Distant Dreams

by Jenny Lykins

  He leapt to his feet, veins bulging, but she merely turned her back and closed the door. By the time he stormed out of his office, Shaelyn’s carriage was two blocks away.

  *******

  She had said her goodbyes to everyone, though they would not know it until they found her letters.

  She walked through the house, touching things that Alec had touched. When she was done she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, picked up a small oil lamp, and took her time walking to where they’d spent those first endless, blissful days of making love.

  The early October air had turned cold and the leaves on the trees blazed during the day, but now they were waving black shadows against a nearly full moon. Alec would have pointed them out to her, and they would have leaned against each other and watched them for a while. He would have rested his chin on her head and hugged her to him...

  She bit the inside of her cheek and blinked away the burning in her eyes.

  She let herself into the guest cottage in a swirl of dried leaves. The quiet parlor welcomed her like an old friend after a long absence. She moved around the room, looking out at the view one last time, dragging her fingertips across the desk where she’d written her first article for Samuel and started her journal detailing her thoughts.

  She moved to the stairway and climbed the steps to the bedroom where the tiny life within her had been conceived. The dim light of the lamp fell across the frilly bed, and she could almost see Alec lying there, waiting for her.

  A sob rose in her chest. His spirit still lived in this room. Their love would forever haunt the confines of Harbor Mist. She willed it to be so.

  With a calm that surprised her, she set the lamp on the table and curled up on the bed.

  “I’m going home, sweetheart,” she told the spirit of her husband. “Your father will try to take our baby if I stay.” She grasped the ring on her finger. “I won’t let him do that. And without you here, I have no reason to stay.”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  “I love you, Alec. I will love you forever.” She swallowed the tears clogging her throat and tried to ease the pain in her chest with a shaky breath. “Wait for me.”

  She pulled the ring from her finger. It slid free with such ease it flew from her hand and clattered to the floor.

  “No!”

  She tried to scramble from the bed, but already the vertigo struck with such force it pinned her to the mattress. The world swirled around her in a nauseating kaleidoscope of shadows. Forces she couldn’t see buffeted her, and then suddenly she felt a rough wooden floor beneath her hands.

  She opened her eyes and looked around, recognizing the companionway of the ship where she’d found the ring. She was on her hands and knees, in the same position she’d been when she’d slipped the band on her finger. The dim light from the oil lamps illuminated the black scorched floodlight on the wall.

  A door opened above and the companionway filled with light as she rose to her feet.

  “Hey there, missy. The groom’s waitin’.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Shaelyn stared at Pete in his fraying knitted cap. He scanned her from head to toe and gave a low whistle.

  “They went all out for that costume, didn’t they? I may just take the groom’s place, the way you look in it.”

  All she could do was stand there and blink.

  “Hey, don’t tell me you’ve got stage fright. All you gotta do is stand there and say I do.”

  It couldn’t be possible! Had she traveled back to the same moment she’d left? Had she traveled back to July 29th?

  The baby!

  She clamped her hands to her abdomen. Was she still pregnant?

  She felt the same tiny bulge that had been there just that morning, which reassured her somewhat. But the first thing she planned to do was go in search of a pregnancy test.

  “You all right there, missy?” Pete started down the steps, but Shaelyn shook her head.

  “I...I’m all right, Pete. I’ll be there in a minute. I just dropped something. Would you leave the door open?”

  “Sure thing,”

  When he disappeared out the door, Shaelyn whirled around and searched the floor for any sign of the ring. She scanned every corner, got down on her hands and knees and searched every crack and crevice, hoping against hope she would find it wedged where she had found it before. All she found was her notebook and recorder.

  With a heart that felt as if it were ripping in two, she slowly rose to her feet. Not only had she lost Alec, but she’d lost that which had taken her to him. And now she had to go through the ceremony that had started it all. Could she bear to stand there in a mockery of what she and Alec had done?

  She closed her eyes and took a deep, fortifying breath. She was back in 1999. She had a job to do. She needed to make money for herself and the baby. She would do this, and then she would write about it.

  And then she would cry it out of her system.

  She lifted her skirts and climbed the steep steps with the ease of someone with experience. When she stepped onto the deck, a crowd of tourists turned to watch her, and she saw her first glimpse of the twentieth century in more than two months.

  Pete came up to meet her and escorted her toward the crowd. One by one the tourists moved out of her way until they parted to reveal the captain and the back of a tall man with shiny black hair.

  Her heart nearly exploded in her chest. She stumbled and Pete tightened his grip on her arm.

  “Alec!” she cried.

  The man turned to her, a question on his face, recognition absent from his eyes.

  He wasn’t Alec. He didn’t even come close.

  She took a deep, quivering breath and stared at the furled sails, willing the tears away. Somehow she found herself standing next to the man. The captain launched into the mock ceremony in a booming voice using names she’d never heard of. She repeated her vows like a robot, gave him her hand when instructed to do so. Eventually he leaned over and gave her an embarrassed peck on the cheek, then led her to the gangplank and off the ship amidst a round of applause.

  He said something to her, his voice indistinguishable above the roaring in her ears. She looked at him and forced a smile, mumbled something in response. When he left her and returned to the ship, she turned and headed for her condo, ignoring the strange looks people gave her gown.

  She needed to get home. She needed to see her parents. To see Bri. She needed to go somewhere and try to heal this pain that time would never erase.

  *******

  “I’ve made you an appointment with a doctor, sugar. I think it’s time you saw one.”

  Louisa Sumner handed her a slip of paper with the name Dr. Stetler, and the date August 30 at 1:30. Shaelyn finished writing out her check to the children’s home to cover all her curses within the past several months. She’d lost count of her “balance,” so she figured five thousand dollars ought to do it. She sealed the check in an envelope, slapped a stamp on it, then picked up the slip of paper. The name wasn’t familiar.

  “This isn’t Dr. Noble, Mom. I have an appointment with him next week.”

  Her mother shifted in her chair at the kitchen table in their Baton Rouge home.

  “This one’s not an obstetrician, Shae. He’s a psychiatrist.”

  “Damn it, Mother.” Shae tossed the paper back onto the table. “I’m not crazy. I’m not imagining this. If you don’t believe me, that’s fine, but I’m not going to a shrink so he can pump me full of anti-delusion drugs.”

  “Just talk to him, Shaelyn. Even if it’s just about those nightmares that have come back.”

  “No!”

  She scraped her chair back and stood.

  “I come home to find comfort with my family, and all I get from you and Dad and Bri are raised eyebrows and offers to have me committed. Everything I told you is true! I lived in 1830, I married the man of my dreams, and he is the father of this baby!”

  “Shaelyn, we spoke
to you just five days ago!”

  “I already told you... Oh, never mind. I don’t blame you for not believing me. I wouldn’t if I were in your place. But I will never, I repeat, never, see a psychiatrist about it.”

  She shoved her chair to the table and turned to leave.

  “Shaelyn, where are you going?”

  She waved her hand as she walked out of the room.

  “I’m going back to Maine, to find proof that what I’ve said is true.”

  *******

  Why she didn’t think of this before, she didn’t know. Her only excuse was that her mind had been numb with grief.

  She rubbed the tiny bulge beneath her jeans. “Come on, little Bubba. We’re off to the courthouse.”

  She found her way to the office that held the records of Port Helm’s births, deaths, and marriages. It didn’t take her any time at all to find the record of marriage between one Alec Hawthorne and one Shaelyn Sumner, joined in Holy Matrimony on the twenty-ninth day of July, in the year of our Lord, 1830.

  Tears flooded her eyes at the sight and the unexpected ease with which she’d found the record. An ache grew in her chest and she let the tears flow free, sitting there at the microfiche viewer.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?” a young clerk in a bowtie asked.

  She chewed her lower lip and swiped at her eyes.

  “Yes. I’m fine. I just found what I’m looking for.”

  He peered at the screen, took one more long look at her, then walked away.

  While she had the records open, she decided to scan the next few years and see if there were records on Molly and Charles.

  She found nothing on Molly, but she discovered Charles and Mary had had four boys and three girls in the space of eight years.

  “Criminy, Charles,” she muttered with a watery smile. “You should have given the girl a breather.”

  With a little reticence, she scanned the death records to see how long Der Fuerher had lived to torment his other children. She found the record much sooner than she’d expected.

  William Charles Hawthorne

  b. Feb. 15, 1775

  d. Feb. 17, 1832 of natural causes

  So, nobody ever got around to killing him. She read on.

  Survived by wife, Jane Elkin Hawthorne, sons Alec Christopher Hawthorne, Charles Elkin Hawthorne, and daughter Molly Ann Hawthorne.

  The words jumped off the screen and slammed into her brain.

  Survived by Alec Christopher Hawthorne!

  Oh, my God! Oh, dear God! Had he survived? Was this a mistake in the records?

  Heat tingled across her neck and up the back of her spine. The room spun for a moment and she thought her heart would explode in her chest.

  She put the microfiche back in their holders, shoved them into the bowtied clerk’s hands, then ran from the building and didn’t stop until she got to the library.

  “Newspaper articles from 1830,” she panted to the librarian. “Do you have them on microfiche?”

  The plump little lady with her short helmet of hair slowly shook her head no. Shaelyn wanted to scream.

  “We’ve put them all on CD ROM.”

  Shaelyn could have kissed her.

  The woman took a maddeningly long time to find the disk she was looking for.

  “Now you put this in the little drawer on the left and - ”

  Shaelyn grabbed the CD from the woman’s hands and ran for the computer bank.

  “I know how, thanks,” she called over her shoulder.

  She dashed to the nearest computer, which had a teenager browsing the web. The next had an eleven year old playing a video game. At the third, a mother with two children hanging on her arm tried desperately to look up something between whines.

  Shaelyn was going to physically remove one of the people if she didn’t find a computer.

  That, or commit homicide.

  A free computer fell into her line of vision and she ran to it with all the determination of a quarterback going for the goal line. Woe to anyone who got in her way.

  She slid into the seat just as a gum-popping teenage girl put her hand on the back of the chair.

  “Sorry,” Shaelyn said while she dropped the CD into the drawer. “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Whatever,” the girl huffed in irritated teenage-ese.

  Shaelyn by-passed all the months leading up to October, 1830. She found the article reporting the sinking of the Zephyr and the deaths of all onboard, including the ship’s owner and pillar of the community, Alec Hawthorne. She’d read that a hundred and sixty-nine years ago.

  The next article froze the blood in her veins. It was written two days after she’d left.

  LOCAL SHIPOWNER ALIVE

  Alec Hawthorne, reported lost at sea after his ship went down during a hurricane, arrived in Port Helm yesterday, shocking his family as well as the community.

  He reported having become ill early in his voyage home and disembarked on the tip of the peninsula that makes up the Territory of Florida, to recover from his illness and continue his journey overland.

  Shaelyn laughed out loud. He’d been seasick! A chorus of “Shhhs” sent her back to reading.

  Hawthorne’s homecoming proved to be bittersweet, however. He was shocked to learn of the loss of the ship and its men, but most upsetting is the mysterious disappearance of his bride of two months, Shaelyn Sumner Hawthorne. She had been missing for little more than a day when Hawthorne returned from the grave. It is said that Mrs. Hawthorne was despondent over the loss of her husband, and the family fears...

  The words blurred in front of Shaelyn’s eyes and blood roared in her ears.

  He was alive! And she was here. Molly knew the truth, but Alec would never believe her. She had to get to him. She had to put the ring back on and go -

  The ring! Oh, dear God. The ring.

  Why, why had she taken off the ring? If she had waited just twenty-four hours, she would be in his arms right now, the happiest woman on earth.

  She had to find the ring.

  Yanking the CD from the computer, she raced to the desk and shoved it into the nearest clerk’s hands, then ran out the door and back to her condo.

  Bills, shopping lists, and newspapers went airborne as she searched for the phone book.

  She tore the list of antique dealers and jewelers out of the Yellow Pages. You couldn’t walk ten feet in that part of Maine without stumbling into an antique store, and she would comb every one of them, as well as any jeweler who dealt in antique jewelry, looking for her ring.

  Five days later she had visited every place of business on that list, plus some others, and no one had ever seen a ring of that kind.

  She was dangerously close to being clinically depressed.

  She needed a break. She would go back to the courthouse and the library, get copies of the marriage record and the newspaper article, and then go home to Baton Rouge and try to clear her head and come up with another plan.

  There had to be another way to find that ring.

  *******

  Griffin stood in the doorway to Alec’s library, glaring. He had sailed in just a day after Alec’s arrival, in mourning and prepared for a funeral.

  “Drinking won’t bring her back, Hawthorne.”

  Alec waved him off. “I appreciate it, Grif, but I need to be alone right now.”

  Griffin started to speak, but instead just shook his head and closed the door behind him.

  Alec poured another drink and tossed the contents down his throat in one swig. He waited for the blessed numbness to creep into his brain, cloud his thoughts and give a few longed-for moments of forgetfulness.

  So far it hadn’t worked.

  A week had gone by since his return to Port Helm. He had thought of nothing on the trip overland save holding Shaelyn in his arms and never letting her go. He’d also vowed never to step foot on a ship again.

  His seasickness had increased in direct proportion to the storms around them. Finally, when he’d grown so
weak he could barely rise, he’d swallowed his pride and instructed Captain Hancock to put him ashore before they had to bury him at sea. Though the waters had been rough, never had he dreamed that the ship would go down just days after they left him on dry land.

  And then to return, not only to find Shaelyn gone, but to discover that they were no longer married, and that his father had ordered her out of Alec’s house.

  That very day Alec had spoken to Lawrence Sheffield and ordered what he had built of the business to be separated from Hawthorne Shipping. He would not work another day, let alone earn another cent, for the man who had treated his wife so heartlessly.

  And she was his wife, no matter what the law declared.

  He scrubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand, then dragged it down to rasp against his days-old beard. He had barely eaten or slept since his return, let alone bothered to shave.

  Where the hell could she be?

  He, Griffin, and the men he’d hired had ridden much further than she’d had an opportunity to travel, checking every direction, every place of lodging, every means of conveyance: Ships, coach lines, railroads. He’d even checked livery stables for a woman meeting her description hiring a horse.

  And what had she taken? Margaret had inspected Shaelyn’s wardrobe and declared that the only clothing missing was what she’d worn the day she’d disappeared. Indeed, the little maid had found some very odd-looking apparel stuffed into a boot that could only be a very abbreviated version of undergarments. One more mystery to add to the enigma that was his wife.

  And then they’d found the ring. Laying in the middle of the floor in the bedroom of the guest cottage. That alone caused his heart to shift in his chest.

  He’d demanded in those early days that she remove the ring, and he had witnessed her trying desperately to do so, even when she didn’t know he watched her. How did she get it off? And why did she leave it behind?

  He raked his hands through his hair, then slammed his fist against the desk.

  She loved him, damn it.

  A growing fear, the seed of which had been planted days ago, took root against all his efforts to stop it.