Once in a Blue Moon

by Kathryn Kelly

  Maybe Augustus was right. Maybe America did need to move on and forget about this time in its history. It was like treating someone with PTSD, she mused. Sometimes it was best to put the incident out of mind and move on. Yes, Augustus was onto something. When… if… when she got back to her time, she would write a paper on that. She’d write that the Civil War needed to be put aside and America needed to move ahead.

  Pleased with her thoughts, she studied her reflection in the full-length mirror. She noticed a smile on her face.

  And realized that she was happy. She was truly happy.

  She had no cell phone. No computer. No electricity. No car. None of the things that were deemed important in the twenty-first century.

  Who would have thought that she’d have to travel over one hundred fifty years to find happiness?

  Chapter 48

  Augustus stood on the veranda and watched his men. He smoked a pipe someone had given him along with a rare pouch of tobacco.

  He’d made a decision.

  A decision that made him ecstatic and terrified all at once.

  He wanted to take Arabella home with him. He wanted to show her where he had grown up and where he lived with his family. He wanted her to meet his family. For her to get to know them and them to get to know her. He wanted her to be part of his life. Forever.

  In fact, it had gotten to the point that he could no longer imagine his life without her. He could barely remember not knowing her and even now in the midst of this horrid war, he could squint just a little and imagine that instead of soldiers moving about the back lawn, that it was their children who played and laughed. With her, he found himself imagining all sorts of things that had nothing to do with this war.

  August had decided to ask for Arabella’s hand in marriage.

  Chapter 49

  It was going to rain again. The torrential rains these past few days left them all cooped up inside. Fortunately, the rain brought cooler temperatures with it. Even a breeze now and then. There were dark clouds forming to the west. There was a storm brewing.

  Arabella had stepped outside for some fresh air. They’d just lost another one – a man whose amputated leg had become infected. It was a terrible way to go. He’d spent the last days of his life mourning the loss of his limb. This was a most horrible war.

  She stood on the veranda and stared unseeing down the dirt road. It had been paved when she drove up. If that wasn’t a clue that she was in a different time, nothing was.

  She was tired, surviving on mere hours of sleep at a time. There were so many to care for and so few to do the caring. She and Augustus carried the load. He treated the wounds and she treated their hearts.

  It was funny how foreign psychology was. She’d known it was a new science – in her time – but seeing the world before was so very odd. Though he didn’t get the concept, Augustus seemed to appreciate what she was doing for the men. Just this morning, she’d held a man’s hand while Augustus performed an amputation. She still couldn’t watch him cutting on anyone with his evil looking saw, but she was getting used to the sounds – unenviable progress.

  She noticed a movement in the distance. Even now there was someone coming down the road. It was another wounded soldier making his way toward them. Somehow word had gotten out and there was always another soldier to care for.

  With Vicksburg under siege, they were the next safe haven for those outside the walls.

  Arabella knew that some of the men they treated were Yankees. Augustus knew it, too, but neither of them talked about it. She wasn’t sure anyone even cared anymore. Everyone was tired. Tired from the sickness and death that surrounded them. They all just wanted it to end.

  She leaned against the nearest white column and watched the soldier approaching. He wasn’t an ordinary soldier. He was an officer. She recognized the uniform and the way he carried himself. Yet he was alone and he was walking, albeit with a limp.

  When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and gazed up at her.

  He didn’t speak. Instead he peered at her with that same intensity that she’d first encountered with Villars. It was as though he recognized her.

  The wind swept her hair across her cheeks and she pulled it back and held it with one hand.

  The raindrops began falling as the man stood staring at her.

  “Come.” She motioned with her hand for him to come up to the veranda. “You’ll be soaked.”

  He didn’t move and for a moment she thought he might be suffering from a PTSD flashback or as they called it here, shellshock.

  His eyes still locked onto hers, he took one step up. It was raining now.

  She couldn’t allow this man to stand there when he could be underneath the shelter of the veranda. He was obviously not well to begin with. Standing in the rain would only make it worse.

  She pulled her skirts up over her ankles and walked down the steps, took his arm, and tugged gently. He stayed frozen in place. She looked up, her hair and clothes getting soaked by the moment and met his gaze. He was older than she – perhaps in his mid-fifties. His face wore the shadow of a beard, but it was his eyes that caught her attention.

  His eyes looked familiar.

  She shook off the sensation. Her great-grandmother’s influence was ever present.

  There was no way that she could know someone living in this time. The thought was so ridiculous that she laughed out loud.

  Then the man swayed and began to fall. She tried, but she couldn’t stop him. He was too heavy. He’d fainted. And he pulled her down with him.

  Chapter 50

  Augustus heard a commotion out back. It wasn’t the usual commotion – the one men make just being men. Besides he knew Arabella had gone outside to get some air.

  He dropped the needle he’d been threading and dashed toward the back, his long legs eating up the space, his heart pumping furiously.

  When he saw her on the ground, pushing at the soldier pinning her down, his first thought was the he was about to have to kill someone.

  But as he flew down the stairs, he realized that the man had passed out and Arabella was merely trying to disengage herself.

  The soldier was big, at least as big as he was, but he managed to roll him over and then helped Arabella pull her skirt free.

  “What happened?”

  “He fainted. I don’t think he’s well.”

  “Go find someone to help me get him inside.” The rain was coming down in torrents now and Augustus could barely see with the rain splashing in his eyes.

  Arabella dashed up the stairs and disappeared inside. Augustus tried to give the man a cursory examination, but all he could really tell was that he had a pulse.

  A minute later, two soldiers grabbed him up and hauled him inside the house. All of them walked through dripping water onto the hardwood floors. They put him in the study and Arabella reluctantly went upstairs to change out of her dress. She could barely move around in all those skirts soaked as she was.

  Augustus determined that the man had an infection in his leg. He sat back and sighed. That would mean another amputation.

  The man blinked and opened his eyes. “Home.” The word came on parched lips.

  “Yes,” Augustus agreed. “You’re inside.”

  The man shook his head. “Home.” He insisted before his eyes closed again.

  Chapter 51

  Arabella had been through so many dresses she’d lost count. It was a good thing the lady of the house had lots of clothes. And it was good thing they were the same size.

  It would all make sense if she were truly Ericka, Arabella’s mother. But no matter how much she tried to make sense of that, she couldn’t wrap her head around it.

  It makes as much sense as you being here in 1863.

  Every time her thoughts bumped up against the whole notion, she hit a wall. It just wasn’t plausible. It was too much to accept that she had travelled through time, much less that her mother was here in this century still living.


  She toweled off her hair and combed it through. She hated for Augustus to see her looking like a soaked rat. But there was no time for it to dry. Not with a new patient downstairs. One who obviously was going to need some type of treatment.

  After putting on a green dress with a black sash, she put on her pair of boots, and headed back downstairs. A group of soldiers were playing cards and telling jokes. At least their morale was good. She’d never thought about the extent of boredom for the wounded and healthy alike during the days they were waiting for their next order.

  She stepped into the study and found Augustus scowling at the man’s leg. She inhaled sharply. Even she could see the beginning signs of infection spreading from his injury.

  “It’s bad.” She tugged the man’s knapsack off his back to allow him to lie back more comfortably. “I wonder how far he walked.”

  “There’s no telling. Men will walk all across the country just to make their way home.”

  “It’s like an instinct.” She mused, kneeling next to the man and wiping dirt from his face. The thought came back unbidden. He looked familiar. “How long can you wait before you have to amputate?” She asked him that every time. She’d asked him to try other treatment methods, but he insisted it was the only way to keep them alive. Many died anyway.

  Augustus sat on the desk, studying the man from across the room. He shook his head and swiped his wet hair off his face. “I don’t know.” His voice sounded defeated. Resigned. “Three days at the longest.”

  She always asked him what the longest time was. “But you want to do it now.”

  “I don’t want to do it. But I know it’s inevitable.”

  “There’s got to be another way.” The words were automatic and she no longer even expected him to respond.

  “I wish to God above there was.”

  She looked at him sharply. “There is.”

  “My eternal optimist.”

  Every time she came close to telling him where… when she was from, he gave her an excuse not to. He’d picked up a book from the desk and flipped through the pages.

  Arabella turned back and continued to study the man’s features.

  The man blinked and opened his eyes. He held her gaze. His lips curved in a smile. Perhaps he was dreaming.

  “Arabella,” he whispered.

  Chapter 52

  Augustus heard Arabella fall back onto her backside and was off the desk in an instant. What had happened now?

  The man’s eyes were open.

  Arabella tried to stand, but kept stepping on her skirts, pulling her back to the floor.

  “Here.” He took her arms. “Here. Let me help you. What happened?”

  He helped her stand, but she didn’t take her eyes off the man. Her eyes were wide and she watched him warily as she would a rabid dog.

  “Did he hurt you?”

  That seemed to jar her out of the trance. “No. No, of course not.”

  “What then? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I have.”

  “Arabella.” The man said more loudly.

  Augustus looked at her. “You know this man?”

  “No.” She shook her head.

  “He knows you.”

  Her fingertips were digging into his arm as she held onto him. “I have to…” She stopped. Glanced at him, then back at the man on the floor. “I have to do something.”

  With that, she gathered up her skirts and ran from the room.

  Augustus watched her leave, then turned to his patient.

  “Whiskey.”

  Augustus scoffed. “What I would give for a swig right now.”

  The man scanned the room and attempted to sit up.

  “Whoa. We’ll get you dried off and something to eat before you try to get up.” He picked up a towel and handed it to the man.

  He wiped his face and ran the towel over his hair. “There.” He pointed. “On the third shelf from the top. There’s a bottle of whiskey.”

  Augustus suspected the man had been become addled from the infection.

  “Just look.” He insisted.

  Augustus went to where the man pointed, moved some books aside, and there he found a bottle of whiskey. He slid it off the shelf and turned questioningly back to the wounded soldier.

  “Charles Becquerel,” he said. “This is my house.”

  Chapter 53

  Arabella ran upstairs, nearly losing her footing. She could barely see through the tears that glazed her eyes. No. It can’t be. She repeated the phrase over and over as she ran.

  She reached her room, threw open the trunk and pulled out the picture of the little family. She missed inside lighting probably more than anything else. With the clouds, there was no light coming from outside either.

  She took the picture with her to the bedside and held it near the candlelight.

  “I need a magnifying glass.”

  She looked around for something that might magnify. My phone!

  She dashed to the bureau where she’d hidden her phone and switched it on. It still had twenty percent.

  Propping the picture beneath the candle, she took a picture as close she could get it. Then she went into her phone, zoomed in, and could see their features much more clearly.

  “Her eyes are like mine. And our lips are the same.” They even had the same little freckle on their left cheek.

  She scanned over to the image of the man. “And I have his nose.” That’s why he looked familiar.

  She sat back on the bed, staring at the picture on her phone. The man had seen the resemblance to the woman. Except for their noses, they were mirror images.

  It was true then.

  Her parents lived.

  Chapter 54

  Augustus found Arabella in her room, sitting in the middle of her bed, staring at… something. Perhaps the photograph he’d seen her looking at more often than he knew.

  She was staring so intently she didn’t hear him come in.

  He peered over her shoulder. She was looking at the images, but they were bigger and on some kind of glass. He watched as she put her fingers on the glass and the images got even bigger.

  He must have made a sound because she gasped and hid it behind her.

  “What is that?”

  “Nothing.” Her answer came quickly telling him it was something.

  “Let me see.”

  “No. I can’t.”

  Witchcraft had been discredited. Hadn’t it? “Are you a witch then?”

  She scoffed. “You know better.”

  “How?”

  “If I were a witch, your patients wouldn’t die.”

  “Good point.” He waited, watching her expectantly, but she didn’t budge. “So can I see?”

  She brought the glass out and held it up for him. He’d been right. It was the same picture. “How?”

  “It’s a camera. I took a picture of the picture.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She hesitated, then said. “Here. Let me show you.” She leaned toward him, pressing her cheek against his, held the glass in front of them to show their reflections and touched it.

  Then she showed him the glass. There was an image of the two of them on it. He reached out as though to touch it, but pulled his hand back.

  “It’s okay. You can hold it.” Holding it by its sides, she handed him the glass.

  He took it from her, careful not to touch the reflective glass. “Will it disappear if you touch the image?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “How long will it stay this way?”

  “Not much longer, I’m afraid.”

  “But you touched it before.”

  She sighed. “Yes. But very lightly.” She put two fingers on it and suddenly his image was the only one there and it was much bigger.

  He stared at his reflection. “I need to shave.”

  She laughed.

  Then suddenly the picture dimmed. And a second later, it faded completely, leav
ing only a black mirror. She took it from his hands. “It’s out of energy.”

  “What gives it energy?”

  Thunder rumbled in the distance as she seemed to consider. “It’s like kerosene for a lantern. Only it’s able to hold onto energy for a few minutes without the flame. Then it goes out.”

  He frowned. “How does it get more energy?”

  She glanced at the window. “Sunlight. So it won’t work now.” She put it in her skirt pocket.

  “Oh, I came up here to tell you something about our newest patient.”

  She looked into his eyes. “His name is Charles Becquerel and I think he’s my father.”

  Chapter 55

  Arabella wiped her hands on her skirt as she walked down the hallway with Augustus. Her hoop skirt swayed slightly. She was getting the hang of maneuvering the hoops. When they reached the top of the landing, the grandfather clock began tolling the hour.

  She was nervous. It was very likely that she was about to meet her father. The father she had believed to be dead her whole life.

  It was strange though that he didn’t seem particularly surprised to see her. She would have to ponder that further, but right now her heart was beating too fast for her to think straight. As they reached the landing, a flash of lightening shot through the window in front of them. Arabella grabbed Augustus’ hand and jumped back.

  “It’s all right. The …” He assured her. But the rumble of thunder drowned out the rest of his words.

  They continued down the stairs as the storm crashed around them. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the grandfather clock chimed the eighth time, but its echo lingered as they passed in front of it.