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1910, but it was more than just a random date on a distant calendar. It was an important date in the history of the Johnson clan, one that seemed to take on greater significance as he approached the family estate.
    According to the reunion program, Asa Johnson had died on July 22, 1910, while visiting his wife's family in Spokane. He had died in the presence of his wife and sons and had never returned to the house he had purchased or the treasure he had hidden. In all likelihood, the man he knew as his great-great-grandfather was already gone.
    Kevin glanced at the darkening sky and then placed his hands in his pockets, where he repositioned a few of the jingling double eagles. He had more than enough coins to placate the portal and the full moon that shined more brightly than ever. He was as confident as ever that he would walk out of 1910. The question now was whether he would walk back.
     

CHAPTER 7: KEVIN
     
    Friday, June 21, 2013
     
    Cuckoo hadn't budged in his absence, nor had the hands on the clock. Kevin had left his grandfather's house shortly after 7:15 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on June 21, 2013, and returned to the same place, time, and date. The sports section of a Spokane paper lay where he had left it, as did a paperback copy of Yann Martel's Life of Pi . Even the coffee he had poured in the sink still lay in the sink, in two distinctive puddles. Nothing had changed. Yet everything had changed.
    Kevin tried to digest what he had done as he sat at the kitchen table and stared out a large east-facing window. He had really done it. He had not had a dream. Unless Shelly Johnson had laced her son's coffee with hallucinogenic drugs, that son had just traveled through time 103 years. Kevin was pretty sure his mom hadn't spiked his drink.
    The journey back had been seamless, quick, and cheap. Deciding that he didn't want to leave more than twenty gold pieces outside the chamber of stones for Asa Johnson or anyone else to find, Kevin had picked up the coins and taken them with him. The chamber gods, it seemed, required only a gesture – not the actual goods. Kevin noted that possibly important detail in Asa's journal, which he now claimed as his own.
    Kevin thought a lot about his brief, amazing trip. He thought about seeing his great-great-grandfather's house when his great-great-grandfather lived in it. He thought about residences in a neighborhood that no longer existed and a horse-drawn wagon that probably now occupied its own room in a local museum. He thought about Garnet Street and the smoke and the full moon.
    But mostly he thought about the girl. He thought a lot about the girl. Everything about Sarah Thompson stirred his mind, from her elegant dress and done-up hair to her sense of humor and incredible smile. As long as he lived, he would never forget that smile. It was a beautiful smile, a kind smile, a smile he wanted to see again.
    The decision about whether to go back was not a difficult one. The moment Kevin saw that he had returned to a world unchanged, he decided that time travel was something he could do again. It was something he wanted to do again. If he could have that adventure his mother wanted him to have and still return to the present before his family returned from Spokane, was there really a downside? He didn't think so.
    Still, Kevin had much to consider. For one thing, the portal was as reliable, at least in launch mode, as a test rocket. Not one of Asa Johnson's departure dates had matched up with his arrival dates. Leaving the past on New Year's Day, Asa would have been just as likely to arrive in the future on July 1 as January 1.
    Kevin also pondered James May's deathbed confession. The speculator had been very specific about the chamber of stones. A person could pass through the portal only in the light of a solstice sun or the shadow of the fullest moon. Kevin wasn't sure how far the shadow of the moon extended, at least in Wallace, Idaho, but he guessed that it wasn't more than a