Beneath a Beating Heart

by Lauri Robinson

  She had to believe that. Had to focus on herself, so he changed the subject and tried to sound as if he still had a bit of sanity. “Tell me about yourself. When you aren’t cataloguing antiques in haunted houses, what do you do? Where do you live?”

  Eyeing him closely, she asked, “You sure you haven’t been drinking? How about smoking? Have you been to Colorado lately?”

  “Haven’t been to Colorado in years,” he answered. “Have you?”

  “I’ve never been to Colorado. No reason to go there.”

  “Why did you want to know if I’ve been there?”

  She grinned then and shook her head. “No reason. It was a bad joke.”

  “A joke on who?”

  “Forget it,” she said. “No, I’ve never been to Colorado for any reason.”

  “Good to know.” Every little bit of information was good to know, and he needed a lot more. “Where do you live?”

  She frowned, and looked him up and down, until eventually answering, “Billings, Montana. I’ve told you that.”

  “Yes, yes, you have.” He drew a deep breath to collect his thoughts, which were a jumbled mess. “You live with your folks, then?”

  “No, my parents died when I was a small child. I’ve told you all this already.”

  She had, but he hadn’t been listening. Not really. Not like he should have been. Not like he would now. “I know. I just want to hear it again.”

  “Why?”

  “I just do.” Yesterday, it would have been hard for him not to tell her that Conrad and Millie, her parents, were alive and well, and missed her almost as much as he did. Today, he could accept she didn’t know that. Didn’t remember that. “How did they die? Your parents, how did they die?”

  “A car accident,” she said. “It was, storming. My father must not have seen the train coming. It hit our car and killed my parents.”

  “But not you?”

  “No. Not me.”

  Her lack of emotion was unlike her. No, it was unlike the Beth he knew. Choosing not to contemplate that, he asked, “Who raised you? Who did you live with then?”

  “A foster family. Gladys and Norman Walker. They took in dozens of foster children over the years. Some only stayed a few days, others like me, lived with them for years.”

  “Do you still live with them?”

  She shook her head. “They both passed away earlier this year, but I moved into my own apartment years ago, right after high school. That’s where I still live. It’s small. Not much bigger than your little cabin out back, but its home.”

  “Is it?” He wanted to bite the end of his tongue, and quickly added, “In Billings?” He wanted his house, their house, to her home, but she had to want that.

  “Yes.”

  Searching for another question, he shifted his feet. “Do you have any sisters? Brothers?”

  “No.” She frowned and glanced from him to the mirror and back again. “Why are you asking me all this?”

  The truth was the best answer he could think of. “I want to know all about you.” The century she lived in made no difference. Neither did the name she called herself. This was the woman he loved. Would always love. Her spirit was the same. The very essence that made her remarkable, unforgettable, loveable, was connected to his with a bond stronger than time and too powerful to be broken by even death. He’d known that before, but this morning, he believed it profoundly.

  “Like Beth did you when you first met,” she said. “She almost wore out your brain with questions about you and your family.”

  That’s what he’d told Beth shortly after they met—that she was wearing out his brain. “Yes.”

  He reached for her as she let go of the mirror. His hand encountered nothing, but relief washed away his concern as she sat down in one of the chairs. Her face was full of sorrow, and he knelt beside her, placing the mirror on the table within her reach.

  It was a moment before she touched the mirror and turned to meet his gaze. “It doesn’t matter, Rance. Whether I believe in reincarnation or not. Whether somehow, someway, Beth and I share the same soul doesn’t matter. You are still in the twentieth century, and I’m in the twenty-first.”

  That was a dilemma. One he didn’t know how to solve. Yet, didn’t doubt there had to be a way. Grasping the notion the woman from this morning had delivered the trunk for a reason, he said, “Come upstairs with me.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s something I want to show you.”

  “I’ve seen everything upstairs. I know where everything belongs. I even know where things came from originally.” Frowning slightly as she glanced around the room. “Other than that stove.”

  He grinned. Beth had never seen the stove. “Come. Please.”

  She sighed, and shook her head, but the smidgen of a grin on her lips kicked his heart beat into a faster pace. Beth never could hold back when someone said please. Especially him.

  “All right,” she said. “But it’s not going to matter. Whatever it is.”

  That was Beth, too. She’d argue her point until the last dog was hung when it was something she truly believed.

  He shifted his hand on the mirror, placing it over the top of hers holding the handle, and the warmth that filled his palm gave him more hope. The sensation wasn’t as strong as it had been yesterday, but in his heart, he was touching her. Holding her hand.

  Her gaze met his as she stood, and then glanced down to the mirror. “I can feel that,” she whispered. “Your hand. I can feel it.”

  “Once you touch someone’s heart, it’s easy to touch their hand,” he whispered.

  She closed her eyes for a moment. Her breath came out shaking, as was her voice. “Yes, it is.”

  He was getting close, or rather, she was. He could feel it, and that filled him with urgency. “What else do you feel?”

  She licked her lips and closed her eyes. “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”

  “It’s strange, isn’t it,” he said. “How you always thought you knew most everything there was to know about something, and then, one day, everything changes and you realize you didn’t know everything, in fact, you didn’t know much at all.”

  Her frown was back. “What are you talking about?”

  “Life. Before I met Beth, I thought I knew things. What I wanted. Within hours, things changed, and then, when that train accident happened, things changed again. And then you appeared, and things changed again, and they have every day since.” His blubbering was confusing her, and him. “I know you aren’t in my century, but at times I feel as if you are. I can almost believe you are as flesh and blood as me. Not with my hands, but inside, with my heart.” He searched her face, confirming his belief. “You feel that way at times, too, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “Yes, at times I do almost believe you are…” She shrugged. “Real.”

  “I am real. And so are you.”

  Silence surrounded them as they stood there, holding the mirror, yet looking at each other and feeling. He knew she was feeling him as deeply as he was feeling her, inside himself, inside his heart, where she’d lived before and would again. Completely. He believed that with all he had and would make her believe it too. When she blinked and offered a tiny grin, he whispered, “Come.”

  Liz’s entire being shook. Not trembling with fear or pulsating with excitement. This was different. Almost as if she was on an uneven surface that was about to give way. She’d never been in an earthquake, but imagined this could be what it felt like, yet it wasn’t the ground beneath her shaking. It was her. Inside her it was as if something was being separated, shaken apart. Not destructively, but gently, lovingly.

  She’d spent the better part of the night contemplating souls, reincarnation, past lives. It was a concept she could grasp. Vivi Anne once pointed out over two-thirds of the population experienced déjà vu. That had been back at the antique store when she’d first seen the half-done saddle. The tooling, the initials, had looked familiar, and as she�
��d rubbed the leather, she commented it was as if she’s seen it before. That’s how she felt now. As if he had led her up these stairs many times before, and she’d been happy about that. Excited.

  She’d experienced déjà vu many times the past few days, especially while seeing certain things in the house, but, this time it was different. Rather than just knowing where an item came from or experiencing a hint of familiarity, this time excitement danced deep in her belly. He had led Beth up these stairs many times. Every night they’d lived in this house, and once upstairs, once in their bedroom, he’d made love to her with deep and profound passion.

  She swallowed and pressed a hand to her chest as her heart began to thud. Her body was remembering things, not just her mind. It was crazy. Mainly because she was seeing herself, not Beth. With Rance. Making love.

  “Are you all right?” he asked as they paused at the top of the stairs.

  She had to nod, whereas in truth, she was far from all right. She was a million miles away from sanity with her foot still on the gas pedal. Holding her breath in an attempt to quell the fiery desires of the pole dancer that had come to life inside her, she told herself it truly didn’t make a difference what she saw in her mind, what she felt, she and Rance were centuries apart and always would be. Sex was as impossible as everything else.

  As they walked down the hall, she once again told herself she hadn’t been his wife in a past life. That was impossible. As impossible as flying monkeys and little green men. She’d contemplated all those things last night, as well as others. Believing Vivi Anne was a psychic and had foreseen her husband’s death was easy. People all around the world believed in such things. There were TV shows dedicated to such beliefs and phenomena. Not that everything on TV was true. There were shows about past lives and time travel, too, but they were considered fiction. Imaginary tales some creative writer produced while deep in the throes of writing tales of what-ifs that are meant for nothing more than entertainment.

  It was easy to see the difference. Or at least it had been last night while lying in the bed at the motel. While walking next to him, it wasn’t easy. Nothing was easy. Other than believing he was as real as any other person walking this earth—even though he wasn’t living in her century. Last night she’d concluded believing she’d never been his wife would be the easiest thing to believe and hoped that would make the erroneous pain of living without him not so overwhelming. Not so soul-crushing.

  All the thoughts racing through her mind collided when she stepped into the bedroom. The simple wooden trunk with metal hinges and single latch sitting at the foot of the bed was as recognizable as her own hand, and seeing it made her heart tumble, yet, ironically, panic didn’t well inside her. That was where the trunk belonged. Where it had always belonged. At the foot of the bed.

  She’d been in the room numerous times over the past few days, and the trunk had never been there. “How did this get here?”

  He knelt beside her but she didn’t wait for his response.

  “Vivi Anne was here, wasn’t she?” Liz asked. “This morning, while I was sleeping.”

  Knowing he wouldn’t have been able to see her friend, she explained, “Vivi Anne is the friend that I told you about. The one who owns the antique store. The day before I came to Cody, the church that Norman and Gladys left their property to had called Vivi Anne about selling some antiques, this must have been part of that lot and she brought it down here. I wonder why she didn’t mention it to me.” The trunk didn’t scare her, not like it always had in the past. It probably wasn’t the same trunk, just similar. Although that would make sense, she knew it wasn’t true. This was the same trunk she remembered.

  Cautious, yet not able to restrain herself, she reached out a hand and touched the curved top. Fuzzy, a fleeting image of emptying the trunk flickered in the recesses of her mind, as did refilling it with material—clothes or blankets. The thoughts, or memories, were too far away, too obscure to grasp, but there was excitement, happiness behind filling that trunk. Therefore, those memories could not be hers.

  She’d only ever seen the trunk twice, once in the attic and then when Norman had carried it downstairs. Both times had frightened her, and neither time had she put anything in it. As far as she knew, it had never been opened.

  Looking up, she asked, “What’s in it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve carried it up and down the stairs, in and out of the buggy, but never looked inside it.”

  The very center of her chest seemed to expand, to open a door that had long ago slammed shut. “Of course you didn’t,” she said, running a hand over the wood. He not only loved Beth with all his heart and soul, he respected her and trusted her. He would never have needed to look in her trunk because he would never have wondered what was in there. If he’d wanted to know, he’d have asked, and she’d have told him. He’d never asked, though, because in the scheme of things, during his life with Beth, they’d had far more important things to focus on. Their love. Their lives.

  She swallowed at the lump forming in her throat. The apprehension in his eyes all but stole her breath, as did his silent communication. He still didn’t need to know what was in the trunk, but he wanted her to know.

  She didn’t want to know. Never had wanted to see what was in that trunk. It was her Pandora’s box. Had been from the moment the rescuers had found her floating atop it.

  What was she thinking? A trunk from his century would never have lasted until hers. Not one that had been submersed in water. That’s what had happened to Beth’s. It had been on the train with her when the bridge collapsed almost a hundred years before the car accident that tossed her into the same water. A wooden trunk would have long ago rotted. Dissolved into nothing.

  “Open it,” he said quietly.

  The trunk no longer filled her with panic, but that could change the moment she lifted the lid. “I don’t want to.”

  “You need to. For both our sakes, you need to.”

  He would have to point that out. If it was just for her, she’d never lift the lid, but for his sake, if it would make a difference in his life, she’d crawl inside the damn thing. She clenched her teeth together to keep from growling at the frustration filling her. This caring about others, loving someone, sure had its consequences. No wonder she’d never wanted to do it before.

  “Open it.”

  “I’m getting ready to,” she snapped. “Don’t rush me.” Normally not so quick to temper, she flinched slightly.

  His snort, the way he held in a laugh, struck her in an unusual way. He wasn’t offended. There was a twinkle in his eyes.

  She had to pinch her lips together to hold in a giggle. There was nothing funny about the situation, but the desire to laugh, along with a rare sense of happiness filled her so fast, so completely, she pressed a hand to her lips in order to contain a giggle.

  He laughed, too, and as she watched that, him laughing, his eyes twinkling, his smile growing, she laughed harder. It was crazy, ridiculous, to be sitting on the floor laughing with a man who was over a hundred years older than her, but it was wonderful at the same time.

  She’d fought this the entire way. The idea, the fact, that she’d somehow crossed a dimension, an unexplainable barrier that most people didn’t even know existed. But what if she truly had? If that really was the case, and she was starting to fully believe it could be possible, she should be embracing it. Shouldn’t she? Experiencing it to the fullest. It had happened for a reason.

  He was that reason. She had no doubt of that. He had loved Beth so fully, so completely.

  Was that the reason she was here? To learn love did exist. Not in the casual, flippant way people of her time believed it to be, but in the purist way possible. Untainted love that lasts through the ages, beyond time and all the barriers people put in place.

  Her mind stopped momentarily. Beth had loved him as strongly as he had loved her, and she hadn’t been ready to leave him. Hadn’t been willing to leave him. In fact,
she’d gone beyond human capacity to not leave him. Her soul had anyway.

  This wasn’t all about him. It was just as much about Beth. And how hard, how long, her spirit had fought to be reunited with him.

  The breath she took was once again shaky, uneven. She wasn’t certain how she knew it, but the realization was as solid and real as everything she knew about herself. She’d been chosen, chosen by Beth to be the catalyst to reunite these two—if only for a moment. If only to say their final good-byes.

  She had to close her eyes against the sensation of being pulled apart inside again. It was stronger than before. Almost painful. More so than even her panic attacks and that told her it was time to get this over with. Her hands were balled into fists, and it took conscious efforts to move them toward the trunk. It was just a trunk. An old trunk that couldn’t hurt her. But it could help him. There had to be a message inside of it. Something Beth wanted him to know.

  The quaking inside her eased as she opened her hands, spread her fingers over the trunk lid. She drew in a deep breath, and then used a thumb to unclasp the hitch.

  There was no creaking of hinges as she opened the lid, no spring-loaded Jack-in-the-box surprise leaping out to scare her. She let the air out of her lungs and reached down to push aside the sheet of old tissue paper to reveal a stack of neatly folded items. She picked a tiny garment off the top.

  It was old, the silk and lace yellowed by age and deteriorating, but it was clearly a child’s christening gown.

  Her hands shook as she laid the gown down, and she held her breath, afraid to look at Rance. Her stomach clenched as an overwhelming sadness brought tears to her eyes. Beth had been pregnant when she’d died. This couldn’t be Beth’s final message to him. It just couldn’t be. He’d suffered enough pain. He didn’t need to know he’d lost his child along with his wife.

  Did not need to know.

  “What is it?” he asked. “What’s in there?”

  Her first instinct was to cover the gown with the paper again, but she couldn’t. Just couldn’t. She loved him too much.