The Night Mark(95)

“You? Why?”

“He wanted a 4-F discharge. Any kind of discharge. He’d rather wait out the war in a military prison than on the boat, he was that scared. Came at me from behind and sliced my whole side open.”

The scar on Carrick’s side. So that was where it had come from.

“I didn’t think,” he said. “I just reacted. I threw him into the wall, punched him so hard I killed him. Marshall found us in the engine room. He was my commanding officer. When I told him what happened, he said we should throw him over. No military court in the world would have convicted me, but it would still be a hell of a lot of paperwork, a trial, and during the war, no one wanted that. Marshall said the ship needed me. I was in too much shock to even argue with him. He tossed the boy in the water and I let him, praying for that kid’s soul the whole time. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I let him. Everyone assumed he committed suicide. Nobody questioned it. That kid was a wreck from day one anyway. Marshall and I swore each other to secrecy, and we got on with the business of fighting the war.”

“It was a war,” Faye said, trying not to betray her horror at Marshall’s act, what he’d made Carrick do, what he’d taken from that poor boy’s family. “Terrible things happen in wars.”

“After the war they started handing out medals. I felt like a fraud with every medal they gave me. No matter how much good I’d managed to do, that kid’s blood is on me like a red shadow.” Carrick shook his head, took a shuddering breath. “Seventeen years old. He should never have been on that boat.”

“No, he shouldn’t have. But he shouldn’t have attacked you, either. I saw that scar. He could have killed you.”

“His family had no body to bury because of us.”

“I’m not saying what you did was right. I am saying it’s forgivable.”

“Pat says it’s forgivable. He says he absolved me of the sin in 1965.” Carrick turned and looked her in the eyes for the first time since coming out onto the porch. “I told Marshall I’d keep that secret until my deathbed. Turns out I did. But Pat remembers my confession. There’s no way he could know the things he knows unless I told him myself. And I’ve never told anyone.”

Carrick leaned back against the porch post and closed his eyes. With his arms crossed over his chest, he seemed like an impenetrable wall to her. No door opened to let her in.

“I have your prayer book,” Faye said. “Pat gave it to me. In my time, I mean.”

“Prayer book?”

“A red prayer book. There’s a prayer in it you wrote asking for forgiveness for killing someone. Now I know what you were praying about.”

Carrick pushed a hand through his hair. He looked as dazed as she’d felt when she’d woken up in this world. “To think I spent my whole life believing time only went in one direction,” he said. “Thought it was a river. Turns out it’s an ocean. Waves come in. Waves go out. Sometimes those waves take us with them.”

“I didn’t plan to come here, I promise. I got caught in one of those waves.”

“Pat says you coming here was an accident—the first time. But the second time you came by choice. Why?”

Faye looked at him even though he couldn’t seem to meet her eyes.

“Because I’m in love with you.”

Carrick exhaled heavily. That wasn’t the reaction she’d hoped for.

Faye wrapped both hands around her mug of tea, clinging to it for warmth.

“I should have told you,” she said. “Told you who I really am. I was too cowardly to say, ‘Hey, Carrick, I know I look exactly like Faith, but I’m not her. I’m from the future.’” Faye poured her cold tea out on the lawn. “I saw Terminator 2 as a kid. I remember what they did to Sarah Connor in that mental hospital. And that was the early ’90s. I don’t want to know what they’d do to me in an insane asylum in 1921.”

“You’re speaking in tongues, love. Who’s Sarah Connor?”

“If you live to be ninety-eight years old, I’ll introduce you to her. She’s a badass like you are. Except she kills robots, not alligators.”

“Tell me about this Will of yours,” Carrick said. “You were married to him?”

“Yes. We were together a year, a beautiful year. Then he was killed in 2011. I could tell you the exact date and the exact time they called it, but I’ll spare you the details. I don’t even want to know.”

“That’s ninety years from now.”

“And four years in the past for me.”

“You hope...” Carrick sighed. “I suppose everyone hopes that in the future that doesn’t happen, that it’s better, safer, that we finally start getting it right.”

“The future isn’t heaven, and it isn’t utopia, either. It’s just like now. Only, you know, with air-conditioning. Don’t ask what it is. Just know I’d rather have you than it.”

“Because I look like the man you were married to.”

“You do look like Will. Enough that I mistook you for him that night you pulled me out of the water the first time. I wouldn’t have...” She paused, rethought her words. “I thought I was dreaming. I thought I was dreaming of Will. It was the only explanation that made sense at the time. But that’s not why I love you. I loved Will’s face, but I didn’t love him for his face. I don’t love you for yours, either.”