We heard the sound again, the one that gripped hold of my heart and threatened to tear it from my chest.
The unmistakable combination of whistle, chugging engine, puffing steam, and then, as it got closer to the platform, the unholy screeching of brakes.
The Aurelia Belle, or at least some representation of her, had indeed returned ahead of schedule, ready to take me back to my world, and away from Marigold forever.
I pulled her back into my arms.
I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think, and what was more, I couldn’t let go.
She finally said the words I’d been aching to hear. “I love you, Keigan. I love you, and I’ll wait for you. If there’s any chance you could find your way back here, to stay with me, or you could get me and take me back with you.”
Even as she spoke the words, she sounded defeated. We both knew if J. Howard Fox, with all his wealth and resources, had never been able to find a way, I had little to no chance of doing it.
“Don’t, please.” I brushed her hair back out of her face, still unused to seeing it down like this.
She looked more beautiful than ever. I tried to remember exactly how each strand of silk felt between my fingers, the slight scent of flowers, and the way she looked at me as I’d held her, upon our unsanctioned honeymoon bed.
“Don’t wait for me,” I insisted. “Go on with your life, as I am sure you are meant to. Find someone who will be good to you. Marry, have a family. Most of all, be happy, Marigold. I don’t know how I’d cope if I thought you wouldn’t be.”
“I’ll be happiest waiting for you, don’t you understand? A life spent remembering you, dreaming of you, waiting for you, is better than any other life I could have here.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t have to, Keigan. Not as long as I do.”
The whistle blew, the bell rang, and the rumble of the approaching train shook the platform beneath our feet.
She began to work the clasp on the necklace around her throat, the one bearing the pendant that meant so much.
She tried to put it on me, but I gently stopped her. “It’s all you have left of your mother, you must keep it.”
She frowned and looked downward. “I wish I could give you something.”
“Don’t you know what you’ve given me?” I was incredulous. Still, she did not know her worth. “You’ve given me everything, Marigold. Everything. And I can sure as hell take this back with me.”
I held her so tight, I threatened to crush her as I kissed her passionately. She kissed back, and I didn’t care if the whole town appeared and stared at us now.
But no one was there, not until I saw the conductor. He stuck his head out of the window and yelled. “All aboard!”
I looked again at the book on the bench beside her. It was vibrating. “You’ll destroy it?”
“We don’t have a choice, do we? I’ll have to, as soon as I’m sure you’re gone.”
“How?” I asked, though I really didn’t want to know.
“The small wood stove in my room,” she answered. “No one will see, no one will know.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“All aboard!” The Conductor shouted, staring at me and gesturing for me to hurry. “Train departs momentarily!”
This is different, I thought. Last time I looked up, and the train was just gone. This time, the engine is steaming up…I can see coal being shoveled into the firebox.
Steam billowed all around the bottom of the engine, and then began to puff out of the top.
I kissed her once more, with great longing, and for the last time.
Finally, she put her hands on my chest and pushed me back.
“Go!” she shouted through her tears, trying to remain courageous and succeeding where I failed.
She was so much braver than I would ever be.
There was no more time left. The train had chugged into motion and was moving forward without me.
I finally picked up my pack and, without looking back, ran to catch up. I jumped aboard the passenger car and, as before, found myself alone in it. All appeared just as it had been three weeks before. It seemed forever ago.
It wasn’t long before the same sensation of impending unconsciousness crept up on me, too, and I closed my eyes, not wanting to fight. I prayed that, when I opened them again, this would all have been a dream, something I’d wake up from and feel certain it had never happened at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
WHEN I OPENED my eyes, I was lying on the cold, damp ground of the pit beneath a gigantic, silent Aurelia Belle.
What had happened to me was no dream, but it was a nightmare. I was wide awake again, and I remembered it all in vivid, living color.
I finally forced my legs to comply with my brain’s command to move. I reached into the pocket at the front of my backpack and found the master key Seymour had given me. At least I hadn’t lost that; I’d be able to get out of here, somehow.
I made my way up through the roundhouse and to the back door. The key fit flawlessly, and soon I was standing outside.
I pulled my long coat tighter around me; I was still dressed for 1880, and I’d never felt so cold. Freezing, alone, and lonelier than I had ever been in my life.
I tried my phone to check the date and time but found it had been permanently fried—and melted—by the energy of the wormhole on the return trip.
I walked slowly, in uneven steps, past the benches on the platform.
For just a moment, I thought I saw a woman sitting there. The light from the dim streetlamps reflected off of her in a most unnatural way.
I stepped closer, so sure of what I thought I saw…
“Marigold?” I called softly, but she didn’t move.
It was almost as if she were made of metal…a piece of artwork.
A monument.
I ran over to the bench, and there she was, a life-size replica of my beautiful snow angel. Seated forever, eyes fixed upon the infinite horizon.
“Can’t be…” I choked, but it was.
I knew every curve and line of that face, the long, feminine neck, and above all, I knew her expression, so mournful and pure, frozen forever in time and cast in bronze. With my flashlight shaking in my hand, I analyzed the statue in every detail, wondering how it could be possible to experience so much pain and yet at the same time feel so numb.
I lifted my hand and caressed her cheek, her chin, her full lips. There was no softness, no comfort to be found there, of course, in the cold metal representation of someone who had once been so alive. Just hours ago, it seemed, in my arms, though a hundred and thirty-five years had passed.
I looked down and found a plaque at the base of the sculpture. I fell to my knees and cleared away the snow piled up against it.
My voice broke as I tried, unsuccessfully, to read the inscription aloud. Instead, the words echoed painfully in my head as they revealed Marigold’s fate.
“Waiting”, the sculpture of a young woman seated at the depot of Wishing Cross Heritage Railroad, is a reproduction of a statue made originally in stone in 1881.
Commissioned by a man known as William Best, it was said Best drew the sketch the original sculptor worked from. Both were a tribute to the life and death of a local girl, the daughter of a small town Stationmaster, who perished from hypothermia in February of 1881 after wandering outside in the dead of night.
She had a habit, Best said, of sitting at the train station day in and day out, speaking to no one, staring as if waiting for something. When the weather turned, her family would come and take her inside, but often they’d discover she had stolen away again as darkness fell.
On one such winter night, they found her too late.
Clutched in her left hand was a silver pocket watch. A small suitcase rested at her feet.
What it was, exactly, that Marigold Belle Sutton waited for, no one will ever know.
I stopped read
ing.
I knew.
Marigold had died, waiting still, for me to return…just as she promised she would.
Just as I begged her not to.
What was she thinking, all the time she sat at the station, hoping I’d appear?
What in the world was I supposed to do now?
My questions would never have answers.
I stayed where I was for a long time. Kneeling before her image, worshipping her in my heart just as I would with my body, given the chance.
Still I wouldn’t cry. I couldn’t.
I finally struggled to stand, and as I rose, I heard something fall out of my coat and hit the statue. It had come from my pocket, but it wasn’t something I’d put there.
“Oh God…” I realized immediately what it was.
Marigold had hidden her necklace in my pocket when I hadn’t been paying attention.
“No,” I whispered, holding my head in my hands. “No, Marigold, no…” A part of me had secretly hoped that if she kept the necklace, there might be a way back to her, still.
Now the necklace was on its proper side of history, the book had been returned to the past and, if she kept her word, destroyed. There should be no more ‘doorstops’ to hold open the wormhole.
Marigold was dead. The Aurelia Belle, silent.
Grief overtook every other emotion; there was no room left in my head, or my heart, for dreaming now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I MADE MY WAY out of the historical park as soon as I could and began the long walk back to my car. On the way, I passed a bank with a flashing sign bearing the date. It said 4:55 AM, December 25, 2015.
I struggled to unlock the door, my hands shaking, and slid down into the seat.
I began pounding the steering wheel with my fists, so hard I thought I might break it.
I swore, I screamed, I cursed time and space itself for taking us away from each other.
Still, I did not cry.
I wondered what changes, if any, to current times would happen because I’d gone back. I wondered if she ever felt loved, truly, because I had loved her.
I feared the greatest proof of our outcome was memorialized forever in a statue that had not existed at Wishing Cross Heritage Railroad before I went back to 1880.
Just as Aurelia Belle’s history had been written once and for all after her death, the last stroke of the pen had now also concluded Marigold’s story, and I was the only one who knew, who really understood, what the book of her life had meant.
How I would face tomorrow was completely beyond my comprehension.
I only knew I would never love anyone in my life the way that I loved Marigold Belle, daughter of J. Howard Fox.
I rummaged through my backpack, seeking something that had sunk to the bottom: the little toy model of the locomotive. I focused on the faded initials on its side, and then closed my eyes and grasped it in my hand, willing it to have magical powers. Wishing it could somehow bring her back to me, or make it possible for me to go back to her.
I thought about throwing it away, but I couldn’t do it. Keeping it would serve as a reminder of all that had been, things I never wanted to forget.
The statue at Wishing Cross Heritage Railroad may be a monument in death to the woman I knew, but my love will remain, as long as I draw breath, a testament to her life.
April 2, 2016
I went to Wishing Cross Heritage Railroad tonight…for the first time since the mighty Aurelia Belle brought me back.
I listened to her cries as she circled her track, and mourned, as she did, Time’s lost daughters.
I hid in her pit after dark.
I held Marigold’s necklace in my hands, and I waited.
Nothing happened.
I remained there until the first light of day shone through the windows of the roundhouse, and I knew I’d get caught if I stayed.
I secured the necklace around my throat again, and I left that place without stopping for a moment to stare at her statue, her image frozen so still, even though spring was starting to bloom on the land surrounding it.
It was lifeless. Flawless.
Devastating.
I left the Park certain of one thing. I would keep the promise Marigold once made me.
I will always wait.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost I must thank my incredibly talented editor, Laura Bartha, for her invaluable contribution to this work. She saw the best in it and made me see it too, and it has turned out to be so much more than I ever imagined possible when I considered writing a little novel about time travel and a historical theme park. Thank you, Laura, from the bottom of my heart.
I also want to thank the rest of my amazing team at Booktrope: Majanka Verstraete, Jennifer Gracen, and Greg Simanson, for their love, care, and attention to detail that has helped to make this story all it can be.
Thank you to everyone behind the scenes at Booktrope as well: Adam Bodendieck, Jesse James Freeman, Victoria Wolffe, and everyone who has worked on the layout and production of this novel.
To Booktrope leaders Kenneth Shear and Katherine Sears, I can only say thank you again for believing in me and my stories.
To all the wonderful people out there who have read my work in the past (and may be surprised by the way this book has turned out) I must say thank you for sticking with me. You have been such an encouragement along the way, and your support has meant everything to me as a writer. Thank you.
To friends who number too many to name, and family who have encouraged me to write what was in my heart, I thank you all as well.
And finally, thank you to J. for making it possible for me to do what I can, as I am able. They don’t call you “Saint” for nothing.
With Heartfelt Gratitude,
~February Grace
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