[ April 2, 2004 ]

ANN 

"Convenient? Jesus."

"I know." I groaned and turned to the window. "I have been so stupid."

His hand stroked over mine and for some reason that show of support or sympathy choked me up. I glanced at him and his steady gaze held me in its power and I felt like I'd never been smarter than when I recognized that he'd be a good friend. "Everyone makes mistakes, Ann."

"Yeah. You just always think you'll have the chance to put them right, eh? Or at least apologize. I guess we're both shit out of luck on that score if we don't get lucky."

We neither of us said a word and the plane just kept flying over that dark ocean.

"You know, I really do love him. And I really do hate the way I left things with him. But I had to find out, okay? I had to know and I was so sure I was going to find out that I was nothing but words on a page that I didn't want him holding out hope I'd come back or that I'd ever be what he really needed. But ... fuck. I am such a bitch."

"No. You're not. You just miscalculated. Hey, you did the best you could, right?"

I turned in my seat and faced him head-on. He was lit with the overhead light and the paperwork he'd been pouring over lay unexamined now on the tray in front of him. I picked up his glass of scotch and sipped. One little motion from him and a flight attendant was there and only too happy to bring him another drink. So I settled back with his scotch and watched him watch me.

"Thanks for coming with me," he said as he suddenly turned back to his paperwork, nervous in that moment to be caught without his mask.

Smiling over at him, I whispered, "I didn't really want to be left behind."

We had spent two weeks in DC trying to investigate ways of activating a portal, any portal. At first, our best intentions to cope by being distant but supportive to each other kept buckling under the pressure we were under.

He had been furious when I admitted I'd read his Ann's journals after I told him about why she'd been coming to see him in London. It was awful; I honestly think he wasn't so much mad at me as he was feeling like it was the final insult ... that she'd not felt she could even tell him she was looking for another job because she was trying to eliminate the biggest stress between them.

Not that he wasn't righteously pissed at me. He had barely grunted to me for most of a day after that. Our breakthrough came in the midst of a raging argument over our different ideas on how she would have felt to know I'd done that. I finally said something about how I knew she was enough like me that she'd probably done the same thing ... that she'd probably already discovered all my hidden diary entries.

And how would that make you feel, he'd asked me. Like somebody cared, I had said in this pissed off and way-too-harsh voice. They all cared about you but you were too blind to see it, he had said loudly at me. She cared about nothing but you but you were too fucking penis-addled to see it, I had shouted back.

"Even for you, that's cold. Any wonder he didn't love you?" Terry said, his voice the emptiness of every dark day without pity.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," I whispered to him.

We just stood there, our bodies rigid, staring at each other across their living room. And without tears, I told him what I'd done. Why I'd really left. How I'd left. The words I'd left behind me for Jack to find. How frightened I was that I was never going to get the chance to put things right. How I hated myself for not putting the needs of those men before mine. How I'd been trying to go back because I knew there had been a reason I'd been there but that I had never found it.

Alone among the Sisters, I told him, it was me who kept going back to my portal. It was me, no one else, who never seemed convinced she was staying in Perve World. It was me who didn't believe for so long.

And without anger, he told me that he hadn't really thought he'd taken the love he had with Ann for granted but that maybe he had. He had just not really considered that maybe he hadn't been open enough about what he wanted in their marriage and that maybe he'd not given her credit for being willing to make changes to make it better for them both. He hadn't meant to make her feel like she wasn't good enough.

Why was it, he asked the air, that he hadn't shared so much of himself with her? Why had he always felt like keeping her on a leash? Why hadn't he realized she was trying to find a way to make things better between them even if she was stumbling? What did that say if they hadn't been able to communicate any better than that?

"Oh, Terry." I whispered it out to him and went around the space between us, opened my arms to him and hugged him into me to give him comfort. "You were so good for her and to her. Never doubt yourself. You two love each other and it's never perfect, is it? Who'd want perfection, anyway? But, I swear to you, you are such a good man and she knows that."

His arms held me tight and it felt like the right place to be. "Jack loves you. When you get back, he'll understand. And Terry ... he already does, love. Trust me."

From that moment on, we opened up.

It was as if I could tell him things I would have loved to have told the Terry I knew. I think it's because we both thought, in our hearts, that my time there was to be short. And so we just had no barriers from that point on to sharing our foibles and seeking each others' perspectives on how we could learn from our mistakes and how we could do better when things did revert to the way they should be. But, subconsciously, I think, there was another agenda: as he opened to me, he showed me things about Terry I never understood; as I opened to him, he came to understand Ann better.

Days later, he asked me to tell him about Terry. The Terry I knew.

And I asked him to tell me the truth about his Ann ... not just who she was, but who she was with him. It's when he shared with me the book. It was a book of love poems but inside the pages were tucked these little stories she'd done of little events in their life together. I look back on the hours I spent reading those stories and see that this was when I started falling for him.

It still seems odd to me how these two things juxtaposed themselves: me telling him about Terry and him telling me about her. At first, all I really told him about Terry was the way he was as a man, a companion, a professional. But he asked me about our relationship ... about the kind of person his Ann could likely meet in Perve World. I told him about the things that had happened between us and I told him about what had been happening in the months before I left. I told him about the pregnancy and I told him about how it had made me feel to find out the way I did.

And the oddest thing was ... he helped me understand in a way that let me feel peace. It was as if just admitting what I was honestly feeling helped me understand that my perceptions had to be faced if they were to be dealt with.

"So you were mad at him, were you? That's why you left?"

"No. Well, it was ... No. I mean, I was angry with him but there was more to it. I was also hurt and ... But, in the end, it wasn't really the reason I left so much as just the way I left it."

"Do you still love him?"

I looked down at my hands as they dangled off the rail of his back deck.

"Well? Do you even know?"

I looked over at him. This momentary glance. I gave him a sigh and looked back out toward their back fence, this bit of red brick expanse illuminated in the harsh refraction of nearby streetlights. "I love him. I always have loved him. He's an obsession."

"Does he love you?"

I hung my head down and chuckled. "You're so fucking much like him. He'd ask me just that kind of question ... the exact one he would know I sure the fuck don't even want to answer."

"So answer it."

"No!" I smiled shyly at him. "Why should I tell you? What does it matter anyway? When I'm gone, is it going to mean anything to you to know?"

"I wanted to see if I could ... I was curious, is all ... figure she might answer it the same way if someone there asked her. Just wanted to know... if she'd still believe in me."

His eyes held mine and I saw the pain there. I reached a hand over and popped him on the chin. "She loves you, Terry. I think it must be hardwired in us because it's just too hard to believe this is some coincidence."

"Then he loves you, Annie. Bet your life on it." His voice was choked with emotion. "Cuz I sure the fuck love her."

"Why?" I whispered it out to him, my eyes searching his. "Why do you love her? What is it about her? I know this will sound so damned pathetic, but I really wonder about that. You know? Like, why would he love me? I don't think I can think of one reason other than that he's rather obligated to since he's a Brother."

"That's bullshit. Men like us, we're not like that."

"Then tell me why you love her."

"Because I do," he said. Firm, like that settled it. But another second and he realized that of course it didn't. He frowned at me; got up, lit a cigarette and looked off toward the fence. This soft voice as his fingers worried over his eyebrow: "Why do we ever fall in love? It just happens. You meet someone, you're attracted to her, she laughs at your jokes, she makes you feel like you're everything and more than you ever thought you were ..."

His voice trailed off. I made this snide remark: "Next thing you know, you're asking her to marry you because you can't think of anything else to do with her and ..."

"Shut up," he growled at me. "I love her, okay? So I can't put it into words but she is the real deal. How do you do that? How do you say why you love someone? It's too immense. It's impossible."

"I loved Terry because he is strong and honorable and brave. And he's also vulnerable and caring. And he's so giving. It's nothing to him ... it's natural ... he just acts and he's helping others. And I loved the way he touched me, like I was precious to him and like I was strong enough to take him on. I loved how every single time I saw him, I got scared because I was worried I wasn't enough woman for him. I love how he can seem so arrogant but underneath it all is an undeserved insecurity that he's not worthy."

I paused in this mid-stream of rattling things off and I heard myself, heard my words, knew I'd passed from past tense to present tense. I felt his eyes on me, this Terry, as I went lickety-split through all these unconnected elements of why I loved Terry.

"I love him because he is one of the best men I've ever known. I love his smile and how it lights up his eyes. I love how he can be so tender one minute and then so damned tough the next. I love how it feels to know he's in my life and how if I am ever in trouble, he'd be the first one I'd call for help. And I love how I have never doubted that if I called him, he'd be there for me with no questions asked. And I love, absolutely love, how he's not perfect and I love every imperfection I've ever found in him because it's him. And I love that he's no longer afraid to show me a few chinks in his armor because he knows I love him no matter what. And I love that he accepts my insecurities that keep him having to prove his love to me. So to answer your question, how do you say why you love someone? That's how I say it, Terry. And it doesn't begin to do him justice."

"So what went wrong then?" he whispered to me.

"Nothing. Something. I don't know ... Me. I went wrong. I love him too much, you see? Way too much for the way our Game's played. It's not my right to love him that much. And if he ever knew, it'd hurt him because he doesn't love me back in anything near the way I love him. He loves her that way ... Uma ... that's who he loves. I'm just another Sister to him and I'm not even a particularly important one, to be honest."

"So you don't think he loves you?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Yeah, he did ... does ...  Never like I love him. But I think it's obvious that I'm not special to him anymore. Not like I used to be."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because, you see, he took infinite care to tell the Sisters who really matter to him about the fact he and Uma were going to have a child. But he didn't tell me."

I heard that little hitching sob I gave. And then just that quick, I swallowed it down. Because in the face of everything else, I was suddenly aware of how little this all meant in the grand scheme of life and that I was ready to let it go.

"Doesn't matter. Honest. It doesn't. It's not a big deal. It's the past, right? At some point, it's the time for letting go." I went to walk back in their house. Turned to face him. "Let me just give you one bit of advice, Terry. When you tell other people a secret, just expect that everyone will know it. So make sure that you don't tell it if you don't want it out."

"Sure," he said, all soft and calm. That voice of his that always made me slow down to listen. "Goes without saying, doesn't it? It's not a secret anymore once anyone knows. Everyone tells someone else. Eventually too many people know."

"Exactly." Then I looked at him, really looked. "So he knew, didn't he? He knew when they started telling other people in the family that I'd find out only it wouldn't be from him. So either he was a coward who couldn't face me and tell me proudly that he was damned fucking excited he was having a kid or ..."

"Or?"

"Or ..." Another hitch in my voice. "Or he cared so little about me that he let me find out that way. Couldn't be bothered to just tell me himself."

"Or?"

"No other options, Terry."

"So ... he was a coward or a bastard? That's the only options?"

I turned and went in the house. Inside the bathroom, I thought about what I'd just said. Marched back out. He knew I would be right back out there. God, he knew her so well. Which meant he knew me too well. "Or ... or he just was so sick of me and my silly shit so he just didn't want me dragging him down with a negative reaction when he was so happy. I think maybe that option sucks the most because it's probably the truth."

"Or maybe he knew that from the moment he told you, he'd never again have you in his life the way he wanted you. Maybe he just didn't know how to face losing that part of you. He knew that's what it would be, don't you think? Maybe he loved you too much to be rejected when he was so vulnerable. You tell me you never once thought it might be something more like that?"

I never had. I honestly never had thought there might be a reason that didn't find me seriously lacking; that maybe there was a reason that was more to do with his own human weaknesses in a confusing and vulnerable time for them both. God. I am so blind. Why did I still prefer running away at the slightest obstacle when it came to Terry rather than standing in there and fighting for what I wanted with him?

Time for letting go. Otherwise, the past just stands in your way.

A few days later, Terry told me he had to go to London on business. I was serving him dinner and he casually mentioned it but one look at the set of his shoulders told me he was really not happy about leaving me there.

So I played it cool and calm. Inside, I felt these fingers of fear. He was my only lifeline in this world. What if something happened to him?

The next day, he "casually" mentioned that I might quite enjoy tagging along on his trip to London. Shopping, he suggested with this slight glance at me and I caught his grin when I rolled my eyes. We could catch some shows, he said with a suggestion of boredom.

I didn't dare tell him what I'd been thinking ever since he said he was going to London.

You'll be busy working and I'll just be in the way, I'd said.

Not that busy, he'd replied. Meetings with clients ... reports from operatives coming in off missions ... entertaining potential new clients ...

"Could do with a cute bird on my arm for the social bits," he said with this smirk. "You'd not do half bad."

"You want me there as arm candy, do you? Yeah, I see that happening," I sassed him.

"Dino wants to meet you," he said, straight from nowhere. "Heather, too. They thought maybe we'd go over there for dinner before I left."

"They know who I am?" He nodded at me. God. I'd read their Ann's journals. I knew how they all felt about each other. "I don't think I could take that. I just have to be honest. I'd hate seeing them examining me and finding me lacking because I'm not her. Can you understand that?"

He said yes. I hoped he was telling me the truth.

Next day, he called me from work. He was wondering if he could change the reservations ... if he could buy a ticket for the seat next to him for the trip over ... if he could get a second hotel room ... if I would come with him only because he'd feel better if he could keep an eye on me, make sure I was safe.

And I said yes but I didn't say that I knew it was really more about him wanting to be sure he was right there with her if she came back into this body. I didn't say it to him because I wanted to go with him.

But it wasn't just because I felt safer to be with him. I had a few ulterior motives. There were two people in London whom I wanted to see.

I had given it a lot of thought. There really was only one option left for me to get back to PW. And it was Isobel. Actually, it was both Isobels.

See, the thing is, if there had been a way for the Isobel in this world to connect with her counterpart in PW by a bit of magic and second sight once ... then surely I could con the Isobel in this world into trying again to find PW in another mirror with my help. And once my Isobel was visible to us through that mirror and I could use this Isobel to communicate with my Isobel ... then I just knew, my Isobel would help bring me home while sending the Ann there back to her home. Maybe all my Isobel needed was a real lock on me ... and maybe that would be the key to unlocking whatever portal had alluded me here.

And if this were the only chance to give this Terry back his happiness, then that's exactly what I was going to do. I didn't care about any risks to myself. I just wanted him to have his Ann back ... I wanted to believe it would work out for them. I knew it would work out if they just got back together. I needed the peace of knowing that somewhere, these two people had each other to hold on to because, if they did, they'd be happy. So I knew that when I was in London, I was going to track down Isobel and I was going to find a way to use her to contact my Isobel for help in switching me and Terry's Ann.

But there was one other thing I wanted to do before I left this world of Terra Nova.

There were two other people wrapped up in the disaster that had befallen Terry and Ann. I wanted to believe that here in this world, two people who mattered so deeply to me in PW would reclaim their happiness in Terra Nova. I wanted to heal the rift between Uma and Max. And I honestly thought ... still do, in fact, that's how arrogant I am ... that no one else stood a shot like I did.

I had tried to reach Uma almost immediately after understanding what had happened to her in this world. None of the numbers I found on Terry's cell worked anymore. I called the museum. They were willing to pass my number on to her, but they'd never give me her contact number. Finally, I asked Terry to help me find her.

She had been my best friend in PW, I told him. I had lost her there, had been unable to save her or help her when that bitch goddess Dea took her from Terry ... could he not see how helping her in his world would be important to me. He could see it, he said, but he had a policy he lived by ... if someone disappeared on purpose, he let them stay hidden. If she didn't want to be found, there was a reason, he said. Let it be.

The day before we left, I called Max's cell phone. He was polite and distant; but underneath was this concern for me. I asked to see him when I was in London. I told him I felt we needed to see each other and to deal with what had happened. Not because we feel guilty, I told him, but because we each need resolution on this. He said he would be too busy to see me but appreciated hearing from me.

When I got to London, I slept off jet lag, met Terry for dinner, wasn't able to dissuade him from taking me out on the town ... and had a great time with him. I look back on this and realize that it was like I'd developed enough distance with all the time being away from PW and the fact this was not my Terry that I was able to remember the man he was. And he was heavy into his own way of having distance between us, snug and safe behind his professional K&R face. Yet we were also curious about each other ... and curious about what we could learn about our counterparts from each other. This approach, I see now, afforded us a way to grow a friendship that came from the heart with no confusion about whether it might lead to something else because we knew going into it that it wouldn't.

Next morning, after watching Terry's familiar form leave the hotel's front doors ... I called Max and told him I'd be in a nearby restaurant at lunch.

God. I choked down tears when he walked in and glanced around until he found me. In PW, I had fallen in love with Max. In this world, I had used him cruelly. But he showed up anyway. No matter what else, hadn't I known he'd do the unexpected for me?

I had not really expected the way this felt. Having read her journals, I knew her perspective on what they'd done. I knew she had felt so guilty. Between her lines, I felt I read that she had recognized even in her haze of rage that Maximus was not the guilty party. She had felt his pain, his confusion, his anger ... but it hadn't been directed at her and she had too much of her own to deal with to ever take on his. And this was what I tried to tell him because I felt the Max I knew would have felt a hard stab of self-disgust that maybe he should have never involved Ann in any effort to strike back at Terry and Uma.

So I told him what I hoped he'd want to know ... I spoke on her behalf because he didn't need to know that I wasn't her. But I spoke as if I was her when I said that I was healing and that I realized he had protected me from as much of my self-destructiveness as he could. And that, in some ways, he had helped me and that I appreciated how he'd been strong enough to watch over me as I raged out of control that bad night.

He didn't give me much back; and this caused deep pain to the part of me that knew a Max who'd begun to let me inside. The discussion made this Max uncomfortable. But there's something about doing things like this when you know you're never going to see that person again that made that conversation so much easier for me. Besides, I felt like doing a good deed.

In the course of 90 minutes, we lessened the sharp edges between them. I rather knew Max and the other Ann, when she came back, would probably never be that comfortable together again, but I really wanted to give Max some peace on the issue. It just seemed to me that if he realized there had been no permanent damage, that maybe it would ease his conscience. He listened in that intent way he has as I answered his inquiry about what was now happening in my life ... her life. It's not easy, I said and was totally honest, but we are working on trust and I think in the end, things will work out because there is too much love there to just throw it away.

He blinked a few times and his eyes darted away from mine. How about you and Uma, I asked him. That is between us, he said, giving me a hard voice and a cold look of formality. I dropped it for a short while, asked after Lily and asked after him. He had this wall of armor built up around him and he just hated that anyone might find a chink. In my own hubris, I thought there was never any defenses I couldn't find a way around with Max because I only wanted what I thought was best for him. Isn't that just the most godawful ridiculous thing you could hear from my pitiful well of misinformed womanhood, Diary?

You still love her, I said eventually, and that won't change. He shifted around and asked how long I'd be in London. Can't you feel how much you want to forgive her and how much you understand that it was the spell that did it to them, I begged him softly. This is not your concern, he responded. I don't remember his exact words, honestly. But I will never forget the set of his jaw and the pain in his eyes. I reached across the table and took his hand. He tensed. I said it low: she's worth anything you have to do to find a way to heal your heart.

He set his face, he shut me down with nothing more than a dismissive, "Your efforts are best spent within your own marriage, Ann. You know nothing of me or of her. Allow me to deal with my own affairs."

So ... it wasn't really a success, was it? But at least I tried.

[ April 6, 2004 ]

"Revisionist history," I snorted to him. Terry started giggling and it made me feel so at ease. Well, that and the fact that by then, I'd had enough to drink that I was very ... er ... relaxed. "If there was a course in it, I'd get an A+."

"For a smart woman, you do take a while to learn the simpler concepts," he said as he took my hand and led me across the street.

"Everyone's stupid in love," I retorted and he gave me a grin. It felt good to hold his hand.

"It's a matter of degrees, Annie."

His hand switched to the small of my back to guide me into the pub he'd been heading us toward. We'd spent a night out just catching the things he liked to do when partying in London. I'd given him a hard time about that because somehow I just didn't think his idea of a wild party night in London included taking in a Shakespearean performance ... at intermission, he admitted that he'd taken us there because he was trying hard to figure out what I'd like. I said, I would like to tag along with you and you just take me places you'd go to have a good time with a friend ... and then revised it: "Just remember that I'm not Dino so don't take me to strip joints or pick up bars."

So ... I do come by my partying abilities honestly having lived in New Orleans for so long. And I figured he'd be easy to keep up with. It wasn't like I dared him to go wild, but he did seem to enjoy the fun I had. The first thing he did was take me into some dive but when I didn't seem fazed, he seemed to relax. We grabbed a late dinner at a nice Japanese restaurant and spent a lot of time talking about our mutual appreciation for that culture. I kept inside myself the memory of the last time I'd seen my Terry and how I'd given him a netsuke because I felt our understanding of each other in some ways was the better for having shared that link of the samurai. I hoped that talisman was keeping him safe.

The sake we drank got to us both that night. In all the time I'd been with this Terry, his professional demeanor was like a shield he used to keep himself safe. But as we'd become friends, he'd let it slip a bit. In this night, the sake seemed to work on his will to keep that shield up. I felt like he left it laying on the tatami mats as we left the restaurant.

We haunted two jazz clubs. He told me that he and Ann had loved going into smoky jazz joints and dancing close. We were sitting right up against each other in a crowded little place where you had to be close to be heard. His arm was casually yet protectively draped over the back of my chair. I leaned in to him and said I bet she loved dancing slow with you ... he smiled in this sad way. I figured why not revel in this forlorn moment because it wouldn't be long before he'd be with her and he'd look back on this night and realize that I had known it'd be our last together. So I asked him to dance and by the second tune, we were swaying against each other without our shields up.

"It's odd to me the little things that are different," I said against his ear. "I mean, I've been fascinated by the major ways she's different from me and all ... but it's these little things that have made an impression. Like, for instance ... you're into jazz ... when my Terry was with me, we loved dancing to early Motown. It was one of the first things about him that got to me ... he sang this Motown song to me as we danced to it the night I met him. It just always ... you know how it is, right? It's those little things that you share with someone that add up to you feeling like you know them."

"You smell differently than she does," he said and instantly looked like he wished he hadn't said that.

"I've noticed that you smell differently than he does as well," I said. God. I remembered the way he'd felt in my arms and the weight of understanding yet again that we'd never discussed how he'd felt to realize that the first thing we'd done when I came into his world was make love ... in this specific moment, I wondered if he was bearing another measure of guilt thanks to me and my part in him having sex with a woman who was not his wife. Did that count as him cheating on his Ann? What insanity, Diary. But this issue was all around me. "You have a different taste, too."

Too much alcohol, eh? Why had I said that? Who knows. I don't.

"Your eyes ... there's a difference ... it's subtle, but I noticed it right away. Just didn't realize what it meant until ... later," he said.

"He always liked my eyes," I said and got this déjà vu memory that made me stop swaying. I tried to cover it up by saying, "I know what you mean because it's like you just have a different light or sparkle in your eyes. Maybe they're just a bit greener than his or something."

It wasn't until later, inside the pub, that I told him what I'd at first thought I should not have. But I was going to be seeing Isobel the next day and figured it was our last night.

"A few months ago ... Terry and I had this conversation. I had been back in my portal and done something I couldn't rationalize, see? And I thought ... how did I know what was reality if all the people I had known in that world, as it turned out, they were not really the people I knew but more like replicas or alter egos? I asked Terry how we ever knew what was real and what wasn't. He told me that if he ever had any reason to wonder if it was me he was with that he'd rely on more than just his knowledge of my skin but that he'd also listen to the beat of my heart and the look inside my eyes. That everyone had a different heartbeat and that he just could see me in my eyes. So that's how he'd know if it was me. I thought it was a bit of romantic nonsense and it touched me deeply."

"I know you're not her, Annie. I've liked getting to know you. But you are enough like her that it shouldn't seem eerie to either of us that I'd enjoy being around you. Do you think she's having the same thoughts in your place? Is she trying to get back to me? Is she playing in that Game?"

We both took long sips of our beers. I wondered if he wanted reassurance or raw honesty? I chose to ease his suffering in some small way.

"I doubt they'd let her play the Game," I said with a shrug. "My conjecture is that Jack and Stephen realized pretty quickly she wasn't me. From there, I bet it was just one more bit of madness in a family that was being shaken up. But Isobel is too smart to not be trying to find an answer once Jack tells her. Two things, Terry ... Ann's not going to change just because she's there..."

"She isn't into trading multiple bed partners."

I winced at the brutality of his assessment but didn't feel the need to defend myself and my lifestyle. Instead, I focused on what he really was needing to know but not wanting to put into words. "... And they will take care of her."

"Is she trying to get back to me?"

"Yeah, absolutely."

"Then she'll find a way."

"Yeah, I know the feeling." I looked off as I sipped my beer. "You know, whatever you think about our set up there, it wasn't just about sex. It would have been easier if it had been."

He waited until I glanced at him. This open stance as he leaned back in the booth. Without hostility, with a desire to understand, he said, "How did the men ... I don't know any man who'd put up with it. Not with a woman he ..."

"Not with a woman he really loved?" I finished for him and he nodded without really looking at me. "I never felt like the men objected at first. It wasn't until it seemed I'd formed some real ... feelings ... when it was not just about sex but about sex being a way to show how we felt ... that's when I started sensing that we were all beginning to draw into these little circles. I just think it's human nature ... even when we said it was love one-love all, it can't be that simple when people have free will, can it?"

"So they did object?"

I gave him this giggle and it turned on some obscene dime into a real attack of wild hilarity at the absurdity of it all. Sitting there in a London tavern, discussing this wholly improbable set up with a man like this? And, come on, discussing it knowing that his own world's set up really had a few screwy elements, too, eh? Who'd have ever seriously entertained such a discussion but people who'd had to suspend belief and adjust in any way they could to worlds with delicate balance?

"Hey, they didn't object as long as it was them. They only objected when another man got a bit too important to a woman who was supposed to be ga-ga over them. But the women were just as bad. We said we shared without jealousy, but ... irrational feelings cannot be stopped, they can only be controlled, don't you think?"

"Did you really love him?" he finally asked me. And I felt like this was a night when he really just wanted to know.

"There were three I really loved. I mean, really loved. In this way that giving up any of the three was like cutting off a part of me. And I don't know how I could feel that way. One I loved because he just had a hold on me that was pure wonder. One I loved because he needed my love in a way no one maybe ever had before. And then there was Jack ... and I loved him ... because he was Jack and it was impossible for me to not love him."

"See? Not so easy to say why you love sometimes is it?" he said with this little smirk before giving me a serious look and a little nod to his head to encourage me to go on.

I cleared my throat and the sense of Jack seemed stronger for being in London. "He was my rock. In the end, I suppose I beat myself to a pulp against him and it left us both raw. But I still loved him. Even knowing I wouldn't let it lead to the commitment Jack wanted, I loved him as much as I was capable of, which was a lot more than I would have thought possible."

He took this long, slow, steady sip of his beer. Put the glass down on the table and leaned in. His mouth at my ear. A pause before his lips moved and the words came out deep, breathless, uncompromising. "Past tense, love."

It was a moment that hung there and the future spread before me. I knew I was going. And I knew I was returning someplace where it wouldn't be permanent. But I was heavy into sacrifices just then. Had been ever since I'd reawakened to my memories of PW. I turned my head, put my lips to his ear, and said it soft: "As long as the men were free, so was I. It wasn't because I needed my independence; it was because I was so alienated. And when it came down to it, when Jack wanted a real commitment, I couldn't stay and play the Game if I agreed to anything approaching a union between us but he wouldn't leave it. Am I a foolish hypocrite or what?"

"Because you figured out what you wanted? No. Maybe that was the smartest thing you could have done."

I leaned my forehead against his temple and reached my arms around his neck to give him this hug that he returned. "You're a good friend."

"I can be. For the right price."

It made me chuckle against him. "I should have been friends with them before being lovers. My dad used to have this saying when we'd be watching some action movie on TV and from nowhere the man and woman start making moon-eyes at each other. 'Love rears its ugly head and messes things up yet again.' Lust isn't the best place to start, maybe. Maybe friendship is the better place. Maybe your foundation's firmer that way."

"Maybe it gets you through the tough times better."

"Maybe so."

"No way!"

He groaned and then fell back on the carpet, holding both hands over his chest like he'd been shot dead. "What can I say? Dino took off ... I was footloose, fancy free ... no one to tell me to be a good boy ..."

"My God. That's horrid!" I said and our eyes met as we both laughed. "What was Ann's reaction? Bet it made her question who she'd gotten involved with to know what a terror you were when you first got here!"

He shook his head and closed his eyes. Big breath, long sigh. "I never told her things like that. Especially not early on. Always wanted her to think I was ... Best foot forward, right?"

"Oh, c'mon, Terry." I leaned back against the edge of the couch, looking up at the ceiling, noticing the texture there ... fingers rubbing against the carpet's nap. "Why were you ... Why are you able to tell me things you never told her? Why would you think any of this would matter to her? She was in love with you ... and you had that danged 'pull' going for you ... It's like you not telling her about who you really were and about this family here until ..."

"Yeah. We've established that I wasn't always perfect, right? Can you let that go?"

"Ah, geez, Terry. I didn't mean that as a criticism, honest," I said and when I looked down at him, he rolled his eyes at me. "I just meant ... I don't know, it seems like it's something important in your relationship with her that you wish you could do differently now. And I just thought maybe seeing that things like that ... they don't matter to someone like me. Not like you fear. She sees you with eyes that love you."

"Right," he said with this sarcastic snarl as he sat up and leveled me with a sharp look of tough man. "Now you. Have we established what you've learned in how you went wrong with Terry? Like maybe you'd go back seeing that an obsession isn't the same as a healthy love? Maybe be looking for chances to give him a few breaks instead of just assuming he's out to shit on you ..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think maybe you drilled that lesson in just fine, honey," I said in full sarcasm.

He gave me that little boy look. "Sorry. Bad form, right?"

We both took long draws on the scotch we were sipping by then. Both of us sitting on the floor of his hotel room and unwilling to call it a night. Both so open ... and seeing the maudlin sides but also seeing things can sometimes be better for calling a spade a spade.

"Thanks for what you've shared with me," I said softly and my words were slurred. "I won't ever forget you."

"You're a remarkable woman, Ann," he said and his tone was just as soft and his words were nearly as slurred. "I'm glad I got to meet you."

We kinda took twin sniffles and then chuckled at each other for the sudden sappy turn of emotions.

"Look, when she comes back ..."

"If she comes back ..."

"When she comes back," I said with this little growling undertone as I narrowed my eyes at him. He gave me a half-drunk grin back. "When she comes back, maybe you've learned some ways you want to change how the two of you related. Second chances, eh? Heather always said PW was the place for second chances ... maybe this second chance will come to you courtesy of us in PW. Doesn't that sound like a great moral to the story?"

That cocky tilt of his chin and that sweet look in his eyes. "When'd you get so gullible as to believe in happy endings?"

We talked about happy endings ... about his philosophy that there's always a piper to pay in life and I riffed on how I'd titled one of my first diaries about him "There's Always A Price." Baby, we were made for each other, he giggled when I told him. Born wanting you, I thought ... but I said ... "Any scotch left or are you hoarding it, you cheap bastard?" in the closest thing to Dino's voice I could find.

The last time I could remember having a headache bad enough to make me wonder if I was going to make it had been the one I'd had after I'd slid through to Terra Nova. Considering what would happen that day, maybe I should have taken that as an omen.

But I didn't. Nope. Because when I woke up and stumbled to the bathroom and realized my head was about 20 million times bigger than it should have been, all I really thought about was finding some aspirin.

I rummaged through the room's refrigerator until I found a small bottle of orange juice and then rooted in his kit bag for the container of aspirin he carried ... and my hands lingered there as I realized ... this was not my Terry and yet ... habits, eh? They had similar habits on such things ... must have been formed by their time in the military. That precise and predictable element of them.

Sitting in one of the big, overstuffed chairs in the outer room of his suite, I chased the aspirin down with gulps of juice. And I watched him sleeping on the floor, hugging a pillow and snug under a blanket. Not too far from his form, evidence of where I'd snagged about two hours of sleep ... a pillow and the bedspread still crumpled there after I'd risen to go to the bathroom not that many minutes earlier.

He looked so young. Even with the shadow of morning scruff, the ease on his face made him look years younger than he had when I'd first met him ... what was it ... almost a month ago? He was such a good man. I was determined to do good by him. No matter what it took; no matter that he would never have asked me to take the risk. In the end, this was more about giving him the future he deserved than about any foolish scheme I'd had to go back to PW and atone for my sins.

I pressed a light kiss on his forehead before I left. He'd stirred and mumbled in his hazy, drink-laced dream. I said these words over him that I knew he wouldn't hear, but that I wanted to have said ... about how I'd never forget that no matter what world I might meet a version of him, each incarnation had at its core the same qualities and complexities that forever drew me to love. But that with him, the friendship had forever after changed me.

Inside my hotel room, I pulled out the copy of the investigative report on Isobel that I'd found in Terry's office at his home. I knew I shouldn't have taken it, but I had. And I wasn't the least ashamed because I knew it was the only way I might have found out where she was in London. I didn't want to call her to arrange a visit; I just wanted to show up unannounced because I figured that having surprise on my side was a good way to start.

As I was getting up to dress, my eyes fell across her laptop. And I pictured her ... that Ann ... Terry's Ann ... pictured her coming back into this world and I said this curse-laden diatribe that she'd better not fuck up the chance I was giving her to make a better life with Terry.

It's when I got the brilliant idea to leave her a few words. I opened a document on her laptop and started typing. Told her things about how he felt ... showed her I understood how she felt ... begged her to make her life with him count for both of us.

An hour later, I was in the shower and feeling the edge of the hangover beginning to really leave me with the rawness of full awareness.

Fate.

Had it all led to this, I wondered.

Kismet.

Was it totally happenstance or had there been some rhyme, some reason?

Destiny.

Was this where I was meant to be?

Reality.

There was always a price, wasn't there?