Leaving Lavender: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 3)

by Barbara Bartholomew

  Chapter Six

  2027 Oklahoma

  Zan came home from a difficult day at the spaceport, his mind working through a conversation he’d had earlier in the day with his brother. He’d asked Geoff directly if their latest designs for space travel were being adapted to military uses.

  The news from other parts of the world wasn’t good. Countries that had been in friendly relationships for decades now were at trigger point with each other as all the old lines fell and new alliances rose.

  In the last years some of the most volatile states had achieved nuclear power and increasingly Zan thought the chances of preventing another globe damaging outpouring of power such as the one that had occurred half a decade ago lessened each day.

  He didn’t want to contribute to that risk. From the time he’d been in his mid-teens, others had told him he had unique abilities. He didn’t want to go down in history as contributing to the death of the planet.

  So he’d asked Geoff, the big brother who had always taken care of the more troubling real-world problems.

  “Are we doing work for the military?”

  Geoff looked uneasy. “Hey! You’re the development man. I handle the business side. No worries.”

  “I’m in my mid-twenties, Geoff. I’m not a kid anymore.”

  Geoff settled more deeply in his commanding desk chair, facing the younger brother who sat in the seat meant for business customers. “Of course, Zan. You grew up quicker than the rest of us. You were in college at an age when I was still playing junior high baseball. But it’s because of that, because your mind works differently than others that you don’t have to bother with everyday details. That’s why you have me and all the rest of the staff.”

  Zan frowned. Geoff was evading his question. “Are we working for the military?” he asked again.

  “No.”

  Zan stared into his brother’s eyes.

  “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Our country is at risk, Zan.”

  “And so we are contributing our work for free to keep our people safe?” he asked, satire in his tone, even though he couldn’t help hoping there would be some reasonable explanation that would let his brother and his company, even himself, off the hook. He wasn’t stupid; he just liked to live in his own little creative world, but that didn’t mean he could ignore his responsibilities.

  “Well, no, not exactly. Our expenses are huge, Zan. I know you dream of space travel as a means of relieving the stresses on our crowded planet, but our work costs huge sums of money.”

  Geoff liked to talk in large terms like ‘relieving the stresses on the crowded planet.’ Abruptly Zan realized it was also a good way of avoiding confrontation between them.

  This time it wasn’t enough. “We’ve accepted money from the military complex to use our ideas in developing advanced weapons?”

  Glumly Geoff nodded. “I was trying to protect you from having to know, Zan, because you’re so idealistic . . .”

  “I’m a man. I’m grownup. And some of those ideas are mine.”

  “Most of them,” Geoff admitted. “Your mind works in ways most of us can’t imagine, but at the same time you have to admit that you don’t think about ordinary things the way ordinary people do.”

  Suddenly Zan was back in his early years where his parents weren’t sure whether he was severely limited or strongly advanced in his mental powers. They hadn’t known what to make of him.

  “You mean normal people,” he said coldly and, Geoff protesting and following him to his automobile, he’d gotten in his vehicle and headed for the ranch.

  Jerry, who seemed to be growing at the rate of an inch a day, raced up to meet him with Einstein at his heels. Zan felt a rush of gladness at being back in the real world with people who were concerned with things like the new colt and whether there would be enough rain to keep the pasture from drying out instead of worldwide worries.

  “Guess what?” Jerry yelled eagerly. “My cousin’s coming for a visit.”

  Zan wasn’t exactly pleased at the news. Lynne came from a large family and her mom, dad, brother, sisters, and various nieces and nephews all seemed to love to come to the ranch. The Caldecotts did the best they could to keep their visitors from intruding on his privacy, but even the sight of strangers crossing the pastures or riding the horses was an intrusion.

  This was the worst possible time for guests when he had such critical matters to consider. Still, the ranch wasn’t his personal property and he was lucky the family shared this little piece of heaven with him.

  “No, you don’t get it,” Jerry protested. “It’s my cousin from that other place. It’s Betsy.”

  “Betsy Burden,” Zan agreed, rubbing behind Einstein’s ears. “Your mother’s niece. I wrote a letter to her.” Well, the truth was his secretary had written the letter, but that was practically the same thing.

  Jerry burst into laughter. “Good luck with that. How do you send a letter back in time? Anyway, Betsy is really my dad’s niece. His sister’s daughter. Mom’s her aunt by marriage.”

  In time? Zan frowned. He must have misunderstood. He stood silently, hanging on to his dog’s collar so that Einstein couldn’t follow Jerry as he raced toward a transport taxi coming to a stop at the end of the drive. Two young women, wearing long full skirts and old-fashioned hats emerged.

  He would have preferred to retreat, but instead he let go of Einstein’s collar so the dog was freed to run to Jerry’s side, barking an enthusiastic welcome to the newcomers.

  Zan watched as the taxi departed and the two women turned to look in his direction. He might not pay much attention to most people, particularly not to their physical appearances or facial details, but he wasn’t likely to miss out on these two.

  One was short and curvy, with blonde curls creeping out of an upswept hairdo. The other was tall, perhaps five eight or more, with a willowy figure and an angular, high cheekboned face that could have belonged to an elf. He couldn’t tell about the ears because they were covered by a silky length of auburn hair.

  Jerry gestured toward him and they began to walk in his direction. Just as he was considering retreating very rudely to his own cabin, the elf stumbled over a rock and tumbled to the ground, landing in a sitting position with her hands braced on the ground on either side of her slim body.

  Her eyes large and dark as she looked at him, her cheeks reddened with embarrassment. He had no choice but to go to her rescue.

  Eddie had slipped into deep sleep during the final hours of the drive from Lavender once she’d gotten past being terrified that they’d be crushed to death by one of the thousands of driver-less cars that swept past them on the broad highway.

  All her life she had known a world where only a little over a thousand people lived, where people rode on horses or in horse-powered vehicles. All of the activity and noise around her built a sense of terror until the only thing she could do was escape into dreams.

  But she’d awakened to find they were in open country, approaching a long drive that led to a house not so different from those she was used to seeing, if you ignored the huge farm machines and several apparent passenger vehicles in the side yard.

  She focused instead on cattle and horses grazing in the pasture and the dazzling outlook. Back home in the country your view was blocked by trees and hills. Here you looked across gently rolling slopes, largely unclad by trees of any size, to the horizon. She could see further than all the miles that existed in the community of Lavender.

  So busy taking everything in, she was barely aware that a stringbean of a boy who looked to be in his mid-teens had lifted his cousin into his arms, yelling, “Betsy! I would know you anywhere from your pictures.”

  “Well, I don’t know you,” Betsy said in a not unfriendly statement of fact. “Who are you? Don’t my aunt and uncle live here anymore?”

  The teen laughed excitedly. “I’m your cousin.”

  “Jeremy?” She peered up into his
face. “But you were only a tiny baby when I last saw you.”

  “And you were nine in the pictures Mom and Dad keep in the living room. But I’d recognize that yellow hair anywhere.” He turned to yell in the direction of the house. “She’s here! Betsy’s here!”

  Eddie didn’t mind being ignored. In fact, she preferred it. Then she looked past Betsy and her cousin to see that a tall, dark-haired, very good-looking man was staring at her with eyes that seemed to go right through her. Almost involuntarily, she took about two steps toward him, tripped on something on the ground, and found herself seated ignominiously on her rear end.

  Lordy! Why did these things always happen to her?

  He came toward her, walking at first, then running to reach down and assist her to her feet. Her arms tingled at his touch and her face burned even hotter with humiliation.

  She loved the look of his face, not pretty-boy handsome, but a mouth now set in a stern line, a strong nose, and eyes that looked at her reprovingly. “You okay?” he questioned harshly.

  “I’m fine,” she said with equal brusqueness, pulling away from him to brush dust from her skirt. Any minute now he would look at Betsy and see how pretty she was and not notice her anymore. But right now, thanks to her ignominious tumble, she had his entire frowning attention.

  She knew at once who he must be. This was Alexander called ‘Zan,’ the young man with whom Betsy’s aunt had tried to instigate a correspondence. The man to whom Betsy had asked her to write.

  Finally he turned away from her and she had no choice but to realize that Betsy was being hugged and exclaimed over by two people who had to be her aunt and uncle.

  “This is my Uncle Moss,” Betsy remembered introductions. The resemblance to his sister, the woman who had been her mother since she was nine, was so strong that Eddie felt almost like a relative herself.

  “And this is my Aunt Lynne.” Betsy’s aunt was small and dark with the most adorable heart-shaped, dimpled face Eddie had ever seen. When she smiled, she seemed to sparkle and now that sparkle was turned on Eddie.

  “We’re so happy to finally meet you Eddie,” she said, looking as though she wanted to hug her, but not sure the gesture would be welcomed. “Meet our son, Jeremy .”

  “Jerry,” the boy corrected. “Nobody calls me Jeremy anymore.”

  His mother’s attention went on to the man still standing close at her side. “And this is our friend, Zan.”

  “Eddie,” he said without a smile.

  She couldn’t manage one either, not with her heart knocking in her chest. “My real name is Edith,” she said. “Betsy was the one who was supposed to write to you, but actually it was me.”

  “And I’m Alexander,” he replied. “My secretary wrote back.”

  Finally Eddie managed to smile. People at home called her blunt, but she thought it best to start out with honesty. It avoided later awkward explanations.

  Chapter Seven

  Since it was hot summer in 2027 Oklahoma, the first thing Aunt Lynne did was take both young women shopping for clothes in Dallas. Betsy had tried to give her the cash her mother had taken to Lavender all those years ago, only to find it useless in that community which issued its own script.

  The bills were hardly more practical here. Aunt Lynne explained the ability to produce nearly perfect counterfeit paper money had made merchants so reluctant to accept it in payment that in the last few years it had largely gone out of use.

  “But we want to pay our own way,” Betsy protested. “And this is the only money mother had to give us.”

  “Your uncle will fill you in later,” Aunt Lynne reassured her. “But don’t worry. You have plenty for both you and Eddie.”

  Eddie had no idea what this meant, but Betsy seemed satisfied, so she allowed the woman she kept trying to call Mrs. Caldecott, but who insisted she was as much Eddie’s aunt as Betsy’s, to take them to a dazzling shopping center in a huge city and help them pick out modern clothing from dainty underwear to pants and dresses.

  Even Betsy found the styles unfamiliar. “When I was a girl, we wore mostly jeans,” she told Eddie. “Denim pants and cotton pullovers.” Now they left the last store, dressed in shimmering, fitted dresses in glowing shades of blue (Betsy) and mint green (Eddie). Shoes were lacy high-heeled sandals that made Eddie stumble every other step until she began to learn the trick of walking in them.

  They finished the shopping expedition with a dainty lunch of food totally unfamiliar to Eddie, accompanied by a bubbling drink that tickled her nose and made her head whirl. Even though there were other people in the restaurant, none of them as much as glanced their way. It was as though the people at each table pretended there were no others in the room.

  If she’d thought the roads busy coming from Lavender, Dallas was a larger experience. She’d not known so many people existed in the whole world as she saw on the streets of the city and roads that led to and from Dallas

  The automobile in which they rode was elegant in every detail and moved at probably twice the speed of the taxi that had brought them to Oklahoma, but it would only be when they were back on the narrow ribbon roads of western Oklahoma that Eddie would begin to relax.

  As she listened to Betsy chat with her aunt, the irony of it hit her. All her life she’d longed for new experiences in the larger world and now that she was here, she was so excited she was shaking.

  Mostly Betsy and Lynne talked about things back in Lavender. Lynne was delighted to hear she had another niece and that the medical practice was booming and Grandpapa and Mrs. Myers were still alive and well, though advancing in years.

  Most of all she wanted to hear about Cynthia and Evan and how they’d made a good marriage and seemed content with their work together. “It was almost as though you’d died,” she said to her niece, unshed tears in her eyes. “Sometimes we felt as though we were just imagining you safe in another place.”

  It seemed she and her husband knew a great deal about the community isolated in time from stories Cynthia had told before she went permanently back to Lavender.

  Eddie was more interested when Lynne began to talk of changes in this time. She gathered that Betsy was almost as shocked as she was, that in the years since she’d escaped with her mother, change had escalated at a doubled pace so that many things were almost as unfamiliar to her as to Eddie.

  “We can’t stay long, Aunt Lynne,” Betsy said over her iced tea and éclair. “Mama and Papa will be worried. But we’d like to see a little of the world and I have a special mission to accomplish.”

  A brief look of anxiety flitted across Lynne’s pretty face, quickly dismissed. “I keep forgetting you’re all grown up, Betsy. To me, you should still be nine since I missed out on all the years when you were growing up.”

  Betsy smiled, a dimple deepening near her mouth. “And I keep expecting Jeremy to still be the baby I left behind.”

  His mother smiled proudly. “He’s gifted, you know. Sometimes Moss and I hardly know what to make of him. One minute he’s talking about quarks and dark holes, and the next he’s acting like a typical fourteen-year-old. And since he worked as an intern for Zan last summer, he’s refused to answer when we call him Jeremy. Zan calls him Jerry, so that’s his name.”

  “Jeremy Russell Caldecott,” Betsy elaborated. “I was so happy when he was born. I had a cousin.”

  “Who is Zan?” Eddie interrupted. “Is he family? Why does he live at your ranch?”

  “And why is he so strange?” Betsy added, taking a sip of the delicious tea.

  “He’s not strange,” Eddie defended hotly. “He’s just a little, a little . . .”

  Lynne laughed softly. “You’re not the only one who thinks he’s strange, Betsy. The neighbors don’t know what to make of him either. What he is, it seems, is a genius.”

  Betsy looked down at her dessert plate. “I have to confess that when you asked me to write to him, I had Eddie answer in my place.”

  “Oh,” Lynne said, “thought I don’t s
uppose it made any difference . . .”

  “No, it didn’t,” Eddie said wryly. “He replied with a stiff little note written by his secretary.”

  Lynne didn’t seem surprised so apparently she’d heard Eddie’s brief confession when she first met Zan. “I was amazed that letter actually got through. For years now we’ve been writing to your mother, hoping to get some kind of reassuring reply. All the others were returned to us.”

  “Mama wrote too,” Betsy told her. “But I don’t suppose you got a single letter.”

  Eddie listened to them go off on the tangent of the undelivered letters, but her own mind was focused on the young man Lynne called a genius. She couldn’t help but feel he was a less than happy person. Everything in her yearned to bring some form of comfort to him.

  Moss Caldecott insisted Eddie join Betsy in his study for the little talk Lynne had promised. This meeting was to be all business. “I’ve managed your mother’s trust and estate for her since you left,” he told his niece.

  Betsy’s eyes opened wide. “Mom said most likely we’ve both been declared legally dead and the estate passed on to whoever was next in line.”

  “Dead!” exclaimed Eddie who had heard nothing of any of this. “Just because nobody knew where you were. That’s not dead.”

  Moss chuckled. “It’s usually what happens after a term of years. But in this case since my son was the principal heir after you, Betsy, Lynne and I have been able to keep that from happening. You’re still legally alive, both of you, and living abroad.”

  Betsy grinned. “At an unspecified location.”

  Eddie, as usual, displayed her talent for saying the wrong thing. “Was poor Jerry terribly disappointed?”

  “That I’m not dead?” Betsy asked with exaggerated indignation.

  “No, silly. That he didn’t come into a bunch of money?”

  “My son was hardly aware of the whole thing,” Moss explained gently. “Besides when Cynthia’s trust fund was set up by our parents, so was mine. Jerry will be just fine and in the meantime, your funds have grown over the years, so you will have plenty to do whatever sightseeing and travel you choose.”