There’s an Internet café, so I post a quick update to my blog. When I’m done blogging, I rejoin Ixchel and Susannah at the restaurant. I take Arcadio’s envelope out of my pocket and place it on the table in front of us. Susannah kisses her fingers and then lightly touches the envelope. Ixchel and I watch her. We can’t hide our curiosity. Bluntly, Ixchel asks, “You loved him, didn’t you?” “Yes, dear, I did” is Susannah’s soft-spoken reply. “Which is why it’s such an honor to be of assistance to his grandson.” But am I? She keeps insisting that Arcadio’s my grandfather, but secretly I wonder if it’s the other way around. My future grandson, traveling backward in time … I open the envelope. There’s a single sheet of paper inside. The message: Dear Josh, By now you must suspect that your fate is intertwined with the Mayan prophecy of 2012. As the poet once said, our destiny is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and ironclad.
