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"Are you sure that he's traveling alone?"

"That's what Cindy said. She said he wanted to come to the coast to clear his head. She said he hadn't been the same since returning from Yellowstone."

Grace chewed on that morsel as she watched two well-dressed men walk by. Each appeared to be in his late twenties. Each gave Grace a visual inspection and a friendly smile that she found both flattering and unnerving. She had received many such glances since getting off the bus in Seattle but had not yet learned how to respond to them.

"Did she say why?"

"No. She just said that he hadn't been himself since he got back from his trip."

Grace looked at Katie and saw that the smile she had carried through most of lunch had been replaced by a frown. She began paying more attention to her burrito than her dining partner.

"Katie?"

"Yes, Grace."

"Have you told me all I need to know about Joel? I'm getting the feeling that you're holding back something – something important."

Katie pushed away her plate and stared blankly at the shop that sold cinnamon rolls by the dozen. When she returned to Grace a moment later, she grabbed her hand.

"There is something else, something I should have told you last night."

Within seconds, the not-so-authentic Chinese cuisine that had at least gone down without a fight began to work its way up Grace's throat. She took a deep breath and looked at Katie.

"What is it?"

"When I called Cindy Smith on Monday night, Joel had been out of the house. He had gone to a bar to meet a friend."

"And this friend, who is he?"

"The friend is not a he, dear, but a she. She's a woman, a very pretty young woman who has been accepted into Stanford Law School."

Katie squeezed Grace's hand and sighed.

"Joel has dated this woman for two years, Grace. He has a girlfriend."

CHAPTER 17: GRACE

Seaside, Oregon – Saturday, June 17, 2000

Two days of peace and quiet at the Saito house had done nothing to remove the knots in Grace's stomach, nor had a night at the Oceanfront Inn, one of the largest and ritziest hotels on the Oregon coast. Grace had been wracked by fear and worry the minute she had learned that the biggest gamble of her life may have been her biggest blunder.

"You have to eat something. It's not good to go without food," Katie said.

Walter Saito looked on from a chair in their ground-floor suite.

"Katherine is right, Grace. You should eat something."

"I'm not hungry."

Grace huddled in a fetal position at the end of one of two queen beds in the room. She wanted something to eat. She knew she needed it too. But she also knew that there was not a snowball's chance that she'd be able to hold it down until she knew what was swirling through the mind of a tall, dark-haired man she had not seen in three weeks.

Katie turned away from the others and walked toward a sliding glass door that separated the room from a small patio and the beach. She unlatched the door and opened it about a foot, allowing a warm breeze to enter the room. In the distance, squawking seagulls and crashing waves created a Pacific symphony that on any other day might be considered soothing.

"It shouldn't be long now. I left a message with the motel clerk," Katie said "Joel checked in about an hour ago and went for a walk."

Walter put the local newspaper on a table by his side and looked at his wife.

"What is your plan, Katherine? I assume you have a plan."

Katie looked at Walter as if he had asked the dumbest question in history but did not reply right away. She instead picked up a graduation card and a black-and-white snapshot: a picture that Joel Smith had taken with Katie's Brownie Junior in July 1941. She returned to Grace and handed her the photograph.

"Do you remember this night?" Katie asked.

Grace looked at the photo and closed her eyes. She remembered well the night that Joel had pulled Katie's camera out of her hands and taken a picture of Ginny, Grace, Linda, and Katie as they stood arm in arm in front of their rental house on Klickitat Avenue.

She remembered how empty she had felt as a man she secretly loved prepared for a double date with Linda, Ginny, and Tom at a lakeside dance hall. She remembered how she had bought Linda breakfast and helped her pick out an outfit as a way of telling her sorority sister that Joel Smith was a man she did not want and, as an engaged woman, could not have. She remembered it all, but her vivid recollections meant little now. They were in a different time and place.

"I remember it," Grace said as she returned the photo.

"Good," Katie said. "I knew you would, just as I know Joel will too."

"What are you getting at?" Walter asked.

"I'm getting at something that both of you are missing. Joel is not someone who just wandered into our lives for a weekend. He spent six months in our time. He made friends. He found a family. He fell in love. You do not erase that from someone's heart and mind in three weeks."

The statement brought Grace out of her semi-catatonic state.

"But what if you're wrong, Katie? What if you're wrong?"

Grace grabbed her stomach and held out a hand as she raced to the bathroom. Within seconds she was leaning over the toilet releasing the breakfast and lunch she had not eaten. The dry heaves sent shock waves through a body already weak from stress and insomnia.

When she returned to the room in tears, she looked at Walter and then stepped toward Katie. She gave the old woman a firm hug and didn't let go until Katie pushed her away.

"Be positive, dear. Have faith," Katie said. "If there is one thing I know about the Joel Smith of today, it's that he's a restless soul. You are in his heart just as surely as you are in this room. This battle has not been lost."

Katie grabbed Grace's hands and gave her a faint smile. She then retrieved her cane from the corner of the room, grabbed her purse, and turned to her husband.

"Do you have your phone, Walter?"

"It's right here."

"Good. Good," Katie said. "Keep it close and await my call. It's almost five now."

Katie turned to Grace and stared at her with the eyes of a warrior.

"It's time."

CHAPTER 18: GRACE

Walter's cell phone buzzed thirty minutes later.

Grace could not hear Katie's voice or even tell which way the wind was blowing based on Walter's facial expressions, but she did know two things: Katie had met Joel on the Promenade, a mile-and-a-half cement walkway that divided the city of Seaside from its public beach, and the two were now making time in something called the sitting room at the other end of the hotel.

Walter turned off his phone and smoothed the wrinkles from his cream-colored slacks and a green polo shirt that bore the emblem of a Portland golf club. He took a sip from a plastic bottle of water sitting atop his table and looked at Grace with a poker face.

"That was Katherine. She wants us to meet her in the sitting room – first me and then you."

"Did she say anything else? Does he still have a girlfriend? Please tell me."

Walter sighed.

"She said nothing else. If I knew more, I would tell you," he said. Walter walked across the room, opened the door to the hall, and turned to Grace. "Shall we go?"

Grace smiled weakly and stepped into the hall. She could not understand why Katie had thought it necessary to meet Joel first and then bring him to a public place and not her room. She could not understand why she wanted Walter to meet him next. Were these signs that something had gone wrong? Once again, anxiety took center stage in her unsettled mind.

When they reached the lobby minutes later, Walter told her to stand by a pay phone and await his return. He then walked across the lobby and passed through the arched doors of a room that Grace knew from reading a brochure was stuffed mostly with furnishings from the 1890s.

The temptation to follow Walter through the doors was almost unbearable. Joel was in that room. So were the answers to all of her questions and a glimpse of her future.

Grace watched hotel guests come and go: a couple in a tux and a wedding gown, two girls in swimsuits, and an elderly man in plaid shorts. They were just the kind of people one would expect to see in a resort town on a Saturday in June.

She didn't know them. She didn't know if they were happy, sad, or something in between. But she was certain that they understood what they were doing, where they were going, and how they would manage to find their way through this seemingly complicated and mysterious world.

Grace looked again at the doors to the sitting room. They were closed. What was taking so long? Were the Saitos pleading with Joel to soften the coming blow?

She realized now what a fool she had been. Joel may have loved her in 1941, but that was another time. He was a different person in 2000. He was wealthy and educated. He had friends and connections and a girlfriend bound for Stanford Law. He'd be crazy to trade that for a bumpkin in a blue gingham dress with little more than a few hundred dollars and a dated education.

Grace grabbed her stomach as she felt yet another wave of nausea. She berated herself for being weak. She hated this. She hated the fear and the loneliness and growing sense that she was powerless to control her future.

Feeling weaker by the second, she stepped away from the pay phone and walked briskly toward the front desk. She needed to find a restroom and find it soon. Her stomach was reeling.

When she reached the desk, she saw a clerk pick up a phone and hold up a finger. Time was running out. She scanned the room for a helpful sign but saw nothing to guide her way. She was about to race out of the building when she heard a door open in the distance.

It was Walter. He shut a door to the sitting room, looked toward the front desk, and motioned to Grace to join him.

"Please come, Grace," he said. "Please come."

Walter Saito said no more to her. He didn't have to. Walter Saito was smiling.

CHAPTER 19: GRACE

Grace raced to the open door and looked at Walter one more time to see if his smile was something more than an illusion. It was. He grinned broadly as he held out an arm.

"Katherine has asked me to bring you in."

Grace grabbed Walter's arm and followed him into a room that looked like it belonged in a museum. Plush furniture, fountains, artwork, and plants occupied every visible space and paled only to the exotic rugs that covered the floor. The chamber was the most incredible thing she had ever seen. Then Walter escorted her farther into the room and she saw something a tad bit better.

Grace held Walter's arm until they reached the center of the chamber. She stopped, released his arm, and turned toward a couple of sofas, where Katie stood next to a dream. For several seconds, she could do nothing but let her mind go. It remained in a better place until the woman who had set up this incredible reunion brought her back to the here and now.

"I believe you two know each other."

Grace wanted to say something but couldn't. Just the mere sight of Joel had left her speechless. He was dressed for a hike in a sweatshirt and jeans. He needed a shave and probably a bath. But he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

"It's you," he finally said.

"It's me."

Grace smiled as the tears rolled down her face. Gripped by a hundred different thoughts and emotions, she found it nearly impossible to move forward. But move she did. With a few brisk steps she raced toward a man, not an illusion, and met his embrace at full stride.

Joel smothered her with a hug and a kiss, the kind she had wanted the night he had left – the kind she wanted the rest of her life. He pulled back, shook his head, and repeated his greeting.

"I am so sorry, Grace. I can't even find the words."

"Then don't," she said, wiping her eyes. "Don't apologize. I understand why you left. Just tell me you love me. Tell me I haven't made a mistake."

Joel smiled broadly as tears of his own began to form.

"Are you kidding? I love you so much it hurts. I've thought of nothing else since I left. I've been miserable." He grabbed her hands. "It's really you."

"It's really me."

"But how?"

"I opened your card on December 7 and flew to Helena that night with money Katie gave me. I said goodbye to Aunt Edith and Ginny and left. Your letter was like a road map."

Grace saw the sheer joy on his face and lapped it up. If there was ever any doubt that he loved her – and only her – it was gone. But she could also see confusion in his face. Katie had not told him her entire story and he had not figured it out.

"But it's not possible. It's not. Even if you left in time, you could not have known where to go. I never named the mine. There must be hundreds in Montana."

"There are thousands," she said. "But there was only one Buick dealer in Helena. He remembered you and where he picked you up. He was very helpful."

Joel gave a smile to Grace and another to Katie. Then he looked at the ceiling as if giving his thanks to God or a guardian angel or the grandmother who would have loved this moment.

Grace didn't wait for him to inquire more. She didn't want to answer questions. She wanted only to put an exclamation mark on an incredible day. She put her hands on his face, met his eyes, and gave him a tender kiss.

"You left me some crumbs," she said, "and I picked them up."

CHAPTER 20: JOEL

Sunday, June 18, 2000

The waves were smaller than the last time around, the air was cooler, and the morning sun loomed higher in the sky. But in so many other, more meaningful ways, the setting was the same. Seaside was Seaside, Grace was Grace, and 2000 was 1941. Joel had the love of his life at his side, a love he thought he had lost. Nothing else now really mattered.

"I can't believe you wore the dress," Joel said as he led Grace by the hand on the Promenade, which they had walked for more than an hour. "That was a nice touch."