-----

The only reason she had ever been to one at all was because her mother had always taken Prue and her sisters to the church fair. The reason was partly altruistic and partly practical: Patty liked the idea of supporting the church and, in turn, the church shelter, but it was also a lot less expensive to stock the manor with secondhand toys for her three girls.

After Prue's mother’s drowning, her grandmother had attempted to carry on the tradition, but they only went a couple of times before the younger Halliwells began grumbling and groaning when the subject came up. Now that they were all older, Prue was hoping they could revive one of her mother’s traditions. It made Prue feel closer to her mother somehow, doing something that Patty had enjoyed.

"How come I don't remember Grams taking us here?" Phoebe asked as she slammed the door of Piper's Jeep closed. The sound startled Prue out of her reverie and kicked her into motion.

"We were really little, Pheebs," Prue said as she climbed out of the car. "I'm not surprised you don't remember."

"I don't remember it, either," Piper said, stepping around Prue to gaze up at the enormous white structure in front of them. The church had stood on the corner of Sycamore Street for as far back as she could remember. She remembered being somewhat intimidated by the staid Catholic building when she was a child.

As she led the way to the parish hall, vague memories started making their way to the surface. In her mind's eye, she saw Phoebe as a toddler having an absolute ball in a room full of toys and other children. "Not really, anyway."

"I loved the fudge room, you loved the book room, and Phoebe loved the toy room," Prue said as a nostalgic smile lit her face.

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Piper replied with a light giggle.

The sisters enjoyed the bright May sunshine as they walked to the parish hall, a hush falling over them. As Prue walked into the building, familiar smells hit her nose. The distinct intermingled aroma of baked goods, coffee, fudge, and candy hung in the air and filled the small space with a warm, inviting aura. Comforting.

Inside, the sisters separated, Phoebe and Piper heading straight for the baked goods and Prue deciding to start from the beginning and work her way around the parish hall in a circle. The first alcove on the right was the book room. She scanned the titles as she walked past each table; she didn't expect to find anything really worthwhile, maybe a couple of beach reads.

As she crept up on the fourth table, her eye was instantly drawn to the spine of a thick, cloth-bound hardcover that looked much, much different from those around it. With a curious frown, she picked up the book and turned it over to get a look at the cover. Her eyes widened when she saw the piece of American history she held in her hands.

A beautiful, first edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales for Boys and Girls that, with the exception of a few smudges of dark dirt or dust worn into the cloth, was in almost museum condition.

She gingerly nested the book in the crook of her arm, cradling it as if she were a student carrying her textbooks, and hurried out of the alcove. She ran her eyes over the crowd, trying to find someone she could return the book to. A moment later she spotted one of the priests standing near the refreshment table; she hurried over to him. "Excuse me, Father Allen?"

"Yes?" said Father Gregory Allen, a handsome man in his early thirties. Prue had mentioned to her sisters on more than one occasion when he had first become priest at the church that it was a shame he had taken a vow of celibacy.

"I found this in the book room," she explained, holding the book out to the priest. She smiled almost shyly when his blue eyes locked with hers. "It's worth a great deal more than the dollar-fifty you're charging for it. A first edition would sell at auction for thousands, especially if there are Hawthorne enthusiasts present. It's kind of hard to come by."

"Oh, no," Father Allen replied, carefully taking the book from Prue's hand, "this wasn't supposed to be on the floor. Thank you very much for bringing it to my attention."

"May I ask why it wasn't supposed to be on the floor?"

"It belongs to someone staying in the shelter," he explained. "It must have gotten packed with the sale books by mistake. I'll go return it to her now. Thank you again."

"You're very welcome," Prue said before the priest smiled a goodbye and disappeared into the crowd. She let her breath out in relief, secure in the knowledge that the book was being returned to its rightful owner.

She returned to the book alcove and resumed her search for cheesy, light reads only to find herself continually thinking about the Hawthorne novel. What she had told Father Allen was correct; first edition copies of Tanglewood Tales for Boys and Girls were rather difficult to find. It wasn't an obscure title by any means, but it wasn't a title that the average person would know off the top of his head, either.

Frowning, she turned around and again scanned the crowd for Father Allen. She wanted to tell him to make sure that the owner of the book knew how valuable it was. Unfortunately she could not find him among the throng of church-goers and bargain shoppers.

At that moment, Piper and Phoebe ran up to her, giggling like small children, and handed her the largest chocolate chip cookie she had ever seen. “What the hell?”

“Prue!” Phoebe exclaimed. “Can you say that in a Catholic church?”

“What, hell?” Prue asked. She smirked. “I’m pretty sure you can. If you mean the place, which I totally did.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Piper laughed. “Can you believe the size of these cookies? They’re selling them for fifty cents!”

Prue grinned at her sister and bit into her cookie. She had never tasted anything so close to baked perfection; it positively melted in her mouth. “This is amazing!” she said after she had swallowed.

“Isn’t it?” Piper said excitedly. “I would kill for the recipe.”

“Piper!” Phoebe hissed. “You shouldn’t threaten violence in a church! Thou shalt not kill, remember?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Phoebe!” Prue exclaimed. “We’re not even in the church itself.”

Phoebe just gave her sister a mischievous, teasing grin in response. “Using the Lord’s name in vain.”

Prue shook her head, chuckling to herself. “Oh, you’ll never guess what I found in the book room,” she said in a hushed whisper after swallowing another bite of cookie. “A first edition Tanglewood Tales.”

“A first edition Hawthorne?” Piper asked, surreptitiously licking melted chocolate off her index finger. “Here?”

Prue nodded, an excited twinkle in her eye. “It was absolutely gorgeous, really well maintained. I brought it to Father Allen to let him know that it was worth much more than they were selling it for, and he told me that it actually belonged to someone staying in the shelter and that it had made it into the to-sell pile by mistake.”

“Huh.” Phoebe said, frowning. “I hope the person knows how much that book is worth. If anyone needed a little windfall, it would be someone staying in a church shelter."

“I hope so, too, Pheebs,” Prue said softly, darting her eyes around the parish hall again. Still no sign of Father Allen. "I hope so, too."

-----

It had been three days, but Prue couldn't take her mind off the book she had found at the church fair. Because they were sick of her obsessing, to use Phoebe's term, her sisters had finally convinced her to go back to the church and talk to Father Allen again. At least that way she'd know she'd done all she could to inform the owner of the book of its value.

She parked her car on the side of the street opposite the church and paused a moment to gaze up at the building before opening the car door. Then she hurried across the street and pulled one of the heavy wooden doors towards her.

The ornate decoration of Catholic churches never failed to impress Prue. It was all dark woods, rich stained glass, shiny gold, polished silver, and antiqued brass, and Prue thought it was absolutely stunning. She drew in an involuntary breath; it wasn't a loud gasp, but in the silence of the space she felt as if it was enough to wake the dead.

A young girl stood beside the altar polishing a silver chalice with what looked to Prue like an old dish rag. She looked to be no more than sixteen, her long, auburn hair held back from her face in a loose low ponytail. Her jeans and T-shirt were nice but worn--standard shelter-issue clothing--and she didn't look wholly comfortable in them. She must have seen Prue out of the corner of her eye because she turned her head towards the back of the church. She gave Prue a polite smile before setting the chalice and the rag down on the cloth covering the altar. "Can I help you with something?" she asked, her voice echoing slightly in the open space.

"I was just wondering if Father Allen was available," Prue said as she walked a little closer to the front of the church.

"He's actually at a neighboring parish right now," the girl replied apologetically. "May I give him a message?"

Prue was disappointed that the priest wasn't in, but she tried not to let it show as she dug through her purse for a business card. She came up with one and handed it to the girl. "Yes. Would you please have him call me? I want to talk to him about the Hawthorne book I found at the fair."

The girl's brown eyes reflected sudden understanding and gratitude. "You're the one who found my book. Thank you for that."

Prue felt her eyes widen in surprise. She hadn't been expecting the owner of the book to be ... well, a kid. Even though Tanglewood Tales was at its heart a children's book, most kids hadn't even heard of it, never mind owned a first edition. "I'm just glad I found it before someone else did," Prue replied, smiling.

"I am, too," the girl said. She blinked quickly, as if suddenly remembering her manners. "My name's Sarah Driscoll."

"Mine's Prue Halliwell," Prue said. "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too." Sarah gestured towards the front pew, inviting Prue to sit. Prue followed the girl's lead and sat facing slightly sideways. Sarah read the business card over before looking up at Prue. "You work at an auction house? Is that why you found my book in the first place?"

"Not exactly," Prue answered, "but it is why I knew what it was. I originally spotted it just because it looked so different from all the books around it. The way books were bound back then is in no way like how they're bound now. When I picked it up, I realized that it was a first edition in, I must say, almost immaculate condition."

Sarah smiled shyly, but there was something in her eyes that Prue couldn't quite place. Sadness, perhaps? "Sarah, forgive me if this question seems rude, but how did you end up with that book?"

"It's somewhat of a family heirloom," she said softly, dropping her gaze to her hands. Then she raised her eyes and smiled hopefully. "I have more things, if you'd like to see them. It's not a large collection, but it seems as if you appreciate antiques."

"I'd definitely like to see them," Prue grinned. Something in Sarah's eyes was telling her that, for whatever reason, Sarah needed to show her the items. Plus, she had to admit to being a little curious. What else could this young teenager have?

Sarah stood and led Prue to a door on the left side of the altar. Prue had never been that close to a Catholic altar and the items and decoration were even more incredible up close. Sarah looked back over her shoulder to make sure Prue was indeed following her and smirked when she saw the wide-eyed expression on Prue's face. "You've never seen this kind of thing up close and personal, have you?"

"Is it that obvious?" Prue asked lightly, her cheeks blushing.

Sarah giggled and laughingly put on a tour guide persona. She narrated their surroundings as she led Prue into the sacristy and then down a short corridor which opened into a wide space set up with half a dozen cots. The far wall was lined with a refrigerator, a small four-burner range, some cupboards, and a sink, and the bathrooms were built off the left wall. A few doors on the right wall opened into closets. "Father Allen tells me that in the winter, it gets really crowded," Sarah said, leading Prue to the cot nearest the closets. "But since it's so nice out at night, there aren't very many of us staying here."

She sat down on the small bed and reached underneath it, unearthing a small burlap satchel that was practically bursting at the seams. Before Sarah replaced the blanket, Prue glimpsed a slightly dirty blue gingham dress neatly folded and sitting next to a pair of well-worn black moccasin slippers under the bed. Sarah gingerly set the satchel down on the mattress and began pulling out its contents. Prue was amazed when Sarah tugged a rag doll, two more books, and some coins from the satchel. Sarah looked up and grinned at the awe on Prue's face.

Gingerly, Prue reached out and picked up one of the books, which turned out to be a thick, leather-bound Bible that, if she had to guess, was published somewhere around the American Revolution. Her guess turned out to be accurate when read the publication date on the inside cover: 1783. "It was my mother's," Sarah spoke up softly. "Actually, before that it had been my grandmother's."

After holding the Bible for a moment longer, running her hand gently over the soft leather, Prue set it down and picked up the other volume. A gorgeous first edition Uncle Tom's Cabin seemed to smile up at her. Prue felt her jaw drop but she quickly regained her professional control. "Sarah, this is ... you have no idea how valuable this stuff is. You have a small fortune in these books alone. Hell, just in the Bible alone."

"I-I couldn't possibly sell these, Ms. Halliwell," Sarah said, picking up the Bible and holding it close to her chest. "It's all I have left of my family."

Instinct almost made Prue ask what had happened to Sarah's family but she caught herself before the words could tumble out of her mouth. It really wasn't any of her business, though she had to admit that she was dying of curiosity. Sarah certainly carried an air of mystery. "Tell you what," Prue said gently, nudging Sarah's knee. "You keep the card and if you ever change your mind about selling, give me a call. I'll handle all the tough stuff for you, okay?"

Sarah's dark eyes met Prue's and she smiled. "Thank you, Ms. Halliwell."

"Oh, please, call me Prue." Sarah's smile grew wider before she broke eye contact and gazed down at the Bible. "Sarah, can I ask how old you are?"

"Fifteen," she answered without looking up. "I've been staying here for eight weeks, ever since ..." Her voice caught in her throat. She cleared her throat and raised her eyes, seemingly embarrassed at having almost lost control. "Father Allen's been very kind to me. He told me I could stay here for as long as I need to. I've been doing little things around the church and the parish hall as a thank you. Cleaning and straightening up." She gave a dismissive shrug. "It's the least I can do."

Prue ached to pull the girl into a tight hug and tell her that everything was going to be okay. She had no idea of Sarah's circumstances, but it was obvious that she was in pain and completely alone in the world. She seemed to be extremely mature for her age, though, if her calm attitude with Prue was in any way indicative of how she was handling her situation.

Prue settled for giving the girl a kind, comforting smile and reached for the rag doll. "That was my sister's," Sarah said. "She named her Anna."

"That's a very pretty name," Prue said as she examined the doll. "Where did your sister get this? This style is straight out of the pioneer days."

Sarah's eyes widened for a quick second. "Another family heirloom," she quickly stammered.

Sensing that the girl was growing uncomfortable with her questions, Prue set the doll back down on the bed. "Sarah, this is an incredible collection. Thank you for letting me see it."

"You're welcome," Sarah replied, her easy demeanor returning.

Prue smiled and stood. "I've taken up enough of your time," she said. "Keep that card, now, just in case you do change your mind."

"I will," Sarah said. "Let me walk you back out."

Sarah and Prue returned to the church proper, where Prue bid the young girl goodbye. Sarah seemed truly sad to see her go. All Prue could think about on her drive home was the girl, how she could have come into possession of such a collection of antiques and, most importantly, what had happened eight weeks earlier that led to her living in a church shelter at fifteen years old.

-----

“You couldn’t find anything?” Prue whined into her office phone.

“Nothing about a family named Driscoll eight weeks ago,” Andy Trudeau confirmed.

It had been six days since Prue had gone to the church to visit Sarah and she once again found herself obsessing over what could have possibly happened to the young girl. She had asked Andy the day before to discreetly poke around the records for her to see what he could come up with. Apparently, he’d hit a wall.

“I don’t know, Prue," he continued, startling her after the small bit of silence. "Maybe she’s not originally from the area. Or maybe she’s just a runaway.”

“This girl isn’t a runaway, Andy,” she insisted. With a sigh, she leaned back in her chair and frowned. A runaway wouldn’t speak so lovingly of her family and wouldn’t refuse to sell what little possessions she had, especially considering the value of those possessions. No, Sarah wasn’t a runaway. Something had happened to her, something tragic.

“Okay,” Andy replied, sounding a bit taken aback by her tone. “She’s not a runaway. So what happened, Prue? And where? Because nothing happened here, not to a family named Driscoll eight weeks ago.”

Prue sighed again, completely at a loss. She really thought Andy would have been able to find something in the police records, some kind of hint. A tragic accident, a car crash, something. Anything.

“Maybe you should go talk to her again,” Andy spoke up, his voice soft and gentle.

He was beginning to sound over-protective, and she didn't like it one bit. “Yes, because what I really want is a fifteen-year-old to think I’m stalking her.”

“Well, you kind of are,” Andy joked. “I mean, using your connections at the police station to check up on her?” He clucked his tongue in mock disapproval.

Prue smirked and dropped her gaze to her desk calendar. “Whatever.” When she looked up, she was surprised to see none other than Sarah Driscoll standing shyly in the doorway to her office, her satchel hooked over her shoulder. “Speak of the devil," she said, softly enough that Sarah couldn't hear. "Andy, can I call you back?”

“Yeah, sure,” he answered congenially, though she could hear the slight intrigue in his tone.

She quickly said goodbye and hung up the phone then stood and invited Sarah into her office. “I-I changed my mind,” Sarah stammered. The poise and confidence Prue had seen when she had met the girl in the church was nowhere to be found. Instead, she was anxious, troubled. “N-not about the books, but … the coins?” She dug into the satchel and then held them out to Prue. “Could they be worth something?”

“Let’s have a seat,” Prue said, hoping that if she were calm and professional, she’d ease Sarah's nerves a bit. She led Sarah to one of the conference chairs and then took her own seat behind her desk. Sarah perched nervously on the edge of the right-hand chair. Prue just gave her a soft half-smile. “Relax. It’ll be okay.”

Sarah took a deep breath in and held it for a quick moment, nodding. She reached out and set the coins on Prue’s desk. “How much money do you think I could get for these?”

“I’d have to have them appraised, but I can definitely look into it for you.” She picked up a couple of the coins, a half-cent minted in 1832 and a dime minted in 1845. Glancing over at the small pile on her desk, she could see two or three more of each denomination. A couple of early quarters and one silver dollar completed the collection. “Can I ask why you’ve changed your mind about selling?”

“I’ve been at the church shelter over two months now. I think it’s time for me to be on my own.”

Prue raised her eyes from the coin to meet Sarah’s. “Sarah, you’re only fifteen. You might not legally be able to live on your own.”

Sarah just smiled calmly. Her confidence seemed to be returning. “I still would like to know if those coins are worth enough for me to be able to try.”

Prue nodded and returned her attention to the dime in her hand. “Where did you get the coins?”

“They were my grandfather’s,” Sarah answered quickly. Almost too quickly.

“Do you know where he got them?” Sarah gave a slight shrug as Prue turned the coin over and inspected the obverse. “Sarah, I’m sorry, but these coins aren’t old enough to be authentic. They’re reproductions. Faithful reproductions, but reproductions nonetheless. Are you sure you don’t know where he got them?”

Sarah just shook her head. “I can assure you that these coins are authentic.”

“Do you have documents or certificates or anything?” she asked, then cringed. That was a stupid question, considering she had seen all that the girl owned in the world.

Again, Sarah shook her head, her gaze dropping to her hands in defeat. “No.”

Prue sighed softly and picked up the silver dollar. It was dated 1856 and still slightly shiny. “I really am sorry, but no dealer would buy these coins. There’s not enough wear on them.” She held out the dollar as an example. “Even if someone in 1856 put this coin away the second they received it and kept as an heirloom, it still would have had to have been handled in some way over the last hundred and fifty years. The surface would have dirtied and dulled, and some of the relief would have worn down.”

Tears quickly welled in Sarah’s eyes but she blinked them back before they could fall. She reached out and gathered the coins from Prue’s desk with one swipe of her hand. “Thank you for trying, Prue. I’m sorry for taking up so much of your time.”

As the girl stood, so did Prue. “Sarah, wait,” she called as Sarah turned to head out the door.

Sarah paused in her tracks and turned back to face Prue, attempting to keep her composure. “I know you don’t believe me, but the coins are authentic. I can’t explain it to you, but they are.”

“I do believe you,” Prue replied, and it was the truth. Or at least, she believed that Sarah believed that the coins were authentic; Prue knew that those coins were relatively freshly minted. Her heart was aching for the girl in front of her. Sarah was honest and mature and alone and her hopes of striking it out on her own had just been dashed. “If you could tell me how you know that the coins are authentic, maybe I could figure something out. Something to explain the discrepancy.”

Sarah gave a bitter smile and dropped her gaze to the thin Keds she was wearing. More shelter-issue clothing. “In a million years, you’d never believe me.”

“Try me,” Prue said gently. “There’s not a lot I don’t believe.”

Sarah looked into Prue’s eyes, searching for signs that Prue was merely humoring her. Upon realizing that Prue was completely serious, she took a deep breath to calm her nerves and sat back down in the conference chair. “Trust me. You’re going to want to be sitting down for this one.”

-----

Sarah Driscoll was not used to asking other people for help. She had already had to overcome so much and she’d done so completely on her own. But this time, she needed help. What had happened was so unbelievable, so off-the-charts impossible that she couldn’t figure out a solution on her own. All she could hope was that Prue wouldn’t think that she belonged in an insane asylum somewhere.

Prue looked at her expectantly and Sarah cleared her throat. She dropped the silver dollar back onto Prue’s desk and smiled uneasily. “That dollar was minted in 1856, but you are right. It’s not a hundred and fifty years old. It’s only a year old. And I’m fifteen years old … but I was born in February of 1842.”

To Sarah’s surprise, Prue didn’t immediately burst out in laughter nor did she appear ready to commit her. All she did was raise an eyebrow, sit back in her chair, and tell Sarah to start from the beginning.

Sarah began her incredible story, starting with the day-to-day life of a century and a half prior. She was the oldest child in a pioneer family; her mother had taken care of the house and the small amount of animals they raised, some chickens and a couple of cows, while her father had worked at the local lumber mill for long hours and minimal wages. “But last winter--well, winter of ‘55-‘56--both my mother and father came down with pneumonia. The illness swept through the whole settlement, and like many others, my parents didn’t survive. I was left on my own to take care of Jacob and Elizabeth. My brother and sister,” she clarified when she saw the confusion on Prue’s face. "Jacob is nine and Elizabeth just turned six."

Sarah cleared her throat again as she continued. "Luckily, when I turned thirteen, my mother had begun teaching me how to do various things around the homestead. I could cook stews and bake bread and mend our clothing, at least. I got a job at the mercantile to earn money for the things we needed. Medicines and food and a good, square meal from the town restaurant every now and again. Jacob and Elizabeth quickly learned how to help and after a bit of a rough start, we wound up doing relatively well.” She smiled fondly at the memory of her siblings and sniffled back some tears.

Prue smiled as well, but she didn’t say anything, clearly expecting Sarah to continue with her story.

“The last night I was home, I had been feeling a little under the weather, so I had gone up to the loft to lie down. I should have made Jacob and Elizabeth come with me, but I left them playing downstairs. I don’t know what happened, whether they knocked over an oil lamp or if a spark escaped from the fireplace, but I woke up coughing. I couldn’t see anything through the smoke that had gathered in the loft. I ran down the ladder, calling for the children, but they were nowhere to be found. The fire was out of control downstairs; I knew we were going to lose the house, so I grabbed my satchel and threw some things in there that we couldn’t replace. Elizabeth’s doll, my brother’s Tanglewood Tales, my Uncle Tom’s Cabin, my mother’s Bible. Though aside from the Bible, I suppose we could have replaced the books, but they were my and Jacob’s favorite things. Seems a bit silly now. I grabbed what little money we had in the house and ran outside, hoping against hope that the children had already escaped. They hadn’t.”

Sarah paused to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat as she was talking. “I knew they were still in the house and after all I had lost, I couldn’t lose them, too. I ran back inside, calling for them, but the smoke was too thick. It was burning my eyes and my throat and I couldn’t see. I felt myself falling, but when I landed on my knees, I felt cold water on my back. When I looked up, I didn’t recognize where I was. I was kneeling on the ground on this odd black rock--which I learned later was the paved street--and when I stood up, I became frightened. Nothing was familiar and everything looked so strange. Nothing like normal. But I did see a church steeple, so I walked towards it, figuring I could at least get out of the rain.”

“And that’s how you met Father Allen,” Prue interjected with a slight nod.

“Yes,” Sarah replied, somewhat out of breath. For over two months, she’d been longing to tell someone what had really happened to her and now that the story was out in the open, she felt exhausted. “He sat me down in a pew and then went to go find a towel so I could dry off a bit. There was a newspaper lying on the pew and I had to look twice at the date. The month and the day were correct, but not the year. The year was 1999. One minute, I was in my homestead that was burning to the ground in 1857 and the next I was in a rain storm in 1999? It seemed absolutely impossible. I don’t know how I was sent ahead in time, nor do I know why. All I know is that I can’t go back. I’ve tried praying, I’ve tried wishing, I’ve tried dreaming. I’ve tried everything I can think of to go back and I can’t. I can’t.”

Prue was quiet for a long moment and Sarah held her breath. Was it a mistake to tell Prue her story? Why did she think Prue would believe her in the first place? She barely believed it herself, and she was the one it had happened to! Finally, Prue nodded slightly, her mouth turned down into a pensive frown. “Okay. I need to ask you a favor.”

Here it comes, Sarah thought, cringing inwardly. “What?”

“Would you mind coming to my house with me?” Sarah blinked in surprise. That was not the answer she had been expecting at all. Prue mistook her surprise for concern. “I need to run your situation by my sisters, and I’d really like you to talk to my sister Phoebe.”

“You really believe me?” Sarah asked quietly. She smiled slightly in relief when Prue nodded. “May I ask why?”

Prue giggled. “First of all, no one comes up with a story to tell people that’s that crazy unless it’s actually true. And for another … well, let’s just say that a year ago, I probably would have made you an appointment with a shrink so fast your head would have spun. But I’ve had some pretty impossible things happen to me lately, and I’ve learned that nothing is outside the realm of possibility.”

“What kind of impossible things?” Sarah asked, intrigued.

“All in good time,” Prue said as she stood, a mischievous glint in her eye. She opened her desk drawer and grabbed her purse. Sarah took that as an indication to stand and the two of them exited Prue’s office. As Sarah walked down the hall, thoroughly exhausted and rather nervous, she couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit excited. Maybe, just maybe, Prue and her sisters would be able to come up with a way to send her back home.

-----

“That’s some story,” Piper murmured to Prue as she watched Sarah and Phoebe take a seat in the sunroom.

She had to admit to being somewhat skeptical. After all she had been through with her sisters in the last year, she had learned that nothing was impossible. However, there were things that were highly improbable, and Sarah’s story definitely fell into the improbable category.

But still, there was a certain way that Sarah carried herself that was unlike most fifteen-year-olds. She had an air of maturity about her, one that could only come from having to grow up fast. And if Sarah’s story were true, she had certainly had to grow up extremely fast, not only because of having to be the sole caregiver to a young family at fourteen, but also because of the time period in which she had been living.

“I know,” Prue muttered, bringing Piper back to the matter at hand, “and call me crazy, but I believe her. I can’t put my finger on why and I can’t even begin to explain what really happened to her, but I do believe her.”

Piper watched as Sarah held her hands out to Phoebe. Phoebe took them and closed her eyes. “You want her to get a premonition,” Piper whispered in realization.

“Well, a vision of the past,” Prue replied, gently correcting her sister. “At the very least, it will be confirmation of her story.”

Piper stood watching her sister and Sarah until Phoebe shuddered, coughed, and opened her eyes. She could tell just by the look on Phoebe’s face that Sarah had indeed been telling them the truth. Her eyes unexpectedly filled with tears as the reality of what that young girl had been through hit her. “The poor thing,” she whispered.

“I know,” Prue said softly. “But we still have questions that need answering and a lot of brainstorming to do.”

Prue waited another long moment before walking into the sunroom, hoping to make it seem like she and Piper hadn’t been hovering outside the doorway. She set the tea tray she had been carrying down on the table and settled in the wicker chair across from Phoebe and Sarah.

“I’m going to have to answer more questions, aren’t I?” Sarah asked, wincing slightly at the serious look on Prue’s face.

“Yes,” Prue answered. She smiled, hoping to calm Sarah down a little.

“You do believe me, though, don’t you?” The question was aimed mostly at Phoebe and Piper.

The two of them nodded, and though Prue could tell Sarah was itching to find out exactly why they believed her, she needed answers to her own pressing questions. “What did you tell Father Allen? About how you had come to be out in the rain that night?”

“He thinks I’m a runaway,” Sarah said softly. There was a guilty glint in her eye. Lying to a priest was not something a good Christian did, even if it was only lying by omission.. “He came up with the idea on his own, I just never corrected him. I mean, how could I?”

“Why did he come up with the idea on his own?” Piper asked.

“He asked about where I had come from, and I didn’t mean to, but I told him I couldn’t go home.” She shrugged dismissively. “I guess time traveler isn’t the first thing someone thinks of when they hear that, so he assumed I was a runaway.” Phoebe grinned at Sarah, appreciative of her joke. “One of the things that is most different about this time is that fifteen-year-olds are still kids. In my time, I was almost of the age to marry and live on my own. I had been living on my own for over a year, raising my siblings. Father Allen mentioned social services a couple of times, and I started getting nervous. I'm not sure of much in this time, but I do know that an agency would mean more questions. Questions that I wouldn’t be able to answer. So I told him that when I said I couldn’t go home, it was because my family was awful towards me. Abusive. That lie killed me, but …” She trailed off with a soft sigh.

“Honey, you did what you had to do,” Phoebe said gently, resting her hand on Sarah’s knee.

Sarah smiled; she liked Phoebe already. “Then he started talking me about becoming an … emancipated minor? Whatever that means.”

Piper gave the girl a calm smile. “Becoming an emancipated minor means that the courts recognize that even though you’re under eighteen, you are legally able to live on your own and make your own decisions. It’s an extreme decision, though, and it’s not something that happens all the time.”

“But that would also mean questions, right? They’d have to ask me why I wanted to be an emancipated minor.” Piper nodded in confirmation. Sarah sighed. “I can’t answer those questions.”

“Then we need to find a way to send you home,” Prue murmured pensively.

Sarah darted her eyes from one sister to another. “Forgive me if this seems rude, but how can you send me back home? Why would you even think that you can? To be honest, I still don’t know why you believe me. I appreciate it, yes, but I don’t know why.”

Phoebe and Piper both looked to Prue for permission to tell Sarah their secret. And after Sarah had revealed so much of her own secret, regardless of the very real possibility that the Halliwells would not have believed her in the slightest, Prue could see no reason to refuse. She nodded but also silently told them that she would start the explanation.

She didn’t want to use the word “witch”. Though Sarah had come from a time far removed from the days of the witch trials, she knew that even the pioneers were fearful of black magic. She didn’t want Sarah getting the wrong idea from the start. “We have special gifts, Sarah, gifts that allow us to do things that most people can’t. We only recently received these gifts, but they have opened our eyes to another world, a world in which impossible things are possible.”

“What kind of gifts?” Sarah asked, slightly nervous. Perhaps going to the Halliwells really had been a mistake.

“I can move things, Piper can freeze things, and Phoebe has visions.”

“That’s what I was doing when I took your hands,” Phoebe spoke up gently. “I was trying to get a vision of the past. Of your past. It was a way of confirming your story.”

“And you saw it?” Sarah cried, her voice quavering with emotion. “You saw what happened to me?”

“Well, I saw the fire,” Phoebe clarified. “I didn’t see what happened to you, how you went from there to here, but I did see the fire and the smoke. I saw you in your blue dress, panicked and scared.”

At the mention of the color of her dress, Sarah blinked back tears. There was no way Phoebe would have known what color her dress was unless she had actually seen it in her vision.

No, this hadn’t been a mistake, but for the first time since her first rainy night in 1999, she was afraid. She had been terrified when she realized that she had, impossibly, traveled a hundred and forty-two years into the future, but after the initial confusion, she had simply accepted what had happened. She had questions, so many questions, but she soon realized that none were going to be answered for her. So she had just accepted that the impossible was sometimes possible, and attempted to move on. To find a way home.

But for the first time since the night she arrived in the future, she was faced with the fact that real magic existed. “So if there is magic … is it good? Or is it evil?”

“Magic itself is neither good nor evil,” Piper assured her. “Neither dark nor light. It just is. It’s the intention of the person using the magic that makes it good or evil.”

Sarah nodded, somewhat relieved. At least the magic that had brought her to the future wasn’t bad. “But if someone has to use the magic, how did I get here? I certainly didn’t use magic.”

“We’re not quite sure yet, Sarah, but we’ll figure it out,” Prue spoke up with an emphatic nod. “I promise.”

Sarah cleared her throat, nodded, and dropped her gaze to her hands. When she looked up, she met the eyes of each sister in turn. “Do you really think you can send me home?”

“We’re certainly going to try,” Phoebe said as she put her arm around Sarah's shoulders, trying to reassure the young girl.

Piper gave a sudden gasp and urgently nudged Prue before leaning over to whisper in her ear, “We cannot send her home.”

“Why not?” Prue hissed back, casting a glance over at Sarah and Phoebe. Luckily, the two of them had fallen into conversation and weren’t paying attention to the older Halliwells.

“Because 1857 may be her present, but it’s our past. We can’t send her back without changing the past.”

-----

Sarah didn’t understand at all. At first the Halliwells had seemed willing to help her--almost like they wanted nothing more than to help her--but now they were backpedaling. Now they were saying that they weren’t sure they could help her. They weren’t sure that they should help her. On some level, she had known that it was a long shot that the Halliwells would be able to do anything for her aside from give her an ear and a shoulder to cry on, but she couldn’t help but feel disappointed and even hurt that things had changed so quickly.

And Sarah was not ashamed to admit that she didn’t understand their reasoning. They were talking about how changing the past changed the present and ripple effects and paradoxes and none of it made a lick of sense to her. She wasn't asking them to change the past. She just wanted to go home.

“Let’s put it this way,” Phoebe said, attempting to find a different way to illustrate the point. “You told Prue that the night of the fire, you had gone to lie down and that you should have brought your brother and sister up with you.”

“Yes,” Sarah confirmed.

“Okay, so say you were able to go back in time and make them go up to the loft with you. Theoretically, whatever happened downstairs wouldn’t have happened and, again theoretically, your house wouldn’t have burned down. Right?”

“Yes.”

“So you changed the outcome. You changed history,” Prue explained gently. “Now extend that a little further. Say we send you back to 1857. You will continue to live your life in the nineteenth century. You’ll grow up, get married, have children of your own. Those children will have children and so on. Now our history has been changed because those children don’t exist in our history. They never had the chance to exist because you didn’t stay in 1857.”

A spark of realization lit Sarah's eyes as she finally understood. In that one moment, the enormity of the distance she'd traveled suddenly became clear. Her comprehension of the situation had always been sort of abstract: she was a hundred and fifty years in the future. But now she was able to see that she was a hundred and fifty years in the future. Though it felt to her like mere months, her brother and sister had died over a century ago. Her great-grandchildren, if she had stayed in her own time, probably wouldn't have been still alive in 1999. Her eyes unexpectedly filled with tears. Tears of loss, of wonder, of astonishment, of desperation. For the first time since her parents passed away, she wanted no one but her mother. She wanted her mother to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be okay.

The foursome was quiet for a long time before Piper gasped. “What if, instead of sending Sarah to the past, we bring the past to Sarah?”

Prue just shoot her sister a bewildered expression. “Piper--”

“No, hear me out,” Piper said, excitedly holding up her hand. “We can’t send Sarah to 1857 to save her brother and sister without changing the past. But what if we send her back to the night of the fire, she grabs Jacob and Elizabeth, and we bring the three of them back here, to 1999? Nothing in the past will have changed. As it stands now, history says that all three of them died in that fire. If the townspeople assumed Sarah died in the fire even though she obviously didn’t, what’s to stop them from assuming that Jacob and Elizabeth died, too, even if they didn’t?”

“So either way, three children ‘die’ in the fire,” Phoebe muttered, a wide grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. “We can preserve our timeline and still help Sarah!”

Sarah grinned as hope bubbled in the form of butterflies in her stomach. “Oh, do you really think so?”

Prue inhaled hesitantly. Though Piper's idea made sense in theory, she wasn't sure how feasible it would prove to be in practice. “It could work,” she said warily, trying not to give the young girl false hope. “If we can think of a way to time travel on command. It’s not something that’s easily done.”

“Well, Grams did it that time,” Phoebe said, reminding her sisters of their recent trip to the 1970s. “She wrote a spell to send us home. Maybe--”

“Yeah, but we haven’t been able to replicate the power behind that spell,” Prue argued. “Even with the Power of Three.” She heaved a frustrated sigh and ran her fingers through her hair. “Sarah, can you remember anything about the moments right before you came here?”

Sarah whimpered quietly; thinking about the fire was something she tried not to do. At first it had been all she could think about, but she found that the situation was easier to handle if she put it out of her mind entirely. But if Prue thought it would help... She closed her eyes and thought back to the night of the fire.

She remembered the heat, the flames, the smoke. Smoke thick and black and burning her eyes, her throat, the inside of her nose. Involuntarily, she coughed. “I was afraid. I was so afraid, but I knew I had to find Jacob and Elizabeth. The smoke was so thick that I couldn't see, and I remember wishing that I could be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Somewhere where I could be safe and cared for. After that is when I felt the rain.”

She opened her eyes, blinking back tears. The Halliwells exchanged a glance among them. “What?” Sarah asked, flicking her eyes from one sister to another.

“This is going to sound weird, but I want you to do me a favor,” Prue said, a small smile on her face. “I want you to close your eyes and wish that you were five minutes ahead in time. Wish as hard as you wished the night of the fire.”

Sarah narrowed her eyes slightly at Prue. Now they were just playing with her. They had to be. “What? Why?”

“Just humor me.”

With a soft, exasperated grunt, Sarah closed her eyes and did as Prue asked. She wished long and hard that she was five minutes into the future. She didn't understand why she was doing so, but it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was her wish. A moment later she opened her eyes to the Halliwells’ smiling and excited faces. “What? Did it work?”

“Damn right it worked!” Phoebe exclaimed, grinning. She stuck out her hand and showed her watch to Sarah. The girl’s eyes widened as she realized that yes indeed, five minutes had passed in the blink of an eye. “Sarah, you must have powers, too! You must be a--”

“You must be able to use magic as well,” Prue interrupted, giving her sister a wicked side-eye. “That’s how you went from 1857 to 1999 in literally a second. You did it without even knowing it.”

“But … how?” Sarah was confused. “I don’t understand.”

Prue took Sarah’s hands in hers and smiled comfortingly. “You have a gift, Sarah. Just like we do. Our gifts were handed down to us by our mother. My guess is your mother had special gifts as well and they passed on to you and Elizabeth.”

“But not Jacob?”

“Probably not Jacob.”

Sarah's head was spinning. Magic and time travel and special gifts? Suddenly she longed for the days when all she had to worry about was making sure Jacob and Elizabeth did their morning chores and got off to school before she started her day at the mercantile.

“The upshot of all this?” Prue said, bringing Sarah back to the matter at hand. “You can save Jacob and Elizabeth. You can go get them and bring them back here. The three of you can start over here, in this time. Together. You just have to want it.”

“Oh, I do want it,” Sarah said softly, a touch of helplessness in her tone. “I want it so badly. You have no idea how much I miss them.”

The Halliwells exchanged another wide grin. “All right,” Phoebe said, amiably nudging Sarah’s shoulder. “Let's get to work! You have some children to save.”

-----

The nervous but excited energy buzzing in the air was making Sarah somewhat giddy. She had taken a seat in the middle of the Halliwells’ attic floor, and the three sisters were seated around her, almost in a circle. She smirked, wondering what old Mrs. Mulherne would have said if she could have seen her in that moment. The woman had had a crippling fear of black magic, and she was absolutely convinced that any unfortunate occurrence in the settlement was the devil’s work. Something told Sarah that Mrs. Mulherne would not have approved of a girl using magic to bridge the distance of a century and a half.

Her hands shook slightly as she pushed her hair behind her ears. “Trust us,” the sisters had told her. And honestly, she did trust them. She just … didn’t understand something. Nervously, she cleared her throat. It was now or never. “One question?”

"Shoot," Piper said.

She caught Prue’s eye. “I-I know you said that this would work, but I’ve told you that I tried wishing myself home before. Why would it work now and not then?”

"The difference is now you know what to wish for," Prue replied. "Before you were just wishing to go home. Now you're wishing yourself back to a specific point in the timeline. The power isn't in the wish, Sarah, it's in you. The wish is just a way for you to access it. It worked the night of the fire because your emotions were running high, and it'll work now because you're channeling it. Controlling it."

Sarah’s heart was pounding but for once, it wasn’t from fear. For the first time since arriving in the future, she was completely happy. She finally understood how she had come to be here. Well, for the most part. Some things, she was not afraid to admit that she didn’t understand, but at least she knew that it had happened for a reason and that it could be controlled. And now she was about to control it, to use it to her advantage. She was going to use it to save her brother and sister.

“Are you sure you know what you’re going to do?” Phoebe asked.

Sarah was somewhat surprised to hear a little anxiety in her tone. It never occurred to her until this very moment that her situation was something of an anomaly even to people with special gifts. “Yes, I’m sure,” she assured Phoebe with a soft smile.

And she was sure. The four of them had verbally hashed out the plan a couple of different times. Sarah was to will herself back to the night of the fire, let the fire catch, and then find her brother and sister. Once the three of them were together, she was to will them back to the Halliwells' attic in 1999. It sounded simple enough, if she could put out of her mind the sheer improbability of it all, and Sarah couldn’t wait to get started.

“Okay,” Prue said, giving Sarah a calm but emphatic nod. “Whenever you’re ready, Sarah.”

Sarah drew in a nervous breath and shut her eyes, concentrating on the night of the fire. The acrid smell of the smoke still lingered in her nose, the heat from the flames still stung her exposed skin. Again, she coughed, though this time when she opened her eyes she did not see the calm of the Halliwells’ attic. Instead, she saw bright orange flames leaping from the fireplace to the back walls of her small, wood-frame house. The curtains her mother had sewn shortly before coming down with pneumonia were ablaze and the smoke that filled the space was thick and heavy. Coughing, she dropped to her knees. The fire was not supposed to be this far along! She had misjudged, miscalculated.

Fear and panic began churning in her stomach and she fought the urge to vomit or wish herself back to the Halliwells’. Or both. No. She had a job to do, and she was going to do it. “Jacob!” she called, her voice soft compared with the roar of the fire. “Elizabeth! Where are you?”

Nothing.

She inhaled to call again and instead coughed long and hard. The smoke burned her throat and was making her eyes water. “Jacob!” she croaked. “Jacob, come here!”

That was when it hit her that the children were more than likely terrified, and when they were scared, they hid. The only problem was that the children had more than a dozen hiding places in the house, and with the fire was progressing as quickly as it was, she wouldn’t have time to check them all before the flames and the smoke consumed her.

The tears welled in her eyes without warning, but she didn’t allow herself to give into the emotion. She didn’t have time for weakness. She had to find her brother and sister now. Before the fire claimed all their lives.

“Jacob!” she called, crawling forward. The smoke wasn’t as heavy the closer she was to the ground. She was sweating and coughing, the intense heat burning her lungs and making it hard for her to breathe. “Elizabeth! Can you hear me?”

She made her way to the kitchen cabinet beside the iron stove and pulled the door open. That was one of Elizabeth’s favorite hiding spaces. When Sarah was baking bread, Elizabeth liked to hide in there and jump out at her as she went to put the new loaves into the big black oven. Unfortunately, the cabinet was empty.

She was panting as she crossed the kitchen on her hands and knees and pulled open the cabinet under the water basin. She could have burst into tears of happiness and relief when she saw the two children cuddled together in the cabinet. They were both unconscious but they were still breathing, albeit very shallowly.

There was no way that she could carry them both outside. Elizabeth was still small enough, but not Jacob. Summoning all the strength she had, Sarah pushed herself to her feet and shook her brother roughly. “Jacob, I need you to wake up,” she pleaded in between desperate coughs. “Jacob, please.”

After another rough shake, Jacob’s eyelids began fluttering as he groaned softly. “You need to get out of the house, now,” Sarah insisted. She clamped her hand around his wrist and tugged at his arm, trying to bring him around a little. “Jacob, do you hear me? Go!”

Though still very disoriented and coughing in the smoke and the heat, Jacob had the presence of mind to obey his older sister and fled towards the front door of the house. Sarah coughed hard, then once again channeled all her strength into tucking her arms underneath her little sister’s.

Slowly but urgently, Sarah dragged Elizabeth through the house and then out the front door. Jacob, his cheeks smudged with dark ash, was in tears. As soon as Sarah pulled Elizabeth a safe distance from the house, he ran forward and wrapped his arms around Sarah’s stomach in a tight embrace. Sarah hugged him back and realized for the first time that she was crying, too. Dropping to her knees on the ground next to her sister, she allowed Jacob to continue clinging to her. The very fact that he was okay and holding onto her was comforting her more than he could ever imagine. “Elizabeth,” she choked out as she attempted to wipe ash and soot from her sister’s face, “Elizabeth, wake up. Please.”

The little girl was still for a moment, then she inhaled sharply and began coughing violently. When her eyes finally fluttered open a few seconds later, Sarah laughed in hysterical relief and hugged her sister tightly. “Oh, I’m so glad that you’re both all right,” she said as she pulled her brother into the embrace.

“Sarah, it’s not all right! The house!” Jacob cried, his voice rising in hysteria. “The house is burning down!”

“I know, sweetheart, but it’s going to be all right. I promise you.” She gathered her brother and sister together and knelt in front of them so that she was eye-level with Elizabeth and only had to look up a little to meet Jacob’s gaze. She rested one hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder and the other on Jacob’s. “I don’t want you to be afraid of what’s going to happen next. I just want you to know that I am going to keep you safe. Forever and always. All right?”

“Forever and always,” Elizabeth parroted, her voice hoarse.

Sarah grinned and gathered her siblings in for another tight hug. With her brother and sister in her arms, she concentrated on the Halliwells’ attic, on 1999. On the time she had just left, the time that was going to become her family’s new home. The roar of the fire faded as she concentrated; she was leaving it behind, just as she was leaving the nineteenth century behind, forever.

-----

Piper was quite busy wearing a rut in the attic floor as she paced nervously from one end of the room to the other. “Maybe this was a bad idea,” she spoke up hesitantly.

Phoebe smirked. “Piper, this was your idea,” she gently reminded her.

“Well, I’m allowed to have a bad idea every now and then, aren’t I?” She stopped pacing and instead stood at the lectern on which the Book of Shadows rested. “She’s been gone an hour and a half! What if she doesn’t know how to get back? What if she got stuck in another time? What if--”

“Whoa, Piper, relax,” Prue said, jumping up from her seat in the old wicker chair. She stepped up next to her sister and slung her arm around Piper’s shoulders. “I’m sure she’s fine. Did you really think that she was going to leave and then come back with her brother and sister in a second flat?”

“Well …yeah,” Piper admitted. “I mean, kind of. She’s time-traveling, which means she can go to any moment she pleases. This isn’t real-time, remember.”

“She can, theoretically, go to any moment she pleases,” Phoebe corrected her. “She’s also brand-new at this, so let’s give her a little bit of time.”

Piper nodded and crossed her arms over her chest, trying to calm herself down. Just as she felt Prue tighten her grip around her shoulders, a bright flash lit the attic. When the light cleared, three children were left standing in the middle of the room, coughing and spluttering. All three were dirty and sooty, and they smelled of ash and smoke. Piper grinned when she saw that Sarah was holding her sister and brother tightly in her arms.

Sarah opened her eyes and when she realized where she was, she planted a kiss first on the top of her brother’s head and then on the top of her sister’s. “Oh, we made it,” she whispered, closing her eyes in sweet relief.

“Prue, we need to get them to a hospital,” Phoebe said urgently.

At the sound of Phoebe’s voice, Jacob started and pulled out of his sister’s embrace. “Sarah?” he asked, pure terror in his voice, his eyes wide. “Sarah, where are we? What happened?”

“It’s fine, Jacob. I told you not to be scared, remember?” Sarah allowed Jacob to cling to her again as she addressed Phoebe. “We can’t go to a hospital. They’ll have questions--”

Prue quickly shushed her. “Sarah, you all probably have smoke inhalation. Doctors need to see you.”

“But the questions--”

“We’ll think of something to explain,” Prue assured her. “Come on. We need to go now.”

The two youngest Driscolls refused to release their hold on Sarah. They were both terrified of everything, the fire, the new surroundings, the strangers. “Who are they, Sarah?” Elizabeth whispered. “How did we get here?”

“They’re friends, Elizabeth. I promise. Later I’ll explain to you how we got here, but you have to believe me that we’re safe now.”

Piper smiled at the maternal inflection creeping into Sarah’s voice. Sarah ran the back of her hand down Elizabeth’s face to calm her. “We have to go with them now so that the doctors can take a look at us.”

Jacob looked doubtful. He flicked his eyes to each of the Halliwells in turn before meeting his sister’s gaze. “You promise that we’re safe?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, nodding emphatically. “I promise.”

-----

The Halliwells had just barely finished signing the Driscolls in at the emergency room when the children were whisked off down the hall and into a triage room. The Charmed Ones were left with nothing to do but sit in the waiting room chairs and wait for word on the children’s condition. Finally, after what seemed to Prue like hours, a doctor called for them.

Prue let out a huge sigh of relief when the doctor assured them that the children were fine. Shaken, but fine. “They’re responding quite well to the oxygen therapy. We did have to call social services, so the children have to wait here until a social worker arrives. From there, they’ll be placed in an emergency foster home until permanent placement can be arranged.”

The doctor shook his head with a soft sigh. “Such a shame for kids like that to be living on the streets. Sarah is remarkable with the little ones, though. She’s been caring for them for a while, hasn’t she?”

“Yes,” Prue answered, smiling. She was relieved that their cover story--that the Driscolls were found wandering the streets after a fire consumed the condemned building they had been staying in--was being taken at face value. “I’m so glad we found then when we did. May we go see them now?”

“Absolutely.” The doctor gestured for them to follow him and he led them down to the Driscolls’ triage room. Prue was relieved to see that they had been cleaned up and had been given hospital scrubs to wear in absence of their charred, smoky clothing. All three had oxygen tubes resting under their noses, but they seemed to be in good spirits.

Once the doctor left the two families alone, Elizabeth darted her eyes from one sister to the other and spoke up shyly, nervously twisting a lock of her dark brown hair around her finger. “Are you guys really magical?”

“Elizabeth,” Sarah admonished. Honestly, her sister knew better than to ask adults their business.

“It’s okay,” Phoebe smiled. “Yes, sweetie, we are. And you know what? You are, too.”

Elizabeth smiled widely, her cheeks dimpling, as Phoebe ran her finger gently down her nose. “I know. Sarah told me.”

“Well, I don’t believe in magic,” Jacob huffed. His hair was the same auburn color as Sarah’s, and he had a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of his nose.

“But Jacob, how else do you explain what happened?” Sarah asked with a roll of her eyes. “We’re not only away from our house, we’re in the future! Without magic, how did we do that?”

Jacob just shrugged. He had no explanation at the moment, but he was not about to admit that to his sister. He’d think of one, in time. Instead, he looked pleadingly at Sarah. “What happens to us now?”

“Well, the hospital is going to send someone called a social worker down here,” Piper gently explained, “and the social worker is going to find a nice family for you guys to live with.”

Elizabeth ran to Sarah and nestled herself into her sister’s lap. “I don’t want to live with someone else,” Jacob said, frowning. “I want to live with Sarah.”

“You’ll still be living with Sarah,” Prue assured him as she sat down on the edge of Elizabeth’s vacated stretcher. “But you’ll also be living with another family, and this family will love you just like you were their family the whole time.”

“But we’re a family,” he argued. “We were doing well, Sarah, weren't we?”

“We were doing just fine,” Sarah assured him, “but here, we’re too young to be living on our own the way we did at home. We have to have adults taking care of us, and I, for one, am looking forward to it. We can go back to being children, Jacob! It’s going to be wonderful.”

Jacob pouted, clearly not as enthused about the idea as his sister. The poor kid, Prue thought. Of the three of them, she could tell that he was going to have the hardest time adjusting, not only to life with a foster family but also to life in a new century. Sarah had already been through the hardest part of her adjustment, and Elizabeth was still young enough that she could just roll with the punches. But Jacob … at nine, he’d already begun forming his worldview, and that worldview was about to be completely shattered.

"But the most important thing is that we're together," Sarah said, locking eyes with her little brother. "We're together, and we will be forever."

"Forever and always," Elizabeth said with a grin, leaning back against Sarah.

Jacob let out a breath through his nose and finally cracked a small smile. “Forever and always.”

Sarah grinned, reaching around her sister’s shoulders in a light hug, turned her attention to the Halliwells. “I want to thank you. From all of us. I have my family back and soon we’ll have a home. A real home. ”

“You’re quite welcome, Sarah,” Prue smiled. “All three of you. I’m glad we could help.”

The six of them were silent for a few moments before Sarah exclaimed, “Oh! I just realized that I need to call Father Allen! He’s going to be wondering where I am, and I have to tell him that I will no longer need to stay at the church.”

“I’m sure the hospital will let you use the phone,” Piper said.

Elizabeth asked Sarah what a phone was at the same time that a wide-eyed Jacob asked, “You were living in a church?”

The Halliwells stayed with the Driscolls until the social worker arrived, and then they bid the three of them goodbye after telling them they would check in on them the following day. As they were walking across the hospital parking lot, Prue turned on her cell phone and was surprised to see a missed call from Andy. He answered the phone with, “Are you ever going to tell me what happened this afternoon?”

Had it really only been since the afternoon that she had talked to him last? It seemed like a lot longer. “Oh, Andy, you wouldn’t believe it in a million years,” Prue said dismissively. This was not a story she wanted to have to tell over the phone.

“After what you’ve told me already, there isn’t much you can say that I won’t believe.”

Prue just smiled, enjoying the mystery. “It’s a long, long story involving time travel and pioneer-era orphans.”

“Time travel, huh?” Andy joked. “Well, I have all the time in the world.”

Prue rolled her eyes, chuckling. “That was such a dad joke. Okay, fine, I’ll tell you, but it’ll have to wait until I get home. Since, you know, you have all the time in the world.”

Piper listened to Prue’s side of the conversation as she said her goodbyes and snapped the phone shut. “You really think he’s going to buy this one?” Piper asked.

“I think so,” Prue nodded after a moment of thought. “Like I told Sarah, no one tells a story like this unless it’s true.” She paused, thinking back over all that had happened to her in the past year, and scoffed. “Remember what life was like before we were doing things like helping a fifteen-year-old pioneer child travel through time? Our lives have gotten rather weird.”

“Prue,” Phoebe said teasingly, “our lives have always been weird. This is just … a new level of weirdness.”

Prue considered that a moment and then nodded, smirking. She and her sisters may not have been a typical American family, but she wouldn’t have had it any other way.