It was the only thing I could think of. It wasn’t like I could ask anyone to help me find answers. Everyone would think I was nuts.
“Your library?” Jack inquired.
I laughed at the fact that I had to explain this to people now. “I own a library. My Gram died and now it’s mine. That is if I can get back to it.”
“So you’re a librarian then.”
“I guess so. I’m also a college student. It’s not what I want to be doing, but it’s my life currently.”
He nodded and I sensed that he felt the same. “Going to America isn’t what I desire.”
His expression turned serious.
“Why? What would you do if you could do anything?”
“I wouldn’t be doing what my father wants of me. I would move to London and start my own trade company. But alas, I am my father’s only son.”
It was funny how things worked out in life. One minute you are living and dreaming of your future and the next you’re living someone else’s dream.
“We don’t get to choose our lives like they tell us when we’re little, do we?”
“No,” he agreed. “We certainly do not. Being a child is much more innocent of a time and I often wish I was one again.”
A young girl brought out a tea service and set it up at a table in the next room.
“Come, let’s have tea. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll have with you,” Jack said as he walked into the room.
A smile crept upon my face at his words. He wanted to spend time with me, and the strange thing was, I wanted to be here. It made me forget about the library and my responsibilities.
He pulled out a chair for me as I sat as gracefully as I could in yoga pants. He smiled when I sat and shook his head.
“What?” I asked suddenly worried that I did something wrong or that I looked funny to him.
“Your clothing is shocking to me. I’m not sure if I’ll get used to how different you dress.” A blush ran across his cheeks.
Yep, I looked like a dork.
Great. Any guy back home would like my tight pants, but coming here, it’s different.
“Next time I travel I’ll make sure to dress more to your liking,” I said smartly.
He held up a hand and his smile grew even wider. “No. Please. I’m trying to say that I enjoy your clothing. I like the way they look on you. I’d like to inspect the material if I could.”
“You want me to take my clothes off?” I acted very offended, even though taunting him and making his blush grow wider was my real goal. “I thought the men in this era were supposed to be gentlemen.”
“Emmeline, I do apologize. I didn’t mean to say that I’d like to take them off myself…oh dear. I mean that when you take them off to change, can I inspect them? Oh bugger!”
He’d thrown his hands up in the air and went quiet.
“Jack, really it’s okay. I get what you’re saying. You’ve never seen material like this, right?”
“Precisely, I never intended to offend you in any way.” He sighed with relief and ran his hand through his hair. He must do that when he’s nervous because I had seen him do it before. I’d love to run my own fingers through his thick locks if he’d let me.
Jack had one of the most attractive faces I’d ever laid eyes on. It was one of those faces you saw only in movies and it made you wish you were born in another time period.
“I know that. I liked seeing you squirm. It was enjoyable,” I said honestly. “In my time, men are very blunt. They’ll tell you they want to take your clothes off with no hesitation. It’s actually nice to see a man try to defend his virtue, is all.”
He shook his head, all serious now, and poured my tea.
“Men are different in your time, that’s for sure. It is very impolite to discuss matter of dress with a lady, and I’m sorry that I did. Yet, something tells me that I was the one who was more embarrassed. Am I right?”
I nodded. “It’s no big deal to me. I’m used to it.”
He stopped pouring and looked up at me sadly. “You’re used to men being demeaning?”
“Well, when you put it that way, I guess the answer is yes.”
He sat the tea down and gave me sugar and cream and stirred my drink. When he was done, I picked it up.
“That makes me sad to hear, Emmeline. May I speak frankly?” I sipped my tea and nodded once more. “You deserve a true and honest gentleman, for you may be the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes upon.”
Now I was blushing furiously. A fire took hold of my face and I hid behind my teacup. No one had ever called me beautiful besides my Gram or maybe even my parents. Not my friends and especially not men. When a man saw me, he saw a conquest, and when I saw a man, I challenged them and showed them that I too didn’t want anything but a good time.
Was Jack right? Did I deserve more from a man? If so, who in the hell would I find in my world to treat me like that?
“Why would you say that? Look at me, I’m in my Yoga pants and a T-shirt and I’m sipping tea in your gorgeous home. I’m not beautiful, I’m plain.” I was defensive now. This was not the best reaction.
He took my hand as I set down my cup. “Please, never say you are anything but extraordinary. Why do you think I spoke to you when you first came? Because you blended into the background? No, because, Emmeline, you stand out.”
What the hell was going on here? Was he actually flirting with me? God knows I wanted him to flirt with me. He was everything I looked for in a guy, but ten times better. Jack wasn’t your typical guy; he was the guy who rode the white horse and became your gallant knight in shining armor. Except there was one problem, he lived in a book. He was a book boyfriend!
I wasn’t even sure if he was an actual living human being. I saw him breathe and eat and drink, but was he real solely in the book? I couldn’t help but want to ask him all these questions. I really wanted to know how it felt to be a book character, but then again as I sat here with him, I guess I became one myself. And maybe a character didn’t know that they weren’t real. They lived their lives as the author wrote it out.
The more I thought about it, the stranger it became. Was he fiction or not? I had to know the truth, but for now, I would bask in the delight he gave me.
“Are you embarrassed?” he asked, pulling me out of my trance.
“No. I think I’m shocked. No one has ever said that to me,” I admitted.
“Would you like to see the rest of the house?”
Jack had changed the subject before things got awkward, thankfully.
“I’d really like to, yes. I don’t think the hot tea was such a good idea. I’m even hotter now than I was before.” I stood, and he took my hand and wrapped it in his arm. He felt warm, but a good warm.
He led me through the rest of the downstairs showing me a huge parlor and eventually we made our way upstairs. The tapestries that hung around the wall were astounding; everything in this house was like that. It was an honest-to-God mansion, and I was in it walking around and breathing it all in. It was the most beautiful place I had ever been, and I was in it with Jack. I felt giddy suddenly, and I had to fight to push the feelings back down.
“I’ve seen this room,” I admitted when we passed by the room I changed in.
“Ah. I was going to show you the library, not the guest bedroom.”
We walked through the hall and into a library that was nothing I expected: wall to wall books from floor to ceiling. In the corner a large fire place that thankfully was not lit. The other corner held a door that led out to a small balcony.
“It’s beautiful, Jack.”
“I thought you’d enjoy it. Yet, you did say you didn’t like being a librarian, so we do not have to stay in this boring old room.”
“No! No, please. I
like it here,” I admitted. He laughed softly to himself.
“The girl who wishes a different career for herself loves books after all. Hmm.”
He was teasing me and I liked it. Letting my hand go, he sat in a large overstuffed chair.
“I enjoy it here as well. It helps me think.”
I scanned the walls and the books and asked, “What do you think about?”
“Loads of things, really. Mostly how I can get out from under my father’s thumb and start my company. Then I laugh to myself over such an idiotic notion.”
I stopped and looked at Jack. “You can do anything you want. You’re a grown man, aren’t you?”
“Why yes. I’m twenty. Emmeline, it isn’t easy for a man my age. I simply cannot break free like that. I’d lose his support and his trust. And a man like my father has many allies and a man cannot defy his father.”
He’d lose his money, and for a man in this time, money and status was everything. I got it, I really did. Money and status were important in my time, too.
“You know, everything we talk about defines us by our time periods we live in.” I pulled a book from the shelf and inspected the cover. “We aren’t simply just a man and a woman right now. We’re ‘Jack’s World’ and ‘Emme’s World.’ The things we speak about won’t be the same. I won’t be able to help you get through what you’re going through because I simply won’t understand. Things in my world are so much different. They aren’t that complicated.”
He bit his thumb and looked incredibly sexy while doing it.
“So, if they aren’t so complicated, why are you a librarian instead of at finishing school?”
Damn it. He had me there. I turned and faced him, fully aware that I had no answer for him. The room started to spin suddenly and the colors of the books swirled together.
“Oh no!” I said as Jack stood and tried to catch me, but I fell too fast out of his world and back into mine.
Nine
This time I ended up waking—if you’ll call it that—alone. No one was tugging on me and asking questions. It was just me and the book alone in the library. Tarryn was still asleep upstairs from what I could tell. I looked outside and it was still dark, so that meant I couldn’t have been there too long. I hadn’t been missing from this world for as long as the time before. Yet it was hard to tell where my actual body went while I was in the book and how long I was away. I really knew nothing. It was all just guesses and estimations right now. I needed to set up a video camera next time. I needed actual proof.
I pulled the blanket off my sweaty legs and opened the window a crack to cool off. My body was still heated; I could feel the weather lingering from Jack’s world. I ran my hand through my hair and found it as poofy as it was when I was with him.
Him.
I actually felt awful for leaving again. Did I miss him? I wasn’t sure.
I wasn’t sure what I felt about anything that happened to me or how I felt about this whole situation, but one thing was certain, I wanted to go back soon. I realized I wasn’t any closer to figuring out why my great-grandmother was there.
I got up and scrambled to bed, exhausted from my little visit. I fell into bed still in the same clothes and looked forward to a new day where I could hopefully find answers.
The next morning I awoke to the sound of Tarryn cooking. I heard a lot of clinking and dishes being moved around. I pulled on a robe and shuffled into the kitchen. She took one look at me and handed me a cup full of coffee.
“You look like you need this more than me right now,” she laughed lightly. “I made bacon and eggs.”
She sat down a plate full of greasy bacon and scrambled eggs. “Thank you, Tarryn. But you don’t have to cook for me in the morning.”
“I know that. I wanted to. I like to cook, so I have no problem making meals for you if you’re around.” She smiled and dug into her breakfast. I did the same. Having her here wouldn’t be so bad. We got along and she cooked, so that was a bonus.
In California, it took me a while to warm up to all of my roommates in college. Harmony and I hit a few rough patches in the beginning and we worked through it. Maybe living with Tarryn would be easier somehow.
“I have some errands to run, but I’ll be back later to help you with anything in the library,” she said as she finished her eggs.
I ate and nodded, saying, “I appreciate it. But we open tomorrow, so let’s take the day off today.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said as she got up and rinsed her plate. “Okay, see you later.”
“Bye. Thanks for breakfast,” I told her as she walked out the door.
****
Later in the day I found myself surrounded by college papers. I already had a paper due by next week, and I had just started the online class. This was going to be challenging for sure, but I loved it.
I reached for my cup of coffee and realized it was empty. This was no good. I sat up to stretch my legs and wake myself up somehow. I was down in the library’s open space doing my work in the quiet surroundings. Gram had this room done for students who needed a little quiet time to do homework. How ironic that I was using it in an empty library.
I walked to the office where Gram did everything behind the scenes: ordered books, planned meetings, paid bills, and everything else a librarian does. The space wasn’t very big, but it was big enough for Gram. I ran my hand over the small desk she sat in and realized that I remembered her working in here for hours sometimes. And this room was always off limits to me or Rose. We were never allowed in here at any time.
“What were you hiding, Gram?” I asked alloud.
I looked through the cabinets, now extremely curious about what she was doing in here all the time.
I found nothing.
So I went through her desk, still nothing. No clues left that I could see and no answers about why she needed me to guard this forsaken library.
I sat in her chair with a loud thump and rolled around the room. If she saw me now, she’d kill me. I pushed off the desk and the chair hit the wall behind me with a thud. I laughed then spun in the chair and rested my feet on the wall.
“Gram, why am I here? What the hell do you want from me, huh?” Tears now took over and the laughter ceased. “Why am I traveling into a book? Why does it have to be me? It’s absolute torture to meet him and to be taken away so suddenly, especially when I’m so damn lonely without you.”
Frustrated now, I gave the wall a good solid kick with both feet and the chair spun across the room. I looked up and heard a loud creaking noise.
“Oh shit.”
I’d broken the stupid old building. The wall seemed to move slightly and I shot up out of my chair fearful of collapse. I stood there watching the wall shift and gradually, before my eyes, open. I gasped and looked into a room that was now visible in front of me.
A trick wall in my Gram’s office. This was insane. I had once dreamt about Gram having a hidden room, but maybe it wasn’t a dream. Maybe it was a memory,
It was like Narnia, and I was a kid again with hidden passages and magic books. I was going batshit crazy, so I did the only thing a crazy woman could do; I looked around for my trusty flashlight I put on the desk. I clicked it on and shined it into the large space. Dust and debris fell from the opening and I hesitated before entering. What would happen if I went in and the door closed? I’d be trapped because I didn’t know the trick to opening it back up. I took a book and jammed it underneath the door for good measure before going inside.
The room wasn’t as dark and scary as I anticipated it to be; it was actually quite the opposite. It looked like it had been in use not too long ago, a month maybe, before Gram died. It was a guess, but with this being her office, I only assumed she knew about this room. Books filled a small shelf on one wall and I found a hurricane lamp
on a table. I lit it and its orange glow flooded the room. Posters hung on the wall with drawings of things I couldn’t understand. From my best estimation they were scientific drawings full of numbers and calculations. Pictures filled up another wall. I noticed Gram in a few, but the others I had to really squint to see.
One photo held my attention. Four women in dresses, depicting the photo’s origin were probably in Jack’s time or earlier. I pulled the photo down and tried to see if any of the women looked familiar, but they didn’t. One girl with dark curls resembled Gram from when she was younger, yet she looked different. A relative maybe.
I yanked the photo from the frame and found an inscription on the back: The Librarians 1850.
The fact that I’d been off about the year didn’t even faze me. What did in fact shock me was the name they had for themselves. The Librarians.
Were they actual librarians, and if so, was this a family business? I wasn’t so sure, but I would find out. I searched the wall for more photos of these ladies and found them. Some of them were with other people, but never were they all together again like they were in this one photo that I held in my hand. No, it could never be that simple. Not in my life at least.
The woman that looked like Gram was in a photo that read 1957, and she looked exactly the same as she did in the group photo.
A curly-haired blonde was also in a picture from another date that read 1925, and you guessed it, she looked the same. I needed to find out who these women were, so I took all the photos from their frames and flipped them over. I pulled out a sheet of notebook paper from a journal and wrote all the women’s names and dates down. After a while I had everyone’s name and the dates that they were in separate photos.
Jenny 1925, the curly-haired blonde.
Alice 1950, a feisty looking red head with a fierce smile.
Laura 1982, a pretty girl who looked shy.
And last but not least, Grace, my great-grandmother with her dark blonde curls. The same year, now that I remembered, that Nancy told me that Harold Lockhart and Grace arrived in the book. Things weren’t making sense, but the pieces of the puzzle were lining up, if I could only fit them all together. I laid all of the pictures in a row and stared at them until my eyes watered. I had no answers, but I knew one thing; these women were together once and they were all from different time periods.
The Librarian Page 7