“Vroom,” he said very softly, and broke into a sudden grin, reliving his first exposure to automobiles.
“Yes,” she said, smiling back despite herself. “Then we could go to the Ridge, and I was going to leave you with Grannie and Grandda while I went to Scotland to find Daddy.”
Jem’s smile faded, and his red brows drew together.
“Pardon my pointing out the obvious,” Joe said. “But wasn’t there a war going on in 1778?”
“There was,” she said tersely. “And, yes, it might be a little bit difficult to get a ship from North Carolina to Scotland, but believe you me, I could do it.”
“Oh, I do,” he assured her. “It would be easier—and safer, I reckon—than going through in Scotland and searching for Roger with Jem and Mandy to look after at the same time, but—”
“I don’t need looking after!”
“Maybe not,” Joe told him, “but you got about six years, sixty pounds, and another two feet to grow before you can look after your mama. ’Til you get big enough that nobody can just pick you up and carry you off, she’s got to worry about you.”
Jem looked as if he wanted to argue the point, but he was at the age where logic did sometimes prevail, and happily this was one of those times. He made a small “mmphm” sound in his throat, which startled Bree, and sat back on the ottoman, still frowning.
“But you can’t go to where Grannie and Grandda are,” he pointed out. “ ’Cuz Dad’s not where—I mean when—you thought. He’s not in the same time they are.”
“Bingo,” she said briefly, and, reaching into the pocket of her sweater, carefully withdrew the plastic bag protecting Roger’s letter. She handed it to Joe. “Read that.”
He whipped his reading glasses out of his own pocket and, with them perched on his nose, read the letter carefully, looked up at her, wide-eyed, then bent his head and read it again. After which he sat quite still for several minutes, staring into space, the letter open on his knee.
At last, he heaved a sigh, folded the letter carefully, and handed it back to her.
“So now it’s space and time,” he said. “You ever watch Doctor Who on PBS?”
“All the time,” she said dryly, “on the BBC. And don’t think I wouldn’t sell my soul for a TARDIS.”
Jem made the little Scottish noise again, and Brianna looked sideways at him.
“Are you doing that on purpose?”
He looked up at her, surprised. “Doing what?”
“Never mind. When you are fifteen, I’m locking you in the cellar.”
“What? Why?” he demanded indignantly.
“Because that’s when your father and grandfather started getting into real trouble, and evidently you’re going to be just like them.”
“Oh.” He seemed pleased to hear this, and subsided.
“Well, putting aside the possibility of getting hold of a working TARDIS . . .” Joe leaned forward, topping up both glasses of wine. “It’s possible to travel farther than you thought, because Roger and this Buck guy just did it. So you think you could do it, too?”
“I’ve got to,” she said simply. “He won’t try to come back without Jem, so I have to go find him.”
“Do you know how he did it? You told me it took gemstones to do it. Did he have, like, a special kind of gem?”
“No.” She frowned, remembering the effort of using the kitchen shears to snip apart the old brooch with its scatter of chip-like diamonds. “They each had a few tiny little diamonds—but Roger went through before with a single biggish diamond. He said it was like the other times we know about; it exploded or vaporized or something—just a smear of soot in his pocket.”
“Mmm.” Joe took a sip of wine and held it meditatively in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. “Hypothesis one, then: number is more important than size—i.e., you can go farther if you have more stones in your pocket.”
She stared at him for a moment, somewhat taken aback.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said slowly. “The first time he tried it, though . . . he had his mother’s locket; that had garnets on it. Definitely garnets, plural. But he didn’t get through—he was thrown back, on fire.” She shuddered briefly, the sudden vision of Mandy flung on the ground, burning . . . She gulped wine and coughed. “So—so we don’t know whether he might have gone farther if he had gone through.”
“It’s just a thought,” Joe said mildly, watching her. “Now . . . Roger’s mentioning Jeremiah here, and it sounds like he means there’s somebody besides Jemmy who’s got that name. Do you know what he means?”
“I do.” A skitter of something between fear and excitement ran down her back with icy little feet, and she took another swallow of wine and a deep breath before telling him about Jerry MacKenzie. The circumstances of his disappearance—and what her mother had told Roger.
“She thought he was very likely an accidental traveler. One who—who couldn’t get back.” She took another quick sip.
“That’s my other grandda?” Jemmy asked. His face flushed a little at the thought and he sat forward, hands clutched between his thighs. “If we go where Dad is, will we get to meet him, too?”
“I can’t even think about that,” she told him honestly, though the suggestion made her insides curl up. Among the million alarming contingencies of the current situation, the possibility of meeting her deceased father-in-law face-to-face was about 999,999th on the list of Things to Be Worried About—but apparently it was on the list.