Read Written in Time for Free Online Page B

about two minutes—Elizabeth already had her sandwich and Jack Naile’s was half-consumed— David entered the kitchen. “Here,” Ellen Naile said, putting a plate in her son’s hand. “You want another one, the bread’s right there.” She took a bite of her own sandwich.  
    “Where’s the thing that came in the mail?” Jack Naile asked his wife.  
    “Right where you put it.” She took it off the kitchen table and handed it to him.  
    Jack set down his sandwich and sat down at the table. As he opened the envelope and extracted the page cut from the magazine, he declared, “This is really bizarre.”  
    “It’s a picture of an old town,” David announced, looking over his father’s shoulder. Elizabeth had come around to stand beside him. “What’s so amazing—”  
    “Your father wants you guys to look at the name on the store on the far side of the street.”  
    “‘Jack Naile—General Merchandise,’” Elizabeth read aloud.  
    “Ohh. Yeah, that is weird,” David announced as he sat down and started eating.  
    “How’s the math class?” Elizabeth asked her brother.  
    “I’m getting it. I think I’m going to get an A, whereas, if I’d taken it in the fall, well . . .”  
    “Have you got a store meeting tonight, David?” Ellen asked.  
    “As assistant manager, I’ve gotta be there.”  
    “No, I just wanted to double check. You going to have dinner with us?”  
    “Yeah, sure.”  
    Jack Naile swallowed the bite of sandwich that was in his mouth. “Doesn’t anybody have anything to say about the photograph? You guys realize how odd the spelling is for our last name? And then it’s even the same first name! I mean, this is really strange. And what an idea for a book!”  
    “A book?” Elizabeth repeated.  
    “Why did you ask that?” David asked his sister. “Now Dad’ll take the next twenty minutes—”  
    “Hey, think about it!” Jack insisted. “What would happen to a family just like ours if—somehow—we got thrust back in time to turn-of-the-century Nevada?”  
    “I’d be late for work,” David supplied.  
    “No, I mean we could have one hell of a book if we used ourselves as the basis for the characters and then worked out all the planning that would be involved and—”  
    David’s smile was indulgent as he told Jack, “It could never happen, Dad. What? Are they going to invent a time machine or something? Are they going to bump into some crazy professor with a DeLorean like Michael J. Fox did in the movies? Nobody’s ever going to believe it, Dad, because it couldn’t happen in real life. I’ve gotta go.”  
    David was up. Elizabeth said, “You don’t know that it couldn’t happen, David. And that is our name on that store almost a hundred years ago. I think Mom and Dad have a good idea.”  
    David didn’t say it, but Jack could read his son’s thoughts on the young man’s face: either “Suck-up” or “You shouldn’t humor Mom and Dad on stuff like this; they need to write something serious.”  
    David shot everybody a smile and started down the hall.  
    Jack was up, Ellen had never sat down for more than a second and Elizabeth was already following her brother down the hall. “We’ll wave at you, David.”  
    “Fine. See you guys.”  
    The practice of waving was a family tradition, so much so that anytime David or Elizabeth went out with their friends, all of their friends would wave as well. It went according to a well-established pattern; depending on the clemency of the weather it was conducted either wholly from within the house by the storm door (which also involved flashing the porch light) or from the front porch.  
    It was a warm—too warm to Jack’s way of thinking— and dry day, so the exterior wave option was automatically selected. As David was starting down the front steps, his sister was already saying “Give me a kiss, David.” David, of course, did not, but smiled.  
    David was getting