And, on top of all that, Mac and that dreadful woman in black were still holding New Seattle hostage. Dorothy lowered her face to her hands, gently pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers. It made her head spin to think of it all.

“We have to go back,” she said eventually. “Soon, I hope.”

“Go back?” Loretta lifted an eyebrow. “To the”—she grimaced, as though it pained her to say it—“future?”

“Yes, Mother,” Dorothy said.

“Will you ever return home?”

Will I? Dorothy blinked, surprised to find that she hadn’t fully considered that question. She certainly hadn’t planned on returning, but now that she thought of it, she realized that she wouldn’t be able to, even if she’d wanted to. Once they got back to the future, they would need to find a way to destroy the remaining exotic matter. It wouldn’t be possible for her to come back.

For some reason, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to return made it all so much harder to face.

“I . . . I won’t,” she said, blinking hard. Were those tears in her eyes? How strange. “Which means this is goodbye, I guess.”

Loretta studied her for a long moment, her expression unreadable. She’d always been hard on her. Cruel, even, Dorothy thought. But now that she knew what it was like to try to take care of herself in a world where she’d had nothing—no friends or family or money—Dorothy thought she understood where that cruelty came from. She’d become a monster, too, after all.

After a moment, Loretta sighed and reached out to touch her daughter’s ruined face with her own badly damaged hand. She traced Dorothy’s scar with her thumb, and, for a moment, Dorothy was sure that her mother was about to say something terrible about how reckless she’d been with her beauty. She steeled herself . . .

But Loretta was quiet. Something passed between them, and then Loretta took her hand away.

“What will you do in this future world?” she asked, sniffing. She glanced over her shoulder, toward the hall, where Ash and the Professor were still talking. “Will you be with him?”

“I—I’m not sure,” Dorothy said, her cheeks coloring. She hurried to add, “There are other things we need to take care of, much more important things.”

Loretta lifted an eyebrow, and Dorothy could read what she was thinking as clearly as if she’d spoken the words out loud.

More important than marriage? Does such a thing exist?

“There’s this terrible man, Mac Murphy,” Dorothy rushed to add. “He’s sort of a crime lord in New Seattle. He wants time travel for himself, and the only way to stop him is to make time travel impossible.” Dorothy stared down at her tea, feeling helpless. “So, that’s what we’re going to do.”