Here and Now

by Constance O'Day-Flannery

  She got up and picked up the printouts of the deeds and the bill of sale. “Come on. Let’s go home and get some lunch. I’ll call Laura and ask her to come to the house. We can tell her our story and see what she thinks.”

  “And you’re going to tell her everything?” he asked, following her from the small room.

  “I think we should.”

  “Everything?”

  Chuckling as they left the county building, Suzanne held open the door for Charlie and Matty. “Yep. Everything. Your cover is about to be blown, Mr. Garrity.”

  Suzanne and Charlie stared at each other as the doorbell rang. Slowly, Suzanne started walking toward the door. Right before she opened it, she looked at Charlie and held up her hand with her fingers crossed for good luck.

  “Hi, Laura,” she said, holding open the door. “Thanks for coming over.”

  “Well, you made it sound so important. Are you okay? Has Kevin tried to contact you and renegotiate the property settlement?”

  Smiling at the smaller woman dressed in her perfectly tailored suit, Suzanne waved her inside. “No, nothing like that. Come in and we’ll discuss it. Would you care for a glass of wine?”

  Laura was staring at Charlie standing by the fireplace in the family room. “Ah, no thanks.”

  Suzanne led Laura into the room. “Laura, may I present Charles Garrity. Charles, this is my attorney, Laura Silverman.”

  Always the professional, Laura put out her hand in greeting. “How do you do?”

  Charles shook it and said, “Fine, thank you. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Silverman.”

  Laura smiled in return and then looked at Suzanne. “How can I help you?”

  “Please, have a seat, Laura. This might take a while to explain. Are you sure I can’t get you a glass of wine?”

  Smiling again as she sat down on the sofa, Laura said, “Are you trying to ply me with wine to prepare me for something? Now I’m really curious.”

  Suzanne could only return the smile as she sat down at the opposite end of the sofa and Charlie took the chair by the fireplace. “Well, you might want it later.”

  “You’ve whetted my curiosity. Now tell me what’s going on.”

  She took a deep breath for courage. “First of all, everything will be protected under lawyer-client privilege, right? Confidential.”

  “Completely.”

  “Okay. What I’m about to say is going to challenge everything you’ve been taught to believe is possible, but I promise you I’m telling you the truth. I could take a lie detector test, a dozen of them, and pass every single one. And so could Charlie.”

  “What is it?”

  Suzanne looked at Charlie and smiled. She inhaled deeply.

  “Allow me to start at the beginning, when Kevin told me he was leaving me for Ingrid. I ran out of the house and drove to Rancocas Creek to try to calm down. It wasn’t working. I don’t know if anything could have that day. I was staring at the water and I took off my wedding ring and threw it into the water, and then I saw this body floating by me. I could tell it was a man and he was alive, so I waded in and pulled him out and that’s when I went into labor. That man was Charles.”

  She watched as Laura looked at Charlie and then back at her.

  “Okay, so why was he in the water?”

  “He’d been shot.”

  “Shot?” Again, she looked at Charlie. “Who shot you?”

  “Mitch Davies,” he answered. “Who now goes by the name Michael McDermott.”

  After a few moments, Laura said, “Now I’m lost. Who is Michael McDermott?”

  “Kevin’s grandfather,” Suzanne answered. “I know this is confusing, but bear with me. Charlie had just purchased a large tract of land and was offering Mitch Davies a partnership when Mitch pulled out a gun and demanded the deed to the property. Charlie refused and decided to take his chances jumping from the old railroad bridge and into the creek, rather than wrestling with Mitch and his gun.”

  “And then you pulled him out?” Laura finished, looking at Charlie. “Kevin’s grandfather tried to kill you?” she asked in disbelief.

  “Yes. Every word Suzanne is telling you is the absolute truth.”

  “But, Laura…”

  Laura turned back to Suzanne. “The shooting happened in nineteen twenty-six.”

  The lawyer didn’t say anything, just continued to stare at Suzanne.

  “I’m telling the truth, Laura.”

  Shifting her position on the sofa, Laura turned fully to Suzanne. “I don’t understand. How could Kevin’s grandfather have tried to kill Charles, but you pulled him out of the water—in nineteen twenty-six?”

  Nodding, Suzanne answered, “Charles jumped into the water in nineteen twenty-six. I pulled him out in two thousand one.”

  Laura waved her hands, as though it might clear the air and also her head. “Wait a minute. What are you talking about?”

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Suzanne stated. “I know it sounds crazy. I know nothing like this has ever happened before in my life, or in anyone else’s that I know of, but I do know it happened, exactly as I told it. Now look, you don’t have to take our word for it. We have some interesting items—evidence that will verify all of this story.”

  She looked at Charlie and nodded to the antique chest that was now sitting on the coffee table. He rose from his chair and began to open the hidden drawer as Suzanne continued. “Grace Stinson had been engaged to marry Charlie. He made this chest for her and stashed the deed to his property in that hidden bottom compartment. As you’ll soon read, in her own writing, Grace questioned Charles’s disappearance. She’d found the hidden drawer some twenty years after she married Mitch, who had changed his name to Michael. But she put some interesting things in it, along with Charlie’s deed. A year before she died, Grace Stinson McDermott, Kevin’s grandmother, gave me this chest. It was filled with embroidered pillowcases and I never used them, or it. In fact, it remained in the bottom of my closet until early this morning when I realized I had it and wanted to pack it for the move to the new house.”

  “I’m throughly confused,” Laura muttered, looking at the opened drawer.

  “I’m doing a terrible job explaining it all. Why don’t you read Grace’s letter, then we’ll continue.”

  Charlie handed the thick envelope to Laura and then sat back in his chair. He looked at Suzanne and she raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders, trying silently to convey to him that they were flying by the seat of their pants now.

  No one said anything until Laura finished the last page.

  “What does all this mean?” she muttered, holding the pages in her lap and staring at them.

  “It means that Mitch Davies stole my life,” Charlie said.

  Laura looked up at him. “You can’t be, Charles Garrity. You’d have to be…”

  “One hundred and eleven years old,” he finished. “I know.”

  “But he is!” Suzanne protested. “And we have proof.”

  “What kind of proof can there be for something that… that incredible?”

  “Charlie, show her the keepsake.”

  He picked up the small glass and handed it to Laura.

  She held it in her hands and stared at it. After a few moments, she looked back up at Charles. “This is your hair? How did Grace get this lock of it?”

  “She cut my hair the morning before all this happened. She cut Mitch’s too.”

  “Look, Laura,” Suzanne directed, pointing to the silver around the glass. “Hold it up to the light. You can see the silversmith’s marking. If we can trace that, we can verify its age. The person who made it probably died a long time ago. And once we get that, we can open it and do—”

  “DNA tests,” Laura interrupted, shaking her head. “This is just too unbelievable. You want me to believe that this man is a hundred and eleven years old?”

  “I’m thirty-six,” Charlie stated. “I left nineteen twenty-six at thirty-six years old and I still am that
age. I’ve been here for a little over six weeks.”

  Laura ran her fingers through her short hair and stared out the window before turning back to them. “Look, people just don’t… travel through time!”

  Suzanne shrugged. “Obviously, he has. DNA will prove it.” She said to Charlie, “Show her the deeds, and your bill of sale.”

  They waited as Laura reviewed them.

  “See, Charlie’s deed is registered, along with his bill of sale. A week later, just as Grace wrote, Mitch somehow had a deed made up and registered for the same land in his new name of Michael McDermott… but there’s no bill of sale. How could he do that, Laura?”

  “He could have paid off the county clerk,” Laura murmured. “They didn’t keep great records back then, and when they were transferred to microfilm, nobody was checking accuracy, just filing everything.”

  “Makes perfect sense,” Charlie muttered. “Mitch had just come out of jail and wouldn’t hesitate to bribe someone.”

  “But you’ll never prove that,” Laura said. “The county clerk must be dead by now.”

  “But Mitch isn’t,” Suzanne stated. “He’s an old man, but he’s very much alive.”

  After a few moments, Laura said to Suzanne, “Okay. Now I’ll have that glass of wine.”

  Laughing nervously, Suzanne got up and hurried into the kitchen.

  “Not that I’m buying this time-travel thing, but say the DNA shows what you say. We have the letter. We have the deed. What do you want to do with all this? What do you hope to gain?” she asked Charlie.

  “I want my life back. That man took everything from me.”

  Nodding in agreement, Laura accepted the wine glass from Suzanne and said, “You want the money for the land?”

  “He’s entitled,” Suzanne answered, sitting back down. “It never belonged to the McDermott family. Kevin sold land that wasn’t his to sell. He made thirty-three million. Charles deserves some of that. Imagine, Laura, if all this were made public. Kevin would have to make restitution to Charlie, to the developers, even to those people living in those big houses out there.”

  “It would break him,” Laura murmured. “You realize your own settlement with him would be in jeopardy?”

  “I don’t care,” Suzanne pronounced. “It’s time for justice. Besides, we couldn’t touch his investments, right?”

  “No. Just the original profit from selling the land. But still, you’d have to prove Mitch, Michael, whoever he is, obtained that land illegally. And there’s only one person who can tell the truth about what really happened.”

  Both Suzanne and Charlie said the name at the same time.

  “Mitch.”

  16

  Amid the chaos of moving to the new house, Laura arranged for them to have Charlie’s hair tested at a DNA lab. The lawyer had already taken all the evidence and was having the age of the glass keepsake verified. There were calls back and forth between Laura and a real estate attorney as to the best way to proceed. Laura still couldn’t believe the time-travel aspect of the case and said until the DNA tests came in, she was going to be an ostrich with her head buried in the sand—denial by avoidance.

  Looking around the living room of her new house, Suzanne appreciated how well her own things blended with the furnishings that came with the rental. Hearing Charlie upstairs, she smiled. He had removed the bedroom furniture in one room and was installing Matty’s crib and dresser. It was a fairly easy move, since they mostly brought boxes and clothes, and she was glad to be out of the farm house with all its memories. It felt as if a huge weight had been removed from her soul. Here was a place to make a fresh start, she thought, walking into the kitchen.

  Testing the iron to make sure it was hot enough, she once more reassured herself that she had made the right decision. The move had taken their minds off the incredible circumstances of finding the contents of that hidden drawer. They just kept working and Suzanne was sure Charlie needed the distraction more than she did, for he was once again solemn, withdrawing from her and his mind seemed to take over his personality.

  It was understandable, she thought, picking up a clean pillowcase and laying it on the ironing board. She ran her hands over it, smoothing out the wrinkles, and thought of the woman who had made them. Spraying starch over the white cloth, she wondered how Grace had lived with Mitch all those years, knowing in her heart that her husband was somehow involved with Charlie’s disappearance. Maybe it was because she shared something with Matty’s great-grandmother, loving the same wonderful man, that she found she couldn’t judge the woman for her silence.

  She looked up from her ironing and gazed at her son in the sun room, sleeping in his infant seat. He was such a good baby, now taking water from a bottle, and Suzanne once more thought about his lineage. Matty was also Mitch’s great-grandson. Grace had been right about the grasping ways of the men in the family. She remembered Mitch, who she could no longer think of as Michael McDermott. Many years ago, while still in college, she had begun visiting the family, and she remembered Mitch as a cranky, manipulative old man, more concerned with the orchard than with his family. Was it any wonder that Kevin and his father had turned out to be selfish when each in turn never experienced any love from the male figure in their lives?

  Returning her attention to the pillowcase in front of her, she vowed that she would bring Matty up differently. Kevin wouldn’t have any influence on him, if she could help it. She took a deep breath and continued her ironing, carefully applying pressure to the delicate, intricate embroidery at the hem of the pillowcases. What a work of art, she thought, and then she remembered seeing Grace at holidays seated in a corner of the living room, her hands always busy, crocheting or reading her prayers. No one seemed to pay much attention to her. She was an old woman, forgotten. Suzanne had spent some time with her, listening to her stories about how the orchards began, but she now realized it wasn’t enough.

  Folding the first pillowcase, she once more had to admire the beautiful work. It must have taken days, maybe even weeks, to complete. Was this how Grace kept herself sane? Keeping her hands busy, while her mind prayed for her family? She would never know the answers, but she would honor the memory of the woman and use these pillowcases.

  “I’m finished,” Charlie announced, coming into the kitchen and holding the small toolbox they had taken from the farm house.

  She glanced up and smiled. “I’ll put away Matty’s clothes as soon as I’m finished here.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked, looking down to the folded pillowcase on the table.

  She grabbed up another from her ironing pile and answered, “I’m going to honor Grace by using these. It seems right somehow that the first night we spend here, we’ll be putting our heads on her pillowcases.”

  Charlie just stared at them, and she could tell memories were running through his mind. “Is that okay with you?”

  He took a deep breath and reached out his hand, as though to touch the pillowcase, and then slowly drew back as if he had changed his mind. “Where is she buried?”

  “Not too far from here,” Suzanne whispered. She looked at him, sensing his anguish, and added, “Would you like to visit her grave?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Well, I’m getting divorced tomorrow,” she reminded him, even though she had been trying to push it from her mind. “I have to be at the courthouse at eleven in the morning. We could do it later in the afternoon.”

  “Do you want me to come with you tomorrow morning?”

  She wanted to say yes, come with me, hold my hand, make it all better, but she knew she had to do this one alone. “If it’s all right with you, I’d like you to stay here with Matty, I don’t want to bring him into that courtroom as his parents’ marriage is dissolved. Laura will be with me and, since I’m filing and Kevin isn’t contesting the divorce, he probably won’t even be there. At least that’s what Laura said.”

  “Whatever you want, Suzanne. Are you okay with all this happening at once
? We really haven’t talked much about it.”

  She shrugged, knowing he had been the one who’d been distancing himself. “We’ve been pretty busy with the move,” she said, beginning to iron the next pillowcase. “What’s there to talk about? Now, more than ever, I want to divorce myself from Kevin and his family. The one good thing is that having the divorce take place so quickly, my settlement with him will be a court judgment. The money will be deposited into my account before he’s hit with… well, with whatever happens next.”

  “I’m glad you will be protected,” Charlie said, walking toward the door that led into the garage.

  And that was it, the extent of their conversation. She knew all the reasons men were different than women. When they had something on their minds they liked to hibernate in their caves, where women wanted to talk it out. She acknowledged Charlie was doing his best to hibernate, but it wasn’t easy to be around him. Neither one of them mentioned the night they had spent in each other’s arms. Suzanne looked back on it as if it had been a dream, for the very next morning all hell had started to break loose around them and it seemed since then he was putting out mental fires right and left.

  She also knew that Charlie was frustrated by waiting for the results of all the testing. He wanted to go to Evergreen Nursing Home and strangle Mitch Davies. She couldn’t blame him, but knew it would serve no purpose. The best thing they could do was wait.

  Patience. It was a hard lesson to learn.

  The next morning she dressed with care. She wore her gray Armani suit with the longer jacket. The waistband of the skirt was a little tight, so she didn’t button it, sure the zipper would hold it up. She applied full makeup, perfume, even jewelry. Gold earrings and a gold omega necklace. It had been quite a while since she’d worn panty hose, and she couldn’t believe that she’d spent years doing this every morning. What a chore. That was another thing changing within her. Her sense of self was altering. Once it had been so very important to her what others thought of her looks, her clothes, her makeup, her hair, her weight, her job, her husband, her home. Now, she couldn’t care. It was more than clear that right now, in this season of her life, she was more comfortable wearing jeans than Armani.