“I’ll give it back before then,” I promised him. “What else can you show me?”
I clutched the book to my chest and walked the rest of the tour with Jason. My ears listened to him talk about all of the plans for the place, but my mind was on the diary.
And while I wasn’t ready to leave Jason’s company, I wanted to go to my nook and read this. I fought off the feeling and made myself calm down so I could pay attention, but Jason noticed.
Of course he did, he was too smart not to.
“Well, I think I’ll end the tour here and get you home. It’s getting late and you look tired,” he said concerned.
I felt bad, but he was right. I needed a coffee and my pj’s because I had work to do.
“Sorry, Jason. I am a little tired.”
He walked me out and locked up the house. At first I thought he was upset, but as we walked the pathway back and he pulled out a flashlight and grabbed my hand, I knew he wasn’t. He was just being attentive to my needs.
Jason was a lot like Jack, yet he was this century’s version. He would never replace Jack, but he was growing into someone I liked, a lot. I wanted to keep seeing him, and I felt guilty for wanting that. I made my peace with Jack three nights ago. Even if he didn’t want to end things between us, I knew that I had said what was in my heart.
All I could do was hope that it would set in and Jack would remember what I said after he let go of all the hurt and anger he had inside of him.
Thirty-Two
I cuddled up in my nook and leaned down on the soft pillows and blankets that I had laid out. The lights in the library were all out except for the one I had on above my head. It was just enough light to brighten my nook.
I had the journal, my guidebook, and Jack’s book with me. If all went well, I could seal his book tonight and make my final entries into the guidebook. Tarryn was upstairs having a little get-together with some friends and knew I needed time alone with the journal. She met Jason after he dropped me off and walked me to the door.
She was happy to see me with him, and after he left, she said, “He’s a keeper. Hold on to him for sure, Emme.”
I blushed just thinking about it. Jason was a great guy, but I couldn’t think about a future with him until I saw Jack’s fate. He asked me out again, and I told him yes, but I needed to finish this before we set plans.
I cracked open the pages of the book and immersed myself in Jack’s stories. Before I knew it, I was pulled inside his journal, not like I would be with my historical book, but more like the fiction book I entered once.
I could have pulled off the ring and read it like any other book, but I much rather liked it this way. This way I was with him as he described the events of his life. It was like flying over him as I watched his life play out right in front of my very eyes.
And I did see his life. I saw everything that happened to him after he arrived in America and onward. I was feasting on the pages of his book and learning more about him than I had ever before. Like how he opened the bank and why he picked the location for his house. He also talked a great deal about his mother and father and friends he met along the way.
He did talk about me, which was strange to see played out, but he didn’t go into great detail. Until the day I had last visited him came and I saw the two of us standing together in the library. I tore my eyes away from the book and looked away. Tears pooled in my eyes—this was harder than I thought it would be. I ripped the ring off of my finger and read the journal like normal.
March 23, 1893
Miss Bailey came to visit me for the last time. I find that our friendship has served its purpose and I will no longer be seeing her. I often find myself wishing that she had never come to me in England, for she is an insufferable woman that has turned my world upside down. I can’t help but feel angry at her. I know it’s wrong, but I can’t stop myself.
It’s time to move on in my life and do what I was meant to do with it. She did remind me of that: my purpose here.
I stopped and fought the urge to throw the book across the room. I hated that he called me insufferable, but I reminded myself that he was angry when he wrote it. He might have seen a different view later.
I kept reading and learning about Jack’s history making this town. He continued to make progress and talked a lot about knowing loss and heartache. I hoped he was talking about losing his father, but I knew better.
Finally, I came to the entry about another woman. Her name was Lorraine, and I wanted to see her face so badly. I wanted to see the woman who would become his wife.
I put the ring back on and was immersed once again into his journal, walking side by side with the woman he would love forever.
Lorraine was beautiful. No, more than that, she was glamorous, much like the actresses in the twenties. Her blonde bombshell hair had a finger wave that fell across her face and her lips were bright red without lipstick. She had a smile that would stop you dead in your tracks and a kindness about her that radiated throughout the small yard where she stood with Jack.
When she looked at Jack, she looked at him like a woman in love. She was just what Jack deserved. I could only hope that she would be able to thaw his frozen heart.
He wrote about how beautiful she was and how everyone in the town thought they made a great pair, but never about how much he loved her.
I was thrown into another day, a day where church bells rang and Jack stood wearing a fancy brown suit that held a flower on the lapel.
It was his wedding day. I fought the feelings of jealousy inside me, telling myself that this was best. This was what Jack needed and she was perfect for him.
May 10, 1902
Today is the day that Lorraine Engel becomes my wife. I can’t help but think that I am not the man for her. I don’t deserve such a fine woman. She’s done all she can to keep me happy, even loving my mother as her own. I feel as if Lorraine could do better. I am not the man she thinks I am.
My heart sank. He still wasn’t happy. I tried to make him forget me and forget his heartbreak.
How could our short tryst be hurting him so badly? We barely knew one another, but we did feel strongly. I didn’t deny that I missed him and that I felt strongly for him. But I let the knowledge of knowing what I could have done to him to mess up his future guide me. It was what healed my hurting heart. I didn’t want my story to be like Jenny’s. I refused to leave this world and for Jack’s life to never be known just to make him happy.
I just wished he could see what I did. I tried to help him, but he refused to let go of his anger.
I read on and on as the night grew longer. Tarryn’s party upstairs quieted down, and before I knew it, she was standing in front of me holding a flashlight.
I looked up from inside the pages of Jack’s journal and I was now in my world.
“Hey,” she said as she sat down with me in my nook. “Everyone left and I came down to see how you’re doing?”
I sighed. “Not good. He’s not any happier. He got married and has a child with her.”
“Well, how does that make you feel? Do you hate her?”
I laughed. “No. Actually, she’s sort of amazing. I’m able to follow along the pages as if I’m there with them, but not the same as when I’m actually with him. I can’t talk to him.”
She thought for a minute as if trying to get her mind around the idea.
“So, it’s like watching a movie?”
I nodded. “Kind of. But I’m in the movie as it plays out in front of me. They can’t see me or hear me.”
She shivered. “That’s a little creepy. Kind of like visiting with ghosts.”
I shrugged. It was definitely an invasion of privacy, but I tried not to think about the fact that these people were, in fact, dead.
“He’s awful to his wife, and
he’s never around to see his kid. It’s not right.”
“What are you going to do, Emme? You can’t change his future and you can’t seem to heal him either. It’s a conundrum. Why don’t you come upstairs and have a drink with me. You deserve a break.”
I did deserve a break and I couldn’t watch Jack’s life any longer. I’d seen enough. He never became the nice guy I knew him to be. Instead he immersed himself in his work and left Lorraine alone basically.
“I’ll be up in a bit, I just want to put these away in the office,” I said as I emerged from my nook and stretched.
“Okay, I’ll go lie on the couch until you get done.”
The hidden room had become my office of all things Librarian. I had alphabetized all of the books my ancestors read through and even added Jack’s book. I put pictures of Tarryn and me up on the wall along with the other Librarians. We deserved a place there now.
I slipped Jack’s journal next to Jack’s book, and as I shoved it on the shelf, another book came tumbling down. I knelt down and picked it up.
It was Grace’s last book, the one I met her in. I realized then that all the other finished books had seals along the edges, but this one didn’t. I ran my fingers along the spine and realized then what I had to do. I wasn’t going to change Jack’s broken heart by going back and talking to him. I couldn’t help him by doing that, but I could help him by changing everything from the very beginning. I had to talk to Grace and Mr. Lockhart first.
Thirty-Three
Lockhart smiled widely at me as I stumbled inside his time. He was sitting alone, on a veranda, sipping tea.
“Emmeline, how lovely to see you,” he said. “Tea?”
I laughed. It was so strange, but it was like he was expecting me. At the table sat a single tea-service, waiting for me.
I sat at the small table across from him. I looked out beyond the veranda and saw that we were not at the Ridgewell Manor but somewhere else.
“Where are we?” I dared to ask.
He chuckled. “You mean, when are we?”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“Doesn’t it look familiar to you?” He waved his hand and I looked again. We were in Maine sitting on a balcony that I never knew existed, before now, in the library’s building.
“This is your perfume shop, correct?”
He laughed again. Lockhart was a happy guy, he sure liked to laugh.
“I have a confession to make. My perfume shop was just a cover. I actually have many science experiments going and have been performing those for some time now,” he admitted. “This is the very place where I wrote the formula to time-travel. I learned that traveling through time was never going to work by just simply riding in a machine or, rather, willing yourself there. You needed a form of transportation and the safest way was by book.”
I leaned in. I was so intrigued and felt so special to be learning all that Harold Lockhart created.
“I wrote the formula in the pages of a book to keep track of them. And merely by accident, after creating the stones all of you preservers wear, did I travel through time.”
I was confused. “But if you wrote the pages in a plain book, then when did you travel to?”
He tapped his nose. “You caught on! You’re very observant, Emmeline. You see, I didn’t have any blank pages left, so I grabbed a book off of a shelf. It was my favorite book about Abraham Lincoln. I absently held the stone inside my hands as I wrote, and before I knew it, BAM!”
I jumped.
“I was sitting in a room next to him. I realized after meeting the man I admired that I had a gift. Not only to travel through time periods, but to meet our histories’ finest leaders and mentors throughout the world. I could see all things built, the wonders of the world even. But I couldn’t keep this gift secret. I had to share it and teach others to preserve these stories about these fine people.
“It was important that we find the truth in their histories and their lives. I knew we had to preserve the books in such a way that no one could just simply grab them off the shelves; they had to be kept in pristine condition. So I created The Librarians and their libraries. I trusted my dear friend, Grace Bailey, to keep my secret. She tried to travel and I was pleased that she could do it. I attributed that to her fine family upbringing. I trusted her to help me find others in her family who would do it as well. And we had our Librarians. The Bailey family women were the only women I trusted could hold this gift. Bailey women are strong, Emmeline. You hold a power within you to travel.”
“After we travel, how does the truth become reported?” I asked.
“Well, you do know that when we travel the words are recorded on the pages, making them true recordings of our time there. Our job was simple: record the findings and report them to the Historical Society of Libraries. Sealing the books before they are sent ensures that the findings aren’t breached.”
Oh. I didn’t know I was supposed to send my books away. I was still learning about the facts, and it seemed I had things to do.
“Someone will contact you when it’s time to send your books to the HSL, Emmeline. Don’t worry too much, my dear.”
I sipped the now cold tea, but I didn’t care. I had learned the hows and whys that have always bothered me about my family’s gift. All from the man himself. Harold Lockhart was a fabulous man who had created a wonderful gift for my family.
I gulped and remembered why I had come in the first place. I hated to tell him. I felt ashamed.
“Emmeline, I know why you are here,” he said, shocking me once again.
I looked up from my teacup. “How could you?”
“He laughed. I just do. I am a man of science, my dear, but I recognize the look of someone who has a burden. And you, you have that look,” he said as he tapped the air and pointed at me. “Now tell me.”
I took in a deep breath, nerves running through me, and I told him everything. Not keeping anything hidden, for fear that it might somehow alter his remedy for helping me. I needed to leave nothing out.
And Lockhart didn’t judge me or gasp in shock at what I had done to alter Jack’s life. Instead he only nodded and listened intently.
When I was done, he rang a little bell and a maid came around the corner and took our service away from the table. I never knew that he had maids, or could afford them, even. But Harold probably needed all the help he could get in keeping his life running. Scientists are often drowning in their own work, and maybe he was too.
When she disappeared around the corner, he got up from the table and held out his hand. I took it and he led me down a set of stairs without saying a word. I was dying to see what he thought or what he could do to help me, but I tried to be patient.
We came to a small room and I recognized it as what was now my office. He pulled a book off of the same shelf that was built into the wall in my office.
“This is how you’re going to fix your situation, Emmeline. I think you know what you need to do, don’t you?”
I didn’t want to say it out loud, but I did know.
“I do.”
“You will take this book and you will fix it now, Emmeline. You will change everything in doing this. And after you have done so, you will be back in your own time. I will make it so. Now, you must go.”
I took the book and held it against me. “Will I ever see you again?”
He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But remember this one thing.”
“Yes?”
“We are there to observe, not to change. It’s easy to get attached to these fine people, but you must be like a shadow. Moving alongside them, but never forming relationships with them. You can’t be their friend, but you can be their acquaintance. You are there to learn, only.”
I nodded. “I understand, sir.”
“Good girl.” H
e patted my arm. “Now, you best be on your way.”
I pulled the book from my body and opened it.
****
I could see a floor and that I was lying on it. My face was smashed into it, along with bread crumbs and, there it was again, that darn rat poop. I sat up, this time not as slowly as the first.
The heat from the hot kitchen engulfed me again and I smiled. I stood up and saw her, the stout old woman with her hair in a loose bun. She looked at me in surprise and then shrieked, “Where did you come from, eh?”
“It’s good to see you too, Nancy,” I said with a smile.
“I have half a mind to grab my broom and whip you with it, lass. Don’t you talk to me like you know me. Now, tell me who ya are and why you’re in my kitchen.”
I held up my hand with the ring on it and Nancy’s eyes widened.
“Where did you get tha’?”
“I got it from Mr. Lockhart,” I said, this time with full confidence in my voice. “I’ve come to join your beautiful celebration of Jack’s going away party.”
She smiled and stepped back. “I never thought I’d see that ring again. Mr. Lockhart was a kind man. And that Miss Bailey, so beautiful.”
“Yes, she was. Now, if you’d be so kind to help me change into something more fitting?”
She put her ladle down and helped me up the stairs. This time I knew where to go and I took off my clothes without any defiance. Nancy laced me up in a corset and pulled the same exact dress from the last time I was here, the mauve dress that took my breath away. I pulled it up and tried stepping into it, but she stopped me, again.
“I know, you’ll do this part.”
I let her help me into the dress and again she told me the story of the dress.
“This is the finest dress from France and was meant for Miss Everly to wear, but she passed last month.”
The Librarian Page 20