He grasped my hand as he gave them to me. I turned my back to the fountain and threw both coins over my shoulder.
“Brava,” he said, his eyes moist.
“Let’s go home,” I said.
We got up early the next morning and took a cab to Leonardo da Vinci airport. Our flight was direct to New York’s JFK, with a connection to Salt Lake City. We passed through customs, then rechecked our luggage and boarded a new flight. We arrived in Utah at around six o’clock on the same day we left. I habitually did the calculations—it was two in the morning in Italy.
It wasn’t snowing when we landed, but it was freezing cold and the landscape was white beneath a blanket of snow.
Roxanne and Ray picked us up outside the terminal. Oddly, even Roxanne, for once, seemed subdued, as if she sensed that there was something to be mourned. As we drove up the quiet, holiday-dressed street to my home, our ten months already seemed like a dream. I couldn’t believe our time together was gone. You can cheat time, but it will find you.
Three days left.
Beth Cardall’s Diary
We moved slowly those last days, as if the speed of our actions could somehow slow time. To my disappointment, Matthew was gone for most of the afternoon of the twenty-second and the morning of the twenty-third. On the afternoon of the twenty-third, he brought me into the bedroom to talk. There were practical matters to be discussed, he said, which felt grim to me, like the planning of one’s own funeral. As I look back on it all, it was the most interesting conversation of my life.
We sat on the floor facing each other. Matthew had a large, accordion-style file folder brimming with what I would discover were certificates and documents. Matthew spoke with the stoic demeanor of a financial advisor.
“What I’m giving you now is all the financial information you will ever need. This morning I paid off this home, so you own it free and clear. You still have more than two million dollars left in your accounts. Over the last two days I have divided them into funds that will do well over the next eighteen years. There are a few companies you need to invest in that haven’t started or gone public yet. One of them is called Google. They’ll go public in 1996. The other is YouTube in 2005. YouTube will be a private fund, so I’ve given you special instructions on whom to contact. It’s very important that you invest the exact amounts at the times I have written down.
“If you do what I say, you will be wealthy beyond your wildest imagination. Do not, I repeat, do not let anyone change or touch these accounts. There will be people who will try to talk you out of it, or think they know better. They don’t. The best they have is an educated guess. I’m not guessing, I’ve read the last page. I know how the story ends. Promise me you will do exactly what I say.”
“I promise.”
“Remember how I tricked you into signing me on as a cosignatory on your home-equity loan?”
I nodded.
“Don’t ever do that again. There will be temptations. There will be fools. Money attracts fools. Do not give in to them.”
He pulled out an envelope. “This is a fund for Charlotte’s education. She’s going to major in art history and will decide to attend the University of Utah mostly to be near you, so this fund will ensure that you will have more than enough for school, books and lodging.”
He replaced the envelope and pulled out another. “This packet right here is time-sensitive. Do not touch these funds until the dates I’ve written down, then be sure to take all the money out. The dates I’ve written are generalities, the best I can remember, so if they’re off a bit, don’t worry about it. They’re close enough.”
“If you want to buy something big, like a mansion or yacht or something . . .”
I stopped him. “Why would I want those things?”
“I’m not saying you will, just that any big expenditure needs to come out of this fund. This is your liquid fund. Don’t ever spend more than this account or you’ll kill the golden goose. People get rich and they go nuts and lose it all. Most lottery winners end up bankrupt. It’s the norm. As long as you don’t leave the path I set for you, you’ll be safe. Step off it, even once, and you may be back pressing suit coats and clipping coupons.” He looked me in the eyes. “Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good.” He sighed and pulled out another small packet. “This might seem a little selfish, but this fund is for Charlotte and me. It will be worth several million when it matures. We can’t access it until we are thirty. I did that on purpose, I didn’t want to mess up the future I’m stepping back into and I didn’t want to ruin Charlotte. It’s best if Charlotte doesn’t know about it until it matures.”
“Okay.”
“Now this checkbook, the green one, is what I call your Mad Money account. It’s an interest-bearing checking account. This is what you are going to gamble with. I made a list of all the Super Bowl and NBA championship winners for the next fifteen years. Just keep gambling the money and turn it over. Never gamble more than half of it at once, just in case I made a mistake.” He took my hand. “Does all this make sense?”
I nodded.
“I know it’s a lot, but I wrote everything down. This is your new job, managing your money. Promise me you will do only what I’ve told you to do.”
“I promise.”
“As long as you stay in the pen, the wolves won’t get you. Step outside . . .”
“I’m dinner.”
“Exactly.” He breathed out and pushed the file aside. “Okay, enough about money. There are other things you should know about the future. I made this for you.” He lifted a small steno notepad he’d had at his side. “I’ve written down some things I think you’ll find helpful. Some are important, some are just interesting. For instance, you know the group Milli Vanilli?”
“The singers,” I said. “They just won a Grammy for best new artist.”
“Yeah, well they’re fake. It’s not really them singing.”
“What?”
“It will come out later this year.” He turned a few pages. “Here’s something six or seven years away. Harry Potter is going to be really big, so if you want, secure the dot-com address as soon as you can. You can sell it back to them. The author’s going to be a billionaire, so don’t settle for less than a hundred thousand dollars. Trust me.”
“Who’s Harry Potter?”
“He’s a fictional character in a series of books about a boy wizard.”
“A wizard?”
He nodded. “It’s going to be big.” He leafed through a few more pages. “Oh, this is very, very important. Stay out of New York City, actually, don’t fly at all, on September 11th, 2001.”
“Why?”
“That’s one I can’t tell you. Just trust me.” He turned a few more pages. “We’ll go to war twice with Iraq. The second time we’ll be looking for weapons of mass destruction, but they’ll never find any. But they will eventually find Saddam Hussein.”
“Who’s that?”
“You’ll find out. I filled this whole book with information like that. The bottom line is, over the next two decades you’re going to hear doomsday scenarios, dire predictions, ‘blood will run in the streets’ propaganda. None of it will happen. Be at peace, the world will go on.”
He handed me the book and the file folder. “Protect this information, don’t tell anyone about it, not Roxanne, not even Charlotte. You don’t want that responsibility and you don’t want to screw up the future.” He reached into his pocket and took out a small brass key and handed it to me. “Just in case there’s a fire or something and these copies are destroyed, there are backup copies of everything in this safe deposit box. It’s at the bank where we took out your home-equity loan.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” He stood. “Oh, one more thing. When I come over for Charlotte’s twenty-first birthday party, don’t point out that my fly is open in front of everyone. It was really embarrassing.”
<
br /> “I really did that?”
“Yeah, you did.”
“Sorry.”
Make no mistake—the day of reckoning always arrives on time. We can deny the approaching reef, but we can’t deny the collision.
Beth Cardall’s Diary
The morning of December 24, I was a mess. I woke crying and rolled over into Matthew’s arms. He held me but didn’t speak. I knew his heart was breaking as well. I tried to keep busy that morning by doing normal things, as if there was anything normal at all about the day. I made waffles for breakfast, forgetting that Charlotte couldn’t eat them, and neither Matthew nor I were hungry.
Around noon I dropped Charlotte off at Roxanne’s under the guise of Santa preparations then came back home. Matthew was sitting in the living room. He was tying his shoes.
“Do you need to pack?” I asked.
“For what?”
“Sorry,” I said. “This is new to me.”
“Do you want to get some lunch?”
“I’m not really hungry,” I said, “but I’ll keep you company.”
“I’m not hungry either, I just need to get out of here before I lose my mind.”
“Okay,” I said, “let’s go.”
The streets were insanely crowded with last-minute Christmas shoppers. We went to a small French café in Holladay, but the wait was more than an hour, so we took our drinks and salads to go and drove to a nearby park. We sat at a metal picnic table beneath an open canopy, our breath freezing before us.
We talked mostly about the last ten months; our favorite cities and restaurants, the size of lemons in Capri, the glass factory in Murano and seafood in Burano, and laughed hysterically at Niccola, the cute little Italian man who led us through Pompeii, called the other guides “idjits” and finished each declaration with “thank you.” We talked about everything except the clock that was ticking down. We didn’t need to. I swear I could hear it.
“Are you set on the story?” he asked me.
I nodded. “Your grandmother died last night in Sorrento, so you left suddenly to get back in time for the funeral. While you are there, you are killed in a car accident.”
Matthew nodded. “The fewer details you give the better. Do you think you’ll convince Roxanne? You may have to pretend to cry.”
“I haven’t stopped crying since we left Capri and you haven’t even left yet. I don’t think it will be a problem.”
He frowned. “How do you think Charlotte will take it?”
“Not well. But she’ll survive. It’s not the first time she’s lost someone close to her. I’ll take care of her.” I rolled my cup in my hands. “Is there anything I should know about Charlotte?”
“Nothing that I haven’t already told you.”
“How about boys . . .”
“You shouldn’t get too involved. You might scare her away from me. Just be yourself.”
I nodded.
We got home around three. I was so emotionally drained that I decided to take a short nap. I woke to Matthew gently shaking me. “It’s time,” he said softly. I sat up. “What? What time is it?”
“It’s six.”
My eyes immediately filled with tears. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
He kissed my cheek. “It’s better this way.” He knelt on the bed next to me and put his arms around me and we held each other. After a few minutes he pulled away from me, still holding my hand. “Let’s do it.”
We walked out to my car and drove just a few miles down the road, a few blocks past the 7-Eleven where we’d first met. At his direction I pulled off from the boulevard down a side street. “It’s just up ahead,” he said, “where that red car’s parked.”
I drove forward and pulled up to the curb behind the car. “Here?”
“It’s this apartment building,” he said, tilting his head toward a two-story, flat-roofed structure.
“Which number is it? I can save you some time when you and Charlotte go apartment hunting.” Stupid thing to say.
“Two-zero-seven, the one on the side by the stairwell.”
I looked at the door. I don’t know what I was expecting it to look like, but there was nothing special about it.
“It looks like any other door,” I said.
He shrugged. “I look like any other guy.”
“Not to me.”
He reached over and took my hand. “Are you afraid?”
“Yes.”
“So am I.”
“Why aren’t I there when my daughter dies?”
He looked down. “I guess Charlotte didn’t want you to see her go.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve hurt too much over her already.” He leaned over and put his arms around me and held me. After a few minutes he leaned back and looked into my eyes. “I will always love you.”
“You can’t promise me that. Not like this.” I buried my head on his shoulder. He just held me again.
“Beth, are you sure this is what you want?”
“Please, don’t tempt me. I want my girl to be happy. I want you to be happy with her.”
“You’re always looking after her.”
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” I rubbed my hand over his back. “The next time you see me, I’ll be fourteen years older. I won’t be so pretty.”
“I’ve seen you in nineteen years. You’re still beautiful.”
Neither of us spoke after that. I just clung to him. A few minutes later he sighed. “It’s time,” he said. “I can’t put this off any longer.”
I slowly released him. “Take care of my girl.”
“I promise.”
He opened the car door and stepped out, then leaned back through the window. “Ciao, bella.”
I wiped my eyes. “Ciao.” He turned and began to walk away when I shouted, “Matthew!”
He stopped. I got out of the car and ran to him and we embraced. “Please don’t forget me. Promise me.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“I can’t live with that. I can sacrifice you for her, I can sacrifice my love, but I can’t live with you never knowing that we had this time.” I looked up at him pleadingly. “You once said, ‘You can’t believe what I can promise.’ You promised her. Promise me. Please, just say it.”
He looked into my eyes then ran his finger over my cheek. “I promise.”
“Okay,” I said, “Okay.” I stepped away from him, still holding his hand. “Ci vediamo.” I stepped back until we dropped each other’s hands.
“Bye.”
He turned and I watched him walk up toward the apartment. He looked back once more and gave me a short wave. I wiped my eyes and waved back. Then I went back to the car and went to get my Charlotte.
They say that you can never go back home again. But it’s not the home that changes, it’s the traveler.
Beth Cardall’s Diary
Matthew tentatively grasped the doorknob, unsure of what lay behind it and even more unsure of how he would respond. He thought back to the previous Christmas Eve, when the strange couple had forced him out of the apartment with a baseball bat. The idea of encountering them again was far less frightening than the prospect of finding Charlotte in bed, struggling to live—to witness her death. Or, had she already passed? He looked back to the road, to maybe catch a glimpse of Beth’s car, but it was gone.
He turned the knob. He was not surprised to find the door unlocked, for the same reason he knew he was to be there. He slowly opened the door, took a deep breath and stepped inside, crossing a threshold of time and sealing the past behind him.
He glanced around the quiet room. The apartment was exactly the way he remembered it. Their furniture was back. The wood paneling was gone and the walls were painted vanilla yellow, adorned with their pictures. On the front room wall, above the sofa, was Charlotte’s bridal picture. He was back. Two thousand eight was back. He looked to the open bedroom door and cautiously took a step toward it. Then he heard a voice. “Matthew?”
Just then Charlotte stepped out of the bedroom, her head cocked to one side as she fastened an earring. She wore a bright Christmas sweater tight enough to accent the small bump of her waist. “Where have you been, love?”
He just stared at her and her stomach. “You’re okay.”
She smiled. “Of course I am, silly. I told you it was just a little late afternoon morning sickness. Where have you been?”
He stared at her. “I, uh, went for a walk.”
“Without a coat?”
He walked up and threw his arms around her. “Charlotte.”
She laughed. “Careful, you’ll muss me up. Now hurry and change, we’ll be late for Mom’s party.”
“Of course.” He went into the bedroom to dress. Some things in the room were the same, some different. There were new clothes in the closet mixed in with clothes he recognized. He put on some corduroy jeans and a sweater he’d never seen before. Charlotte was waiting by the door holding a small wrapped package when he walked out.
She looked him over. “I love that sweater. Didn’t Mom give that to you for your birthday?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I think she did. She’ll be glad you’re wearing it. Do you have the keys?”
“No. Where are they?”
“Where we always put them.”
Matthew went into the kitchen and was relieved to find that the keys were in the same drawer they always were. He looked around the room. It had changed. It was decorated in Tuscan design.
“Come on, Matthew, we’re late.”
“I’m coming,” he said.
Charlotte took his hand as they walked out of the apartment. “That was so sweet of you, hugging me like that. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but don’t let it out.”
“I was just thinking how I’d never get over it if something happened to you.”