Robin groaned. “I can’t go back, then. I’ll have to stay here.”
“What? Why on earth would you do that?”
“So you won’t have to become a nun. Our life won’t be a bed of roses, but it has to be better than that. I have no idea what we’ll do, just that I’ll be here to support you when you break your engagement and everyone freaks out.”
Margaret had never felt so mortified. “No, Robin. Don’t you dare stay here.” She’d once entertained that fantasy, but no longer. “You said you don’t want the responsibility of ruining my life. I don’t want to ruin yours. If you stayed here, I could never live with myself, never look at you without feeling guilty for what I’d denied you. I do not want you here. If you stay, I’ll never speak to you again. You don’t belong here.”
Robin’s face crumpled. She sank into her chair and buried her face in her hands.
Trembling, Margaret knelt in front of her. “Robin,” she murmured. When Robin didn’t respond, Margaret used Robin’s lap for support as she leaned into her, stopping when her lips were mere inches away from Robin’s hands. “I want you to go back to 2010. I want you to finish university. I want you to find a nice woman, someone you can love, and marry her. Can you do that for me?”
Robin’s shoulders shook. She sobbed into her hands.
“Please, Robin. The knowledge that you went back and lived your life the way it’s meant to be lived will be the greatest gift you can give me. So, please, do this for me. You can’t do anything for me here.” She winced when Robin dropped her hands, and reached out to help dry her tears.
Robin drew a shaky breath. “I wish Pam had never bought that stupid book.”
“I’m glad she did. Otherwise I always would have thought there was something wrong with me. And I never would have met you. I never would have truly loved.”
“And been loved,” Robin whispered.
Margaret’s vision blurred.
“You’ll always be loved, Margaret. As long as I’m alive, you’ll be alive, and loved.” Overcome by sorrow, Margaret closed her eyes, then opened them in confusion when Robin gently pushed her away. She struggled to her feet at the same time Robin rose, and didn’t protest when Robin pulled her into her arms. Oh, it felt so natural to embrace Robin and rest her head against Robin’s shoulder! She would hold this moment in her heart forever, savour it, draw on it to banish the coming loneliness.
“I will stay, if you want me to.” Robin’s breath warmed Margaret’s ear.
“I know, and that humbles me more than I can say. But no, I couldn’t bear it.” Margaret plunged ahead, not willing to waste what could be her final opportunity to convey the depth of her love. “If we were in your time . . . if you were willing to be patient, to give me time to fully accept my true nature . . . I would marry you, Robin Tillman—if you’d have me.” Robin drew back. “You’d marry me?”
Margaret nodded and wiped away a tear. “But we can’t be together here. You have to go back, and you have to believe me when I tell you that with what I know now, I’ll live a much more fulfilling life inside a religious order than inside a marriage.”
“I’ll worry.”
“That would be a waste of time. The moment you’re back, I’ll have already lived my life, so worrying would be for naught.”
“I’ll worry about how it was for you.”
If only she could somehow reassure Robin that everything would be all right. “When you retrieved my diary from the attic, was there anything else there?” Robin’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Other papers. Letters, perhaps?”
“I don’t know. As soon as I lifted the floorboard and saw the diary, I took it. I didn’t check for anything else.”
Then perhaps she could put Robin’s mind at ease. “There’s room for more. I’ll write to you about how it went when I told Jasper and my family about my plans. I’ll tuck any letters farther back under the floorboard, somewhere you wouldn’t see them unless you knew to look.” Funny how she hadn’t known about any letters when she was in 2010, even though she’d come from the past. But then, she hadn’t lived this part of her life yet. “Check the attic when you get back. I can’t write to you once I’m in the order, but at least you’ll know how I fared before then.” Robin lifted an eyebrow. “I guess taking a long shower will be the second thing I’ll do when I get back, not the first.”
Margaret smiled through her tears. She gazed at Robin, lightly tracing her nose, lips, and chin with her fingers. Never had a face been so precious. The desire to kiss Robin was overpowering, but so was the fear that if she touched her lips to Robin’s and melted into her, she’d commit acts that she’d later come to regret. Rushing herself when she wasn’t ready would only mar cherished memories. If only they had more time.
She tore her gaze away and murmured, “I’m sorry.” Over Robin’s shoulder, she glimpsed the clock on the mantel. Her heart sank. Had they sat for that long? “Come, let’s dry our eyes and sit together again. We don’t have much time.”
Robin gripped her shoulders. “Margaret.”
She swallowed and forced her eyes back to Robin’s.
“I would be patient.”
Margaret nodded. “I know.” If only Robin would have the opportunity. With a heavy spirit, Margaret pulled a handkerchief from under her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes as Robin rubbed at hers. Back in their chairs, they laced fingers, stared into the fire, and occasionally said a word or two to chase away the oppressive silence that would soon be all they had.
Chapter Thirteen
Pam yawned and stretched as she padded into the kitchen, and wasn’t surprised to see Robin already sitting at the table, nursing a cup of tea. “Excited? If everything goes as expected, you’ll have your morning tea in our kitchen tomorrow.” She walked over to the tea tin—bring on decent coffee in 2010—but twisted around when Robin didn’t respond. Robin looked like hell.
Pam had assumed that excitement had prevented Robin from sleeping more than a few hours the past couple of nights, but— “You all right?”
Robin shrugged. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m not entirely looking forward to going back,” she said dully.
That was the last thing Pam expected her to say. “Are you serious? Why wouldn’t you want to go back? Besides the obvious, you’ve been cooped up in here for almost a month. You must be chomping at the bit to go home.”
Robin remained silent.
“Robin?”
She sighed. “I’m not looking forward to going back for the same reason you aren’t.” That didn’t make sense. Robin knew she dreaded leaving Jasper and would probably spend the next year on the sofa, clutching tissues and moaning Jasper’s name as she tore through her movie collection for the umpteenth time. Robin didn’t care about Jasper, not in that way. So why
—whoa! The tea could wait.
Pam pulled out a chair and plunked into it. “You’re not saying you’ve fallen for Margaret?
God, Robin, I know the two of you have spent a lot of time together, but she’s straight. You usually don’t fall into that trap. Maybe you’re experiencing the same thing hostages do for their captors. What’s it called? Oh, I know—Stockholm syndrome.” Robin rolled her eyes. “We’re not hostages, for god’s sake.” She lowered her voice. “And Margaret isn’t straight. We’re sorta, kinda involved.”
“What? You and Margaret?”
Robin nodded.
“What the hell did you do?”
“Nothing! She made the first move, not me.”
Margaret? “Spill it, girl.”
Robin lifted her cup to her lips, then noticed it was empty and put it down. “She kissed me when she came to say good-bye.”
“When? Just the other night?”
“No, at home, in 2010. I offered to hug her, expecting a quick hug and that’s all.” Pam could hardly contain herself. “And?”
“I got the full body treatment. I thought, okay, maybe she always hugs her friends this wa
y.
But then she kissed me, and it was more than a friendly kiss.” Margaret?
“To make a long story short, we’ve grown closer here. I would have been okay with going back—though I would have missed her—until she told me she’s not going to marry Jasper.” Cripes, this was going from bad to worse, though Pam couldn’t deny feeling a teeny-weeny bit pleased. “You’re not thinking of staying here and running away with her? Your life would be hell.”
“No, I’m not. She doesn’t want me to.”
So they’d discussed it. Jesus.
“She’s going to become a nun.”
“A nun? A freaking nun?”
“Yeah, a freaking nun. And I feel like it’s my fault. I mean, god, Pam, what sort of life will she have?”
“She’ll marry Jasper.”
Robin shook her head. “No, she—”
“I don’t care what she’s planning to do. The marriage announcement, remember? They get married. They have a daughter.”
“That was before we arrived here.”
“No. I mean, yes, but that doesn’t matter. We looked up the past when we were in 2010.
We’d already been here at that point, even though we hadn’t been.” She sympathized when Robin groaned. “So she doesn’t go through with the nun thing.”
“But why would she change her mind? She seems dead set against marrying him.” Pam straightened. “I’ll tell you what I think happens. She has to tell Jasper she doesn’t want to marry him, and why. I bet he talks her out of it. She might even end up telling him the truth about herself.”
Robin frowned. “I can’t see that.”
“Jasper’s not an unreasonable man. If she’s really upset when she tells him, I can see that happening, and I can believe he’d still marry her.”
“I don’t know, Pam, he still might marry her, but I honestly don’t believe she’d marry him.
She doesn’t want to live a lie. She doesn’t want to condemn him to a loveless marriage.”
“I wonder if this has anything to do with why they ended up in Halifax and married so quickly?” Pam mused. “Anyway, she probably feels very brave and determined right now, while you’re still here. Wait until reality sinks in and she has to face breaking her engagement and the shit that’ll hit the fan. Maybe she decides on her own not to go through with it. And that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about you,” Pam added when Robin’s shoulders hunched. “It means she’s being realistic and accepting that you’re gone and that Jasper is still here and does care about her.” But why Halifax, then? She leaned back. “You and Margaret—I can’t believe it! Margaret doesn’t seem your type.” She paused. “You know, we don’t have to go back.”
“Yes, we do,” Robin said firmly. “Margaret wants me to go back.” She tapped one of her temples. “And I know up here that I have to go back, not only for me, but for Mom and Chris.
I’m just not completely happy about it. And since you believe the marriage announcement, there’s no point you staying here, either.”
“I kind of like it here,” Pam said. “I feel like I fit in. But you’re right, Jasper is the big draw.
And this will sound arrogant, but the fact that he married Margaret means I didn’t stay.” Robin barked a laugh. “You’re right, it does sound arrogant.”
“What can I say?” Pam said unapologetically. “It also means the rhyme will work tonight.
We’re checking out.”
“You know, I won’t be surprised if I wake up to see a doctor hovering over me and I discover I’ve been in a coma for months.”
Pam reached out and pinched Robin’s arm—hard.
Robin yelped. “What was that for?”
“I’m real, not some figment of your imagination.” Pam clasped her hands on the table as Robin rubbed her arm. “You know what I don’t understand?” Robin looked at her expectantly.
“Won’t we keep living this over and over again now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we’re in 1910, right? Time will march on here, and eventually we’ll be born again and grow up again and end up in 2010. Jasper and Margaret will arrive again, we’ll be sucked back here, rinse and repeat.”
“I’ve had time to think about this, all those afternoons you were out and Margaret wasn’t here.” Robin stabbed her finger on the table. “I figure each life is a thread. You’re born at one end of the thread and die at the other. You can only move forward along the thread, not backward. But the thread can be woven through time. Somehow that rhyme allowed the needle to be pushed in at 2010 and lifted out in 1910. Tonight, if all goes to plan, it will be pushed in again today and lifted out at 2010, and we’ll continue to move forward along the thread. We can’t go backward and be born a second time. Margaret and Jasper won’t be resurrected over and over again.”
“A sewing analogy? Margaret’s rubbing off on you.” And Pam’s head hurt. “Wouldn’t that mean our presence here could change history?” Such as scuttle Jasper and Margaret’s engagement? “If you’re right, we hadn’t already been here when we found the marriage announcement in 2010.”
“No, we had, because although we can only move forward on our threads, the threads themselves can be threaded backward and forward. So even though each moment in our lives can only be lived once, they don’t have to be lived chronologically.” Robin closed her eyes and buried her head in her hands.
“Robin?”
After a moment, Robin dropped her hands and met Pam’s gaze. “I think I’ve just convinced myself that you’re right. She does marry him.”
“Disappointed?” Pam asked softly.
“I’m not crazy about the idea—”
“Join the club.”
“—but I understand why she does it.”
“I guess we’ll never know what made her give up on the nun idea or why they went to Halifax,” Pam said.
“We might. She said she’ll write to me.”
“How?”
“The attic. It’s possible other papers were there. I didn’t look.”
“Ooh, maybe she’ll write you love letters.” Pam sighed. “Are we pathetic, or what? We can’t find people in our own time?”
“Let’s hope we get back to our own time.”
She frowned at Robin. “What do you mean?”
“We know they’re fine because of the marriage announcement. But who knows where we’ll end up? You can’t control where we go, and so far, we’ve never tried sending people forward, only back.”
“Jasper and Margaret went forward,” Pam pointed out.
“Yes, but you read the book in their future. Maybe I’m worrying about nothing, but we know the rhyme works both ways. I’m hoping we don’t end up in 1810, or worse.”
“You know what would be really interesting? If we all end up in 2010. I know, I know, it won’t happen. They get married here in 1910 and live happily ever after.” Or make a damn good show of it, anyway. “But would you be crushed if Margaret arrived back in 2010 with us?” She batted her eyelashes at Robin. To her delight, Robin smiled.
“I think I’d be frightened.”
“Why?”
“She’d want to marry me.”
“And you wouldn’t want that,” Pam said slowly.
“She’s not ready for that.”
Was Robin?
“I’d like to think I’d have the patience to wait, but what if she’s never ready? What if it takes her years? And I’m not sure I’d want the responsibility of compensating for the loss of almost every other freaking person she’s ever known in her life, including her entire family. That would be a huge burden to bear. How could I ever live up to that, especially once she met my family?”
Pam chuckled. “It wouldn’t be only you, Robin. She’d also benefit from all the changes between now and then.”
“That might not be enough. Though she wouldn’t be the first lesbian forced to turn her back on her family and friends to be who she is.” Robin’s eyes narrowed. “What about yo
u and Jasper? Do you think you’d ride off into the sunset together?” God, she wished! “I’d like to think we would, but you’re right. He’d have to leave everyone behind. He might be okay with that at first, but when we reach the point where I’m yelling at him for throwing his dirty underwear on the floor, he might wish he was back here and wonder why he gave it all up. So yeah, they’d probably stay for a month again, we’d read the damn rhyme, and we’d all end up back here. Instead of spending summers at home and winters in Florida, the four of us would spend odd months in 2010 and even months in 1910.” Robin threw back her head and laughed. “And we’d seem to grow older twice as fast as everyone else, which would be really, really freaky.”
“Yeah, so if the four of us do somehow end up in 2010 tonight, screw the rhyme. We’d have to put roots down in one time period, and they’d have an easier time in 2010 than you’d have here.” Pam slapped the table. “But it won’t happen. They get married. We end up at home, we hope. We’ll feel like shit for a while, but somehow we’ll get through it.” Her throat felt dry; it was time for that tea. She pushed back her chair and rose, slipped her arm around Robin’s shoulders, and squeezed her. “But we can dream, eh? We can dream.”
“And we’ll destroy the book, right? Otherwise it’ll taunt us.”
“Yeah, we will. I’m with you there.” She shuffled over to the tea tin and spooned tea leaves into the strainer. “Jasper said he’ll have dinner with us and then we’ll head to Margaret’s.” So it was only a matter of time. Regardless of how she and Robin kept themselves busy until then, Pam would feel like a condemned woman waiting for the hangman to arrive.
*****
Pam didn’t dare look at Jasper or Robin as they trudged up the path to Margaret’s house. If someone jumped out, stuck a gun to their heads, and demanded that they smile, they’d all be dead. She could almost touch the waves of dread and sorrow emanating from them. It was incomprehensible. They were about to die—she and Robin to Jasper and Margaret, and Jasper and Margaret to them. This was it, really it. Even Margaret’s letters in the attic, if there were any, would be a relic from the past, the writer long returned to dust—nothing but a brutal reminder of people who’d touched their hearts and left them weeping.
Threaded Through Time, Book One Page 17