Zan had no problem with any of that. He’d been somewhat concerned that the others would be used to compel his cooperation. He felt sure that Betsy, having come to accept her father’s character or lack of it, would now return to Lavender with Eddie. Well aware that Tyler Stephens’ secrets would be locked away with them, his logical mind seemed to have deserted him and when he should have been concerned about the wellbeing of the whole world, he seemed only to be able to think that he was losing Eddie. Without her life looked very bleak.
“As for us, we’ll return to the spaceport in Oklahoma to continue our work.”
So that was the edict. He was to continue his work. Geoff knew quite well that he would not do so willingly. Their eyes met. “There are ways,” Geoff said calmly.
“Torture or drugs?” Zan whispered tauntingly.
“You forget how well I know you, little brother. You can be inhumanly stubborn, but today’s medicines are such that no one will resist. You’ll give us the information we need and be all the better for it. Do you have any idea what I would give to be able to gift humanity the way you can?”
“A gift of death.”
“You’re much too pessimistic. We will use your knowledge for the good of all.”
“I’m sure that’s what they thought out in New Mexico when they set off the first bomb.”
“I can’t wait to get home,” Betsy said, as she packed the last of the belongings she had acquired online since they’d come here. “I’ve got the cutest game for Sylvie. She’s going to love it. And for Mama, a lovely soft nightgown, and a new medical book for Papa, and for Grandpapa and Mrs. Myers . . .”
Eddie’s mind drifted away. She hadn’t thought of choosing presents to take back with her. Perhaps that was because somewhere inside she knew she would not be going back.
She didn’t quite know how to arrange it. If Geoff Alston was determined that only Zan would remain behind, she had no way of challenging him directly. She would go with Betsy to Lavender, but would not cross over. She would come back to Zan.
She felt as though she could weep forever at the thought that she would not see her family again and yet she did not shed a tear. Instead she packed her own bag and pretended to listen to Betsy’s plans.
When time came to leave, they were allowed a few minutes alone, she and Zan. She told him Betsy’s plan that he should go with them and he kissed her, telling her he wished that possible, but that neither his brother or his associates would allow it to happen.
She lingered in his arms until Geoff came to make her go. “We will meet again,” she promised in a whisper.
“I pray for that,” he answered simply.
Eddie and Betsy went back to Oklahoma with her aunt and uncle and the lovelorn fourteen-year-old Jerry. He and Sara had seemed to have almost as hard a parting as she and Zan, though she hoped they would recover more quickly.
Their stop at the ranch was brief, just long enough to convince Moss the government agents were no longer interested in them. Betsy’s uncle seemed frustrated and angry, helpless as he was to do anything to help the young man who had become a friend to all the family.
After a week passed, Moss and Lynne, having left Jerry with neighborhood friends, set out to see Betsy and her sister home. Betsy, who had an optimistic personality, kept what regrets she had for her father within her, and chatted happily of the soon to come reunion with her family.
Eddie had a hard time pretending to share her delight, but each word about one of them—Cynthia, Evan, her little sister, Grandpapa, or Mrs. Myers—stabbed her with sorrow that she might never see them again. And yet all her thoughts and plans were on returning to Zan and helping him.
The Texas countryside was burned crisp with late summer heat shimmering on the highways and the big trees drooping as though exhausted. The heady scent of honeysuckle hung in the air and crepe myrtle bloomed in all its brilliance of color.
The spaceport had long ago been Clinton-Sherman Air Force Base, a flat rather drab place on the prairie of western Oklahoma where wide-open skies gave plenty of room for young pilots to test their flying machines. Before that, in World War II, it had housed a navy base, but it was the air force with its building of one of the longest air strips in the world that had eventually, years after the base closed, allowed in the space ships that were launched, not by the government, but by private industries like Alston Adventures.
For Zan the port was now his prison. Oh, it was a comfortable imprisonment. His apartment was, in fact, luxurious and there he was allowed his privacy. He could go to his office, his laboratory, at will, but he could not leave the base. His every move outside the buildings was guarded.
As Geoff had assured him, he was being given small doses of a new drug, one not even known to most medical professionals. The medicine would not harm him, not in the small amounts being administered, but would lower his control, his will, so that he would eventually confide the secrets they wished to know.
A larger dose and he might lose all his memory and much of his intellect. It could damage his brain. No one wanted that, least of all Geoff.
He tried to keep busy in his lab night and day and when he did sleep found himself dreaming of that small hidden town where Eddie and Betsy lived with their family and friends. He did not envy them what he saw as its gentleness and peace, but he wished for the journals Tyler Stephens might have left that would have given him another option for helping the starving people of today.
He even planned the community he would first choose if he knew the answer to Dr. Stephens’ scientific revelations. He would not choose to live in a bucolic environment such as Lavender promised with its cows and carriages, but something wilder, stranger, a time when change hung over the edge waiting to happen.
The fading Roman empire before the barbarians overtook the civilization, the frontier when native Americans were defending against invasion, places where not only the people he would lead there but the ones already in residence could use a second chance, a small part of the population brought inward into the beginnings of a new world.
And in that place he would not be the serpent in Eden, having unwittingly introduced new means of destruction; he would find a way to make his gifts of the mind a blessing and not a curse.
A second chance, that was what he and so many more needed. A second chance and Eddie. He couldn’t imagine any kind of life without her.
In the meantime, each day he was given the injection that slowly reduced his will, making him less human and more of a weapon.
If only Betsy had agreed to take him back to Lavender to search for any possibility of notes that would give him a start before it was too late. But she’d been right to be afraid. She hadn’t known him well enough to risk Lavender to him.
The only thing he could do now was to somehow keep from giving up. Instead of letting his mind whirl with ideas—and, of course, it didn’t seem to whirl as fast these days. He thought about Eddie. He planned a future that could never be.
Chapter Nineteen
Betsy got into quite a conversation with the waitress at the mid-town café where they stopped for lunch. It seemed they’d met years ago when she had been just a little girl and, surprisingly, remembered each other.
“How’s your mom, hon?” the waitress asked. “Such a pretty lady. I’ll never forget how she looked and looked at those pictures of old Lavender back there.”
“Mom’s fine,” Betsy answered.
“And did you ever find the place where the old town used to be?” The waitress shook her head. “So sad to think of all those people just vanishing into nothing like that.”
Betsy grinned as she sensed the tension around the table. This was new to her aunt and uncle. They thought the knowledge of Lavender was a secret no one else knew.
Eddie understood immediately. She’d heard this story from Cynthia many times. It was part of the legend of how she and Betsy had come to them in the first place.
“Lavender was this little town that was
hit by a tornado back in the 1880s,” Betsy explained solemnly.
“One day it was there,” the waitress said, serving Betsy her cheeseburger and fries, “and the next morning nobody could find it. Not a scrap of that town was left nor anybody that had lived there. Not dead or alive.”
Moss choked on his iced tea. “Tornadoes usually leave a trail of debris,” he protested mildly.
“Look honey, this was a whole long time ago. The way I figure it the tale has grown a mite in the telling.”
He nodded weakly and once they’d finished their meal went with the others as Betsy took them back to see the pictures. It made Eddie homesick just to look at them. The photos showed Lavender as it was when she was growing up.
After lunch they drove on, the auto programmed to Betsy’s direction. Eddie kept quiet, a lump in her throat so big she thought she would choke. They stopped talking about Lavender now they were getting so close, but instead lingered on the topic of the ranch and this year’s new crop of colts.
In her daze Eddie didn’t even realize she was slipping away from them until she once more found herself standing in Maud’s living room. A quick search revealed that she was alone in the house and so she peered through a window to see if Maud and little Jenny were outside.
Two women dressed in skins, their hair black and shiny, bent over a fire. It was evening and several small children played on the other side of the fire in the distance. One woman had an infant strapped to her back.
Indians. No, she knew somehow, this scene was happening long before Columbus and the other Europeans came to this land and misnamed its people. Native Americans from long ago. She stared, taking in every detail of the scene before her with her prodigious memory. Maud had said she could look through the windows of this house and see into the distant past. Eddie wondered if she’d ever seen this far back.
And then she was again in the auto and they were pulling to a stop at the bend in the creek that marked the entrance to Lavender.
Betsy reprogrammed the auto to her uncle’s control, hugged her aunt and uncle, gave them one last invitation to join the family in Lavender, than turned to Eddie. She sniffed and Eddie could tell she was working hard at not crying.
“See you soon,” she said.
Eddie nodded, though she knew it could not be true. She had no way of crossing into Lavender without Betsy. This was the magic only Betsy of them all possessed.
“I’m going to have trouble explaining to Mama and Papa why you aren’t coming back.”
Eddie tried to smile. “Just remind them of what they went through before you first came here just to be together.”
Betsy considered. “I left because Jonas was going to marry someone else and now I can barely remember what he looks like.”
Eddie laughed. “That’s because you haven’t found your real love yet.”
Betsy sighed. “Maybe it’ll never happen.”
“It will.”
“Tell Zan I’m sorry, that I was wrong not to trust him.”
Eddie nodded. She stood with the now silent Moss and Lynne as Betsy began to slowly step forward. As she approached the spot where the creek turned, she stopped, saying excitedly, “Can you believe it! They’re here. They must have come hoping to see us.”
Eddie took a step forward, wanting so much to see the beloved faces, than stopped. To cross that line with Betsy would be to abandon Zan. There was no guarantee that either she or her sister would ever be able to return.
“It’s Mama and Papa. Oh, look, they see me. They’re waving.”
It was Betsy’s magic, Eddie knew that. She could see them. They could see her.
“Just come and look,” Betsy urged. “I promise I won’t take you across, Eddie, I promise. But just let them see that you’re all right.”
Eddie wasn’t absolutely certain she could trust her sister. Betsy just might think she was doing the right thing by dragging Eddie back to Lavender.
“I promise,” Betsy coaxed.
Slowly, very slowly, she stepped forward. She could see them: Cynthia with her long, slim face that bore little resemblance to her daughter’s more rounded one, and Papa, her own papa who was a dour and serious-looking Heathcliff type, but when he broke down and relaxed was funny and clever and such a loving father and husband.
They saw her standing at Betsy’s side and broke into wide smiles. They thought their girls were coming home. “Go with me,” Betsy urged. “You can look for our great-grandfather’s journal the way Zan wanted you to and if you find it, you can take it back to him.”
Eddie refused to be tempted, though it was hard looking at those two dear faces. “I already found his journals and read from them.”
She and Betsy exchanged glances. Betsy nodded and let go of Eddie’s hand. Eddie stepped back at the same time as Betsy stepped forward to vanish.
Her sister had gone home to their family in Lavender and she was left alone, locked out on the other side by her own choice.
The months fled by but little progress was made toward reunification with Zan. Eddie, who was living at the ranch with the Caldecotts, had been able to see him exactly one time. That had been in mid-October when apparently Geoff had become so concerned about his brother’s health that he’d yielded to her demands for a visit.
Zan looked awful. He stood before her, shaking slightly, his skin gray and loose. He looked like he’d lost perhaps fifty pounds, reduced to a skeleton of a man.
His face flooded with joy at the sight of her, he held her close as though he would never let her go. When he finally released her, he turned to his brother with a frown. “You agreed we could have time alone,” he said coldly.
Geoff nodded and departed. Eddie took a second to see in what kind of place Zan was being kept. If it was a prison it was a plush one with comfortable furnishings and world-class paintings on the walls. He pulled her again into his arms for a long kiss, than whispered against her lips, “They’ve probably got us bugged.”
She frowned. “Bugged?” she whispered back.
“They can hear everything we say,” he spoke in a more normal voice, glancing around to add, “Right, Geoff?” to the brother who had left the room.
She took in the situation immediately. “Well, it’s not as if we have any great big secrets, is it?”
He smiled, his lips looking dry and cracked. “Don’t suppose it’s a secret that I’m in love with you?”
“Probably everybody knows,” she agreed, “nor is it a secret that I’m staying at the ranch with Betsy’s aunt and uncle so I can be close to you.”
The gaze that passed between them was full of tenderness.
“Betsy get home all right?” he asked very casually.
“Sure did. Just mad at me because I wouldn’t go with her.”
“Still doesn’t approve of me then?”
She’s coming around. Give her a little time.”
“Guess she’s got lots of that.”
He led her over to a huge cushioned chair, sank down and pulled her into his lap. “Why Dr. Alston,” she protested with false modesty as they embraced.
They were in the middle of a kiss when Geoff Alston reentered the room.
Eddie pulled away hastily, but when she tried to get up from his lap, Zan held her in place. “What do you want?” he testily asked his brother.
Geoff, looking harried, addressed himself to Eddie. “He’s resisting with every ounce of strength he has and nobody’s been able to do this before. It’s killing him. That’s why I let you come here today, I was afraid he might not be able to see you again.”
Eddie felt Zan’s arms tightened around her. “You’re being melodramatic, Geoff!”
“I’m not. They’re gradually strengthening the dose and I’ve lost control. Nobody listens to me anymore.”
“That’s what happens,” Eddie said primly, even though fear thundered through her that this was more than a scare tactic. Zan did look sick and terribly weak. “When you make a deal with the devil.”
“I never meant anything but good. The last thing I wanted was to harm you Geoff. Nobody truly wants to hurt you . . .”
“Because he’s the goose that lays the golden eggs, Eddie finished the sentence for him.
“Hey!” Zan protested with a grin. “I’m not sure I like being compared to a goose.” He looked up at his brother, the grin fading. “You agreed to give us this time alone.”
Geoff nodded reluctantly. “I’ll leave, but I’m begging you, Eddie, try to talk him into cooperating.”
When they were alone again, she cuddled close to his chest. “You going to try to talk me into it, Eddie.”
She closed her eyes. “I know you’ll do what’s best.”
He chuckled softly. “Even if I’m the stupid goose?”
“I only want you to be safe,” she said faintly, feeling sick and elated at the same time. As long as she was in his arms, she couldn’t feel entirely hopeless. “I need to tell you something, but . . .” She looked around, wondering if he was right that they were surrounded by listeners.
He stopped whatever it was she was going to say by pressing his mouth against hers. When he could speak again, he murmured, “I love you too.”
So he was anxious that she keep quiet about anything important. She would have to follow his guidance. He knew these people and this place much better than she did. But it was so important that she tell him.
She tried to be subtle. “You know that book you wanted to read?”
“Oh, you mean The Adventures of Uncle Tyler?” It sounded like fun, something to cheer me up, but I’ve heard its long out of print.”
“Beyond reach,” she agreed, “but I’m hoping to be able to get it for you.”
He gave her a quick kiss. “You’re so sweet, but I’m afraid nothing, not even your favorite book from when you were a little girl, would make me feel better while I’m here.”
Leaving Lavender: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 3) Page 13