Then came the slower tunes, and he put his arm around her and his cheek closer and closer to her own. She was absolutely lovely and sweet beyond anything that her older self could ever have thought to describe in the book.

When the evening’s program finally came to an end, she asked him, “Would you like to walk me home?”

He gladly obliged, and when they were halfway down her own street, she surprised him again.

“It’s as if you’ve been leading me on this walk, as though you already knew where I lived, like you knew where my school was,” she said, “But I’m sure that the article about the smugglers didn’t give my home address away.”

“I think your body language might have given me a general sense of where you would have turned at each corner, if you’d been walking by yourself,” he ad libbed.

“If you’re as perceptive as that, you would have solved that monastery case without any help from me,” said Bonnie.

“There’s one mystery I don’t think I could easily fathom,” said Andy.

“What would that be?”

“The mystery of whether or not you think that this would be a suitable time to kiss you,” said Andy.

“Well sometimes, when I’m solving a mystery, I have to experiment a little,” said Bonnie, “Why don’t you try that?”

Her perfect smile, her inviting eyes, and her captivating lips had just transformed the mystery into a solution. He put his arms around her and kissed her slowly. It was incredible. He was six decades in his own past, kissing a girl he’d only ever seen in photographs until recently. And she was happily kissing him too.

It was at least ten minutes before they were ready to continue the walk to Bonnie’s house. After that, he made his way back to the monastery, which he’d been using as the least likely place for his time machine to be discovered. For the next week, he simply couldn’t wait to see Bonnie again. How could he ever fall for a girl in his own time after that mystery in the monastery, that dance in the school hall, that walk to her street, and that captivating kiss?

The kiss had also made up his mind about something else. He wanted to keep no secrets from her. He was going to tell her everything, of his trip from her future, of his lengthy fascination with her, and his undying love. The only thing he wouldn’t tell her was that his knowledge came from a book she would one day write herself. She needed to reach the decision to do so in her own time, not feel that it was hanging over her in order to keep history accurate. He would never load that burden onto her.

This time, he would aim the time machine for Bonnie’s own back garden. He just needed to know where the bushes were. So on Friday night, he snuck out in the middle of the night, and onto the garage sale owner’s property, and around the back, just to examine the back garden in the moonlight.