He sat down facing the three of them, his back to the river and the beautiful scene that had caused him to build this mansion in this location in so many timelines.
Duster had taken off his coat and hat while both women were enjoying the coolness of the tea, their hats still in place as was the custom of this time period. Fashions in this time in history were not pleasant for women, of that there was no doubt.
“So, you like my little home?” he asked, smiling at Sherri.
“I do,” she said, nodding. “Very much. I’m so looking forward to you showing it to me.”
Her voice sort of choked and more than likely she had forgotten her cover story. He could see the worry growing in her eyes. He knew that what she really wanted to know was why he would kill himself and then haunt this mansion for such a long period of time.
She said nothing more and he let the silence build.
No one seemed to know what to say and clearly Sherri was flustered.
They sat in silence for a moment, sipping on their tea.
He just needed to get this all out in the open if he was really going to get any answers about who Sherri really was. And he really, really wanted to know everything about her.
So screw it, decision time.
He was going for it.
He laughed for a moment, then he said, “Sorry, I can’t take this any longer. Honest, I have no plans on killing myself on September 20th. I fake that every time I come back.”
The look of shock from all three of them was priceless.
He just kept smiling and the silence was about as thick as the warming air on the hot afternoon.
“So what year did you buy this place?” he asked, turning to smile at Sherri. “I saw an article in the paper that you were remodeling it in 2017. I remember the article said we were not relatives, but shared a last name. So what can I do to help you restore this wonderful home?”
Sherri just blinked.
He smiled. He loved the shocked look on her face. Her beautiful mouth opened, then closed, then panic filled her eyes and she glanced at Duster, who was looking just as confused as Bonnie.
He smiled at Duster and Bonnie. “You recruited me in the late spring of 2017, or will recruit me as is the case from your point of view. I am hoping beyond hope that this encounter does not jeopardize that recruitment in any fashion. I assume you are back here from the late summer of 2016, right?”
Duster nodded and Bonnie just sat there staring at him.
“You mean in all your thousands of years of traveling in time,” Carson said, “you never met someone you hadn’t recruited yet to do research back in time?”
“Not that anyone admitted,” Duster said, glancing at Bonnie.
“Dawn and Madison did in Roosevelt, remember?” Bonnie said.
“Oh, yeah,” Duster said, “but they didn’t tell us.”
Carson laughed. “If you three hadn’t come here to my home, I wouldn’t have admitted it either. But I couldn’t take the chance you would recognize me and then not recruit me. I figured in the end it was better to have everything out in the open.”
“More than likely you are right,” Duster said, nodding.
“I think we have some math to do,” Bonnie said, shaking her head.
“Yeah, a lot of it,” Duster said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
August 6, 1902
Outside of Boise, Idaho
Sherri just sat there stunned, not only at the fantastic man sitting across from her, but at what he had said.
He was a time traveler as well.
Duster and Bonnie looked shaken to their core.
So she finally decided to stop acting like a fish-out-of-water with her mouth and ask a few questions of the handsome green-eyed man across from her.
“I bought the place in the winter of 2015,” she said, answering his question from earlier, “with the intention of restoring it so it looks like this.”
She waved her arm around at the beauty that surrounded her.
“But I can’t get anyone to work for me because of the stupid ghost that haunts this place, supposedly the ghost of you.”
Now it was Carson’s turn to look surprised. “The batteries weren’t supposed to last that long,” he said. “They were supposed to die about the time the money I left in trust to keep this home in shape ran out so someone could buy it and keep it up. No wonder the home had gotten run down.”
“Batteries?” Sherri asked. “You’re saying the ghost is a fake?”
“Of course,” Carson said, laughing. “Ghosts don’t exist.”
“And neither did time travel until I came back here,” she said, enjoying his laugh and smiling back. She was gaining her strength and footing with him.
“You want to see where I hid it?” he asked. “So you can fix it when you get back.”
“I damned sure do,” she said, standing as he did. “That stupid ghost has caused me more grief than I want to think about.”
“You coming, Bonnie and Duster?” Carson asked as he led Sherri into the cooler insides of the house. “Bring your tea.”
Sherri had her crystal glass of iced tea in her hand, helping her keep cool in the growing heat.
Bonnie and Duster were still just sitting, their glasses in their hands, looking totally stunned, more than likely lost in the math of the situation, if she knew them.
Maybe she was accepting Carson as a time traveler faster than they were because in thousands of years this had never happened to them before. She was still new to this insanity.
Together, she and Carson went into the front parlor, then Carson pointed to a panel up about two feet below the twelve-foot ceiling. “The ghost device is in there, disguised as an old ice box that is locked up tight. It was designed to echo through the air spaces in the walls throughout the house.”
“Oh, trust me, it does,” Sherri said. “Can’t get a workman to stay in the building.”
Carson laughed. “Sorry. I just never thought the batteries would last until 2016.”
“Glad they did,” Sherri said. “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
Then she realized what she had said and blushed.
“I’m really glad they did as well,” he said, smiling at her.
For a moment, she thought he was going to reach out and take her hand. If he did that, she wondered if her knees would hold her up. What she wanted more than anything else was for him to just hold her and kiss her.
But sadly, he didn’t take her hand. They just held each other’s gaze for a moment before Duster and Bonnie came up behind them and finally broke the silence.
“Think we can talk for a bit about you being a time traveler?”
Carson laughed. “I think so. Let’s go downstairs where it’s comfortable and cool.”
“There is no downstairs in this mansion,” Sherri said, stunned. “I know, I have copies of the original plans.”
She instantly realized how silly that sounded since she was standing with the original owner and builder just twenty years after he had built the place.
Carson gave her that smile that wanted to melt her into a hot puddle on the polished stone floor. “Haven’t found it yet, huh?”
“Haven’t been able to with your stupid ghost haunting me,” she said, smiling back at him.
“I hope to do more than just haunt you,” he said, smiling at her, before turning away and heading toward the kitchen area.
She just stood there, her mouth once again doing the fish-out-of-water routine until Bonnie took her arm and nudged her forward.
“Damn men can do that to you, can’t they?” Bonnie whispered.
“I heard that,” Duster said behind them.
“I’ll see who’s going to do what to whom,” Sherri said softly to Bonnie and the two of them laughed all the way to the kitchen and the hidden door behind a stove that led to the secret basement.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
August 6, 1902
Outside of Boise, Idaho
> Carson spent the next two hours in his air-conditioned basement living area, flirting with Sherri and explaining to Bonnie and Duster how he had gotten to this time at this point, and how he knew about Bonnie and Duster. And how they had trained him. Or more accurately, would train him.
He had designed his hidden basement to look more like his family room in 2017 than it did in 1902. Two walls were covered in books and the floor was covered in thick area rugs. The furniture was comfortable and plain overstuffed, not really showing a time period.
The main room was about the size of a large living room, and he also had a fruit cellar and wine cellar to one side of the basement.
Outside, in a hidden shed, he had a small generator working off of a nearby artesian spring, and he had also used the cool water from it to build an air conditioner in the wall down here, vented out under the back porch.
He also had a small fridge and small ice-maker from parts and coolant he had packed into Boise with him from the old mine. The cold water from the spring helped most of it work.
The room was lit by four standing electric lamps with tan shades that gave the room a comfortable feel. He loved it in this room and spent most of the warm days in here.
He sat in his favorite reading chair facing Bonnie and Duster who were sitting on his favorite nap couch. Sherri sat on a second chair that matched his reading chair, facing him.
He never understood why he had brought that second chair down here when he built the room. No one had sat in it in thirty times building the mansion, but now he understood why. Maybe somehow he knew Sherri was coming in some strange way. She seemed to fit in the room and in the chair.
Even after two hours of talking and laughing, the attraction he felt toward Sherri hadn’t dulled in the slightest. He just wanted to spend more and more time with her the better he got to know her.
“So let me get this straight,” Sherri said. “In the late spring of 2017, Duster and Bonnie recruit you. Correct?”
“They will,” Carson said, nodding. “In June. I studied in college and did my thesis on the time period around World War One and Europe.”
“I need the exact time and date that we recruit you,” Bonnie said, “and who was with us, and the story you remember.” Bonnie pulled out a small notebook and pencil.
He gave her all the details, including that Dawn and Madison were along.
“We need to make sure that happens in exactly that same way,” Bonnie said to Duster and he nodded.
“So you think that might have happened naturally without us meeting here?” Carson asked.
“Had to,” Duster said, “because you are here. We just want to keep the time divisions down if we can, when we can.”
“So we pattern this after the way it actually happened, so nothing changes in billions more timelines,” Bonnie said.
“Trust me,” Duster said, “we’ll be doing a lot of math on this before that day.”
Sherri just shook her head and muttered something about how time travel could give her a headache.
“You’re not the only one,” Duster said.
Carson completely agreed with that, but was relieved that Duster and Bonnie were going to work to make sure his recruitment to time travel remained the same.
“So how does this work now?” Sherri asked. “When we go back to the mine and pull the plug on the machine, are we going to cut Carson’s trip short in this timeline as well?”
Silence for a moment as the two great math brains thought it through.
Carson nodded to her. She was really, really smart, of that he had no doubt, and he liked that a lot about her.
“Interesting question,” Bonnie said, “not sure if it worked that way when Dawn met Janice and Steven in Roosevelt. We would have to ask Janice and Steven. Never occurred to me to be honest.”
“We’re going to have to do the math on that as well to confirm it all,” Duster said. “But my gut sense is that when we unplug the device, the four of us will go back to our original timeline, but the machine will still be hooked up for Carson for his timeline. We’ll get to test that in September when we all head back.”
“Original timelines?” Carson asked. “Are you saying I might be from another timeline?”
“More than likely,” Bonnie said. “But it won’t make any difference at all since the you from our timeline is sitting here with the three of us from another timeline and so on. Exactly the same people.”
“No doubt that I’m going to have a headache now,” Sherri said, shaking her head.
Carson had to agree with her on that. He decided the best thing to do was let the super math brains work out the details and then tell him in plain English how it worked. And clearly, the two math brains were puzzled on all this as well.
Sherri glanced at Carson, then turned to Duster and Bonnie. “So what happens if Carson doesn’t leave in two months and let people think he killed himself? Will I be able to buy the house in the future?”
“Since you came from a timeline where you bought the house, then yes,” Duster said and Bonnie nodded. “But better at this point to just keep everything consistent.”
Carson was very glad to hear that, and he agreed that if they were going to pattern his recruitment perfectly, than he should pattern his leaving in two months as he always did. At least this time.
“So in how many timelines do Carson and I both exist?” Sherri asked.
Both Bonnie and Duster shrugged.
“More billions and billions and billions than I want to try to think about,” Duster said. “In some you meet, in some you don’t.”
“Now I am one hundred percent convinced I have a headache,” she said.
Carson just smiled. “Put it to you this way. In this timeline we met. Which means we will meet in many billions of other timelines. And I like the sound of that, to be honest.”
“As do I,” she said, blushing slightly and holding his gaze.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
August 6, 1902
Outside of Boise, Idaho
Sherri was stunned when Carson suggested that they go get Dawn, have a short lunch in town, and return to let him cook them dinner, so they could eat in air-conditioned comfort. She loved the idea.
It meant she could spend a lot more time today with him.
“And besides,” Carson said. “It’s almost lunch time and I still haven’t shown you my home, which I can do after lunch. And feel free to bring with you modern clothes for a comfortable afternoon and evening.”
“Shouldn’t you be worried about other guests dropping by?” Sherri asked.
Carson laughed. “You are the first guests in thirty-one times building this mansion that I have ever had. I lived here twenty years each time.”
Now Sherri was really, really stunned. She just stared at the handsome man and he smiled back at her.
“In fact,” he said, “you and Bonnie are the first two women to ever set foot in this mansion.”
Sherri flat didn’t know what to say about that.
Bonnie said simply, “Wow.”
Bonnie and Duster both agreed to lunch and dinner and fifteen minutes later the four of them were riding at a comfortable pace back into Boise along the rutted and dusty Warm Springs Avenue in the mid-day heat. The road wound along the bluff over the river and was mostly shaded by tall oak and cottonwood trees. That helped a lot with the heat and a slight breezed helped more. But still Sherri felt she was far, far overdressed for the weather.
Sherri mostly rode beside Carson and at one point Carson pointed down toward the river. “This is where the Broadway Bridge will be built and the swamp area to the west will eventually be the Boise University Campus. They have already built one building there.”
Bonnie and Duster nodded, since they clearly had been out here in the past before. Sherri just shook her head, trying to imagine all the modern buildings superimposed over the mostly empty landscape.
Back in the hotel, Duster and Carson got them a table in the dining
room while Bonnie and Sherri went upstairs to freshen up and tell Dawn a little of what happened.
They both went to Dawn’s room and found her sitting at the desk in shorts and a Cal Tech t-shirt. Her room had kept its coolness so far and she had the drapes pulled to block any direct sunlight.
“Time to get dressed,” Bonnie said. “We have a lunch date.”
“With whom?” Dawn asked as she headed for the bedroom.
“You know the hot guy at breakfast?” Sherri asked.
“Carson?” Dawn asked, looking at Sherri and smiling. “Seriously?”
“He ended up owning the Edwards Mansion,” Sherri said.
“And he’s from 2017,” Bonnie said. “We haven’t recruited him yet in our time.”
Dawn now looked like a fish out of water.
“And he has a hidden air-conditioned basement,” Sherri said, “where he wants to serve us dinner tonight.”
Dawn just shook her head and finally closed her mouth.
“This is like you meeting Janice and Steven in Roosevelt,” Bonnie said. “He didn’t want to tell us who he was, but by going to his mansion, we forced him to reveal himself.”
“He didn’t dare take a chance,” Sherri said, “that Bonnie and Duster would recognize him in 2017 when they recruit him.”
“So he doesn’t kill himself in two months?” Dawn asked as she stripped down and Bonnie headed for the bathroom to freshen up.
“Nope,” Sherri said. “And the ghost was fake, battery run, not meant to last as long as it did.”
“Wow, just wow,” Dawn said. “I decide to stay in the hotel one morning and look what I miss. So you jumped his bones yet?”
Sherri pretended to be insulted. “No, how dare you. I’m a lady.”
Dawn just snorted.
“She wanted to,” Bonnie said from the bathroom.
Sherri laughed. “Got that right. And the day is still young.”
“Well,” Dawn said, “as the old saying goes, when the mansion is rockin’, the other guests get walkin’.”
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