The Color of Forever

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The Color of Forever Page 16

by Julianne MacLean


  Squeezing my eyes shut to block out the horror, I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand, for the memory was causing me terrible, burning anxiety, even though I knew it was only a dream.

  I looked up and tried to focus on the flat-screen TV on the desk, where I had watched the Portland Evening News each night. There was a bowl of foil-wrapped candies next to it, as well as a black leather binder with information about the services at the inn.

  Feeling more grounded as the dream began to recede from my memory and my heart slowed to a more natural rhythm, I blew out a breath and stood up, but sank back down onto the mattress again when I felt dizzy. In a daze, I held my fingers up to my face and stared at them. I could barely focus.

  This is what happens when you stand up too fast.

  I took a moment to breathe deeply and waited for the lightheadedness to pass.

  o0o

  “I was just about to go upstairs and knock on your door,” Bailey said a short while later when I entered the dining room. She was the only person left seated at the breakfast table, and was just finishing a cup of coffee while reading the newspaper.

  I glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was almost 10:00 a.m. I was probably the last guest to come down.

  “Sorry. I had a weird dream,” I explained as I moved to the sideboard to serve myself some scrambled eggs, cottage cheese and fruit salad. “Actually, it was more like a nightmare. I dreamed I was in the body of Captain Fraser’s wife when she got swept off the rocks at the lighthouse. It was really scary.”

  “You dreamed she got swept off the rocks? Yeah, that would be awful. What a horrible way to go.”

  I reached for a blueberry muffin and moved to sit across from Bailey at the table. “In the dream, I went to visit the lighthouse keeper, who was this young, hot, rugged guy—a bit rough around the edges—and I was crying on his shoulder about something… Wait, I remember now. I had told him about how my husband cheated on me.”

  “You were telling him about Mark?” Bailey asked, interrupting my story.

  “No. Captain Fraser,” I clarified, “although there is a common theme here, don’t you think?” I stabbed a grape with my fork and dipped it in the cottage cheese.

  “So then what happened?” Bailey asked, setting down the paper to pay closer attention.

  “Captain Fraser arrived and caught us, and he dragged the lighthouse keeper outside, and then the lighthouse keeper tackled him and punched him. I got really upset—”

  “Naturally.”

  “And then I ran down onto the rocks just to get away from them.”

  “I don’t blame you,” she said.

  “Exactly. Right?” I ate some eggs and waited until I swallowed before I continued. “That’s when it got really scary—when the wave came toward me and I knew, with every inch of my soul, that I was going to die.”

  “Yikes.” Bailey set down her cup. “Thank God it was just a dream.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She picked up the newspaper again. “I wonder why you dreamed that.”

  “Probably because of our visit to the lighthouse yesterday, when we saw where it really happened. And we were all wondering what she was doing there in the first place, on such a cold winter morning. I guess subconsciously, I wanted to come up with a theory.” I broke my blueberry muffin in half and spread some butter on it.

  Bailey set down the newspaper and frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

  I took a bite of the muffin. “I mean…I was probably freaked out by that.”

  “By what?”

  “By seeing where she actually died. Where the wave took her off the rocks.”

  Bailey shook her head at me. “That’s not how she died, Katelyn. She lived to be an old woman and died of old age, here in the house. You know that.”

  I set down my fork and knife. “What are you talking about? You and I spent the whole morning at the museum the other day, doing research on the captain and his wife. She died young, and that’s why he was trying to figure out how to build a time machine. Because he loved her so much.”

  Bailey started to laugh. “What is wrong with you? I think you’re dreaming right now.”

  I waved my fork through the air, trying to help her remember. “No, no. The sundial in the yard. We think that’s why he put it there—remember? To find a way back in time to prevent his wife’s death.”

  Bailey’s expression darkened, and she leaned forward over the table and spoke quietly. “Are you okay? Because that’s not what happened. You and I did do a bunch of research on the sundial, but it was Mrs. Fraser who was obsessed with time travel. She was the one who insisted they travel to Asia to find it. She didn’t die at the lighthouse.”

  I sat back in my chair and frowned. “No, you’re wrong.”

  “No,” Bailey replied. “You’re wrong. Don’t you remember?”

  “Of course I remember. It’s you who doesn’t remember.”

  She stared at me with concern. “Well, come on then.” She rose from her chair and directed me to follow. “Let’s go check out the picture in the hall.”

  I threw my napkin onto the table, slid my chair back, and followed her.

  She stood in the entrance hall gesturing toward a black and white photograph in a pewter frame, perched on a side table. I hadn’t seen it before. It showed Sebastian and Evangeline seated before a set of drapes—probably in a photographer’s studio—surrounded by five children. Evangeline looked older than she was in the painted portrait in my room. Here, she looked to be in her mid-to-late-thirties.

  We looked even more hauntingly alike.

  I moved closer, squinting at the details of the photograph, and my eyes fixed on a young boy about nine or ten years of age. He stood beside Evangeline with his hand resting on her shoulder. “Who is that?”

  “One of their children,” Bailey said.

  “What’s his name?”

  Bailey bent to look closer. “I’m not sure. I can’t remember all their names.”

  My stomach began to roll with shock and nervous energy. “Do you remember why we came to Maine?”

  “Yes.” She followed me to the front desk, where I rang the bell frantically, over and over. “Because of that vision you had.”

  “Yes—and that’s him,” I said. “I recognize him.”

  “Who?” Bailey asked.

  “The flashback I had on the mountaintop,” I explained, “where I had a son named Logan. That’s him in the picture. I’m sure of it.”

  Angela came hurrying out of the kitchen at the back of the house. “Is something wrong?”

  “No. I’m sorry, Angela. I didn’t mean to be so aggressive with the bell. I was just wondering…” I led her to the photograph in the front hall. “Do you know the names of all the children in this picture?

  “Yes, of course.” She moved closer to point at each one. “That’s the oldest, Nathan, and this is Amelie, Henry, Sarah, and John.”

  “John.” I bent forward and looked more closely at the boy I recognized from my flashback. “His name is John?”

  Not Logan?

  “That’s right,” Angela replied. “He was their third child, I believe, after Nathan and Amelie.”

  I backed away, trying to make sense of my perceptions and emotions, which were insisting that the boy in the portrait was the same boy from my flashback on the mountaintop.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Bailey. “Are you all right?”

  Nodding, I said, “I just thought I recognized him. He looks exactly the same.”

  I didn’t know what else to say, how to explain what I was feeling, for I was confused and bewildered, yet overjoyed to have discovered that the boy I’d imagined was real. Or at least he had been real, at one time. Here was concrete evidence of his existence, although it made no sense to me that his name was John. Why not Logan? And was I insane to think that this boy was somehow my son? He was born as John Fraser, to a mother named Evangeline and a father named Sebastian.

&
nbsp; In the late 1800s.

  Chapter Forty

  “Just when I was beginning to think I was ready to move on from all this, I have a dream that changes everything.”

  Bailey and I walked outside to the veranda and down the stairs. It was a sunny, breezy morning.

  “I have to admit,” she said, running her hand down the white painted railing, “I’m getting a bit worried about your state of mind, Katelyn, because you’re remembering the past week very differently from how I remember it. You have this whole story in your head about Captain Fraser’s wife dying young, when that’s not what happened at all. They lived a long and happy life together and had five children. We’ve known that all along.”

  “I didn’t know it,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, since yesterday, the history of this house has changed completely.”

  Which had me wondering… How much of it was a dream? Or had the sundial played a part?

  We stepped onto the stone path that would take us down to the ancient timekeeper, and walked under the rose arbor. When we reached it, I stood back for a moment, afraid to touch it or even go near it.

  “What’s wrong?” Bailey asked. “You look very intense.”

  “I’m just thinking,” I said. “When I first fell asleep, I dreamed I came down here by myself. I ran my hands over the top of the stone, then I got really cold, and the next thing I knew, I was dreaming I was Evangeline, walking down the driveway on a cold winter morning.”

  “Do you think it was one of those lucid dreams,” Bailey asked, “or astral projection, like what happened to Sylvie? Do you think it’s possible that you actually went back in time?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t trying to make it happen. I went to sleep feeling very content for the first time in ages, and happy to move on from all this.”

  We strolled to the two Adirondack chairs and sat down to look out over the water. A fishing boat motored past, about a mile out.

  “It was like I was actually inside Evangeline’s skin, living her life,” I said. “I was so upset and hurt by what my husband had done—cheating on me with that other woman—and I felt guilty about him catching me with the lighthouse keeper.”

  “What was the lighthouse keeper’s name?” Bailey asked.

  I wracked my brain, trying to remember. “Mr. Williams, I think.”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the name of the keeper at that time. There were pictures at the museum, and I remember… It was another man. His name was…” She paused. “Harvey, I think.”

  The name struck a chord in me. “Harvey.” I thought about that for a moment. “It sounds very familiar.” I continued to watch the fishing boat and listen to the hollow clang of a buoy’s bell somewhere in the distance. “I remember my parents from the dream. I was grieving for my mother who had died recently. She was sick for a long time, and then my father left to live somewhere else. And the woman my husband was in love with—I know it sounds crazy, but I still feel jealous, like it happened only yesterday. It’s all coming back to me, in little bits.” Again, I struggled to remember. “He was in love with her before he met me, but he ended their affair when he proposed to me, but then she tried to get him back after we were married. She followed him to London and they slept together over there. In his coach.”

  “Oh, that sucks,” Bailey said. “But I can’t believe it—that Captain Fraser would do that. Everything we’ve read makes it seem like they were true soulmates, devoted to each other forever.”

  I swallowed over a sick feeling of jealousy and heartbreak, then tried to remind myself that it wasn’t real. He wasn’t my husband. He had never cheated on me.

  “What was he doing in London?” Bailey asked.

  “Taking care of his shipping company, because his brother couldn’t manage it anymore. He was losing his vision or something.”

  Bailey let out a deep breath and sat forward. “You keep saying ‘my parents’ and ‘my husband,’ as if you’re Evangeline. But it was just a dream. And in another century.”

  I snapped out of my reverie. “I know. Of course, you’re right. It just felt so real.”

  We both sat back in our chairs and listened to the waves roll gently onto the shore.

  “Well,” Bailey said, tapping a finger on the armrest, “we know one thing. There was no lighthouse keeper named Mr. Williams, and there’s no record of Mrs. Fraser getting swept off the rocks that day.”

  “Danforth!” I shouted, slapping the armrest with the palm of my hand. “That was the name of the woman Sebastian had an affair with. She was a singer who performed at our house.”

  “Whose house?”

  I pointed my thumb over my shoulder. “The inn.”

  She nodded her head, though she seemed a bit concerned about the things I was saying. “I see.”

  Sitting forward in the chair, I felt as if there were other important details I had yet to uncover. Things that were hovering at the fringes of my memory.

  “Would you mind going back to the museum with me?” I asked. “I want to look up some of this stuff.”

  “Which stuff?” she asked.

  I stood up and started walking back to the house. “All of it.”

  o0o

  The museum curator remembered us from our visit earlier in the week, and allowed us, with no questions asked, into the back room to delve into the Fraser House Collection a second time. We pulled on the white gloves like a couple of seasoned historians and waited at the work table for her to fetch the box.

  I was shocked, however, when it wasn’t just one box she delivered. She brought out one box after another, each one full of documents and pictures—a whole lifetime of memories—all donated by Angela Carrington when she purchased the house in 2009. It was far more extensive, and completely different from the collection I had examined before.

  There were dozens of letters exchanged between all five children and their parents, where they discussed things like social engagements, milestones concerning the grandchildren, holiday plans. There was some talk of politics from the youngest son, Henry, who evidently had a passion for current events.

  I devoured every word, as if they were my own long-lost children and I hadn’t heard from them in years.

  Everyone seemed perfectly content with every aspect of their lives. There were no letters of concern between Amelie and Nathan, worried for their father’s sanity. According to this version of history, their father had lived a long and happy life without need for a time machine to bring his wife back from the dead. He hadn’t spent his life inventing strange gadgets. To the contrary, Evangeline had been the one to insist upon a trip around the world, by steamship, shortly after the end of the First World War. The sundial had been their most treasured souvenir from that journey, though there was no mention of time machine anywhere. Perhaps they knew it would have made them sound crazy. Or maybe they didn’t want strangers coming around to use it recklessly.

  There was a black-and-white photograph of the two of them standing next to it, holding hands. It was dated 1924. I stared at it for a long time, mesmerized and wishing I could remember more of Evangeline’s life beyond that final night at the lighthouse when I woke from the dream.

  After more than an hour of focused, borderline-obsessive reading, I finally looked up. Bailey was asleep with her head on the table.

  I glanced at the curator, who sat at her desk with her back to us, then poked Bailey lightly with my finger. “Hey,” I whispered.

  She sat up groggily and stretched her arms over her head. “Are we all done?”

  I set down the photograph. “I feel terrible for dragging you back here. You must be so bored.”

  “No need to apologize,” she replied. “It’s just not as interesting for me the second time around.”

  “Because you’ve read all this before.” I sighed, accepting that I was either completely bonkers with short-term memory loss, or I had in fact traveled back through time and changed the present-day
world.

  Which was it?

  I turned to address the curator. “Can I ask you a question?”

  She swiveled in her chair to face me. “Certainly.”

  “I’m wondering if there was ever a woman named Mrs. Danforth who might have visited Cape Elizabeth in the 1880s. Is there any way we could search for that name in your records?”

  I just wanted to know if I’d dreamed the whole darn thing.

  “Of course,” she replied cheerfully. “Although we don’t have to do much searching. What would you like to know? I could probably tell you anything, because I wrote an article about her a few years back. She was a singer on the New York stage and married a wealthy older gentleman who owned a summer house here.”

  I glanced at Bailey, whose lips parted with surprise.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” I said. “Do you know if she might have been romantically involved with Captain Fraser at any point?”

  And there were so many more questions I had. I felt suddenly as if time were rushing by too quickly. Soon, Bailey and I would be boarding a plane back to Seattle. Surely there weren’t enough hours in the day to learn all the answers I was seeking.

  The curator inclined her head curiously. “Not that I know of. Why do you ask? Did you read something that would suggest it?” She began to roll herself closer in her chair. “I’ve read everything there is to know about Captain Fraser and his wife. There was never any mention of anything like that. There is a ‘thank you’ card in the collection, however, for a musical evening at the captain’s home. She provided the entertainment. But there is certainly no mention of any infidelities on her part, or Captain Fraser’s. That’s an interesting thought, though. They were about the same age, both very attractive and charismatic. And good heavens. Mr. Danforth sold his property quickly, well below market value. I always wondered why he was in such a hurry to leave Cape Elizabeth.”

  Feeling a strange unbidden urge to protect Captain Fraser’s reputation—and that of his marriage—I waved a hand, dismissively. “Oh, don’t listen to me. I don’t even know why I’m asking that. There was nothing here to suggest it. I’m just dreaming. Obviously Captain Fraser was very much in love with his wife.”

 

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