“You’re not supposed to meddle with these things,” he reminded her. “I thought we agreed to that in the beginning. It’s their lives and their destinies. We’re just the observers here, by virtue of a very strange freak phenomenon that none of us understand.”
“I’m not trying to change anything, or warn them,” which was what she and Blake had agreed not to do. They behaved at all times as though they were on real time, whatever the event, date, or century. They did not interfere or tell them the future. They felt they had no right to do that, whatever the outcome, or however hard it was to watch it unfold, like when Josiah went off to war, or knowing that Bettina would remarry and leave San Francisco.
“If they were meant to meet their great-grandchildren, they would have, without your help. What if they don’t want to and refuse to appear? Or it traumatizes them? Bert has no idea that the crash and the Great Depression are coming. He thinks they are secure for life. If he knew now that they were going to lose everything, it would break his heart. What if finding out about it now precipitates his death earlier?”
Sybil hadn’t thought about that and it panicked her. “I can warn Samuel if he meets them, and tell him he has to live by the same rules we do. They may not even see each other. The family may not want to include anyone else in that circle, and not appear.”
“I don’t think they have that choice,” Blake said to her seriously. “They didn’t decide to meet us. They were as shocked as we were. It just happened.”
“Supposedly it happened because we were open to it. Maybe Samuel and his daughter won’t be. We can’t predict that.”
“You’re playing with fire, Sybil,” he said sternly, and she felt mildly guilty about it after what he said, particularly about Bert and the stock market crash and the dire results for them. In fact, the consequences of it had killed Bert and Gwyneth within a very short time, and it was slowly approaching in the dimension they were in now, though it was still ten years away. “I think what you’re doing is very dangerous,” he reproached her.
“I don’t want to do anything to hurt them. I love them,” Sybil said with feeling. “They’re our family now too. I just want to help them complete the circle, and to know their children’s children, just like they know us and our kids, and love them. I want them to see that it came out all right in the end, in spite of the hard times they went through, and the end of the story is a good one. It does have a happy ending. We’re all together now. And they’re still together. It didn’t end with Bert, or Gwyneth, and losing everything. Don’t you think they should know that?”
“They’ve gone back to a comfortable time in their lives. Think about it. We met them in 1917 for them, before the war, when everything was still all right,” Blake reminded her.
“Yes, but Josiah was killed in the war anyway, and Magnus had died before we met them. We can’t protect them from the bad things that had to happen, any more than they can protect us.”
“But they teach us things that we wouldn’t know otherwise,” Blake said soberly. Bert had literally saved him from financial ruin in the past few months, sure disgrace, bankruptcy, and maybe even prison, with his experience and sage counsel. “I just don’t want you to break the rules we all respect, or hurt them. I think you’re taking a tremendous risk and I don’t like it. What if their great-grandson is an asshole and ridicules them, or exposes us or them in some way, and turns our lives into a freak show? That could happen. Reality TV at the Butterfields’, with Uncle Angus in a ghost costume playing the bagpipes.”
She laughed at the suggestion. “I don’t think Samuel is a jerk, and what I’m hoping for is that he’ll write a book about them. They deserve to have a really great book written about the family. They were important at the time, and it could be done with insight and dignity.”
“Why don’t you write it?” Blake suggested. He knew Sybil would do it lovingly and well. He trusted her, not a great-grandson he didn’t know.
“I’ve thought about it, and I’m not sure I’d do it justice. Their great-grandson is a historian, and a good one.” She had looked up his credentials too, and read a translation of his writing, and it was excellent. He’d had impressive reviews on all his books. They were said to be historically accurate and respected. A writer like Samuel Saint Martin was not going to exploit the emotional aspects of their tragedies. He would weave the important historical facts of the times into their story. They had lived at a key time in American history, when everything had changed dramatically socially, economically, industrially, and scientifically. She was sure Samuel would do justice to that, and to them.
“You may be right,” Blake conceded, “but I’m worried. I just don’t want anything to go wrong for them, and it could. I don’t care about him or his daughter, but I do care a great deal about the family we know and love, whom we live with. The privilege we’ve been given of knowing them, seeing them, and living with them in their time frame and ours is an enormous gift from an unknown source. Let’s not damage that, or hurt them.”
“I won’t. I swear,” she promised him, and reported the conversation to Gwyneth that night at dinner, in a whisper. She told her that Blake wasn’t in favor of the meeting, which was disappointing.
“I’m sure Bert wouldn’t be either, but I won’t tell him. Hopefully, it would just happen the way it did with you. Naturally, even if it surprised all of us.” Sybil smiled at the memory of their first dinner together, and how shocked they had been. And Gwyneth did too. “Are you going to cancel their coming?” She looked dismayed at the thought and Sybil shook her head.
“Blake will be furious with me if something goes wrong. But I think it’s important to do. And if you’re not meant to meet them, you won’t. It won’t happen. You can’t force it.” Alicia and others who came to the house had never seen them. No one entered their common dimension unless they were meant to. And for the past three years, that had been only the Butterfields and Gregorys, with very rare exceptions, and with their approval. It reassured both of them to know that. In some way, they were all protected. And the bond they shared linked them closely to each other, which kept them safe too. It was very much what Michael Stanton had said in the beginning. Others just could not see them, which was as it should be. It was extremely selective. And Sybil felt privileged that her family had been chosen. None of them knew why it had happened or who had ordained it. And there was no telling if the great-grandson and his daughter would be included in the magic circle. It was entirely possible that they wouldn’t be, in which case they could tour the house and learn the family’s history, but it would go no further than that and they wouldn’t see them. Both women found that reassuring.
No one had noticed them whispering at dinner, because Andy and Caroline had come home that afternoon and there was much chatter at the table, and a volley of questions aimed at both of them about school, their friends, and their romances.