When the Stars Align

by Kathryn Kelly

  It was silly, but he felt a sense of panic at not having his cell phone with him. I’m a product of my time. Logically, he knew he couldn’t use it even if he had it with him, but he was having a visceral reaction to the knowledge that he had left it behind.

  “I can’t stay,” he blurted.

  “All right,” she said, appearing unaffected by his statement.

  “I have to go, but I’ll be right back,” he said. I’ll be indigent. A man can’t survive without money.

  She smiled. “I understand.”

  “I left something upstairs in the hotel room.”

  “I’ll wait here,” she said.

  Bradley stood up, but wasn’t sure which way to go. “Is there a back door?” He asked.

  “Of course.” She, too, stood up and led him down a hallway to a wooden door with a lock on it. She took a large ring of keys from her skirt pocket and opened the lock. “Just walk around that corner and you’ll be on the street,” she told him, gesturing to the left.

  “Thank you,” Bradley said, squeezing her hand before dashing toward the street. He just needed to go upstairs and get his things.

  But when he reached the street, he was nearly run over by a horse and rider. The street was dirt, dusty despite the recent rain storm. He ran a hand down his still damp jeans.

  This isn’t right.

  It’s the wrong door.

  He turned and retraced his steps. Camille still stood at the door watching him.

  “I have to go out the front,” he said.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I’m not dressed properly.

  “Wait,” she said, and disappeared down the hallway. Within minutes, she returned with a jacket. “This is my father’s. You can borrow it.”

  “Thank you,” he said and slipped into the wool jacket. “I’ll come right back.”

  “All right,” she said, a strange smile on her lips.

  Although he preferred not to face the room full of men again, he entered the smoky tavern and kept his eyes focused on the door. If they spoke about him or even to him, he kept it tuned out as he hastened toward the door. The door to the street that would put him back in his world.

  He reached the door and shoved it open. It occurred to him in that moment that he had forgotten his umbrella.

  But as he stepped through the threshold, he stepped once again, onto the dusty, dirt street. With horses tied to the posts and men in top hats rushing to and fro.

  Determined, he turned left and went down the street toward the hotel.

  He walked through the lobby and stopped where the elevator should be. Instead he faced a wall.

  Slowly, he turned and walked back to the hotel lobby. The room was lit with candles. Everything was different. More… plush. Blue velvet curtains and settees. The walls were painted maroon with scrolls of flowers painted here and there. A man and woman sat, their heads bent together over a paper. The man was dressed in a dark gray suit and the woman wore a long gown with an elaborate headpiece.

  It was quiet. No cars. No elevators. No electric anything.

  Just quiet.

  He dropped onto an empty sofa and stared at nothing. His mind frozen.

  He’d done it. He’d gone back in time.

  Again.

  Only this time he hadn’t returned home after he walked out through the door front.

  He put his head in his hands and tried to think.

  Instead, his mind raced with no coherent thoughts.

  He felt someone sit down next to him.

  “Are you all right?” Camille asked.

  He lifted his head and looked into her lovely green eyes. The green eyes that had haunted his every waking minute since he’d first seen her. Eyes that infiltrated his dreams and, like a siren’s song, pulled him toward her.

  She had on white gloves now and a shawl over her shoulders. She placed a gloved hand on his shoulder. “What can I do?” She asked.

  “I just wanted to run upstairs and get my things.”

  “Upstairs.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “In the future?”

  He nodded. “Yes. It would only take a minute.”

  “I don’t think it’s all that easy. Madame Laveau says it doesn’t work like that.”

  “Who?”

  “Just a wise woman who lives in town.”

  “The one with a black cat and a three-legged dog?”

  She gazed at him as though he’d possibly gone insane.

  “Nevermind.” He shook his head. “Well, did she happen to say how it does work?”

  “She said it’s complicated.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” He asked, searching those green eyes, looking for answers. It had all seemed so simple. Just get here and all would be well.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  He took a deep steadying breath. There had to be a solution. Perhaps he just needed to go back into the tavern and try again.

  “I think you’re going to be here awhile,” she said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Madame Laveau.”

  “Right.” He nodded. The one who apparently knew more about this time-travel thing than he did. Right now anyone would do as well at figuring it out. He stood up. Paced. Ran a hand through his hair. He knew he was drawing attention to himself. Pacing about in his wet blue jeans.

  “There’s nothing to be done about it tonight,” she said, her voice laced with calmness.

  “Come back to the tavern. We have a guest room you can stay in. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

  She was right, of course. He should have had a contingency plan. He laughed out loud. A contingency plan for traveling back in time. As though having a plan at all weren’t ridiculous enough.

  No. He needed to think. To sleep. To regroup.

  As he followed her from the hotel, made the familiar walk to the tavern door, it occurred to him that he had gotten exactly what he’d wanted.

  Chapter Seven

  Camille led Bradley around to the back door of their townhouse. She wasn’t about to parade him through the crowded tavern again. Especially not in his current state. He looked… unwell.

  He quietly followed her upstairs to the sleeping quarters. She grabbed a candle from a wall sconce and led him into the blue guestroom on the west side. It was the only true guest room in the townhouse. She refused to count her brothers’ rooms as guestrooms. They would be back. That’s what she told herself to combat the butterflies in her stomach when she worried about them fighting Indians in Texas. Keeping their room ready kept some of the anxiety at bay. That, and the silent prayers she sent up each time she passed by their rooms.

  Going into the darkened room, she lit a candle on the nightstand, then went to open the thick velvet curtains to allow moonlight to infuse the room.

  He stood just inside the doorway, watching her, seemingly at a loss. Her heart went out to this man. This man who had found himself in a foreign time. She could not even begin to fathom what his time must be like. She could only liken it to a foreign country – with different dress and different customs.

  Nonetheless, some divine intervention had landed him here in her time. Divine intervention, otherwise, how would two people with such undeniable attraction have found each other – across time itself.

  He hadn’t caught up with her line of thinking. That much was obvious to her. Madame Laveau had cautioned her that in the future, people were much less likely to put stock in things that couldn’t be explained.

  And this definitely could not be explained.

  She went to him and, taking his hand, led him to the settee in front of the window. The moon was visible from here. It shone brightly tonight. It almost looked like she could reach out and touch it. “The moon is pretty tonight,” she commented as she sat next to him.

  He glanced out the window and nodded absently.

  “You have the same moon?” she asked.

  He turned to his gaze
to her then, blinked, and seemed to notice her for the first time since they had sat in the hotel lobby. His lips curved into a smile. He chuckled. “Yes, we have the same moon. It looks no worse for wear.”

  “That’s a relief,” she said, smiling brightly. At least she had managed to shake him from his daze. “What year is it in your time?”

  “2017.”

  She breathed in deeply to steady herself. How different the world must be from now. She did some quick math in her head and tried to imagine what it would be like in 1658. Simpler times. She couldn’t even begin to wrap her head around it. Perhaps she would go to the library so that she could have some perspective. He must think them simple.

  “What is it like?” She asked.

  “Everything is different,” he said.

  “Everything?”

  He shook his head. “If I had my phone… my things… I could show you. Everything started to change so quickly that in a hundred years, the world is no longer anything like it was before.”

  “It sounds a little frightening,” she said.

  “It actually is.” His gaze was intent on hers now. She almost regretted pulling him out of his daze. It occurred to her that she shouldn’t be alone with him here in this bedroom. Her father was out and no one else was home. There were servants about and the way they had a propensity to gossip, she mustn’t be caught here alone with him.

  “I have to go now,” she said. “You should get some sleep and I’ll do the same. In the morning, we’ll try to figure out what to do about… your… situation.”

  He nodded. Released a deep breath. “That’s the best we have then,” he said. “Good night, Camille.”

  She left him, went down the hallway to her room, closed the thick wooden door and locked it. She leaned against it and closed her eyes. Her wish had come true.

  Yet she felt compelled to lock the door behind her.

  She wasn’t sure if she locked him out or locked herself in.

  Bradley watched Camille leave him. Tamped down the urge to call her back. She was the only thing familiar to him. The only thing that he trusted to keep him safe in this foreign time.

  He stared at the moon. He hadn’t told her, but it looked bigger. Brighter. Had the earth’s rotation changed? He didn’t remember ever reading about that. It was something he would look up when… if he ever got back to his time.

  There were so many things he wanted to look up.

  But the thing he was most interested in had just breezed out of his room and disappeared down the hall. He had worked so very hard to get back to her. Planned. Shopped. He had wanted everything to be perfect.

  Now here he was with nothing to his name but an umbrella and a glass of wine – both of which he had left downstairs, probably never to see again.

  And he wore blue jeans and T-shirt. And, of course, a borrowed jacket, but that didn’t count.

  But the thing that bothered him most was his lack of funds. How was he supposed to survive without money? Or worse, skills?

  What could an airplane pilot possibly do for income in 1838?

  Surely there would be some type of job, he assured himself.

  Camille was right. He needed to sleep. He got up, wandered around he room. Much as he had been in the hotel lobby, he was struck by the plushness of the furnishings. He studied the tall bureau, so tall, he couldn’t even see over the top of it, and opened the doors. There was nothing inside. Camille had mentioned something about this being a guest room, though he’d hardly heard a word she had said.

  It was as though his ears had been ringing. Bradley hadn’t been in the military, but his best friend from high school had been. His friend had described the blast from an IED that hit several yards away as being so severe, that he’d been left with an intense ringing in his ears and a disorientation.

  Travelling through time was like being in the wake of an IED blast then. It hadn’t been like that the other times.

  It was impossible to ignore the little voice that told him this time was different.

  He didn’t want to think about the implications of what that meant. He slipped out of his wet jeans, spread them over a chair to dry, and after climbing into the bed, buried himself beneath the covers.

  As soon as he closed his eyes, his mind went into overdrive. Tomorrow he would work on getting home. His money he’d left out to dry should still be there. Most of all, he needed the coins. After a crash course in money collecting, he’s determined that the coins were much more valuable.

  Once he drifted into sleep, the nightmares started. Only this time, the nightmare didn’t involve losing control of an aircraft. This nightmare had him walking up and down the muddied streets of New Orleans, hungry, wet, with no place to go. Well dressed men pushed him aside with their canes. Elegantly dressed women turned away from him in disgust, holding their skirts high, walking as far around him as they could get. One of them was Camille, wrinkling her nose at him.

  He woke in a sweat. His worst fear was coming true. He was here with no means. No future. No place in this world.

  Staring at the ceiling, he came to a decision. He had to get back to his time.

  Camille was up before dawn. She wanted to open Bradley’s door – just to peek and see if he was still here. But she didn’t. Instead, she put her energies into procuring clothing for him. Bradley was about the same size as her brother Samuel. Tamping down the feelings of guilt, she raided his bureau, dragging out every piece of clothing. Bradley had nothing. Fortunately, her brother had kept a nice supply of clothing here at the townhouse. She knew he had more at the plantation and had taken the most useful items with him, but this would keep Bradley from standing out and having attention drawn to him.

  He was going to have a hard enough time fitting in without having decent clothes to wear.

  Her arms laden with clothes, she went to his door and kicked at it with her foot. It seemed like forever before he opened the door.

  His face lit up when he saw her and he grabbed the clothes spilling from her arms.

  “What’s all this?” he asked.

  “My brother, Samuel’s, clothes. There’s more if you want to help me,” she said, waiting while he dumped the clothes on the bed.

  “Sure,” he said, following her down the hall to her brother’s room. “Are you sure he won’t mind.”

  “He has plenty more out at the plantation house,” she said. “You’ll have to try them on, but I think you’re about his size.”

  “And if he minds?” Bradley persisted as she filled his arms with more clothes, stacking shoes on top.

  “If he minds, you can give them back.” She said, closing the bureau doors. “You’re fortunate that you’re tall like Samuel because Samuel likes clothes. My other brother Richard doesn’t care as much for clothes. He’ll wear any old thing. Fortunately, he’s much shorter than you.”

  She turned, and seeing him, giggled. She had stacked the clothes so high she could no longer see his face.

  “I don’t think I’m gonna need all this much.” His voice was muffled behind the load of clothing.

  “We’ll bring back what you can’t wear or what you don’t like.” She took his arm and led him toward the door.

  “I’m at your mercy,” he said.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t lead you down a flight of stairs or anything.”

  He mumbled something, but she couldn’t make it out.

  She chewed her lip as she led him back toward the guest room. The worst challenge was yet to come. He may think he was at her mercy, but it was her father’s mercy that would truly tell the tale. Her father could easily send him on his way. In fact… “We’re here,” she said, taking the shoes off the top and working her way down.

  Her brain began to work overtime. In order to convince her father, they needed a better story than he just happened to land here from another time. No. Her father was plenty generous. But generosity only went so far. Bradley wasn’t exactly a puppy she found on the street. He was living bre
athing man. A stranger.

  There was no one to vouch for him.

  And without a proper introduction, her father would not be overly thrilled with his daughter taking up with a stranger.

  “I need to get back,” he said.

  “So you’ve said.”

  “Will you help me?”

  “How can I help you?”

  “I don’t know. Let me walk out the front door,” he said.

  “You can walk out the front door all you want,” she decided to leave off the part about it not doing any good. If she were in his shoes, she was fairly certain she, too, would do whatever she could to try to get back to her time.

  “Does it bother you?” he asked.

  “Does what bother me?”

  “Does it bother you that I’m from the future?”

  She shrugged and began sorting clothes. Trousers in one pile. Shirts in another. “It doesn’t mean that much to me. It’s no different than if you’d said you were from Japan.”

  “It’s a little different.”

  “Not to me. You’re still a person. You just have different customs. A different language. Different experiences. But we can still communicate.”

  What she didn’t say was we can still be attracted to one another.

  “How did you get to be so wise?” he asked. “Did you have to work at it or did it just come natural?”

  She laughed. “I’m not wise. That’s just the way I see it. I’ve never been like everyone else.”

  “How are you different?” he asked, his eyes full of interest now.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’d rather figure out a math problem than sew a quilt. I don’t like to go to balls just for idle flirting. I’d rather be doing something constructive. Like reading a book or doing some work in the tavern.”

  He watched her with a goofy expression. “You and I are going to get along just fine,” he said.

  She felt the heat rise to her cheeks. He tucked a lock of stray hair behind her ear.