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  “As smooth as it gets when flying over these mountains,” she said.

  She looked at Ryan. “Enjoy the drive up?”

  “Never been on a road like that before,” Ryan said. “But beside the cramp in my hand from hanging on to the door handle so hard, it was actually enjoyable.”

  “You ought to have seen it before it was paved,” Duster said, laughing.

  “No thanks,” Ryan said. He didn’t even want to pretend to imagine that road not paved.

  “That room is wonderful,” a woman’s deep voice said from behind him and again Ryan scrambled to his feet.

  Duster also stood.

  “Dr. Marr I presume?” Duster asked, extending his hand.

  “Just Talia,” the woman said, shaking Duster’s hand as Ryan tried to catch his breath. The woman was the most attractive woman he had ever seen. How was that possible?

  The woman stood just a couple inches shorter than Ryan and also had on jeans and tennis shoes, plus a white Wisconsin sweatshirt over what looked like a red blouse.

  She had short blonde hair and the brightest green eyes Ryan had ever seen.

  He had no idea Dr. Talia Marr was so good-looking. Stunning, actually.

  “Talia. Call me Duster.”

  “This is Dr. Ryan Saddler,” Duster said.

  Talia turned to shake Ryan’s hand and both of them just sort of froze, staring into each other’s eyes.

  Finally Ryan managed to shake her hand, which felt wonderful and smooth and silky.

  Then somehow in slow motion he was sure, he nodded. “Please just call me Ryan.”

  He was beyond happy that his voice didn’t crack.

  She nodded. “Talia.”

  At that moment, a woman with three drinks on a tray came out of the lodge and broke the moment. Thankfully.

  Somehow, Ryan managed to get seated again before his knees gave out or he fainted dead away from not breathing.

  He had never had a reaction about a woman like that before.

  Ever.

  It must have been the high altitude and clean air.

  CHAPTER THREE

  December 24th, 1995

  Boise, Idaho

  THE URINE AND disinfectant smells of the nursing home washed over Carl like a wave over a child on the beach.

  He grabbed the doorframe and held on, feeling dizzy, confused.

  A moment before he had been standing in front of the jukebox at the Garden Lounge, playing a stupid game that Stout, the owner of the bar, had insisted on playing. Carl had that memory firmly placed in his mind, as well as the memories of the last twenty years.

  Yet he also had fresh memories of driving to the nursing home this Christmas Eve. Memories of wishing he could go back to college, wishing he could do something to put Mother out of her pain and suffering.

  And a very clear, very fresh memory of his decision to help her die with some dignity as she had asked.

  It had been a Sunday afternoon, right after the second stroke. She had not only asked, she had begged him to help her if another stroke took her mind and left her body alive. That had been her worst fear.

  Yet he hadn’t done anything.

  The part of his mind that remembered the Garden Lounge knew that she had suffered three more strokes.

  He had been too afraid.

  He squeezed the doorframe until his hand hurt. Christmas music played softly down the hall. “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” the same song he had just punched up on the jukebox at the Garden Lounge.

  How...?

  This made no sense.

  He forced himself to take a deep breath and look around. There was a white-haired nurse sitting behind the counter at the nurse’s station. His mother was in her bed across the small room. Slight, wasted remains of the woman she had once been. She no longer recognized him or anyone else from her life. Most of the time she sat in a wheelchair and just drooled, her head hanging limp.

  The doctors had said she would never recover from the series of strokes. Carl knew from his memory of the Garden Lounge that she would spend the next five years in that bed and chair. He would grow to hate this room, hate his own fear, hate his own inability to do something to help her.

  He glanced over at his own hand against the doorframe. It was his hand all right, only young. No scar where the broken window cut it last year. No deep tan from being outside for so long.

  He was somehow in his young body, his old memories combined with his young ones. He felt dizzy with the conflicting memories and thoughts. His mouth was dry.

  He could really use a drink.

  From down the hall the song reached its halfway point and Carl felt panic filling his mind. Stout and that damn jukebox of his had given him a second chance. An opportunity to do what he had always wished he had done. Now he was wasting it by doing what he had done the first time.

  Nothing.

  He took a deep, almost sobbing breath.

  This time would be different.

  He checked the hall and then moved across the room and around to the other side of his mother’s bed. She smelled of urine. The nurses would change her diapers many times in the next five years, and many times he would be forced to help.

  “This is what you wanted, Mom.”

  He swallowed the bile trying to force its way up into his mouth.

  “I’m doing what you asked.”

  He pulled the edge of the pillow up and over her face, pressing it hard against her mouth and nose.

  “I love you, Mom,” he said, softly. “I’ve learned to be strong. I hope you would be proud of me.”

  She struggled, trying to twist her head from side to side. But he held on, wanting to be sick, wanting to let go, wanting to let her breathe, but not wanting her to suffer day after day for five long years.

  Finally the tension in her body eased and her head became heavy in his hands.

  Very heavy.

  He gently stroked her soft hair as he held the pillow in place for another fifteen seconds. Then he eased his mother’s head back into a more comfortable position.

  He stood up straight and took a deep breath, never taking his gaze from the face of his dead mother.

  A feeling of sadness filled him at the same time as a lightness, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  “Thanks, Stout,” he said out loud as the last faint chords of the song died and took his future memories with it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  December 24th, 2015

  Boise, Idaho

  AS THE LAST few notes of the Bing Crosby song faded into the carpet and booths of the Garden Lounge, the air shimmered as if a heat wave had passed though the room.

  None of the plants moved.

  And Stout felt no heat.

  But he knew what it meant.

  He glanced around the room. Fred was sitting where Carl had sat, and the planter that Carl had built under the east window was gone, replaced with two chairs.

  Carl wasn’t coming back, that much was clear.

  During the song, Stout had calmed the other three men down, explained that Carl had gone back into a memory. Then, on the excuse of Carl needing a drink when he returned, Stout took Carl’s glass and moved over to the jukebox.

  Stout had stood there with one hand on the cool chrome of the jukebox for the last half of the song.

  He glanced down at the glass with Carl’s name in his hand. So it had worked. Anything anyone held if they touched the jukebox stayed in this timeline after the switch. Good.

  And because Stout was touching the jukebox, he still remembered Carl. Carl had changed something in his past and his new future no longer brought him to the Garden Lounge.

  Stout hoped it was a good new future for him.

  Stout studied the jukebox to see if anything had changed. Damned if he knew how it worked. He had just taken it from storage in his old bar and fixed it, put a favorite record in, and the next thing he knew he had found himself facing his old girlfriend, Jenny, in his young body.

  Scared him so bad all he did was sit there and stare at her. He had wanted to be with her more than anything else, but he had not had the courage or the desire to ask her to stay with him. On their third year of being together, she had gone back to college while he stayed in their hometown to work. That semester she had met someone else, and by Christmas she was married to that other someone.

  The song Stout had played on the jukebox had been their song. It had been playing the afternoon he had had a chance to stop her leaving. And that was where the jukebox took him and left him for the entire length of the song.

  The next day he played the song again and the same thing happened again. He did nothing but sit and stare at her.

  He didn’t play another song on the jukebox until he had all the possibilities figured out, including what would happen if he had changed something, as Carl obviously had done.

  “What the hell are you doing over there?” David asked, twisting his custom drinking glass in his good hand.

  “Yeah,” Jess said. “You going to tell us what we’re supposed to do with these quarters?” He flipped it, caught it and turned it over on the bar. “Heads.”

  “Play a song,” Stout said.

  None of them remembered Carl or Stout’s explanation of where he had gone or anything Carl had done, which included playing the last song. Carl had never existed for them because they had not been touching the jukebox.

  Stout moved back around the bar, dumped the remainder of Carl’s drink out and set the glass carefully on the back bar.

  “Who’s Carl?” David asked.

  “Just another friend I wanted to give a glass to.”

  “So how come you want us to play a song?” Jess asked.

  Stout took a long drink o
f his eggnog and let the richness coat his dry throat. He was going to miss Carl. Stout just hoped Carl was happy. Maybe sometime over the next few days Stout would look up Carl’s name in the phone book. Maybe Carl had stayed around town. He would never remember the Garden, but it would be nice to see him again and see how things ended up for him.

  “You all right?” David asked.

  All three men were staring.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking about how songs are like time machines. When you hear one it takes you back to some special moment when the song was playing.”

  Stout pointed at the little boxes and the quarters. “Those are for your memory trips. Fred. Why don’t you try it? But you’ve got to follow my rules.”

  “More damn rules, huh?” Fred said. “Can I at least get off my bar stool or do I have to toss the quarter at the machine from here?”

  Stout tried to laugh but it came out so poorly that David again looked at him with a questioning look.

  “Go pick out a Christmas song that reminds you of something in your past. Then after you’ve selected it, stand beside the machine and tell us the memory.”

  Fred picked up the quarter from the bar and swung around. “I think I can handle that.”

  “I’ll bet that’s not what your ex-wife would say,” Jess said.

  Everyone laughed, and that started the nightly joking about Fred’s ex-wife. She was well known to the group because it seemed at times that was all Fred could talk about. Her name was Alice and she and Fred had gotten married young, had one child, and gotten divorced in an ugly fashion about ten years before.

  Fred was tall and thin, with about twenty pounds of extra weight around his stomach. He used to have bright red hair that was now sun-bleached because he worked for the city streets department. He said that almost a quarter of his salary every month went to paying child support, even though his ex-wife very seldom let him see his daughter. He claimed he loved his daughter, and one Saturday had brought her in for everyone to meet. Sandy had bright red hair like her father.

  “Got one,” Fred said as he dropped the quarter into the slot and quickly punched two buttons.

  “So what’s the memory?” Stout asked.

  Stout’s stomach felt weak. Was he going to lose Fred, too? Maybe he shouldn’t warn Fred that he only had the time of the song, that if he wanted to change anything, he would have to do it fast.

  “The first time I got laid,” Fred said, smiling. “The night Sandy came to be.”

  Stout choked. God, what was he doing to his friends? What kind of presents were these?

  “Stout,” David said. “You all right? You’re as pale as a ghost.”

  Stout nodded and looked up at Fred. “You only have the time of the song. Remember that. Just over two minutes.”

  Jess laughed. “More than enough time for Fred to get laid, from what I hear.”

  Fred had taken a step toward Jess when the Gene Autry song started and Fred vanished from the bar.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  About five years later…

  June 9th, 2020

  Central Wilderness Area, Idaho

  TALIA FELT STUNNED at her reaction to Dr. Ryan Saddler. She had been excited at the prospect of working with him. She had read some of his papers and admired how he came at mathematics, but she never imagined him to be handsome as well.

  She had no idea what she had expected, but it certainly wasn’t dark brown eyes, a square jaw, and shoulders that looked like he worked out more than he spent hunched over a computer.

  And his handshake had damn near made her knees shake. How was that even possible? She had had her share of boyfriends over the years, but all of them didn’t much like her focus on math and her job at the university. Now suddenly she found herself not only sitting with two of the greatest minds in mathematics, but a handsome man almost as smart as they were.

  This was all going to be a dream and she would wake up from it at any moment.

  She took a deep breath of the crisp air and let the freshness of it calm her.

  “Amazing view, isn’t it?” Duster asked.

  Talia made herself focus on the mountains and valleys that stretched for miles under the magnificent lodge deck. The valleys were being filled with blackness as the sun set, but the tops of the peaks, many with snow on them, were being colored shades of reds and pinks.

  “Stunning,” she said. “Just stunning.”

  “I’ll second that,” Ryan said softly.

  She smiled at Duster who had his cowboy hat tipped back and his coat draped behind him. He was just staring out at the view as if he hadn’t seen it before.

  He and Bonnie were amazing people. They seemed totally in control and enjoying life and each other. She had really treasured her time with Bonnie so far. Talia had a hunch that she would find she liked Duster as well.

  Then Talia glanced at Ryan, who was also looking out over the view, his hand holding a Diet Coke can.

  Talia could feel her breath catch. He looked better in profile than he did directly on, if that was possible. Nobody was that good-looking.

  Ryan Saddler was. Damn.

  Just damn.

  Finally Duster pointed down the valley. “We might as well get started explaining some of this.”

  Talia noticed that Bonnie nodded and Ryan came back into his eyes and focused on Duster.

  “The valley below us is called the Monumental Valley,” Duster said. “About five miles down that valley from here is a small lake. That lake is what is left of a larger lake that covered a mining town called Roosevelt in 1909.”

  “What happened?” Ryan asked.

  “Mud slide,” Bonnie said. “No one died and there are a few pictures taken of the town as it slowly submerged over three days.”

  “There’s a big display back in the main dining room off to the right of the front desk,” Duster said. “You can read more about it in the morning.”

  Talia nodded. She planned on doing just that. Wisconsin had its share of old towns and a ton of history, but not like western history and entire towns being submerged.

  “Roosevelt was a pretty amazing mining town,” Duster said. “Almost ten thousand people during the boom summers lived in the valley below us.”

  “Wow,” Talia said, trying to imagine ten thousand people all crammed into a narrow valley.

  “It was a very noisy place,” Bonnie said, smiling. “Alive in all ways.”

  “The pianos helped,” Duster said, smiling. “You see, for the longest time, there were no real wagon roads into that valley, so everything in that town had to be brought in over three trails, one of which went right where the road is now on this summit.”

  “They took in pianos on horseback?” Ryan asked a half second before Talia could.

  She smiled at him and he smiled back.

  “Took them apart, hauled them in, put them back together again,” Duster said. “At one point there were supposed to have been fourteen pianos in that valley.”

  “Only ten were ever accounted for,” Bonnie said. “But they were all in the saloons and the doors in the summer were always open.”

  “Ten pianos in a very narrow valley can make a lot of noise,” Duster said, shaking his head.

  Talia stared at him. He was talking as if he had actually heard the pianos.

  “The legend is,” Bonnie said, “that if you stand near the lake, you can still hear the pianos playing on a calm summer evening.”

  “An awful lot of people have reported hearing them,” Duster said, shaking his head. “And that’s what we want to hire you two for.”

  Ryan sat back, shaking his head.

  Talia just felt confused. She had been working on the mathematics of music, but what that had to do with an old legend was beyond her.

  “We believe,” Bonnie said, looking first at Talia, then Ryan, “that mathematics can answer the question as to why that music is still being heard through time.”

  “You believe the legend?” Ryan asked, looking shocked at Bonnie.

  She nodded.

  Duster nodded.

  “We have heard it many, many times, actually,” Duster said. “Damn creepy if you ask me, but I believe in mathematics and I want to know the reason that music has the power to cut through time. What is it about music and the waves of music sound that have that power?”