I wondered if this was how J. Howard Fox felt the moment he’d met her mother.
God help me. I’ll be absolutely lost without her. There is no changing that now.
They finished their song, and I heard the soft sound of sniffling behind me. The performance had even brought our difficult, tough-as-nails-on-the-exterior-hostess to tears.
Marigold folded her hands and lowered her eyes toward Mr. Best. “Thank you, sir,” she whispered.
“No, Marigold,” he said, gently closing the key case. “Thank you.”
***
We dined in relatively high spirits considering all we were facing, individually and as a group. I knew Miss Finch and Mr. Best were missing Sarah mightily, but I was pleased they felt comfortable enough in our presence to begin telling happy, even humorous stories about her from Christmases past.
“Remember how she always insisted on eating the burnt Christmas cookies?” Mr. Best said, shaking his head, smiling in his gentle way.
“Well, she was the one who burned them!” Miss Finch replied, laughing once as she dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin.
“I didn’t care. I’d have eaten them all black as coal, just because she made them,” Best replied, and then resumed poking at his food with his fork.
“What was your favorite Christmas gift you ever received?” Marigold asked, filling in the silence with her natural warmth and charm. She focused on Mr. Best first, and he thought a moment.
“The second-hand piano my parents bought when I was eleven. I wanted lessons so much, and those were part of the gift,” Mr. Best said at last. “As you can see, I paid attention in those lessons, though my talent is questionable.”
“Come now, Mr. Best, we all heard clear evidence earlier your talent is most impressive,” I replied, taking a sip from the cup of tea Miss Finch had just poured for me. I nodded my thanks to her, and she sat back down. “What about you, Miss Finch? Do you have a favorite Christmas present?”
“Yes. A living doll, and her name was Sarah,” she said softly, looking down into her lap. “You see, I was sixteen when Sarah arrived, right on time on Christmas Eve, as if delivered by Saint Nick himself. I was quite keen to take care of my new baby. My mother had to practically wrestle her away from me just so she could feed her!”
Mr. Best’s cheeks turned red, and I laughed softly. “It sounds like you two were very lucky to have each other.”
“We were,” Miss Finch said with a sigh. “The best sister anyone ever had, Sarah was. I’ll…never forgive her for leaving me behind.”
The room fell silent for a long moment, until Marigold tried again to lighten the mood. “What about you, Mr. Wainwright? Favorite Christmas gift?”
“Probably the train my Grandfather gave me when I was about nine. Top of the line model set. Engine even puffed out smoke, if you worked it right. The best part was setting it up with him, and spending the time with him watching it go in circles around the Christmas tree. It was our tradition. We set it up every year, no matter how old I got. Even last year.” I paused, suddenly feeling the familiar ache of grief in my chest. “Our last Christmas.”
Marigold looked at me with sorrow. “I’m so sorry.”
I nodded, forcing a small smile. “Now it’s your turn. What was your favorite Christmas gift, Miss Sutton?”
She shrugged. “I think the best one was a little rag doll that one of my aunts sent to me one year. I carried her everywhere until she fell apart. Of course, my most prized possession is this.” She lifted the chain around her neck and displayed her pendant.
My heart sped up. I thought about the drawing in the book, and felt, for the moment, overwhelmed by the charm’s true significance.
“My mother died not long after Christmas,” she said, and all stopped eating, drinking, moving, our attention totally fixed upon Marigold. “Before she died, she gave me this necklace. She struggled to put it on me herself, told me never to take it off or give it away. She said it was the dearest thing she owned, and she wanted the person she loved most in the world to have it.”
She stared down at the pendant as it shimmered in the candlelight. “White gold, she told me. Not silver. It had been a gift to her from someone who wanted to remember Wishing Cross Station, and so invented this little symbol to remind them.” She looked puzzled now as she considered the story, almost as though she were hearing it for the first time. “Funny, I never gave it much thought before now. I wonder who exactly gave it to her to begin with.”
I exchanged a quick glance with Mr. Best, and then we returned to examining our food with rapt attention. His expression betrayed the fact he knew, just as I did, where the necklace had come from. The same person who had drawn the symbol in the margin of that log book: J. Howard Fox himself. Marigold’s real father…
“It’s a lovely necklace,” I said finally, as she let it fall back down against her dress.
Marigold was markedly silent afterward and mostly busied herself serving food, clearing away plates, fetching fresh ones, and keeping the kettle going on the stove.
At one point, I finally rose and found her in the kitchen, standing at the basin and fighting back tears.
“Miss Sutton,” I whispered, wishing I could touch her but knowing I dare not. “Is there anything at all I can do to help you?”
“You’re doing it,” she said, “Just keep me distracted, please, and the others, too, until it is time for church. If I can just get through church…through seeing them there, knowing they won’t speak to me…”
She began to cry, and I reached out to brush her tears away. My fingers made contact with a stray strand of her hair, then moved to her face before I could stop myself, and she leaned against them, into the palm of my hand, with her eyes closed. I heard the sound of Mr. Best clearing his throat loudly from the doorway and withdrew my hand immediately.
“Everything all right in here?”
“Just getting ready to cut the pie,” Marigold called, blinking fiercely to stem the flow of her tears, and indicating a nearby shelf. “I can’t reach the knife. Mr. Wainwright was about to get it down for me. Won’t you, please, Mr. Wainwright?”
“I’d be happy to, Miss Sutton,” I said, and after handing her the tool, I hurried for the door.
I shoved my feet into my boots and ran out front without my coat.
I gulped in the freezing air, and my lungs constricted. I reached into my pocket and withdrew my inhaler. With no one around to see, or so I thought, I drew two puffs from it.
“Tobacco of some kind?” Best asked. I turned to find he was standing behind me, holding my coat out to me. He’d seen the canister and made a guess.
“Medicine,” I replied, “My lungs aren’t the strongest a man ever had.”
He nodded. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t think I am.” I felt my composure slip away. “I really don’t. In a way, I wish I was leaving, could leave tonight. I don’t know what I’m going to do for the next week…how I’ll keep from going insane. The shop will be closed, the world closed with families celebrating. Marigold will be here, with Miss Finch, I’ll be in my tiny room at the apartment with the walls closing in on me. Please, don’t misunderstand me, I am grateful for the room. It’s just…just…”
“It’s just that your heart is leading your head,” Mr. Best replied. “I understand, and I’m too old to try to talk you out of it. I’ve seen too much. I just have to ask you, Mr. Wainwright. What earthly good can come of your feelings for her?”
“None I can imagine,” I answered truthfully. “Still, I don’t know how in the world I can possibly stop loving her.” I looked down at the snow gathering at my feet, still falling at a steady pace from above.
***
With dinner over and the dishes cleared away, Marigold grew silent once more.
“What’s the matter, child?” Miss Finch asked, tapping her cane against the floor.
“I’m just not sure about going to church tonight. About seeing my fam
ily so soon.”
“You don’t go to church to see your family, you go to celebrate the holiday with worship,” Finch replied with a stern stare.
Mr. Best was much more understanding. “If it’s too soon, Miss Sutton, I am certain everyone will understand. You could arrive late, stand at the back, and leave early.”
“That was our plan to begin with,” Finch grumbled, annoyed.
“If you don’t mind, Miss Finch, I might just go to bed. I am suddenly feeling ill,” Marigold said, and she looked it.
Her fair complexion had turned ashen, and she was shaking.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked, hopelessly.
She shook her head and bit her lip. “If you’ll excuse me, Miss Finch, I promise I’ll…clean up the dishes later.”
She ran from the room. Moments later we heard her bedroom door close and the sound of sobbing coming from the other side.
That sound cut into me as no other ever had before it. I found I struggled, now, to keep my own composure. I had to do something before I lost it completely in front of my hosts.
“I’d be happy to wash the dishes,” I volunteered.
“No, we’ll handle this, won’t we, Prudence? Plenty of time to clean up and then get to church well before services.”
“Hmm. Well you’d better keep me away from Samuel Sutton, or I’ll be likely to give him a piece of my mind and get myself excommunicated.”
“Why don’t you go on home, Keigan,” Best said to me now, patting me on the shoulder once again. “You look a little pale yourself. Get some air.”
“Thank you, I think I will.” I took my coat from the hook by the door and slid into my boots, leaving them unlaced. “Thank you very much, Miss Finch, for your hospitality.”
“You’re most welcome, young man. Goodnight.”
“See you tomorrow,” Best said with a wave. I nodded, then closed the door.
I inhaled deeply of the frigid air, coughing again. I looked up to see Marigold standing in the window, her shoulders shaking as she wept. She looked directly at me, pressed her hands against the glass. She knew something terrible was coming, and it was going to take us away from each other.
The look in her eyes revealed she didn’t want it to happen any more than I did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I WAS LYING on top of my bed, still fully clothed, unmoving.
My lungs rasped on, though I had taken my inhaler again after I got back and out of the cold.
I sighed.
I looked at the small clock on the bedside table; it was eight-thirty. Dinner had been early and ended sooner than I expected, and there was still plenty of time before services in town.
I could go if I wanted. I could stand there and stare at Marigold across a crowded room, loving her, desiring her, aching for her, thinking all kinds of thoughts I was sure would damn me straight to Hell, if I were of her faith. Or any faith.
My faith had run out long ago.
Most likely, though, if I went I would end up calling her father out on his actions. There was no way I could be in the same room with the man, let alone watch him pray to his God in self-righteous piety while his daughter cried her eyes out at the back of the building.
There was no way in the world I’d be able to stand for it, and the scene I’d create would only heap more scandal upon Marigold and her family.
But God, I wanted a shot at that heartless bastard. Whether I succeeded in humiliating him or he pulverized me, I didn’t care. I wanted to hurt him, somehow, even if I couldn’t come close to repaying him for the way he’d hurt her.
Even if he ended up beating the living daylights out of me, I wouldn’t care, I couldn’t feel any worse than I did at that moment.
The candles burned down, flickering near their death. I lit two more.
I picked up the book. I didn’t know if I should think of it as Sutton’s or J. Howard’s now. Then I accepted it was J. Howard’s, just as Aurelia Belle had really been his, however their lives had turned out.
For a moment in time, stolen from antiquity, they belonged to each other, and they had left their most beautiful mark on the world in the form of the girl I couldn’t forget.
I heard a noise. At first I thought the snow had turned to freezing rain and was pelting my window.
Then I recognized it as something else entirely.
I looked out from the fogged glass and saw Marigold below, my angel in the snow, tossing rocks to get my attention. She was alone, and I wondered how on Earth she’d managed to get out of Finch’s house on her own.
I rushed down the back steps and unlocked the door. She came inside and stood there, staring at me, her eyes rimmed with red but not shedding tears now.
“Tell me,” she demanded, “tell me who you are, and where you really came from.”
“Marigold—”
“Tell me you know something about him!”
“About who?”
“About the man who came to see me when I was a little girl! The one who told me never to take this off.” She held up her pendant. “He came up to me at the station one day. I was only five, but I remember.”
“Wait,” I said, and I took her by the hand and led her upstairs to my room. “I have something to show you.”
“Just tell me what you know of him, please! All my life I’ve wondered if he had anything to do with the fact Father always despised me. The man said he’d come into town on the special. That he’d known my mother. I remember him getting on the special moments later and leaving, and I never saw him again. In fact I don’t remember anyone coming into town on that train ever again... not until you. Do you know him?” She spoke so fast she was nearly out of breath as she held me by the shoulders.
“No, but I know who he is, and I know why he came to you.” I tried to turn away, but she wouldn’t let me.
She put her hand beneath my chin and raised it until our eyes met again. “Tell me the truth. Tell me everything you know.”
“I’m not sure you want to know the truth. About him, or about me.”
“I know you’re going to leave Wishing Cross. Leave me. Whenever the train comes.”
“If it runs on time we still have almost a week,” I said, worried what would happen once she knew the truth. “Maybe we should wait until you’ve thought it through.”
“You never know with the special, it comes when it comes.” She grasped the front of my shirt. “What if we run out of time? What if you never tell me, and I never understand who I really am?”
I swallowed hard. She was right, and I couldn’t risk it.
“All right,” I said, glancing over at the book. “But we need time. Do you know where Best is?”
“He and Miss Finch were going to deliver food to some of the neighbors before they went to church together. There was so much left.”
“So he’s not coming back here anytime soon?”
“No.”
She was so close now, all I could think was how very much I wanted to finally kiss her perfect, rose petal lips.
“This isn’t going to be easy for you to hear, or to know,” I warned. “And how I came to be in possession of the evidence, I can barely explain. It has to do with my job, back home. I work in a library, you see, and some books were donated. But one book in particular I had to research, because I had no idea who had written it. The type on the pages was too faint to read. I was referred to a man who knew what it was, and he told me I had to bring it back here, to Wishing Cross.”
I reached for the book on the bedside table and Marigold’s eyes widened in fear.
“That’s one of Father’s log books!”
“That isn’t the half of what it is, Marigold,” I whispered. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“I have to know.” She pulled the book from my hands and began flipping through the pages.
I had slipped scraps of paper in between some of them, marking important passages.
She slumped down onto my bed and read soft
ly aloud, at first. Then she remained stone still and silent as she progressed and began putting the pieces together.
She closed her eyes and squinted them shut, as though trying to deny what she already knew to be truth.
“So Samuel J. Sutton isn’t my father, at all, “This…John Howard Fox…who came to Wishing Cross on the special…” She shook and her voice trembled. “The same man who came to me after Mother died, and said he’d come back for me, only he never did. I never, never told anyone I’d seen him, or that he’d spoken to me, not until you, tonight. Did you ever meet him?” Her eyes searched mine.
“He died before I was born. I only work in the library on the school grounds of his re-creation of Wishing Cross, in my time.”
“So you’re from the...” she stumbled over the last word, “future?”
“I know it’s difficult to believe. It wasn’t easy for me to believe I’d come back here either, I promise you.”
“What year?”
“Marigold?”
“What year?” It was the first time she’d ever raised her voice to me, and I knew I had to answer.
“Two thousand and fifteen.”
“A…hundred and thirty five years from now?”
I nodded.
“And my real father came from another time as well.”
“Yes. From my past…your future.”
She stared at the book intensely. “He wanted to save her.” She sounded as though she very much wished he’d succeeded. “He wanted to save me.”
“He just never found a way. He tried. He experimented, and two people died because of it. He proved beyond doubt that no one could safely make the trip back with him, or remain here indefinitely. If they tried, it was the end of them.” I whispered, and I sat down beside her. “Marigold…”
“No.” She shook her head fiercely now, against the truth, against her feelings, against the death of everything she had ever believed to be real.
“Marigold.”
“No!” She dropped the book and ran from the room, down the stairs and out the back door into the night.
I ran after her as the snow obscured my vision, falling fast and thick from bitter skies.
Wishing Cross Station Page 14