The House Near the River

by Barbara Bartholomew

  He finally looked into her face. “Sorry for telling you all this. You don’t deserve this kind of punishment.”

  She understood. “It wasn’t just Charlie. It was me.”

  He closed his eyes. “You were gone and I didn’t know why. You were the promise and the hope that I needed.” He hesitated before going on. “But knowing you as I do, I’m sure you had a good reason and I do believe you when you say you can’t remember.”

  This was almost too much. Poor Matthew and all the soldiers from that time who didn’t understand what had happened to them and had to climb back from the hell that was war without counseling and communication. She thought of George Patton who had slapped a shell shocked soldier, thinking him a coward.

  “You’re not a coward,” she told him.

  He looked solemnly at her.

  “You’ve just been recovering from terrible things beyond my imagining.”

  He bent down to touch the top of her head with one hand, resting it there. She knew what he was saying, this man she had known such a brief time and yet with whom she had so much understanding. They could communicate without words and now he was telling her how much her sympathy meant, even though he didn’t agree with her assessment of his condition. He felt shamed by his breakdown.

  “And I’m not telling the truth.” She’d always blurted words out to hastily, anxious to be understood. Mom used to say it was a tendency that would get her in trouble one day.

  She watched with alarm as his green eyes narrowed and fixed on her, waiting for an explanation.

  Angie took in breath in a gasp. “The truth will be hard for you to believe.”

  “Try me,” the two words were spoken in a hoarse whisper. Other sounds in the house had ceased and she supposed Danny, like his other family members, had gone to bed.

  They were alone in the dimly lit room. She tried to think what to say. ‘I’m from another place and time,’ or ‘The fact is we really haven’t met.’

  The getting started was the hard part. She became aware of the ticking of the clock. Might as well just wade in.

  “My name is Angie Ward and David is my brother. That part’s true. My mom and dad adopted me after they’d tried for years to have children and I was their only child until my brother was born. I was ten when he was born.”

  Startled, he looked away from her toward the bedroom in back where David slept. “But he . . . but you . . .”

  She nodded. “When I was thirteen I was here in my grandmother’s house with my mom, grandma and David. While I was supposed to be watching him, David disappeared. We always assumed he wandered off and something bad happened to him or he was kidnapped.”

  “How awful.” He thought for a minute. “But my family has always owned this house and it doesn’t make sense that . . .”

  Again he paused, waiting for her explanation. “A few days ago I came back here.” She decided to leave out the details about getting stranded and the condition of the house. “I was here alone and I looked out and saw David and he looked just the way he had that afternoon he disappeared. He seemed to be still three. I reached out and grabbed him and that was when you and Clemmie spoke to me, one after the other, and you called me Ange. That was what David had called me.”

  She began to lose track with the conversation, even the words she was saying. Looking up at Matthew as she was, she began to look past him.

  Just beyond him a few feet, a sparkling ember began to grow and enlarge into a lighted sliver, a crack that seemed to draw all her attention. She felt an almost irresistible tug as though it were a magnet and she a sliver of metal being sucked in. She watched in horror as she realized what she was seeing. As she had that day when she’d witnessed David in another time, now she saw a young woman with curly blonde hair and a cute, slightly freckled face standing there, obviously not seeing her, but looking at some other scene.

  It was her cousin Amanda and her normally cheerful face was clenched in a frown. Lines cut into her forehead and her mouth was set in a straight line. She looked worried.

  “Amanda,” she whispered the name, but her cousin didn’t seem to hear. She found herself sucked, mentally and physically, to that opening through which she could see her childhood playmate, her grownup friend. She guessed Amanda knew now that she’d gone missing and was trying to find her.

  She didn’t like worrying her and possibly Dad and Grandma as well, but she didn’t want to go back right now, not without David. The pull was overpowering and she knew that any second now, she would be flung toward that opening and would have no choice in the matter.

  “No,” she wasn’t sure whether she whispered or shouted the word. Instinctively she reached out to throw her arms around Matthew, burying her face in his shirt and feeling the warm real person within. She clung to him until she felt the storm pass and knew the opening that had sought her was gone.

  CHAPTER FIVEAngie was holding on to him and without intention or conscious effort, he folded his arms around her, keeping her safe against his own body.

  He couldn’t guess what had so frightened her, but every fiber within him urged him to take care of her.

  “It’s all right, Ange. Nothing can hurt you here.” Then he lost his head and went on to murmur, “You are my life. I have loved you since that first moment I saw you and will for as long as I live.”

  She seemed to nestle against him and then, as though a shock ran through her body, she pulled away, but only by a step. She still stood within the circle of his arms and he didn’t want her to leave him.

  As long as she was there the horrors of the world were distanced, put aside by what lay between the two of them.

  She smelled of scented soap and shampoo and her own lovely skin and he drew breath, feeling the weight of oppression that had landed on him sometime in the last years lightened as it was replaced by unfamiliar joy.

  Matthew was a farm boy, but unlike the generations that had gone before him, had been taught at a good country school where the numbers were low enough for him to profit from the attention of dedicated teachers. One teacher had taught him to love words and the stories they could make, another had delighted in his mathematical abilities.

  His grandparents had possessed an essence of poetry within them that allowed them to appreciate the beauties of the natural world in which they lived and worked. His education had given him the words and ideas to bring those inborn abilities to life. He was better equipped as a citizen of a larger world than the settlers who went before him, though he would never match their talent for sheer survival.

  They had carved a farm out of the prairie for him and now it was up to him to make a living from it.

  Strength surged through him from the woman standing so close. He was not so wounded from the war years that he could not build a life with her.

  She was everything. She was all that mattered.

  “Ange,” he murmured.

  All that had happened to them on that wonderful day when they met pulled forward in his mind and heart so that it was as though it was the next day. They had met and fallen in love yesterday.

  She pressed closer to him. “Hold me, Matthew, don ‘t let them take me away.”

  He complied willingly enough, pulling her once more into his arms and tightening them around her. He even bent to place a kiss on the top of her head. A reserved man who had been brought up to express affection toward his family members through his actions in their behalf rather than with kisses or hugs, he was let loose. He wanted to kiss and hug her until she screamed for mercy—or gave them willingly.

  But his innate caution stepped forward. “Who are you afraid of, my dearest?”

  He felt her tremble. “Let there be only honest words between us.”

  “But you won’t believe me.”

  “I promise I will because you are you.”

  She pulled away again and alrea
dy his arms began to ache for her, but he led the way to the sofa and motioned her to sit down before taking his place at her side. No matter what it was, they would work their way through it together.

  She wouldn’t look at him, but she spoke up bravely. “There was an opening behind you, a crack in time. I saw my cousin looking for me and I felt drawn as though I would have to go back there no matter whether I wanted to or not.”

  He started to speak, uneasily glancing in the direction she’d indicated but seeing nothing out of the ordinary. She wouldn’t let him talk, but gently put a hand across his mouth and began to tell him the wildest story he’d ever heard.

  It was about how she lived in the future, in the time after they began to count the years up from two thousand instead of nineteen hundred, and she had a grandmother who used to own this house long ago—but still in the future.

  Her tale was as unbelievable as the ghost stories his old great-aunt used to tell the children in the family, but his aunt hadn’t meant to be taken seriously and Ange was as serious as death and taxes. He remembered his promise. He must believe her and until he could he would act as though he did.

  “That makes you a bit younger than me,” he managed to joked.

  Her smile was weak. “By something around seventy years,” she admitted, seeming quite serious even though she had to recognize that he was not. “No, that’s seventy years since the start of World War II when you said we met, you were already grown up then. What year were you born?”

  “1911. I’m almost thirty six.”

  “My birth year was 1978.”

  “I don’t think we qualify even for a May-December romance,” he kept making jokes because he didn’t know what else to do. “You were twenty eight when I met you. That means that now you’re . . .”

  “Twenty eight,” she reminded him. “Still twenty eight.”

  “You haven’t aged a minute,” he said, then added truthfully, “you look exactly the same.”

  “I told you I haven’t met you yet, but if I said I was twenty eight when we met, it must happen in the next six months before my birthday.”

  “We haven’t met yet. That’s what you meant?”

  She nodded so convincingly that he almost believed her.

  Certainly she believed what she was saying. He could accept that.

  Suddenly he sensed that someone was watching them and he looked around quickly, almost expecting to see the cousin she’d mentioned peering through a crack. Instead he found Danny in the doorway, dressed in his pajama pants, and observing them in each other’s arms with bright curiosity.

  “I thought you were long asleep,” he told the boy.

  “I was,” Danny answered with a mischievous air. “But I woke up and heard voices. Thought I’d better come in and make sure we didn’t have a burglar.”

  Angie stepped away from his hold, looking embarrassed. “We were just talking, Danny.”

  “Smooching,” Danny corrected with a grin.

  Matthew hid his amusement. If only, he thought. “Danny, you will apologize to Miss Ward for being impertinent to her.”

  “Aww,” Danny protested.

  “It’s quite all right,” Angie said hastily. “I’m sure Danny didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “Danny!”

  The nine-year-old shrugged. “I’m sorry, Miss Ward. I didn’t mean anything bad. It seemed to me to be a good thing that you were smooching Uncle Matthew. He’s been lower than a turtle lately.”

  She eyed him thoughtfully. “Please call me Ange.”

  He grinned. “I always do ‘cept when Uncle Matthew’s around.”

  Angie quickly said goodnight to them both and to Matthew’s disappointment went to bed.

  Danny grinned at his uncle. “You got a girl.”

  Matthew allowed himself to relax. “I hope so, Dan,” he said.

  The next morning Tobe came by and instead of stopping at the house to see Clemmie as he did on any excuse, he walked out to the field where Matthew planted cotton and stood waiting while he brought the tractor to a halt and turned off the motor. No use trying to talk over the roar of the tractor.

  “Morning, Sheriff,” Matthew said as he ambled over. He always had trouble thinking of Tobe, whom he remembered when he was younger than Danny was now, in that official role. But he suspected it was as sheriff that he was here this morning.

  “Morning, Matthew. How’s the planting going?”

  “Fine. Looks to be a good year.”

  Tobe’s wide face split in a grin. As good natured as he was, nobody could call the big man handsome. And Clemmie’s Charlie had been a good looking man. Matthew stopped his brain from considering his sister’s possible love life. All he wanted was for her to be happy and she was the only one who could decide if she wanted to marry again.

  “You farmers always start out by saying it’ll be a good year.”

  “We have to plant with hope,” Matthew returned, recognizing the truth of his friend’s words. “Next we’ll tell you how it’s too dry, or too many grasshoppers, or about the wind or hail that’s keeping us from having a good crop.”

  “Then you’ll start the whole thing over next year.” Tobe shook his head. “You guys are such gamblers.”

  “I like to think of us as optimists,” Matthew countered mildly. Personally he could think of no other life than a farmer. It was all he could endure to deal with his own company and that of the Lord’s. After his breakdown, he sure couldn’t work along side others or deal with a boss.

  Tobe scratched at the dirt with the toe of his boot and Matthew knew he was working up to the matter that had brought him here.

  “Fact is I wanted to talk to you about something,” he finally spoke in his slow drawl. Tobe had never been away from home long enough to lose a bit of his local accent. He’d been in the war for only two months when he’d been wounded and sent home with a permanent limp. He’d taken a job as deputy once he was well enough and last election had won the sheriff’s job. “Been checking everywhere I could and can’t find any sign of your lady or her little boy. It’s as if they just dropped here out of nowhere.”

  Matthew thought of Ange’s explanation that they had walked in from another time. “Nobody’s looking for them?”

  Tobe shook his head. “Looks like somebody would want to find that pretty lady and fine little boy, but nobody’s reported ‘em missing. Sure got me guessing.”

  Matthew nodded. “Doesn’t make sense.”

  They stood without talking, Tobe staring at the dim haze above the river and Matthew studying the ground.

  Finally Tobe spoke, seeming reluctant. “The thing is, I think you should consider sending her and the boy somewhere else. Maybe she’s done something bad, maybe something dangerous and she could hurt the kids or Clemmie.”

  Matthew felt anger rise in him in a swift tide. He couldn’t manage to choke out a word.

  “I’ll see to it that they’re taken somewhere safe.”

  “No!” Matthew finally managed to get out the one word.

  “But Matthew, I know they seem like nice folks, but you just can’t tell. Maybe it isn’t them at all, but someone’s looking for them, maybe the boy’s dad, and he means them harm. You don’t want your family drawn into a mess like that.”

  “I’ll look after my family, Tobe. Don’t you worry.”

  It was so unlike Matthew to blow up with anger that Tobe looked startled. “Come on now, Matthew, be reasonable. Most likely she’s the boy’s mother and she’s taken off with him to hide him from the dadwho is maybe violent. I don’t want Clemmie and the kids in the midst of a bad situation where they could get hurt.”

  Matthew faced him with an icy gaze. “Clemmie is my sister, the kids are my nephew and nieces. They’re nothing to you.”

  Tobe looked as though he’d socked him in the face. “Now Matthew, you
know what I hope . . .”

  “Clemmie’s said nothing to me. And in case you’re wondering Ange is engaged to marry me and she’s remembered that her name is Angie Ward and she’s 28 years old and David is her brother, not her son.”

  Tobe was suddenly the sheriff again instead of his sister’s suitor. His face hardened. “You didn’t tell me this before.”

  “I didn’t know how much she remembered and I didn’t want to upset her.”

  “Known her long?”

  “We met and got engaged in ’41.”

  “Long time to wait to get married.”

  “You didn’t notice we had a war going on?”

  Tobe looked at the ground, seeming to think about what he was going to say. “Some folks tell as how you came back kind of mixed up. Anybody could understand that considering what you went through. You sure you haven’t allowed this woman to sell you a bill of goods? For instance where does she come from and who are her folks?”

  Matthew felt as though something was pounding against his head. He might not be sure what he believed of what Ange had told him, but he sure wouldn’t stand still for some outsider’s questions. “What my girl has told me is none of your affair, Tobe, and I’d thank you to mind your own business.”

  “Now Matthew, settle down and listen to reason for a minute now.”

  “I got work to do. You’d better go.”

  “But Matthew . . .”

  “I said go,” Matthew hissed the words low and cold. He turned and went back to start his tractor and resume plowing. When he came back from his round of rows, both Tobe and his sheriff’s car were gone. He finished out the afternoon plowing, sure as he was of anything that his sister and her children were safe with Ange and David in the house.

  He quit early because it was Wednesday and though he hadn’t gone to church in those first months at home, he hadn’t missed a service since he’d been able to face others again. He wasn’t sure what he believed anymore, if anything, but Harpers had been going to the same little church since his mother and dad first met and set up housekeeping. Not one of them would miss Sunday morning and evening services or Wednesday evening prayer meeting.