A Catch in Time Read online

  DEDICATION:

  In memory of my mother, and to my father. I dedicate this book to them

  for their unflagging support, their unwavering belief, their constant

  encouragement, and their unconditional love.

  Published 2010 by Medallion Press, Inc.

  The MEDALLION PRESS LOGO

  is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment from this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 2010 by Dalia Roddy

  Cover design by James Tampa

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-160542103-2

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

  My deepest thanks to Kimberley Cameron, agent magnifique, whose good cheer, constant support, and near-superhuman perseverance guided me to this tangible result.

  I want to thank my sisters, Camilia and Jasmine, for their unshakable belief in me, my father for his tireless encouragement, my nieces and nephew, Megan, Neil, and Daisey, for their enduring optimism during setbacks, and my friends (you know who you are—and, yes, Dee and Andy, you top the list) for their stalwart conviction that I would “do it.”

  To my children, Melanie and Nicholas—you’re the best. Thank you for never doubting this day would come.

  And finally, to my husband, Bill—there are no words. You know what I mean.… and more.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

  PROLOGUE

  TUNISIA 7:00 PM

  MOHAMMED AL-KUJBAHAN PERCHED ON THE HUMP of ground rising several feet above the bank of the watering hole. His sharp gaze darted through the darkness, picking out the shadowy forms of his charges as they lumbered, wheezing and cough-grunting, to the water’s edge.

  “Hammudi.” His younger sister’s sweet, high-pitched call came through the night. Mohammed scowled. How many times had he told her to stop calling him by that childish form of his name? “Hammudi. Yehla, yehla,” she called, closer now.

  What was she doing out here? And why tell him to hurry? He was doing his job. Who could hurry a camel?

  “Here,” he answered softly, not for her, that softness, but for the camels. He was a good camel herder, the best, he told himself.

  Aida, despite the darkness, lithely clambered up beside him. “The lamb is ready, Hammudi,” she said.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Go eat, then.”

  “Mother says we must wait for you. Ah, Hammudi, please. I am so hungry.” Aida tugged his thin arm.

  Mohammed shrugged off her touch. Aida’s tone irritated him. He was hungry, too, but the food they ate cost money. He nudged her roughly. “Go back to the tent. Do something useful. I will come when I come. You know nothing of my duties.”

  The rich American who had contracted the camels was shrewd, far more watchful than other contractors. And freer with coins.

  Calling him mean and spiteful, Aida scrambled away. A camel bellowed, and something in its tone brought Mohammed to his feet. Other camels milled, shifted, bumped each other and rumbled noisily. Mohammed pinned his gaze to Aida’s fleeing form as camels edged before and behind her. He tried to call to her but sudden blackness filled the world and he collapsed, unconscious, not seeing tiny Aida drop to the sand or the camels trampling her, their small brains filled with terror.

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  SAN FRANCISCO 11:00 A.M.

  CRAIG THOMAS GLANCED AT HIS TWO BOYS IN the rearview mirror just as he merged with traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge approach. Ignoring the dread that pitted his stomach at his glimpse of five year-old Lucas’s guileless expression, he distracted himself with thoughts of John Thomas.

  By age three, his oldest son had no longer responded to being called John or Johnny. John knew his mother was Mary Thomas and his father was Craig Thomas and that he was John Thomas. He required everyone to call him John Thomas, though his mother was allowed to call him Honey. Craig smiled at the memory.

  Perhaps it was time to relocate to a family neighborhood beyond the fringes of the city. He and Mary had talked of such a move after Lucas was born. John Thomas had fit well into their life in the heart of San Francisco, but somehow Lucas’s arrival had pushed them off center. Then Mary had died and thoughts of relocation vanished.

  In the backseat, Lucas was chattering to John Thomas. Another glance in the mirror showed John Thomas looking out his side window, ignoring Lucas. He knows, Craig thought suddenly, and could no longer shunt aside his dread. He felt again the chill that had frozen his heart the day the truth about Lucas had slammed into him.

  He and his sons had just crossed Fulton Street, bordering a playground in Golden Gate Park, when they heard a car horn blare through the screech of tires, and saw a golden retriever tumble into a convulsive heap. Ear-splitting yowls pierced the air. A young boy, maybe eight years old, like John Thomas, dashed to the dog’s side, his screams broken by hysterical pleas for help. Passers-by rushed to them, milling helplessly.

  The howling of both dog and boy evoked such misery that Craig was momentarily stupefied. Hands trembling, he drew his boys to his side and caught his breath at the sight of John Thomas, face twisted in empathetic pain too large for him to understand. Craig dropped to his knees and folded John Thomas to his chest. Turning to Lucas, ready to absorb his pain as well, he stiffened in shock.

  Lucas was smiling.

  Craig stifled rising panic. He’s too young to understand, he reasoned, as fear thudded through him. It’s a blank smile, not one of pleasure. But Lucas was staring at the hysterical boy, the piteously screaming dog, and his smile didn’t waver. Craig frantically scanned the faces of children in the crowd, seeking reassurance in their expressions. But not one was smiling. Even a toddler, clutche
d in its mother’s arms, had tears rolling down his round cheeks.

  Worse yet, Craig’s fear felt familiar. Lucas’s cold smile only strengthened what he’d suspected for quite some time; there was something dreadfully wrong with his younger son. There’d been too many hints in the past year that Lucas’s emotional reactions weren’t normal. For one thing, Lucas was indifferent to John Thomas, something that had always puzzled Craig. He’d assumed younger siblings tagged behind older ones like orbiting planets bound by gravity to their sun. But Lucas ignored John Thomas’s activities. And John Thomas didn’t tease Lucas.

  Craig wasn’t sure whether their odd relationship was due to Lucas’s strangeness or to John Thomas’s precocious maturity. But was John Thomas mature enough to recognize a problem with Lucas?

  Craig now knew he had lost all trust in Lucas. That cold smile. How was it possible? Then it struck him: Should I even leave John Thomas alone with Lucas? He was horrified at such a thought about his own flesh and blood.

  Northbound traffic was moving smoothly on the Golden Gate Bridge. They were nearly across the bridge when Craig felt a slight dizziness. In the next second, vertigo engulfed him and he couldn’t feel his hands on the wheel or his foot on the accelerator. Awareness of his boys in the backseat, of the car hurtling at close to fifty miles per hour on a bridge packed with other cars, screamed alarm through him. Something huge pressed upon his consciousness. He frantically tried to maintain focus on the road, to regain control of his muscles. Helpless rage battled against the numb tingling that stung his body. A surge of panic, then consciousness left him.

  And billions of others.

  Vertigo and unconsciousness were indiscriminate. Every highway, bridge, and street was filled with horrific accidents as drivers slumped over their wheels.

  In their Volvo, Craig and his sons plowed through a narrow opening between careening cars, bounced off the side rail of the Golden Gate, then received the impact of the vehicles piling up behind them. The blow carried them beyond the cement boundaries bordering the end of the bridge and bounced them to a halt on the shoulder of the Bayside exit to the Vista Point parking lot.

  The horrific collisions took less than a minute, and were followed by the sounds of still-running engines, several stuck horns, and an occasional upturned wheel spinning out its slowing force.

  For three minutes, not a whisper of consciousness flickered in the minds of any of the survivors trapped in the distorted metal wrecks.

  United States, est. population (pre-blackout): significantly above 300 million.

  United States, est. population (post-blackout): 198,879,233.

  CHAPTER 2

  SAN FRANCISCO 11:00 A.M.

  PREGNANT. LAURA TOSSED THE TELLTALE STICK INTO a small wastebasket next to her bathroom sink.

  She stared into the mirror. Her hair was thick, honey-colored, unkempt after the night. She scrunched her nose. Someone had told her she had Meryl Streep’s nose. Great. Chipmunk cheeks and Meryl Streep’s nose. At twenty-six, she felt she was fading and wondered what Mack saw in her. Her brown eyes watered and nausea buckled her over the sink.

  You’re a mess. You’re pregnant, Mack’s gone (thank God). Leaving the bathroom, she stopped at the threshold of her apartment’s living room. She could no longer put off calling the clinic for an appointment.

  Sinking into her chair, she reached for the phone and resolutely batted away her fear. She had to take care of this, and recover, before Mack returned from his overseas trip. He’d never know.

  She’d had boyfriends before, but never one like Mack. Older than her by at least fifteen years, Mack was both rugged and charming, an adventurer, a real-life Indiana Jones, and she was flattered by his attention. He could have any woman he wanted, but four months ago, he’d chosen her, and their relationship became all that a small-town girl like herself dreamed about.

  A baby would wreck everything.

  If her resolve dissipated now, the old Laura would reappear, the responsible, organized Laura. The Laura whose dismay at her own behavior would undermine the excitement of this relationship.

  Mack was her adventure and she wasn’t ready to end it.

  She punched the number to the clinic. During the first ring, she began to feel strange. At the second ring, vertigo struck. Apprehensive, she mistook it for nausea, but then felt an enormous pressure on her mind, a huge, unimaginable wave poised to crash upon her. She dropped the phone.

  And was engulfed by sudden, overwhelming comprehension. Of death. Of life.

  Space ceased to exist. Energy was compressed, yet all-encompassing. There was time without space, paradoxically static and fluid, stretching moments into eons into nanoseconds. The understanding of another dimension that contradicted everything came instantly to Laura. Immersed in knowledge, she no longer had a point of view. She felt her sense of self absorbed into entirety.

  She was no longer Laura.

  Forces in harmony sang, colors became panoramic fields describing energy. Images of the only dimension she’d known showed space riddled by endless exchanges between matter and energy in finite velocity. The newly sensed, and limited, time/energy dimension lusted for vastness.

  The entire history of all life on earth, the source of life, the meaning, all were perfectly clear.

  The source was even now, this moment, poised to … something …

  Space reasserted itself. Laura felt as though she had been dropped, a physical sensation that lurched through her stomach as she felt herself once again contained, constrained by flesh and bone.

  Nausea. Carpet below. A dreamlike fade.

  Suddenly, briefly, a flash of something different. A bleak darkness. Unimaginable dread.

  Then it was gone. That smothering blackness, the stomach-pitting dread, had nothing to do with the feelings and knowledge she’d first felt, understood. She shuddered with distaste before a resurgence of euphoria swept over her. A maelstrom of images and ideas raged through her and she fought to remember, groping for the clarity she’d had only moments before. She didn’t want to lose any of it.

  The meaning. It was all there.

  She thought she felt a vague movement in her womb. Movement? Determined not to be distracted, she ignored it and plunged back into memory, wrapping remnants of ecstatic knowledge around her.

  All too soon, the brightly colored diorama faded. She lay, exhausted, on the floor of her familiar apartment. I have to remember, life is … to think we never really knew. All the religions and philosophies. Did anyone ever guess? I’ve got to remember more, there’s more and I’m not remembering. Think, think, THINK.

  Emotionally drained, she absently rubbed her stomach as she tried to refocus her thoughts. Round and round her hand went, trying to soothe the tiny fetus with all she had seen.

  CHAPTER 3

  NOTHING MOVED ON THE WRECKAGE-STREWN GOLDEN Gate Bridge. For three long minutes, those who’d survived the collisions lay unconscious, ecstatically basking in exploding visions.

  John Thomas regained consciousness in strobing flashes: Everythingness, nothingness. Vague euphoria. Everythingness. Singularity. John Thomas.

  Reality returned abruptly: smoke, burnt rubber, oil, and blood; idling engines, stuck car horns, Lucas’s voice, and a low humming he didn’t recognize; twisted car interior strewn with CDs, fast-food garbage, and contents of the glove compartment; leather upholstery oddly pressed into his side, the seat belt bruising his lap and shoulder.

  His head hurt, his eyes stung. But there was a leftover bit of dreamy fog, something exquisite, exciting, good. It slipped away when he tried to focus, and panic, sadness, filled the emptying recesses. He squeezed his eyes shut. What was the picture inside that whiteness that kept sending such night-before-Christmas feelings? The best dream he’d ever had and now he couldn’t remember it!

  “What happened?” Lucas asked loudly, excited. “My side hurts. I can’t get my seat belt off.” He tugged John Thomas’s arm. “What’s wrong with you and Dad? You don’t answ
er and I need help. Get my seat belt off, John Thomas, now, now, now!”

  John Thomas looked at Lucas—his voice, his hand plucking at his sleeve—there, but somehow, not real. Like a TV turned up too loud. Lucas.

  Lucas frightened John Thomas. He’d been wanting to say something about this to his father. But what could he say? The things he felt about his brother didn’t seem to have words.

  His head hurt and it was hard to think. Part of him knew that something was terribly wrong, but most of him was wrapped in the memory of wonderful feelings. If only he could remember where they came from, the story that strung them together.

  “John Thomas, stop pretending you don’t hear me,” Lucas demanded. He tried to wriggle out of his seat belt to see out the windows. All but the front passenger-side window, facing the parking lot, were shattered opaque, yet intact.

  “I can’t see anything, John Thomas. Dad. John Thomas won’t help me. Dad!”

  John Thomas tried to focus on the spot where his father’s head and shoulders should be. His father wasn’t there. Where was he? Fear jolted him.

  They’d had a very bad accident. Was something wrong with his father? John Thomas fumbled with his seat belt, forgetting that he’d been trying to remember something, ignoring Lucas, the pain in his head, needing only to see his father, to know he was there and he was all right.

  He grabbed the front seat, heaved himself up, and saw his father, body contorted on the floor beneath the dash, head turned at an impossible angle, eyes staring at him.

  John Thomas stopped breathing. His pulse thrummed his eardrums. He fastened his gaze on his father’s trembling lips.

  “Watch out,” Craig Thomas croaked.

  John Thomas leaned farther over the seat, straining to hear.

  Using his last breath of life, Craig whispered, “Watch out … for … Lucas.”

  “Dad?” John Thomas stared, stunned. Lifeless eyes stared back at him.