I laughed. “It was only for a year, Rose. Look where I’m sitting now. I’m back in the same town I desperately tried to get away from all my life. I run a library. I’m not a doctor.”
She smiled bashfully. “I am a doctor, but I’m a broke doctor who’s stuck with student loans. I really want my own office, but I realized that if tearing down your Gram’s place was the only way for me to do that, then I was going about it wrong.”
I put my arm around her and gave her a hug. I was thankful she understood the importance of keeping the library where it was. “Rose, we are going to get you your own office. You don’t need to worry about that.”
Rose had been my friend for a long time. She may have been a lot older than me, but she always treated me like an equal. She was a true friend, and I needed her in my life just as much as she needed me.
We sat at the bench talking until sundown. She had an early day and I needed my bed. We hugged goodbye, and I vowed to help her find a way to get her own place.
“Bye, Emme. See you soon, okay?”
I nodded and waved to her as she drove away.
As I walked to the truck, I passed by the bank. It survived the Great Depression and that was pretty incredible. Any building that survived such a time was amazing. The brick front looked like it had been re-done a few times, but the foundation was strong.
The two-story building had a lot of history, and I bet it was beautiful in its time. I wished I could have seen it when it was first built.
The brass sign on the front that Rose had told me about looked like it needed a good polish as I looked closer to read it.
When I did, I felt faint. My whole body began to shake. I wasn’t just standing at the site of history, I was standing at the site of Jackson Ridgewell Jr.’s history.
Twenty-Five
The sign read:
This site is dedicated to the founder of Bay Ridge and the founder of Ridgewell Banking: Jackson Ridgewell Jr.
Built in 1901, Ridgewell Bank stood strong against the storm of the Great Depression. It is in the memory of the people of Bay Ridge that this site be declared Historic.
Jack. My Jack.
He founded Bay Ridge and he founded a bank. A big bank, from the looks of it.
I swayed on my feet and almost fell on my butt, if not for a tree beside me.
I had to get back to the library and I had to see him.
I rushed inside and didn’t even say anything to Tarryn as she greeted me. I grabbed the book and showed it to her, so she knew what I was doing, and then plopped down on the couch and started reading.
I blinked and whooshed. Instantly I was standing in front of a big beautiful home. It looked a lot like this old house in Bay Ridge that had become some sort of attraction years ago. But it couldn’t be the same. Most of the old houses looked alike in Bay Ridge.
I was standing there watching the house, just waiting for someone to come out of it or to see some movement. I wasn’t going to knock on the door. Again, I was wearing clothes not of this era, and I wouldn’t know what to say anyway.
“Hi, is Jack home? I’m his …” What was I to him anyway? His girlfriend? His lover? His secret?
I heard yelling coming from behind the house and I decided that walking along the tree line to check it out would be the best way to do so.
I skimmed the trees and walked slowly. It was, thankfully, cooler outside, which meant one of two things: years had passed or only a few months. The summer heat was gone and I recognized the autumn weather immediately. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw a man walking outside of the home.
“Argus! Come here you mangy mutt!”
It was Jack. He looked different; older perhaps or maybe he only grew in a beard. His full beard covered the face that I loved so much, but I was okay with that.
He put his hands in his pockets and sighed deeply.
I held my breath, wishing that he would just look my way and see me standing here staring at him like a stalker.
Come on, Jack. See me.
At that moment he looked my way, and I froze. Maybe him seeing me wasn’t the best idea. I did still love him, despite trying to stay away.
My feelings for him I couldn’t deny. Thinking I could just hide from him until I went back wasn’t a great idea though, since I was here and I was supposed to be recording pivotal moments in his life. I sincerely doubted calling for a dog was life changing though.
His eyes scanned the trees and at once they stopped, on me.
“Who’s there?” he called out.
Shit.
He walked down the steps of his house and began walking toward me at a fast pace. I backed up and hit a tree with my back. This wasn’t a great idea. What if he didn’t remember me? Maybe many years had passed and he was married now with a litter of kids.
He stopped at the tree line and his eyes grew wide.
“Emmeline,” he whispered. “You’re here.”
He ran to me then and took me in his arms. I fell into him despite my warnings of falling further in love with him. He landed a kiss on my mouth that made all thoughts disappear.
I could taste the desperation in his lips as his kisses became deeper. He didn’t hold back as he lifted me up against the tree. I wrapped my legs around his torso, pulling him closer to me.
We were electric. I couldn’t deny the way he made my skin feel like fire when he touched me. He began kissing my neck and throat and down to my chest.
Then he looked at me and that sexy look of his disappeared as he said, “Where have you been?”
The sadness in his eyes gutted me.
“Jack,” I said as I kissed him. “I’m so sorry that I wasn’t here earlier. I wish…I wish it could be controlled,” I choked out.
Before I knew it, I was crying and kissing him again.
My salty tears ran down my face and into our embrace. He pulled back and with that same look asked, “Why are you sad?”
“Because I’ve missed you. And I hate that I caused you pain, Jack.”
He let me down, gently. And put a distance between us which made me feel empty and bare.
“I only wondered where you were for the past year, Emmeline.”
I swallowed hard. A year?
“I looked for you, everywhere I went. I waited for you. Dammit, I’m still waiting for you and you’re bloody right in front of me.” He raked his hands through his hair. “I can’t do this.”
His words flew at me like knives, piercing my heart over and over again.
“I can’t come when I want to, Jack. It doesn’t work like that. That’s what makes our relationship so complicated.” I wished I had the words to heal his hurt, but I didn’t.
“Relationship? This isn’t anything like that Emmeline. You have to be present to be with me properly. Please explain to me how it works.”
“I’m here to observe you, Jack, you know that. You’re becoming someone so important, and I am only to come to you when you’re actually making history. Your history. I have absolutely no control over where the book will take me.”
He shook his head in confusion.
“So you can only come to me when I’m preforming something important?” He was catching on quickly but growing more irritated.
“Yes. The book only allows me to travel here at certain points in your life. Otherwise I would have been here sooner. I never wanted to leave you in the first place,” I said, truthfully.
He turned away from me, rigidly.
“Then why did you leave me, Emmeline? Why didn’t you stay? You didn’t have to take on the role as observer. You could have stayed with me forever.”
I reached for him and took his hand in mine, surprised he let me.
“You know that I needed to leave that day. You had to
go meet your father and I had a life to get back to.”
I hated that he was so agitated, and I hated that so much time had passed.
He turned toward me and nodded.
“Yes, I had responsibilities. Emmeline, you could have come with me, and you know that you could have walked away from your life. You even told me it wasn’t what you wanted to be doing. A whole year has passed me by, and I’m not the boy I was then. I’ve become a man with great purpose in this town,” he said. “I hate to put it so frank, but I had to live my life.”
I nodded. I wished that he would have told me that before he kissed me like he did. Before he threw me against the tree and made my blood heat with passion.
“I live here in this home, and I looked for you daily. But you never arrived.” He searched my face and ran his fingers across my cheeks. “I yearn for you at night when I’m alone. Emmeline, why is it that you haunt me so? Why can’t I turn away from you and leave you standing here alone? It’s what you deserve.”
I took a deep, painful breath in. “Is that what you want to do, Jack? You want to leave me here alone?”
If that was his wish, then I would walk away. I would wait until I could go back home and I’d never come back, if it meant sparing him the pain I saw in his eyes.
“I can leave, Jack. I know what you will become and what you will do, and I can tell you now that I’m so proud of you. I’m proud that I knew you. I think it would be best if I stopped coming to you.”
He looked down and slowly back up at me again.
“No.”
“No?” I asked curiously.
“No, I don’t want you to walk away,” he replied, as he swept me up into his arms. “I want you to stay, for now. There is something I want you to see.”
He carried me through the woods, not to his home, but somewhere farther away. Finally, he put my feet down when we approached a cliff overlooking the ocean below. To the right, in the distance was a building that looked familiar.
“I brought you here to show you what I am doing with my life,” he said as he stared out toward the waves.
He sighed, preparing himself.
“While you were gone, I have done much thinking about my life. I finally freed myself from my father’s clutches, but in doing so, I fear that I caused him so much pain. Pain I never intended to cause.”
He didn’t meet my eyes, no matter how hard I tried to get him to. Instead he kept his face outward and away from me.
He deserved to be angry with me. I was just thrown for a loop by his forwardness upon seeing me and now he pushed me away. I was beyond confused. Did he want me here or not?
He said he did, but I didn’t feel welcome. He was almost cold and calculated in his actions now, not the same Jack from a year ago, that was for sure.
“My father suffered a heart attack shortly after I told him my plans for the future, the plans that I was going to become a man who made a difference, but without him. It seems fate gave me what I asked for, because he is gone.”
“Oh, Jack. I’m so sorry.” I felt instantly awful for him. “I too suffered the loss of my parents and my Gram. I never wished that for you.”
He finally turned toward me and met my gaze.
“You never talk much about your life, Emmeline. I never knew you lost so many. I suppose there is much we both do not know about one another besides lust and infatuation. Because that’s all we had between the two of us, you know?”
His words instantly gutted me, but I tried hard not to show my pain. My face remained stone even though inside I was breaking to pieces.
He never truly loved me. He was just merely infatuated with me. I was only a girl he thought he loved. The one time fling. The girl who took his virginity and made him see pleasure for one night. I was not the love of his life.
I was the fool then.
That was okay. I would play the fool if it meant that Jack would live the life he was meant to, if I didn’t disrupt his life like Jenny disrupted her lover’s. I would never wipe Jack out of existence no matter how much I wanted to beg him to tell me he loved me.
I loved him too much to ruin his life. I wouldn’t be selfish. I was selfish before when I left my life behind and moved to California. I left Gram when I should have stayed to take care of her. Maybe her life would have been longer if I stayed. I could have gotten my degree at home. It was my own personal need to be free that left her alone.
I wouldn’t do that to Jack.
“So then, why are we here?” I choked out.
“I wanted to show you that,” he said pointing to the building. “It is the future home of Ridgewell Bank and Loan. I have secured my future, Emmeline.”
His bank. That is why the building looked so familiar.
“I have seen that building before, Jack,” I told him, wide eyed. “I just saw it today, and that is why I decided to open the book. I knew I had to see you, to tell you how much you made a difference. Jack, the building is still standing.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “You saw it?”
He looked almost like a kid on Christmas. He was suddenly so happy that it threw me. He had gone from angry to delightful in the matter of seconds.
“I read that the bank and loan opens in a few years, and it survives a tumultuous time.”
I had hoped that that would bring another smile to his face, but it didn’t. He just nodded like I gave him the weather forecast. His happy mood declined.
“Well, then. I suppose I will reach my goal. I am going to do what I set out to do then. Good.”
I was so happy for him. He was going to get all that he desired and do it all without his father’s help.
“I want you to know that you didn’t kill your father, Jack. He did not die because of you.”
His eyes met mine and he looked almost empty inside. I suppose that was what was wrong with him; he was devoid of emotion.
“Doesn’t matter now anyway. You cannot bring back the dead. My mother lives with me. She’s very happy to help me in my ventures. And I have a dog, but I cannot find him, presently.”
I remembered him calling out for the dog.
“Argus?”
He nodded.
“My house is not as I wish it to be yet. It’s not the estate I plan to build, but once the bank and loan opens, it will be. I will send for all of my staff back home to join me here.”
His house was beautiful, an estate was what came to mind when I looked at it. It was as large as his home was in England. I wanted to tell him that he would become the founder of the town and it was the very town I lived in currently, but I didn’t dare make this about me.
“Your home is simply perfect, Jack.”
He shook his head and looked away again.
I was losing him. I felt it in my bones. He wasn’t the same warm, happy Jack. That Jack was gone now and in his place was a man who had focused on making a name for himself and becoming someone worthy of his father’s love, even if his father was gone.
“So you do not have to come and study me anymore. I am no longer your subject.”
I froze. “Study you?”
“Yes, this coming here and haunting me. You can stop now. I do not need you,” he said with venom. It was as harsh as someone who was shooing away a stray animal, trying to get it to leave and stay gone forever.
“Jack, don’t say that. We can still be friends, can’t we? I mean, you just held me in your arms and kissed me. Surely—”
“Surely, what, Emmeline? You think I have feelings for you?”
“Jack, please don’t. You already explained that I was just an infatuation to you. I don’t need to hear anything else.”
My head began to spin, but I fought the urge to leave like this. The tugging felt faster and more rapid.
; “I only kissed you because I was confused. That’s what you do to me, Emmeline. You confuse me into thinking that you care about me. Then you leave me. I am going to live my life without you, Emmeline. And you’re never to come back here, understand?”
My heart broke into a million pieces; I could feel it in my chest as it exploded. The pull from my time was darkening Jack’s face, and I knew I only had seconds left. I wanted to stay and work this out, but I couldn’t.
“I won’t bother you again, Jack. Goodbye.”
Twenty-Six
I fell upon my bed dry heaving. I felt Tarryn’s arms around me, but I was numb to anything else. She had helped me into bathroom as I threw up the contents in my stomach until I couldn’t any more. She ran her fingers over my hair and began to start a bath for me. I undressed, not caring that she would see me. I was in so much pain that nothing mattered.
“You were fighting the pull of time, Emme. You should have come back when you felt the first tug,” she said as she helped me get into the bath. “You were thrashing around on the bed, and at first I thought you were having a seizure. You scared me.”
I lay into the steamy hot water. “Sorry.” I couldn’t form larger sentences, so I hoped that would be enough.
“It’s all right. You look like shit, Emme. Do you want to go to the hospital?” She felt my forehead and clucked her tongue.
“No. I just want to lie here until the feeling passes.”
Tears ran down my face, and I let them come until I was dry heaving again.
“Emme, you’re freaking me out. What happened?”
Seeing Tarryn’s face and her concern for me made me tell her everything that happened, despite the lack of energy. I started with the phone call from Rose and ended at the dreadfully awful incident with Jack. That was what I would be calling it from now on. The incident where I left my broken heart in Jack’s time.
The Librarian Page 16