Return to Yesterday

by Abbie Williams

  I’d visited Miles’s grave earlier this afternoon, not long after our arrival; Grant and Birdie had buried him beneath a towering willow tree growing on the banks of the little spring-fed creek which ran through their property; the turned earth was marked with a handmade wooden cross until a proper headstone could be erected.

  “Do you want to be alone?” Marshall had asked as we walked out past the house to Miles’s resting place. We stood perhaps a dozen yards distant and I could see the silhouette of the cross against the gold dust of late-afternoon sunglow. Behind us, on the other side of a low rise in the foothills, the steep roofline of Grant and Birdie’s house was just visible.

  “Just for a minute,” I whispered, already burning with unshed tears, and he nodded his understanding acceptance of my need to visit Miles with no one else present. As I knelt at the grave, I wished for a bundle of roses to place at the base of the cross. I touched Miles’s name, tracing the letters carved into the wood by Grant’s hand: Miles William Rawley, beloved brother, 1857 – 1881. I struggled with the knowledge that Miles had been only twenty-four years old; his inherently somber nature always made him seem older.

  “Miles,” I whispered, aching with sorrow, resting my hands flat on the earth beneath which he lay, the man who’d loved me with all his heart and whose death I’d been unable to prevent. I’d loved him – I was honest enough to admit this – even though I relentlessly avoided the thought of what might have happened had Miles lived to become my husband. I consented to marry him last autumn, before I’d regained the memories of who I really was, only to have Marshall appear seeking me here in 1882. I knew, without a doubt, I would have gone to Marshall no matter what the circumstances – but what if I’d already been expecting Miles’s baby at that point? What would have been, then?

  It was too much for my mind to wrap around, too brutally painful to consider.

  “I love you, Miles.” Tears fell to my skirt as I knelt there. “You’re gone and I miss you. I miss you every day, deep in my heart.” The need to confess rose like smoke in my chest, demanding release; I was aware that Marshall remained distant, watching silently. “I know you would have loved me all your life. I am so sorry for so many things. I want you to know I found my husband and that I believe you were him in this life. That the two of you share a soul, or pieces of a soul, somehow. I believe your son is his ancestor and if not for you, Marshall would never have lived.”

  I pictured Miles’s face as I remembered it best, his black mustache lifting with a smile, his eyes, dark as coffee without cream, resting on me with both tenderness and intensity. I remembered the softness of his lips against mine, his sweet words of love, the way he’d held me and would have done anything to protect me; how I’d watched him play his fiddle so many nights, and the overpowering relief I always felt when he returned from being away from me. The last thing I wanted was to make a scene but I could not stop the flood of grieving. I knew Marshall would understand. He jogged to my side, falling to his knees and gathering me in his embrace, where I clung until the comfort of his strength and scent quieted my sobs.

  He cupped the back of my head. “I’m here.”

  “I could never be thankful enough, for that,” I whispered, hiccupping, my voice rough. Before we left the creek, Marshall curled a hand around Miles’s name on the wooden cross, rubbing with his thumb as he said, with quiet respect, “Thank you, Rawley, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for loving Ruthann, and for keeping her safe.”

  “You’ve told him that before,” I recognized as we walked back to the house a little later. I tucked close to his side, my arms locked around his ribcage; I’d almost forgotten Marshall had lived here for the duration of last winter.

  “Of course. Every time I sit there.” His chest expanded with a breath and his low voice grew confessional. “I can’t admit I’m not insanely jealous of the man. I’m not gonna lie.” A hint of his usual good nature crept into his tone. “After all, he was me. Or, I was him. I can’t quite figure it all out, but if he had even one-tenth of the same thoughts you inspire in me, angel-woman, then I would have to kick his ass to the future and back, just on principle. Damnation.”

  “Marsh,” I scolded, unable to keep from smiling; I knew without a doubt that Miles would have found Marshall’s comments amusing. I imagined the two of them regarding each other, face to face, and then shook my head to clear it of such bizarre pictures.

  Marshall stalled our forward progress, studying the ground near his boots as he muttered, “He never…you two never…”

  “We didn’t,” I said at once, honest enough to admit I would have wanted to know the answer, were the situation reversed – if somehow a past version of me was here to interact with Marshall, let alone make love with him; undoubtedly she would be drawn to him the same way I’d been drawn to Miles. The thought was so strange and inspired such a blazing surge of possessive jealousy my hands became fists. And then I pictured confronting this past self, ripping at her hair and clawing her eyes for thinking she had some hold on Marshall that trumped mine – that is, if she and I could even exist in the same physical space without a thunderclap and a ripping apart of the entire cosmic continuum.

  Jesus Crimeny, Ruthann.

  It wasn’t a thought for the fainthearted.

  Marshall released a tense breath and his shoulders relaxed. “I didn’t really think so and I’m sorry for asking, sweetheart. I told myself I wasn’t going to ask, no matter what, and now I feel like an asshole…”

  “Honey,” I admonished, and flicked his lean belly, just for good measure. “Don’t feel that way. And, just so you know, I would have asked, too.”

  Hours later, at the crackling fire, I felt the subtle heat of Marshall’s gaze and met it with a smile, my chin resting on Jacob’s head. The little boy was soft and plump, fond of kicking his legs and gurgling spit bubbles, and my entire being, from the inside out, ached with love for Miles’s son. I couldn’t hug and kiss him enough to satisfy the strength of my feelings; I thought, Marshall and I will have a baby by next year and it’s because of you, sweet little Jacob. It’s because you survived and stayed here in Montana that Marshall’s family will exist in the twenty-first century, I truly believe this and I could never be thankful enough for you.

  We told everyone about my pregnancy and though they shared Axton’s opinion that we needed a preacher to marry us as soon as humanly possible, they were nothing but delighted.

  “March,” Birdie said knowledgably. “Right in the midst of sap season, that’s what I predict. Oh, how very exciting. You’ll have staked a homestead claim by then, of course.”

  “There is still available homestead acreage to be had near ours, dear Ruthann.” Una Spicer sat on Birdie’s other side, wrapped in her knitted red shawl. I watched the fire’s light touch Cole’s mother’s face as she spoke, marveling anew at the fact that I was interacting with her, when I’d known about her for so long, when I’d read her letters in a century long after her death. I thought again of what Marshall had told me about his first glimpse of Una – that she looked very much like Melinda Spicer, Case’s mother and the woman who would have been Tish’s mother-in-law, had she lived. Marshall remembered Melinda from his childhood; he said it was like seeing a ghost.

  I didn’t have the heart to admit to these dear women that I hoped and prayed Marshall and I would be gone long before next March; for tonight, at least, I couldn’t bear to think so far in advance. I murmured, “The land is gorgeous here, that’s for certain.”

  Una had exclaimed over Axton with maternal affection, announcing that he looked enough like a Spicer to be her own son. Besides her eldest, Cole, Una was the mother of four additional children; two of her girls had remained in Iowa, already married and settled; the youngest son and daughter, Charles and Susanna, had made the journey west. Charles – and how I wanted to ask him if his middle name was Shea, like Case’s – was nineteen but appeared much younger, slim and frail; I remembered Cole saying that Charles had been
very ill as a child. Susanna, the baby of the family at fourteen, was fair and shy and quiet. They were frequent visitors at the Rawleys’ homestead. Axton, who’d never known a mother or siblings of his own, was quite taken with the kind family, I could tell.

  The only thing dampening the joy of our arrival was the fact that there had been no word from Malcolm, Cole, and Patricia. And though Henry and Una did not seem unduly concerned, and there were many logical, plausible explanations for this, none of us were comforted, least of all Axton.

  “Do you think they’ve reached Minnesota?” Ax had asked me earlier, shortly after we had arrived at the ranch. “They should be there by now, Ruthie.”

  I couldn’t lie to Ax any more than I could hide my fears. “I hope so. It scares me so much to think that –” I stopped before speaking aloud Fallon Yancy’s name, as if to do so would conjure him.

  The expression in Axton’s eyes was almost unbearable. I knew it destroyed him to admit, but he acknowledged in a low, gruff growl, “Spicer will keep her safe.” Immediately he muttered, “Or I’ll kill him.”

  I hated to see Axton this way – maintaining a stubborn, futile hope that somehow Patricia would one day be with him – when it could serve to do nothing but crush him in the end. Marshall’s suggestion that we try our best to find the right woman for Ax before we left the past seemed fruitless; I knew Ax well enough to realize he would hold fast to his love for Patricia if it killed him. I would never give voice to the thought but it tortured me, nonetheless.

  At last I whispered, “You’re right, Cole will keep her safe.”

  And though I’d fought it, I was unable to prevent an image of Fallon from assaulting my mind, his hollow eyes seeking mine from somewhere out there; I’d been in his company over the course of an hour while a prisoner in his train car en route to Chicago last year. I would never fully erase the memory of that encounter, no matter how hard I tried. Fallon was not just a criminal, he was more dangerous than any of us could have guessed, gifted with the ability to leap through time. His control was much stronger than either Marshall’s or mine; Fallon had leaped to the twentieth century many dozens of times.

  For all we knew, he could be there at this moment. Or was Fallon here just now, in the nineteenth century, tailing Malcolm, Cole, and Patricia on their journey to escape him? At least Cole or Malcolm would kill him on sight, recognizing the threat he presented; our families in the future had no idea. Further, it was not apparent just how much of the truth about Patricia and her illegitimate son Cole’s parents knew; Una and Henry had both spoken excitedly of their expectations of Cole returning west to Montana Territory next spring, but if they anticipated him returning with Patricia and the baby in tow they made no mention, leading me to conclude they had no idea.

  I wished, for the countless time, I’d been allowed the chance for a final private conversation with Patricia before we’d parted ways on the Cedar River in Iowa. Maybe it was an unfair assumption, but I understood her better than I knew Cole ever would; the darkest of her secrets was her love for Axton.

  It’s not as though she could have made any choice but the one she did; the baby is Cole’s. There was no longer another choice from the moment she realized she was pregnant.

  Henry Spicer eventually produced the family fiddle and I could not tear my gaze from it; I knew that fiddle, had watched Case play it a hundred times at The Spoke, or around the outdoor fire pit at Clark’s; the gathering spot I remembered so well would someday be located in a different part of the Rawleys’ sprawling yard. Cold shivers climbed my spine and I rubbed my upper arms.

  To my surprise, Henry offered the instrument to Marshall. “We’ve missed your music, young fellow.”

  Marshall accepted both fiddle and bow, nodding agreement. Grant positioned his own fiddle beneath his chin and as they tuned the instruments with easy laughter and banter, an onrushing sense of déjà vu pelted my senses; was I at the fire with Garth and Marshall in 2014, or Grant and Miles in 1882? I knew Miles was gone but it seemed he was here anyway, playing through Marshall’s hands and appearing in his expression.

  Exhausted and overwhelmed by all that had occurred in the past few weeks, I relinquished Jacob to Celia and skirted the fire to settle beside Axton; he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and planted a kiss on my temple. Birdie’s little boys and the cook’s small son shared the blanket with us, curling up like three warm puppies; one of them rested his head on my lap and I feathered his soft hair.

  “I miss Uncle Branch,” Axton confided.

  “I miss him too,” I whispered, thinking of the kindhearted man who’d found me on a riverbank outside Howardsville well over a year ago. Branch and Axton had been my first friends in the nineteenth century; in those early days I’d had no memory of who I was, or where I might have appeared from, and remained eternally thankful that two such kind and honorable men took me under their wing.

  “Birdie said you visited Miles’s grave earlier,” Axton murmured. I knew he understood, better than almost anyone, my sorrow over Miles.

  I nodded, my gaze fixed on Marshall; he stood beside Grant, the two of them bowing out the notes to “Red River Valley,” an old favorite of the Rawleys. I supposed the tune wasn’t so very old in this place. Marshall played with his eyes closed and I marveled again, He’s here. Marshall was here in 1882, when I thought I may never see him again. It had been such a wretched year without him – the pain of our separation remained raw in my soul, not easy to set aside, let alone forget. I settled one hand low on my belly.

  Listen, baby, to your daddy making music. Music flows in your blood, little one.

  “It does my heart good to see Miles’s son here, safe and healthy,” Axton said.

  “Same here,” I murmured. The night was clear and fine, the moon a perfect ivory half-circle in the deep sky. There were at least two dozen people crowded around the fire; the ranch hands not on duty with the cattle always gathered for music. The air was so static anyone within a few miles’ radius would be able to hear the plaintive notes of the two fiddles. The stars looked like bright, tumbled stones, flung by a child’s excited hand.

  “Are you doing all right?” I whispered, turning my attention to Ax. There was a tension in his frame even the sweetness of the music could not fully eradicate. Resolute, since that first night apart from her, Axton had refrained from speaking of Patricia during our journey out of Illinois and across the plains of Iowa. But he called for her in his sleep almost every night, as though in his dreams she was just within reach, disappearing as he woke.

  Axton’s face was cast in gold by the fire’s light. He knew what I was truly asking. “No, but not so’s anybody but you or Marsh would notice.”

  “I wish…”

  Axton shook his head, effectively interrupting me. “I had to let her go, Ruthie, I know there was no other choice, and it hurts like fucking poison.” I could smell whiskey on his breath; Ax didn’t normally drink, or curse, and I attributed the subsequent rush of words to this. He passed his free hand over his eyes. “But even if I could escape the pain I wouldn’t, because it’s all I have of her. I can’t give up even that much of what I have left. When I close my eyes, she’s all I see. When I sleep, I dream of her. I’m haunted.” His shoulders rose with a heaving breath and in his eyes I saw a conviction that frightened me, not because of the strength of feeling it conveyed but that those feelings would work to consume Axton, burning him alive, until there was nothing left but ash.

  I couldn’t think of one thing to say to ease his pain.

  “I’m sorry to go on this way,” he muttered, squeezing me in a one-armed version of a hug. “I am truly happy for you and Marsh, I hope you know.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart. I know you are. I wish I could make things right.” I faltered for a second, unwilling to cause Axton additional pain; at last I admitted, “I’ve always thought Cole was the wrong choice. I think Patricia should be with you, Ax. I care for Cole, I’m not saying I don’t, but I think you’re the b
etter man all around. Cole is…” I struggled to settle on a tactful adjective, not wanting to be unjust. “He’s fickle. And vain. I hope being a father will tame some of that in him, but who knows? I’m afraid he won’t be able to sustain their lives together.”

  “But they’ve a child now, it’s a claim I can’t deny. And he loves her. I can’t deny that either, much as I wish I could.” Axton’s voice was dust. I sensed the questions he could not bear to ask, hovering near our heads.

  What happened that day? Why didn’t she wait for me?

  I knew the answers, at least to some extent, and battled the need to protect Patricia’s secrets; the urge to tell Ax the truth pressed against my breastbone like an anvil. The fiddle music, the charcoal sky, and the fireglow lent our conversation a depth of confidence it may not have otherwise possessed. I damned it all and said, “Patricia’s in love with you, Ax, as you well know. But a part of her loves Cole, too. And she’s tortured by it, to her very core. I spent all last winter with her, hearing her talk about you while carrying Cole’s baby, and she begged me not to judge her. I assured her I don’t but she tortured herself all the same. That day last autumn, with Cole…”

  Axton was motionless as a sculpture, watching me with the intensity of a hawk about to strike.

  I bit the insides of my cheeks, glancing down at the little boy whose head lay in my lap, finding him sound asleep. Axton and I seemed alone in the crowd, wrapped in a smooth, glassy bubble of intimacy, bound by the gravity of our conversation. No matter what, Ax deserved to know the truth. Patricia owed him an explanation and was not here to deliver it. I hoped she would understand my reasoning; remembering her last stolen moments in the chapel with Axton, I knew she would.