A Flight in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 2) Read online

  Jillian agreed. Branson was . . . he was the soul of her family. More than either of her parents, it was Branson who kept the family together, meal by meal. Losing Branson would be like losing the beating heart of the Applegate family. From that time forward, Jillian had only watched him, keeping her questions to a minimum.

  But the seed of desire had been planted, and if it had lain dormant since the days when teenage Jillian had asked questions about dough, it was dormant no longer. The sheer drudgery of her life at UC Berkeley (and of the cold, lifeless future her parents wanted for her) had awakened something deep inside. Jillian hungered for meaning and connection—hungered for it more than for the actual confections on display at Bouchon Bakery. She wanted a future where her creations brought people together, where her hair was always tied back, her apron always dusted with flour.

  When one day she worked up the courage to ask if she could speak to the pastry chef at Bouchon (not available, apologies), she’d been directed to a website, www.ilpaneperfetto.com, where she’d been struck as if by an arrow to the heart.

  Il Pane Perfetto was a tiny pastry chef school in a tiny northern Italian town, situated just where Italy bordered France, providing training in both French and Italian methods. “You want to study in Europe if you’re serious about traditional baking,” the baker’s assistant had said. “American schools are focused on the gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free movement at the moment.” Only four students were accepted at Il Pane Perfetto per year. For 2019, classes would run from January 7 to July 31, with five hours of instruction per day. Tuition was payable in advance and nonrefundable. Classes started in nine weeks, and Jillian had applied, been accepted, sold her car to cover the cost, and sent the payment by wire transfer. She’d had enough left to buy a ticket to Turin, the closest Italian airport.

  She’d told her parents she wasn’t happy at UC Berkeley, promising to present her alternative plan over Thanksgiving. She wasn’t looking forward to the conversation. She knew what her parents expected of her. She’d known it since kindergarten: Applegates always had to stay ahead of the curve. Her parents expected her to graduate Cal with honors, as they had done. They expected her to be successful. To add to the empires each of them had created. She felt their expectations like a crushing weight: pulverizing, suffocating.

  Taking a long, slow breath, she relaxed her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel of her rental car. A tiny voice whispered that maybe she wouldn’t even be having the conversation with her parents after all. She’d failed to board that plane. With all the motivation in the world, Jillian had failed. How was she going to argue for the chance to fly to Italy if she couldn’t fly?

  3

  · EVERETT ·

  New York City, 1901

  If it was going to be his last dinner at home for the next several months, Everett Winston Randolph IV was going to dress the way he wanted to. Which in his case meant twelve minutes of standing mostly still while Jennings went about the transformation that would remove him from his woolen lounge suit (tweedy and a bit “Edward, Prince of Wales,” but Everett liked it) and place him in something appropriate for dinner.

  Everett’s eyes drifted to the nearest window, draped in the severe Victorian velvets of the last century. By tomorrow evening, he would have exchanged his comfortable life in New York City for a rather less comfortable one in a Quantico, Virginia, guesthouse. He wondered what he would miss most, what he’d be happiest to see again upon his brief, obligatory, returns for holidays. Everett did not intend to live under his father’s roof after tonight.

  The storm had been brewing for over a year. Everett had tried to be the son his father wanted. He’d spent the entirety of his fifteenth year devoting himself to the family business of manufacturing headlamps for carriages and buggies. But this was a new century. It was a new era, a new world. The one bit of work Everett had been truly proud of that year—securing a contract to manufacture lights for one Mr. Studebaker—had come to nothing, thanks to his father’s pigheadedness. Mr. Studebaker had needed slight alterations to the headlamps that Everett’s father refused to make.

  Everett still shuddered at his father’s shortsighted response to Studebaker’s request: These automobile men, or whatever they call themselves, had better learn to take what they can get for parts and supplies, or they’ll find themselves run right out of business.

  Everett didn’t think Mr. Studebaker was the one who would be run out of business. The exchange had changed the course of Everett’s ambitions, though; he supposed he ought to be grateful for that. Less certain than he would admit aloud that Studebaker’s noisy, fog-belching machine would catch the popular imagination, Everett was banking on flying as the way of the future, and it was a future he intended to be a part of.

  As Jennings commenced buttoning Everett’s stiff white shirt up the back, Everett cleared his throat.

  “Yes, sir?” Jennings asked in his soft baritone.

  Everett was going to miss Jennings. And have the devil of a time getting in and out of a dinner shirt, now that he thought about it.

  “I’ve spoken with Bits and Bobs—sorry—with Joe Bitterson and Irwin Robertson, Jr., and they mean to box one another for the privilege of making you a job offer.”

  “Very obliging of you to mention it, sir.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t keep you on myself. I would, you see, if I felt I could afford it, but my allowance—”

  “Say no more, sir.”

  Everett frowned.

  “Jennings?”

  “Yes, sir?” Jennings finished buttoning a pair of trousers—pleated, cuffed, and with a fashionably short inseam, all styles Everett’s father, Everett III, despised.

  “It’s just, well, we’re still . . . pals, right?”

  “Indeed, sir.” Jennings commenced knotting Everett’s slim, elegant four-in-hand. He tied it rather more snugly than usual.

  “Holy Moses—” began Everett, reaching for his throat.

  Jennings immediately loosened the tie the slightest amount. That was the thing about Jennings and him: they understood one another. Words were hardly necessary between them. Everett suspected he would miss Jennings more than anything else from his coddled lifestyle.

  Jennings smoothed Everett’s waistcoat and reached for his best tailcoat.

  “No, not that one,” said Everett. “The dinner jacket. The tuxedo.” It was the modern choice. The jacket of a new century.

  “As you wish, sir,” said Jennings. In his compliance, he somehow managed to convey his opinion as to the marked unsuitability of a tuxedo jacket for dining.

  Maybe Everett wouldn’t miss everything about Jennings.

  Five minutes later, his short brown hair properly tamed by Jennings’s experienced hands, Everett heard the dinner bell ringing. Having passed Jennings an envelope of cash—a final form of gratuity—Everett made his way to the dining room.

  It was a Saturday, which meant oysters Rockefeller for the first of nine courses. The family—consisting of only Everett, his mother, and father—was finishing bowls of green turtle soup (his father’s particular favorite) when Everett judged the moment was right for his announcement.

  “Tomorrow, I’ll be traveling down to Virginia to visit Mr. Langley of the Smithsonian Institution.” His heart was racing, but he noted with pride how assured he sounded.

  “Nonsense,” replied his father. “You’ll be accompanying your uncle and myself to Pittsburgh.”

  His father had decided to acquire another manufacturing facility and planned to place Everett as second-in-command under his uncle come the new year. Everett did not plan to be anywhere near Pittsburgh come 1902, or any year.

  “I will not,” said Everett. “As I told you last month, I will not be moving to Pennsylvania next year. Because of this, I will not be accompanying you and Uncle Zacharius tomorrow.”

  Everett’s mother looked up from her half-empty soup bowl, removing her hands to her lap as a sign the footman could clear the table for the thir
d course.

  “The devil you won’t,” muttered Everett’s father. “And what do you think you’re doing, coming down to dinner dressed like that?” He turned from his son to his wife. “You’ll have a word with Jones about this, Millicent.”

  “Jennings,” murmured Millicent.

  Everett’s father glared at her for contradicting him as to the manservant’s name.

  “Of course I will speak to him, darling,” she added, conciliatory.

  As soon as the salmon meunière was set before him, Everett continued. “As it happens, I’ve told Jennings his services are no longer required—”

  “You told him what?” A purple vein at his father’s temple pulsed angrily.

  “—as I mean to apply to Mr. Langley for work.”

  “The devil you will!” exclaimed Everett’s father. “You’ll march yourself downstairs right now, sir, and tell Jennings to pack your trunk for Pittsburgh.”

  “Jennings has already packed my trunk for Virginia, Father.”

  “Then he’d better unpack it—”

  “No, sir.” Everett’s response hung in the air like an angry wasp.

  After a slow count of three, his mother, who had been gingerly picking at her salmon, stood. “I believe I shall retire early.”

  Everett stood. His father stood. Millicent drifted from the dining room, her heavy skirts swish-swishing over the French Aubusson rug.

  Everett’s father reseated himself, attacking the salmon as if it were responsible for his son’s irresponsibility. After several bites, he set his fork down and addressed his son. This time his voice was quieter. He had tamed it to the volume he reserved for threats.

  “You will accompany your uncle and myself to Pittsburgh tomorrow, or you will consider yourself as no longer a member of this family.” With a surgeon’s precision, he resumed the attack upon the salmon meunière.

  Everett stood.

  His father did not.

  “Good-bye, sir,” said Everett. “I shall say my farewells to Mama.”

  “You will do no such thing. Sit down at once, boy.”

  Everett inhaled slowly. “I will not. I am done sitting by and watching you flush Mama’s fortune down the drain with yet another factory that will be obsolete in ten years.”

  “How dare you?”

  “It’s the truth. Catering to the carriage and buggy market is a losing proposition. Within ten years, there won’t be a horse-drawn conveyance in the whole of New York City. And in twenty or thirty years at most, man will fly himself to tend his affairs.”

  His father laughed harshly at his son’s pronouncement. “You are a fool, boy.”

  Everett scowled, not at the use of “fool” but at the use of “boy.” He was seventeen. He was certainly old enough to know his own mind.

  “A fool,” repeated his father.

  “I may be one kind of fool, sir, but I will not be your kind.”

  The very chandeliers and draperies seemed to shiver at Everett’s words.

  “Goodnight to you, sir,” said Everett, walking to the dining room doorway. “And goodbye.”

  “Walk out of this house, boy, and I’ll disinherit you.”

  Though he had expected as much, Everett still felt his stomach churn at the pronouncement. He steeled himself and replied, saying aloud all he’d been thinking these past several months.

  “Better that than the alternative. Mark my words, Father. Continue as you’re doing now, and in ten years there won’t be anything left for me to inherit.” Having said this, Everett stormed from the room and up the grand staircase to say a kinder farewell to his mother.

  But his mother, said her maid, was unwell and had taken her drops already. Laudanum. His mother’s solution to everything, from fatigue, to headaches, to general malaise, to her disappointing son.

  Everett stood at the door for a moment after that, half-minded to walk in anyway. But if his mother had already taken her drops, she wouldn’t remember his good-bye.

  Deciding the trunk was unwieldy with no manservant to carry it, Everett repacked a smaller valise. It was only once the front door closed behind him that it occurred to him that even if his mother wouldn’t have remembered his goodbye, he would have.

  4

  · JILLIAN ·

  Montecito, the Present

  Jillian made the drive home to Montecito in six and a half hours. Speeding might have been involved, stimulated by the Philz coffee she’d stopped for in Cupertino, worth every penny of the eleven-dollar price tag. A part of her cringed at what her best friend Halley would say about the price. Cringed again thinking of what her other best friend DaVinci had said about it on her recent visit to Berkeley: “Do you realize that three of those coffees cost more than a freaking plane ticket to visit you?” DaVinci knew how to squeeze a penny until it squealed, the twenty-nine-dollar flight on Allegiant Air being merely the latest example. DaVinci didn’t have a little thing with flying. DaVinci was a normal, adjusted person. Unlike Jillian.

  It was hopeless.

  Jillian signaled for the familiar exit off US Highway 101 and rolled down her windows, inhaling the scent of eucalyptus. Home. Her friends would be gathering with her late tonight, providing both consolation and distraction by way of a little adventure. A tiny smile formed on Jillian’s face as she drove past the estate of Jules Khan. There was nothing like a little time travel for distraction.

  DaVinci, who lived at home to afford her UCSB tuition, had dubbed the gatherings “The Fly-by-Night Club,” but meetings were necessarily infrequent with everyone so scattered. Halley and Edmund, Halley’s hot earl boyfriend from the sixteenth century, had to drive up from LA, where Halley worked. Besides tonight’s gathering, this would also be Edmund’s introduction to Branson’s famous baker’s dozen of seasonal pies. It was a big weekend, quite apart from Jillian’s big announcement.

  Jillian sighed as she pulled into the drive of the palatial estate she called home. She exited her rental car, grabbed her overnight bag, and strode straight for heaven on earth: Branson’s kitchen. Immediately she smelled sage, dusty and aromatic, alongside rosemary, sharp and invigorating, as well as a dozen other warm and inviting scents that made her feel as if the weight of the world were being lifted from her shoulders, or at least set aside for four days.

  Branson hugged her, dusting her clothes and dark hair in superfine pastry flour, and then she slid into her corner in the kitchen—a raised window seat nook, high enough to afford her an eagle’s eye view of her family cook’s activities.

  In no time at all, Branson had wrangled out of her not only her epic fail at the San Francisco International Airport but also her crushed dream of training in Italy.

  “I love working here, but I used to think I might like to specialize as a pastry chef,” mused Branson. “Anyway, it’s a little late in the day for that now.”

  “I guess we have that in common,” Jillian responded, her voice dull.

  “It is not too late for you.” Branson’s authoritative tone, for once, failed to convince Jillian.

  After a moment’s silence, Branson spoke again, more softly this time.

  “It’s not too late to strike out on a different path, if it’s the path you want. It’s 2018. People drop out of college. It’s not the end of the world. I’ve known you for fourteen years. Jillian Applegate doesn’t give up when adversity crosses her path.”

  Jillian sighed, crossed to the counter, and reached for a pie plate, colorfully, if gaudily, hand painted.

  “I can’t believe you still use this,” she said, remembering the year she’d painted it.

  Branson smiled. “It is my favorite gift from any Applegate, ever.”

  Jillian frowned. She had been party to several purchases made for Branson through the years. The TAG Heuer watch, the custom sheepskin car seat covers, the trip to the Bahamas, for goodness sake.

  “What do you say I teach you how to make a perfect crust this year?” said Branson.

  They had somehow never gotten arou
nd to initiating Jillian in the mysteries of piecrust. She bit the inside of her lip.

  “Maybe at Christmas break,” she said at last.

  Branson responded with a raised eyebrow.

  “It’s Thanksgiving,” she said. “Thanksgiving. We all love your smoked turkey, but it’s the pies everyone talks about all year.”

  Branson smiled, possibly a bit smugly.

  “Go on,” he said. “Wash your hands and roll up those sleeves.”

  “I can’t. Really.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “No. I really can’t. I’m not going to be responsible for ruining Thanksgiving.”

  Branson looked indignant. “As if I would allow that.”

  Jillian emitted a very unladylike groan. “You wouldn’t mean to allow it. I know that. But let’s not take the chance.”

  Branson’s indignant expression softened into a puzzled expression. “Are you telling me that the Jillian Applegate who refused to give up on her horse, Bucephalus, when everyone told her he was unrideable, is afraid of a little shortening and flour?”

  Before she could stop them, two large tears splashed on the counter.

  “Oh, Jillian, honey . . .” Branson was at her side in an instant, having grabbed tissue from who knew where. “This is about more than ruining Thanksgiving.”

  More tears. A tiny nod.

  “I thought . . . I could . . . do it,” she whispered, her words catching on hiccup-y breaths. “I thought I could get on the airplane, but all I could think of was . . . falling.”

  Branson’s arms enfolded her. “Of course,” he said softly. “Of course.”

  He let her cry for a while, quietly reassuring her with his presence. And then, when he must have judged she was done, he spoke again.

  “Sometimes a little failure is what we need. It helps us figure out what really matters.”

  A sad smile curled one side of Jillian’s mouth. She wasn’t even sure what Branson meant.