Caleb swallowed hard. He’d always doubted when Betsy and Doc insisted she’d come here from another time. The way he’d finally worked it out, the two of them had some secret they didn’t want to admit and he’d just had to trust them to explain it all to him someday.
But Forrest was the most solid, down-to-earth dependable man he’d ever known. He didn’t see things, didn’t imagine happenings. Even now, damaged as he was by his war experiences and the loss of Lavinia, he wasn’t given to illusions.
Besides, if he didn’t believe Betsy had stepped away in time, the other choice was to know she’d perished in the fire. He’d rather believe in the time thing.
He went inside to help Miss Eliza give his son his bottle. With Betsy gone, the little boy needed his papa.
The whole family worshiped at the shrine of the new baby. Mama and Papa checked her out and declared her perfect. Sylvie begged to be able to hold her. Mrs. Myers told her she was another grandma and Dottie informed her soon-to-be husband that she wanted one just like her. Grandpa Forrest called her his own sweet darling and Betsy wondered how much he remembered from the past and supposed it wasn’t much, considering the condition he’d been in at the time.
Betsy continued to daily fall more in love with her small tyrant of a daughter and to sink deeper into sadness. Mama said she was suffering from post-partum depression. Papa said she needed to get out in the sunshine and breathe the fresh air. Sylvie made her favorite cookies.
The truth was that she felt such a yearning for Caleb and her baby son that she almost couldn’t bear it. She constantly reminded herself that Caleb had never come home that last night. Anything could have happened to him.
On the first of the month, she borrowed the buggy and drove herself and the baby to the edge of Lavender. No way was she going to leave her little daughter behind while she made the time crossing. If something went wrong and she couldn’t get back, then she would have her baby with her.
She waited long enough by the busy highway to think about going home before the baby got fussy when a long dark car drove up, Eddie spotted her and waved, emerging from the car which then drove away.
“Hi,” Eddie called. “I can only stay a couple of days because Zan . . .” She paused. “Is that a baby?”
“Meet your niece,” Betsy said, passing the infant to her sister. “Eddie, do you remember how time always seemed to run differently in one place compared to another. “Well, I just spent what Mama says was about three weeks in another place, got married and had two babies.”
Eddie stared down at the baby girl. “And so what else is new?” she asked in a voice that quavered only slightly.
Several neighbors had seen Bolter fleeing the scene the night of the accident and pursued him, one middle-aged woman holding him at bay with her soldier husband’s musket until he could be locked up in the town jail. Hetty had gone to see to the two children and was keeping them at her place until relatives showed up to claim them.
Doc had taken the boy with him to his last call in the country and Forrest had offered him a job at the store. Nobody felt the kids should be blamed because Bolter had cracked up, or, as Caleb could have added, because he was a nasty no-good lowlife.
Caleb called his little son Benjamin, the name he and Betsy had decided on if their baby should be a boy. He was a cheerful little guy who smiled early and seemed to take life in stride. He took to the formula Doc had made up of cow’s milk without problems and started sleeping through the night by the time he was a month old.
His small presence was the only thing that kept Caleb going most days as he did the chores around the house, chopped up more wood than they could use all winter, and even filled in once in a while in Forrest’s store.
He was doing his best to be patient and even-tempered, not taking his grief and frustration out on anybody else when finally one Wednesday, he snapped for no reason at all.
They were eating the breakfast he’d made, Doc having come home in the early morning hours from an all-night call and Forrest not having left for work yet. Little Ben was in his cradle, cooing to himself every time his papa reached over with one foot to set it rocking.
Forrest and Doc were talking about the latest news of the war and Caleb couldn’t even listen. People around here occupied their minds with the most trivial matters instead of talking about how to get Betsy back.
He’d been patient, he’d been waiting, but he didn’t know what to do. And these two men who were the closest he had to family weren’t doing a thing to help him.
“I want Betsy,” he said in a low, controlled voice.
“We know that, son,” Doc assured him.
Forrest didn’t say anything. He just looked worried.
“Now!” Caleb shouted.
He’d always been soft-spoken, even as a boy, and now the two men who had raised him for the second half of his boyhood stared at him in surprise.
“I’m working on it, son,” Doc said, then went back to his bacon and eggs.
Oh, that wasn’t nearly good enough. Even while recognizing that he was being irrational, Caleb found he just had to keep on going. “How? What are you doing?”
“Studying. Reviewing my notes.” Doc looked at him with scientific interest as though wondering what he would do next, then went on. “You see, I’ve always wanted to know more about time, whether it’s like a lake you dive into going through layer after layer, or if past and future exists simultaneously with the present, or . . .”
“Doc!” Caleb protested.
“Just some ideas I’m working on. If I can build a solid foundation, then develop a reasonable theory I think I can help you and Betsy reconnect.”
Caleb looked at Forrest. Forrest shrugged. “This is basically why he got kicked out of Europe. Those scientists over there thought he was out of his mind. Anyway I don’t see why it makes a difference. Who wants to travel in time?”
Doc set his coffee cup down with a bang that sloshed the hot liquid over a quarter of the table. “Caleb does,” he said. “He wants to be with Betsy. Those two babies need both their parents.”
“Yeah,” Caleb said, prepared to believe in anything that would put him and Betsy back together.
Even though she had only been home less than a week, Betsy couldn’t help wondering how she would have handled her cranky baby daughter without the help of the family.
Emilee slept fitfully, perhaps an hour or two at a time, and she seemed to have her nights and days mixed up so that she slept more in the daytime hours. When awake, she wanted to be held in someone’s arms, preferably her mother’s, and was so intense that the slightest noise jarred her into a crying spell.
Papa muttered about colic and spoiling babies while Mama tried to get through her workday as quickly as possible so she could help look after little Emilee. Sylvia had quickly gotten tired of baby care, but the adult women of the family took turns in helping out.
Betsy who was so tired she seemed to move in a vague haze of fatigue, told herself it was all her fault. Baby Emilee was missing the brother with whom she’d shared the womb and wouldn’t be happy again until they were reunited.
It was the way she felt about Caleb and her baby son. Nothing would feel right until they were together again.
She and Eddie had tried everything they could think of to make that happen. They’d gone back and forth to the backyard kitchen more times than Betsy could count. They’d roamed the house, hoping to discover another unknown portal.
Nothing had helped. Nothing had worked.
Finally one afternoon while Eddie was soothing the baby to sleep in the big rocker, she sank wearily down into a kitchen chair to watch Grandpapa Forrest work on a puzzle.
“Do you remember me, Grandpapa?”
He looked at her with considerable amusement. “Of course I do, you’re Betsy, my favorite granddaughter.” It was what he always told each of them: Sylvie, Eddie and Betsy. Each was his favorite.
She shook her head, too fuzzy-brained to quib
ble. “No, Grandpapa, do you remember me from back when you’d just come home from the war.”
He stared down at his puzzle. “Don’t recall much about those days. I was in bad shape.”
“I know Grandpapa. You’d been a prisoner of war.”
He nodded and she sighed, accepting the fact that he never had and most likely never would talk about those days.”
“I was fairly sure from the first moment I saw you standing there in front of the school with your mother. Those yellow curls, those big blue eyes and then I heard your name. You were Caleb’s Betsy, but I couldn’t see how that would possibly work out. There was so much time between you. Anyway,” he looked up to smile at her. “You were just a little girl and I didn’t want to put notions in your head.”
“But Grandpapa . . .”
“After all I’m the crazy doctor’s son.” He laughed at that. “Though nobody thought he was anything but in his right mind when he put Lavender behind the walls and kept influenza from spreading out to kill our neighbors. He was truly brilliant, you know, but I tried not to tell him so. He had an ego as big as Texas anyhow.”
“Things didn’t change,” she said, trying to unravel the mystery, “even though my papa’s mother died.”
“Lavinia.” A flicker of old sorrow cross his face, then he drew in a deep breath. “Of course Evan was too young to remember her and I couldn’t bear to talk about her; hurt too blame much.” He straightened in his chair as though to remind himself to put ancient emotions behind him. “We were lucky, Evan and me, we got Eliza to marry and look after us. She was the only mother he ever knew, bless her sweet soul.”
Betsy sat in shock. Forrest had married Eliza. The woman who had died in the influenza epidemic was the bossy teacher who had seemed so devoted to his getting well.
But she had one last, really important question. “What happened to Caleb? What happened to him and my little boy?”
He looked at her in amazement. But Betsy you know that.” Then he shook his head, looking only slightly bewildered. “No, you couldn’t know because it hasn’t happened yet.”
She waited, scarcely daring to breathe for fear of interrupting his train of thought.
He grinned as though about to deliver a delightful surprise. “Doc sent them ahead to find you. Caleb and little Ben. It was his first experiment in time, the one that led to what he did with Lavender all those years later.”
“But Grandpapa,” she protested anxiously, “they aren’t here.”
He shook his head. “I told you,” he said, “that’s because it hasn’t happened yet.”
Chapter Twenty Five
Ben was half a year old with golden curls like his mother’s on the spring day when Caleb carried him out in his arms to check and see how the corn was growing in the little patch back of the house.
It hadn’t been easy getting the spring planting underway with the little boy to look after, but his papa had rigged up a play area under a tree where he could keep an eye on Ben on his blanket while he worked.
Working, keeping busy from sunup to sundown, was the only thing that kept him from going crazy thinking about Betsy and that other baby, little Ben’s twin sister.
The war was over, Lee having surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse to the grief of the south and the relief of the north. They were one country again, though he’d never see the old bitterness die in his lifetime, and the slaves were free and struggling to build new lives in the midst of that caldron of hatred.
Hetty’s boys had come home, tried by war and ready to grasp on to new opportunities. She was so proud of them it was a pleasure to see.
The corn looked good, the slender blades shooting higher into the air every day. It would provide food for the heifer who had produced her first calf a couple of months ago and for the new horse Forrest had bought for him. The green onions and new potatoes from his big garden were already adding to their simple meals. He and little Ben were poor as church mice, but he would feel they had everything they needed if only Betsy and the other baby were here to share with them.
He was lost in contemplation and Ben wiggled in his arms when the sound of an approaching buggy reached their ears. Doc was creaking toward them in the vehicle that, over the years, had carried him so many country miles seeing to the lives and deaths of his patients. His heart stepping up to a faster beat, Caleb couldn’t help wondering what had brought him here today.
He’d about given up. Doc had promised to help him, but apparently all the research he’d done back in old Europe hadn’t been enough to provide the answers they’d both needed. Hell, he might be an old man and Ben grown up before Doc found a way to restore Betsy to them.
And, as he increasingly feared, it might never happen.
He watched as the buggy, pulled by a new team as Rosie, the mare that had brought them back from the north had been retired to a good pasture by Forrest’s wishes, rolled up in front of the house and Doc jumped down with all the energy of a man rejuvenated.
He met Caleb to take Ben into his arms for a big hug, grinning broadly. “I sure will miss this young man,” he said, then the grin widened, “might even miss you, my boy.”
“You’ve figured it out! You know how!”
Doc nodded, handing Ben back to him. “The last little ingredient,” he said proudly. “Years of scientific research, going through all my old notes, and a little bit of Scots magic.”
“But Doc, you don’t come from Scotland.”
“My mother did and she was what they called a wise woman as was my grandmother before her. Personally I don’t think it’s magic at all, don’t believe in such things, but just an early kind of science where they pass down the old knowledge. Anyway, it all goes together, the old wisdom and the new, so you’d better get ready to go.”
Caleb’s throat felt filled with dust so that he could hardly breathe and his heart seemed to have stopped, but nothing happened immediately. Instead Doc started to pace the property, admiring the garden and the field of young corn, stopping here and there to ask Caleb, who trailed after him, the boundaries of his land.
The morning passed as he wandered around talking to himself half the time so that if this had been anybody but Doc, Caleb would have thought he’d edged into senility. He was getting on in years.
He was even more uneasy when, the sun directly overhead, Doc said, “I forgot to eat breakfast. You got anything for dinner?”
It was a simple enough meal that Caleb put together: fried potatoes, warmed over beans, fresh green onions from the garden, a pan of hot cornbread, but Doc ate eagerly, telling stories about his early days in between bites. Caleb, who didn’t feel like he could eat a thing, gave Ben his bottle and then tucked him into the cradle he would soon outgrow for a nap.
“How do you know where she is?” he blurted out the question. “How can you find her?”
“Don’t know exactly. Got some clues from the things she said, but mostly I’m counting on what lies between you and her to draw you together. And, of course, the twins, the same blood runs in both their veins, they’ll recognize each other over time.”
This sounded more like old Scots wisdom to Caleb than science and uneasily he thought if he had to pick between the two, he’d go with science.
It was nearly dark and Caleb was milking the cow, the baby tied on his back for safety. As the last drops rained noisily into the pail, Doc came to his side. “Ready to go?” he asked in a mixture of solemnity and submerged excitement.
Caleb looked questioningly up at him. They could go anywhere, him and little Ben, but they would be together. He had to trust Doc and his hopes to see Betsy again.
“You’ll see to the animals? The horse and this cow?” He clapped one hand against the young cow’s broad side. “The calf and the three hens. I wouldn’t want ‘em left here to starve.”
Doc nodded. “We’ll miss you and the little fellow, son?”
“And I’ll miss you.”
That was all they said in the way of goo
dbye. Caleb untied the baby from his makeshift carrier on his back, and held him comfortingly in his arms, patting his back and whispering soothingly as he followed Doc as once more they walked the property, then finally strolled slowly under moonlight into the darkened house.
Once inside, Doc nodded, touched the baby on his downy curls, then went out and closed the door behind him.
This was insane! Caleb didn’t know what he was supposed to do. The baby began to whimper, frightened at the deep darkness inside the cabin and Caleb said, “It’ll be all right, Ben. We’re going to see mommy.”
He wished he could believe it, but nothing happened. No thunder or lightning, no dramatic events. He just stood there and closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he stood under the stars in a small clearing surrounded by tall, thickly grown trees. All that was left of the cabin was the tumbled down structure that lay on the ground around him, almost melted into the natural environment.
After days of hoping to see Caleb around every corner, Betsy was deeply discouraged. While Eddie played with her tiny new niece, she baked a peach cobbler as though the world depended on whether it was tasty enough to serve for supper. Dottie was over at her new home with her brand new husband, having been married in front of the church last Sunday. Sylvie was at school and Mama and Papa were in their office, seeing patients.
Grandpapa Forrest was dozing in his chair in the living room.
Finally the cobbler was in the oven and Betsy’s spate of talking, mostly about wild plans to get Caleb and her baby back, died into silence. Then she had one more idea, “We could ask Zan to help,” she said. “He has plenty of strange ideas.”
Eddie frowned. She was accustomed to hearing remarks of this sort about her husband, but not from Betsy. “Zan’s a genius,” she protested.
“That’s what I mean. He’s like Doc. He doesn’t think like everybody else.”
“I’m sure he’ll be glad to help if he can,” Eddie agreed, kissing little Emilee on each cheek, then laughing at the funny face she made.
Lavender Blue: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series) Page 17