Free Rewinder by Brett Battles Page B

secrets those in bygone generations assumed would never be known.
    I immerse myself in my work, and even when we’re not traveling, I continue my studies into the past so no decade I visit will be unknown to me. It’s purely by accident that I see the story in the newspaper.
    The world of my home time has become all but invisible to me. The institute is my life. The only time I leave the grounds is when I go into the past. The world of today is something I never think about.
    I’m in the library, where I spend most evenings researching, when I see it. Johnston has told me that tomorrow we’ll be traveling back to 1943, so I’m in the mid-twentieth-century section for a quick refresher.
    It’s a tense era. The Russian Empire is dealing with internal revolts that will last until the czar’s army is finally able to squash them in 1948. Closer to home is the growing tension between the British Kingdom and China. The war neither empire really wants is still another decade away, but the people of ’43 don’t know that. For them, the Chinese’s desire to reclaim the coast from north of Shanghai all the way to southeast Asia could turn hostile at any moment.
    I roll my head from side to side, trying to work out the ache in my neck and shoulders, but I know the only thing that will make it go away is rest. I could read more but I’m more than prepared for the trip, so I shelve the book I’ve been reading and turn to leave.
    The newspaper sits on one of the stuffed chairs along the wall. It catches my attention because it’s the first one I’ve seen since coming to the institute. The paper is folded so that an article on one of the inside pages is showing. The headline is why I pick it up.
     
    PROMINENT BUSINESSMAN HARLAN WALKER DEAD
     
    It’s a name I know very well. Less than two months ago, Johnston and I rewound the man’s history. Though we’ve traced two other families since then, Walker’s has stuck in my mind because of the irregularity we uncovered.
    I read the article and learn that Walker—owner of the largest construction company on the East Coast of North America, and the fourth Harlan of his family—was found in his office, dead of natural causes. Unnamed medical sources report he had a hereditary heart condition that resulted in a massive coronary the previous afternoon.
    I frown. Someone doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.
    Here’s what I know.
    Harlan Walker was thirty-seven years old. I’ve seen Walker’s medical records. I have seen his father’s and mother’s medical records. I have seen the medical records belonging to his grandfathers and grandmothers and great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers. Not a single one of them had a heart condition.
    I flip the paper over so I can read the rest, and have to go over the second-to-last paragraph twice to make sure I didn’t read it wrong.
    Again, what I know. Harlan Walker was unmarried but on the cusp of becoming engaged. This was the reason he hired the institute. He needed to verify his lineage before he could marry the daughter of a duke. What we found was that his grandmother on his father’s side had an affair. His father, Harlan III, was the result, making Harlan IV the son of an illegitimate heir.
    We collected hair samples that the institute’s lab tested to confirm this discovery, and we included the evidence in our report. Though it was never said outright, Johnston all but told me this information would not be given to the client, meaning the official report Harlan IV received would be clean.
    The next-to-last paragraph in the news article makes me wonder if what we learned was truly buried.
     
Walker Construction’s board of directors confirms that ownership of the company will pass to Walker’s cousin Teresa Evans and her husband, Mathew Evans. In addition, a family source reports the estate will be making sizeable donations to several organizations, including the Health Fund of the Atlantic, Catherine University,