Touched by Time

by Zoe Matthews

  “A number of years later, I found the second key in a store in Ireland and was able to purchase it, so that is how I own both of them.

  “To make a long story short, when holding one of these keys in your hand, they will take that person back into the past, or into the future.”

  Victoria stopped talking and looked directly at Kimberly as if waiting for a reaction.

  Kimberly was dumbfounded. Maybe this Mrs. Hilton wasn't as legitimate as she thought and she felt a distinct disappointment. “Wait, do you mean, like time travel?” Kimberly asked. She had heard of time travel before, but it was always in movies or books. From what she knew of the subject, it was impossible to travel between times at will.

  “Yes,” Victoria nodded her head. She held up the larger key. “I have practiced extensively with the keys. They both work the same. I have traveled back to England to see my childhood home. I don’t know if you realize this, but I am actually from 1892. I have used these keys and traveled into the future, to your time, to 2005.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kimberly told her. Was this why Victoria dressed as she did? Why she didn’t use modern technology like a phone? Why the house they were sitting in looked so out of date?

  “What about Collins?” Kimberly asked.

  “He is also from 1892. At first, I only told Charles about the keys. The man who gave them to me told me only one person could know, so naturally I told my husband, but he didn’t believe me. He was a very logical man. I never told him that I had discovered I could time travel with them. After his death, I told Collins who did believe me.”

  Kimberly shook her head as if to clear it. “What does this have to do with me?”

  “Because Patrick is from my time. If you want to meet him, you will need to use one of these keys and time travel to 1892.”

  Kimberly didn’t know what to say. Time travel to 1892? Was Victoria serious? She could tell the woman really believed that the keys did take people back and forth between time periods. Maybe Nicole had been right all along. Maybe this had been a scam. Maybe she shouldn’t trust her own feelings.

  “I am not sure…” Kimberly started to say, but Victoria interrupted her.

  “Are you interested in more information?”

  Kimberly hesitated, but curiosity got the better of her, and after a few moments nodded her head. She was curious about what Victoria was going to say.

  “If you are still interested in meeting Patrick, I will give you one of these keys. When you are ready to travel back in time, you will need to clutch the key in her hand like this.” Kimberly watched as Mrs. Hilton held the key in the palm of her right hand and then moved her fingers and thumb until her entire hand covered the key so she could barely see any of it. “Then you will need to think of the time period you want to travel to, along with the place. You need to picture it in your head if you can and say it out loud.” Mrs. Hilton closed her eyes while clutching the key. “1892, Denver, Colorado, my house.”

  Kimberly watched in amazement as Mrs. Hilton started to look hazy and then she disappeared! She was no longer sitting in front of her! Where did she go? Did she really travel back in time to 1892? Then just as quickly, Mrs. Hilton was sitting in front of her again.

  “I just traveled back to my time, to my house, which is actually this house, located in Denver,” Mrs. Hilton explained.

  Kimberly didn’t know what to say. Her heart pounded loudly in her chest. She knew she hadn’t imagined the woman disappearing before her eyes. She watched as Mrs. Hilton held out one of the keys. “Hold this, and tell me what you feel.”

  Kimberly hesitated, and then reached out to grasp the key. She immediately felt a tingling sensation that spread throughout her entire body, and she dropped the key on the wooden desk in shock. She looked at Mrs. Hilton in amazement.

  “You felt it.” Mrs. Hilton commented as she nodded her head. “That tingling sensation is what moves you back and forth in time, somehow. I have never been able to figure out exactly how it works, but it does.”

  Kimberly picked the key back up very carefully and studied it. Now that she looked closer, she could tell the design wasn't a knot, but the gold did twist around in a delicate design. With a long slender cylinder leading to three notches, one small, the others slightly larger. The entire time she held the key, she felt a slight tingling sensation. She gave it back to Mrs. Hilton who was watching her carefully as if making sure Kimberly wasn’t going to faint or run out of the room screaming in shock.

  “So, you can come and go when you please between your time period, which is 1892, and my time period, 2005?” Kimberly asked.

  “Yes, my dear,” Mrs. Hilton assured her. “I actually can go back in whatever time I want. I can also travel to a different part of the world, but stay in my same time period. These keys have an amazing gift.”

  Okay,” Kimberly took a deep breath to calm herself. “So you have magic keys. I am still not sure what this has to do with me.” She was a bit confused of the information Victoria was giving her.

  “Like I just explained, if you want to meet Patrick and get to know him, with the option of marrying him, you will need to travel back to my time, to 1892, using one of these keys.”

  “Oh,” Kimberly breathed, still in shock that all of this was even happening.

  “Let me give you the rest of the information, and then you can make your decision,” Mrs. Hilton told her to which Kimberly just nodded her head. “Once you arrive in 1892, you will meet Patrick at the Denver Train Station and he will take you to his ranch. You will need to be willing to stay there for 30 days. You will need to put this key in a safe place once you arrive at his ranch. If you decide you do not want to stay in 1892, you will need it to come back to your time.

  “You are not to tell anyone about this key, including Patrick. If you make the decision to stay, then you may tell him. If and when you make that decision, I will come and collect the key. Or you can return it on one of your trips to Denver from Patrick’s ranch.

  “You need to promise me that you will not bring anything with you from this time, 2005, into 1892. Everything must stay here. It is not good to mix things that belong in the future in the past. You also need to promise that you will not use the key to go to any other time period. Can you agree to these things?”

  “Ummm….” Kimberly stuttered. Her brain was still stuck on the possibility of traveling back in time to 1892. She didn’t know what to think of what Mrs. Hilton was telling her.

  The older woman looked at her kindly and with sympathy. “Why don’t you take some time to think about it? If you decide you want to travel back to my time and meet Patrick, come back, and I will help you get there.”

  “So Patrick doesn’t know I am from the future?” She was still trying to understand what she had just heard.

  Mrs. Hilton shook her head. “No, dear. The only people who will know this is myself and Collins, and now you.”

  “Have you done this before with other women from my time?”

  Mrs. Hilton shook her head. “Actually, I have not. You are the first one.”

  “What if it doesn’t work? What if I end up somewhere else besides where Patrick is? What if I can’t come back to my time?” She felt panic at the thought.

  “If you follow my instructions, I can promise you that that will not happen. Collins and I have tested both of these keys extensively. There is no possible way to travel somewhere you don’t want to go by mistake. And as long as you don’t lose the key, you will be able to travel back to your time when you wish.”

  “I need to think about this,” Kimberly finally told her. “When do I have to decide by?

  “I am not going to give you a time limit,” Mrs. Hilton told her firmly. “You must feel comfortable about your decision. I do ask that if you decide you do not want to go through with this, that you write Patrick one last letter to let him know of your decision. It is only proper that he learn of your decision through you, not myself.”

  Kimberl
y nodded her head in agreement and soon she was back in her car. For a moment, she sat there thinking about all she had heard and learned in the last few minutes. For the first time in a long time, she wished she could talk to her mother, and she missed both of her parents desperately. What would her mother advise her to do?

  She instinctively knew she shouldn’t tell Nicky or Justin about this, at least until she had made her decision. She hated that she couldn’t confide in them, but she wanted to be able to make her choice without feeling like her friends thought she was crazy for even considering something like being a mail-order bride, and then adding time travel into the situation, she knew that her friends wouldn’t understand.

  Chapter 6

  Over the next few days, Kimberly went about her days like usual. She went to work and met Nicky for lunch. She went to watch Garrett play a soccer game in a nearby park. On Sunday, she went with Nicky to her parents’ home to celebrate her father’s birthday. But always in the back of her mind she was thinking about what she had learned from Mrs. Hilton. Sometimes she would make the decision to not go back in time and meet Patrick. Other times, she would make the decision to go for it, to meet Patrick and see what happens. She knew it would be difficult to suddenly be required to live like people did in the 1890s. She would be giving up many luxuries that weren’t available back then, but she also felt she knew enough about that time period, that she would be able to accustom herself to it.

  She also kept thinking about Patrick. She found it odd that she felt the beginnings of a bond with him, even though the only contact she had with him were through letters. Now that she knew he was from the past, a lot of what he described made sense, including the four-hour horseback ride to Denver from his ranch. He sounded wonderful in his letters. Did she really want to give up the chance to meet him?

  Finally, on Monday of the next week, she left work early. It had been a terrible day, and her boss had been quite verbally abusive to her. She had been accused of making many mistakes she hadn’t made, and impulsively she had quit on the spot. She knew she couldn’t keep working in the environment she was in. It was draining her emotionally. At the moment she quit and walked out of the ER for the last time, she also knew she had also instantly made the choice to meet Patrick. She was going to go back in time.

  ****

  Patrick had just made the trip to Denver and back in one day. He had been very anxious to see if he had another letter from Kimberly, the woman Mrs. Hilton had matched with him. In his last letter, he had invited her to come to stay on his ranch so they could meet and get to know each other better.

  They had only exchanged a few letters, but he liked what he had read. He learned that she didn’t have any family and that she was a nurse. He liked that she had educated herself so that she could support herself if she needed to. She seemed kind and inquisitive. He enjoyed the thought of teaching her how to help him run his ranch, and from what it sounded like, she was just as interested in it as he was.

  He had gone into Denver to pick up some supplies for the coming roundup. He and Shaun would be moving their small herd of cattle deeper into the mountains for the summer as soon as he arrived back to the ranch. He felt excitement at the thought that Mrs. Hilton had another letter from Kimberly and she had encouraged him to read it right then, almost as if she knew what Kimberly had written him.

  After he accepted the letter, he took a few moments to himself in her gardens and opened the envelope. He quickly learned that she did indeed want to come to meet him. She indicated that they would need to work out a day and time for her to come, but she was agreeable to meet him and live on his ranch in the small cabin he promised her for 30 days. As he read her letter of acceptance, he found himself breathing a sigh of relief. He hadn’t been sure she would want to come when no promises had been officially made between them, and he felt excited at the thought that maybe, within a short amount of time, he would soon have a wife.

  When he returned to the Victorian house, he informed Mrs. Hilton of Kimberly’s decision, and watched as the woman smiled in delight. Between the two of them, they agreed on the date she would come, which would be in two weeks from then, since he needed to get the cattle moved before he could come to Denver again.

  When he arrived at the ranch, he jumped off his horse, and saw Bridget hanging wet clothing on a rope. He ran to her and swung her around. “Kimberly has decided to come,” he told her.

  Bridget squealed and hugged him back. Out of all three of his siblings, she had been the most supportive in the decision to take a mail-order bride. Shaun was skeptical, but then he had always been bitter about women ever since the woman he wanted to marry a little over a year ago had basically left him at the altar when she found out the real history about his daughter, Colleen. His youngest brother, Keegan, was a typical 15-year-old boy who could care less about his eldest brother’s desire to start a family.

  “Give me the details,” Bridget demanded with a grin. “When will she be here?”

  “I am to pick her up from the Denver train station in two weeks from today. That will give us time to move the cattle and move my stuff out of the old cabin into the family home. The old cabin also will need to be cleaned up.”

  “Leave the cabin to me,” Bridget offered. “I will have it ready for her by the time you and Shaun get back from moving the cattle.”

  Patrick was grateful for Bridget’s offer and immediately accepted her help. He knew she would do a better job than he ever could. The cabin had been built sturdy. It was snug and warm and the roof had just been replaced a few years ago, but the inside needed a good cleaning, and a woman’s touch.

  Chapter 7

  Kimberly was again at Mrs. Hilton’s home. She had arrived a few hours before, letting the woman know of her decision. She was surprised how happy Mrs. Hilton seemed of her choice.

  “I have a good feeling about this,” Mrs. Hilton told her as she gave Kimberly a hug. “Patrick is a good man and I really do think you will both be good for each other.”

  “I hope so,” Kimberly replied. She still wasn’t sure how this time travel issue was going to work, especially since she wasn’t allowed to tell him about where she was from unless she made the decision to stay.

  “Now, we need to get you ready. Come with me, dear.” Mrs. Hilton led Kimberly up a long flight of stairs and into a room that was filled with various items. “This room is where I keep everything that I have collected from the different time periods I have traveled in,” Mrs. Hilton explained.

  Kimberly was instantly curious and wanted to look around. She saw many items, mostly clothes and coins, everything organized into different sections depending on the time period, with different pieces of luggage to carry everything in. Hats were hung on the walls, all feminine. On a table in the far corner was a collection of collectables, like an old Polaroid camera, and some spectacles that looked like some of the first ever made. Mrs. Hilton had even collected a few paintings from different eras.

  Mrs. Hilton opened a small wardrobe labeled “1890s” and started to pull out a few dresses.

  “You will need to dress as if you are from the 1890s,” Mrs. Hilton explained as she laid a few of the dresses on a nearby bed. “You may choose a few dresses. I will also make sure you have anything else you might need.”

  Kimberly fell in love with the dresses. Most of them seemed to be for everyday use, with plain colors and aprons. There was one that seemed more formal, with satin fabric and slightly puffy sleeves. She loved the high necklines and the lace, and itched to see what they looked like on her. She instantly chose two of them and Mrs. Hilton encouraged her to try them on. Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly depending on how she wanted to look at it, they both fit her perfectly.

  “These dresses are meant to wear for every day,” Mrs. Hilton explained. “You should choose one more dress, a nice one that you will want to get married in. How about this one?”

  Mrs. Hilton held up another dress and Kimberly instantly agreed. It was iv
ory, with a small train. Ruffles lined the bottom hem and the short sleeves. There was a beautiful design embroidered into the bodice, which ended in a steep "V" shape at her hips. It didn’t look like the fancy wedding dresses that were worn in 2005, but she knew it would be perfect for her wedding, if she chose to marry Patrick, and then she would also be able to always have a nice dress to wear for more fancy functions.

  Mrs. Hilton added some underclothing, stocking, and shoes. She showed Kimberly how to do her hair. Luckily, Kimberly’s hair was long, almost to her mid back, so it wasn’t going to be hard to arrange her hair like the women wore in the 1890s. Mrs. Hilton gave her a large cloth bag, which she called a carpet bag, and helped her fold and arrange all the clothing she had given her into the bag. The last thing she gave Kimberly was the key.

  “Now remember, keep this with you all the time. Once you arrive at Patrick’s ranch, find a safe place to hide it. If you lose it, you will not be able to return to your time if you decide not to stay.”