Children of Time (The After Cilmeri Series Book Four) Read Online Free PDF Page B

never talked about what happened to you all those years ago,” Goronwy said. “I’ve only heard your story from Llywelyn.”
    “I can tell you now,” I said. “Everyone was abed when Anna woke in the night, late on the 15 th . I went to her and was holding her when my water broke. The next second, we had fallen onto my mother’s lawn. David was born in the early hours of November 16 th .”
    “By now, after three voyages to this world and back, you’d think we would understand why this happens and how it happens,” he said.
    “I’ve come to believe that there’s something in me—in my children—that makes world-shifting possible.” I held up my passport. “I may never know what that special something is, but I don’t always have to be unprepared.”

Chapter Four
    15 November 2016
    Meg
     
     
    I struggled with the forms for half an hour, before giving up on conveying anything close to the truth.
    “Why are you smiling?” Goronwy eyed me as I bit the end of the pen.
    “Because I’m making this up as I go along and it’s kind of amusing.”
    I’d made Llywelyn an American, given him my father’s social security number (I’d memorized it before he died, when he was in and out of the hospital so much, and it stuck with me), and the address and phone number of my childhood home. In twenty minutes, I’d created an entire fake back story for him out of whole cloth.
    By the time I finished, a new nurse had replaced the old one, who appeared only long enough to plop a pile of surgical scrubs on the chair next to me. She smelled of smoke, which she hadn’t before, and I guessed that she’d taken my request for clothing as an opportunity to sneak a cigarette before going off-shift. I gave her a smile and thanks, which she didn’t acknowledge. After she’d gone, I held up one of the shirts, pursing my lips as I studied it.
    “What—what are those?” Goronwy said, looking truly discomfited for the first time.
    “Dry clothes,” I said. “Except now I’m having second thoughts.” It wasn’t that they wouldn’t cover us adequately, but I couldn’t see Goronwy willingly changing into the flimsy pants. And what would he do with his sword, which so far he’d kept well hidden under his cloak? Strap it around his waist? It would contrast badly with the lime green scrubs. Surely they would confiscate it.
    For my part, at five and half months pregnant and really showing, especially in my wet dress, the pants might not even fit. I’d had my seamstress add to the seams of my dress only last week, and already it was tight. I’d meant to ask her to do it again in the morning.
    I hated to think what the attendants who cared for Llywelyn had thought of his gear. He’d been wearing his armor and sword when we jumped from the wall, the same as Goronwy. It was part of his formal attire. After our talk on the balcony, we were to have feasted in the hall, as a proper send off for the kids’ journey to London.
    “I think I have a better idea,” I said. “Come with me.”
    I took Goronwy’s arm and headed towards the doors to the waiting room, though not before I passed off my falsified but completed forms to the nurse behind the desk. She took them without a word and didn’t even glance up at us. Perhaps one of the hallmarks of the Healing Waters spa was that the staff didn’t ask questions, no matter how odd their guests or patients appeared to be. If an individual had enough money to stay here, maybe he assumed he’d also bought discretion.
    With my identification gripped tightly in my hand, I strolled with Goronwy towards the main lobby. As we walked down the pink hallway towards the doors through which we’d come initially, I felt like I was turning back the clock. How was it that we hadn’t fallen into that pool a life time ago?
    When we reached the foyer, instead of turning towards the atrium and the pool, we went through a different set of doors that opened into the lobby. And then we stopped