Letters From Another Town: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 2)

by Barbara Bartholomew

  It was equipped with a footed bathtub and a real flush toilet. She seemed to remember that back then it was called a water closet. It was the ultimate in late 19th century luxury and she stripped off her clothes to indulge in a quick hot bath, wishing she had fresh clothing to put on once she’d toweled herself dry.

  Peeking into the bedroom, she saw Betsy still slept and so went down a graceful stairway of the kind that had a landing halfway down before curving into the final descent.

  From what she’d read, she’d always thought a house from this period would be dark and gloomy with thick curtains, rugs, and dark furniture, but it was not so much so. The dark wood shone with polishing, the wall paper that decorated most of the walls was rich in color and cheerful. Of course there were a lot more things from dainty china collectables like the shepherdess that was among the items on the mantel above the big fireplace, to paintings and photographs framed in what seemed every available spot on the walls. But the house itself was no old Victorian in a fading neighborhood, it was bright and new, a house that enclosed the dweller with a sense of family.

  Feeling more cheerful, she went looking for Evan. They had to have a serious talk. She and Betsy needed a place of their own and she wanted his guidance before she started looking for a rental.

  With no idea where to begin looking in the big house, she opened double doors that led to the west side of the house without knocking, fairly certain with those doors this led to a public area and not to someone’s private bedroom.

  It was like a repeat of last night only on a much smaller scale. Comfortable benches lined the far wall and each seat was taken. One boy even held a rather limp looking dog of uncertain ancestry on his lap. All eyes focused on her.

  “Sorry,” she apologized. “I was just looking for the doctor.”

  An efficient looking young woman in white approached her, looking disapproving. “You’ll have to take your turn. We’re full up today.”

  “Never mind.” Cynthia backed away hastily, closing the doors behind her.

  More because she didn’t know what to do than from any real sense of purpose, she wandered in the opposite direction until she found herself in a formal dining room near the back of the east side of the house. From there she followed the scent of cooking food through a breeze way into a kitchen that was only minimally connected to the rest of the house.

  Forrest and Eddie were seated at a table eating breakfast. Mrs. Myers stood, a platter of bacon in her hands. Cynthia’s stomach rumbled embarrassingly. It seemed a long time since she’d had that bowl of soup last night.

  Nobody invited her to sit down. She pulled out a chair and seated herself anyway, glancing around a kitchen that was dominated by a large range with a wood box at its side.

  Mrs. Myers’ keen gray eyes seemed to be taking her measure. Her face betrayed neither positive or negative emotions. Finally she nodded and went over to the range to put a stack of pancakes on a plate that she took from what seemed to be a warming oven.

  She handed the plate to Cynthia, adding silverware and a glass of creamy looking milk. Cynthia thanked her politely, put butter and a small amount of thick syrup on the cakes, took two strips of thick bacon and began to eat. The food was delicious, but she didn’t want milk to drink. More than anything, she wanted a cup of coffee.

  “I’d like some coffee, please,” she was driven to ask.

  Forrest gave a little snort. “Can’t grow the stuff in this climate.”

  Cynthia looked at him without comprehension. Mrs. Myers supplied the necessary information. “We only have what we can produce ourselves or what we stored ahead of time. We ran out of coffee a long time ago.”

  Of course. She blushed at her own ignorance. That was why they cooked with wood rather than coal or gas. Even electricity probably wasn’t too far in the future, she couldn’t quite remember when it came into common use for lighting. But they were locked into their own world with no access to services or expertize from outside.

  Wearily she thought she’d acted too impulsively without planning or researching what life would be like. Well, she still would have done the same thing. Betsy was safe here, that was what counted. Though she did wish she’d brought along some coffee and maybe a few chocolate bars.

  And some maple syrup would have been nice. She tried not to scowl at the strong taste of the homemade syrup. No doubt she’d get used to it.

  Well, she’d better.

  Eddie, her dark hair in two long braids, watched her like a hawk observing a chicken out on the ranch. “Where’s your girl?” she asked bluntly.

  “Still sleeping. She must’ve been terribly tired.”

  “I got up at six-thirty even though it’s a Saturday and I don’t have to go to school.”

  Early rising had never been one of Cynthia’s priorities. She’d never understood why people took such pride in it.

  “How old is she?”

  “Betsy celebrated her birthday in December. She’s eight. Your father told me that’s your age as well.”

  “Almost nine,” Eddie corrected firmly.

  Cynthia had grown up as virtually an only child. Her brother had been years older and for many of the years not even present in her life. Her ideas of sibling relationships had developed back in those years when she was reading her favorite books. Now she began to perceive that Eddie was not about to look on her Betsy as an almost sister. She remembered reading of the fictional Betsy with her little sister Margaret, how warm and loving they were to each other.

  Not that the girls were sisters, but she had hoped they would be friends. But Eddie was acting more as though she was drawing a line over which the new girl could not cross. Before they had hardly more than exchanged a word, she obviously regarded Betsy as an intruder.

  She supposed it was only because she was so tired that at this moment she began to wonder if she’d made a mistake.

  When the last patient left his clinic, Evan washed up and combed his hair before going looking for Cynthia. He found her in the library, watching her daughter and his daughter as they played jacks. Eddie was teaching Betsy the skills with something of a superior air and he supposed that in the time where Betsy lived little girls no longer played jacks.

  Things must be very different there, he thought, sinking into his chair with a weary sigh. “It’s good to see the girls getting along so well,” he observed as an introduction to conversation.

  Cynthia’s face was beginning to heal, the swelling going down and the colors faded closer to normal and he could see that she was, in fact, disturbingly beautiful.

  She and her daughter hardly looked alike at all. Cynthia’s features were chiseled, aristocratic looking and her thick hair lustrous and dark. Little Betsy had bright blue eyes and golden curls and a rounded figure. Oddly enough his own daughter with her slenderness and dark auburn hair bore more of a resemblance to Cynthia than her own.

  “I have to visit a few patients in the country this afternoon, Cynthia. You might enjoy going along with me. It’s a beautiful day.” Two pairs of eyes, one set blue and the other brown looked up hopefully, but he shook his head. “Not this time, young ladies, Mrs. Burden and I need to have a serious talk. The two of you will stay with Mrs. Myers.”

  He smiled at the disappointed look that appeared simultaneously on both faces. “You’ll have a good time getting acquainted.”

  He got to his feet, motioning to Cynthia to go ahead of him, and trying not to notice her form in the rather revealing clothing she wore.

  They barely got to the stable when Eddie came running after them. “Papa,” she said, holding out a package wrapped in a snowy kitchen towel. “Mrs. Myers says you forgot your sandwiches.”

  He was conscious of Cynthia watching as he hitched Hero to the buggy and though his heart sank at the thought of all that he must reveal to her today that might make her blame and hate him, still he was glad to be in her company.

  There was no way, though, that he could justify his actions, even if they
had been unintentional. Somehow his need had drawn her here and she had not understood that he was bringing her inside a prison she had not chosen.

  Helping her into the buggy, he took his seat and, hardly needing his guidance, the black mare took the little buggy into motion and at a gentle flick of the reins, they headed out of town to the west.

  “Hero and I practically read each other’s minds, we’ve worked together so long. She was only a young mare when Grandpa gave her to me and I wasn’t so old myself when he left us this town to doctor.”

  The words were meant to be an invitation to questions about his grandfather and what he’d done with this town, but instead, not looking at him but rather eyeing the houses along the street as though trying to take in what seemed ordinary to him, but must be strange to her, she instead chose to comment, “Hero sounds like a male.”

  He shook his head. “A woman’s name. Shakespeare,” he said briefly as they moved to the edge of town. He nodded as they passed familiar faces, people working in their yards or sitting on their porches.

  She didn’t comment further, but sat straight and thoughtful, her slim form swaying with the motion of the buggy.

  “I suppose you ride aircars in that place where you live.”

  She glanced at him, then quickly away. “I’ve seen buggies something like this. A group of people called the Amish use them. They like to keep to the old ways.”

  Old ways! He didn’t even want to ask how many decades of time she had pierced in coming back to Lavender. He decided then and there that he would treat her as he did Eddie when she asked questions about grownup subjects. He would be totally honest, but wait for her to ask what she would, rather than dumping too much information on her at once.

  He felt an unaccustomed content as they rode along the little dirt road out of town. The grass was greening in the pastures and cattle grazed on one farm, while sheep watched from another. He knew, of course, all of the families that lived on each intensively farmed acreage. They were all his patients and, as with the townspeople, all their work was intensely important to their survival. Milk, cheese, butter, wool and cotton for clothes, fruit and vegetables for the table, the community could bring in nothing, but must support itself.

  What she finally did say surprised him. “How long has it been like this?”

  “It was nearly eight years ago that Grandpa closed us in. The anniversary comes in August. We always have a special celebration.”

  Even though she had seen for herself the town lost in time, she looked at him with a certain degree of disbelief. “Your grandfather did this? How?”

  He laughed. “He didn’t tell me that, but all of us here knew that Grandpa with his inventions and his bit of Irish magic coming down from his mother’s side of the family could do some wild things. Of course when he called me back from medical school in the east and told me what he was about to do, I thought he was out of his head and I told him so.”

  They were moving past the cleared areas and into the woods which provided fuel for warmth and cooking. For every tree that was chopped down, he told her, a new one was planted. The time must never come, though it was in the far future, when the people of Lavender ran out of trees.

  It wasn’t until they’d stopped at a little creek to water the horse and eat thick ham sandwiches with juicy tomatoes and abundant lettuce that she asked, “You said we can’t go back?”

  He looked into her delicately drawn face with the long-lashed eyes and the fading bruises. “Not so far as I know, but then I didn’t think anybody could come in either. Though Maud did try to tell me it was possible. The coming in, not the going out,” he added hastily.

  She nibbled at her sandwich. “You mean Maud Bailey Sandford, my alleged great-great grandmother.”

  “Nothing alleged about her, though I have no idea how many ‘greats’ lie between her and you. She did say she’d never actually seen you, though she was acquainted with your brother.”

  “Moss, that’s my brother, lives on the ranch that used to be hers. He and his wife talk about her a lot and they did once tell me this story . . . ,” she broke off, “I didn’t quite believe it, of course.” She glanced around as though taking in this new reality that was Lavender in what would have been her own past. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  He nodded, understanding. For nearly eight years now he’d been trying to take in what had happened to him.

  A faint smile hovered on her lips. “When I was a girl I had a favorite author whose name was Maud. Maud Hart Lovelace. She wrote about small town life around 1900. It made me want to live in a place like the one she wrote about.” Her smile broadened. “I suppose my wish has come true.”

  Neither said anything else until they were underway once again.

  “Where did you meet Maud Sandford?”

  Another impossible thing to tell her. “We meet in dreams,” he said it right out. “I dream I’m there on the ranch in Oklahoma with her. The dreams started after Grandpa died.”

  Her eyes widened slightly as though she was startled and when she asked another question it was about how they managed the necessities of life when nothing could be brought in from the outside world.

  He told her how they made medicine from poppies and other plants they grew and the conversation took that direction until they reached the home of his first patient.

  As they drew to a stop in the farm yard, he realized she hadn’t asked the question that mattered most, even though it was as obvious as the nose on his face. He couldn’t help being relieved to put off that little talk. He didn’t want to scare her to death on her first full day here. It was bad enough that he was more than a little worried.

  Chapter Twelve

  Before opening time, Mrs. Myers had taken her down to the store that still belonged to Evan’s father, though he now left its operation in other hands. She and Betsy were provided with two outfits for daytime wear, simple cotton dresses accompanied by the necessary undergarments including puffy petticoats to give the proper fullness to the skirts. Cynthia even had a corset, though she sure didn’t lace it up in Gone With the Wind style. She’d rather have her waist its normal size and be able to breathe.

  The clothes were all locally made, of course, and their measurements were taken so that full wardrobes could be sewn. They had to continue wearing the canvas shoes they’d come in until the cobbler could make them appropriate shoes.

  Betsy complained bitterly about the long skirt that hampered her activities, even though at her age she didn’t have one that descended to the floor-sweeping length worn by adult women.

  Neither of them knew how to move in the old-fashioned garments. Even Eddie, who was more into climbing trees and playing baseball than clothes, knew how to walk in such a way as to keep her skirt from hiking up or bunching behind her. Gracefulness in cumbersome garments had definitely not been a part of Cynthia’s upbringing and she felt as though she was physically and mentally hobbled.

  But it was the way women dressed here in this place and time. In fact, Mrs. Myers told her, the designs were considerably simpler than when the town had closed off back in early 1883. No woman bothered with a bustle anymore. They had too much to do to indulge much in the way of fripperies.

  The real shock came when they got back to the house on Crockett Street. She took her large purse and went into Evan’s office, waiting her turn to see him when the last patient departed. He came out to find her and scolded that the nurse should have told him she was there.

  She shook her head. “She offered, but I didn’t want to interrupt your work. This is just something personal anyway.

  She waited until the young nurse departed before reaching into her purse. “I wanted to pay you for all the clothing, shoes and so on that were bought for the two of us this morning.”

  She took out her wallet and opened it. She had gotten over two thousand dollars in cash before she left Cheyenne and, of course, she had the usual plastic and checks. Then it hit her! The checks and
plastic would hardly work here and as for the cash—those bills would be in currency unfamiliar in this town with dates over a century in the future.

  She looked up to see a knowing expression in Evan’s eyes. Of course he’d already figured it out.

  “My money’s no good here,” she whispered. “I can’t pay you.”

  He took her hand in his sympathetic grasp. “It’s taken care of.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. “How do you manage money here?”

  He gestured her to a chair and sat down across from her. “We print our own script and we do quite a lot of bartering. All my country patients pay me for my services in food and fiber. It was a little hard to work out at first, but we’ve got it going now.”

  From the day she was born, all Cynthia’s needs had been covered. Considering their financial successes, her parents refused to pamper their son and daughter. In his teens, Moss had been expected to hold down a job and save toward college just as though there wasn’t plenty of money. But after her brother fell into trouble through no fault of his own, she had been brought up very differently.

  She’d been sent to a secure and very private boarding school in New England among girls from the country’s wealthiest families. By the time she was on her own and married at a young age, she’d been provided with a generous trust fund that left her with more money than she would ever need. Back home she owned more than one house, profitable investments and the well-tended trust. Never given to a flamboyant lifestyle, though she had surrendered a hefty sum to rid herself of her undesirable husband, she had never worried about money.

  Having more than enough was something she’d always taken for granted, and now here she was. She glanced again at the purse full of money, credit cards, and checks and realized once more that they meant nothing here.

  She was thankful that Evan was the kind of person who could be quiet while she tried to work this devastating realization through her mind.