A Knight in Central Park(100)

He gave Susan a hug when she, too, came forward. He noticed Garrett then, leaning nonchalantly against an old oak, as he often did, taking their goodbyes in stride.

Joe set down his things and headed Garrett’s way. He took the boy’s stiff frame into his arms. “I’ll miss you kid,” he said, his voice strangled with emotion. “You take care of them, okay?”

He felt Garrett’s body relax slightly.

It was another moment before Joe let him go. Garrett looked at him with red bloodshot eyes and nodded.

Joe picked up his possessions again and gave them all one last nod. Then he turned to gaze out at the wide open fields, breathing in the fresh earthy smells of a fifteenth century farm for the last time. The moon shone white and fully round, casting shadows against the tall wheat.

He had traveled through time...a dream and a nightmare all at once. An incredible urge to stay struck him. And yet the moon beckoned him, told him to return home while he still could. Joe didn’t belong in this world and yet for the first time since he’d come, he wasn’t so sure that was true.

He glanced over his shoulder toward Alexandra. His throat tightened and his heart did a flip-flop as a wave of panic spread through his body.

He pulled the stone from his pocket, felt its cold smoothness against his palm. The thought that Alexandra loved him popped into his mind. She didn’t love him because of what they had been through or because of the cataclysmic experience they shared.

She loved him for who he was.

She didn’t care if he could hardly lift a sword or make shapes out of clouds. She had three children to take care of. Nothing short of a hurricane could take them away from her. She didn’t need him. She had enough love for them and for him. She loved him more than he deserved to be loved. If he were lucky, she would love him for the rest of his life.

He looked back at her, felt a lifting of his very soul as if a huge incredible burden had been hefted from inside him.

And that’s what love was all about, wasn’t it?

For the first time in Joe’s life he felt as if he knew what love entailed. Love made breathing that much easier. Love made the moon brighter and made the water taste fresher. All those love songs suddenly made sense.

Love was like oxygen.

Love lifted you higher.

He felt downright giddy. It was all true.

Love had somehow eluded him all of these years because he had been looking for scientific jargon or a theory. Love could not be described in any sort of accurate, logical, specific way. His love for Alexandra was far from ordinary.

It came to him as an epiphany. As long as he was with her he would always be home.

He couldn’t leave her if he wanted to.

He pulled his arm back to toss the stone into the air, fling it toward the heavens and out of his grasp. But the moment he clutched the rock tightly within his palm, everything changed. His surroundings became a hazy fog of darkness. It was as if the moon’s gravitational force was pulling him, energy formed between earth and moon, sweeping him ashore like an ocean’s tide.

“Alexandra!” he called before disappearing completely. “I love you.”





Chapter Twenty-Eight



Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.

—Carl Bard

New York, Present Day

The time had finally come for Joe to stand before the Academy. His dreams, his wishes, his goals, all tied up in this one glorious moment.

And he was miserable.

His crisp white shirt beneath a dark gray vest and tuxedo felt confining. He tugged at the collar, tried to breathe. His jaw was cleanly shaven, but he hadn’t the heart to cut his hair, as if it were his last connection to Alexandra, and so it was tied back instead.

He wasn’t listening to a word Jared Katz was saying. The President of the Academy spoke about the Academy’s mission and how they needed to expand understanding and appreciation of humanity’s past through systematic investigation. They needed to promote research, stewardship of new members...and so on and so on.

None of it mattered any more, at least not to Joe.

His father sat to his left, while Jared Katz droned on behind the podium to his right. On the other side of the podium sat last year’s president and the one before that. Before him, sitting at round tables that glittered with polished silver and crystal glasses, were the rest of the members. Most looking bored senseless.

Not his father though.