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  “You two want to help build it?” Madison asked.

  April looked at Ryan, who smiled.

  “We’ll have to talk about that,” April said, smiling. She wasn’t sure how exactly she felt, but now that the lodge was possible, she wasn’t sure how she could turn the chance down.

  “So what exactly happened on that first trip back for you and Dawn?” Ryan asked.

  Madison shook his head. “I only know the good parts. We had a wonderful trip from here to Roosevelt, after we got over the stiffness from riding horses for the first time in years. Dawn and I completely fell in love along the way.”

  “And you still are,” April said. That much was clear to her. And one of the things she really liked about the couple.

  “We are,” Madison said, smiling. “Pretty amazing after seven hundred years, huh?”

  “It is,” April said and Ryan nodded.

  “We spent a wonderful three months in Roosevelt in a huge cabin that Duster had built ahead of time for our trip. He had gone back into the timeline a year earlier to set it all up.”

  “I thought that’s what he said wasn’t possible,” Ryan asked.

  “We were all on the same connection, same trip out,” Madison said, shrugging. “I honestly don’t understand all the math. Gives me a headache.”

  “I’m starting to understand that feeling,” April said.

  “Right about the first week of September, I got hit with a boulder coming off a hill up by the Dewey Mine. Killed my horse, broke my leg really badly. Duster got me off the hill and back to the cabin and that’s the last I remember until I ended up standing next to Dawn in the crystal room without pants on. They told me they kept me knocked out with drugs until I died.”

  “No pants?” Ryan asked, but April understood.

  “Common to bury people without pants on,” April said, smiling at the man she was falling for, “since only half the casket was able to be opened back then.”

  “No casket for me,” Madison said. “Dawn and Janice and Steven just rolled me into a hole up in that cemetery and filled in the dirt.

  “Where were Bonnie and Duster?” Ryan asked.

  “When I got hurt,” Madison said, “Duster took off to come back up here and unplug the machine and bring all four of us back to the cavern. Instant health care.”

  April nodded. “Same as we were brought in from outside by Bonnie.”

  “Exactly,” Madison said, nodding. “But he was on a train above Emmitt, Idaho, when it derailed and he died when his car went into the river. He was asleep and didn’t even know what hit him until he ended up back here as well.”

  “And Bonnie?” April asked, almost afraid to know.

  “When Duster didn’t make it to Silver City, I was still alive but getting worse. Bonnie didn’t want Dawn to have to bury me on the first trip back, so she somehow made it over the pass and out. But near Caldwell a snake spooked her horse and bucked her off and she broke her back and ended up spending the winter in the Caldwell Hospital.”

  “In 1903?” April asked and actually felt herself shudder. She had read about hospitals in that time period out west.

  “She said she worked on a lot of math in her head that winter,” Madison said. “She would have died in a few more months, but Dawn buried me in the fall and managed to get through the long winter in Roosevelt and get back here and unplug the machine and bring us all back. Duster arrived puzzled, Bonnie in a very smelly hospital gown, and me without pants.”

  “And Dawn didn’t tell you anything about how she made it through that long winter in that mining town?” Ryan asked.

  “She said she would rather not talk about it,” Madison said, “and until today, it got sort of forgotten in all the other trips back.”

  “Seven hundred years of living will do that for a person,” Ryan said, nodding.

  April still couldn’t imagine living that long. She was still young and healthy, so she never much thought about death, even dealing with so much of the past as she did every day in her profession.

  But she had never once thought about living a long, long time.

  And basically being immortal in that past period.

  And only having a few minutes here, in her real world, go by.

  By the time she and Ryan asked Madison a few more questions and then Madison said it was time for dinner, she was convinced she wanted to try to go back into the past.

  She loved everything about the past. And she knew Ryan would want to build that lodge himself.

  And she wanted to be the one to furnish it.

  And live in it with Ryan, if he would have her.

  From the memory of that kiss this morning, she had a hunch he would.

  At least for a time.

  And it seemed that suddenly, they both had a great deal of time.

  As Madison went off in search of Bonnie and Duster, April turned to Ryan and took his hand in hers.

  “Want to go build and furnish a big lodge?”

  “Are you asking me on a date?” he asked, smiling.

  “I am,” she said.

  “Then the answer is yes,” he said, smiling at her. “I want to go build a lodge and I want you to furnish it. I’m not sure I understand half of what has been said here so far, or how most of this works, but I’m willing to learn if you are.”

  “More than willing,” she said, “and scared to death.”

  “Yeah, me too,” he said, squeezing her hand. “So we’ll get through it together.”

  She reached forward and pulled him close and kissed him as hard as he had kissed her this morning before the presentation. She just couldn’t believe how much she had come to like this man over the last two months.

  After a moment, Madison cleared his throat and walked by them. “Not over the steaks.”

  April pushed back slightly then, smiling at Ryan, she said, “We don’t want to leave out the salad, do we?”

  “No, we don’t,” Ryan said, smiling back with that wonderful grin that she could look at for a very long time.

  So she kissed him again.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  July 19, 2015

  THE DECISION, after the long and wonderful steak dinner among the eight of them, was for Bonnie and Duster and April and Ryan to head back to Boise, get a few hours of sleep, pack some clothing and come back to the mine early the next day.

  Ryan liked that idea. He felt he needed a little time to get grounded and seeing the office and Boise and his apartment again might help that.

  The other two couples would stay. Janice and Steven said they had a few more trips to take on research and Dawn and Madison said they’d love to go with them.

  Ryan had a hard time imagining that in the time it took him and April to head back to Boise, get a little sleep, and then come back in the morning, those four could spend hundreds and hundreds of years living in the past.

  Maybe more.

  And maybe die a few times in the past as well.

  When he actually let himself believe all this, the amount of knowledge and understanding the four of them would gain in the time it took him to go to Boise and come back made him slightly jealous.

  But living that long in that short of time really wasn’t something he could grasp just yet, even though the idea excited him more than he wanted to admit. He loved living and he loved learning and this seemed to be the perfect opportunity to do a lot of both.

  April sat beside him in the back seat of the big Cadillac and it was dark by the time they got down off the mountains and headed back toward Boise. They were holding hands like kids on a date and it felt right as far as he was concerned.

  On the drive, Bonnie turned in her seat so she could see them both in the dashboard light and explained to them what kind of clothes to pack and bring. Mostly socks and underwear, since not much time would pass in this timeline. She and Duster already had a few changes of clothes for him and April in the cavern that would fit the late 1890’s style
s and they had ordered specially made shoes and boots for them that would pass in the time period as well, even though they were modern made.

  “You thought we would decide to go back?” April asked, clearly as surprised at that as much as Ryan was.

  “We hoped is all,” Bonnie said. “So better to spend a little and be prepared ahead of time.”

  “Just make sure you bring those plans,” Duster said. “Make a couple of copies that we can fold down and put in saddlebags.”

  “So what are you thinking for this first trip?” Ryan asked.

  “I’m going to go back alone to about 1890,” Duster said, “and see if I can get that land secured and a bunch of land around it. Then Dawn and Madison will follow around 1898 into the same timeline, then Bonnie and you two and Janice and Steven about 1900.”

  “We’re going to build the lodge?” April asked, squeezing Ryan’s hand.

  “For the first time,” Duster said.

  Bonnie laughed since she could see his face and April’s face.

  “Remember,” she said, “every time we go back, if we want the lodge to exist, we have to build it again.”

  “Of course, with what Janice and Steven discovered, that might not be the entire story,” Duster said, shaking his head. “So we’ll see about that.”

  Ryan sat there, his stomach twisted up in a knot. Again he had understood that idea that people couldn’t exist at the same time in the same timeline, but what about the lodge.

  Something about the lodge existing in so many timelines bothered him but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  “You mean we are going to have to build and furnish the lodge every two minutes and fifteen seconds?” April asked.

  Ryan glanced at her. She looked as upset as he felt. And was feeling exactly the same thing. His mind wouldn’t let him understand living a long time in another timeline.

  Duster laughed and Bonnie just smiled.

  “In this timeline, yes,” Bonnie said. “Only two minutes and fifteen seconds will go by, but you will remember all the work and time it took to build the lodge.”

  “We’ll make sure we document everything,” Duster said, “so the second and third times we can do it quicker. And we’ll know who to hire the second and third times and who not to.”

  “In this timeline,” Bonnie said, “we might build and furnish that lodge five or six times tomorrow.”

  “But in the timelines that we build the lodge,” Duster said, “you can live in it for an entire lifetime and your children and grandchildren can live in it and you can die of old age in it.”

  “Yeah, tomorrow alone,” Bonnie said, smiling at both of them, “we all could live four or five hundred years.”

  Duster was chuckling, but Ryan and April just sat there and Bonnie smiled at them. Ryan was very glad that they were now on open paved highway, because he felt almost dizzy.

  “Lifetime?” Ryan finally asked.

  “Children?” April asked.

  Bonnie nodded. “When you move into the other timeline, you are actually there, living, just as anyone else in the world. When were you both born?”

  April said, “July 1982.”

  “January 1982,” Ryan said.

  “We were both born in 1980,” Bonnie said, nodding. “So you two can live in the past right up to 1982. Then the timeline will spit you out and you’ll end up back at the mine. However, to live to 1982, you are going to have to live to about 112 years of age or so if we go back in 1890.”

  “And when you die,” Duster said, “no matter when, either young or of old age after seventy years of living, you end up back at the mine as Madison and I did in that first trip with Dawn and Madison.”

  “Children?” April asked.

  Bonnie shrugged. “Again, you are alive in that timeline completely. If you have kids there, they keep on and have kids and so on.”

  “Will they vanish when we come back?” April asked.

  “Oh, heaven’s no,” Duster said, laughing. “They are part of the timeline, even if you step back to this one. They are there and part of that timeline.”

  “Think of it this way,” Bonnie said. “If you had a child here, now, would that kid suddenly vanish because you went to another timeline for a while?”

  Ryan so wanted to ask if Duster and Bonnie had had children, but he wasn’t sure if that was beyond the bounds of what was allowed.

  April glanced at him and also said nothing.

  “Wow, you two really have some restraint,” Bonnie said, smiling.

  Duster laughed and got them onto the freeway headed toward Boise. “Madison and Dawn damn near climbed all over us when they heard kids were possible in other timelines.”

  “Have you?” April asked, looking at Bonnie.

  Bonnie smiled. “Let’s just say that there is more than one timeline where we have left families when we died and returned here. We take back modern drugs with us, but childbirth in the past is not something you want to do lightly.”

  “Do you miss your children?” April asked.

  Bonnie nodded. “Of course, but by this point in time, only great-great-grandkids would still be alive. The kids would not. And living hundreds and hundreds of years sort of dulls the memory of some things you would rather not remember.”

  “Time can give you a real headache, can’t it?” Ryan asked, doing his best to grasp what they were telling him.

  “Parts of it can,” Duster said, nodding.

  “Most of it is just living,” Bonnie said. “When we go back in another timeline tomorrow, we’re going to try to build and furnish that lodge you two designed. It’s going to take years of living and work and fun.”

  “And I plan on spending some time in the lodge after we build it,” Duster said. “My feet up on that deck staring out at that fantastic view and drinking good wine and whisky.”

  He then glanced over his shoulder. “So which suite did you two design for me and Bonnie?”

  “The big one at the end of the hall on the Monumental Creek side,” Ryan said.

  “Good one,” Bonnie said. “I had my eye on that one.”

  “And for Dawn and Madison?”

  “The one on the same side closest to big room,” April said.

  “So Steven and Janice can have one of the other two across the hall with the view in the other direction,” Duster said, “and you two can have the other suite.”

  Ryan glanced at April and she was looking at Duster sort of stunned.

  It might have been just a touch early for them to think about living together.

  But honestly, Ryan liked the idea. He liked it a lot.

  He just hoped April would as well.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  July 20, 2015

  APRIL FELT NUMB when Bonnie and Duster dropped her and Ryan off at their office. It was after midnight, but it felt a lot later. Lifetimes later, but that would come tomorrow if what she had seen was right.

  And Duster said he would pick them up right here at eight in the morning.

  His last words as they climbed out of the Cadillac: “We’ve got a lodge to build tomorrow and some lifetimes to live.”

  They both stood there and watched the big white car drive off until the silence of the warm evening finally just seemed far too loud to stand. The air hadn’t cooled off completely from the warm day and there was no wind in the trees.

  After being in the cavern and then in the climate-controlled Cadillac, she had forgotten the day had been a warm summer day.

  In the distance, there were sounds of some college kids laughing. On the other side of their office she could hear the echoed conversation of a couple strolling along the River Walk.

  “Oh, my,” she said softly.

  “I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck,” Ryan said.

  “It’s not possible to grasp everything they threw at us today,” April said, shaking her head. “Just not possible. They can’t expect us to, can they?”

  He took her hand and turne
d her toward the sidewalk. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

  They had both walked to work that morning, since they lived close to the office. They both had cars, but she seldom used hers, and never to drive the four blocks to work.

  He lived about two blocks away in a slightly different direction. About a half-block from his place was an all-night restaurant. They had eaten many great evening meals in there talking. She suddenly realized it had almost been five hours since that dinner and she needed some food and conversation with Ryan right now.

  “Something to eat?” she asked.

  “Good idea.” They went in a slightly different direction through their building’s parking lot and down the hill, both walking in silence. She just needed to walk with him and think and try to get some sort of perspective. Around them the warm summer night of Boise was going on.

  That helped a little.

  Within ten minutes they were in the noisy, but comfortable, restaurant and tucked in the back facing each other across a brown fake-wood tabletop. It was one of their regular booths and that felt good as well.

  She sat there silently until the waitress left with their drink order. Then she looked up at the man she had worked with for two months and was falling for. His hair was mussed slightly and his shirt was open and his wonderful eyes troubled. Yet he was the most handsome man she had ever seen.

  And one of the smartest and most gentle men she knew.

  All she wanted to do was spend time with him and the fact that he was in this with her made most of this seem all right, even though it was completely impossible.

  “So,” she said, reaching across the table and taking his hands in hers. “You want to live with me in a giant lodge in the Idaho Mountains about a hundred and fifteen years in the past?”

  “Honestly,” he said, nodding and holding her gaze, “yes, I do. But we have to build it first.”

  “Details,” she said, shrugging and smiling at him.

  It took him a moment, but then he laughed and she could feel some of the tension draining from her shoulders and back.

  “So what part of all this don’t you believe?” she asked.