They sat, alone and unspeaking, soaking up the brief pleasure of each other’s presence for as long as they could until Rowan, Tater squirming in his arms, came to the door.
“It’s time,” he said softly.
Ella pulled Halima into a fierce hug, her own tears stinging her eyes. “I’ll never forget you, Halima,” she repeated. “You were my first mother. You’ll always be my first.”
When Ella walked away from Halima and the townhouse where she and Rowan had been so happy for the last four years, she was assaulted with a razor-sharp moment of panic.
Were they right to leave? Would life in 2014 work for them?
And then she remembered there was a woman eighty-nine years in the future who was mourning her—as only a mother could. Ella couldn’t even imagine what it must feel like to lose a child. To wave goodbye to a dear son or daughter and then never to see them again.
In the end, the passage back was the easiest one of them all. Because they’d waited nearly eight months to go, neither Ella nor Rowan felt any ill effects from the travel. And little Tater, after initially crying at the feeling of headache and nausea that the process always prompted, had already forgotten the experience. Ella wasn’t sure when Tater would be too old to travel in tandem with her and Rowan—or even if he’d inherited the gift to do so alone. Only time would tell.
Ella held the three-year-old’s hand while Rowan purchased three one-way tickets to Atlanta, Georgia at Cairo International Airport. She looked at her surroundings with one hand covering her mouth in amazement. The fast-food kiosks, the clothing, the frenetic pace of people’s speech and movement. It was going to take awhile to get used to how fast—and loud—everything was in 2014.
She waited until they landed in Atlanta before calling her parents, and even then she didn’t have the nerve to do it herself. It had been two years since that Mother’s Day photo was taken. What if her mother had died in the meantime? Or they’d moved? In Ella’s pre-Key West timeline, her widowed father married Susie ten years after Ella’s mother’s death. After raising Ella in Atlanta, the two then moved to Tampa.
She wasn’t sure how she was so sure, but she just knew her parents were still in Atlanta. She sat in one of the airport seats at Hartsfield holding her sleepy toddler while Rowan used one of the public phones in baggage claim, but she was so nervous it was all she could do to sit still.
“What did they say?” she asked, getting up and running to Rowan when he returned from the baggage claim area.
“Well,” Rowan said, scratching his head. “They were pretty blown away, I have to tell you. We’re like raised from the dead as far as their concerned. Honestly, there was a lot of crying and not a whole lot of talking.”
Ella stared at him. “They?”
Rowan took the baby out of her arms and pulled her into a hug. “I talked to your Mom, babe,” he said. “She’s alive and she’s screaming she’s so excited to see you again.” He jostled the baby, who put his head down on his father’s shoulder as if to nap. “I didn’t even get far enough to tell ‘em about this little guy. Come on, let’s get a taxi.”
He had talked to her. He had talked to my mother. Ella felt her legs stiffen as if she’d forgotten how to walk. Rowan turned when he realized she wasn’t with him.
“El? You okay?”
“What did she say, Rowan?” she said, her eyes filling with tears once more. “I can’t believe you talked to her. How did she sound?”
“Well, she sounded Southern, which kinda surprised me since she was born in Germany, but I guess she’s been over here long enough to pick it up.”
“That’s not what I mean!”
Rowan took her by the hand and tugged her along after him. “Come on, let’s talk and walk. She sounded hysterical because I think they thought they’d never see us again, you know? But good hysterical, if that makes sense. She sounds very sweet, El. But let’s go and you’ll see for yourself.”
Ella stumbled along behind him, the maze and frenetic energy of the crowd in the international concourse of the Atlanta airport bustling around her like demented ants on a sugar cube.
“Wait! Did you…did you call your own folks?”
“I did,” he said, pulling her onto the down escalator that led to ground transport. “My mother cried but my Dad was cool. Yeah, then he cried. I told him we were heading to your folks’ place and he and Mom are going to meet us there. They just couldn’t wait.”
“Of course,” Ella said. “And what are we telling everyone? That we were doing missionary work? Is that believable?”
“It is if you don’t curse very much.”
“Oh, very funny.”
“And it would help if Tater doesn’t curse very much.”
Her parents still lived in the brick traditional that Ella had grown up in. Quickly supplanting her old memories of living in that house with Susie, her stepmother, were images of gardening with her mother, riding her bike with both her parents down the tree-lined lane, and walking to the little elementary school two blocks over, her hand snugly in the hand of the tall auburn-haired beauty who laughed like bells on the wind and spoke with a delicate German accent.
When they arrived, the front door swung open before Ella could even shut the taxi door behind her. Her mother appeared in the opening. The minute Ella saw her, tall and willowy, one hand to her mouth as if she would burst into tears, she knew she had always known her.
“Mama!” she called, glancing quickly at Rowan who held the baby.
“Go on,” he urged.
She ran to the front door, stopping just short of reaching her and stumbled, her eyes clouded with tears. Her mother gathered her into her arms, moaning her joy into Ella’s hair and rocking her from side-to-side. “Mein liebling,” she whispered. “My precious, precious girl.”
Ella smelled her mother’s perfume and images of sunny fall days in the Georgia mountains, sipping cocoa at Christmas and splashing in the surf on family vacations came back to her as intensely and perfectly as if they’d just happened.
“Oh, Mama,” she said, her throat aching with the need to sob. “I’ve missed you so much.”
When Rowan’s parents arrived, the emotional reunion was replayed again. Rowan’s mother wept and clung to him and wouldn’t allow little Tater—or James, as she insisted on calling him—out of her lap. Rowan’s father kept clapping his hand on Rowan’s shoulder, as if trying to convince himself Rowan was real and not an apparition.
Ella’s own father, after a very blubbery greeting, spent most of the rest of the visit making and serving barbecue, baked beans, corn bread, angel rolls, Brunswick stew and gallons of sugar-sweet tea. One thing Ella knew about her dad was that food was love. Watching him in the kitchen, sniffling and unable to take his eyes off her or his new little grandson, she knew tonight’s meal would be well salted.
When they put the baby down for the night and Rowan’s parents left after extracting promises for Rowan and the baby to come to them the following day, Ella’s father and Rowan sat down in front of the television set. Although she knew Rowan hadn’t missed it much in the last four years, she understood his fascination with it after such a long time without it. She reminded herself to tease him about it later.
She and her mother went to the screened-in porch with two cups of peppermint tea. Because Ella had been so focused on seeing her mother for the first time, she hadn’t spared much time for the many startling examples of the fact they were really back. It amazed her how quickly everything could be done. Her father’s feast, the piping hot cups of tea—in any flavor Ella could wish for. She drank her tea and listened to the sounds of the night birds in her mother’s garden, as she had done all her childhood long.
How can something feel so familiar and yet so foreign? The furniture was rearranged differently, the art on the walls were not the same. For a moment, Ella found herself thinking of the stepmother she’d shared twelve Christmases with. Although she’d never been particularly close to Susie, the woman had
been a part of Ella’s life and had, in her way, loved Ella. Where is Susie now, I wonder?
“We thought we’d lost you, Ella.”
Ella looked at her mother. Her face was lined and tan from years spent gardening under the Georgia sun, but her eyes were clear and blue and youthful. Ella didn’t think she would ever get her fill of looking at her.
“I know,” she said. “Communication was impossible and I hated for you not to know what happened to us. That was the worst part of the whole experience.”
“I’m still a little confused about what the experience was.”
The minute her mother spoke the words Ella was surprised she hadn’t thought of it before: Did her mother know about traveling through time too?
“Well, I’ll explain what I know of it another time, if that’s okay.”
Her mother took her hand. “All that matters is that you’re back,” she said, her eyes gleaming with love and joy. “And you’re staying?”
Ella nodded. “That’s the plan.”
“Thank you, mein Gott. And you’ve brought me a grandson. Little Tater is absolutely gorgeous, Ella. You know he is the spitting image of my father.”
Ella spilled her tea on her slacks and placed the cup down.
“Do…do I really know much about him?” she asked, watching her mother in the half-gloom of the porch, lit only by a small lamp.
“Oh, I’m sure I’ve told you stories about Grandpa Rudy,” her mother said, smiling. “He was such a character.”
“Did I ever meet him?”
“Yes, of course, darling. Or rather, he met you. He and your grandmother flew all the way from Bonn just to see you when you were born. Which was amazing in itself since your grandfather hated to travel.”
“Really?”
“My father loved children, but you were clearly something special to him. Until this very day when God gave you back to me, I considered it one of the singular graces of my life that he was able to hold you—his only grandchild—in his arms before he died.”
“When did he die?”
“A few months after returning to Germany with my mother. He had a coronary playing stickball with some children in the street. Can you imagine? Stickball at his age. He was such a rascal. I’m sorry you didn’t know him. There were those who said my father could be a difficult man—and I understand he was ruthless in business, and perhaps not consistently honest—but he always had a smile on his face and he told the most marvelous stories.”
“I’ll bet.”
“It’s funny that we got to talking about him,” her mother said, pushing a folded square of tissue paper across the patio table to Ella. “I had four years of wishing I’d given this to you before you left and I don’t want to wait a minute longer.”
“What is it?” Ella said, picking up the little tissue packet. When she opened the flap, a gold necklace fell into her lap.
“It’s a family heirloom,” her mother said, smiling at Ella. “My father gave it to my mother, who gave it to me. It’s time you had it.”
Ella picked up the delicate necklace with trembling fingers and saw the insignia of the intersecting hearts superimposed over a large V.
“Thank you, Mama,” she said, her voice strong but full of emotion. “I will treasure it always.”
The End
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Note: If you discovered Race to World’s End, which is Book 3 in the series, and liked it well enough to find out what happened to Rowan and Ella before this point, I hope you’ll check out Book, A Trespass in Time, and Book 2, Journey to the Lost Tomb.
Race to World’s End
Copyright 2014
San Marco Press
While you’re waiting for Book 4 in the Rowan & Ella series, here’s a taste of another wild romp you might want to discover, Murder in Nice:
Lanie sipped her glass of red wine. The majestic Hotel Negresco filled the view from her small balcony at the Soho Hotel that faced the busy Promenade des Anglais.
She noticed the familiar silhouette of the Negresco even before taking in the curve of the brilliantly blue Mediterranean as it outlined the dramatic stretch of umbrella-dotted beach. To be sure, she thought, the view must be every bit as remarkable from the Negresco—that grand dame of luxury and British superiority. But, as she’d asked Bob last spring when they’d booked the tour: would you rather stay in a landmark or gaze upon it?
In the end she’d gotten her way, but not because the idiot cared one way or the other. She shook her head. How the man had risen to become the preeminent travel guru of the Western world she would never understand.
The truth was, the man wouldn’t know a pourboire from a po’boy. Lanie retreated from the balcony.
If one more person comes simpering up to me to say how nice Nice is, I shall vomit on their Louis Vuittons. She dropped her robe on the carpeted floor before walking to the bathroom, where she gave her appearance in the bathroom mirror a quick, satisfied look before turning off the water cascading into the bathtub. She poured herself another glass of wine, set the bottle on the floor next to the tub, and slipped into the soothing, fragrant hot water.
After the tour’s recent drive through Provence, Lanie was officially sick of the smell of lavender, but if she wanted bubbles in her tub tonight she would have to endure it.
God, the French think they invented the stuff…and everything else decent. She made a face as she leaned back into the tub and tried to get comfortable.
As the tension left her shoulders she had to admit it hadn’t been a terrible trip so far. Bob had promised her the bulk of the presentations and he’d been true to his word—even without having to sleep with him. The thought was disgusting. Bob Randall was heavyset and continually flushed. She couldn’t imagine how they managed to color correct his face in post-production.
She noticed, however, none of it stopped that whore Dee-Dee from coming on to him.
The fact was, this trip to the south of France was critical to all of them—three travel guides vying for one slot as co-anchor on Randall’s crazy-successful video travelogue series, Americans Love Europe. The ten-day trip along the Côte d’Azur was the audition that would launch one of them—her, Dee-Dee or that skank Frog, Desiree—into the most coveted, career-making position in travel reporting.
She took a sip of her wine and let out a sigh. Maybe she would sleep with Randall. With everything at stake, now was probably not the best time to get all moral and pure. If she was careful, Olivier need never know…
She heard a sound from the bedroom.
She held her breath and looked at the closed bathroom door, wine glass still in hand. What was it she heard? A muted creak from a floorboard giving way to a stealthy footstep? The sound of one of the pigeons venturing from the balcony into the room in search of crumbs? Did these old hotels creak and groan for no reason? She strained to listen, but the sound didn’t repeat. What was it Bob had said? There had been a recent upswing in attacks against tourists in Nice. Just enough to make her a little edgy…and ruin a perfectly nice bath. After a moment, she let out the breath she was holding. She likely hadn’t heard anything at all, she reasoned.
When she heard the sound again, it registered in her brain as a definite creak…coming from the bedroom. She sat up straight in the tub. As she listened to the accelerated drubbing of her heart pounding in her ears, Lanie suddenly remembered she had given Bob a key. But was this the sort of thing he would do? Just enter her room without calling first?
She stared at the closed bathroom door. There had been no reason to lock it. Frankly, she was surprised she had even bothered to shut it. Could she have imagined the sound a second time? Perhaps it was the noise from the street?
She saw the doorknob of the bathroom door begin to slowly turn.
“Hello?” she called, hearing the panic in her voi
ce. “Who’s there?”
When the door opened a dark figure filled the space, backlit against the balcony door.
“Oh, it’s you,” Lanie said with a sigh. “Did you get lost?”
The dark shape lunged at her. Lanie scrambled to stand up in the slick, soapy water and collided with her attacker, falling backward with a splash.
She gasped and tried to gain purchase in the slippery interior, slick with soap. She clutched at the figure’s jacket. Her legs slipped out from under her and strong arms pushed Lanie backward. She tried again to get to her knees, but an explosion of pain slammed into her head. Bright vibrating stars obliterated her vision. They faded slowly to black, taking all sound with them. All, that is, but the soft popping of the lavender bubbles.
One
“He needs a hat, Laurent.” Maggie stood on the threshold of the French doors, her arms crossed, and watched her husband read the newspaper on the patio while jiggling the baby absentmindedly on his knee.
“He’s fine,” Laurent said without looking up.
“It’s too hot out here for him.” Maggie frowned and took a step onto the patio from the coolness of the house. As she often told her friends back home in Atlanta, summer in Provence alternated between blazing hot and so-hot-you-could-die.
“Bon,” Laurent said, depositing the baby on the slate flooring under the table. “He is in the shade now.”
“Laurent, no!” Maggie yelped as she ran to the baby and scooped him up off the ground. “There’s God knows what under there. Scorpions, rat droppings…”
Laurent had yet to look away from his newspaper. “As you wish.”
Maggie brushed the baby’s chubby knees in case any hint of sand or dirt had attached. She snuggled him close and kissed his neck, which prompted the nine-month-old to giggle.
Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3) Page 28