For Brad, it was like Ezekiel Platt had never hung in City Hall before. Brad had grown up “knowing” Joseph A. Perkins had always hung there. And while he had claimed Lucas Long Bear was his best friend, after I saved Joey, a neighboring house that wasn’t there the first time I’d seen Brad’s house suddenly appeared and Matt Gordon had “always” been his best friend. Could Dr. Joseph Perkins have saved one of Matt’s ancestors after I’d saved Joey’s life? All of these changes had happened in 2016, but only after I’d saved Joey on August 17th. Now it seemed nobody in Sweet Creek remembered things being any different before August 17th. Nobody except me. That was probably because I was the one who had traveled back in time and made the one change that changed the present.
I flipped back through the earlier pages of Charlotte’s diary. Nowhere could I find any mention that Q ever had a dead brother. Instead, many of her previous entries now chronicled Joey sneaking up on them when they thought they were alone, playing pranks on Q, or Joey having some talks with Charlotte almost as if she were his sister. He wasn’t always with them, but in many diary entries he either was there or she and Q talked about him. None of this had been written in the diary before I saved Joey. I studied the handwritten pages closely. Though they were much different in content from the pages I’d read before August 17th, there were no signs of erasure or additions being jammed into the text, no signs that the diary entries had been altered at all. Chills slid down my back. Changing the past tweaked everything up through history and into the future. I needed to read some more.
May 29, 1969
Dear Diary:
I haven’t been able to see my Q for more than a week. Mother said at first I had a touch of an intestinal virus or the stomach flu. Then, when the stomach heaves continued, she claimed I’d been eating tainted meat. Now she fears I have developed an ulcer or I’ve been eating something bad at school. She’s kept me home from school and confined to my bed even though aside from a little dizziness and occasional nausea, most of the time I feel fine.
The one thing she hasn’t guessed is what worries me the most. Maybe I’ve taken too many trips into the past. Maybe drinking such a huge amount of water from that spring has gradually poisoned me or given me cancer of the stomach.
No matter what is wrong with my stomach, I can’t stand staying in bed and staring at the ceiling any longer. My chance came when she drove to town with Simon to visit the banker over some financial issues, see her doctor and run errands. I sneaked out and made a hasty trip to the spring. Q was just leaving when I called to him. Together we walked into the western woods to our secret hiding place in the forest. It’s thickly carpeted with moss and ferns and well-hidden enough by huge logs and dense trees, that a person or animal could walk right by us and never know we were there. Joey has not been able to discover it either and ruin our precious time alone.
We lay together on our mossy bed of ferns, kissing with urgency and exploring each other’s bodies with gentle caresses. Once again we lost complete control. I cannot describe the ecstasy and passion I never guessed existed each time Q and I join together and become lost in the love that engulfs us. How I yearn to find some way to be with my Q forever, never being forced to return home when the spring water wears off. Still I cannot tell him I am from the far future and have not yet figured a way to cheat the slender hold the spring water wields over time.
This day, however, no sooner had we uncoupled, lying back in breathless bliss, than the spring water began to wear off. I panicked. It would take too long to struggle back into my clothes and run further into the woods where Q would not witness me disappearing in a blink, right before his eyes. The sickness fell over me as suddenly as a light being switched on. All I had time to do was sprawl over the nearest log and be sick in the ferns behind it. I was excruciatingly embarrassed, not to mention terrified, to think any second I’d be catapulted back into 1969 without my clothes. How could I go back to the house wearing nothing at all without a logical explanation?
Only I didn’t disappear. I merely threw up over the edge of the log until the sickness passed and there I stayed, naked but not alone. Q was at my side stroking my loose hair away from my face and asking over and over if I was all right.
“I’ve been getting sick just out of the blue for almost three weeks,” I said. “Then, just as quickly, it passes and I’m fine. It’s not serious and nothing to worry yourself over.”
He took my face gently into his hands and slowly broke into a joyful grin. I didn’t see anything funny about it. My relief at still being in 1886 was staggering and I couldn’t get mad at him.
“Don’t you see, my love?” he asked.
“See what?”
“You are with child,” he whispered. “You are carrying our precious son or daughter. And now you have to marry me. We’ll get dressed and ride into town to ask the parson how soon he can marry us. We can live with Ma and Pa until I can find us a place of our own. A baby, Charlotte. We’re going to have a baby!”
I cringed and stared at him, so frightened my body froze. I could scarcely draw a breath. My mouth opened though not a word came out. I couldn’t marry him. No more could I go back to my mother’s house and tell her I was pregnant. And there was absolutely no way to ever tell a soul in my time who the father was. My heart was shattering into a million pieces. I was about to devastate the only man who had ever loved me, the man I loved more than life itself. I’d rather die than have to tell Q goodbye. Or to have to explain to him why I couldn’t marry him, why I could never stay with him. Morning sickness? And even my own mother was too clueless to recognize it.
“Q, I have to go. The love I feel for you will last for eternity.” Tears streamed down my face. “You are the only man I will ever feel this way about. But I have to go now.”
I kissed him passionately, only half seeing the bewildered expression that covered his face. Trying desperately not to let him see my tears, I pulled on my dress and sat to tug on my shoes and stockings.
Q, who had decided I must be as euphoric as he at the revelation of our baby, spoke as he slipped on his shirt and pants. “I will tell my folks, sweetheart,” he said in a dreamy tone of voice. “Then I’ll ride into town and make all the arrangements. Try to make your parents see reason and come to the wedding. If they don’t, we’ll just have to get married without them.”
He held me close as we stood among the ferns and trees. He took my face between his gentle hands and kissed me goodbye as tears blinded my eyes. I would taste that kiss forever for I knew this would be the last time I would ever be held by my Q.
For the second time in a matter of minutes, I felt the hairs rise on my arms and along the back of my neck. Q was Charley, that much was sure. And that meant Charley was my grandfather.
Chapter 17
I started to read the next entry, but heard the parlor stairs creak under a heavy tread. Didn’t sound like the Troll. She weighed around one hundred and fifteen pounds wearing her heavy coat and carrying her huge purse. I held my breath, frightened that this might be a visitor for me. It wasn’t as if somebody was just going to check on the Troll in her bedroom down the hall. Penelope had never come up from the kitchen. I could lose my grandmother’s diary if somebody caught me with it.
The footsteps stopped at the top of the stairs in the second floor hall. It couldn’t be Cook. Her step was light and nearly silent. The arthritic hallway squeaked as the footsteps resumed, growing louder as they neared my attic stairs. I jumped up and shoved the diary beneath my mattress just as the footsteps climbed my attic stairs and a rap sounded on my door. My head still spun with the revelation that Charley was my grandfather. I couldn’t think straight and took a seat on the end of my bed right over the hidden diary.
“Come in.” My voice trembled a little.
The door swung open. Simon grunted as he made the last step up and ducked through the door
into my room. The room looked twice as cramped with his towering body inside it. He stared at me for a moment, blue eyes glacial beneath white eyebrows. Without a word, he crossed the room in two steps, dragging the old kitchen chair over to my bed where he sat close enough that our knees almost touched.
I was in trouble. Didn’t take a genius to figure that out. It must be bad because Simon had never been up to my room before. I straightened my back and prepared to get chewed out. The room felt too small to hold both his anger and my fear. I felt like a wild animal who’d been tricked into a trap.
“Cook done told me you come home an hour late an’ upset Miss Ross.”
I ground my teeth and didn’t respond.
“Think you’d best tell ol’ Simon where you was.”
I stared into my lap for a long moment, turning over the possible consequences of laying out the truth. None of them even bordered on pleasant. Simon and Penelope might as well hogtie me up here in this stifling attic jail and nail the door shut for all the privacy and freedom they allowed me. I hated having to live here.
Simon tugged a yellowed rag out of his back pocket and mopped his brow. “This here cubbyhole is a dang blast furnace, girl. You enjoy gettin’ sent up here on account of yer bad behavior? Lord, I could roast a chicken in here.”
I wanted to go stand at the far side of the room even though it wasn’t more than four feet from where I sat. I needed space just to breathe. Except I didn’t dare leave the diary unprotected.
Bad behavior? You’d think I was living back in the Puritan days when nobody could play cards, dance, or laugh. If Simon and that baboon’s caboose, Penelope, would just ease up some, none of my behavior would be considered bad. As it was, if I failed to breathe in the right direction I ended up broiling in this incinerator. If all Penelope’s warnings about Hell were true, I sure was getting a taste of it.
“I’m waitin’, Miss Emma, an’ this heat is makin’ my patience thin. Don’t play with me. Where did you ride that horse this afternoon?”
“Into town.”
“An’ then what? You didn’t spend all that time pickin’ up Cook’s coffee an’ cheesecloth and fetchin’ the mail. What else did you do?”
I dropped my gaze to my lap again, but he tilted my chin up forcing me to look at him. Still I said nothing. If I even murmured Brad’s name, Simon would tell the Troll and together they’d fix it so I could never see him again.
“Well?” Simon cranked up his volume but released my chin.
“Did my great-grandmother send you up here to interrogate me?”
Simon’s frown deepened. “You’d best watch that tone of voice, Missy. Don’t you be sassin’ nor disrespectin’ me. I won’t stand for it.”
“I take that for a yes, then,” I mumbled under my breath.
Simon must have caught it, for his neck and cheeks began to redden. Maybe I’d pushed him too far.
“Lissen up, Missy. You have no understandin’ of what you done to Miss Ross, comin’ home late an’ all. She’s pushin’ eighty-eight, you know. An’ old lady doesn’t need the sort of stress yer causin’ her. Cook says it took two cups of chamomile tea plus an anxiety pill to calm her down. Her health ain’t no good no more, an’ yer shenanigans ain’t helpin’ her none. Miss Ross thinks yer up to no good, meetin’ boys in town an’. . . . Well, I know what I seen in the woods behind the house with you an’ that young stud t’other day. Can you set there, look me in the eye an’ honestly tell me you weren’t engagin’ in none of that hanky panky in the bushes somewhere outside town?”
I couldn’t help it. A tear escaped and trekked down my cheek. “Simon, I know Miss Ross thinks I’m a . . . a . . . the kind of girl who fools around with all the boys and gets herself in trouble. I swear to you I’m not like that. I can honestly say I wasn’t rolling around in some bush doing hanky panky with a boy this afternoon.”
Simon regarded me for a moment as I brushed another tear from my face. “Then what was you doin’?”
A few more tears leaked down my hot cheeks. I hated that I couldn’t stop them. The expression on Simon’s face told me I had to give him an answer.
“Taking a little time for myself. Simon, don’t you ever feel the need to be alone for a while?”
His jaw softened and he sighed. “Missy, yer plum gonna be the death of me. Guess we all need to be alone now an’ then. Howsomever, you need to ask Miss Ross or me for permission to save us from worryin’ ourselves half to death.” He smiled and reached to thumb away another tear from my cheek. “Hear me now, girl?” he whispered.
I nodded. Like I’d ever get permission from Miss Control Freak to go off by myself and chill out for a while.
Simon stood. His knees creaked as they straightened out. “Yer great-grandmother said you need to stay up here ‘til Cook calls you down to set the table. Me? I don’t like it. Not what with this dang heat, but it won’t be much longer. Take it easy on Miss Ross. Try not to get her feathers up from now on, understand me?”
I nodded and Simon turned to leave. He paused by my door.
“By the way, Missy. Whatcha hiding under that mattress where you’ve been settin’ like a broody hen hatchin’ an egg? Looks uncomfortable.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He ducked out my door and closed it after him, unaware of the blush singeing my cheeks. He might be old and shuffling, but that Simon didn’t miss much. I stood and withdrew the diary from beneath the mattress. I had time for another entry before I ditched the diary behind the wainscoting.
May 30, 1969
Dear Diary:
I’ve been dreading with something bordering on mortal terror the prospect of confessing to Mother that I’m pregnant. I don’t show or anything, yet the morning sickness has persisted and become a bit of a problem at school. I have tried to compose a sort of admission of fornication (for that is how she’ll see it) in my head as I lie awake at night, even though I’m not the least bit sorry for the love I shared with Q. Of course her first question, after she spends an hour yelling at me for destroying the Ross family reputation, not to mention being a sinful and wicked whore who’s traveling at the speed of light straight for the portals of Hell, will be to demand that I expose the father.
How do I tell anybody, particularly my mother, that the father is long dead now, that he was born one hundred and three years ago? How could I expect anyone to believe me about the spring water acting like a gateway back through time? And if they did, I know what would happen. Everyone in Sweet Creek and for miles around would come to try drinking from the spring, and 1886 would be inundated by hundreds of people from 1969. It would destroy the community of 1886, perhaps thoroughly enough that the Sweet Creek we know today would never come to be. Destroyed to a point where none of us would ever be born. I can’t let that happen to Q’s baby. I must protect him or her. And I must protect the people of 1886 by keeping the people of 1969 in the dark. No one must ever find out about this secret, and no one shall ever know who fathered my child.
I cringed every time I thought about it. Knowing my dad had been conceived in 1886 by a man who had been born in 1866, just a year after the Civil War had ended and President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated, totally creeped me out. Knowing that same man was my grandfather whom I had met when we were both sixteen upped the creep factor by four squared.
No wonder Charlotte refused to speak about who had fathered her child. How fast would she have been committed to an institution? Because of her unpopular status in Sweet Creek even before the pregnancy, having no friends and certainly no boyfriends, I could almost understand certain kinds of people believing she was still a virgin, and supernatural spiritual forces, good or bad, had seeded the life of her baby. I could understand. Barely.
One thing was certain. I couldn’t ride the “Springwater Express” back to 1882 again. How could I face Charley knowin
g in four years he’d meet my sixteen-year-old grandmother and together they’d make my father who wouldn’t be born until 1970? Could I ever look Charley in the eye again knowing that big kid was my grandfather? No. Not happening. And I, no more than Charlotte, could ever tell anyone who my grandfather was or how a young man in love in 1886 could impregnate my grandmother who lived in 1969.
Chapter 18
Instead I busied myself the next week, as the summer days shortened, harvesting vegetables and helping Cook can and freeze the produce. I’d follow Simon around, helping him mend a gate, buck hay up into the barn loft, sharpen tools and mend machinery—anything to keep myself busy and distract me from the unnatural mysteries I’d unraveled.
And Brad? I made time for Brad at night. I’d become something of an expert at climbing oak trees. We ate picnic dinners down by Sweet Creek, counted shooting stars at the fire lookout in the mountains, grabbed dinner or a movie with Matt Gordon and his girlfriend and walked the darkened campus of Sweet Creek High. We saw each other two or three times a week, a risk made easier because the Troll no longer patrolled the second floor at night. She had taken to going to bed shortly after dinner, and often slept through breakfast.
But hard as I tried to put the revelation of my grandmother’s lover and the identity of Dad’s father behind me, it still haunted my every waking moment, rather like background music in a movie or a bad dream you can’t forget. My need to discover the reason for Charlotte’s suicide once again drove me to unearth her diary from its resting place behind the wainscoting. I laid on my bed one evening, no longer afraid to keep the light on past eight o’clock. The Troll was dead to the world in her own bed long before that.
A Certain Twist in Time Page 16