“Welcome, I’ll see you around three, and we’ll move us all back into the house.”
I hung up and Hayley stopped sifting through the contents of a box. “Zach has a memory too?”
“Yep, he’s how Magnus found me in Los Angeles.”
“That’s amazing.” She ripped open another box.
It was getting tight in the room. We were moving the top boxes off the pile and making one layer all over the floor. It made it hard to move around. “Okay, we’re taking a quick break. We both need a beer, a bathroom break, plus we need to create a pile over here of the boxes we’ve already opened.”
Ten minutes later we were back at it. The pile in the middle had dwindled smaller than the pile on the side. Each box had the potential to be ‘the box,’ but it was disheartening to see the pile get so small, like I was running out of time.
Time for what though? This was an unprecedented thing. It meant everything and nothing — Magnus was alive and looking for me, but we were in the wrong place and times. It was unfathomable how we would get back together. Zach helped him learn how to take a taxi.
I pulled open a box. Coffee mugs, a bath mat, a dried flower arrangement, and three books. I pushed it on to the pile of Sifted Through Already.
Then Hayley yelled, “I’ve got panties!”
I raced to her side and we peered in: a layer of underwear, jewelry, a makeup mirror, and at the bottom, in a pile of belts — the red envelope.
I pulled it out. My hands shook so much I thought I might drop it. I flipped it over and there was the now faded front. The edges were creased and worn. The handwriting though — Magnus’s:
Madame Magnus Campbell.
I sat on the floor and clutched it to my chest tears rolling down my cheeks. “He sent me a letter through time.”
Hayley said gently, “Would you like to open it?”
I nodded.
I wiped my tears on my wrists and shoved the flyaway hairs from my face. I had been wearing this bun since yesterday morning. I was a wreck. I also wiped some snot from my nose on the closest piece of fabric, a silk scarf from back in my LA days. I didn’t want to wet the envelope.
When I decided I would be calm enough to handle it, I inserted a finger under the corner of the sealed flap and tore it up.
Inside was a piece of paper, folded small to fit the square envelope. I gingerly pulled it free. and unfolded it with my eyes closed.
Mo ghradh,
I am alive. Thank ye for doing as I asked. That you are home, safe, waiting, is keeping me alive, able to do this.
The numbers we have used for our vessels no longer work. I am journeying to you, but my time and your time winna coincide. I canna understand the pattern. I am tryin’ tae make sense of it by journeyin’, but I have tae rest in between and recover my strength. I will nae give up until I am home.
I am coming to you.
I love you, mo reul-iuil,
Mahgnus
Hayley crouched beside me. “He’s coming?”
I nodded, lips clamped between my teeth, holding back a sob.
“This is good sweetie; it’s really good.”
I nodded again. I folded the paper back, exactly as he had folded it two years ago and stuffed it into the envelope and clutched it to my chest.
“Are you ready to go back, get some sleep?”
I nodded again.
She gave me a hand and helped me up. “Zach will move in tomorrow. You’ll have Emma to fuss over. I’ll visit every day, and you’ll wait. You can do this right?”
I nodded again.
She said, “Right?”
I straightened my back. “I can do this. He’s alive Hayley, he’s coming home.”
Chapter 38
The following months were filled with activity; moving back into my house. Unpacking and organizing. I took ownership more fully, did some redecorating. I left everything that belonged to Lady Mairead in storage and gave the bigger upstairs bedroom to Emma and Zach. It was a melancholy day when I folded Magnus’s clothes and placed them in his drawers. It was an exhilarating day when I gave Lady Mairead’s room to Zach.
Emma had a nicely rounded tummy. The baby was coming and gave us all something to think about, to focus on, which was helpful when I was bored and lonely. Zach and Emma’s room was so large they turned the end of it into a nursery with a rocking chair and a changing table. The downstairs end tables were covered in books about birth and parenting.
I hired a lawyer to get Quentin out of jail, but there wasn’t any help for it, he had to finish out the four weeks. But with my promise of a job when he got out, and my lawyer’s finagling, he got to keep his gun license so he could actually perform the duties we hired him for. I apologized profusely for not being there when he needed the lawyer, but he simply said, “Ain’t no big deal. My own dumb ass for the fight, my own dumb ass for not doing my probation right.” He was going to be in a twelve-step program when he got out which he was, “cool with.”
I got my parents in line, forced them to believe I was in charge, and assigned Zach and Emma as administrators — just in case. I focused on growing my investments and came up with an amazing idea: I would buy an apartment building. I was thinking James would be the contractor and after it was renovated, Quentin would be the manager. He had the skill-set, and it would give him something to do while there was nothing to do.
Because there wasn’t much to do.
Except wait.
Funny how Magnus was the energetic force of our family, the core principle, and without him we were all going through the motions. Zach planned meals. Quentin planned strategies. I created a home base.
Emma waited for the baby.
Waiting.
* * *
My days were busy enough. My social life was full though my heart pined. And nights were long. Every night I wished that maybe I would go to sleep and wake up with another memory, but so far there was nothing. Nothing at all.
I read the letter from Magnus over and over again.
Chapter 39
I had to go see my grandmother. Mom and Dad and I talked it out. I needed to fly up and see how she was doing, check in on her nurses, and make a plan about where she would live. Dad had her on the waiting list at a home in Orono, but until there was room she had a daily nurse who took care of her a few hours a day. The nurse reported that my grandmother was not doing well. Her memory was worsening; she was losing her ability to remember anything, and I knew it was time. I had to go.
I flew up for the weekend, promising myself that soon I would go for longer. Once Magnus was back. Zach and Quentin knew the drill, they would call me if Magnus arrived. And he would understand. I knew it, but it was still hard to leave.
* * *
My grandparents had lived in this house, in town, for as long as I could remember.
“Grandma?” I knocked and pushed open the front door. “Are you home? It’s me, Katie, your granddaughter.”
My grandmother came around the corner from the kitchen wiping her hands on an apron, squinting at the front door. “Now who on earth is it there?”
“It’s me, Katie.” She looked at me blankly. “Kaitlyn Sheffield, John’s daughter, your grand daughter?”
“Ah!” She said like that explained it, then looked confused again. “Katie is a little girl, you can’t be Katie…” Her face fell with worry.
“But I am Grandma. It’s me, Katie. You just haven’t seen me in a while because I’ve been in California. Now I live down the street from your son, John.” I walked in and put my overnight bag by the couch. Smoke wafted out of the kitchen. “Is Marsha here, are you baking?”
Grandma looked down, wringing her hands.
I implemented Steamroller Protocol: barge in, take over, repeat who I was, and continuously tell her it was okay. “Everything’s cool Grandma. It’s me, Katie. Are you cooking something?”
In stalked past her. Smoke billowed out of the oven. I located oven mitts and extracted a tray of what l
ooked like it was once cheese toast, but was now charcoal. It could have been a fire. “You’re cooking. When I used to visit you in the summers we loved to cook together. Do you remember Grandma? We cooked elaborate experimental meals. Me and you, little Katie and her grandma. Cooking.”
“Little Katie loved cooking.”
“Yes, I do. I love to cook. And I love visiting my grandma Barb.” I scrolled through my contacts and found Marsha’s phone number and called it.
She answered, “Hello?”
“Hi Marsha, it’s Katie Sheffield. I’m here at Barb’s house, and um, she’s just burned a tray of cheese toast.”
Marsha’s voice said, “She’s not allowed to cook if I’m not there.”
“Yeah, of course, um what time are you coming today?”
“Today I don’t come until three.”
It was eleven. The house would have been burned down by then or who knows what. “Okay, I’ll see you at three.” I hung up.
“So Grandma, me and you, little Katie, your granddaughter and you, Barb, my grandma are going to have a really nice visit this weekend—“
“Katie?”
“Yes!” I rushed to my bag and pulled out a box of photos. “I have photos, would you like to see them? Of me, little Katie?” I cleared a place at the table and put down the box.
My grandmother said, “Little Katie, you have grown up.”
“I have, I’m all grown up now. I’m even married.”
“Aw, that’s wonderful dear.”
I pulled out a handful of photos and starting with my childhood showed them to her talking about each one. Eventually she was used to the fact that I was her granddaughter. But then she became confused about where her husband was, and I had to start a whole new kind of steamroll, “Grandpa Jack isn’t here anymore. He’s with God now. He passed away and went to heaven about four years ago, and you were very sad. And I was very sad. But the ceremony was just lovely and now—“
“Jack is gone…”
“He is Grandma, but you’ll see him sometime, in the next life. He’s waiting for you.”
“Remember that time he got lost at Disney world? We couldn’t find him for so long, but then he was sitting right in front of the Lost Child office. He was fifty, but they had given him some ears to wear on his head and a sticker with his name on it?”
“I do, I remember it like it was yesterday. I was five years old at the time.“
She giggled. I could see from the sparkle in her eyes that this was a good visual memory. I grabbed another handful of photos and looked through it for scenes from that day. I found one, me and Grandpa holding hands. It was before he had gotten lost. Grandma screwed up her mouth confused. “That’s you, Katie, but that’s…”
“That’s Grandpa, Jack, your husband of fifty-five years. Those are good memories aren’t they Grandma?”
She nodded.
“Are you hungry?”
“I am. I could use a bite, would you like me to make you something?”
“I’d like to make you something.” I opened the cupboards, which were mostly empty and the fridge which was also mostly empty. My hope was the lack of food was to keep Grandma from making her own meals, but also, what did she eat when no one was here? Would Marsha go by the store on her way here? And why didn’t Dad have a plan for this?
Because she was so far away; it was easy to forget she needed us.
There was some bread and more cheese, so I made some new cheese toast. I slid it under the broiler for a minute then placed it in front of her.
“Thank you, dear.” She ate happily and then grinned. “You remind me a lot of my Katie.”
“I am Katie.”
“Of course, that makes perfect sense.” She chewed another bite. “Show me more of your photos.”
“Sure.” I showed her photos of me at my high school graduation. One of me wearing my prom dress standing beside James. And a photo of me in my college dorm. None of these made much of an impression. Her memory was so much worse than last time I was here, two long years ago. Steamroller Protocol was entirely different on the phone when I couldn’t see how confused she looked.
I sifted through a stack of photos with Braden in them. My Los Angeles years had been all about him. I shoved them to the side to toss in the trash.
“Grandma I wanted to show you photos of my wedding.”
She clapped her hands happily. “I love weddings! Have I ever told you about my wedding?”
I stopped mid-search and listened. These moments were too fleeting to not give it my full attention.
“He was home from the Vietnam war and my dress was spectacular, cinched so tight around my waist that it’s a wonder I didn’t faint away when he said his vows.” Her eyes went faraway like she pictured it.
“I thought I was going to faint too, Grandma, during our ceremony. We had our hands tied together. And it was intense and also beautiful.”
“That’s a Celtic tradition, Handfasting.”
“My husband is Scottish. So that’s why we did it. And it was beautiful.”
“I remember I couldn’t look at him. If I looked up I was going to hyperventilate, instead I just looked at my knuckles.”
“Me too! I focused on our hands and tried to remember to breathe through it.”
My grandmother clasped her hands together. “Oh, it is such a wonderful thing to be married to someone. You will hate him and love him and want to escape him and infuriate him, sometimes all in the same hour, but also, if he is devoted and fair and even-tempered, you’ve got a good road ahead of you.”
“Grandpa was all those things, wasn’t he?”
“He was a good man.”
“I think my husband is all of those things too. It’s still so new, and it’s complicated because we’re so different. But he’s adaptable and has a good spirit.”
“That’s wonderful dear. Can I see the photos?”
I had put them in the box precisely to show her so I got to them easily and spread them out on the table. The photos of me and Magnus in our wedding clothes on the back deck of our house, on the front steps of the church, and leaned together in front of our decadent wedding feast. I loved that photo so much, how we were together, married, but that lean was one of our first times touching each other. It was as much a promise as our oaths had been hours before. Because it was us, together, now—
“Is that Magnus Cam—“ She peered at the photo and another one. “Why it is, it’s Magnus Campbell, did you marry our Magnus, Katie?”
I stared at her dumbfounded.
“Such a nice boy. From Scotland. Oh that’s right, you said your husband was from Scotland. I might have put the two together—“
“Grandma, how do you know Magnus?”
“He used to live here. Remember back when your grandpa and I would take in the university students? When was that, back in the early nineties, I think? Was that before you were born? It was mostly students from Jack’s classes, but then Magnus came along… I’m not sure exactly how we met him, but he stayed here for a couple of months and really became like family. You remember, I’m sure we talked about Magnus before.”
My eyes welled up with tears. I shook my head. “I don’t remember you ever mentioning him.”
“He was like a son, such a sweet boy.” She stood and went to her bookcase and ran a finger along a row of photo album spines with tags that said: 1984-86, 1984-graduation, 1987-Europe, etcetera, and pulled one off the shelf and returned with it. She flipped through a few pages and pointed. “There he is, at our lake house, with your grandpa.”
I sobbed while smiling looking down on the photo. The photo page was antiqued from time — twenty-five years ago.
My grandpa was young, smiling and waving. The lake behind them. Their bare feet on my family’s dock — a place I hadn’t seen in years — and Magnus, smiling, tanned, waving, an arm around my grandpa. Grandpa’s arm around Magnus. There was so much going on in my heart and mind that I didn’t know what to say.
<
br /> “Why was he here?”
My grandmother was looking at other pages, but it was the only photo of Magnus in the book. “Oh he was an exchange student or something, or—“ She looked up at the ceiling. “Funny, the memory is clear as day. He was working on a math equation. He had a bunch of numbers, longitudes and star charts, and was always thinking on it. Jack took him to the university, and he talked to professors there about it. At night we sat around the table with books open, talking and trying to solve it. It was all so much fun. I suppose it was his graduate thesis or something that part is a little hazy now. But it’s been twenty-five years, you know.”
She leaned back in her chair. Looked at the ceiling for a moment. I was worried she might have questions about Magnus’s age, or her memory, or why it was so clear, or anything, but then she returned to my wedding photos. “This is lovely dear. It is so good to see Magnus again. You’ll have to bring him here, next trip. I know Jack would love to…” Her voice trailed off and she looked around confused.
I put the photos back in the boxes and returned her photo album to the shelf. I spent the rest of the weekend kind of looking for a note or message though I wasn’t sure where one would be. And how would it last for twenty-five years?
I opened up the back of frames and looked on the underside of the guest room furniture, but really — I had my message. Magnus come to my grandparents’ house. They helped him work his equations. Grandma thought of him like family. I felt warm inside, happy. He was coming home. It was just a matter of time.
But the warm family feeling about Magnus also felt like a sign. If Magnus was a part of Grandma’s family, and mine, shouldn’t she be a part of the family again, too? And we all lived in Florida.
So I made a unilateral decision to move her to Amelia Island. I argued it out with Mom and Dad. I packed her suitcase, bought her a ticket, and brought her home on the plane.
She stayed in the guest room newly vacated by Zach and Emma, and by Tuesday she was on a shortlist for a spot at a local assisted-living facility. A moving company would pack up her things and bring them down.
Time and Space Between Us Page 17