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Francisco earthquake, sometimes it still felt like a dream. Something once removed. The war wasn’t fiction though, and every one of the people in the photographs had been real. They’d been standing in those spots just as surely as she was standing in Hastings. She flipped through a few more pages. Newspaper stories of civilian casualties and the difficulties the hospitals endured during the bombing raids. Moving operating theaters to basements and burying radium to keep from contaminating everything with lethal doses of radiation if a bomb should strike. Patients were moved from floor to floor and hospital to hospital trying to stay one step ahead of the Nazi bombs.
    In one series of photographs an injured man was being helped into a bed at a new ward at Guy’s Hospital in London. The caption read, “Some men lose more than their homes. For some, their identities are stolen by shell shock induced amnesia.” The photographer captured a close-up of the man’s face. Elizabeth’s hands trembled.
    “Oh my god,” Elizabeth said. “Simon!”
    She could barely believe what she was seeing.
    Simon came to her side. “What is it?”
    She pointed at the man in the photograph. “Look.”
    The man in the photograph looked confused and in some pain, but there was no mistaking who he was. It was Evan Eldridge.

Chapter Four
    “Dear God,” Simon said, leaning closer for a better look. “Is that…?”
    “Mr. Eldridge.”
    When Elizabeth had traveled back to 1906, she’d stayed at the Eldridges’ home. She’d spent weeks there and hour after hour in the parlor where Evan Eldridge’s portrait hung. She’d heard the pain in Mrs. Eldridge’s voice as she recounted the last time she’d seen her husband. She’d said it was her worst nightmare come true. He’d been a member of the Council for Temporal Studies for years and been on countless missions through time, just like Simon’s grandfather. Until one day, he left and never returned. Mrs. Eldridge had always assumed he’d been killed, but the man in the photograph was quite alive. At least, he was alive in the 1940s.
    “When is this?” Elizabeth asked as she scanned the text next to the photograph. “I don’t see any dates.”
    She picked up the binder and took it into the front room. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said as she placed it in front of the woman at the desk. “Do you know anything about these? These photographs? When they were taken?”
    The woman put on her glasses. “Hmmm. No, just what it says there. Something about Guy’s Hospital. It was a feature in the Times, I think.” She flipped through a few more pages and pointed to a small news clipping. “Yes, there we are. September 18, 1942, Guy’s Hospital. Poor man appears to be suffering from a case of amnesia. It wasn’t uncommon. All that bombing, it’s a miracle anyone kept their wits about them.”
    “Yes,” Elizabeth said, her heart racing almost as quickly as her thoughts. “Thank you. I don’t suppose we can have a copy of this?”
    “I’m afraid we don’t have the facilities for that.”
    Maybe it was available online? Most of the newspapers had digital archives now. Of course, she didn’t have her computer and she knew Sebastian’s home didn’t have wireless anyway. Surely, there was a cyber-café in town.
    She grabbed Simon’s hand and dragged him out onto the sidewalk. “Where’s the closest Internet café?”
    “Tell me you’re not seriously considering traveling back in time, “ he said in a strained, hushed voice, “into a war zone, for God’s sake, to virtually kidnap a man we’ve never even met.”
    “I am.”
    The vein in Simon’s temple started to visibly throb. “Let’s discuss this at home,” he said with great effort. “Please? We agreed it was better to not know what happened to the people we left in the past.”
    At the time, she’d agreed, but her initial resolve had lasted a whole two weeks, which was actually a week longer than she