by Eve Gaddy
“Are they here yet?” she asked, glancing around as she saw Elijah.
“No. Soon, though, God willin’.” Hands on her waist, he helped her down from her horse. He let her go instantly, respectfully, but Sarah still felt the joy of his hands upon her. What would it be like if she dared ask for more?
He would refuse, and rightfully so.
A tiny kernel of hope blossomed, refusing to be daunted. One day soon she might convince Elijah himself to leave. And once he did, she could find a way to leave Victor and follow him.
A silly dream, one she knew could never be, but one she held dear nonetheless. One she wished for when her own life became too hard to bear.
October Present Day
“CLAIRE, WAKE UP.”
She came to suddenly, staring into Elijah’s eyes. She blinked, shook her head to clear it. Not Elijah. Jonas. Oh, God.
Jonas was looking down at her, concern in his eyes. “You must have been having a hell of a dream. Were you dreaming about Glenn?”
“Um, no.” Sarah’s husband, not hers. And Sarah’s lover. Not hers. “Why do you ask that? Was I talking in my sleep?”
He gathered her to him and stroked her bare back. “Most of it was unintelligible, but just before I woke you up, you said, ‘He won’t kill me.’”
She pulled back a bit to look at him. “Oh, Jonas, no. I’m not worried about Glenn. It was just a dream. And it wasn’t even about Glenn.” No, she’d dreamed about someone long dead. Two people she shouldn’t know anything about. Except she did.
Jonas looked skeptical. “Are you sure? If you’re that worried about him, maybe you should talk to the police. I’ll go with you. They can’t all be like those jerks the night you went to the hospital.”
She wasn’t so sure about that. “Thanks, but it’s not necessary.” Yet. She wasn’t sure how Glenn would respond to being served with divorce papers, but if his behavior when she’d gone to pick up her things was any indication, he wouldn’t make anything easy. But her husband was only one of the things bothering her.
“I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately,” she said hesitantly. “Odd dreams. Very . . . strange.” She rubbed her forehead, wondering what he’d say if she told him the truth. No, she couldn’t tell him what she was beginning to believe. Not yet. He’d think she was crazy.
Maybe she was.
“What kind of dreams?”
“Of another time. In the past. They’re very . . . realistic.” Almost as if she’d been there. You have been there, Claire, you just don’t want to believe it.
“How far in the past?”
He asked the question sharply. Surprised, she searched his face, but she couldn’t read it. “A long time ago. Over a hundred and fifty years ago. Just prior to the Civil War.”
She could swear he relaxed. Which seemed odd.
“Bad dreams?” Jonas asked.
“Some of them,” she admitted, thinking about the first one. The worst one. “Some of them are good, though.” If you could call anything about a doomed, forbidden love good.
“What is it? There’s more to it, isn’t there?”
If you only knew. How much should she say? Would he understand? “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Just tell me.”
“I’ve been dreaming about a man and woman who lived in 1859.” She looked at him. “A black man and a white woman.”
“Go on.”
“She’s an ancestor of mine. I found a journal when I was cleaning out my mother’s house. It’s been in our family for years and years. Mother had it tucked away with things from a completely different era. I’m not sure anyone has seen it or read it since the woman wrote it. So I took it home with me. I’ve been reading it and ever since I’ve been having these dreams.”
“Every time you read it?”
She nodded. “And then last night, even when I hadn’t read it.” Again, she wasn’t sure what to say. “You’ll think this is strange, but I had the first dream before I ever read a word of the journal. I’d glanced at a few pages, seen the dates, but that’s it. It was dated 1859. Then that night, I had the first dream. The night before I ran into you at the coffee shop for the first time.”
“So this is part of the fate thing. Because you’ve been having weird dreams.”
She frowned at him, annoyed even though she knew she must sound strange at the least. “When you say it like that it sounds ridiculous.”
“I didn’t say it was ridiculous. Maybe you just have a vivid imagination. You read this journal and then you dream about the woman.”
“No, I don’t. That’s just it. I don’t dream about the author of the journal. Rachel Adams wrote it. She was my great-great-great-great-grandmother. If I dreamed about her, it would make sense. But I don’t. I dream about her sister. Her name was Sarah. Sarah Lawrence. I can’t explain it, Jonas, but when I started that journal, when I read about Rachel and what she wrote about her sister, I had the oddest feeling. As if when Rachel wrote about her sister she was writing about my life. As if I knew what she was going to write next. And the freaky thing was, I was right. At least the parts of the journal that I’ve read. When I dream, I don’t dream exactly what I’ve read about, but then later, I’ll find an entry that corresponds to my dream.”
He wasn’t looking at her as if she was crazy. He had a completely blank expression on his face. Exactly like the one he’d worn before. As if he wasn’t even seeing her, but something else entirely. Before she could question him, her pager went off. She reached for it and grimaced. “I’m not supposed to be working. I wonder what that’s about?”
The blank look cleared. She could swear Jonas looked relieved. “Paperwork, maybe.”
She picked up her cell and called in, hanging up a couple of minutes later. “I need to go sign some charts.”
“But you’re free after that?”
“As a bird. Unless something comes up.”
“Want to spend the day together?”
She smiled, looped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. “I can’t think of anything I’d like better.”
CLAIRE’S DREAMS troubled him. Her dreams seemed uncomfortably similar to his even though they dreamed of different time periods. They were just dreams. Hers didn’t have to mean anything, whatever Claire thought. Just as his own dreams didn’t have to mean anything.
Right. So why was he dreaming about someone else’s life?
A dream was a dream. It held no deeper meaning.
Jonas decided to drop by his mother’s while Claire took care of business at the hospital. The new girl had started work, and so far Naomi seemed to like her. At least she hadn’t complained about her whenever he called.
He walked into a scene of chaos. Naomi sat on the couch in the den with photographs and boxes spread all over the place. Maci, her helper, was nowhere in sight.
“What’s going on, Mom?”
She put her hand to her chest. “Oh, Jonas, you gave me a scare. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“What are you doing?”
“I decided to go through my photos and organize and label them while I can still see. Just in case, you know. I’m the only one left who knows who some of these people are. Everyone should have a record of their family, and I know you don’t know. You’ve never been much interested in the past.”
Not until lately. He’d just as soon have kept it that way too, but he hadn’t been given a choice.
“Some of them my mama and my grandmama marked. But a lot were just mixed up,” Naomi continued. “Maci’s been a big help.”
He looked around and didn’t see a sign of her. “And is Maci invisible?”
Naomi laughed. “Of course not. She went to pick up some more albums and boxes. Supplies to help us organize. She’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He moved some of the crap from the couch to the coffee table and sat beside his mother. “How is Maci working out?”
“I like her. She’s young and enthusiastic.” She gave Jonas a pointed look. “Doesn’t treat me like a useless old fool, either.”
“If you’re implying I’ve been treating you like a useless fool—”
“Oh, don’t get your panties in a wad. I wasn’t talking about you. I just don’t think you always listen to me.”
He had to admit the charge had some merit. “I think the saying is ‘don’t get your shorts in a twist.’ At least when you’re talking to a man.” He picked up one of the photos that had fallen from a pile to the floor. He started to toss it back onto the coffee table but took a second look. “Mom, is this a picture of me? I don’t remember it.” He was young. High school, maybe. Wearing a white T-shirt and jeans and leaning back against the hood of a fifties-era green pickup truck. His vision swam as he continued to look at the picture. A truck he remembered from . . . Oh, God, the dreams. He knew that truck from his dreams.
His mother’s voice came from a distance. Jonas shook his head and pulled himself together. “That pile of stuff is from the sixties. I don’t know how you’d have gotten mixed up in it. I haven’t even started on your pictures yet. They’re in a pile way over there,” she said, gesturing at another chair piled high with pictures and boxes, some of it spilling onto the floor. “Let me see.” Picking up her magnifying glass, she took the picture, tilted her head back and forth before finding a good angle to peer closely at it. “That’s not you. That’s Calvin.”
Calvin. Well, shit. Of course it was. “Calvin?”
Naomi looked thoughtful, and sad. “You know who he is. I told you about him years ago. He was my cousin.”
His cousin. The cousin Jonas had heard spoken of in whispers. Calvin had come to a bad end, a tragic end, was the way it had been put. Naomi hadn’t mentioned him in a long time. Jonas knew it from the dreams, but now he remembered more about the stories. The whispers had been there, in his subconscious. Could that be the reason for the dreams? His subconscious had decided to go wild?
“You don’t ever talk about him. Not anymore. And you sure as hell have never mentioned I look just like him.”
“Calvin’s been gone more than forty years. It never occurred to me you’d grown up to look like him.” She peered again with her magnifying glass, then looked at her son. “You’re his spitting image, though. What he’d have looked like if he’d lived. I can’t believe I never saw it. Never even thought about it, which is strange. I should have seen it right off, but I guess it’s been so long since he’s been gone I just didn’t think of it. And when you were in high school, well, it just didn’t occur to me to even think about you looking like Calvin.” She shook her head. “I probably did it on purpose. It always makes me so sad to think of him.”
Gone. “You said he was gone. You mean dead, don’t you?”
She nodded. “Still a hole in my heart where Calvin was.”
“How did he die?” he asked, but he had a feeling he knew. A bad end didn’t imply a happy ending.
Still looking at the photo, her expression turned grim. “He was murdered. Shot down in cold blood.”
Murdered. Fuck. If Jonas remembered his dreams, would he remember Calvin’s murder? “Was it random? Or was it a civil rights thing?” He knew it wasn’t. Even though he hadn’t dreamed it, or at least, remembered, he knew why Calvin had been shot.
“No, not civil rights. But it was a race thing. Calvin fell in love with a white girl. Isabel Cantrell. Everybody but her daddy called her Bella, though. Bella got pregnant and she and Calvin got married. Wasn’t easy back in those days to have a mixed marriage. It had only just become legal in Texas. I helped them do it. Roger and I did.”
She shook her head, covered her eyes with her hand. Her voice was thick with tears when she looked up and continued. “We shouldn’t have done it. Should have known better. We should have known nothing good would come of it. Bella’s daddy, Buster Cantrell, he found out the two of them were married and he shot Calvin. Killed him, though he never paid for it. No one ever did.”
“There was no proof?”
“Oh, they knew who it was,” she said scornfully. “Everyone did. Even though Roger and I tried to force an investigation, the police ignored us. It was early on in Roger’s career. He’d just started practicing law the year before and hired me while I was still in school. So I went right to him when Calvin died, thinking he could help. Like he’d helped the two of them get married.” She laughed without humor. “He tried. What investigating the police did was a joke. Cantrell money and influence made it all go away.”
“So Calvin and Bella were married?” Again, something he hadn’t known.
“Yes. I told you, Bella was pregnant.” She sighed and looked away. “I helped them do it, God forgive me. And Calvin died because of it.”
She set the picture down and drew in a breath. “Lord, I haven’t thought of all that in years. Hurts too much still.” She looked at Jonas and asked, “Are you all right, Jonas? You look downright sick.”
Because he was sick. What did it all mean? He’d been having dreams of a cousin who’d been murdered. And the dreams were his own, yet from Calvin’s point of view. As if he was Calvin. Impossible. But then the whole damn thing was impossible. He didn’t believe in this shit.
“What happened to Bella? And her child?”
“I never saw her again. Bella had a younger sister. Her name was Sophie. I asked her what happened to Bella. Sophie said she died. She couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell me anything else. Just that Bella died while she was still pregnant. Not long after Calvin. I don’t know why, or anything else about it. Only that Bella and her baby both died.”
She leveled a hard look at Jonas. “Now you know why I don’t want you getting involved with that doctor. She’s married. And white. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“It’s hardly the same situation, Mom.” He couldn’t picture Glenn Westbrook coming after him with a shotgun, but the man was violent. He’d proved that when he beat up Claire.
“Isn’t it?”
Calvin had been in love with Bella, for one thing. Jonas wasn’t in love with Claire. They were lovers now, but that didn’t mean he was in love with her. . . . Did it?
Chapter Fifteen
PAIN MEDICINE DIDN’T work worth a shit, Lawrence thought. All it did was make him tired and groggy. He didn’t like to sleep during the day. But he didn’t sleep well at night, and he couldn’t stop drifting off in the daytime. Maybe he could just close his eyes and rest. He didn’t have to sleep, just rest, and drift off . . . .
Lawrence couldn’t believe his eyes. His date had gone to the restroom, leaving him with nothing to do but look around since the movie was too damn boring to watch. But Juliet had asked to see it, and since the girl he wanted wouldn’t give him the time of day and Juliet seemed willing to give him whatever he wanted, he’d gone along with her. And then he’d seen Bella, climbing into an old Ford pickup that he wouldn’t have bet a nickel she’d have set foot in. Especially not since it was parked in the colored section. Bella was with a colored kid. Sitting in his car at the drive-in. Just as if she were on a date with him.
But that couldn’t be right. Bella wouldn’t date a colored boy. Except it looked like she was. What else was she doing in his car at the drive-in if it wasn’t a date? The kid was that basketball player, Calvin Davis. Lawrence had never talked to him, but he had watched him play. Kid thought he was hot shit. A lot of the jocks thought that, though. But this was carrying things too far. He had no right to date a white girl.
Especially the girl Lawrence wanted. Other girls, like Juliet, were only good for one thing. But he’d thought Bella was different. Even Bella’s father, Buster Cantrell, approved of him, so why wouldn’t Bella
give him a chance? Maybe he hadn’t been persistent enough. If Bella would go out with him, she’d see how much better suited they were to each other than she was to some colored bastard.
If Buster Cantrell knew about it, then the shit would really hit the fan. Should he tell him? Not yet, he decided. First he’d see if he could use this knowledge to his advantage. Yeah, he liked that. Bella wouldn’t turn him down once she knew he was on to her latest maneuver. And that he was willing to tell the old man exactly what his darling daughter had been doing.
He sat watching them for a while. They didn’t seem to know or care that they were being observed. Bella was laughing. Leaning toward the bastard. Surely to God she wasn’t going to let him put his hands on her.
She kissed him. Kissed that colored kid like it was nothing. Like it wouldn’t make any self-respecting white person sick. Lawrence wanted to go over and rip them apart. Ask her what the hell she thought she was doing.
But he didn’t. Instead he just watched, in silent rage.
“Mr. Westbrook, are you all right?”
He opened his eyes to see the nurse hovering over him. The nurse he hadn’t wanted but Glenn had insisted Lawrence hire, at least part-time. Damn interfering woman. “I’m fine. Damn medicine isn’t worth a shit.”
“Are you in pain? It’s not quite time for your next dose.”
The meds—or lack of them—had caused that dream. That, on top of reading about Calvin Davis’s murder on the Internet. Until he’d seen that bastard, Jonas Clark, he hadn’t thought about Bella Cantrell in years. No, that wasn’t true, he admitted. Every time he saw his daughter-in-law he was reminded, painfully, of Isabel Cantrell.
“Leave me alone. Of course I’m in pain, but if you can’t give me the medicine then get the hell out. Why did you come in? I told you I’d ring for you if I needed you.”
“You were shouting, Mr. Westbrook. Cursing. I thought you were in pain.”