Fortunately, Wyn returned not long after that. Wyn had the answer to the questions that had been puzzling me.
Wyn gave no warning of his return. He just walked into the house one afternoon, carrying a suitcase and smoking a pipe.
When I found Wyn and Summer in the park, they had appeared to be twins. During Wyn's absence his hair had begun to gray—prematurely, I'm sure—and now he looked like Summer's father. The change in her must have been even more noticeable to him than it was to me, because he had been separated from her during its most remarkable development. But he showed no surprise at it.
"I knew what the trouble was before I left," he said soberly. "You see, as Summer's husband I was much closer to her than you could be, even since she and the boy have been living with you."
I could feel my ears turning red. I asked hurriedly:
"What is wrong with Summer, Wyn?"
"She lives backwards," he said. "Time is reversed for her. It isn't only a physiological reversal. Everything goes backwards in time for her. The future is the past to Summer, and the past is the unknown future. She remembers the future, Don—she remembers it, because she has seen it happen."
"That's impossible!" I exclaimed. "How can she? It hasn't happened yet!"
"To her it has," he replied. "It may upset your conception of the future as a fluid thing of limitless possibilities, but Summer's experience is pretty good evidence that it is as frozen and stable as the past. As the Orientals say, what is to be will be."