When All is Null and Void

Chapter Forty-Three

The entire ride home was thick with a nearly impenetrable silence, as if someone had dropped it on the roof of the truck, and it was doing good work at suffocating Caleb and Alexander. They pulled into the driveway a little past eight and trudged inside with the all-consuming silence and guilt weighing down on them.

Alexander banged through cabinets, but Caleb was fairly certain his mentor didn't particularly have anything in mind he wanted or needed. Caleb sat on the couch, numb and unfeeling. How could this have happened? Why couldn't they go back to the specific moment they'd been in before?

Danielle had to be angry. He'd be pissed off too if—

He couldn't even imagine what she'd been through. Left so suddenly in not only a foreign country, but a foreign time as well? The thought made his stomach roll. It didn't help he was beating himself up with a tiny bit of anxiety pricking the back of his brain. What if Danielle decided she never wanted to talk to him again? What if she called it quits, and Caleb was forced to go to Rhea James with the news.

He flopped sideways onto the couch and groaned.

"She'll forgive you," Alexander said. It had been five minutes of Caleb staring at the ceiling before Alexander had forced him to sit up and make a space for him on the couch.

"I don't know..." Caleb said under his breath. "She seemed pretty mad."

"But..." Caleb started before trailing off. "I mean, what if she doesn't?"

Alexander shrugged. "The least you can do is apologize. Obviously we're looking at it from the perspective of people who could have left the situation, so we can't really know what it was like. But you just apologize, and if she doesn't forgive you, then you don't beat yourself up about it. There really wasn't anything we could have done differently."

"How am I going to even start asking for forgiveness?"

Alexander wrapped his arm around Caleb's shoulders and gave him a quick squeeze. "Here's what we're going to do."

+++

Alexander's plan was to bring flowers to Danielle's house. Since Christmas was nearly upon them, the flower options at the local supermarket had been dismal, to say the least. Caleb had asked if they could go pick tropical flowers from some other time, but Alexander had quickly shot the idea down. "If we're asking forgiveness for leaving her in another time, we shouldn't present a peace offering from another time. We gotta be normal about it." Knowing Danielle thought poinsettias were disgusting, he'd finally decided on a bouquet of gerber daises in a patchwork of bright colors, which seemed more suited for Easter than Christmas.

They drove to Danielle's house, and Caleb's heart thumped oddly in his chest. It wasn't as if he was confessing his undying love to her—an act he would never do since she was only his friend. He was just trying to ask for forgiveness. He'd even put a little bit of hairstyling product in his hair to make himself look a little more put together. Except it had somehow made him look reminiscent of a wet dog. At least he knew she'd laugh.

"Remember the plan?" Alexander asked. He rolled to a stop down the street from Danielle's door. Caleb could have Hopped to her door, but Alexander had nixed the idea from the start. It didn't mean they were going to park in the driveway and watch it all go down. He'd watch from further away. A getaway car should the encounter go down in flames.

"I remember," Caleb said. He grabbed the flowers and walked down the street in the fine, misty evening. It had been two days. They'd agreed on giving her space. If she needed more space than this, then she wasn't the friend Caleb had grown to know. Alexander had said something similar, but he'd barely been listening. Sure, they could do the plan Alexander had figured out. Sure, they could try to keep Danielle safe, but a pessimistic piece of Caleb wondered if he was just stupid. Shouldn't they let Danielle be, so Rhea James couldn't use her?