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

by Barbara Bartholomew

In that moment she took in fearful knowledge. Not until Betsy was at her side was she able to see through. Humbly, she recognized for the first time, that it was not she who enabled the crossover, but Betsy. The magic was in her young daughter.

  “Goodbye, we love you,” she called without turning to look back, and then together, holding hands, she and Betsy stepped into that wintry landscape.

  Evan, burning with fever, dreamed of the ranch where he’d so often met Maud Sandford. Now, in his illness, he wandered empty rooms and looked out onto deserted pastures. As she’d forewarned him, his dear old friend had gone on to be with the lover she’d had to live without so many years.

  As he rose to a feverish consciousness, he became aware that people were whispering over him. They were saying that he was terribly sick and the crisis would come soon.

  He knew what that meant. He’d seen it so many times as a doctor. The crisis was the turning point where the patient either lived or died.

  He began to shiver so violently that his teeth chattered, feeling cold in spite of the fever that wracked his body. At least he’d gotten word to Cynthia not to come in. She and Betsy would be safe, even if he was not able to see them and his other loved ones again unless, like Maud, he could hope for a reunion after death.

  The change in seasons was painful in spite of the thick, brightly colored down-lined coats they wore over their period dresses. Cynthia guessed the temperature to be in the teens. They slogged through snow in shoes not designed for such, and everything was made worse by the cold wind that blew from the north.

  The weather added a complication she had not expected. She’d known they’d have a long hike before they reached the nearest farm where they could ask for transportation into town, but she had not considered they would have such a miserable walk.

  She hung on to Betsy with one hand while she carried that laden bag in the other. Why hadn’t she thought to wear gloves and boots as well as the thick coats she’d borrowed from Lynne’s closet.

  Fortunately her coat hung on Betsy’s small frame and the too-long sleeves covered her hands. She dashed ahead excitedly at first, but after the first mile she began to drag a little. “Mom, I’m so cold,” she said, shivering exaggeratedly.

  “Me too,” Cynthia agreed, pulling her close to her side. “Guess we should call a cab.”

  They laughed together at the feeble joke. Cynthia supposed her daughter, young as she was, would adjust to the more primitive lifestyle, but she knew she would always miss the small luxuries like cell phones, television, and, most especially, hot coffee. She sure could use a cup right now.

  There was nothing to do but keep walking. She couldn’t quite remember how far it was to the first farm house. It hadn’t seemed such a distance to that little white house where a young couple with two small sons lived when she was going past in the buggy.

  But on foot, it seemed a really long way.

  She was beginning to worry that this would be too much for

  Betsy, even though the girl was chugging along about a yard ahead of her. She could feel a blister beginning to burn its way on to her right ankle and mentally cursed her old fashioned looking shoes that were really of modern factory crafting. The shoes the cobbler and his sons made in Lavender were much more comfortable.

  They were only beginning their third mile of walking when Betsy gave a little scream and yelled, “I hear someone coming!”

  They came to a pause, and then walked more slowly. Another minute passed before Cynthia too heard the steady clip-clop of horses and the creak of what could only be wooden wheels.

  Betsy came to a stop and Cynthia caught up with her while they waited until a wagon pulled by a team came over the hill from the direction of Lavender. Thank goodness! They stepped to the side of the road and watched the wagon approach.

  Cynthia recognized the young man huddled against the cold as he drove the team. She couldn’t remember his name, but he was one of three constables who served as the Lavender police force.

  He sat up straight with surprise when he saw them and flicked the reins at the horses, stepping up their pace.

  If she hadn’t feared the tears would freeze on her face, Cynthia would have wept for gladness as he raced to stop alongside them.

  “Hi, Joel,” Betsy called.

  That was his name, she recalled. Joel Bedford. His dad was a carpenter and his mom worked at the little textile factory.

  “Howdy, Betsy,” he called and making a token gesture at his cap added, “Welcome back, Miz Burden. Sure am sorry to see the two of you.”

  Sorry? What kind of greeting was this?

  He jumped down and helped them up on the wagon, then gestured to them to look back of the wagon seat to where a big, homemade sign lay. He turned it over so they could read: QUARANTEEN! Do Not Enter. In smaller letters below, it said, “That means you Mama and Betsy.”

  Eddie had been slower to accept their gradually merging families than had Betsy. She’d never called Cynthia ‘mama’ before. Cynthia blinked her eyes hard, never doubting who had made that sign.

  “What’s wrong, Joel?” she asked quietly, even as Betsy said, “Don’t they want us back?”

  He found a thick blanket with a distinctive horsey smell in the back and gave it to them, and then put the horses into motion, turning around to head back toward Lavender before answering.

  “Eddie Stephens made the sign and sent me to put it up. She said it was what her papa wanted.”

  “Wanted?” Cynthia asked, struck with fear. “Evan?” she whispered the name.

  “No, no, he’s not gone yet. Not unless it happened since I left town, but he’s real sick. They weren’t sure he’d make it through the night and he didn’t want you and Betsy to come in and catch it.” He stiffened suddenly. “Maybe that’s what he’d have wanted—for me to take you back to where you came in so you could get away and not catch the plague.”

  Plague! That was what many of the people called influenza. No wonder it was their chief horror after what had happened eight years ago when so many had been sick and too many had died. The epidemic had closed their world down and changed everything about their lives.

  As the young constable halted the horses, she thought quickly. “No,” she said. “I want to go on to Lavender, but I must have some way to keep Betsy as safe as possible.”

  He nodded. “I’ll take her to my mom. Nobody’s sick at our house or even in our neighborhood. It’s not like before, Miz Burden, not so many people are sick and so far nobody’s died, unless Doc . . .”

  Instead of finishing the sentence, he put the horses back into motion.

  “Papa’s sick?” Betsy asked in a tiny voice.

  Cynthia nodded. “I’ll take care of him while you go stay with Joel’s mama.”

  “Yeah,” Joel agreed. “Your mama’s a doctor. She’ll get him well and see to everybody else too.”

  A doctor with only a couple of months training, Cynthia thought ironically. Still, with the help of the practical medicine of Lavender’s home-skilled ladies, she would do her best.

  She hadn’t come home only to lose the man she loved.

  Joel dropped her off at the pink and gray house on Crockett Street while he took Betsy on to his own home where his mother would look after her. Cynthia hurried up the walk, wading through deep snow to get to the front door. Not taking time to knock, she rushed inside. The sound of the door closing behind her was enough to bring the household running.

  “Thank the Lord,” Mrs. Myers said, while a thin, pale-looking Forrest Stephens coming just behind her broke into a wide smile. Eddie ran straight into her arms, whispering, “Mama! Mama!”

  She hugged Eddie hard and demanded, “Evan?”

  “Real sick,” Eddie whispered.

  “But he’s hanging on,” his father insisted proudly.

  She ran immediately for the stairs, barely hearing the argument behind her as the two adults insisted that Eddie stay safe downstairs.

  Snow fell from her coat a
nd boots as she ran up one flight of stairs and then another until she was in the hallway outside the tower room that was Evan’s private sanctuary.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Cynthia wakened early, warm within her husband’s arms. A feeling of gladness welled up within her, rising like the dawn-light that came in through the high windows of the tower room.

  They’d made love last night surrounded by stars and she closed her eyes as she relived those moments when his kisses had melted into her face and mind and body, linking the two of them into one.

  Now on this March day she could look back upon a winter of extremes. The best of it had been the day when she and Evan had stood together after Sunday church service and quietly, joyfully, been bound in marriage in the presence of both their daughters, Papa Forrest, Mrs. Myers and so many of their friends and neighbors.

  It had been a celebration not only of their union, but of the fact that they had come without a single fatality through the first serious run of influenza the town had suffered since the epic occurrence that had driven then into isolation, a town quarantined away from the world by its own choice.

  The worst of the winter for her had been finding Evan so terribly sick that for days she was not sure he would survive. He told her now the only thing that had saved him was her return and the care she’d given him as he gradually got better.

  She informed him that he would take better care of himself in the future, resting regularly, eating properly and not working himself to death. She would see to it and the town of Lavender would just have to realize that a live doctor was better than a dead one.

  Besides she was here to help him now.

  Cynthia was quite sure she had not moved by so much as a half inch, but suddenly she felt him stir. “Sorry to wake you,” she whispered.

  “I’m not sorry,” he whispered back, though in the privacy of their remote tower room they could have shouted without disturbing the rest of the household, “but happy that we have a little extra time together before it’s time to get up and face the day.”

  “And how did you plan to make use of that time?” she asked demurely, her eyes meeting his.

  He showed her.

  The End

  About the Author: Barbara Bartholomew learned to love fantasy and science fiction when she listened to her grandfather talk of traveling through time and space when she was a little girl, an interest enhanced as she slept with her family in the open under the starry summer skies of western Oklahoma. Among her other fantasy romances are: The House Near the River, By the Bay and the Lavender, Texas Trilogy: The Ghost and Miss Hallam, Letters From Another Time, and Leaving Lavender. Each book in the Lavender series is complete in itself, but most interesting if read in sequence.