Time and Again

the tea to the table. "Half the time when he'd get into fights it was because someone had said something about me. It used to annoy me, because I wanted to take care of it myself, but he'd always plow right in before I had the chance. And my parents- I can't think of a single time he'd forget a birthday or Mother's Day."
    "They still have Mother's Day?"
    "Sure."
    "Cal." Absently she stirred sugar into her tea. "How did you decide to stay?"
    "I didn't decide," he told her. "What I mean is, I don't think decide is the word. It implies choice. I couldn't leave Libby. I tried. But I've never stopped thinking about my family."
    "Whether you consider you had a choice or not, it had to be difficult."
    "For me it was pretty cut-and-dried. I couldn't even be sure if I'd make it back. I sent the ship and the reports because if there was a chance I could let them know I was alive, safe, I had to." He laid a hand over hers. "With J.T., it's different. He knows he can make it back, and if he didn't go he'd be leaving them without hope. He couldn't do that."
    "No, he couldn't do that." She lifted her head. "It's been hard for you."
    "This has been the best year of my life."
    "But the adjustments, the separation-"
    "If I'd been tossed back another five hundred years it wouldn't have mattered. As long as I'd found Libby."
    "She's lucky to have you."
    "I like to think so." He grinned, then sobered. "He loves you, Sunny."
    Something flickered in her eyes before she lowered them. "Did he tell you that?"
    "Yes, but he didn't have to. I saw it the first time he said your name. I guess what I wanted to tell you was that he's never felt about anyone the way he feels about you."
    "Will you help me, Cal? I left before he woke up." She pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling. "I can't say goodbye."
    Libby stood by the stream watching the water fight its way around the ice. In her mind she saw it as it had been in the spring, when the water had gurgled lazily over the rocks and the song of birds had been everywhere. The grass had been soft and green.
    It was there that she and Cal had buried the time capsule. And there they had made love, while her heart had broken at the picture of him unearthing it again in some springtime hundreds of years ahead.
    Instead, he had stayed, and it was his brother who had taken out the box they had placed there. Now it was her sister's heart that was breaking.
    Whatever comfort she offered Sunny wouldn't be enough.
    It seemed wrong that she should have everything while Sunny lost. She had Cal, and the home they loved, the life they were building. She had the child.
    With a soft smile, she pressed a hand to her stomach. The child who would come at summer's end and bind them even closer together.
    Sunny would have only memories, and there was nothing Libby could do about it.
    She turned her head slightly and saw Jacob.
    He was only a few feet away. She hadn't heard his approach in the muffling snow. In the shadows cast by the trees she saw how much he resembled Cal. The same build, the same coloring, the same sharp facial bones. There was a measuring look in his eyes that made her wonder how long he had been standing and watching her in silence.
    She didn't approach him. Though he posed no threat to her-and she admitted that she had been foolish and overemotional ever to believe he could-he had taken her sister's heart. And broken it.
    "Cal's inside." Her voice was cool and clipped. She made no attempt to be friendly.
    She showed her anger differently from Sunny, he mused. Sunny exploded with hers, went straight on the attack. Apparently Libby let hers bubble and brew inside. He wondered if she realized it was just as volatile.
    "I wanted to talk to you."
    She had never enjoyed confrontations, but she braced for this one. "There's nothing you can say to me that would make me influence Cal to leave with you. The choice is his, whether you believe it or not. Just as it was before."
    "I know." He moved slowly across the snow until he stood beside her. "It isn't something I thought I would understand or accept, but I do. Our parents will- It will mean a great deal to them when I tell them about you. About the child."
    "He misses them." Her voice was thick as she battled the tide of emotion. "They should know that."
    "They will."
    "Why didn't you tell her?" she demanded. "How could you have let her fall in love with you when you knew you were going to leave?"
    His hands fisted as he plunged them into the