The Christmas Eve Daughter - A Time Travel Novel: The Sequel to The Christmas Eve Letter

by Elyse Douglas

  “Did you ever see Pauline again?”

  “I tried. I went to the store where she worked. She wouldn’t see me.”

  “Why?”

  Patrick shrugged. “I don’t know. I tried a number of times. I even waited for her after work one night. I walked with her for a few blocks. She told me she was sorry for what had happened. She told me she was a good Irish girl from a good Catholic family and that I had deceived and debased her. She told me she never wanted to see me again, and that I should never try to see her again. She said nothing about being in the family way.”

  “You mean pregnant?”

  “Yes. Maybe she didn’t know then. I don’t know, but I swear to you that I never knew.”

  Patrick lifted his eyes on Eve. “I didn’t force myself on her. You must believe me about that. We… well, we… It just happened. It was a mutual choice. I did not deceive or debase her. I would not do that.”

  Eve’s stare was direct, but warm. “I know that, Patrick. I know what kind of man you are.”

  “I am not a saint, Eve. My life back in 1885 could be hard and brutal, and sometimes deadly. After Emma’s death, after I lost both my wife and my child, that’s how I saw life…as cold and brutal. I became bitter for a time. I was not always the best of policemen then, nor the best of men. Until I met you.”

  Patrick let out a heavy sigh. “But I won’t make excuses for what I did. I was sober and clear when I was with Pauline, but I did not know that she was with child. If I had known, so help me I would have married her and helped her raise our child with all my breath and love, with all the support I could give. I would have died protecting Maggie. Please believe me, Eve, I did not know. It breaks my heart to think that Pauline tried to get in touch with me but was turned away.”

  “Why would the policeman at the desk do such a thing? I don’t understand.”

  Patrick pulled a hand from his pocket and made a vague gesture. “It was a different time, Eve. It is distasteful to say, but that kind of thing happened often. It was very much a man’s world, as I’m sure you recall. Men always protected other men. I’m sure the other policeman was just trying to protect one of his own.”

  “And no one ever told you about Pauline… that she was pregnant with your child?”

  She held his eyes to get his reaction.

  “You doubt me, Eve? The policeman who took Pauline’s note probably didn’t even know who I was, and he didn’t care. If she had written again pleading for help, some other policeman would have written her back to say that I was not the father of her child, and that if she ever wrote again, she would be tracked down and jailed. Those kinds of responses were routine. Pregnant women were often turned away with a threat. They would have thought her a prostitute. You see, Eve, desperate women did this kind of thing all too frequently. Some were genuine, and some were not.”

  Eve stared ahead, remembering the raging poverty in the tenements between East 14th and East 23rd Streets, and the thousands of homeless kids wearing rags, living on the streets and sleeping in the hay barges on the East River.

  Patrick continued. “Women had so few choices back then. Pauline was lucky she had relatives to help her out and take Maggie after she died.”

  “Thank the merciful God for that,” Patrick said. “Although it sounds like Maggie’s uncle was not much of a father to her.” He clenched his fists. “It was such a violent world back then. Children were not cared for the way they are now. How many times did I pass an alleyway to see dirty and poorly dressed Bootblacks and Newsboys shooting craps with their hard-earned money? I knew within a few years they’d be in the police books, soon to wind up in the criminal courts.”

  “It broke my heart to see those starved, desperate children living on the streets.”

  “And at the other end were the corrupt political leaders, and the head of the New York City Police Detective Department, our friend Inspector Byrnes, who was chasing us when we escaped to the future. Have you forgotten those things, Eve? Have you forgotten what the world was like in 1885?”

  Eve saw a vacant, weary look in Patrick’s eyes and it moved her. Her eyes grew tender. “Of course, I haven’t forgotten. I’m just trying to understand.”

  He lifted his eyes to her. “I would not have turned away from a woman carrying my child, Eve.” Patrick hung his head. “I did not know, Eve. Do you doubt me?”

  Eve softened, pained by the hard, sad reality. “No, Patrick… No, I don’t doubt you, and I don’t mean to judge you or make you feel any worse than you already do. I’m just in shock, that’s all.”

  “As am I, Eve. To think that that girl, that famous actress, was my daughter, and that she did not have her real father, and that she died so violently, with no parents, with no one to protect and defend her…Well, how can I bear it? Had I known, I would not have left her. I would not have left 1885.”

  Eve’s blue eyes darkened. “I’m not so sure I like the sound of that.”

  Patrick, a tall, broad, handsome man with dark blue eyes and stylish black curly hair, stared back at his pretty, strong-willed wife and smiled. He went to her, placed his big hands on her shoulders and gently drew her into him, kissing her hair, holding her close.

  “So, we would have lived our lives together in 1885, Eve. I would not have left you either.”

  “You’d been shot, Patrick. You would have died had we not returned so you could be treated with antibiotics.”

  “I know, Eve. I know. If it hadn’t been for you and your love for me, I would be dead in so many ways.”

  Patrick held her at arm’s length, taking a good, loving look at her. “You are beautiful, you know.”

  “So you tell me, Mr. Detective.”

  “Former detective. I am now a student, thanks to your father’s influence and the FBI giving me a modern identity. I made my final selection this morning. I start school next Monday.”

  “Yes, I was thinking about that today,” Eve said. “Why did you choose Forensic Psychology and not, say, Police Studies, since you want to be a modern detective?”

  “Because I will be learning to employ an empirical approach to understanding human behavior, especially your behavior,” he concluded with a wink.

  “Oh, I find that very sexy, Mr. Detective. Am I so inscrutable?”

  Patrick drew her back to him, focusing on her lips. “Oh, yes, Miss Kennedy, from 1885. You are indeed inscrutable, and deliciously desirable.”

  He kissed her, his tongue flirting with her lips, slowly parting them. They fell into a long, warm kiss.

  As they broke, and just before he moved in for another kiss, Patrick whispered.

  “Shall we wander toward the bedroom, so we can become man and wife once more?”

  Afterward, they ate pizza in bed, with Georgy Boy curled up on the floor beside them. Eve turned to Patrick.

  “I didn’t even know your middle name was Lott.”

  Patrick made a face. “Sometimes when you leave the past, you want to leave certain things behind, at least all the things you didn’t like. I never liked the name, Lott. It was my mother’s maiden name. My grandfather was British, from Kent. It always reminded me of The Book of Genesis, and how Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt after she looked back at Sodom.”

  Eve looked up at the ceiling thinking. “You know, the more I think of it, the more I find it very touching that Maggie used your middle name. She had a lovely name, didn’t she? Maggie Lott Gantly.”

  “Yes… it is a lovely name and ever since I read that article, I feel Maggie’s presence around me, vaguely and wildly, almost as if she’s calling out to me from some hidden world.”

  Eve’s eyes came to his. She loved his eyes, now filled with so much sorrow.

  “Patrick, I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t go back.”

  Patrick looked away, tossed his half-eaten piece of pizza in the open delivery box that lay between them, reached for a paper napkin and blotted his lips. His head slipped to one side as he went into th
ought, and he shut his eyes and massaged them.

  “It seems so long ago…that time I came from. It seems like another lifetime—someone else’s lifetime, not mine.”

  “And it was another lifetime, Patrick. This is where your life is now. It’s where our life is.”

  Patrick opened his eyes and turned to her. “And yet, we still have the lantern.”

  Eve felt her throat tighten, but she didn’t answer him.

  “Don’t you see, Eve? It’s as if I’ve stumbled about in darkness and now I’ve found a secret door, a door that opens into a past I didn’t know was there—a past where I have a daughter.”

  Eve dropped her mostly eaten slice of pizza in the box on top of Patrick’s. As she chewed and swallowed, she felt a rush of heat; a rush of dread. She leaned right for her glass of red wine. She sipped it, tamping down a mounting discomfort.

  “Patrick… I can imagine how you feel, but we can’t go back. We just can’t.”

  “You said you believed the lantern still held power.”

  “I don’t know what it holds. I should have thrown the damn thing into the Hudson River months ago.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know why, but I will. I’ll throw the thing away tonight.”

  Patrick looked at her. “Okay, Eve. All right. Let’s not talk about it anymore tonight. Let’s watch a movie and forget all about it.”

  Eve felt a storm building her chest. “But you won’t forget about it, Patrick. I know you. Once something grabs you, it grabs you. You will never let go of this.”

  Patrick threw back the sheet, stood up and slipped into his royal blue robe. He turned to Eve.

  “What would you do, Eve? What would you do if there was even the slightest possibility that you could save your child from a terrible fate—a fate that could have been avoided if only you had been there to stop it, to change it, to make it right? What would you do?”

  Eve pulled the sheet up to her chin, covering her bare breasts. “What’s done is done, Patrick. It’s all in the past.”

  “You’re ducking the question, Eve.”

  She trained her focus on him. “We just barely made it out of 1885, Patrick. You almost died. I was almost a sex slave to the wealthy, overbearing and odious Albert Harringshaw.”

  “It will be different this time.”

  “Patrick, we don’t even know if the lantern will work. If it does work, we don’t know where we will end up. We could both die or end up in the middle of the ocean. We just don’t know. We could wind up right back where we started from, not knowing each other, and either playing out the whole crazy drama again, or never finding each other and playing out some other drama, some other fate. It’s just too much to ask. I just don’t want us to take that chance.”

  “Not we, Eve. Me. You’re not going.”

  Eve sat up, her face flushing with anger. “Oh? And who suddenly made you the king of this marriage. What are you, Mr. Patriarch Man from 1885? You don’t tell me what to do, Patrick. If I want to go, I’m going, and that’s the end of it. Not that I’m saying that I do want to go. And what are you grinning at?” she snapped.

  “You… I sometimes forget how stubborn you are.”

  “Don’t change the subject.” Eve dropped her arms to her side, shook her head and looked away. “I know how you feel, Patrick, I do, but it all happened a long time ago. It’s over. All those people are dead and gone. We have a life here, now, in 2018, not in 1885.”

  “Again, Eve, if things were reversed, what would you do? If you had just learned what I learned, don’t tell me you wouldn’t want to go back. Can you sit there and say, No, Patrick, it all happened so long ago, and all those people are dead and gone? It just doesn’t matter to me. I can forget the fact that a child I didn’t know was mine, died a tragic death because I wasn’t there for her?”

  It was a cold and impossible moment. Eve struggled to come up with a logical argument. “I don’t know, Patrick. Look, we’ve only been married six months. We were going to start our own family. We are moving on with our lives. Do you want to jeopardize all that? If we are killed trying to go back to 1885, what about the child we never had? What about our family that will never be, and what about the love we feel for each other here and now? What if that is somehow destroyed?”

  The stressful energy in the room awoke Georgy Boy and he got up, giving himself a big shake. He turned his watery brown eyes on Eve.

  Patrick nodded. “All right, Eve. All right. You’re right. I can’t deny any of what you say. We do have a good life.”

  He ran a hand through his thick hair, inhaled a deep breath and let out a sigh.

  “We should sleep on this, Eve. It’s been a shock to both of us. Let’s just let it go for now. I’ll just let it go.”

  Eve tossed off the sheet, swung her feet to the cool wood floor and went to him, wrapping him with her arms, resting her head against his shoulder. She loved the solid feel of him—and that warm feeling of safety and ever-new love. She breathed him in, and her heart thrummed and swelled with contentment.

  “I don’t want to lose us, Patrick. I don’t want to lose what we have. It’s so rare, and we nearly lost it once.”

  Patrick held her close, as the air circulating around them held a sudden restless uncertainty.

  “As my old grandmother used to say, Eve ‘A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything.’”

  “Okay, so what did your grandfather used to say, because I know you always follow up a quote from your grandmother with one from your grandfather.”

  “Ah, yes, Eve, so good of you to notice that. Well, let me see now. Old grandad would say, with a very thick Irish brogue, of course, ‘A man in love is incomplete until he has married—and then he is finished.’”

  Eve pushed back, playfully slapping Patrick’s shoulder.

  He cowered, pointing at her, laughing. “See what I mean? I’m finished.”

  CHAPTER 3

  It was the third night in a row that Patrick had awakened her with a screaming nightmare. Eve jerked up straight and switched on the light, gently shaking him. He sat up, his eyes wide with terror, face pallid and slick with sweat, the sheets tangled around him.

  “It’s okay, Patrick,” Eve said, soothingly. “It’s okay now.”

  He swallowed, mouth twitching, big scared eyes fixed ahead as if he were peering into another world.

  “Maggie came to me again, Eve, calling for me, begging me to come for her.”

  “It was only a dream, Patrick.”

  “No, Eve. It was real. I saw her clearly, her almond brown eyes, her thick glossy curls. Her complexion the color of cream, her pink mouth tight with stress, her face filled with fear.”

  Eve tossed back the covers. “I’ll get you some water.”

  He clamped a firm hand on her arm to stop her. “No, Eve. Stay. Please stay…”

  Eve sat back, covering herself. She reached over and stroked his damp hair. “It’s okay, my darling. Lie back down. All this will pass.”

  Patrick lay back, struggling to settle his staggered breathing, while Eve stroked his brow.

  “I went to the Cathedral of St. John the Devine yesterday, Eve. I sat in the glory of that edifice and begged God to forgive me for what I’d done.”

  “Patrick, you didn’t do it on purpose. You’re a human being. We have all done things we wish we hadn’t. Don’t beat yourself up over this. It happened over a hundred years ago.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. “How do you name the unnamable pain, Eve? The unnamable sadness I feel over Maggie?”

  Her eyes darted around the room, seeking some kind of answer. “…I don’t know, Patrick. We just have to give it more time.”

  Outside came a rumble of thunder, and rain began beating against the bedroom windows. Georgy Boy crouched and wiggled himself under the bed, already spooked by Patrick’s screaming nightmare.

  Patrick turned toward the window, and when he spoke, his low voice sounded f
ar away.

  “It’s November. I used to love October and November when I was a boy. The change of wind from humid and warm, to cool and crisp. The leaves gradually changing their colors. I loved the smell of burning leaves, all the earthy smells. The smell of the horses’ stalls, the pungent smells of the food push carts. I miss those smells. Sometimes I miss my time, and I feel displaced.”

  While Patrick talked, Eve’s worried mind wandered. She had refused to think about the lantern during the past few days. She’d refused to let it gain power over her as it once had. But now, she had to think about it. She had to consider it. She had to at least tiptoe toward the possibility of lighting it again.

  Why hadn’t she tossed it into the Hudson River? She could have many times. Why hadn’t she just thrown it away?

  Something pacing in the hidden recesses of her mind had stopped her. If she allowed that pacing animal to speak, she could understand its words.

  “You might need it someday, Eve. It has great power, and no one else in the entire world has any idea what it has done and what it can do. No one knows its power—except you, your friend Joni, and Patrick.”

  So there it sat, in the back corner of her closet, hiding like some live thing, asleep, hibernating, waiting for the inevitable day when it would once again awaken and work its mysterious magic.

  Eve recalled the first time she saw it, sitting on a shelf in that Pennsylvania antique shop. She had stepped gingerly toward it, feeling its allure, its strange attraction. The lantern lay innocently next to an old heavy typewriter, both relics from the long past. Why she’d been drawn to it, she didn’t know. It was handsome and wonderfully old, about twelve inches high and made of iron, with a tarnished green/brown patina. There were four glass window panes with wire guards, and an anchor design on each side of the roof.

  She had loved the sturdy feel of it and the pleasing design. Where had it come from? Who had owned it? How did it wind up in Granny Gilbert’s little broken-down antique shop?