Door 22

"Hi, Mary," Jack said. "Do you remember me? My name-"

"Did you find Jeb?" Mary asked.

Jack nodded. "Yeah, I found-"

"Get in here. You're letting all the warm air out."

*****

Jack sat across from Mary, warming his hands on a cup of coffee. He hadn't taken a drink yet and had no plans to do so. Mary hung her head across from him. She looked to be in physical pain.

"I don't want to ask about him. I don't want to know," Mary said. "If I was younger. Stronger. I'd just tell you to go back out the door and go to my grave mad. But I ain't young. I'm old."

Jack didn't know how to respond to that.

"Did he say he was sorry?" Mary asked.

"Yes, he did."

"What happened to Matthew?"

Jack shrugged. "It's hard to explain-"

"Don't act like I'm some idiot," Mary said. "Were they traveling through time?"

"Yes."

"Matt killed himself by doing something stupid, didn't he?" Mary didn't wait for an answer. "He never thought about the consequences of the things he did. Neither of them did."

Jack stared into his coffee cup. The surface of the coffee vibrated in his hands, sending tiny waves back and forth across the cup, crashing into each other, merging and fanning out in other directions.

"I hated both of them," Mary said. "I hated them for excluding me from what they were doing. I hated them for treating me like a little girl. I hated Matt for dying - hated him for leaving me alone."

"They didn't know," Jack said.

"But you know, don't you? Did you throw that damn calendar away?"

"Not yet," Jack said. "There are some other people in trouble because of the calendar, the Doorway. Three girls."

"Tell me," Mary said.