I pulled farther back behind the tree, beginning to feel an uncomfortable churning in my stomach. Dizziness overcame me and a soft roaring and popping sound filled my ears. As the dust from the buggy wheels settled, the house seemed to shimmer like it had sunk beneath choppy water. The woman on the porch began to vibrate like an ancient flickering film before she suddenly flicked out of sight. The shimmering grew stronger, making everything within sight vibrate. The tree trunk I crouched behind swelled and stretched as if being blown up like a balloon before winking out of sight altogether leaving only a broad stump behind. As I watched in a kind of horrified fascination, the shimmery view of the house gradually jerked and faded to the shabbier version of 2016.
~ ~ ~
Cook set me to hoeing beans in the garden out back of the house later that afternoon. I had stopped for a moment to take a long pull from my bottle of water when I heard a whistle, and stood still to listen. Other than a crow’s raspy caw from the cedar tree up by Simon’s converted carriage house, I heard nothing. It came again, from a distance behind me. Nothing except forest back there. I turned to look anyway, checking out the trees. An afternoon breeze murmured through their branches and rippled the shadows at their giant feet. At the edge of my sight I detected movement. Brad slipped through the trees into the clearing where the sun gave life to the vegetable garden.
I tried to motion him back, not sure who might be peering out a back window from the house. I stood in plain view to anyone watching. Brad ignored my shooing signal and entered the garden to wrap his arms around me. He kissed me with more passion than an afternoon greeting warranted.
“Emma,” he sighed, pulling back a bit, locking his eyes with mine, “I can’t stand not seeing or talking to you for days at a time.”
I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him out of the garden, back under the shelter of the firs and pines.
“Are you trying to get me grounded for life?” I hissed, once we were hidden from sight. “Are you crazy?”
“Crazy in love,” he teased. “A day without you is like a day without oxygen. I can hardly breathe without you. Don’t be mad at me, sweet thing. I can’t help myself.”
Before I could say another word he had drawn me against his chest, tilted my chin up and silenced me with one of his bone-liquefying kisses.
“Come sit with me awhile,” he whispered in my ear. He led me over to the base of a hairy-barked cedar where we sat, leaning our backs against it.
“Brad, I’m supposed to be weeding the garden. If Cook or somebody sees me gone, they’ll come looking for me. I’m already in trouble for taking a walk that Cook felt was way too long. She got worried I was lost or had met up with a bear.” I couldn’t tell him about the spring or traveling back through time. It was Charlotte’s deep secret, and one I’d have to keep.
Brad smoothed wisps of hair behind my ears that had escaped from my braid. “They won’t miss you for a little while. Besides, I’ve got a problem.”
“What?” I felt a sudden urgent concern.
He leaned over and kissed me again. “Seeing you on the sly once a week isn’t doing it for me,” he complained. “Once school starts, I can see you every day, but until then—”
“Until then we just have to be grateful for the time we can steal and hope we don’t get caught. If you show up at the house, the Queen will send you packing, probably at the end of her shotgun barrel. If you call me, she won’t let me answer the phone and I’ll get bawled out for being what she calls a strumpet. I think that’s a kind of whore. We’re taking a huge risk sneaking out once a week, and if we tried to make it more often than that, we’d get caught for sure.”
Brad scooted away from the tree trunk and laid down on his back in the groundcover. “I know, darlin’, and it’s driving me crazy. That’s why I made you a little mailbox.” He aimed that way-too-sexy grin at me.
That grin was impossible to resist. I’d have probably sneaked out every night in the week to see him if he’d asked while vaporizing my good sense with that grin. “A mailbox? What do you mean?”
“It’ll be inside that old Douglas fir log lying by the road at our meeting spot,” he said. “I can drive up that close without anyone at the house hearing my truck and drop off a note for you, and you can trot your little self down there anytime and leave a note for me. Not as good as seeing you or touching you, but without email or phone calls it’s better than nothing.”
I smiled down at him. “I’d like that. I’ll check it every day.”
“Just be sure you hide my notes so the Ice Queen and her evil minions never find them. Better yet, burn them in the cook stove.” He reached for me, pulling me down on top of him and destroying any possible objections with a kiss that triggered my heart and spiked my breathing.
I returned his kiss enthusiastically without my usual shyness, crushing myself so tightly against him that I doubt if a log-splitting wedge could have separated us. Brad ran his hand down my backside, breaking the kiss only to murmur in my ear that I belonged to him and there was nothing on earth he wouldn’t do if I asked. He grabbed me and rolled me over, his body now on top, supported in a way that didn’t squash me. Flames rose in my cheeks, but for the first time they weren’t caused by embarrassment. A frenzy of sensations rolled through my body south of my stomach and I reached for his face, drawing his lips back to mine. What was happening to me? Why couldn’t I catch my breath? One of Brad’s hands slid down my neck and shoulder to explore a breast. I didn’t care or feel any urge to stop him. He groaned and buried his face against my chest.
“What in holy tarnation is goin’ on here?”
We both jerked at the sound and Brad rolled off me. I looked up into the furious face of Simon.
Chapter 10
Brad scrambled to his feet ready for action, standing protectively between me and Simon. He relaxed a little when he saw who it was. “Nothing happened, sir. Nothing was going to happen either. I’d never hurt Emma.”
I smoothed down my pioneer dress and Brad helped me to my feet. Now my cheeks flamed for their usual reason. My hands trembled, too. It wasn’t just embarrassment or the fear of losing Brad. A knot of hot anger tightened in my stomach.
“Don’t look at me that way, Simon,” I snapped. “Brad is my friend. My only friend. Other than you and Cook, that is. But he’s my age and I need friends my own age.”
Simon’s face grew darker. His blue eyes narrowed in an expression of rage I’d never seen before. “You don’t need no friends who do this to you in the woods, Missy. I won’t stand for it an’ neither will Miss Ross. You can be sure of that.”
“Please, Simon. Please don’t tell my great-grandmother. She’d never understand, and I’d be in ten tons of trouble. She’d probably dip me in boiling oil before sending me to that nunnery she threatened me with again last week.” Or worse.
“You’re in plenty enough trouble with me, Miss Emma. I don’t take to no boys, horny as a herd of dang stags in rut, keepin’ company with young girls. It’s indecent an’ disgustin’, an’ I won’t have it. Hear me?”
My chest tightened, and my eyes filled with tears. “Simon, please listen to me. I’ve lost everything I ever cared about in my life; my parents, my friends, my home and neighborhood, my school. Everything. Brad and I, well, it’s not just what you saw here when you stumbled across us. We’re close friends. We can talk about anything and he takes away my sadness and fear of the future. I can’t explain it. Just know that you’ll break what’s left of my heart if you tell the Troll. She’ll kill me or do something that makes me wish I were dead.”
Simon paled beneath his tan. “You wouldn’t do nothin’ to harm yourself, Miss Emma. Seriously? Would you?”
The tears overflowed. “Do you have any idea how Charlotte felt having no friends at all?”
He frowned and brushed past Brad to grab me by the
shoulders. “What d’you know about Miss Charlotte and her feelin’s?” He shook me a little and Brad reached out to stop him, until I froze him with a look.
“Charlotte had no friends. I’ve been told that by people who knew her. She must have felt just like I did until I met Brad.”
Simon’s frown deepened.
Oh, crud. I’d forgotten Charlotte somehow got pregnant and now Simon feared the same fate awaited me.
“You lissen, Missy, and lissen good. I won’t tell Miss Ross nothin’ ‘bout this if’n you promise not to see this here boy no more.”
Brad shot me a panicked look.
I reached for some way to talk him out of this. “You’ve spent your whole life in that carriage house working for Miss Ross,” I said gently, struggling for control. “You never had a chance to go to school and make friends. You never fell in love, never married or had children. Is that truly what you want for me?”
Simon let go of me and took a step back. His fury softened to sadness. His blue eyes swam in unshed tears. “No, Missy. Reckon not. But you know about Miss Charlotte. She . . . well, she—"
“She got pregnant, I know. I wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t.”
Simon thought that over for a minute as if such a truth had never entered his mind. “Reckon that’ll be right,” he said, “I just don’t want you gettin' yourself in that sorta mess an’ me havin’ to stop Miss Ross from tossin’ you out in the street. An’ I particular don’t wannna walk into the barn some day an’ find you hangin’ from no rafter.”
In the stunned silence, only the wind sighed through the pines.
I felt my eyes bug. “What? What did you say?”
Simon looked horrified. “Dang. I shouldna tol’ you that. I were fond of Miss Charlotte, jus’ like I’m fond of you, Miss Emma. It plumb tore my heart out to see her danglin’ there, already cold afore anyone found her.”
A breathless panic gripped my heart like a fist. My throat constricted. “My grandmother committed suicide?”
“Now don’t go tellin’ your great-grandma I tol’ you that. Please, Miss Emma. She’d fire me quick as spit. I wouldn’t have time to turn ‘round and blink. There jus’ ain’t nowhere for me to go at my age. Nobody’d hire me.”
“She committed suicide and left her baby with no mother?” I couldn’t grasp it, nor could I have predicted the painful hollow ache that swelled inside my chest. I’d never actually known her, after all. Maybe I related to her as though I knew her almost as a friend through the pages of her diary. We’d both been boiled in the same cauldron by the same witch.
“I’ll make you a deal,” said Simon. “I won’t breathe nary a word of what I saw here in the forest today if’n you won’t tell Miss Ross what I said ‘bout Miss Charlotte.”
I started to agree. Simon stopped me.
“An’,” he said, the fire back in his eyes, “if’n you go to your room for the rest of the day an’ don’t never let me catch you with this boy again. Boys only want one thing an’ what happened to Miss Charlotte ain’t never gonna happen to you. Not while I’m on this earth. Don’t you go testin’ me now, Miss Emma, because I purely mean it.”
Not letting Simon catch me with Brad was not exactly the same thing as my never seeing Brad again. “Okay, Simon. I won’t tell.”
“Then you, Missy, get to your room an’ don’t be pokin’ yer head out ‘til supper. An’ you,” he said, turning to Brad, “better never let me catch you anywheres near this property again. My meanin’ clear?”
Brad nodded. I never got the chance to see him walk away. Simon turned me toward the house and escorted me right inside to the stairs.
Being torn away from Brad hurt. Being sent up to my jail cell did not. I fished the diary out of the crawlspace. Would Charlotte’s diary reveal how a friendless loner became pregnant?
January 27, 1969
Dear Diary:
It’s happened. It’s really happened! I can’t wait to tell you, Dear Diary. Mother drove into town today with a bunch of errands to run. This was the first time in forever that I’ve had enough time to steal away back to the spring without worrying about Mother having a cow if I’m not right where she can put a thumb on me. I’ve been a few times to the clearing, enough to get used to the process and to realize just about how long I’ll stay in the past with one swallow of spring water and how long with two. If I risked more than that I’d be late getting home and Mother would have a conniption fit. Yet while I am away I am not sure when I am in time. I also wonder why I’ve never seen any people.
Today that changed. I sat by the spring, grateful the overcast day was mild for late January. I swallowed a large mouthful of spring water and waited until the unpleasantness abated and the forest had changed. From one excursion into the past to another, nothing much changes except the weather. One day it might be raining, another foggy and freezing, another snowing and another mild. Because of this, I do know I am not going back to the same day in the past each time. I wish I could go to another season, spring or fall or summer, but there seems no chance of that. I am stuck in some ancient winter.
I sat at the spring, contemplating these things when I heard a muffled noise. Hoofbeats in the dead grass. I knew well the sound of a trotting horse and looked up to see a sorrel gelding being pulled to a stop eighty yards away by the man riding him. At first I panicked. What if this man, finding a girl all alone, meant to do me harm? Then I realized this might be a chance to get more information about when in time I was. Maybe.
The man wore a long wool coat with a fur collar, dark pants and a set of spurs on tall leather boots that reached almost to his knees. He stared at me for a long moment. If he was anything like the young men of my time, he’d ride on. Or laugh at me. He did neither. He nudged his horse forward and walked the gelding up to me.
“Hello, miss,” he said politely. “Don’t believe I’ve seen you before. My name is Q.”
(Excuse me, Diary. I don’t dare mention his real name for fear someone may find my diary one day.)
He removed his felt hat and held it in front of his chest. “And who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
No man had ever said it was a pleasure to speak to me before. Hell’s bells. No man had ever spoken to me at all before. “I’m Charlotte. Charlotte Ross.” Surely he’d recognize the last name and know I wasn’t a stranger in these parts.
“Miss Ross,” he said, giving me a polite nod in place of a bow.
He had somewhat shaggy brown hair and the bluest of eyes. Too handsome to be speaking to the likes of me. I glanced down in embarrassment.
“I’m sorry if I startled you, Miss Ross. I sometimes come by this spring on my way home after going to fetch the mail in town, but I’ve never met another soul here.”
What? He’d had a full-on look at me and hadn’t ridden off at a dead gallop? “I like coming here too,” I murmured, gazing up at him. “I’ve also never seen anyone here.”
“Would you mind terribly much if I stepped down off my horse and rested here for a spell?”
I hesitated, worrying that in his world, a girl might be considered wanton or loose for allowing such a thing. In the end I didn’t care. “Please do. It’s rather lonely here in the forest with nobody to talk to.” I laughed bitterly on the inside. It was rather lonely in my life with nobody to talk to.
He grinned and swung down, dropping his reins on the ground. As he came near enough to sit a chaste three feet away I noticed he wasn’t a great deal older than I am. He was clean-shaven except for a mustache and sideburns, and beneath his open coat I caught a glimpse of a holstered pistol.
“You figure it’s safe for a slip of a girl like you to be out in these woods all alone?” he asked, setting his hat beside him on the dead grass.
“I’m not a slip of a girl,” I countered. “I’m sixteen and can tak
e care of myself.”
“Sixteen, then?” He stifled a chuckle. “Why, you’re old enough to be married with young’uns to raise. I beg your pardon, ma’am.”
“You’re laughing at me,” I said with open disgust. Why did every boy I met have to laugh at me? “So how old are you? Fifty?”
“Miss Ross, I’m sincerely not laughing at you. I just like the way you’re fixin to whip the world, all by yourself. And I am getting along toward fifty. Right now, I’m twenty.”
Oh. Twenty is a bit old. Not too old, though. “Did you get any interesting mail today?” I asked, anxious to change the subject before I made a total idiot of myself.
Q reached into an inside pocket in his coat and drew out several fat envelopes. “Some letters from Ma’s family and a death notice for somebody I don’t know.”
“May I see?” I boldly took two of the envelopes from him and studied the fancy handwriting on the addresses. Mostly I looked at the postmarks. Both were marked for late days in December, 1885. “This is January, isn’t it?” I asked as casually as possible.
“Yes. January 27th to be exact. Why?”
Wow. January 27, 1886. I’d been carried back exactly 83 years ago to the day. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Maybe every time I swallowed the spring water I went back to the exact month and day in my own world, only far in the past. Q regarded me with a quizzical expression.
A Certain Twist in Time Page 9