Victorie plus N

Chapter 28: Coward

(A/N: This is SO late....)

"Kelly, didn't you say Owen was coming today?" I ask her after we're almost done with searching Lolita's library for the day.

"Oh, umm..." she mumbles, "I guess he decided not to."

"Really. I thought he would actually come. And I guess the others couldn't come either?"

"No. They're just busy and stuff, you know?" she says.

"Yeah, for sure," I seethe. We're practically getting nowhere with our searches, Teddy hasn't found anything else unusual about the journal and nothing about Thyme, and Lolita's breaks have gotten longer and more frequent. All in all, not my best day.

Kelly goes back to her work while I go back to mine and curse my now horrible life. Because my life is horrible. It so is. I think I might be going insane, I want all of this to be a hoax, but I know that can't be true. Ann is actually missing. And practically everyone else I know has left me.

Teddy approaches us a couple of hours later. "Found anything? I'm on my last bookcase."

"No. I haven't found a thing," I grumble.

"Well someone's grumpy today," he chides.

"Wouldn't you be?!" I glare at him. I'm so tired of getting nowhere. This is all pointless. Pointless! We'll never find Ann, never-

"I would be, but guess what? I just found something!" he cries.

"What?!" I exclaim, taken aback.

"Yeah, see, if Thyme disappeared around 1850, (A/N: I changed 30 years to 50 years in Chapter 26, and Thyme to Thea realizing I wrote the wrong name, sorry for the confusion)and Thyme's later nephew, given birth by her sister was actually Uncle John, and Uncle John died this year, 2020, so..."

Suddenly, a realization dawned on me. "Wait. 1900 was... 120 years ago. How could Grandfather had lived that long, longer actually, because he was probably close to being an adult when Alexandra wrote in the journal? And Alexandra too? That's impossible!"

"This is a crazy world, Victorie, anything's possible!" Teddy chuckles, "The Manipulators probably did something to them, they were always on pretty good terms, Uncle John's family being nobility and everything."

"You can make people live longer than they actually can?" I ask in disbelief.

"Well, yes, they probably did some of their complicated science and put him in a time loop or curve or something, although in both of those you still age..." he trails off, then shakes his head, "Never mind, back to the point, Grandfather left Beckenridge Manor, and Alexandra of course, too, went along with him, around 70 years ago in 1953. Which, as you can see, 100 years after around the same time Thyme disappeared."

He pauses.

"So?" I say.

"So, we need to know everything we can about that gazebo and its location because it has to be connected to all these dates."

"Yeah, 'it has to be connected to all these dates!'" I mimic, "Because that's so reasonable," I roll my eyes. "That's just too easy. Seriously."

I mean, I do have the map of the garden layout and it's super-specific. It definitely has everything you could possibly need to know about that gazebo.

"Well... it's not as easy as you would think," Teddy says.

"What do you mean. I have the map of the garden. It tells all the locations and measures and stuff, too. I don't really know how to convert them though because you know, grew up with the conversion tables, so-"

"Wait seriously? You have a map of the garden?! Uncle John never gave me a map of the garden when I asked him. He practically refused!" Teddy cuts me off.

"Really? Umm, that's kind of strange, well, do you want to look at it when we get home?" I ask him.

"Yes, of course! Let's go now!" he says, all excited. I look down at the stacks of books near the bookcase I'm working on.

"Uh... I don't really know...."

"Hey, it's fine, just shelve them real quick and we'll go," he says and goes back to his spot.

"I guess..." I say and reluctantly start shelving them. I kind of want to keep searching even though I know that it probably won't get us anywhere, and I know that me already having the map and it being related to Thyme's disappearance is just too easy.

I really want everything to be easy but life is just so hard sometimes. So when easy things come up, it seems unreal. But I'm not going to give up on fighting the hard things. Because that's what cowards do. And I am not a coward.