Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(28)

“Then you can stay here,” she said, “and I’ll move to Chelmsford.”

Life tilted a bit, and he looked at it from this new angle. Living in London without his mother? Was such a thing possible, or was it on the list of things he thought would never happen?

He knew he could have a place of his own, some grimy flat above a barber’s shop—that’s where people his age went to live, wasn’t it?—but then he would be truly alone. The gaping threat of the future chilled him.

Perhaps his mother simply didn’t want to be near him anymore. Perhaps, finally, she had stopped caring.

“You have a job, you have connections,” Leila said. “You’ll be fine here on your own.”

Danny detected something stiff about her, something in the way her eyes moved to the pot to avoid his gaze. He thought of Chelmsford and the towns around it. What the mechanics were trying to build on the very edge of its time zone, right where it met Maldon’s.

“You want to go because of Dad.” He said the words slowly, his voice hard with accusation. “You want to be closer to Maldon.” Danny flinched when she shoved the pot away with a scraping clatter.

“Of course I want to be closer to him! Why do you make it out like that’s a bad thing? I miss him, Danny. We both do.”

Danny was alarmed, and ashamed, to see that her cheeks were wet. She turned and wiped her face around a sniff like paper tearing.

“It won’t bring him back,” he said quietly. They had lived that first year in anticipation, thinking Christopher would come through the door at any moment. But just because his father now lived where time stood still didn’t mean their lives could stand still also.

“I know that,” his mother said. “I only want to be closer to him, to see if I can f-feel him, somehow.” Her shoulders shook. “If it were you, if it had h-happened to someone you … Wouldn’t you do the same? Wouldn’t you do anything for the one you love?”

Danny felt the wound again, the sharp slide of stone. He clutched his stomach and closed his eyes. He deserved this. He deserved her leaving him.

Nothing would get through to her now.

“A woman named Collins called,” he said. “You have an interview in two weeks. Thursday, ten o’clock.”

Leila turned her head, her eyelashes formed into wet spikes. “Thank you, Danny.”

He went to bed hungry.



The news made the front page of next day’s paper:

ROTHERFIELD CLOCK TOWER BOMBED—CITIZENS ALARMED

Danny dropped the paper like it had caught fire. Bile burned the back of his throat.

“Don’t leave it on the floor,” his mother scolded. She bent to pick it up, but stopped when she read the headline. She turned to Danny, horrified.

He ran to the toilet just in time to empty his stomach.





The Lead didn’t waste time calling an assembly of clock mechanics. The small crowd of protesters was more riled up than ever, and police had to patrol the outside of the Affairs building as mechanics filed inside. Danny ducked his head and pretended not to hear the shouts and calls, the yelled questions he couldn’t answer.

He bumped into the mechanic in front of him in his hurry. She half turned with a frown, crinkling the diamond-shaped tattoo by her eye. Daphne Richards.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Maybe you should keep your eyes off the floor, Mr. Hart,” she replied. She slipped away before he could respond.

Solemn murmurs filled the assembly hall, speculating about the recent attack. Tom and George spoke with heads bent close together. Danny often felt eyes on him, on his scar. No one said a word to him.

The Lead announced that there would be further investigations, and that any suspicious behavior was to be reported immediately. Danny thought about Colton’s tower. Would the police come back? Would they find out that he’d been there on his own?

He hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday, but he felt ready to throw up again.

As the mechanics filed out after the assembly, Danny spotted Matthias in the far back. The man seemed to be looking for him, so Danny hid behind a group of apprentices. He wasn’t in the mood to be fussed over right now. He had already endured his mother’s particular brand of worry.

That morning, she had knocked repeatedly on the washroom door and asked if he was all right. The first wave of panic had been the worst, seizing his limbs and smothering his lungs. Danny hadn’t been able to move for some time, slumped against the tub and staring blankly at the wall.

Again. It’s happened again. In his mind, the clockwork gears blasted apart repeatedly, blossoming out like a sharp, deadly flower before retracting to its framework and exploding all over again.

By the time he’d found his way to his room, his mother was sitting on his bed. She’d been pale and frantic, twisting her thin hands together, dried tears on her face.

“Danny, do you need anything?”

He had shaken his head. Better to pretend he was fine; he didn’t want to go back to the hospital. He’d been forced to stay there after the incident in Shere, and it had made him feel lesser. Weaker. Alone.

His mother had cried then, too. He didn’t want to see her cry anymore.

In the atrium someone tapped his shoulder, returning him to the present. The Lead.

“Daniel, a word?”