Wakening the Past: A Time Travel Romance
Book Two in the Medicine Stick, Oklahoma Trilogy
Barbara Bartholomew
Wakening the Past
Published by Barbara Bartholomew at Amazon Kindle
Copyright 2014 by Barbara Bartholomew
Cover by Cover Shot Creations
Books by the Author
The House Near the River
The Ghost and Miss Hallam (Lavender series)
Letters From Another Town (Lavender series)
Leaving Lavender (Lavender series)
Lavender Blue (Lavender series)
By The Bay
At This Time of Year (novella)
Nightmare Kingdom
Wrong Face in the Mirror (Medicine Stick series)
Wakening the Past (Medicine Stick series)
Bobbi and the Bootlegger (Medicine Stick series)
For Younger Readers
The Time Keeper (Timeways series)
Child of Tomorrow (Timeways series)
When Dreamers Cease to Dream (Timeways series)
The Second Jeep Harris
Dreams of Earth
Finding Endymion
Royal Blood
Princess Alice
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Epilogue
Prologue
Even after months back home in California, Bobbi tossed uneasily too many nights, caught in nightmares where a crazed-looking woman with a gun in her hand was threatening a familiar red-haired woman she knew by the name of Stacia.
Somehow she was nowhere, nothing, caught in between, and she heard a horrified male voice call, “No!”
Time suspended as she saw a finger begin to squeeze a trigger. This was her fault, not because she had encouraged Ray Forrester’s attentions in any way, but just by being in Medicine Stick, choosing to linger there where she, who had so little in the way of family, had come to love Helen, Mom and Dad, and the boys. For the first time, she’d belonged in a big family and been surrounded by friends and neighbors in a small close community, and had fallen in love.
She’d stolen Stacia’s life and not been anxious to return to her own. And now Stacia stood, about to be the innocent victim of her choices.
Deliberately Hart made her move. She shoved Stacia from her body and took her place.
And felt the bullet hit her forehead.
Chapter One
Hart decided you had to be a resident of western Oklahoma to have your spirits lifted by trudging through puddles of cold water in the third day of epic rainfall in gray February. She smiled to herself as she huddled under her coat to walk past the guards and enter the state prison where she worked as librarian, envisioning fields soaking up water and long-dry ponds filling to the brim.
Everybody she met talked about the weather, bragging about the inches of water in their rain gauges. Wichita County was in a collective spirit of rejoicing after three years of soul-sucking drought that had reduced the normally arid region to near desert status.
Even the guards were joking and cheerful as they escorted her to her library where prisoners who saw little of the outside world also seemed mildly elated by the change in the weather. All of them, it seemed, but Nolan Jeffers. The elderly man who was her favorite patron sagged in his chair, looking as dejected as though every bone in his body ached.
“Morning, Mrs. Redhawk,” he said. Unlike the other trustees who frequented the library and attended her classes, he had refused to call her by her first name as invited. He was old-fashioned, he said, but a gentleman did not call a lady by her given name on early acquaintance.
Hart had a difficult time thinking of the gallant old man who had spent most of his life incarcerated as the murderer she’d been told he was.
“You okay, Mr. Jeffers?” she inquired. She couldn’t guess his age, but supposed he had to be somewhere in his late sixties. Perhaps the rainy weather was bringing on aches and pains.
“Fine.” He glanced with something like disinterest at the small row of new paperbacks she’d put on display before she left yesterday. This was unusual in a man who mostly devoted his days to the books he loved. It was a kinship he and Hart, who was an avid reader herself, shared. “I’m just missing the past today. You know how it is when you dream you’re back there and then wake up to find you’re still here.”
That thought touched close to the bone. She didn’t tell others with the exception of her husband that she’d been born in the 1920s and lived through the days of the great depression and the second world war, only coming to this modern age on a regular basis last year. She didn’t tell because she wasn’t eager to be locked up as a mad woman, but like Nolan Jeffers, she knew what it was to visit the past and even now lived somewhat uneasily on the edge of a world that often seemed strange to her.
She selected a book she thought he would like and handed it to him so he could retreat to his favorite comfortable chair in the far corner of the library to read. At his age and with his health problems, he wasn’t expected to labor any more on the prison farm, but the other prisoners visiting her library only had an hour to select their books before they would be picked up for today’s work detail so she concentrated on them until the library was cleared and she and Mr. Jeffers were left alone with the guard who was always present when she worked with prisoners, even the old man.
She went over to take the chair next to him, prepared to devote a little time to cheering him up. “You don’t look well today, Mr. Jeffers. This weather must be getting to you. Could I get you something hot to drink?”
He looked up as though not noticing until this instant that she was there. “You are most kind, Mrs. Redhawk, but I’m just feeling a little thoughtful. I’m coming up for my annual review, you know.”
She shook her head.
“Every year now they take another look at my case and decide to renew my lease,” he said with a wry grin. “Its pure formality, but I used to get rather excited about the idea that I might be let go. Now, well I’m not certain I’d know how to manage out in the real world. Anyway, as long as one of the Maxwell brothers is alive, it’s not going to happen. Stirs up a lot of resentment in folks just to see those two walking around.”
She hardly knew what to say. He’d been sentenced to life in prison at an early age, she knew that much, but had no other details.
“The Maxwells are the sons of the man I’m supposed to have murdered,” he explained in a bitter tone. “Bill and Terry Maxwell show up each year to protest any idea of my release.”
He was so matter-of-fact about it that she found herself responding, “Wouldn’t you like to be free?”
He sighed, his gentle face taking on a wistful look. “I used to pray that I would get out. I even imagined the warden coming to me and saying, ‘We discovered the real murderer, Nolan, a
nd we know you’re innocent. You can walk out the front gates anytime you want.’” He smiled as though amused at himself. “The trouble was that after a while I couldn’t imagine what was out there. From what I’ve seen on television things have changed so much since I was sixteen that I wouldn’t even know how to live.”
“Sixteen? You were just sixteen when you were sent to prison?”
He nodded. “It was 1957 and I had just finished my sophomore year at Mountainside High. I was a good student, a very good student, and there was talk that I might even get a scholarship to go to college. Can you imagine me going to college?” He chuckled as though he’d said something funny.
“Yes, Mr. Jeffers, I can imagine that well enough,” she said softly, “considering the way you love reading.”
When she’d first starting working here she’d been careful to select books for him by popular authors who appealed to male readers, but since then she’d learned nothing was beyond his interest. He was as likely to read Homer as Stephen King; his tastes were eclectic.
“Well, life doesn’t always work out the way we hope.” His smile was reminiscent. “There was a girl. Her name was Bonnie Jo Bretton and she was in my class. Smart as a whip and prettiest thing you ever saw with brown hair and green eyes.”
He went into a reverie, his eyes dreamy and lost in the faraway past. She could almost see the sixteen-year-old he must have been. He was probably handsome back then because in spite of his age, he was still good looking.
Finally Hart said softly, “Was she your girlfriend?”
“Oh no,” he disclaimed that honor. “I barely dared speak to Bonnie Jo, but in my dreams I’d always say something so brilliant she’d be impressed and then I’d ask her to the picture show and from then on we would have been a couple.” He sighed. “It might’ve even have worked out like that, if I’d ever had a chance.”
She knew what happened after that. He’d been arrested for murder, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
Though ‘life’ didn’t always mean forever. She was surprised, considering his age when convicted, that he hadn’t been released years ago. Especially since he had to be an exemplary prisoner to be allowed in-person access to her library and classes.
He looked up at her to say with sudden earnestness, “I didn’t do it, you know. I didn’t kill Stout Maxwell.”
Uneasily she reminded herself that it was what they usually said, these men, and all of them couldn’t be innocent. Still she wanted to believe this gentle old man.
Even though he was county sheriff, Alistair Redhawk didn’t like interfering in people’s business. An intensely private man himself, he preferred to give other people their due regard, but he told himself now that where his wife was concerned, this was his business.
So when he found his brother-in-law out in the front yard of the house shaded by the mountain in Mountainside, he showed no sign of hesitation in walking up and peering under the hood where Tommy Benson was working in such concentration.
“Tommy,” he said.
Tommy straightened so abruptly he bonged his head against the hood and pulled out, rubbing the sore spot. “Dammit, sheriff, you startled me.”
“Sorry,” the apology was perfunctory. Alistair and Tommy might be related by marriage but that didn’t mean they were friendly. Tommy had once, in fact, publicly accused him of killing Hart. Fortunately his wife had disproved that charge by showing up very much alive.
“Need to talk to you about something, Tommy,” he said.
The round-faced man who carried a few extra pounds on a blocky frame led the way to the shade on the front porch, flopping so hard into a fold-out chair that Alistair thought for a minute it would collapse. He seated himself gingerly in a similar chair, not too sure it would hold his own weight. He was lean, but muscled, with the distinctive look of his Kiowa heritage.
“Talk away,” Tommy Benson challenged, then frowned to ask, “Nothing wrong with my sister?”
“Hart’s fine,” Alistair lied. It was none of Tommy’s business what was going on in his marriage and anyway he and Hart would work things out. “It’s your wife I’m here to talk about. She’s giving Hart a bad time and it’s got to stop.”
Tommy frowned. “Nikki’s the sweetest woman in the world. She doesn’t give anybody a bad time.”
“Nothing against Nikki, but she might be a little over-protective where you’re concerned and she’s always going after Hart about money.”
“I haven’t been gambling,” Tommy avoided looking at Alistair.
“That’s your business. None of my affair, but when Nikki keeps harassing Hart, especially in front of other people, it bothers me.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Tommy muttered, getting up to go back to his work and ignoring his brother-in-law.
That hadn’t gone well, but then he hadn’t expected it would. It was necessary, though, to remove Nikki from the equation if he and Hart were to get their lives in balance. They had enough to deal with without having Nikki showing up to alternately badmouth and plead with Hart for money.
Not that he cared about the money. Hart could give it all to her brother for all he cared, but he wouldn’t stand for her being continually upset this way.
He went back to his car and was instantly absorbed in other matters. His concerns for Hart were put on the shelf for the rest of the day.
Hart was getting ready to end her day in the library when the call came through. “You know anything about Nolan Jeffers?”
She recognized her husband’s voice and laughed. “No greeting. No ‘how was your day, Hart?’”
“Honey, he’s gone missing.”
Her heart jolted. “Gone missing? He’s in lock-up, how could he be missing? What are you talking about, Alistair?”
“His parole review was this afternoon.”
“He mentioned that it was coming up. Didn’t think he stood a chance.”
“Well, apparently he arranged an outing for himself. The deputy was taking him back to jail afterwards and somehow he got away. We’re trying to find him now.”
She felt sure he was teasing, knowing her affection for the old man. “What’d he do, punch your deputy in the jaw and take off?” she returned the joke.
“He went around a corner ahead of Deputy Long and disappeared. When Long followed him, he couldn’t see him anywhere. He’d taken off.”
The idea was appalling. Poor Mr. Jeffers wouldn’t do such a thing. At least she didn’t think he would. She couldn’t help thinking how he’d spoken of the girl he’d admired in high school. “Maybe he’s gone looking for his Bonnie Jo,” she murmured more to herself than for her husband’s benefit.
“What? Bonnie who?”
“You’re not kidding, are you, Alistair? You really think he took off?” She was still in disbelief.
“Damn serious. Anything could happen to him out there, he’s been locked up his whole life. Hey, Eisenhower was president when he went to prison.”
She let her gaze roam the little library, abandoned at this time of day, thinking of the man who had told her his story so somberly only this morning. Then she remembered something vital.
“Alistair, he would never have even tried to escape. He didn’t want to be free. He’s agoraphobic. He has a fear of open spaces.”
Chapter Two
Having exited the prison as quickly as she could considering she had to go through a series of locking and unlocking doors and then be waved on by the guard at the gate, Hart drove anxiously toward Wichita, the small town that served as county seat for Wichita County, both town and county having been named for a nearby mountain range.
She found the picturesque old courthouse in the middle of town a beehive of activity. County cars, Oklahoma Highway Patrol cars and city police vehicles were all parked on the right side of the front entrance while individuals in uniform swarmed the lawns, along with townspeople. It was a three-ring circus and poor Mr. Jeffers, wherever he was hiding, was probably scared to death. Sh
e just hoped somebody didn’t panic and shoot him before her husband could get him safely back to the prison.
She was well acquainted with the deputy who had let him escape, mostly because of Alistair’s complaints. Mark Long had been a legacy, inherited from the previous sheriff’s term in office, hired because he was a relative and a ‘good old boy,’ and not because of his ability.
Nobody else would have allowed an elderly prisoner in delicate health who was afraid of wide open spaces and had no motive to escape, get away. It was criminal negligence, that’s what it was.
When she tried to enter at the front entrance, she was turned away until she insisted irritably that Deputy Joey Harding check with his boss about that. She was too worried about Mr. Jeffers to waste time on being overly polite and stood impatiently waiting while young Joey contacted Alistair and was told to let her in.
She found her husband in the office he maintained within the courthouse, but unfortunately he was surrounded by men and women in uniform, most of whom seemed to be trying to talk all at once. Through the glass panes on the exterior wall, she could see a van marked Channel Four pulling up. Great! The Oklahoma City television stations were beginning to show up. Alistair would just love that.
“Come on in, honey,” Alistair said when he saw her hesitating at the doorway.
She did wish he wouldn’t call her honey when they were in their professional roles, but he smiled proudly as he introduced her to the more significant of his official visitors. “My wife, Hart,” he said. “She’s librarian over at the prison and has friendly feelings toward our Mr. Jeffers. Largely because he likes to read, I think.”
The men—well, mostly men—around him, laughed politely. “Even a cold blooded murderer can enjoy a good book,” one of the OHP troopers said.
She forced a smile. “I was hoping you’d found your misplaced prisoner,” she said.
Alistair shook his head and she could tell he was worried. No doubt he took this whole incident personally since the escape had occurred under his watch. But who could have guessed that even his poorest excuse for a deputy would have allowed a man who had spent most of his life incarcerated get away.
Wakening the Past: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series Book 2) Page 1