B00A1ID5X0 EBOK

by Heldt, John A.

  Robert's rush to put a ring on her finger, however, had not been followed by a quick trip to the altar. He wanted a longer engagement, even if that meant putting off something most men could not do without. They settled on Saturday, April 12, a date sandwiched between Karen and Susan's birthdays and one that accommodated their schedules. Robert didn't want anything large or fancy, but he did want his daughters to be a part of the day. So April 12 it was.

  Teachers and staff at UHS had reacted to the news of the engagement with surprise and cheer. Some who had known Linda Land reacted with hugs and tears. They had seen her illness wear down Robert and were ecstatic that he had been able to move on with his life so swiftly and satisfactorily. Wayne Dennison had offered the happy couple use of his Wallowa Lake summer home as a wedding present, an offer Robert gladly accepted. Marsha Zimmerman had offered her services as a wedding singer, an offer Robert politely declined.

  Michelle thought happy thoughts as she pondered her new life. She imagined a honeymoon in Hawaii and cooking classes over the summer. She thought of a dozen ways she could revitalize Linda's garden as a tribute to the woman she had replaced. But most of all, she thought about how happy she would be as the wife of Robert Land and how distant any happiness had seemed when she had stood at the foot of Scott Richardson's grave or had emerged from the A.F. Pennington mansion frightened and confused. Her future was astonishingly bright.

  The blissful moment ended all too soon. When Michelle turned to face the dance floor, she saw Scott, Shelly, and Nick in a heated conversation. Shelly and Nick had apparently not come as a couple, or at least a couple officially authorized by Unionville High School's Science Club president. Michelle couldn't make out a word, but she saw enough body language to know that Scott was pissed, Shelly was distressed, and Nick was increasingly impatient.

  A few seconds later, Nick gave Shelly a half-hearted salute, flipped off Scott, and walked through a dozen or so people to the exit. Shelly stared at Scott with folded arms. Scott repeatedly shook his head and turned away. Had he turned in different directions, he would have seen Brian Johnson return a white-hot glare and April Burke with her hands on her mouth.

  Trouble had come to paradise.

  CHAPTER 34: SHELLY

  Monday, January 21, 1980

  "It's all my fault. I never should have agreed to dance," Shelly said.

  She spoke to April but looked at the snow-covered sidewalk ahead as the two proceeded eastward on Tenth Avenue toward the intersection with Monroe. Shelly had requested a long walk with her best friend because she knew a long walk with her best friend was an ideal way to clear her head.

  "I should have just stayed in the music room and waited for Scott."

  "That wouldn't have solved anything either."

  "What do you mean? You think I should have left with Nick?"

  "No, Shelly," April said with a firm voice. "I don't think you should have left with Nick. You know exactly where I stand on Nick. I think he's bad news. I've told you that several times. But I'm not so sure that Scott is good news. You're never happy when you're together."

  "That's not entirely true. We get along fine when it's just the two of us. But throw other people into the mix and he goes nuts. It shouldn't be that way. I should be able to talk and dance with other guys without worrying what he will say or do. Scott doesn't own me. No one does."

  Shelly tried to purge her mind of unpleasant memories of Saturday night but couldn't. They were still too vivid and fresh. Nick's one dance had quickly turned into three and the third one, to a slow song, had sent Scott through the roof. He had entered the cafeteria just as Nick had put his arms around her waist and tried to get up close and personal. Relations with Scott had not improved with Nick's departure either. They had managed just one dance and a few terse words before Shelly had decided to go home. She had left alone, stopping only to say goodbye to April and Brian on the way out.

  "I don't know what to tell you," April said. She tightened her grip on a plastic bag that contained an album she had purchased at a record store. "It seems that most guys are that way. If they're not selfish and possessive, they're just plain boring. I'm still trying to find a guy who is nice and interesting."

  "What about Tony? You two got pretty cozy at the dance."

  "He's interesting, all right. I'm just not sure about the nice part."

  "What do you mean?" Shelly asked.

  "He wanted to fool around in his car in the parking lot. We hadn't even danced three times and he wanted to leave. Whatever happened to foreplay?"

  Shelly laughed.

  "I warned you about him." She wagged her finger. "I did."

  April sighed.

  "I know you did. He's definitely a player. But he's also the only guy who's shown any interest in me lately. Maybe we both need to start dating college guys."

  "No, thanks. They're trouble too. Just ask Sandy Pearson."

  April didn't ask for clarification. Shelly knew she didn't have to. The plight of Sandra Pearson was common knowledge at the high school. She was three months pregnant with the child of a sophomore at Unionville Community College. Sandy hadn't been free of her longtime boyfriend for even a week when she had hooked up with the college point guard and turned her senior year upside down. She planned to graduate and then put the baby up for adoption. The basketball player had demonstrated no interest in marriage or fatherhood.

  "Then maybe we should go in the other direction," April said.

  A smile returned to her face.

  "Elaborate, please."

  "Well, if we are both fed up with boys, perhaps we should swear off of them for the rest of the year. Maybe we can dedicate ourselves to purity and chastity and serve as role models for the cheerleaders and the dance team!"

  Shelly laughed.

  "Don't get carried away, April. I'm not that distraught."

  In fact, April's flippant suggestion made a lot of sense. Scott was an unnecessary complication. Though he had called on Sunday to apologize for his boorish behavior, Shelly considered his apology just another bandage on a relationship that probably had too many wounds to survive. She had told him that she had wanted a week to herself to think about their future. Apparently realizing that he had no choice in the matter, he gave it to her.

  When they approached the Preston residence, Shelly peered into the distance and noticed a mailman go from house to house on Tenth. He had already covered her block and was now trudging through the snow on the east side of Monroe. She didn't envy people who had to do the same old thing day after day. She vowed that whatever she chose for a vocation, it would be something that offered variety. She needed variety in her life. She needed choices.

  "Do you want a ride home?" Shelly asked.

  "Yeah, I think I do. My legs are fine, but my fingers are getting numb."

  "OK. Take these and go warm up the car," Shelly said as she handed April the keys to her Volkswagen. "I'll be there in a minute. I want to check the mail."

  Shelly watched April walk up the driveway, enter the Beetle, and start the ignition before heading toward the front steps of her house. When she reached the door, she stuck a hand in the wall-mounted mailbox and retrieved three envelopes. The first contained a utility bill, the second a letter from Grandma Preston. But it was the third that brought her heart to a standstill.

  She opened the envelope from Yale University and pulled out a single sheet of paper folded in thirds. She needed only fifteen seconds to get to the gist of the letter, drop the envelope, and scream.

  CHAPTER 35: MICHELLE

  Saturday, January 26, 1980

  Michelle returned her aunt's birth certificate to its rightful place without notice and with only a little guilt. As far as she could tell, no one had reported the certificate missing and no one had requested the folder on one of Unionville's most famous daughters. When Michelle handed the cobra in glasses the complete and restored file on Michelle Jennings, she considered the matter closed. Any sanction for her unauthorized loan
would have to come from God and not the Eastern Oregon Historical Society.

  The new Michelle Jennings could have walked out the door and never given the place a second thought, but she didn't. Her business at the archive had just begun and no sooner than she returned the folder on her legendary aunt she requested one on a legendary house. Michelle took the file on the A.F. Pennington mansion to a far table, pulled a pen and notepad from her purse, and tried to unravel a mystery.

  Because her transition to the past had been remarkably pleasant and painless, at least after her remarkably unpleasant and painful first week, Michelle had given little thought to the house on the hill, the Franklins, or the possibility she might someday be able to return to her time. She had a new life now and planned to make the best of it but not before resolving questions that still tugged the corners of her mind.

  She opened the Pennington file and went through dozens of newspaper articles, photos, and documents. Most items pertained to the lumber baron and his descendants and most of the rest to the house's second and third owners. This made perfect sense. The Franklins were not ancient history but relatively recent news. Two Unionville Gazette articles from January 13, 1980, reminded Michelle that the family, in her present world, had been gone only nine months.

  The articles were little more than a rehash of widely reported facts, particulars that the time traveler knew well. The Franklins had disappeared without a trace on April 13, 1979, and had not been heard from since. Despite the best efforts of several law enforcement agencies and dozens of amateur sleuths, the disappearances remained unexplained. The case on the young family had grown as cold as the winter air outside the building.

  It wasn't long, however, before Michelle found some common threads. The Franklins had not been the only other occupants of the mansion to go missing. A.F. Pennington's first housekeeper had disappeared in 1886, as had his 21-year-old grandson in 1917 and a nanny in 1948. Foul play had been suspected in two of the cases, but no charges had been filed. Charges generally required bodies and no bodies had ever been found. All of the adults, including Michelle, had vanished after returning to Unionville following long absences. Their homecomings had been brief.

  It seemed inconceivable that the disappearances were connected. They certainly could not have been the work of one person. Even Jack the Ripper had a shelf life.

  Then the woman who had always had trouble with numbers ran the numbers – 1886, 1917, 1948, 1979, and 2010 – and discovered that each new incident had occurred thirty-one years after the last. Selected news articles revealed something else. Each disappearance had happened on a Friday the 13th. Michelle closed her eyes and sighed. The house's address, 313 East Riverside Drive, contained the number 31 as well as 13. Could the Pennington mansion be nothing more than a haunted house that acted out every three decades on unlucky days?

  Michelle examined the articles again but found more information than answers. The first disappearance, on August 13, 1886, had occurred just six years after the house's construction. Sarah Wellington had gone missing while watching the residence for her vacationing employers. Police had suspected that a railroad worker named Tyler Black had killed her after she had refused his offer of marriage, but they could not prove what many had believed.

  Police had also suspected foul play in the case of Bette Champion, who had vanished on February 13, 1948. The mansion's owner, Perry Young, a 55-year-old banker, had admitted to having an extramarital affair with his 20-year-old nanny but had denied any involvement in her disappearance. Facing scandal and divorce, Young shot himself three weeks later.

  Only in 1917 had violence not been suspected. When George Pennington had gone missing on July 13, it had been widely assumed that he had fled the country. The lumber baron's grandson had been a scathing critic of the Selective Service Act of 1917 and America's entry into World War I. When he had registered for the draft on June 5, at his grandfather's insistence, he had informed the old man that he would never serve.

  Newspaper articles told Michelle a lot about the people who had disappeared but nothing about where they had gone. Had they too entered the mansion's mysterious chamber? If so, when and where had they emerged? Was it possible that they had made the same journey in terms of time and place? Were any still alive?

  Michelle was about to give up finding answers to any of the questions when she got an idea and returned to the front desk. She asked to see Unionville High School yearbooks from the early 1960s and was directed to a nearby shelf. She pulled the volumes from 1960 to 1965 and went back to her table. Within a few minutes, she had answers on the youngest victims.

  The girl pictured on Page 15 of the 1960 Corral was much older than the girl pictured on Page 1A of the April 15, 1979 issue of the Unionville Gazette, but there was no doubt in Michelle's mind that the two were one and the same. The Alice Franklin who had been born in Denver, Colorado, in 1973 had been the Alice Franklin who had graduated from Unionville High in 1960. Brother Tim had followed suit in 1963. The Franklins, in all probability, had traveled back to 1948 and, like Michelle, had started over again in the same town.

  Michelle raced to the phone directory, flipped through the Fs, and quickly found three Franklins: the original family, which no longer lived at 313 East Riverside Drive, and two other clans who lived on the south side of town. She personally knew both families, one from school and one from church, and neither remotely fit the profile of older time travelers.

  She knew the odds were good that at least one member of Roger Franklin's clan was still alive. The kids would be in their late thirties now, no doubt settled in new towns with new families and new lives – lives that did not include stories of parallel universes and haunted houses. She vowed to find them someday, if only to reach out to the only people on the planet who could relate to her terrifying experience.

  But as Michelle wrote in her journal that night, that day would have to wait. She had found the answers to some of her questions and could live with herself if she never found more. She had come to the end of a road that no longer mattered. It was time to move on.

  CHAPTER 36: SHELLY

  Sunday, January 27, 1980

  "Yale, huh?"

  Shelly Preston stared hard at the boy in the Unionville football jersey.

  "That's the Ivy League to you, Mister."

  "Connecticut's a long way from Corvallis, Shelly."

  "It's close to my dreams, Scott. That's what counts."

  Scott Richardson sighed and leaned back in his cushioned seat. He stirred his coffee and looked dejectedly at the confident young woman on the other side of their booth.

  "Looks like you got what you want."

  "I still have to find a way to pay for it. The school costs nine thousand dollars a year. If I don't get a decent scholarship, the matter's moot. You should be happy for me."

  "I am happy for you. But I'm worried about us."

  Shelly looked at the seemingly repentant young man and weighed two courses of action. The first was to squeeze his jewels until his tongue popped out and he apologized for every selfish statement and act of the past eight months. The second was to grab his hand and tell him that she loved him and that if they were truly meant to be their relationship would survive a separation of four years and three thousand miles. She grabbed his hand.

  "Why are you worried about us?"

  "Because a lot of things can happen in four years."

  "Like what?"

  "Like you meeting someone else. You're going to meet a lot of new people."

  "Of course I am, Scott. That's the point of leaving home. You meet new people. You grow. You experience new things. You determine what you want out of life and you go for it. What's wrong with that?"

  "There's nothing wrong with that, in theory. There's everything wrong with that in practice. I don't want to lose you."

  "Then don't. Don't lose me. Fight for me. Don't take me for granted."

  Shelly glanced at a nearby table and saw another couple turn away. The
Seventh Avenue Diner wasn't the most private place in town, but it would have to do. She returned to Scott.

  "I love you. I want this to work. But it won't work if you keep treating me this way."

  "What do you mean?"

  "What do I mean? I mean melting down every time I talk to another guy or dance with someone else. You don't own me, Scott Richardson. You don't. Yet you act like you do, and I'm sick of it. Treat me with respect. Treat me like I matter."

  Scott shifted in his seat and glanced out a window. Sleet, driven by a harsh wind, bounced off the glass. When he looked back at Shelly, Scott displayed the face of a humbled man – a man who no longer called the shots in an important relationship.

  "I get it," he said. "I get it. I'll try to do better."

  "Do more than try, Scott. Succeed."

  She took a sip of her coffee and looked him in the eyes.

  "You won't get another chance."

  CHAPTER 37: MICHELLE

  Tuesday, February 5, 1980

  Michelle couldn't see all of the tables or hear any of the conversations, but from her vantage point in the bleachers of the Unionville High School gym she was able to get a pretty good fix on employment trends for the next ten years.

  More than a dozen students lined up to speak to a casually dressed man in his twenties who represented a technology company that manufactured desktop computers for homes and businesses. Scott Richardson stood at the head of the line. Several others crowded around representatives from advertising agencies, law firms, and financial institutions. Few students showed interest in manufacturing. Only one hung around the agriculture table.

  Michelle had answered a call to assist with the school's first-ever career fair because it gave her a chance to escape her prison-cell office and because she thought it was important. Picking a vocation ranked next to picking a mate in the hierarchy of critical decisions these young adults would face in the coming years. She had spent most of the morning helping others set up tables and welcoming more than thirty professionals and industry representatives to the school. By doing so, she got more out of the fair than she had as a student.