actually see it now.”

Quinn was in Diana’s mind, looking across the street at the old version of her shop.

“I can’t see Paul yet, but I can see the shop, at least. It looks nice with that paint on the window. Maybe I should do that. My windows don’t have anything on them.”

“I can help if you want,” Abby offered.

Quinn turned and asked, “You can paint windows?”

“I can buy paint and stencils so that we can both paint windows.”

Quinn smiled and said, “I might take you up on that.”

“Quinn, there’s another thing.”

“What?”

“They made a list. Cheryl and Diana. They had a list that they put into a book. It’s all the couples they think they’ve ever been.”

Quinn’s eyes widened.

“They made a list?”

“They couldn’t quite figure out when it all started, but they went back as far as the 1600s.”

“The princess,” Quinn said.

“But they also believed there were couples before them because Maria and Isabella spoke about it. It’s like the further we get from a previous couple, the foggier they get. That’s why Deb and Harriet are clearer to us than Antoinette and Dorothy.”

“Antoinette and–” Quinn stopped as the image of two women in the bathroom mirror, with the 1919 calendar in the corner, appeared in her mind. “The women before Deb and Harriet.”

“Yes,” Abby confirmed. “Before that, we can still see them and hear them, but not as clearly or not as much, so I think it was the same for Cheryl and Diana. I think they got stuck in the 1600s, so to speak, but there had to be couples before them.”

“I guess so,” she said .

“Do you not want to know about them?”

“No, I do, but… Abs, I think I’m just going to go.”

“What? Why?”

“I’m not sure I’m ready for this, after all. I thought… When you left and said that you needed time, I didn’t want to push, but then you showed up at my place, and I didn’t want you to go. I never wanted you to leave. I think part of that was me, but the other part was the fact that we’ve literally been married for decades, if you add it all up. Maybe even a century; I don’t know. I think I may need some time now. I thought we’d talk about us tonight. That was the plan. And now, I’m still picturing them . They’re happy, falling in love, reading to each other, seeing their son from another life, and here I am, standing in front of a girl, asking her to talk only about us .”

“I’m sorry,” Abby said softly. “I get like this sometimes. You should know that.”

“Like what? You talk about your past lives with other people, too?”

“No.” Abby smiled coyly. “I told you before, remember? I’m a writer, Quinn. This is part of it. I’m an anxious person as well. I also get obsessive about things and can’t get them out of my mind until I say them, do them, or write them down. So, what you’re seeing isn’t just me talking about our past. It’s me being me , in a way. I can’t help it. It’s why I investigated Deb and Harriet and wanted to know what happened to Paul. If you’d been anyone else, I wouldn’t have responded to a single text today. I would’ve put on my headphones, ignored my phone altogether, and just typed for hours and hours until my brain finally settled for long enough to remember that I needed to eat something.”

“So, this is you? Part of you ?”

Abby nodded and said, “Probably the most annoying part.” She let out a nervous laugh. “Do you still want to leave? Did I ruin it, like I’ve ruined everything else?”

“What? Everything else? What are you talking about?”

“Do you really want to ruin the night by letting me talk about myself for the rest of it? That’s how long it would take for me to get through the fact that I’m a disappointment to just about everyone, have a hard time going into a store I’ve never been to before, can’t stand to be in big cities, and hate having to attend those events I mentioned earlier.”

Quinn took a step toward her and said, “You can talk about all of that. It won’t ruin anything. I want to know who you are, Abby. All of it. Even if we don’t know where it came from, you’re still you. I want to know you .”

“I was never like anyone else in my family, Quinn. I guess you’d call me the black sheep. My parents love me; I don’t doubt that or anything. But they’ve never truly understood me. They wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer. When I told them I wanted to be a writer, they thought I’d never make a dime at it. They tried to get me into math and science instead of letting me take the creative writing courses I wanted, so I rebelled a little; made some mistakes as a teenager. Nothing major. Just skipping school, barely passing trig and chemistry, and smoking and drinking. That kind of a thing.”

“You smoked? Come on, you know that’s bad for you, Abs.” Quinn took another step toward her.

“I know.” Abby laughed. “I never liked it and stopped a few months in. My parents and the rest of my family are practical, logical people who don’t share a ton of emotions, so I grew up like that, too. Now, I’m being confronted with a whole lot of emotions at once, centuries of them, and it’s a lot. I’m processing it by writing stories and trying to find out the truth of what happened because that’s how I deal with things I can’t handle or don’t know what to do with.”

Quinn took another step closer to her, placed her hands on Abby’s hips for the first time, and said, “I would really like to hug you right now.”

“Hug me?” Abby chuckled a little. “Not anything else?”

“Oh, I want to do everything else, but I also really just want to hug you, Abs. Can I?”

When Abby nodded, Quinn wrapped her arms around her middle, pulled her in, and held her tight. A second later, Abby’s arms moved around Quinn’s neck, and it took her a moment, but then Abby settled against her fully.

It didn’t take long at all for Quinn to realize that she hadn’t ever felt this kind of completeness before. She didn’t even care about their past lives anymore. Right now, in this moment, she was just Quinn holding Abby, and Abby felt like hers.

“I…” Abby started, but then she just sighed instead, and Quinn could swear that she felt all the tension leave Abby’s body. “God, this is it, isn’t it?”

“What?” she asked, rubbing up and down Abby’s back.

“What it’s supposed to feel like. I’ve never just hugged someone before and felt this.” Abby went to turn her face to Quinn’s neck, and Quinn felt her lips rest there more than press to the skin.

“Neither have I,” she admitted.

“I don’t want you to go, Quinn. I want you to stay so that we can keep talking. I’ll quiet my brain down about everything, and we can keep getting to know each other. I want that. I want to know about your worst customer waiting tables, and your favorite book, and everything else, too.”

Quinn’s eyes went wide again, and she said, “The book.”

“Yeah, your favorite. What is it?”

“No, not that.” She didn’t want to pull out of this hug, but she had to because she needed to tell Abby something she thought might be important. “There were books in the box, Abs. Three of them. One was an old romance novel that looked totally out of place, but the other two were interesting. With everything going on, I just put one of them in the display and didn’t even bother putting a price on it. I was going to look them up to see if they were worth anything, but I forgot. The other one was weird, though.”

“Okay. So?”

“You said that Cheryl and Diana put their list into a book?”

“Yeah, they wrote it. Why?”

“I think I have it,” she replied. “I think it’s at my shop, in a box of things I still have to deal with.”