THE TIME BETWEEN US

           THE TIME BETWEEN US

Quinn Hart had always believed that history was a collection of things that had already happened.

Dates.

Names.

Battles.

Treaties.

Births and deaths carefully recorded in old books.

History, she had learned was finished.

It could be studied, argued over, romanticized, but never changed.

She was wrong.

She discovered that on a rainy October afternoon when she found the watch.

It had belonged to her grandmother.

Quinn had discovered it inside a small wooden box hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the attic of her grandmother’s old farmhouse. The watch was old-fashioned, made of tarnished silver, with tiny flowers engraved around the edge.

On the inside of the cover were four words.

Time remembers what hearts forget.

Quinn had laughed when she read them.

“Very dramatic Grandma.”

She turned the watch over.

The hours weren’t moving.

Then she touched the glass.

The room disappeared.

When Quinn opened her eyes, she was standing in the middle of a muddy road.

The rain was gone.

So was the farmhouse.

So was the twenty-first century.

Instead, she heard horses.

She smelled wood smoke.

Somewhere nearby a woman was calling for her children.

Quinn stared at the buildings around her.

They were wooden.

Horse-drawn wagons rolled past.

Men wore breeches and waistcoats. Women wore long dresses and bonnets.

A newspaper boy hurried down the street shouting about British troops.

Quinn’s heart stopped.

“No,” she whispered.

She looked down at the watch.

The hands were moving now.

The year suddenly seemed to exist inside her head with terrifying clarity.

1777.

Colonial America.

The Revolutionary War.

“Oh Grandma,” Quinn whispered. “What did you do?”

A horse suddenly reared beside her.

Quinn stumbled backward.

A man grabbed her arm.

“Careful.”

She looked up.

And everything inside her went still.

He was perhaps twenty-eight, with dark hair, gray-blue eyes, and a face that seemed entirely wrong for the eighteenth century because Quinn could imagine seeing it everywhere.

He wore a dark military coat.

Not continental.

British.

He released her arm.

“Are you hurt?”

Quinn stared at him.

“No.”

“You look frightened.”

“I am.”

He smiled faintly.

“At least you are honest.”

His name was Thomas Whitmore.

He was a British officer stationed nearby.

And, as Quin would soon discover, he was a Loyalist.

He believed the colonies belonged to the British.

He believed the rebellion was dangerous.

He believed King George was his king.

And Quinn knew that falling in love with him would be the worst possible thing she could do.

She did it anyway.

For the next several days, Thomas helped Quinn survive in a world where everything she knew was centuries away.

He found her clothes.

He arranged for her to stay with a widow named Mrs. Bell.

He never questioned why Quinn didn’t seem to know how to do anything.

“You hold a quill like a sword,” he told her one morning.

“I’ve never used one.”

“Everyone uses a quill pen.”

“I don’t.”

Thomas laughed.

“You are a strange woman, Miss Hart.”

Quinn smiled.

“You have no idea.”

She couldn’t tell him the truth.

Not about the future.

Not about the watch.

Not about the year she had come from.

Not about the fact she knew how the war would end.

She couldn’t tell him that one day the United States would exist.

She couldn’t tell him that Britain would lose.

She couldn’t tell him that people would eventually walk on the moon.

That computers would exist.

That people would carry tiny devices in their pockets capable of talking to someone thousands of miles away.

To Thomas, all of that would sound like madness.

So, instead she talked about things that didn’t matter.

Books.

Music.

Rain.

The sea.

Childhood.

Dreams.

And Thomas listened.

One evening, they sat beneath an enormous oak tree while the sun sank behind the fields.

“Why are you loyal to Britain?” Quinn asked.

Thomas looked toward the distant.

“My father was.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

‘It is the only one I have.”

She studied him.

“Do you believe Britain is right?”

Thomas was silent.

“I believe order is better than chaos.”

“What if the order is wrong?”

He looked at her.

“And what if rebellion destroys everything?”

“What if rebellion is the only way to build something better?”

Thomas smiled sadly.

“You speak like someone who has already seen the future.”

Quinn’s heart stumbled.

“I wish I could.”

“You would want to.”

“Why?”

“Because knowing the future would mean knowing what you cannot change.”

She looked away.

He had no idea how close he was to the truth.

As the days passed, Quinn began recognizing Thomas’s name.

She had heard it before.

Not in her own family.

In history books.

She remembered reading about a Loyalist officer named Thomas Whitmore who had disappeared during the winter of 1777.

There had been no confirmed record of his death.

No grave.

No body.

Only a brief mention in an old military journal.

Quinn’s stomach tightened.

It couldn’t be him.

But it was.

She knew it.

One afternoon, she found Thomas reading a letter.

His face was troubled.

“What happened?”

He folded the paper.

“My commanding officer has ordered us to search several farms.”

“For rebels?”

“For suspected rebels.”

“And if they aren’t rebels?”

“Then we search anyway.”

Quinn stood.

“That isn’t justice.”

Thomas looked at her.

“I know.”

“You said you believed in order.”

“I do.”

“Then how can you accept this?”

He didn’t answer.

She stepped closer.

“Thomas.”

He looked at her.

And something changed.

Not all at once.

Not dramatically.

It was simply the moment when doubt entered a man’s heart and refused to leave.

The next morning, Thomas didn’t ride with the soldiers.

Instead, he returned to Mrs. Bell’s house.

Quinn found him standing outside.

“I didn’t go,” he said.

“Where?”

“With the patrol.”

She stared at him.

“Why?”

“Because you were right.”

Her heart began pounding.

“About what?”

“About everything.”

He stepped closer.

“I have spent my entire life believing loyalty meant obedience. But perhaps loyalty means knowing when the people you serve are wrong.”

Quinn swallowed.

“You can’t change sides.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’ll kill you.”

“Perhaps.”

“Thomas.”

He smiled.

“I have been thinking about you since the moment I met you.”

She looked down.

“Don’t.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t know me.”

“I know enough.”

“You don’t know where I came from.”

“No.”

“You don’t know who I really am.”

He gently lifted her chin.

“Then tell me.”

She couldn’t.

Not without destroying everything.

So instead, she kissed him.

It was the first kiss of her life that felt like an answer to a question she had been afraid to ask.

Thomas wrapped his arms around her.

For a few precious seconds, the war disappeared.

There was only them.

Two people born centuries apart.

Two people who should never have met.

Two hearts that did not care.

That night, Quinn told him the truth.

Not everything.

But enough.

“I am not from here,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“I mean I’m not from your time.”

Thomas stared at her.

She showed him the watch.

When he touched it, the hands began spinning.

His face went pale.

“What is it?”

A way home.

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked at her.

“Then you have to stay.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because this isn’t my time.”

He stepped closer.

“Then make it yours.”

Tears filled her eyes.

“I wish I could.”

Thomas looked at her.

“If you leave, I will find you.”

“You can’t.”

“I will.”

“You won’t even know where to look.”

“Then I will spend the rest of my life looking.”

Quinn cried.

Because she knew something he didn’t.

There was no future in which Thomas could follow her.

There was no world where she could take him home.

History would not allow it.

Neither would time.

Three days later, the watch began glowing.

Quinn knew what it meant.

She and Thomas stood together beneath the same oak tree where they had first spoken about the future.

The war continued around them.

Cannons thundered in the distance.

People shouted.

Horses raced along the road.

But Quinn heard none of it.

“I love you,” Thomas said.

She closed her eyes.

“I love you too.”

“Then stay.”

“I can’t.”

She touched his face.

“I don’t belong here.”

“Neither do I anymore.”

She smiled through tears.

“Maybe that’s why we found each other.”

The watch grew brighter.

Thomas pulled her against him.

“Will I ever see you again?”

Quinn wanted to lie.

Instead, she said, “I don’t know.”

He kissed her forehead.

“Then I will love you until I do.”

The watched flashed.

The world vanished.

Quinn woke on the attic floor.

Rain struck the window.

The farmhouse stood exactly as she had left it.

She scrambled upright.

The watch lay on her hand.

Its silver casing was warm.

Only minutes had passed.

Quinn ran downstairs.

She searched every history book she owned.

There he was.

The Loyalist Officer.

But something had changed.

The old entry had been different before.

She remembered.

Now it said:

Thomas Whitmore, British Officer. Defected to the American cause in 1777. Later served as courier for Continental Army. Married Abigail Hart of Virginia in 1779.

Quin froze.

Hart.

Her last name.

She turned the page.

There was a portrait.

Thomas.

Older.

But unmistakable.

Beside him stood a woman.

Quinn stared at her.

The woman had Thomas’s had resting on her shoulder.

Her name was Abigail Hart.

Quinn’s ancestor.

Her grandmother’s, grandmother’s, grandmother.

Quinn sat down hard.

She had changed history.

Not the war.

Not the outcome.

Not the birth of America.

Something smaller.

Something almost invisible.

But important.

Thomas had survived.

He married Abigail.

And somewhere along the generations, his bloodline had joined hers.

That was why Quinn had been able to travel to him.

That was why the watch had belonged to her grandmother.

It had not merely taken Quinn into the past.

It had taken her to someone who was part of her future.

She turned the page.

At the bottom of Thomas’s biography was one final statement.

Family tradition claims Whitmore spent the remainder of his life waiting for a woman named Quinn, whom he described as a “stranger from another time.”

Quinn covered her mouth.

She was crying again.

Then she noticed something else.

A small handwritten note had been added to the family bible.

The handwriting was old.

Faded.

But she recognized it.

Thomas’s.

To Quinn, wherever time has carried you. I kept my promise. I loved you until I found you again.

Quinn pressed the watched against her heart.

She always believed history was a collection of things that had already happened.

Now she understood.

History was made from things people chose to do.

The small decisions.

The impossible choices.

The people who loved when they shouldn’t.

The people who changed sides because someone gave them the courage to question what they believe.

And sometimes history was changed by one woman stepping into the past and falling in love with a man she was never supposed to meet.

Quinn closed the Bible.

Outside, the rain had stopped.

The sun broke through the clouds.

She looked down at the watch.

The hands had stopped moving.

But beneath the glass, engraved so faintly she had never noticed it before were five new words.

Some loves outlive time itself.

Quinn smiled.

Then for the first time since she had returned, she wasn’t afraid of the future.

Because somewhere in the past Thomas Whitmore had lived.

He had loved her.

And because of one impossible journey through time, he had changed history.

Not enough for anyone else to notice.

But enough to change everything.