by Cathy Peper
He was curious. No doubt about it. The unusual closure on her pack, the “bungee” cords and the many bladed knife she tried to keep hidden, were strange, as was her canteen, which she referred to as a “water bottle.” He wanted to know what business she had with Poole and why they had left her alone in the middle of nowhere. If Poole had deliberately abandoned her in an area contested by both the Union and Confederate armies, he had a bone to pick with the man, rich and powerful or not. “You can trust me. Whatever this about, you can depend on me.”
Her wary brown eyes softened. “I do trust you, Jesse. But some things you’re better off not knowing.” She fidgeted with her napkin again, balling it up and smoothing it out. “Bryce might demand my silence as payment for helping me. If not, I’ll share a few useful tidbits with you before I go home.”
Before she goes home. A hollow ache filled his stomach despite the food he had just eaten. The thought of never seeing her again filled him with dismay even though he had no claim on her and was in no position to stake a claim. The Confederate Army owned him for another year. As soon as he got Diamond safely settled, he would return to the battlefield. He had little to offer any woman save a one-third share in his father’s farm and the imminent risk of widowhood.
“My brother fights for the Union. I don’t care if you are a spy.”
“I’ve told you a million times, I’m not a spy.”
“You wouldn’t tell me if you were.”
“Guess not.” She chewed on a piece of bacon. “Your brother’s a Yankee? Didn’t see that coming.”
“It was my father’s idea to have one son on each side. No matter which side wins, we’re covered.”
“Sounds cold-hearted. What about patriotism, honor, and duty?”
“Dad hasn’t a lot of patience with intangible things. He wants the South to prevail, but is more concerned with holding on to our property. The house and land are now in enemy territory since New Madrid fell. I only hope it has escaped damage.”
“I’m sorry to keep you from your home and family.”
“You’re not. It’s my duty to return to my regiment once I get you settled.”
“On that note, let’s get a refill on our coffee and go beard the dragon,” Diamond said, gesturing towards the waitress as boldly as a man.
Jesse hid his grin behind his cup. Bryce didn’t know what he was in for.
* * *
Diamond waited while Jesse asked the front desk for directions to Poole Mercantile. They took a streetcar, pulled by a horse, but running on tracks, to reach the business. Diamond stood across the street, nerves strung tight. What if Bryce and Anne weren’t there? They might have already returned to the future. It had taken her nearly two weeks to get here. They had to get here, too, but she supposed they still had their ATV.
“Shall I go in with you?” Jesse asked.
She shook her head. “No, I need to do this alone.” Taking a deep breath, she approached the store. It had two large plate-glass windows displaying a selection of shoes and boots. A border of glass tiles topped the windows and door. When Diamond pulled the door open, a bell rang and a young woman stepped out from behind the counter.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m looking for Mr. Poole.”
“Which Mr. Poole would that be?”
“Bryce Poole.”
“My grandfather isn’t in at the moment. He’s mostly retired these days.”
Her grandfather? Must be the Bryce Jesse knew about. “The man I’m looking for is a young man. Perhaps from a different branch of the family?”
The woman shook her head. “My grandfather is the only St. Louis Poole with the name Bryce. I don’t know all our kin in Virginia, though.”
“What about Bob Rivers or Anne Rush? Do you know where I could find them?”
The woman eyed her with suspicion. Diamond brushed her fingers against the full skirts of her gown. The shop displayed delicate leather boots, silk slippers, and elegant shoes. The items looked expensive, as did the plush sofas and crystal chandeliers. Although used, her dress was of good quality, but plain, unlike those of the other shoppers in the store. She didn’t look as if she belonged here.
“My grandfather went by the nom de plume Bob Rivers when he worked on the river. My grandmother’s name is Arianne, but she goes by Ari, not Anne.”
Sweat broke out on Diamond’s brow and her stomach rolled. She would have thought she’d found the right people if not for the difference in ages. But families often re-used names. Perhaps this young woman didn’t know all her relatives. Maybe the older Pooles could help. “Could I talk to your grandparents? Or your parents? It’s very important I find the people I’m looking for.”
The woman hesitated. “Would you like to take a seat? You look pale.”
Diamond sank onto the sofa and clutched her hands in her lap. She longed to demand to speak to Bryce, but didn’t want to risk being thrown out of the store. “Can you help me? Give me your grandparents’ address?” If the woman wouldn’t cooperate, she would check the city directory.
“My grandmother came in with me today. She’s in the back. Who should I tell her is calling?”
Should she use a fake name? Would Bryce or Anne have mentioned the reporter who dogged their steps in the twenty-first century? She decided against it. “Diamond Merrell.”
“Wait here.” The woman disappeared into the back of the store. She returned a few moments later. “Grandma will see you.” She led Diamond to an office where an older woman sat behind a desk piled with papers. She wore a purple gown trimmed with black braid and had pulled her gray hair back in a knot. Despite her age and time-worn features, she had excellent posture and a serene smile.
“You wished to see me, Miss Merrell? I must admit while your name sounds familiar, I don’t recall where we met.”
Diamond stared at the old woman. She shared Anne’s high cheekbones and there was something eerily similar in her smile, but she could not possibly be the same person. “Thank you for seeing me. I was hoping you could help me find Bryce Poole and Anne Rush.”
The old woman’s face lost color. “Who are you? What do you want from me?”
“My name is Diamond Merrell,” she repeated. Old people were often forgetful. “I only want to talk to Bryce and Anne. I mean them no harm.”
“I’m Anne Rush, but I haven’t used that name in years. Wherever did you hear it?”
“You’re Anne Rush? That’s impossible.” Diamond’s heart raced. “I just saw her a few weeks ago, and she was no more than thirty.”
The woman’s eyes grew wide. “You’re that reporter! I knew I recognized the name. You kept following us. You wouldn’t leave us alone, although we had done nothing wrong.”
How did she know this? “Did Anne tell you about me? You can’t be her. You’re old.” Fear held her in its grip and Diamond had no time for tact.
“I am old, for this time period. But late seventies is not so unusual in the twenty-first century.”
The twenty-first century. Diamond swallowed. Something was very wrong here. “It is you. I don’t understand. How could you age so much in a few weeks?” Is accelerated aging a side effect of time travel?
“A few weeks?” Old-woman Anne placed a hand behind her neck. “I’m as confused as you are. You ran towards us as we activated the stone. I suppose we caught you up in the vortex. But that was fifty years ago.”
If Anne hadn’t looked so frail, Diamond would have wanted to shake her. She had to be lying! Yet the proof was in her lined face and wrinkled hands. Diamond sucked air into her lungs, trying to stave off full-blown panic. Anne had said something about a stone. “You used a stone to travel through time? Please go get it and send me back. I can’t stay here in this war-torn country. I’m lucky to be alive.”
Anne took a deep breath. “We need to talk.”
Eleven
Chapter 11
Anne took charge. She sent a street urchin for her carriage, told her granddau
ghter to watch the shop and sent a message to her husband to meet them at home. She might have aged fifty years since Diamond had last seen her, but she still had the same energy. Now, however, she appeared serene and full of purpose, unlike the haunted young woman Diamond had confronted that night at McDonald’s. Life in the past, harsh as it was, suited her.
“I go by Arianne, now,” Anne told her as they waited for her driver. “Arianne Poole. Bryce and I married shortly after you last saw me.”
They had stayed together. Diamond recalled how close they had been, how she’d felt a tinge of envy. Some couples really did make it. “And your little girl? Is she still a child or is she a woman in her fifties?”
“She’s fully grown,” Arianne said, her eyes shadowed.
A horse-drawn carriage pulled up in front of the store and Diamond climbed in after Arianne. She wondered if Jesse was watching. She would have to meet him back at the hotel.
The Pooles’ carriage was elegant and luxurious. The mud splashed exterior gave way to a clean and shiny interior with soft and supple leather seats. The carriage rocked gently as they set out, but it was almost as comfortable as riding in a car. Much slower, but not arduous. Diamond gazed out the window. They passed stores and restaurants, maneuvering around other carriages, wagons, people on horseback and even reckless pedestrians darting through the traffic.
She was so busy taking in her surroundings, it took her a while to realize that Arianne was studying her just as intently. “Everything must seem strange to you.”
“I’ve had some time to adjust, but at first I thought I’d stumbled upon a reenactment group so concerned about accuracy they bordered on a cult.”
“Soldiers captured you?”
“No, but I witnessed part of a battle—the fall of Island #10.”
“You’ve only been here for a few weeks?”
“Yes. I don’t understand why you’ve aged and I haven’t.”
“Bryce and I returned to 1812. It seems the stone brought you to 1862.”
She kept mentioning a stone. A stone that could transport people through time? It seemed crazy, but nothing had been normal since she came to in that clearing.
The carriage drew up to an elegant three-story house nestled on a long narrow lot between two similar houses. It seemed the Pooles had done well for themselves. Diamond exited the carriage and followed Arianne up the brick sidewalk to the door. A maid met them in the hallway and took their coats.
“Has Mr. Poole arrived?”
“Yes, he’s in the parlor,” the maid replied.
“Bring tea, please.” Arianne entered the room to their left. An elegant sofa sat under the bay window bathed in sunlight and an elaborately carved table stood in the center of the room flanked by matching chairs. A fire burned in the hearth, but the room still held a chill. An old man stood by the window, leaning on a cane, his face cast in shadow. Bryce.
“What’s wrong, Ari? Who is this woman?”
“You don’t recognize her? Think back to the day we came home, when we were in the ATV and about to activate the necklace.”
“Di Merrell?” He stepped away from the window. His handsome features had softened with age, except for his nose which jutted fiercely from his face. His hair was white, but his eyes were still a piercing blue. “How is this possible? She hasn’t aged a day.”
“While the stone brought us to 1812, it deposited Diamond in 1862.”
“Interesting.”
Diamond had had enough. “No, not interesting. Disastrous. You need to send me back.”
A knock on the door signaled the return of the maid with a tray of tea and cookies. She set it on the table and withdrew. Arianne exchanged a look with Bryce and went to pour the tea. “Do you take sugar? Cream?”
Diamond closed her eyes and counted to ten. “Sugar, no cream. Or skip the formalities and just get me the hell out of here.”
Arianne poured three cups of tea, added sugar to them all and cream to her own. Only when they each had a steaming cup and a china plate with a cookie, did she speak. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. We no longer have the stone.”
For a moment Diamond thought she might faint. Her vision dimmed and her ears rang. “You can’t be serious. How could you lose something so valuable?” Needing caffeine and sugar, she took a careful sip of tea. She had come so far and been through so much. She had to get home.
“Few people know about the power of the necklace, but those who do want it rather badly,” Bryce said.
Diamond longed to scream at him, but kept her tone moderate. “You got me into this mess. Get me out.” She swallowed, trying to think. Panic made it difficult. “Who stole the stone?”
“They kidnapped our daughter, Hannah,” Arianne said.
“And demanded we give them the necklace to get her back,” Bryce continued.
Great. “Who are these people? When did this happen?” If it was fifty years ago, how would she ever be able to trace the current ownership of the stone?
“It was a couple from New Orleans. They kidnapped Hannah shortly after we arrived here.”
Diamond set her cup down with a clatter and rested her head in her hands. “The Confederates still hold New Orleans, right? How on earth am I going to get down there? Will this couple still have the stone? Will they even still be alive? Why didn’t you try to get it back from them?” She remembered the night Bryce had gone out on the lake. She still suspected he might have been dropping a body. He was doing something illegal. She had a hard time imagining him passively handing over the time travel device. He would have done what was necessary to save his daughter, but then he would have gone after the kidnappers.
But what if the kidnappers had killed Hannah? No, Arianne had already told her that Hannah was still alive. If the stone had been missing for fifty years, it would be very hard to find.
A look passed between the older couple. Arianne cleared her throat. “We don’t know for sure what happened to the kidnappers, but they don’t have the stone anymore. Bryce’s father acquired it.”
Sounds like the kidnappers got their just desserts. Diamond was glad to hear it, but she still didn’t understand why the Poole’s would allow such a valuable tool to get away from them. She glared at Bryce. “Is your father still alive?”
“No,” Bryce said. “He died years ago. We suspected he had the stone, but Ari and I readjusted to living in this time. We opened the store and had other children. We no longer wanted to return to the twenty-first century.”
Arianne continued the story, “But Hannah wanted to go home. She was born in the twenty-first century and remembered the wonders of technology. We allowed her to take the necklace.”
“So Hannah has the stone?” Diamond wished they would just get to the point and tell her where the stone was now. She would do whatever it took to get it back. She’d already crossed miles of war-torn countryside.
“Yes,” Ari said, “but she took it with her to the future. There’s no way to use it to send you home.”
Diamond rose to her feet, her head buzzing. “No, you’re lying to me. It’s your fault I’m here. And your responsibility to make things right. I can’t stay here in this primitive time period, in a land at war with itself. I just can’t.”
“How is it our fault?” Bryce asked coolly. “We asked you to leave us alone, but you continued to follow us and plague us with your endless questions. You are responsible for your predicament.”
“So bringing me back in time with you was your twisted idea of revenge?”
“Of course not. We didn’t know the vortex caught you until you walked into the store this morning. We were only trying to get home.”
Bryce set his cup down and wandered back to his place by the window. “I wonder if that’s why she traveled to 1862 instead of 1812? She was close enough for the power to reach her, but not close enough to come as far back as we did.”
“I don’t know. We still know very little about how the stone works,” Ari said.
&
nbsp; “I don’t care how it works. This isn’t an intellectual puzzle for me. It’s my life. Contact Hannah and have her come get me.”
“How would you propose we do that?” Bryce asked.
Diamond stared at Ari. “I can’t believe you would let your daughter return to the future without some way to contact her.”
“I’ve tried to leave her a few breadcrumbs to find us in the historical record. But there’s no way for her to communicate with us.”
“Leave another bread crumb telling her to come get me. Then you can talk to her in person. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see her again, to learn what she made of her life?”
The plan tempted Ari. Diamond could see it in her eyes.
“I wouldn’t do it even if I could be sure she would get our message. You’ve seen for yourself how unpredictable time travel can be. Bryce and I never intended to stay here. We planned to warn my brother he was in danger and go back to the twenty-first century. But then we lost the stone to the kidnappers and didn’t realize until much later that Bryce’s father had stolen it back. By then we had made a life for ourselves here,” Ari said.
“You need to do the same, Di. Make a life for yourself here and now, because there’s no way to get back.”
“I refuse to believe that. If one device exists, there may be others.”
“Perhaps,” Bryce agreed, “but how would you find one?”
Put an ad in the paper. Wanted: time travel device. Even in the twenty-first century with on-line forums and easy ways to buy or sell almost anything, she wouldn’t be able to track down something as rare and unbelievable as a time-traveling crystal.
Diamond felt as if her world was shattering around her. She’d rescued a man from capture, saved his life, traveled hundreds of miles through dangerous territory and tracked down Bryce and Ari for nothing? If there was truly no hope, then she wanted nothing more than to curl up on the floor and cry. And she had not been a crier since her dad’s death. She could count on the fingers of one hand how many times she had cried since she’d finally cried herself dry after the funeral.