“Who is Inez?” you ask.
Father stands blinking at you for several seconds, and then joins you at the dining room table, setting down a plate with three sandwiches on it. “Inez,” he informs you, “is your wife.”
“I’m not married,” you say simply.
Father scoffs. “You were this morning. The three of us had breakfast together.”
“You mean...?”
“Yes.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
“It’s the House again?”
“What else?” Father asks. He idly picks up one of the sandwiches. “I told you both you had to be careful. This is the fifth history shift you’ve caused in the month you’ve lived here.”
“I didn’t do this,” you insist. Father’s only response is to lift an eyebrow.
You slump back in your chair, your mind boggling at the news. The day you found out your car was a black Honda instead of a blue Ford was a little weird. The morning you woke up to find you were a paralegal at Hampton, Hampton & Simms rather than a clerk at the district attorney’s office – that took some adjustment. But to lose an entire wife?
“Let me show you,” Father says, standing and leaving the room. You just sit there, still numb from the shock. You stare at the two sandwiches remaining on the plate, one of which had obviously been intended for a person who doesn’t live here anymore.
Father returns after a few moments and hands you a small picture frame. “Your engagement picture.”
It’s a photograph of you, all right. In it, you’re standing arm-in-arm with a woman about three inches taller than you are. Not your type, oddly enough. You prefer Nordic women – blond and muscular – but Inez is a slender woman with the Latina coloring that matches her name. Her straight dark hair is cut into a bob curled up around her chin and she has the tinge of a mischievous smile on her face.
“I’ve never seen this person before in my life,” you say.
“This time around, at least,” Father says.
“This time around,” you agree.
“You don’t have a house key, do you?” Father asks.
“Of course not.”
“Then she must have gotten ahold of one somehow,” Father says, more to himself than to you. Then he fixes you with a scowl. “What could she be up to?”
“Don’t ask me,” you say, waving a hand at the picture sitting on the table between you. “I’ve never seen this woman before in my life.”
“Something must be going on,” Father says. “I mean, it’s not like she hasn’t had a chance before now. She’s been visiting the House with you for nearly two decades now.”
“So what do we do?”
Father shrugs. “What do you want to do?
“I mean, was it a good marriage? Do I even want her back?”
“Now how in the hell am I supposed to answer that question?” he asks you, scowling.
“Do we – did we have any kids?”
“Not that I know of.”
You can’t think of what to say to that. What to say to any of it.
He quirks up one corner of his mouth and pushes the plate of sandwiches across the table towards you. You ignore it. “You’ve never had to deal with a major history shift like this one, have you?”
“You’ve never let me have a house key long enough to cause one,” you say sourly.
“Well,” he says, “in my experience, it’s always best to try and put things back the way they were. Once you start mucking with history, it’s frightening how easy it is to get lost. The more you tinker, the more things can spiral out of control. You can even end up losing access to the House entirely. Then you’re stuck wherever you happened to end up.”
You look up in sudden realization. “Wait – you’re going to let me fix it?”
“It’s not my history that’s changed,” Father says. “It has to be you.”
You feel simultaneous butterflies in your stomach and a lump in your throat. “Well then,” you say, your voice shaking, “where do I start?”
“The first question to ask is whether the change happened because of something you did or something she did.”
“I don’t have a house key,” you remind him.
“She’s not supposed to have one either.” He squints at you. “You promiseyou don’t have one?”
You spread your hands.
“It must be her, then.”
“Don’t you keep them locked up?” you ask.
“I do,” Father says. “If we assume it’s her, then –”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” you grumble.
“… the second question is whether she did it on purpose or by accident.”
“And how do we tell that?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
You huff out a breath in frustration, leaning forward and planting your hands flat on the table in front of you like you’re about to push yourself up out of your chair. “If she’s gone from my life entirely, then however she did it – accident or on purpose – she did it in the past.” You look up and meet your father’s gaze. “Where did she and I first meet?”
“College.”
“Which year.”
Father shrugs.
You sniff. “Well, at least that narrows it down to four specific years.”
“The good news is that the House is not a time machine.,” Father says. “It doesn’t need to be programmed with a specific date, time, or place. You just decide to go back to the day you met and you end up there.”
“That sounds easy enough.”
“The problem,” Father says, “is randomness. Life happens. There’s no guarantee that changing the day you met will be enough to set things right again.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that the start of the story is only the start of the story,” he says. “You’ll probably have to keep on going past that – going through the story sequentially until you get to the climax.”
“Climax?”
“The point where she agrees to marry you.”
You fall back into your chair, stunned. “I might have to go through the entire courtship to get there,” you say. “That could take years.”
“It could,” Father agrees. “The good news is that it’s not your only option. Follow me.” He stands up and leads you out of the room.
* * *
The majority of the House is exactly what you’d expect an old house to look like: floral wallpaper, wainscotting, intricate scrollwork carved in the wood wherever wall meets ceiling and around every door frame.
Father’s study, however, makes for a sharp contrast. The room is a perfect reflection of the man who inhabits it: spotlessly clean but cold, with a pristine white wall-to-wall carpet, stainless steel furniture, and bookshelves lining the walls. The spines of the book all sit exactly the same distance from the edge, almost as if they were a theater prop. The man must use a yardstick.
Father crosses the room to one of the paintings on the wall – an abstract piece of red and black splatters. You’ve known for a few years now that there’s a safe behind it where he keeps all the house keys, but he’s never opened it in your presence before.
“Back when he was steward of the House,” Father is saying, “your great great great grandfather Horace theorized that time – history – has certain currents and eddies to it.”
“Like destiny?” you ask. “The same things will happen no matter how much you try to change them?”
“Nothing quite so . . . deterministic,” Father says absently, working the dial on the safe. “Choices are still choices. Anything that can be chosen can be changed.” He swings the safe open and pulls out two boxes, bringing them back to his desk. He sets aside the larger of the two – cigar box sized – and sits, considering the smaller box as he turns it in his hands. “In his journals, Horace talked about how sometimes the House took him where he wanted to go and sometimes it didn’t. The idea that we’re the ones who control it, he decided, was an illusion. The House does all the work. If so, then we should let the House do the steering.”
“And how exactly does that happen?”
As his answer, Father lifts the lid off the box, carefully pulling out an oblong, somewhat shapeless object. It’s only when he hands it to you that you get a close enough look to figure out what it is.
“A rabbit’s foot?”
“Yes,” Father confirms. “Considering how old it is, it’s likely the genuine article – a left hind foot from a rabbit killed in a cemetery on a full moon.”
The thing feels suddenly greasy in your fingers. You hand it back to Father and wipe your palm on your shirt. “A good luck charm? Really?”
“Horace’s idea of a joke, I believe,” Father says. “His point was that the only way to take the human element out of it is to let fate decide. When you do, Horace theorized, the number of possible destinations isn’t the full span of your life. The eddies and currents inherent to your history will pull you to one of perhaps a handful of key locations.”
“How does it decide which key location to take you to?”
Father shrugs. “You will have to tell me. I’ve never tried it out myself.” He sets the rabbit’s foot down and draws the larger box to him. “Now let’s get you a house key.”
When he opens the box, however, an odd look crosses his face.
“What?”
He reaches in and pulls out a small white envelope, which he hands to you. Your name is written across the front in tidy cursive.
“What’s this?” you ask him.
“Inez’s handwriting.”
Your fingers tremble a little as you pull the envelope open. There’s a single sheet of paper inside:
Sketched across the bottom of the page is small maze, hand-drawn in pen.
“What is it?” Father asks.
You hand him the note and he reads it. Then he glances up at you. “Deliberate, then,” he says.
“If that’s the case, why should I even bother to go get her back?”
Your father holds up the note. “Because she invited you to.”
You grunt, your mind racing.
“It seems to me,” Father says, “that you have three choices.” He hands you the note. “Solve the puzzle.” He hands you the rabbit’s foot. “Try your luck.” Then he reaches into the wooden box and comes out with a plain-looking key on a narrow gold chain, identical to the one he’s wearing. “Or tell the story.”
Your fingers tremble a little when you reach out to take the key from him.
“When do I leave?” you ask him. “Right away? Can it wait until morning?”
“It’s time travel,” Father answers. “It can wait a year if you want to.”
You turn to glance out the window. It’s already dark outside. You’d had a long day already, even before you found out that your wife had gone back in time and written herself out of your life story.
“I think I’ll sleep on it,” you tell him. “Start out fresh in the morning.”
Father shrugs and then rises. “I’m going back to eat my supper,” he says. “Coming with me?”
You shake your head. You don’t even hear him when he leaves the room.
* * *
The House has always been particularly spooky at night, you think to yourself as you make your way up the stairs to your room.
The thing about the House is that, no matter what changes outside, the inside always stays the same. If you’re in the House, you stay the same too. If you’re outside the House, however, the only way to stay the same is to have one of the house keys with you. Which is why Father can still remember Inez but you can’t.
And why the House itself remembers her too. Your bedroom is not the way you remember it. Suddenly, it’s laid out for two people – for a couple. There’s a faint scent of an unfamiliar perfume – obviously hers. You start to poke your way around. Unfamiliar slippers under the bed. Two toothbrushes in the bathroom. You remember buying and wearing half of the clothes in the closet but you have no memory of the other half at all.
You stumble over and sit down on the edge of the bed. The room feels incomplete somehow. Is it possible to miss someone you’ve never met?
It’s only then that you notice you’ve been walking around with a bunch of random objects clutched in your hand. You gently deposit them beside you on the bed. The house key. The note. The rabbit’s foot.
I probably should have asked for the box the rabbit’s foot came in as well, you realize, too late.
Without realizing it, you’ve brought the engagement picture along with you as well. You pick it up and stare at it, long and hard. In the photograph, you look happy, relaxed. In reality the way you remember it now, it’s been more than a year since your last date, and you’ve started getting used to the fact that maybe you’re just not suited for a long-term relationship. But then you glance down at the photograph again. Maybe you are.
Although the fact that she's run off might indicate otherwise, you remind yourself.
By this point, you’re too overwhelmed and exhausted to think straight. You lay backwards in the bed – still in your street clothes, on top of the bedspread – and fall immediately asleep.
It doesn’t last for long, though. Suddenly you’re wide awake again, already sitting upright. You glance quickly at the window and it’s still night outside. But somehow in your sleep you’ve decided what you should do.
First thing, you pick up the house key and fasten the chain around your neck. You take a dozen deep breaths to slow down your pounding heart. Father’s given you access to a house key before, but always for something small, like the day you went back to watch a particularly exciting Yankees game together. But you’ve never traveled this far into the past before and the stakes have never been this high.
With a sigh, you make yourself stand up, scooping up the rabbit’s foot and Inez’s note. You take one last deep breath, and