THE PHOTO TRAVELER (THE PHOTO TRAVELER SERIES - BOOK 1)

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I spin around and see them running toward me. For a second I wonder if I’m suffering from hypothermia and it’s making me hallucinate. No! It really is them!

            I jump into their arms feeling the most warmth I’ve felt in the last several hours. Knowing I’ve found them and that they’re safe shields me from the reality of the frostbite that’s been taunting my fingers and toes.

            “You have no idea how happy I am to see you guys right now!” I exclaim, still shivering with cold.

            My dad presses my head to his chest. “I knew you’d figure it out.”

            “How long have you guys been here?”

            “As long as you have. Even though we traveled here from a different part of time than you did, the photo was still taken at one precise moment.”

            I know now that they’ve just escaped the fire. The soot stains on their chapped cheeks confirms it.

            My mom pulls me toward her, nearly choking me with her hug, and a long-forgotten memory assaults me. She’s wearing a pink sweater that I remember from when I was only four. I used to play with the fuzzy dog sewn on its front. In fact, I think I remember once almost choking on its dangling yarn tail.

            My dad notices how underdressed I am. “You’ve got to be freezing, Gav. Are you crazy coming out here like that?”

            I shrug. “I wasn’t dressed like this when I got here. I met a young boy who lost his parents. He was barely wearing anything, so I gave him a lot of my clothes. I know it’s against the rules, but I couldn’t let him die. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t.”

            They glance at each other and crack the biggest smiles. My mom wipes the cold from her nose. “You couldn’t have turned out any better.”

            We hurry out of the park and into the first diner we see. While we’re sipping on hot cocoa, I begin asking them questions about the fire—what happened, if they saw anyone, if they had left the message on the wooden crate for me.

            My mom nods. “We knew you’d catch on. Your dad used one of his keys to carve it. We went there because you had mentioned it years back when you came to visit us, while I was pregnant with you. But once we saw how dangerous it was there, we left Elizabeth the clue about the Great Depression in hopes that you’d make contact with her. We had to go back to the fire if we were going to have any chance of actually surviving it because we had to transport to another, safer photo."

             “By the time we got back, the whole house was ablaze and the attic floor was about to cave in, so we were trapped up there. Our only way out was to travel again. We threw ourselves flat on the floor to get as much air as we could and I flipped to the pages on the Depression. I’d had that one photo marked for years because, like your mother said… we never forgot anything you mentioned to us. We just knew we’d meet again one day.”

            And I had somehow known what they’d be thinking. I can’t believe how connected we were. “When the floor began to cave in, we hid the book in an old chest.”

            “But... who started the fire?” I ask. “Because they may be after us now. Estelle and Bud were sent a photo of the other vials, and they think that somebody’s after ours.”