But knowing John, he’d show up one day.
Then Samuel had left. But he’d waited as long as he could.
He’d actually set off to join the Union.
But when he ended up right in the middle of Confederate parade in Memphis, the Southern women, children, and older men turned out, something had changed.
They all looked so hopeful. So proud to be southerners.
He’d known then that he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t raise his weapon against the boys of the south.
Not just the pride of Memphis, but his own brother. His own friends.
Those of his own southern blood.
He just couldn’t do.
Not even knowing that the south was a lost cause from the very beginning.
When it came down to the wire, his southern roots had snapped him back.
He’d signed up with the Tennessee Cavalry First Battalion, Company A.
They’d taken him in and he’d made new friends.
Even though he found himself fighting for the south, after all, being so far from home helped him not think about Ella so much.
And being from home kept him from watching for her. Every moment. Of every day.
Mostly she haunted him at night when he slept.
But during those four years of hell, he’d come to grips with reality.
She was not coming back.
She was like Vaughn.
Merely dropping in. Then leaving short thereafter.
He sometimes wondered if she’d returned the watch to Vaughn. He liked to think that she had.
But, unlike Vaughn, Ella hadn’t left something behind.
She’d taken something with her instead.
She’d taken his heart.
42
Ella was supposed to be at graduation today.
It wasn’t every day a girl got to walk across the university graduation stage and have her advisor drape a hood over their head.
But she wasn’t there.
Today was May 2nd.
But May 2 was exactly four years from the day she’d vanished from 1861.
Four years to the day.
As the day had approached, it had become more and significant to her.
It had started the night she’d had a martini with Garth. She had, in fact, left Garth in charge of picking up her diploma. He’d started to question her, but something in her resolve must have kept his questions at bay.
She’d finished her study of time.
She had her degree.
All that was left was the graduation ceremony itself.
She had the sensation that she’d cycled through everything she could.
She felt like she’d had held her head beneath the water for four years. And now that she’d used up all her oxygen and was coming up for air, she needed to grab ahold of a lifeline.
And her lifeline was Samuel.
She slammed her car door and walked slowly up to the deserted house.
She kept one hand wrapped around the full charged Apple watch on her wrist.
Unlike when she’d left here the last time, she was wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt.
Reaching the steps leading up to the front door, she stopped.
Then put a hand on the railing.
It needed painting.
When she’d been in this spot in 1861, it had all been so clean and freshly painted.
She took a deep breath and walked up the steps. She sat down in the nearest rocker and just rocked back and forth.
Not really thinking about anything.
Just keeping her mind blank.
Letting her thoughts dart here and there.
As they always did, they found the beaten pathway back to Samuel.
She wondered what he was doing.
She’d thought about looking him up on the Internet. He would probably be easy enough to find.
But she didn’t want to know.
She didn’t want to find the date of his death. Whether it was 1861 or 1911.
She couldn’t bear it.
In her mind, he was here. Alive and well.
Well, not technically here. But here then.
She sighed and ran a hand over her face.
Maybe she was technically insane.
She had a Ph.D. in psychology. Was supposed to be graduating today.
And she was sitting here on the front porch of an empty house longing for a man who’d lived before the Civil War.
She straightened the band on her watch.
Yes. Her sanity was definitely in question.
43
Ella used a small narrow screwdriver to open one of the French doors at the back of the house.
The French doors were elegant looking and pretty, but they didn’t do much for security.
She opened the door, stepped inside, and waited to see if an alarm of any kind went off.
When it didn’t, she quietly closed the door and locked it behind her.
There was no longer any question about her lack of sanity.
Sorry Officer. I just felt compelled to be here.
Yes. I know the person who lives here. But he isn’t home. And hasn’t been here for quite some time.
Quite some time indeed.
More like over a hundred fifty years.
And, yes, several other people had lived here since. And no. I have not met them.
Ella walked through the silent house.
The covered furniture gave the house an eerie feel.
She’d never actually been inside the house, other than the foyer, in the present time.
Just the past.
She reached the foyer and stopped to look up at the silent grandfather clock.
There was a rip across the face.
She swallowed. Something had definitely happened since she’d been here.
After a quick look around to make sure no one was here, she went upstairs.
Nothing up there either, except more covered furniture.
She went into what had been the guest room in the past.
The bed looked the same.
But there was no mosquito netting draped over the tall four poster frame.
Going to the window, she looked out across the fields of trees and brambles.
It looked so incredibly different now.
Turning around, she faced the room.
She really hadn’t gotten past this moment in her planning. If she could even call it planning.
There were a few new items, of course.
She went to the dresser and pulled off the cover. It looked like the same piece of furniture.
She slid onto the seat and pulled what looked like a little wooden keepsake box toward her.
She startled when she opened the lid.
It started playing a little sentimental tune.
She darted a glance over her shoulder and slammed it shut.
When her heart rate was back to a normal rate, she opened the lid again and looked inside, letting the music play.
There were several items inside.
A little pink silk scarf, well-worn around the edges. A photograph of two young women that looked like it had been taken in the 1980’s.
A pair of heart-shaped pink sunshades.
And a little glass bauble on a chain.
She picked it up and placed the glass in her palm.
She gasped.
It was the little piece of glass that she’d found on the ground.
The little piece of broken telescope glass that she’d had with her when she’d gone back in time and met Samuel.
She ran her fingertips lightly over it.
Someone had not only kept it, but they had attached it to a chain, making it into a necklace.
Her cheeks flushed at this unexpected find.
Her stepbrother, Daniel had never been found. He’d been declared dead.
She wasn’t sure if it was thinking about Daniel and how he’d never been found that troubled her the most or finding out
that someone had kept this small piece of glass.
Baffled, she opened the clasp and put it around her neck.
She’d left this piece of glass in the past. Someone had liked it well enough to keep it.
Suddenly exhausted, she went over to the bed, climbed in beneath the blankets, and fell asleep.
44
Lightning struck just outside his bedroom door with thunder on its heels.
The wind had kicked one of his French doors open and rain was coming in through the window.
He turned onto his back and stared into the darkness. The sound of thunder left an echo in the air, punctuated by flashes of lightning.
He needed to get up and close the door. But he was in that haze between sleep and wake making an open window seem unimportant.
Besides, he’d been having a most tantalizing dream about Ella.
And he preferred to go back to that instead.
Unfortunately, the dream’s spell had been broken and the rain had captured his attention.
With a groan, he dragged himself out of bed and pushed the window closed.
The storm had one of the little saplings outside his window bent sideways.
Damn. This was quite the storm.
He quickly cleaned up the rainwater.
He needed to check downstairs for storm damage.
Quickly lighting a candle, he checked the time on his pocket watch. Two in the morning.
With the wind howling around the house, he slipped on his pants, a shirt, and tugged on his boots.
Lightning flashing around him, he went into the darkness of the hallway.
Father had come home two days ago. Exhausted. Beaten.
He could doubtless sleep through anything. As could both his mother and sister. Nothing unusual.
He stopped in front of the guest room door. Just as he had done a dozen times since coming home.
Before he left for the war, he’d gathered up her things and stashed them in his room.
He’d found a little piece of glass that she must have brought with her from the future. When he held it up to his eye and looked through it, everything was closer. Closer than any looking glass he’d ever seen. Besides, it had a pink tint to it that he liked. Very unusual.
He kept it wrapped in a scarf and tucked in a trunk in his room along with her pants and shirt.
He should check the windows in that room, too.
The fleeting thought was enough of an excuse for him.
He turned the knob and stepped inside the room.
Something felt different.
He moved quietly toward the bed.
Held up the candle and blinked.
It was her.
It was Ella. Sleeping beneath the blankets.
But… how…?
Had she been here all along? Had he checked the bed?
His knees felt weak and his stomach dropped.
His hands trembling, he reached out and placed his fingertips against her cheek.
Weak with relief, he leaned against the edge of the bed.
His thoughts swirled with questions.
How did she get here?
Thunder crashed all around them.
Yet, she didn’t wake up.
“Ella,” he called her name softly. She still didn’t stir.
He touched her cheek again, alarmed now.
She was heartbreakingly beautiful.
He watched her sleep as the storm finally passed, leaving quietness in its wake.
Still. She didn’t move.
He would let her sleep.
Come back in the morning.
But he kept remembering how she’d vanished right in front of his eyes.
He wouldn’t be able to bear it if he came back tomorrow and she were gone again.
Perhaps he could find a way to attach her to him to keep it from happening again.
Then he remembered his own words to Daniel.
The only way to keep her safe is to leave here. Get away from this place.
That was the answer. To keep her, he would have to take her away from her.
Standing up, he paced to the door.
He put a hand on the wooden door and leaned his head against his arm.
He couldn’t do it.
Couldn’t leave her here like this.
He’d just have to deal with the repercussions.
Taking a deep breath, he turned and went back to stand next to the bed.
“Ella,” he said, louder this time.
But still no answer.
Then he would just have to stay here with her until she woke up.
He slid a chair over next to the bed.
“Good night, my love,” he said.
Then he bent over and kissed her softly on the lips.
As he pulled back, her eyes fluttered open.
“Samuel?” she whispered, her voice barely audible.
Overcome with relief, he sat next to her on the bed.
“You’re here,” he said.
She moved to sit up.
He saw that she was wearing her strange clothes again.
He went to take her hand in his, but she pulled back.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“Tell you what?”
“Why didn’t you tell me that Daniel was here?”
45
Ella’s lips tingled from Samuel’s kiss.
It only took the flash of a second for her to realize she was back in the 1800’s.
It was rather surreal to be awakened from a deep sleep by a kiss.
She could have chosen to focus on that.
It was the thought of kissing him that had haunted her during the night when her mind was idle.
But she quickly remembered that she was mad at Samuel.
And even waking her with a kiss wasn’t enough to redeem himself for what he’d done.
“How do you know about Daniel?” he asked, looking rather pale even in the pale candlelight.
Ella reached over, searched for the leather journal she’d found tucked in a trunk right here in this room.
Just inside the front cover, the name Daniel Sinclair had been scrawled across the page.
She’d spent several hours reading Daniel’s journal last night. She had, in fact, stayed awake much too late, and from the looks of the darkness, she hadn’t been asleep for very long.
“Where is it?” she asked.
Then sat back. Of course. It wasn’t here. It was in the future.
She looked at Samuel. Wavered between being mad at him and being ecstatic to see him.
“I wasn’t sure,” he said.
“But you knew I was looking for him.”
He nodded. “Yes. I did. But I didn’t know it was the same man.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why not?”
Samuel scrubbed a hand across his face. “The timing wasn’t right.”
She looked at him sideways.
“But things have changed now that the war was over.”
The war.
Her expression softened.
The war was over then. That meant that he and his family had been through hell and back.
She couldn’t be mad at him. She was far too thankful that he had survived.
“Do you know where he is now?” she asked.
“I do,” he said with a little smile. “He’s living in Texas. And… he married my sister.”
Ella’s mouth dropped open. “My half-brother married your sister? Beatrice?”
He shrugged.
“They couldn’t stay here. If they stayed here… well…”
“Daniel might not stay in this time,” she finished for him. She put her hands together beneath her chin. She couldn’t blame Samuel for not understanding about Daniel. She hadn’t understood the whole time travel thing herself.
He nodded.
Then tapped her watch, lighting it up with the time. “When he came back the second time, a few months ago, he was wearing one of these.�
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Ella smiled. “That’s how you knew he was from the future.”
Samuel nodded.
“Did he know that you knew?” she asked.
“He might have. But I didn’t tell him.”
She wasn’t mad at him anymore. He hadn’t done anything wrong.
And with that realization came another.
She realized that she had made a choice.
Just as Vaughn had said she would.
When she’d decided to come back here, she’d made the decision to be with Samuel.
It didn’t matter whether she had actually traveled back in time again.
Even if she hadn’t, she’d still chosen Samuel over the memory of Thomas.
And knowing she had done that. Finally. Was freeing.
She’d moved on. She’d chosen life.
She took his hand, pulled him toward her, and kissed him.
Wrapping his arms around her, he deepened the kiss.
Yes. She’d definitely chosen life.
46
Samuel held Ella’s hand tightly in his as they walked beneath the oak trees.
The early morning air was still cool. It wouldn’t be full on summer for another few weeks.
Hopefully longer.
Sometimes summer hit right in the middle of May while the rest of the country still enjoyed nice cool weather.
Just because he lived in the south didn’t mean he liked the heat.
Ella had changed into a green dress his sister had left behind when she’d left for Texas.
He’d thought it might be strange seeing Ella wearing his sister’s clothes.
But, in all truthfulness, Samuel didn’t remember his sister ever wearing this dress. He mostly remembered her wearing pants.
And, besides, it fit Ella perfectly and the green suited her green eyes.
“We could move to Texas,” he said. “Be close to your brother.”
“Half-brother,” she said, touching a finger to the watch that still worked. She said it wouldn’t last much longer without adding more power to it.
“We can’t stay here,” he said.
Not only was this place somehow responsible for Ella’s—and Daniel’s—time travel, but also, the south was scorched and damaged.
Samuel doubted it would ever fully recover.
When the Moon Falls Page 9