Time After Time Read Online Free PDF

trunk of old letters sealed away,
and this was in with them." -
    "No kidding?"
    Susy was tugging at her
mother's hand. "Mommy? I think maybe I don't want to go. I think. .
. maybe I should have some quiet time," she said with a tentative
look in her big brown eyes.
    Stomachache,
dammit. Liz threw Victoria a scolding
glance, then said to her daughter, "Okay, sweetie. I'll take the
box to the locksmith some other time."
    "Liz, just go; I'll stay
with Susy," said Victoria amiably. She held out her hand to the
little girl and said, "You can have quiet time while I tell you
another adventure of the Princess and the Magic
Petunia."
    Susy was all for that,
which left Liz with mixed feelings. Her daughter's early years were
precious ones, and on Liz's deathbed she was going to want every
lost moment of them. She felt guilty for wanting to open the box
... but she wanted desperately to open the box.
    "Okay, then, sunshine.
I'll be right back."
    ****
    Jimmy's Lock and Key was
located in a peeling colonial house, one of the many historic
buildings, most of them updated, that lined both sides of downtown
Thames Street. The concept of gentrification, however, had not yet
occurred to Jimmy; his ancient, tattered shop was a jumble of new
brass hardware, carousels of key blanks, and boxes of mysterious
metal innards. Liz laid the red-lacquered box on the painted
plywood counter and said, "Can you get it open without damaging
it?"
    Jimmy, a bulldozer of a
man who could probably pry open a locked safe with one arm tied
behind his back, picked up the box in his thick, stubby hands and
said, "Shouldn't be too hard. Where'd you get it — flea market, or
antique shop?"
    "Neither. It was in the
sealed-in attic of the house I've just bought, along with a bunch
of old letters. Isn't that weird? If this box were bigger, I'd be
afraid of finding someone's bones in it," Liz said with a
self-conscious laugh.
    "Or ashes," said Jimmy,
shaking it back and forth the way Liz had.
    Ashes! She hadn't thought
of ashes. "Can you pick the lock?" she asked with more dread than
before.
    Jimmy shrugged and reached
under the counter. "Won't need to, maybe." He brought out an El
Producto cigar box and flipped open the cardboard top. "Let's see
what we got in here," he said, pushing an assortment of tiny keys
around in the box. "Sometimes we get lucky."
    His eye lit on a little
brass key that must've looked promising. He picked it up and tried
inserting it. No luck. He tried another. Ditto. Liz's hopes began
to sag. Then he pulled out a third key, a tiny key turned dark with
age, and tried that one.
    "Well, well," he said,
obviously pleased as the key turned smoothly in the lock. "Nothin's
frozen."
    What Jimmy did next showed
he had an instinct either for chivalry or for caution, Liz never
did figure out which: he turned the box around to face her so that
she could open it herself.
    Liz bit her lower lip and
laid both her hands gently on the lid. She'd half convinced herself
that there was an important letter wedged inside, or a map, a
treasure map left behind by Captain Kidd. But she did not want
ashes.
    Slowly, expectantly, she
raised the lid. Almost at once her ears seemed to ring, as though
somewhere in the far, far distance, someone were playing an
instrument. A chime, perhaps: a single-noted chime whose echo began
to fill the room with its extraordinary tone.
    She was confused; she
thought perhaps the box was some sort of music box or that —
bizarrely — it was rigged to sound an alarm when opened. But the
tone stayed with her, filling her head with its melodious
note.
    "Well? What've we got?"
asked Jimmy.
    "I ... what?" Liz asked,
hardly registering the question.
    The inside of the box was
lined with rich black satin, and on the satin sat a heart-shaped
pin. The heart itself was open and gold, shaped into a twining
leafy pattern. The inside point of the heart ended in a tiny red
stone sitting on five gold petals. It was very pretty, but worth
less, probably,