When she finished buying the essentials for the apartment, Adeline splurged and bought a bike. Every dollar she spent was one less she had to invest, but the bike would cut down on her travel time around town (and save cab fares).

  *

  That night, she sat in the bedroom, scowling at the Netflix website. The user interface was atrocious. The selection was even worse. The vast majority of titles were only available via the mail. Who would want to wait for DVDs to come in the mail? And how could they even make a profit mailing stuff to your house—especially if you had to mail it back? It didn’t make any sense.

  She wondered how they had ever made it.

  She biked to Blockbuster and rented the first season of a TV show that was a staff pick. It was called 24, and Adeline figured if they had the guts to name the show just one number, it had to be pretty good. And it was. In fact, it was about a guy racing against the clock to save his life and the country. Adeline definitely identified with that. She kept popping the DVDs into her laptop until it was late into the night. It was 8 a.m. for Jack Bauer, but it was bedtime for her.

  *

  Adeline arrived at the lecture hall early the next morning and waited at the front. When her mother arrived, she looked sick and haggard.

  “What’s wrong?” Adeline asked.

  “Morning sickness.” Her mother closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as if waiting for a wave of nausea to pass. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “Don’t be.” Adeline reached out and put a hand on her mother’s shoulder. The feeling was indescribable. A moment she had imagined a million times since her mother had passed away.

  Her mother seemed to read Adeline’s reaction. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Adeline said. She took her mother’s bag. “Here, I’ll get you set up for class.”

  Her mother exhaled, took a seat on the stool, and focused on her breathing. Adeline opened the laptop, plugged in the VGA cord, and began placing the handouts on the desks.

  When she returned to the front of the room, she reached into the bag and brought out the last remaining item: a Hershey’s chocolate bar.

  Her mother held her hands out. “And I’m craving sweets. Busted. You know what that means?”

  Adeline didn’t. Her mother smiled again. She seemed to be feeling better.

  “It’s probably a girl. It’s an old wives’ tale: morning sickness and sweets means that you’re having a daughter.”

  Her mother smiled then, gaze unfocused, as if thinking. Adeline wondered if she was imagining seeing her daughter go to prom. Or moving into her first college dorm. Or walking down the aisle on her wedding day.

  That thought filled Adeline with sadness. She knew the future. Knew that her mother would never do any of those things.

  But her mother didn’t.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  Adeline looked up. Her mother had read the emotion on her face. She had always been good at that.

  “Nothing. Just thinking.”

  “Well, be careful of your thoughts. They’re more powerful than you think.”

  Her mother flipped open a notebook. “By the way, someone dropped the class yesterday. Probably a good thing—he was failing. I don’t know for sure, but I might be able to add you.”

  “That’s okay. Really.”

  Her mother studied her. “Are you a student here, Adeline?”

  “I am. Just not right now.”

  “That’s all right. But are you all right?”

  “I’m just trying to get back on my feet. Life has sort of thrown me for a loop.”

  Her mother formed that kind smile that had been the hallmark of her youth. “It happens. Life is about getting up. Not avoiding falling down.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  A week later, Adeline returned to Shen Photo in East Palo Alto.

  Her new identity was waiting for her. As far as she could tell, everything checked out. It was a big piece in the puzzle that was the next nineteen years—until the moment she would place herself in that Absolom machine to travel back here to 2008.

  *

  Adeline set up an investment account at E*Trade. She remembered the broad strokes of the global financial crisis that was just starting to unfold—and even recalled some of the key dates.

  She took bearish positions on firms she knew would collapse. She felt a bit guilty about betting against the companies, but she found absolution in the idea that this had already happened, and that the money she would make would ensure the future was possible. The profits from the E*Trade account would fund San Andreas Capital, which would fund various start-ups and eventually Absolom (and her trip to the past).

  With her E*Trade account, she could short stocks and buy puts, but she wanted to go further. She needed more leveraged investments to increase her returns.

  She found a small brokerage firm in San Francisco that was willing to allow her to buy credit default swaps for mortgage-backed securities issued by companies she knew were on the verge of collapse.

  While she was buying up the troubled assets, she watched as officials from those companies appeared on TV, insisting that their portfolios of subprime mortgages were simply facing a stress test and were fine.

  They were not fine.

  And the credit default swaps backing their securities might not have been fine either if not for the Federal Reserve, which stepped in and essentially guaranteed them in order to restore confidence in the financial system.

  Over the course of a year, Adeline turned a few thousand dollars into tens of millions. Not enough to draw too much attention, but enough to do what she needed to do. It was a nice nest egg to grow, and it would grow to be all the money she needed to create the future.

  As the year progressed, it wasn’t the growth in her brokerage account that interested her. It was a thing she hadn’t expected: how close she became with her mother.

  Three times a week, she joined her in class. She also began coming to her mother’s office after class to help prepare for future lectures and grade papers.

  In a sense, it was the thing Adeline had most wanted in life: a second chance to be with her mother, as a young adult, almost as peers, sharing an experience that was special to both of them.

  Adeline knew it couldn’t last. For that reason, she savored every second.

  They were eating Chinese take-out in her mother’s office, grading finals, when her mother said: “What are your plans for the summer?”

  “I’m not sure. I know I have to move. My sublet is up.”

  “Are you staying in the area?”

  “Planning on it. Why?”

  “Well, I’m actually looking for some help around the house. I don’t know if I mentioned it, but my husband is a postdoc in the physics department. He’s gotten a job for the summer in Geneva, at CERN. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They’re building this massive machine called the Large Hadron Collider. Have you heard of it?”

  Adeline smiled. “I have.”

  “Well, Sam is nuts over it. So is his friend, Elliott. He’s been working on the project and has gotten Sam a job there this summer. It’s supposed to start up on September tenth, and Elliott wants Sam to be there. This is like the Super Bowl of all Super Bowls for them. Sort of geeky, but it’s also sort of adorable. Their entire community has been working on this machine for a decade. It’s a big deal.”

  “I’m sure. So Sam will be gone all summer?”

  “He will.”

  Adeline knew that her mother would die in approximately twelve years. She also knew she would have to leave her life at some point before she began to look like the girl she grew up to be—for her mother’s sake, and especially her father’s sake.

  In fact, to be on the safe side, Adeline had decided not to come into contact with her father until she completed the other change she knew she had to make to be Daniele: cosmetic surgery.

  She knew that her younger self would not meet Daniele Danneros until she was eleven—when Daniele was thirty years old. But it wasn’t just the age difference that separated their appearances. She now knew that Daniele had slightly altered her face to ensure that no one recognized her. Adeline would have to go in for surgery at some point. She probably should’ve done it upon arriving in the past, but she didn’t know then what she knew now. Such was the time traveler’s burden.

  Adeline returned her focus to the present and her mother’s request. “Well, I’d be happy to help.”

  “Thank you. We’ll be busy. I’m teaching summer school—I agreed to do it before I knew I was pregnant—and there’s still a lot to do around the house.”

  “We’ll get it done.”

  “Sam has promised to be back by the due date—September seventeenth. The LHC is slated to start up on September tenth, so that should be plenty of time.”

  Adeline simply smiled. She knew that the LHC would indeed start up on September 10. And her birthday was September 8.

  She marveled that history was funny that way: what your parents tell you about the past is sometimes a heavily edited version. And there was still room for surprises.

  FORTY-NINE

  That summer, Adeline and her mother were virtually inseparable.

  They painted the nursery, shopped for baby clothes at Goodwill, and stayed up late into the night assembling the crib.

  “Really, you can go home,” her mother said. “Once I start something, I get a little obsessed with finishing it.”

  Adeline knew the feeling. And now she knew where she had gotten it from. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  The floor was covered in pieces, as if a wooden treehouse had exploded in the room. The direction book lay flayed open, and her mother was following every step to the letter.

  “Confession,” her mother said. “I waited until Sam left to do this.” She tilted her head. “I love him to death, but he’s not very handy around the house.”

  Adeline laughed.

  “He’d probably starve to death if left alone in the woods.”

  The smile faded from Adeline’s face. “You never know. People are capable of a lot more than we might think—when life requires.”

  As Adeline said the words, she knew they were half for her own sake. Since she had seen him disappear in the Absolom machine, not a day had gone by when Adeline didn’t think of her father and wonder how things had turned out for him in the Triassic.

  Most of all, she dreaded the event she knew would come in nineteen years: she would have to stand in that room all over again and watch him slip into the past.

  The events she was certain of, however, concerned her the least. Her focus now was the secrets in the past. The details that might help her save her father. Because she was going to get that chance. And she had nineteen years to prepare for it—assuming she could control the past. If things didn’t happen as they had, there would be no future to save.

  *

  In June and July, the financial world slipped into chaos.

  Federal regulators seized IndyMac Bank, making it one of the largest bank failures in US history.

  The Fed extended credit lines to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and later took them over in September, around the time Lehman Brothers failed and the Troubled Asset Relief Program was announced.

  Adeline rolled some of the proceeds from her credit default swaps into tech stocks with strong growth potential.

  Closer to home, life assumed a routine. By day, Adeline helped her mother with summer school. In the afternoons and evenings, they worked on preparing the small bungalow in Menlo Park for the arrival of Sam and Sarah Anderson’s first child. A child who, in a strange twist of fate, had returned home after nineteen years.

  One afternoon, while grading papers in her office on campus, her mother said, “Are you going back to school in the fall?”

  “No.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “I think the education I need is out in the world, not inside a classroom.” Adeline looked up from the pages. “No offense.”

  “None taken. College isn’t the right path for everyone. I’m glad you have a sense of what’s right for you—and are brave enough to go after it.”

  Adeline felt a pride rise inside of her she had never known. She had doubted before, but in that moment, she started to believe that maybe there was a larger force at work here, that this life gave and took and surprised, and that just maybe it all added up to something truly wonderful.

  *

  As the baby grew inside of her, Adeline’s mother became more fatigued. Her projects around the house grew less ambitious.

  In the second half of summer, they spent most of their time sewing. As a child, Adeline had thought her mother’s hobby was the most boring thing ever invented. Here and now, at almost twenty years old, in the presence of the mother she had already lost once, she relished every minute of it.

  In the corner of the small family room, they sewed baby clothes and toddler outfits that Adeline’s younger self would soon wear. Finally, after all this time, Adeline saw what her mother loved about sewing, the joy of making something from scratch, the serenity of the motions, of creating something your child could enjoy, and doing something to help provide for your family. Like building a life, sewing was much more than knitting pieces together.

  As summer came to an end and the first hint of fall descended on Palo Alto, their afternoon and early evening projects were cut shorter, and increasingly they found themselves sitting on the couch, watching TV, her mother grimacing as the child inside of her kicked relentlessly at night.

  They watched the first three seasons of LOST, and Adeline and her mother both cursed the world when they learned the fourth season wouldn’t be out on DVD until Christmas. They agreed that it was so, so unfair.

  The idea of people being stranded on a strange time travel island made Adeline think of her father on Pangea. Except, of course, he wasn’t battling a smoke monster and finding things buried on the island.

  *

  One night, during a game of Scrabble, her mother said, “Speaking of spelling things, I wanted to ask you something.”

  Adeline raised her eyebrows.

  “Your name. It’s so pretty. Sam and I have really struggled to find one we love. I wondered if you would mind if we named our daughter Adeline.”

  “Not at all. I’d love that.”

  *

  Adeline’s investment accounts continued to swell that summer, but she didn’t spend much of the money. She did, however, buy a used Camry that had just gotten off a corporate lease. She needed reliable transportation for what was about to happen.

  On Monday, September 8, 2008, around lunchtime, Adeline was sitting in the nursery, unboxing the baby monitor, when her mother called from the master bathroom, through the bedroom across the hall.

  “Adeline!”

  She ran in and found her mother clutching her bulging stomach. “I’m having contractions.”

  “Just breathe. They might pass. How close are they?”

  *

  An hour later, Adeline was behind the wheel of her car, driving her mother to the hospital.

  The expectant mother had her eyes closed, whispering. “She’s over a week early.”

  Her phone vibrated, and she answered it. “Sam. She’s coming.”

  *

  But he didn’t get home in time. Adeline, however, was there to see her mother holding her infant form, the glow on her face, the twinkle in her eyes. It was the happiest thing she had ever seen.

  Adeline knew it was about time to go. She made a deal with herself: she would stay one more night.

  Her mother’s eyes were still closed the next morning when she leaned over the hospital bed and kissed her on the head. She lingered a long moment over the bassinet, staring down at herself, thinking about what an unexpected life awaited that young child.

  As she was walking out the front door of the hospital, her father was rushing in, gasping for breath, his clothes disheveled. Geneva was nine hours ahead. He must have caught the red-eye.

  The LHC would go live later today. He had missed both births, but his life was about to change nevertheless.

  In the used Camry, Adeline drove to Draeger’s Market on University Drive, at the corner of Santa Cruz, and made her way to the bakery section. The woman behind the counter spotted her, set down a pastry bag, and wiped the excess icing on her hands on a white apron.

  “What can I get you, dear?”

  “I’d like a birthday cake.”

  The woman plopped an order pad on the metal counter and clicked a pen, ready to take notes. “Size?”

  “The largest you have.”

  “Would you like a name on it?”

  “Yes. I’d like my own name on it.”

  The woman looked up, surprised.

  “It’s my birthday today.”

  “All right. What’s your name, dear?”

  “Daniele. You spell it with one N and one L.”

  FIFTY

  In the fall of 2008, Adeline moved to Santa Barbara. Her mother was taking maternity leave from teaching that semester, and she felt that it was best to leave the Bay Area. There was too much risk of running into her father or being photographed.

  And besides, she knew from living with Daniele that San Andreas Capital had been based in Santa Barbara initially.

  For a while, she lived the life of a loner. She learned all she could about quantum physics. She planned the events she knew had to happen. In the winter evenings, she read by the fire. When the weather allowed, she took long walks, listening to audiobooks and learning foreign languages, including German, Korean, and Chinese.

  She kept in touch with her mother, who gave her updates on the infant that was now the center of her and her husband’s lives.

  In March of 2009, as the stock market was reaching the nadir of the bear market brought on by the financial crisis, her mother remarked on a lengthy call that “Sam wants to sell all of our stocks. He’s convinced the bottom is going to fall out of everything. He wants to use the money to buy a bigger house. They’re practically giving them away right now compared to prices a few years ago.”