“The only problem I try to solve in the rain is how to get out of it,” Jack said and chuckled.
Charlotte set her cup on the table next to her, checked her phone for emails, scrolled through several, but none of them seemed as important as listening to Braham’s story. She put the smartphone down. “What about your law practice?”
“I spend most of my time in San Francisco, but I get restless and go to the winery every month or two for several days. If I run for a senate seat, it’ll be harder to get there as often.”
“State Senate or US Senate?” Charlotte asked.
“By the time this conflict is over, I’ll have had enough of Washington.”
Charlotte and Jack laughed. “A hundred and fifty years, and some things haven’t changed,” Jack said.
Charlotte yawned. “It’s late. I need to get back to town.”
“Why don’t you stay?” Jack said.
“I’ve got an early-morning lecture. It’ll be easier if I go home tonight.”
Braham glanced around the room then looked at Jack. “Ye’ve got a lot of books. I’d like to select one to read tonight, if ye don’t mind.”
“You mentioned reading Plato. I’ve got The Republic, The Symposium, Phaedo, and The Trial and Death of Socrates.”
“I’ll take The Republic.”
Jack put his coffee down, went to the floor-to-ceiling shelves, and scanned the collection. “It’s here somewhere. It was my grandfather’s favorite book, too.”
Charlotte found her thoughts drifting back to her earlier examination of Braham’s wound, the pajamas, and his muscular arms. Her face heating, she yanked her attention back to the conversation. “It was also his father’s favorite and his father’s and his father’s and his father’s ad infinitum.”
Jack gave an amused snort. “As far back as I can remember the book sat on the bedside table. He read passages every evening. If he traveled, he packed it in his suitcase. I’m surprised my grandmother didn’t put it in the casket with him.”
Braham joined him, moving slowly from one bookcase to another. “I think this is it.” He removed a book, opened it, and thumbed through several pages. “He made notations in the margins. I’ll enjoy reading his thoughts.” He then nodded to Charlotte and Jack. “Good night.”
Before he reached the door, he stopped. “There’s a newspaper clipping in here dated April 1965. It’s for a memorial service to pray over the hundredth anniversary of the death of Abraham Lin—” Braham stopped reading and glanced up, ashen-faced.
“If April 1965 was the one hundredth year,” he rasped, “it means Lincoln died in April of 1865.” Braham’s hands shook so hard the laminated clipping tapped against the book’s cover. “What killed him? This doesn’t say.” His voice was an anguished whisper.
Charlotte’s panic hoarsened her voice. “We can’t tell you.”
Braham pounded his fist on the edge of a table, rattling the lamp and glass candy dish. “What the hell do ye mean, you can’t tell me? Lincoln’s dead, and ye can’t tell me what happened?” He scanned the titles in the bookcase. “Ye’ve got hundreds of books here. One of them will tell me what I want to know.”
“Stop him,” she said quietly to Jack. “The Sandburg titles are right in front of him.”
Jack squeezed Braham’s shoulder. “Come. Sit down. Let’s discuss this.”
Braham shrug off Jack’s arm. “Are ye going to tell me what happened?”
“No,” Jack said.
Braham grabbed a book from the bookcase. “Abraham Lincoln: The War Years Volume IV by Carl Sandburg. This will tell me.” He glared at Charlotte and continued in a steely voice, “Ye’ve known all along he might be dead by the time I got back. Yet ye never said a word. Why?”
Charlotte had the sensation of losing a patient on the operating table, knowing there was nothing she could do to salvage the situation. “Life is full of uncertainties. None of us knows what the future holds. You can’t come here, soak up what’s happened in the past hundred and fifty years, then take the knowledge back to your time and manipulate history. I won’t be responsible for it happening.”
“Damn it. Ye should have let me die.”
Something in his voice and the way he looked at her made her heart knock against her ribs. “I couldn’t. Lincoln recruited me to save your life.”
He slapped the book against the doorjamb. “Ye saved the wrong man, Doctor Mallory. I don’t have to read this to know he was murdered. We begged him to be careful. But he refused to listen.” Tears glittered in his eyes. “I have to go home and stop this madness before it happens.” Braham turned and left the room with shoulders hunched in sorrow.
Charlotte moved to follow, but Jack held her back. “He doesn’t need us right now.” He poured brandy into two glasses. “When he reads what Booth did, he’ll demand to go back and stop the assassination.”
Charlotte gulped her drink. “We’ve got a problem, then. If that’s his plan, we can’t let him go.”
“We can’t keep him. He’s not a stray. He has a life he’s entitled to live.”
“Braham lost the life he had. We can’t give him another one and then let him loose to shake the fabric of our lives. Can we?”
“No.” Jack freshened his drink then tipped the decanter to pour more into Charlotte’s glass.
She placed her palm over the top. “No more for me. I have to drive.”
Jack sat and crossed his legs, his slipper dangling from his toes. “Braham’s never questioned the whole concept of time travel. It’s as if he already knew it was possible.”
Charlotte tilted her head, considering the possibility. “He’s opened-minded and accepts situations that aren’t easily explained.”
“He won’t accept being stuck here.”
“He can’t see it from our perspective, and we can’t see it from his. To us, Lincoln has always been a man carved in white Georgia marble, larger than life, the nation’s quintessential self-made man.”
Jack finished off his drink. “You’re waxing poetic, sis.”
“What? Are you jealous? Afraid I’ll write a book of my own and compete with you?”
“I’d love for you to write a book. You’ve got an entertaining writer’s voice.”
She kissed his cheek. “Thank you. But I’ll stick to surgery. I’ve got to go. Take Braham’s temperature in the morning.”
“I assume you mean figuratively.”
She rolled her eyes. “If he’s still set on a plan likely to derail the country, we’ll keep him here. Maybe you should take him to Washington and let him see the Lincoln Memorial.”
Jack’s face brightened. “That’s worth a try.”
She slipped on her jacket and grabbed her purse off the entryway table. “Check on him later. I’ll text when I get home.”
She opened the door and a black cat darted between her legs and into the house. She jumped and slapped her hand over her heart. “Where’d he come from?”
Jack crouched down and called to the cat. “She showed up a couple of nights ago. Come here, girl.” The cat rubbed up against Jack’s leg, meowing. “She’s healthy and well fed. Her owner probably dumped her in the field, hoping she’d find a home here.”
“Just because we have a farm, people think they can dump their animals here. Did I miss seeing a signpost saying strays welcome? What are you going to do with her? You can’t keep her. You’re hardly ever home.”
Jack eyed Charlotte with a speculative gleam in his eyes. “Isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you?”
She threw up her hands. “Apples and oranges.” She left the house, letting the door slam behind her, feeling a hard, unmovable knot in her throat, and cursing brothers, cats, and green-eyed cavalrymen.
14
Mallory Plantation, Richmond, Virginia, Present Day
The sun was climbing above the horizon by the time Braham finished the last book in Carl Sandburg’s The War Years four-volume set. He knew how the war ended and how profoundly affe
cted the country was and continued to be.
According to John Wilkes Booth’s notes quoted in Sandburg’s book, Booth believed Lincoln was a tyrant who had caused all the South’s troubles, and that he, Booth, was the instrument of punishment.
If Braham had anything to do with it, those words would never be written. Booth would die before he could end Lincoln’s life on April 14, 1865.
Braham sat in an upholstered chair in his bedroom, feet propped on a stool, staring at the river, unsure of how to proceed. He felt certain Charlotte would never help him return to his time, now that he knew of Lincoln’s assassination. That meant he had to find another way.
What that would be, he wasn’t sure, but the answers would come. They always did.
15
Mallory Plantation, Richmond, Virginia, Present Day
The sound of shuffling feet told Jack his houseguest was up and about and on his way into the kitchen. Jack closed the American History magazine he was reading and shoved it into a drawer. Then he turned his attention back to the newspaper spread open on the counter, and glanced up when Braham entered the kitchen. Tired, drawn, red eyes. Jack had seen the face of grief too many times, and his heart ached for his buddy. He reached for a mug in the overhead cabinet.
“Coffee?”
Braham slung a leg over the barstool. “As black as ye can get it.” He nodded toward the paper. “Anything noteworthy happening in Richmond? Are the Yanks ready to invade?”
Jack gave him a squirrely grin. “Does a Detroit automaker looking to relocate count?”
“Is it cheaper to make cars here?”
“Tax incentives,” Jack said.
Braham gave Jack a curious squint.
“The government collects taxes from individuals and businesses. It then gives tax breaks to companies who relocate to depressed areas. Saves the company money, and it’s good for the local economy.”
“Yer traffic will become more congested.”
Jack placed a steaming cup of coffee on the counter. “There’s the rub.”
“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,” Braham continued.
“When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause,” Jack said.
“There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life.”
Jack gave Braham a soft punch in the arm. “You’re the first person to ever share lines with me. Thank you.”
“I enjoy reading Hamlet.”
“Tonight we can entertain Charlotte with a theatrical performance.”
Braham scratched his chin. “Doesn’t Richmond have men’s clubs? I would think ye’d be a regular, not home reciting Shakespeare to yer sister.”
“You’d be surprised at today’s men’s clubs. And, no, I don’t belong to one.” He refilled his mug and stirred in a teaspoon of sugar. “On second thought, you might not be surprised.”
Braham glanced down at the T-shirt he was wearing. “I’d need appropriate clothes. A uniform, perhaps. Where does Charlotte get hers?”
“There’s a Civil War clothing store in Richmond. The owner makes custom uniforms. Whatever you need, he can make it. Women’s dresses, too.”
“I don’t think I’ll dress up in women’s clothing. I’ll leave dressing as the opposite sex to yer sister.”
“Who, by the way, asked me to check your temperature this morning, but—”
Braham held out his finger.
Jack looked at the digit, then at Braham’s smirking face.
“Don’t ye have one of those clothes pins they use in the hospital?”
“Clothes pins? Oh. You’re talking about a pulse ox.” Jack chuckled. “I don’t have one of those, but she asked me to take your temperature figuratively. Not literally.”
The wheels behind Braham’s eyes were spinning. After a long moment, he said, “She was asking about my mood, not my health.”
Jack held his fist out for a fist bump but Braham looked at him awkwardly. “Bump your fist against mine.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Braham gave him a fist bump which ended up being more of a punch. Jack spread his fingers and shook his hand. “Not so hard. This is an important guy ritual. Let’s try it again. It’s more about touching your knuckles than an actual punch.” Jack reached out his fist again and Braham applied the right amount of force this time.
Braham glanced down into his coffee. “I can do a fist bump, but it doesn’t mean I belong here. I don’t understand yer jokes or yer customs. Helplessness is emasculating, especially for a soldier. I’ve spent four years in a war. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. But I never doubted my manhood until now. I’ve failed my president. I’ve failed myself. I don’t know why I’m here.”
Jack sipped his coffee, tapping his foot softly.
“Ye understand those sentiments,” Braham continued. “They’re similar to what ye experienced at the monastery. I don’t have six months to follow ye around, to find my own path. The path I’m on leads to a tragic end. If ye won’t take me back, I’ll find another way.”
“Let’s eat breakfast,” Jack said. “Then I thought we’d go to Washington.”
Braham arched his brows.
“Sorry, buddy. Not your Washington, but mine. There’s something I need to show you.”
Jack had his own important reasons for helping Braham return to his time. He wanted to go, too. He had done extensive research on the sixteenth president. In one article, he had described Lincoln as the captain who had guided America’s ship through stormy seas of secession and civil war and then led the people to a safe harbor called peace. Following the release of the article, a line of text had trended on Twitter, which resulted in a bump in sales for both his fiction and nonfiction books.
He had planned to write a follow-up article about how Lincoln’s untimely death had caused the president to become a martyr to the cause of liberty, but Jack discovered he had nothing new to add to the discussion. An interview with Lincoln, Grant, or even Booth could give him enough new material to write a full-length book. He framed the premise in his mind: How did Lincoln’s mythic stature grow over the century to the point where he was now considered America’s greatest president?
So all he had to do, Jack thought as he sipped his coffee, was help Braham understand how saving the president’s life would prevent Lincoln from becoming immortal. Once Jack accomplished that, he would have to then convince Charlotte she wouldn’t land in another high-risk adventure with bullets flying over her head.
Convincing Braham might actually be easier than convincing his sister.
16
Washington, D.C., Present Day
An hour later Jack and Braham climbed into the Range Rover for their day trip to Washington. Jack put on his seat belt and so did Braham, sliding it easily across his chest and clicking in the latch plate without glancing down.
“You sure you’re feeling up to this?” Jack asked.
“I’m not accustomed to staying indoors.” He knocked on the window glass. “I’m still closed in, but at least I can have the wind on my face. Is Charlotte coming with us?”
Jack started the car and put it into gear. “She said she would call if she could rearrange her schedule. I doubt she’ll do it. Nothing comes between her and her precious hospital.”
“Ye don’t like her work taking up so much of her time, do ye?”
“I don’t have a problem with her job. I have a problem with her believing she doesn’t need anything else in her life.”
Braham pushed the window button and watched the glass disappear inside the door, then pulled the button in the other direction, raising the window. “What do ye have besides yer books?”
Jack chuckled. “More than she does. Charlotte calls me a serial monogamist.”
“What’s that?”
“A person who moves from the end of one relationship to the beginning of a new relationship as quickly as possible. I’m not quite that bad. But what about you? Are you marrie
d?”
“Never found a woman with the right mix of cleverness and sass.”
“There probably aren’t many eligible women in Washington…in your Washington, I mean.”
Braham chuckled, remembering the stack of invitations to dinner parties and balls he’d declined prior to leaving for Richmond. He intended to thank the president for rescuing him from dozens of overbearing mothers, eager to marry off their daughters. “Ye’d be surprised how many educated and wealthy women there are, but none of them interest me.”
“What? Are you hard to please?”
“I’d prefer to be the pursuer, not the pursued.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
They drove down the lane, a country road lined with vineyards. “I’ve seen several vineyards. How’s the wine?” Braham asked.
“Pretty good. It took a few years to get the vines established, but in the last two years The Lane Winery has won several awards.” Jack’s phone rang, flashing Charlotte’s name. He answered using the Bluetooth speaker phone connection. “Hey, sis. What’s up?”
“I cleared my calendar. Where are you?”
“We’re not on the highway yet.”
“Oh, good. Come get me.”
Jack tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “I’m not sure we want you to go. You’ll put a damper on our conversation.”
Braham shook his head and mouthed, “No, she won’t.”
“It’ll take you thirty minutes to get here,” Charlotte said. “You can tell Braham everything you know about women in ten minutes, all your dirty jokes in five, and how to avoid an STD in thirty seconds. You’ll be talking sports by the time you pick me up, and I know as much about that as you do.”
“What about the subtle nuances of dating in the twenty-first century?”
The Sapphire Brooch Page 11