by Bess McBride
****
I must have fainted this time, because my first impression was of lying curled in the fetal position in an unpaved road—the road that ran in front of the house. My second impression was of the bitter smell of burning wood. My throat ached, and I coughed, wondering if the smell was in my clothes.
The fire! I scrambled to my knees and jerked my head in the direction of the house.
It stood! It still stood—and it looked exactly the same! The same faded pastel colors of turquoise and salmon pink begged the onlooker to take notice of its more festive days. The same peeling weathered and dingy white paint adorned the wraparound porch.
And Sara came running out the front door, shouting at me, although all I could hear at the moment was the pounding in my heart and the roar of a fire from over one hundred years ago.
I stood on shaky knees as I watched her trot down the driveway. Darius was gone. He was gone—dead in the fire. But the house still stood. Had there been a fire? Had Darius been real? I felt so confused, and I sank to my knees in the road, sobs shaking my body.
Darius... Darius, I moaned silently.
“Molly! Where have you been? What happened to you?” Sara reached me and tried to pull me up, but I must have been dead weight, because she gave up trying and came down on her knees beside me.
“Molly!” she cried as she pulled my hair back from my face to look at me. “What’s wrong, honey? What happened?”
I hugged myself and rocked back and forth, moaning.
“Darius,” I sobbed. “Darius.” I had no other words. Darius was dead...or he was a figment of my crazed imagination. Either way, he was not with me. He had not traveled with me, and I had no way to get back to him.
“Molly, honey, let me take you to the house. At least, let me get you off the road.”
I resisted when Sara tried to pull me up—as if by leaving the road, I left my last best chance to get back to Darius. What if I left the road, and the “window” to travel in time closed?
“I can’t leave the road. I have to stay here,” I muttered feverishly. “If he comes back, I have to be here.”
“Are you talking about Darren, Molly?”
I pushed my tangled hair back off my wet face and grabbed her arms as I stared at her.
“His name is Darius, Sara. Darius. Do you remember him? Do you remember Darius?” I whispered hoarsely.
Sara frowned. “What’s happened, Molly? Where is he? Did something happen?”
“What do you remember?” I gave her a slight shake. “What do you remember about him?”
“Molly, stop it. You’re hurting me.” She loosened my grip. I barely registered that Marmaduke paced back and forth at the entrance of the drive. “What are you talking about? What shouldn’t I remember?”
“I’m sorry,” I choked out. “I’m sorry, Sara. Everything is so mixed up right now. I feel like I’m in a nightmare.”
She rose to a standing position and managed to pull me to my feet as well.
“Well, so do I! You’ve been gone for five days. Just like that!” She wrapped one arm around my waist and held my elbow with the other while she pulled me out of the road. “I didn’t know what to do when I saw you disappear!”
“Did you see Darius disappear with me?” I could only focus on him. I let her propel me forward toward the porch. Marmaduke ran back and forth around our legs as we moved.
“Yes, I did. Both of you.”
We reached the porch and I made my way to the love seat where I dropped onto it. I didn’t think I could face going inside.
Sara sat down next to me and took my shaking hands in hers.
“What happened to you? I didn’t dare call the police. I didn’t know what to do. What would I have told them?” she asked with a lift of her shoulders.
I shook my head and gave her hands a squeeze, grateful for small favors.
“I’m so glad you didn’t. I knew you’d be upset and worried, and I tried to get back here as fast as I could, but Darius...” I bit my lip in an effort to stop the shaking in my jaw. “I can’t believe I was gone five days though. It was only overnight.”
Sara frowned and pressed her lips together. She peered into my face as if to divine an answer.
“Where is Darius, Molly? What happened to you guys?”
I swallowed hard. My throat ached so bad...maybe from holding back tears...maybe from the fire. If there had been a fire. I turned to look at the peeling porch railing where Marmaduke perched watching us with interest. It certainly didn’t look as if it had been burnt and repainted. The ferocious fire I remembered would have left nothing standing. Had it only been moments ago?
“Molly?” Sara gave my hand a tug.
I shook my head and looked down at our hands.
“Well, you saw us disappear. Where do you think we went?” It would have been so much easier if she guessed. I didn’t know how to explain it.
“I have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Sara said in a strained voice. “That’s why I couldn’t call the police. But I was going to in the morning if you hadn’t come back today.”
“I’m so sorry, Sara,” I muttered as I clutched her hand. “I would have never disappeared without telling you first if I’d had a choice.”
“So?” she prompted, her impatience at my hesitation evident.
“Do you remember talking to me about time travel?” I said quietly. I kept my gaze downcast, sounding crazy even to myself.
Sara nodded. “The book I’m reading.”
I stared at her, willing her to guess. She watched my face carefully, and within seconds, her eyes widened.
“What?” she said incredulously.
I could only nod.
“Are you trying to tell me that you traveled...” she couldn’t finish. I didn’t blame her. She pulled her hand from mine and wrapped her arms around her chest.
“Are you nuts?” she whispered.
“Well, you saw us disappear? You tell me,” I muttered.
She turned to look at the end of the drive, and I followed suit
“Where is he?”
I gave her a quick look and shook my head, desperately trying to keep the ever ready burning tears in check. I looked back at the road, wondering how I could have taken my eyes off the drive for even the last few minutes. What if Darius came? Wouldn’t he need me to help him? Was he alive? Was he dead? Pain carved such a deep hole in my chest that I wondered if it would ever stop hurting. I suspected not. This was not fixable.
“Where did you go?” she asked in a voice tinged with awe.
I gave my head another befuddled shake. “To his time. To 1880.”
“Are you telling me that Darius was from the past?” Her raised brows suggested I was out of my mind, and I was fairly sure she was right.
“If he even existed at all,” I gave her a quick look before returning my gaze to the road.
“Oh, he was real all right. No wonder you guys made no sense,” she muttered with a shake of her head.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing about him seemed quite normal, and nothing about his story seemed plausible.” She nudged me in the arm. “You lied to me,” she said accusingly.
I nodded, too depressed to feel guilty.
“Yes, I had to. I couldn’t just say, “Oh, guess what, here’s this strange guy I met in the cemetery, and he has come to live with me.”
Sara leaned forward to get in my field of vision.
“You met him at the cemetery?” She gave a short mirthless laugh and sat back in the loveseat. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by now. But I am. What possessed you to bring home some man you met in a cemetery?”
I opened my mouth but had no answer to give her. I still couldn’t understand anything myself.
“Oh, wait! Is that why you were asking me about ghosts? Did you think he was a ghost—because of the cemetery?”
“We both thought he might be.” I wanted to smile at the memory, but the pain in my ch
est forced me to concentrate on breathing shallowly. Smiling just didn’t seem possible right now. I kept my eye on the road.
“I don’t think I can talk about this anymore right now, Sara. I don’t feel very well,” I mumbled. “I just can’t...”
Sara nodded. “I understand. I just have one quick question, and then I’ll leave you alone for a while.”
I nodded wearily.
“Is he coming back?”
I broke down in sobs, and with a mumbled curse at herself for insensitivity or some such thing, Sara wrapped an arm around my shoulders and rocked me while I cried for what seemed like hours but must have been fifteen minutes or so. When I ran out of tears, though the ache in my chest continued to burn, I told her everything I could remember.
“And now I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again,” I murmured in a broken voice. I lay my aching head against the back of the love seat and closed my burning eyes...for just an instant. I had to maintain my vigil on the road.
“I-I don’t know what to say, Molly. This sounds so...fantastical.” She paused. “And to top it all off, you think you saw...what?...your ghost?”
I opened one swollen eye and looked at her briefly before I scanned the road. She held her hands to her temples.
“I know,” I sighed. “I know.” Although I’d told her about Molly, I wished I had kept that part to myself, though I was in no intellectual shape to think about future implications if I managed to edit the story. I wanted to keep Molly to myself. After all, she was...my other self, and I wanted to honor her memory. The word “ghost” simply did not do justice to Molly’s vitality. I had fallen in love with her in an instant...and I found myself missing her. She had truly understood everything I was feeling. And why not? She was me.
“Time travelers and ghosts,” Sara murmured in a bemused tone. “You sure have had a busy week.”
“I’m sorry to have put you through all this, Sara. You were supposed to fly back today, weren’t you?” I held my breath. I didn’t want her to go.
“Yes, but I rescheduled the flight for tomorrow. It’s summer, and there’s no school. I’ve got meetings next week though. And Brad will be all right on his own without me.”
She gave me a quick impulsive hug.
“I’m so glad you’re alive.”
I gritted my teeth to stem the scream threatening to erupt at the word “alive.” Was Darius alive? Even if the house had not burned down, and I didn’t know how that was possible, he would not really be alive—not in the twenty-first century. I couldn’t bear the thought. I simply couldn’t bear it. I hugged myself tightly.
“Cynthia and Laura came by yesterday,” Sara said on a quiet note. “I told them that you and—”
She paused, and I waited anxiously. Me and Darius?
“I told them that you had gone to Council Bluffs. They’re almost ready to head off to Florida.”
I tried to focus on the faces of the sisters, but everything seemed fairly blurry at the moment. I wondered if I was in shock.
Darius’s great-great nieces...or was it another great? I couldn’t figure it out. They lived. We had not changed the future. Darius must have been successful in settling his estate, and it seemed likely the house might not have burned down after all. Who wills a burnt-down house to his family? Had I dreamed the whole thing? How had I gotten to the road?
Had I asked the sisters everything I could about Darius and his family? What had they said about him? That he’d “disappeared mysteriously?” What did that mean? Had he died in the fire then? But the house still stood!
“Wouldn’t Cynthia and Laura have mentioned that the house burned down...if it had?” I asked aloud. I’m not certain I really expected Sara to answer, but she was game.
“We could ask them,” she said in a tentative voice. “We could call them.”
The road was empty. No one walked up the drive.
I turned to look at Sara. “Yes, I think I need to talk to them.” At the look of alarm on Sara’s face, I almost chuckled. Almost.
“No, no. I’m not going to tell them my bizarre story. But they might know if the house burned down. And they might remember hearing anything about how...” I meant to say how Darius died, but I couldn’t voice the words.
“We’ll call them,” Sara said quickly. She seemed to know when I couldn’t talk further.
The picture! Darius’s picture! Was it real? Did it exist? I jumped up without a word and ran into the house, ignoring Sara’s startled exclamation.
“Where are you going?”
Sassy jumped down from the couch and followed me up the stairs to the master bedroom.
“Molly!” I heard Sara’s voice down below and then on the stairs. “What is it?” she called out.
I pulled open the nightstand drawer and fell back against the edge of the bed with weak knees. There it was, lying on top of an assortment of paper, pens and the rest of the house photos the sisters had given me. Darius’s picture!
I straightened and reached for it slowly, reverently—as if it were the last thing I would ever have of him.
Sara ran into the room.
“What the—” She stopped when she saw me. I didn’t take my eyes off the photograph as I passed her to leave the room.
“I just had to get this. I have to run back downstairs. I need to keep an eye on the road,” I murmured. I cradled the photograph against my chest as I hurried down the stairs. Both Sassy and Sara followed me.
“I didn’t know you had a picture of him,” Sara said. She took her seat beside me again as I scanned the road before lowering myself to the loveseat.
I knew she wanted to look at the photograph, but I couldn’t seem to make myself pull it away from its place near my racing heart.
“Laura and Cynthia gave it to me. It was in a box of old family photographs they’d left here. I wanted it, and they let me have it.” I took a steadying breath as I stared at the road. “They said he didn’t have any descendents to leave it to.”
“Oh, Molly,” she almost crooned. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now.”
I turned to look at her then, and with a tight smile, I pulled the photograph away from my chest and let her look at it. She probably knew better than to ask if she could actually hold it at that moment. She leaned forward and peered at it.
“Look at his mustache!”
I looked down and ran a tender finger over the length of his mustache.
“He shaved it off,” I said quietly. “For me, I think.”
“Well, he looks handsome with it or without it, either way, although it is easier to see his smile when he’s clean shaven.” She leaned forward again. “What year was the photo taken?”
I turned it over. “1880 Sometime this year...or the other year, I guess.”
“Molly...” I knew she hesitated, and I tensed. “Why do you think he’s not coming back? What if the fire wasn’t real?” She turned to look over her shoulder at the picture window where Sassy sat watching us intently. “How can the house still be here if that really happened?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Even if the fire wasn’t real—and I couldn’t have imagined anything that ferocious—I don’t know why he would come here.”
“Because he loves you. Even I could see that. Victorian house restoration specialist, my foot.” She chuckled, and even I felt a corner of my mouth lift momentarily. “Well, I imagine he probably did—does know more about Victorian construction than most men.”
I didn’t miss her use of past tense, and I winced.
Sara rose. “Let me get you something to drink. When did you last eat?”
I shook my head and shrugged. “I don’t know. This morning? An hour ago? Over a hundred years ago?”
“Why don’t you come inside,” she asked as she headed for the door, “while I get something for us to eat?”
I threw her a desperate look. “I can’t. I need to wait here...just in case.”
She turned to look
at the road and then brought her gaze back to mine. I didn’t want to see the pity in her eyes. Her sympathy seemed somehow to make Darius’s absence an unalterable future reality. I couldn’t give up hope so easily. I wasn’t sure how I would go on if I didn’t have some small spark to cling to—even if it seemed almost an impossibility.
“Okay,” she shrugged lightly. “I’ll bring it out here, along with the phone...so you can call Cynthia and Laura.”
****
Laura pulled the car up the driveway about an hour later, and I stood to go help Cynthia alight.
“Molly, dear! I’m so glad you called. We wanted to see you before we leave for Florida.”
Sara came out of the house and down the porch steps.
“And here’s Sara. How are you, dear?”
I wasn’t sure to whom she was talking at the moment, so I let Sara be “dear.” I nodded at Laura as she came around the front of the car.
“Let’s go sit on the porch. The late afternoon breeze is so nice,” I said, just in case anyone had an idea that I was going to give up my vigil. Sara hadn’t said anything further as we ate—or as I picked at my food and she ate—but I knew she was wondering how long I was going to stand guard watching the road. As far as I was concerned, I was sleeping on the porch.
“Yes, it is wonderful, isn’t it?” Laura agreed. “It’s days like these that make me forget why we’re moving to Florida.” She settled into one of the single chairs while I lowered Cynthia onto the loveseat.
“Not me,” Cynthia chirped. “I’m not likely to forget the winters here.” She shivered delicately. “Brutal.”
“Can I get you some lemonade?” Sara asked.
“No, thank you, dear, not for me,” Cynthia murmured. “Laura?”
Laura declined, and I shook my head, impatient to ask the sisters about the house. Sara read my face and took a seat.
“I’m so glad you were able to come by,” I rushed in. “I was wondering. It’s the strangest thing really,” I chuckled nervously, “but I was wondering if you had remembered any more details about the history of the house...or the builder?” I ended on a bit of a squeak. “I mean...is this the original house? Or did it...burn down at one point?” I saw Sara’s cautionary look as I finished on a stilted note.