Time and Again

mused, and even an archaic vehicle could be made to run smoothly and quietly.
    Jacob was on the brink of pointing this out to her when she shoved the Land Rover in gear and sent snow spitting out from under the tires.
    "All right!"
    "Is it?"
    "This baby rides like a tank," she said happily as they lumbered away from the cabin.
    "Apparently." He braced himself, finding it incongruous that he should worry about life and limb here, when he had taken countless trips at warp speed. "I suppose you know what you're doing."
    "Of course I know what I'm doing. I learned how to drive in a Jeep." They labored up an incline where snow had melted and refrozen into a slick surface.
    Jacob judged the height and breadth of the trees. He could only trust that she knew how to avoid them.
    "You look a little green." She had to chuckle as they plowed, then fishtailed, then plowed again, making erratic but definite progress. "Haven't you ever ridden in one of these?"
    He had an image of driving his own LSA vehicle-Land, Sea or Air. It was smooth and quiet and as fast as a comet. "No, actually, I haven't."
    "Then you're in for a treat."
    The Land Rover bumped over rocks hidden under the snow. "I bet."
    They forged through the drifts. He nearly relaxed. By all indications, she knew how to handle the vehicle.
    Such as it was. After the first twenty minutes, the heater began to hum.
    "How about some tunes?"
    His brow creased. "Fine," he said cautiously.
    "You're in charge."
    "Of what?"
    "Of the tunes." She navigated carefully down an incline. "The radio."
    He eyed a particularly large tree. At their current rate and angle, he estimated thirty seconds to impact.
    "We didn't bring it."
    "The car radio, J.T." She missed the tree by six or eight inches. "Pick a station."
    She'd taken her hand from the wheel for an instant to gesture at the dashboard. Eyes narrowed, Jacob studied it. Trusting luck, he turned a dial.
    "It works better if you turn it on before you try to tune in a station."
    Biting back an oath, he tried another dial and was greeted by a blast of ear-popping static. After adjusting the volume, he applied himself to the tuner. His first stop was an instrumental melody, loaded with strings, that made him cringe. Still, he glanced over at Sunny.
    "If that's your choice, we'll have to reassess our relationship immediately."
    Sound faded in and out as he played with the tuner. He hit on some gritty rock, not too dissimiliar from what might have sounded over the airwaves in his own time.
    "Good choice." She turned her head briefly to smile at him. "Who's your favorite musician?"
    "Mozart," he answered, because it was partially true and undeniably safe.
    "You're going to like my mother. When I was a kid, she used to weave to his Clarinet Concerto in A Minor." With the radio still rocking, she hummed a few bars. "For the purity of sound, she'd always say.
    Mom's always been big on pure-no additives, no preservatives."
    "How did you keep food fresh without preservatives?"
    "That's what I say. What's life without a little MSG? Anyway, then Dad would switch on Bob Dylan."
    She laughed, more relieved than she wanted to admit when they turned onto the first plowed road. "One of my earliest memories of him is watching him weed his garden, with his hair down to his shoulders and this scratchy Dylan record playing on a little portable turntable. 'Come gather 'round, people, wherever you roam.' All he was wearing-Dad, not Dylan-was bell-bottoms and love beads."
    Jacob got an uncomfortable flash of his own father, dressed in his tidy gardening clothes, blue shirt, blue slacks, his hair carefully trimmed under a stiff peaked cap, his face quiet as he hand-pruned his roses and listened to Brahms on his personal entertainment unit.
    And of his mother, sitting in the shade of a tree on a lazy Sunday afternoon, reading a novel while he and Cal had tossed a baseball and argued over strike zones.
    "I think you'll like him."
    Dragged back, Jacob blinked at her. "What?"
    "My father," she repeated. "I think you'll like him."
    He battled down the anger that had risen up inside him. It was simple enough to put two and two together. "Your parents live in Portland?"
    "That's right. About twenty minutes from my place." She let out a quiet, satisfied breath as they turned onto Route 5 and headed north. "They'll be glad to meet you, especially since Cal's family has been so shrouded in mystery."
    The friendly smile she offered him faded when she saw his expression.