A second ago, he’d been standing in Trista’s bedroom, on a rainy night. Now, a fierce spring sun was shining and the familiar hallway had changed drastically.
There were light fixtures on the walls, and beneath his feet was a thick rug the color of ripe wheat. For a few moments, he just stood there, gripping the necklace, trying to understand what was happening to him. He was scared, but not badly enough to turn around and go back without seeing what kind of world Elisabeth lived in.
Once he’d regained his equilibrium, he crossed the hall and opened the door to the master bedroom.
Like the hallway, it was structurally the same, but there the similarities ended. Jonathan’s scientific heart began to beat faster with excitement.
When the shrill sound of a bell filled the air, he jumped and almost bolted. Then he realized the jangle was coming from a telephone.
He looked around, but there was no instrument affixed to the wall. Finally, he tracked the noise to a fussy-looking gadget resting on the vanity table and he lifted the earpiece.
“Hello!” he snapped, frowning. There were telephones in Seattle, of course, but the lines hadn’t reached Pine River yet, and Jonathan hadn’t had much practice talking into a wire.
“Who is this?” a woman’s voice demanded.
“This is Jonathan Fortner,” he answered, fascinated. “Who are you, and why are you telephoning?”
There was a pause. “I’m Janet Finch, Elisabeth’s friend. Is she there?”
A slow grin spread across Jonathan’s mouth. “I’m afraid not,” he replied. And then he laid the receiver in its cradle and walked away.
Almost immediately, the jarring noise began again, but Jonathan ignored it. There were things he wanted to investigate.
Just as he was descending the front stairway, an old woman with fussy white hair and enormous blue eyes peered through one of the long windows that stood on either side of the door. At the sight of Jonathan, she gave a little shriek, dropped something to the porch floor with a clatter and turned to run away.
Jonathan went to the window, grinning, and watched her trot across the road, her legs showing beneath her short dress. If this was truly the future, the elderly lady probably thought he was a ghost.
He just hoped he hadn’t scared her too badly.
With a sigh of resignation, Jonathan proceeded to the kitchen, where he made an amazed inspection. He figured out the icebox right away, and he identified the thing with metal coils on top as a stove by process of elimination. He turned one of the knobs and then moved on to the sink, frowning at the gleaming spigots. When he gave one a twist, water shot out of a small pipe, startling him.
One of the spirals on the stove was red hot when he looked back, and Jonathan held his palm over it, feeling the heat and marveling.
By far the most interesting thing in the room, however, was the box that sat on the counter. It had little dials, like the stove, and a window made out of the same stuff as Elisabeth’s medicine bottle, only clear.
Jonathan tampered with the knobs and suddenly the window flashed with light and the face of an attractive African woman with stiff hair loomed before him.
“Are you tired of catering to your boss’s every whim?” she demanded, and Jonathan took a step backward, speechless. The woman was staring at him, as if waiting for an answer, and he wondered if he should speak to her. “Today’s guests will tell you how to stand up for yourself and still keep your job!” she finished.
“What guests?” Jonathan asked, looking around the kitchen. Music poured out of the box, and then a woman with hair the same color as Elisabeth’s appeared, holding up a glass of orange juice.
“No, thank you,” Jonathan said, touching the knob again. The window went dark.
He ambled outside to look at the barn—it had fallen into a shameful state of disrepair—and stood by the fence watching automobiles speed by. They were all colors now, instead of just the plain black he’d seen on the streets of Boston and New York.
When half an hour passed and he still hadn’t seen a single horse, Jonathan shook his head and turned toward the house. He walked around it, noting the changes.
The section that contained Trista’s room and the second rear stairway was gone, leaving no trace except for a door in the second-story wall. Remembering what Elisabeth had said about a fire, he shoved splayed fingers through his hair and strode inside.
He could hear her calling to him the moment he entered, and he smiled as he started up the rear stairs.
“Damn you, Jonathan Fortner, you get back here! Now!”
Jonathan took the necklace from his pocket and held it in one hand. Then he opened the door and stepped over the threshold.
Elisabeth was wearing different clothes—a black sateen skirt and a blue shirtwaist—and there were shadows under her eyes. “Oh, Jonathan,” she cried, thrusting herself, shuddering, into his arms.
He kissed her temple, feeling pretty shaken himself. “It’s all right, Lizzie,” he said. “I’m here.” He held her tightly.
She raised her eyes to his face. “People were starting to ask questions,” she fretted. “And I had to lie to Trista and tell her you’d gone to Seattle on business.”
Jonathan was stunned. “But I was only gone for an hour or so….”
Elisabeth shook her head. “Eight days, Jonathan,” she said somberly. She pressed her cheek to his chest. “I was sure I’d never see you again.”
He was distracted by the way she felt in his arms, all soft and warm. With a fingertip, he traced the outline of her trembling lips. “Eight days?” he echoed.
She nodded.
The mystery was more than he could assimilate all at once, so he put it to the back of his mind. “You must have missed me something fierce in that case,” he teased.
A spark of the old fire flickered in her eyes, and a corner of her mouth quivered, as though she might forgive him for frightening her and favor him with a smile. “I didn’t miss you at all,” she said, raising her chin.
He spread his hands over her rib cage, letting the thumbs caress her full breasts, feeling the nipples just against the fabric in response. “You’re lying, Lizzie,” he scolded. His arousal struck like a physical blow; suddenly he was hard and heavy with the need of her. He bent and kissed the pulse point he saw throbbing under her right ear. “Are we alone?”
Her breath caught, and her satiny flesh seemed to tremble under his lips. “For the moment,” she said, her voice breathless and muffled. “Trista isn’t home from school yet, and Ellen is out in the vegetable garden, weeding.”
“Good,” Jonathan said, thinking what an extraordinarily long time an hour could be. And then he lost himself in Elisabeth’s kiss.
Elisabeth knew her cheeks were glowing and, despite her best efforts, her hair didn’t look quite the same as it had before Jonathan had taken it down from its pins.
“Imagine that,” Ellen said, breaking open a pod and expertly scraping out the peas with her thumbnail. “The doctor came back from wherever he’s been, but I didn’t hear no wagon nor see a sign of a horse. Come to that, he never took his rig with him in the first place.” She paused to cluck and shake her head. “Strange doin’s.”
Elisabeth was sitting on the front step, while Ellen occupied the rocking chair. Watching the road for Trista, Elisabeth brushed a tendril of pale hair back from her cheek. “There are some things in this life that just can’t be explained,” she informed the housekeeper in a moderate tone. She was tired of the woman’s suspicious glances and obvious disapproval.
Ellen sniffed. “If you ask me—”
“I didn’t ask you,” Elisabeth interrupted, turning on the step to fix the housekeeper with a look.
Color seeped into Ellen’s sallow cheeks, but she didn’t say anything more. She just went on shelling peas.
When Elisabeth saw Trista coming slowly down the road from the schoolhouse, her head lowered, she smoothed her sateen skirts and stood. She met the child at the gate with
a smile.
“Your papa is back from his travels,” she said.
The transformation in Trista stirred Elisabeth’s heart. The little girl fairly glowed, and a renewed energy seemed to make her taller and stronger in an instant. With a little cry of joy, Trista flung herself into Elisabeth’s arms.
Elisabeth held the child, near tears. Over the past eight trying days, she’d seen the depths of the bond this child had with her father. To separate them permanently by sending Trista to Barbara, so far in the future, was no longer an option.
“I thought maybe he’d stay away forever, like Mama,” Trista confided as the two of them went through the gate together.
Elisabeth had known what Trista was thinking, of course, but there hadn’t been much she could do to reassure the uneasy child. She squeezed Trista’s shoulders. “He’ll be home for supper—if there isn’t a baby ready to be born somewhere.”
Ellen, in the meantime, had finished shelling the peas and returned to the kitchen, where she was just putting a chicken into the oven to roast. She sniffed again when she saw Elisabeth.
“I don’t imagine I’ll be needed around here much longer,” she said to no one in particular.
So that was it, Elisabeth reflected. Ellen’s tendency to be unkind probably stemmed from her fear of losing her job, now that the doctor’s sister-in-law seemed to be a permanent fixture in the house. The problem was really so obvious, but Elisabeth had been too worried about Jonathan’s disappearance into the twentieth century to notice.
Even now, Elisabeth couldn’t reassure the woman because she didn’t know what Jonathan thought about the whole matter. He had talked about marriage, and he could well expect Elisabeth to take on all the duties Ellen was handling then. He might have been more progressive than most men of his era, but he wouldn’t be taking up the suffrage cause anytime soon.
“I’ll let Jon—the doctor know you’re concerned,” Elisabeth finally said, and Ellen paused and looked back at her in mild surprise. “And for what it’s worth, I think you do a very good job.”
Ellen blinked at that. Clearly, she’d had Elisabeth tagged as an enemy and didn’t know how to relate to her as a friend. “I’d be obliged,” Ellen allowed at last. “The family depends on me, and if there ain’t going to be a place for me here, I need to be finding another position.”
Elisabeth nodded and went back into the house to look about. Lord knew, there weren’t any labor-saving devices, and she’d never been all that crazy about housework, but the idea of being a wife to Jonathan filled her with a strange, sweet vigor. Maybe she was crazy, she thought with a crooked little smile, because she really wanted to live out this life fate had handed to her.
Twilight had already fallen when Jonathan returned, and the kitchen was filled with the succulent aroma of roasting chicken and the cheery glow of lantern light. Trista was working out her fractions while Elisabeth mashed the potatoes.
The moment she heard her father’s buggy in the yard, Trista tossed down her schoolwork and bolted for the back door, her face flushed and wreathed in smiles.
Elisabeth watched with her heart in her throat as the child launched herself from the back step into Jonathan’s arms, shrieking, “Papa!”
He laughed and caught her easily, planting a noisy kiss on her forehead. “Hello, sweetheart,” he said. There was a suspicious glimmer in his eyes, and his voice was a little hoarse.
Trista’s small arms tightened around his neck. “I missed you so much!” she cried, hugging him tightly.
Jonathan returned the child’s embrace, told her he loved her and set her back on the steps. Only then did Elisabeth notice how tired he looked.
“I imagine your patients missed you, too,” she said as he followed Trista into the house and set his bag in the customary place. One of the greatest sources of Elisabeth’s anxiety, during Jonathan’s absence, was the fact that people had constantly come by looking for him. It hadn’t been easy, knowing patients who needed his professional attention were being left to their own devices.
He sighed, and Elisabeth could see the strain in his face and in the set of his shoulders. “There are times,” he said, “when I think being a coal miner would be easier.”
Although she wanted to touch him, to take him into her arms and offer comfort, Elisabeth was painfully aware that she didn’t have that option—not with Trista in the room.
It was bad enough that they’d lied to the child, telling her Elisabeth was Barbara’s sister. For the past week, Trista had been begging for stories of the childhood Elisabeth had supposedly shared with her mother.
“Sit down, Jon,” Elisabeth said quietly, letting her hands rest on his tense shoulders for a moment after he sank into a chair at the kitchen table.
Trista, delighted that her father was home, rushed to get his coffee mug, but it was Elisabeth who filled it from the heavy enamel pot on the stove.
The evening passed pleasantly—by some miracle, no one came to call Jonathan away—and after Trista had been settled in bed, he came into the kitchen and began drying dishes as Elisabeth washed them.
That reminded her of Ellen’s concerns. “You need to have a talk with your housekeeper,” she said. “She wants to look for another job if you’re planning to let her go.”
Jonathan frowned. “Isn’t her work satisfactory?”
Elisabeth couldn’t help smiling, seeing this rugged doctor standing there with an embroidered dishtowel in his hands. “Her work is fine. But you have given the community—and me, I might add—the impression that I might be staying around here permanently.” She paused, blushing because the topic was a sensitive one. “I mean, if I’m to be your wife….”
He put down the towel and the cup he’d been drying and turned Elisabeth to face him. Her hands were dripping suds and water, and she dried them absently on her apron.
His expression was wry. “I’m not as destitute as you seem to think,” he said. “I had an inheritance from my father and I invested it wisely, so I can afford to keep a housekeeper and a wife.”
Elisabeth flushed anew; she hadn’t meant to imply that he was a pauper.
Her reaction made Jonathan laugh, but she saw love in his eyes. “My sweet Lizzie—first and foremost, I want you to be a wife and partner to me. And I hope you’ll be a mother to Trista. But running a house is a lot of work, and you’re going to need Ellen to help you.” He tilted his head to one side, studying her more soberly now. “Does this mean you’re going to agree to marry me?”
Elisabeth sighed. The motion left her partially deflated, like a balloon the day after a party. There was still the specter of the fire looming over them, and the question had to be resolved. “That depends, Jonathan,” she said, grieving when he took his hands away from her shoulders. “You’ve been over the threshold now, you’ve experienced what I have. I guess it all distills down to one question—do you believe me now?”
She saw his guard go up, and her disappointment was so keen and so sudden that it made her knees go weak.
Jonathan shoved one hand through his dark, rumpled hair. “Lizzie…”
“You saw it, Jonathan!” she cried in a ragged whisper as panic pooled around her like tidewater, threatening to suck her under. “Damn it, you were there!”
“I imagined it,” he said, and his face was suddenly hard, his eyes cold and distant.
Elisabeth strode over to the sidetable where his medical bag awaited and snapped it open, taking out the prescription bottle and holding it up. “What about this, Jonathan? Did you imagine this?”
He approached her, took the vial from her hands and dropped it back into the bag. “I experienced something,” he said, “but that’s all I’m prepared to admit. The human mind is capable of incredible things—it could all have been some sort of elaborate illusion.”
Elisabeth was shaking. Jonathan was the most important person in her topsy-turvy universe, and he didn’t believe her. She felt she would go mad if she couldn’t make him understand. “Are you
saying we both had the same hallucination, Jon? Isn’t that a little farfetched?”
Again, Jonathan raked the fingers of one hand through his hair. “No more than believing that people can actually travel back and forth between centuries,” he argued, making an effort to keep his voice down for Trista’s sake. “Lizzie, the past is gone, and the future doesn’t exist yet. All we have is this moment.”
Elisabeth was in no mood for an esoteric discussion. For eight days she’d been mourning Jonathan, worrying about him, trying to reassure his daughter and his patients. She was emotionally exhausted and she wanted a hot bath and some sleep.
“I’d like the kitchen to myself now, if you don’t mind,” she said wearily, lifting the lid on the hot-water reservoir to check the supply inside. “I need a bath.”
Jonathan’s eyes lighted with humor and love. “I’d be happy to help you.”
Elisabeth glared at him. “Yes, I imagine you would,” she said, “but I don’t happen to want your company just now, Dr. Fortner. As far as I’m concerned, you’re an imbecile and I’d just as soon you kept your distance.”
He smiled and lingered even after Elisabeth had dragged the big tin bathtub in from the combination pantry and storage room. His arms were folded across his chest. It was obvious that he was stifling a laugh.
Elisabeth brought out the biggest kettle in the kitchen, slammed it down in the sink and began pumping icy well water into it. It was amazing, she thought furiously, that she wanted to stay in this backward time with this backward man, when she could have hot and cold running water and probably a Democrat with an M.B.A. if she just returned to the 1990s. She lugged the heavy kettle to the stove and set it on the surface with a ringing thump.
When she turned to face Jonathan, her hands were on her hips and her jaw was jutting out obstinately. “I wouldn’t give a flying damn whether you believed me or not,” she breathed, “if it weren’t for the fact that your life is hanging in the balance—and so is Trista’s! Half of this house is going to burn in the third week in June, and they’re not going to find a trace of you or your daughter. What they are going to do is try me for your murders!”
Linda Lael Miller Bundle Page 34