“You’re wrong, Zelda. I’m not even going to try. I’m staying.”
“That’s ridiculous. If you don’t try, you’ll always regret not making the attempt to return to---to where you came from.” She moved back, out of his arms, trying to distance herself from the terrible temptation he was offering. She prayed for strength, for clearheaded vision. “I won’t be the reason for that regret, Tom. If you stay, you’ve said yourself you’re liable to have to work hard, just to earn a living. All those comforts, those – those investments, those---” She struggled to remember the things he’d described so lovingly, the things she’d come to resent. “Those---motorcycle things, and your---what about your real estate? Your bank accounts?”
He shook his head impatiently. “They just don’t matter anymore, none of them. You matter, Zel. You’re all that matters to me now. I’m staying here.”
She folded here arms around herself, her fingers digging into her shoulders. He’d taken her by complete surprise, but now she was beginning to feel again. The weeks of misery, the months of waiting in vain for him to say exactly this, were suddenly vivid in her mind. She began to tremble.
Instead of relief or happiness, all she was aware of feeling for him at this moment was anger, red and blinding.
She’d had nothing but her pride for so long. She wasn’t about to relinquish it now, just because of some whim that had come over him. She summoned up outrage and insult. She deliberately recalled the awful pain of the past weeks, and suddenly she wanted to strike him, to lash out with her fists and her feet at the unfairness of it all. He was finally offering her everything she’d ever dreamed of, and now she was too proud and too terribly frightened to take it.
“So you’ve changed your mind, and now you think all you have to do is ask, and I’ll simper and fall weeping at your feet, grateful for the honor of being your wife, Tom Chapman?” Her voice vibrated with the scorn she’d summoned up to protect herself.
“You believe that because you’re a man, you can make all the choices, go or stay, give love or withhold it, marry or not.” She ran out of breath and gulped. “Well, I have choices, too, and I---I choose not to marry you, not tonight, not ever. Get back on that wagon and leave, Tom. When the Slide comes tomorrow night, go back where you came from, where you---where you be---belong.” Her voice broke shamefully on the last word, and she whirled around, but his hand caught her arm in a fierce grip.
She fought him with all her strength, kicking and lashing out with her fists and knees, but he cursed and grabbed her other arm and held on until she quieted. He turned her to face him, holding her immobile, his fingers clamped around her upper arms, his chest heaving with emotion and the effort of restraining her.
“Damn you, listen to me, Zelda. You have every right to be good and mad at me. I’ve been a fool, and I’m sorry for that. But I’m telling you that I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you if you give me the chance.”
She shook her head furiously from side to side and tried to fight her way out of his grasp all over again, but again he held on.
“Stop this and listen. I knew this woman once,” he said with savage intensity. “Her name was Evelyn. She was old and fat and rich, and she was dying, and she was all alone. She told me that money’s cold comfort at a time like that, and if I’d had any sense, I’d have listened a lot harder than I did. But it all came back to me tonight, what she’d been trying to get through my thick skull about money and love. And what she said goes for pride, too, Zel, you hear me?” He shook her, desperate to make her understand. “Is that what you want, to get old and die all alone like Evelyn Lawrence, with just your damned pride to comfort you?”
She looked up into his face. It had grown darker, and she couldn’t see his features clearly, but the timbre of his voice seemed to penetrate her every pore.
“For the first time in my life, I know exactly what I want.” He sounded confident and very sure. “I want you for my wife. I want to make a home for us, for Virgil, for Eli, for the kids you and I’ll have together.” His voice became softer, thoughtful.
“I want to know when it comes time to die that I’ve loved and been loved by my family, the way Virgil has, and I’m leaving behind more than just a damned back account, or real estate, or rolling stock. Love is what you leave, Zel, and it’s probably what you take with you, too. I had to come back here to find that out, and now that I have, I won’t let you and your stiff-necked pride and your bad temper spoil it for both of us.”
Inside the house, Virgil coughed and quieted again, and she had a vision of what the future would be like alone. Her father would die soon; for the first time, she acknowledged it honestly, and the pain was almost unbearable.
She was terrified of the agony Virgil’s death would bring.
She was so afraid of being totally alone. But if she lowered the only defenses she’d ever had, her pride, her fierce temper, her matter-of-fact acceptance of herself as a spinster, what would take their place? She’d be defenseless.
Tom had lifted his head at Virgil’s cough, his body tensing. “Believe me when I say I love you, Zel,” he murmured again when the coughing subsided. “I love him, too. I’ll be here for both of you, I promise.” The whispered words were heartfelt, with an unspoken acceptance of all that was to come.
It was so hard to trust. She struggled against it. “I can manage on my own. I always have.”
“Of course you can.” His voice was sad. “Both of us can manage, we’re strong people. But it would be so much better to share. Tell me, Zel, do you still love me?”
There it was, the one thing she couldn’t deny. She trembled and her throat worked. “Yes.” The answer was instinctive, as automatic as the blood coursing through her veins. “Yes, I love you. I will always love you.” The assertion brought its own strength, and with it, at last, came peace.
She stopped struggling, both physically and emotionally. She felt rather than heard the shuddering sigh that came from him, and its echo vibrated through her as well.
“Then for God’s sake stop fighting and say that you’ll marry me.”
She groped for courage, and it was there. “Yes, I will marry you, Tom.”
His arms came around her, and she thought her ribs would crack. He pressed his face again her hair and groaned. “You’re such a stubborn woman, Zelda Ralston.”
She nestled against him, and it felt as if she were home. She made a disparaging sound in her throat. “I don’t hold a candle to you in that regard. Heaven knows what our children will be like. They’ll probably drive us both to distraction.”
Children. Her heart soared. She’d have his children.
He bent his head and kissed her, first with jubilation, then more gently, and finally with growing hunger. Then sudden angry squawking came from the chickens crammed uncomfortably into the wooden crates.
They laughed, reminded of what still had to be done.
“I’d better get this stuff unloaded in the shed and them in the coop, unharness these poor horses and give them a rubdown and some grain. They’ve had a hard day.” He released her with reluctance.
“Will you---would you stay here with me tonight?” Her question was shy.
He planted a quick, hard kiss on her lips. “Nothing could drive me away.”
Tom awakened to the sound of Virgil’s harsh coughing coming from downstairs. The bedroom was still black dark. Zelda lay nestled in his arms, her long slender body deliciously warm and naked under the quilt. She didn’t stir, exhausted from their lovemaking and the work of the previous day.
Cautiously, Tom untwined his body from hers and slid from the bed, fumbling for his pants and shirt and socks, shivering in the chill. He fumbled for a match and lit the candle on the dresser, shielding the faint light with his hand so Zelda wouldn’t be disturbed. His watch said it was twenty minutes to three. He strapped it on and made his way along the hallway and down the steep stairs.
Virgil was propped nearly upright on a mound of pill
ows, the only way he could rest these days. He turned his head toward the candlelight, and although there was recognition in his eyes at the sight of Tom, there was also agony as the paroxysms shook his frail body and he struggled to draw air into his damaged lungs. His contorted face was purple, and small blood vessels had broken on his cheeks and nose. The fingernails on each gnarled hand were a deep cyanotic blue.
Feeling helpless, Tom sat down on the edge of the bed and began to rub Virgil’s back. He’d seen Zelda do this in an effort to ease the attacks. Through the flannel nightshirt, he could feel the frantic beating of the older man’s heart, and his own chest ached with the awful knowledge that Virgil’s lungs could no longer draw in enough oxygen to sustain his body.
Under Tom’s palm Virgil’s back was skin and bone, each rib and vertebrae standing out in harsh relief through the flesh. Muscles that had once been strong from hours of digging coal with pick and shovel were now atrophied.
The coughing finally ran its course, and Virgil was able to take one shaky, desperate breath and then another. He groped for a handkerchief and blotted away the tears that the coughing created and slumped back on the pillows. Then, indomitable as ever, he gave Tom a shaky grin.
“Thanks, lad,” he wheezed. “Good to see you.” Speech was an effort, and it took moments before he could manage the rest. “So you’ve come home, have you? I knew you and that lass would come to your senses afore it was too late.”
“We’re getting married, Virgil. As soon as we possibly can. I’m staying here, with all of you, if you think you can put up with me.”
Virgil’s gnarled had curled around Tom’s forearm and squeezed, and the tears that glistened in the candlelight weren’t from coughing this time. “I’d like that right fine, lad.” His smile was tremulous. “I always knew here was where you belonged.”
“I’m going in the kitchen to light the stove, make us both a cup of tea,” Tom said, struggling against the hot rush of emotion that Virgil’s words brought. He drew the quilt up over the older man’s shoulders and clumsily tucked it in. “Be right back.”
But by the time the stove was lit and the tea steeped, Viril had fallen heavily asleep again. Marveling at how fond he’d become of tea, Tom poured himself a mug of the strong, hot brew and pulled on a jacket and a pair of boots.
Outside, the first faint traces of dawn were beginning to lighten the eastern sky, and a chorus of birdsong filled the cool mountain air. Tom shivered, not just from the chill. It was the morning of April 28, the last morning Frank would exist in its present form.
He and Jackson had been in the village exactly one year today, and sometime this morning, Jackson would ride off with Bill Miner and Lewis Schraeger. Late in the afternoon they’d stop the eastbound train, hoping to make off with over a million dollars in gold.
Tom’s mind skittered over the things that could go wrong with their plans, and apprehension twisted his gut. He’d tried time and again to reason with Jackson, but his former friend had become a stranger, caught up in the excitement and romance of taking part in a train robbery. Nothing Tom said affected him.
If they succeeded, as history indicated they would, they were all to meet shortly after midnight tonight, on the mountain where the Interpretive Center was located. Tom had promised Jackson he’d bring Leona with him, and, of course, he’d stick to that plan despite the fact that he wasn’t going to try to return to the future himself.
But he needed to say good-bye to Jackson. He’d decided to give his friend his bank cards and the information needed to access all of his accounts and investments. Jackson might as well benefit from everything; Tom had no use for any of it there.
The day would be a busy one. He planned to make one final effort at getting the people in the miners’ cottages to leave their homes and go somewhere safe for the night.
He looked up at the mountain, massive and inky dark against a lighter sky, its rolls of limestone jutting forbiddingly out over the valley.
He squinted at his watch.
It was eight minutes after four. As he watched, the hands moved inexorably forward. One minute, then two.
4:10. An icy tremor passed through Tom’s body and his eyes lifted again to the mountain. Its limestone peak would break away exactly twenty-four hours from this exact moment. Ninety million tons of rock would come tumbling down, breaking into fragments that ranged from tiny chips to chunks the size of a house. It would last less than a hundred seconds, and it would bury everything in its path.
For Tom, the very worst thing was knowing that he couldn’t stop it from happening, and neither had he been able to convince most people that it would even occur.
He remembered all too well the embarrassment and pity he’d felt for the wild individuals in parks and on street corners in the nineties, loudly predicting the end of the world or an invasion by little men from outer space. The loonies, he’d called them.
Talking to people about the Slide made Tom sympathize with those unfortunates, because now the embarrassment and pity on people’s faces were directed at him.
He sighed and dumped the remains of his tea on the grass. No matter how humiliating, he had to try again today, going from door to door at the cottages on the eastern flats, the cottages directly in the path of the Slide.
Behind the house the disgruntled rooster in his strange new chicken house crowed, and gradually light seeped over the valley like golden dust.
Morning had come to Frank, the last morning before the Slide.
A Distant Echo: Chapter Thrity-Six
April 28, 1903
It was unseasonably warm all that day and well into the evening in Frank. Crocuses bloomed everywhere, and mothers finally allowed their children to discard heavy winter underwear and put on summer clothing. As dusk fell, the ball game at the recreation field broke up and amidst shouts and laughter, players and spectators slowly made their way home.
The hotels geared up for their nightly sessions of drinking and gambling, and in the cottages wives cooked dinner for the miners getting off the day shift, or shushed noisy children so the night shift workers might steal another hour of sleep.
A heavy mist formed over the top of the Turtle as the sun went down.
At the North West Mounted Police barracks, Corporal Allan unlocked the barred door of the cell and handed a supper tray in to his prisoner. Tom took it, watching for a single small mistake on the corporal’s part that would allow him to overpower his captor and escape. But the corporal was a cautious man and a good policeman. He shut the cell door with a bang and locked it, delivering the same lecture he’d given Tom two hours before when he’d arrested him.
“You were duly warned, Chapman, about this ridiculous talk of the mountain falling. I distinctly remember telling you that if you persisted, I would be forced to take action,” he said, turning the huge key. “And yet there you were, going from door to door, frightening innocent women and children with your fabrications. A night behind bars will hopefully convince you of your folly.”
Tom stared at the plateful of stringy pot roast and congealing gravy, sick to his very soul. During the hours since his arrest, he’d tried to reason with the corporal, promising absolute silence on his part if only he was released that evening, but Allan was resolute.
“First thing in the morning, you can go. You seem a reasonable enough chap, apart from these delusions of yours. Have you seen a doctor about them?”
Tom gave up on reason. “Could I at least speak to Eli Ralston? I have to get a message to his sister, Zelda. She’s expecting me for supper and she’ll be worried.”
“The boy is off with Constable Laird. They’re helping one of the ranchers round up the cattle that were driven off by wild dogs last night. They should be back by dark.”
How long would it be before Zelda became alarmed? She knew he’d planned to pick up Leona just before midnight and head up to the site of the Interpretive Center, to wait for Jackson. He’d told her that morning what Jackson was up to, and she�
�d been horrified.
“Are you sure no one was killed during that robbery, Tom?”
“Fairly sure.”
“But if it doesn’t work tonight, if Jackson can’t return to the future, he’s going to be a wanted man. He and Leona will have to live like fugitives. And there’s the baby--”
Tom had nodded. “It’s going to have to work, Zel. It will work, I’m sure of it.”
“And you, Tom?” Her voice had been a husky whisper, and he had seen the uncertainty in her eyes. “You haven’t changed your mind?”
He’d drawn her into his arms and had stopped the words with his lips on hers. “I’m already home, Zel.”
But at this moment he wasn’t home at all. He was in jail. Unless he found some way out, he’d spend the night of the Slide ignominiously behind bars, unable to say good-bye to Jackson or to witness the event that had haunted him, day and night, for a full year. Panic threatened and he forced it down.
“Could I have a pen and paper, Corporal?”
Allan handed in a nib pen and a small inkwell.
“I, Tom Chapman, hereby appoint Jackson Zalco to be my power of attorney for all purposes. This appointment shall endure beyond any mental or physical impairment I may suffer from, and is effective from April 28, 2014….”
It was already dusk by the time Constable Liard and Eli finally got back to the barracks and a half-hour after that when an outraged Zelda burst through the door.
“This is ridiculous, Corporal Allan.” Her rich, deep voice reverberated through the room, and from his seat behind the battered table he used for a desk, Allan rolled his eyes heavenward.
“This man is my betrothed,” Zelda declared. “I demand that you release him this instant.”
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 93