As he’d known, she was in the kitchen, running a fingertip along the handle of the mirror. Slowly, he crossed the room, taking time to examine her from head to toe. She wore another set of short pants, a shade of blue that was so light, they looked almost white, and her shirt was purple. This one had sleeves, but they didn’t come down as far as her elbows. The way those odd-fangled clothes she wore molded her body like a tailored leather glove had grown on him.
“I know you’re there.”
He grinned and reached around her to touch the mirror. “And I know you are here.”
They lifted the mirror together and the sorrow on her face tugged at his heart.
“You weren’t able to stop them,” he said.
“No, I wasn’t,” she replied quietly.
“We will think of something.”
She pinched her lips together.
“Yes, we will,” he insisted. “I love you. You love me. You were reborn to be with me, your husband. I won’t believe otherwise.”
“It’s not possible. I wish it was true, but it’s not. It’s—it’s just not possible.”
He wanted to grip her shoulders and spin her around and had never been so flustered that he couldn’t. “You never used to say that. You always insisted everything was possible. As long as a person believed, everything was possible.”
“That was before, before Beth died.”
A deep breath did little to calm his nerves. He thought they were over this. Over her thinking she wasn’t Beth. She was. Liz and Beth are the same person. Why can’t she see that?
“They can start in the barn.”
Instinct had him letting go of the mirror and walking toward the door. Glancing around the empty space, he asked, “Who are you talking to?”
Pressing the mirror against her breast, she walked toward the parlor. “I’ll be upstairs.”
He followed and waited until they were in the bedroom before asking, “Who is here?”
She’d walked straight to the window, and that’s where they stood. “Men. They are taking out the antiques.”
“We don’t need it. Whatever they take, we don’t need it. We can buy more. Replace anything. Everything.”
She shook her head. What bothered him was the lack of light in her eyes. There was no belief in them. No belief in her.
“What happened last night? What happened to steal your belief?”
“Nothing happened. I just faced the truth. And that’s what you have to do, too. You have to face the fact Beth died in that accident. That she’ll never come back to you. You have to get on with your life. Find someone else, get married again. Love again.”
A flaming tremor made him quake in his boots. He was growing tired of pointing out the obvious. “Love again? What do you think I’ve been doing these past few days?”
“I don’t mean love Beth again, I mean love someone else. Find someone else and have a family so today doesn’t happen a hundred years from now in your time…” She shook her head. “In whatever time, whosever time, men don’t come clean out your house. So the fire department doesn’t come to burn it down.” Letting go of the mirror, she whispered, “So I don’t lose my sanity. If I have any left. I don’t even know anymore.”
She walked away, to other side of the room and covered her face with both hands.
He pulled his hat off and threw it on the bed. She was back to being Liz completely. This bouncing back and forth was wearing, and frustrating, and…exasperating for both of them. The tears she swiped aside said more than that. It was hard.
More for her than him. Being two people at the same time had to be hell. If this happened every time someone was reborn, it was amazing a sane person walked on this earth. It didn’t happen. Most people didn’t know they were reborn. She only did because Beth was so determined to come back to him. She’d been fighting to come back to him for over a hundred years, but in doing so, she was destroying another person. Another human being.
That wasn’t right. Beth wouldn’t want that.
Beth wouldn’t want that.
His heart sank to his knees, then further, onto the floor where he might as well stomp on it.
Acting before he couldn’t, he crossed the room and held up the mirror.
She pinched her lips together and clutched her hand into a fist.
He waited and swallowed at the bile working its way into his throat. He’d come to love her, as Liz and as Beth, and letting her go, this time on purpose, may prove to be harder than the first time. But it was the right thing to do. The only thing he could do for her.
Hesitantly, she grasped the mirror.
“You’re right. This, what’s happening, isn’t right. I shouldn’t have dragged you into it.” He shook his head. “It was just so easy for me to believe that—” He stopped himself. It no longer mattered what he believed or why or how. Not much mattered a whole lot. “I’ll make you a promise, if you’ll make me one.”
She nodded, and the tears streaming down her face said it wasn’t any easier on her than it was on him. He was proud of her for that. Proud of her strength and righteousness.
“I promise to get on with my life, as you said. I won’t wait for Beth any longer. I can’t promise I’ll get married again, that will depend on how things go. I’m not Robert’s father, but I’ll do my damnedest to make sure Lou and Nate don’t inherit this house. I’m not sure how that will change things, but I hope it’ll mean you’ll never have to come here to catalogue antiques.”
The pain on her face tore at him, and he planted his feet firmer on the floor to combat the aguish eating him inside out. “You have to promise me you’ll walk out that door and forget you ever met me. Look deep inside yourself, and find what’s beneath your heart, what makes you smile, and laugh, and live. When you find what that is, don’t let it go. Don’t ever let it go.”
Not waiting for her answer, he let go of the mirror and left the room while he still could. His vision was blurry, his heart broken, but he kept walking.
Down the stairs, across the room, and out the door.
Chapter Nineteen
There was nothing to find beneath her heart because she didn’t have a heart. Just an empty hole where one used to be. Liz didn’t even know why she was still alive. Still breathing. She didn’t want to be. Not at this moment. Rance was gone. The emptiness of the house echoed around her, inside her. “Damn you, Beth. Why’d you save my life to just have it filled with such pain?”
She laid the mirror on the bed. “If I’d been you, I’d never have died on that train. I’d never have gone to Billings. I’d never have left Rance for any reason.”
With tears scalding her face, she walked to the door, and like a zombie in a B movie, continued down the hall. Down the stairs. Across the kitchen. Out the door.
“Liz?”
She walked past Vivi Anne and down the outside steps.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
She held up a hand, stopping the questions as she continued forward, to her car. The tears came in full force then. Feeling her way, she found the door handle and climbed in. If she’d thought the eye of the hurricane consuming her had already hit, she was wrong. It hit with such force, such magnitude, her entire being shook hard enough to shatter bones.
Crumpled against the steering wheel, she shook and sobbed and cried until there were no tears left, no part that wasn’t encrusted with pain. She stayed there a while longer, numb and uncaring.
When the car door opened, she didn’t even lift her head.
“The firemen are here.”
Hands pulled her upright and cupped her cheeks. She didn’t have the strength to pull away.
“What the hell happened?” Vivi Anne asked.
“He’s gone.” She wasn’t numb. Saying that hurt like hell.
“Rance?”
Anger flared inside her. “No, Santa Claus.” Vindictive, unrelenting pain twisted her insides harder. “Yes, Rance, who’s not any more real than Santa Claus. A
cruel trick played on kids to make them behave.”
“Hold up,” Vivi Anne shouted to someone behind her.
Liz pushed the woman’s hands away and fumbled at the keys hanging off the side of the steering wheel. “Let them come. Let them burn the place down.”
Vivi Anne grabbed the keys and pulled them out of the ignition. “Not until you tell me what happened.”
“I told him he had to get on with his life. That Beth was dead and wasn’t coming back.”
Vivi Anne grabbed her face again, and twisted her, forcing eye contact. “Love sometimes gets you into trouble. Up-to-your-waist-deep trouble. It can hurt like hell, and twist you inside out and upside down, but in the end, it’s worth it.”
“No, it’s not.”
“So you want to live the rest of your life without it? Work for me, selling bits and pieces of other people’s lives, living in a one-bedroom apartment until you’re too old to climb the steps?”
“You don’t know—”
“Like hell I don’t! I know you’re in love with the man you just sent away. You’ve loved him for centuries.”
“And I can’t have him!”
“He’s the only thing you’ve ever been passionate about.”
“I know that!” Rance would forever be the only person she’d ever love with this intensity. “And as I just said, I can’t have him. We live in two different worlds. Two different centuries.”
“Love is timeless. It has no barriers.”
Frustrated, Liz grasped handfuls of her own hair, pulling at the roots. “What part of this don’t you understand? Whether I love him or not, he lives a hundred years ago, and he’s in love with someone else. His wife!”
“Beth.”
She snapped her head up. “Yes. Beth.” She slapped the steering wheel. “Someone I’d give everything I own to be right now.”
“But you are her.”
“No, I’m not. I’m Elizabeth Baxter.”
Vivi Anne squeezed her face more firmly. “Elizabeth Baxter died at five years old in an accident with her parents.”
A chilling sensation rippled Liz’s spine. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, she did. That little girl, along with her parents, was supposed to die in that accident. You. Beth wasn’t supposed to die in that train accident. Wasn’t supposed to be on that train. That’s why your soul was still there, waiting for a chance to get back. To make things right.”
“That’s not—” For some reason, Liz couldn’t say that wasn’t possible. It didn’t feel right. Or she just wanted to be Beth so badly, the words wouldn’t form. She had said it so many times, but couldn’t. Just couldn’t. “It took over a century?” she whispered.
“Time has no boundaries,” Vivi Anne said once again. “No hours or years, only moments that are either acted upon or forever lost.”
Just then something peculiar resonated inside Liz. It stole her breath and made things swirl. Not outside of her. Inside. Almost as if the little twisted pillars of her DNA started bouncing off one another. It was reminiscent of when Rance had danced her across the room. She hadn’t paid it much attention then, because she’d been in his arms and that had been too wonderful to think of any else. It had felt as if her true self had come alive while dancing with him. As if Liz had been a figment of her imagination. An illusion her spirit had created until the time was right for her to know the truth.
That she wasn’t Liz Baxter but Beth Livingston.
Something inside her shattered with such force she doubled over. Her forehead hit the steering wheel as she pressed both hands to the burning in her chest. Her lungs rattled and then tightened as she tried to breathe. Visions formed, all sorts of images that flashed across her mind like a movie on fast-forward.
She recognized the people, the places, the events. Especially the train wreck, the water, the pain, and how she’d shouted for Rance. When a child appeared in the water, her heart started racing as she swam toward the sinking tiny body.
Hands grasped her shoulders, shaking her.
Her heart was racing and hot tears fell from her eyes as she looked up at Vivi Anne. “You’re right,” she whispered. “Liz Baxter died in that car accident with her parents. That’s why there’s no information about her, about her family. She never survived the accident. And that’s why, why I was so aloof, my heart only knew him. I had to find him to find myself.”
Tears fell from Vivi Anne’s eyes as she nodded.
“I’m Beth. I always have been. I—” Alarm had her scrambling, grabbing the steering wheel to maneuver out of the car. “Rance! I have to find him. Now, before they set the house afire.”
“Go,” Vivi Anne ordered. “I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”
Beth started for the house, but stopped. Spinning around, she wrapped her arms around Vivi Anne. “I may never see you again.”
“You won’t ever see me again,” Vivi Anne whispered. “But I’ll never forget you.”
A part of her had connected with Vivi Anne, a friend in a time of need, a counterpart, an ally she owed much. As appreciative as she was for all that, there was no drawing need to remain behind. She didn’t belong here. Never had. “I’ll miss you.”
“You’ll be too busy to miss me.” Vivi Anne kissed her cheek. “Now go!”
Beth started to run, but stopped again to spin around and say, “Rance isn’t Robert’s father. If needed let that be known.”
“I will!” Vivi Anne shouted before she grabbed a fireman’s arm.
Beth grinned and ran to the house. She grabbed the door handle, shouting, “Rance! Rance! It’s me, Beth! Where are you?” A miniature explosion rattled inside her chest, like a top of a canister under pressure letting loose, flying skyward, releasing freedom, and more. It summoned hope and truth, and most of all, love. Pure, unfiltered love like she had known before. Had experienced. And it was right there, where it was supposed to be, at the base of her heart. Its very foundation.
Drawing upon that, she raced up the steps to see if the mirror had been left behind. More alive than ever, and driven, she ran down the hall. “Rance! Rance!”
Sunlight shone onto the bed, and a beam, precise and bold, reflected off the glass, shooting a prism of colors onto the ceiling. She leaped over the trunk that must have been inadvertently pushed aside when the armoire had been carried out and grasped the handle of the mirror. “Rance! Rance!”
There was no hum. Instead shouts rattled off the walls. Vivi Anne’s protests. Arguments from men.
Beth closed her eyes, searching deep within. Rance’s love had shown her who she was, but getting back to him was all up to her. Had been all along. She had to believe. Believe she was Beth. Believe she had been given a second chance. Been reborn so she and Rance could live right here in this house until they were too old to climb the stairs.
They would. They’d live here for decades, raising children and horses, and loving one another until the end of time, because love knows no boundaries. Has no barriers.
It conquers all as long as one believes that with all their heart.
She did. She believed.
She. Believed.
Her eyes flew open at the pounding of footsteps on the stairs. Vivi Anne’s protests were getting closer, as were the men telling her to get out of the way.
“Rance, please!” Beth shouted, begging him to appear.
His reflection didn’t appear in the mirror, and she spun about, to run for another room in search of him, but tripped.
The air whooshed out of her lungs as she landed on the trunk. Draped over the top, she reached for the handle that slipped from her hold. “No!” she screamed as the mirror hit the floor and bounced out of reach.
On the second tumble, the mirror shattered, splaying glass into the air. Tiny shards rained onto the floor like hail. Tinkling and clanging as they settled upon a final resting place.
“No,” Scrambling off the trunk, she crawled to the bits of glass. “No. No. No.”
The pounding f
ootsteps drew closer as she clawed at the broken glass, searching for larger pieces, ones that could hold a reflection.
There were none.
“No. No,” she sobbed.
All the love she held for Rance, the love she’d harbored for more than a century, let loose like a dam no longer able to hold back a river. Water rushed forth, and terror filled her as she was pulled downward, into a dark abyss she’d known before. Fighting, gasping for air, she cried, “Rance Livingston, you’re my husband. I’m your wife. We pledged our love forever. Forever. You promised.” With her last bits of air, she whispered, “I promised.”
****
Rance grabbed the door frame, freezing in the bedroom doorway as his heart stopped, flipped, and started beating fast enough to steal his breath. He’d heard Beth shouting for him all the way out in the barn. The sight of her crumpled on the floor, surrounded by shards of glass had him lunging forward.
Kneeling beside her, his hands shook as he reached out. “Yes!” he shouted to the heavens as his hands grasped a hold of her. “Beth, Beth!” He pulled her onto his lap, kissing her hair, her forehead, her cheeks.
She was limp, her arms dangling, her head hanging sideways. “No!” he growled as pain sliced through his chest. “No! Not again!”
Grabbing her chin, he blew air between her parted blue lips. He blew again, and again, and again. He didn’t stop until she coughed.
Then he froze momentarily before he pulled her against his chest and started pounding on her back.
She coughed another time, and another, and then moaned, “Stop. Stop.”
Grasping her shoulders, he yanked her off his chest. Her face was twisted in a frown, her breasts heaving with each breath she took.
“That hurt,” she muttered.
“I’m sorry,” he said, although sorrow was the one thing he wasn’t feeling. “But you have to stop doing that to me.”
“Doing wh—”
The shine that appeared in her eyes, the smile that overtook her entire, beautiful, face kicked his heart into a gallop.
Beneath a Beating Heart Page 27