by Bess McBride
Jeremiah recognized her question and nodded.
“Yes, Katherine came to us from the future. She decided to stay and marry our minister, John Ludlow.”
Leigh’s face broke into a smile. “Oh! Hello!” Leigh said. “Yes, here I am! What year did you come from?”
“2014. And I hear you’re from 2018? I’ll bet there have been a lot of changes!”
“Some, I think. So you’ve been here about four years?” Leigh asked.
“No, about five years now. And it’s killing my OCD. I’ve noticed we don’t necessarily come back in a tidy, organized fashion.”
“You do not have an obsessive-compulsive disorder,” Jeremiah said with a laugh.
“Well, I’ve got enough traits to drive me crazy,” Katherine responded with a matching laugh. She took Leigh’s hands again.
“I know you’re probably miserable, angry and confused right now, but I for one am thrilled to see you! And you ended up at Jeremiah’s house! How lucky for you. I found myself wandering around the church when I started out just walking along the lakeshore.”
“Oh! You too?”
“That’s how we all end up here. Luckily, John found me, and I lived happily ever after, so there’s a silver lining.”
Katherine’s dark-brown eyes twinkled as she looked at Leigh. She looked stunning in the fashions of the time. Her lovely ivory lace blouse ended at a wide chocolate-colored web belt above a similarly colored taffeta skirt. She wore a dainty coral cameo broach at her throat, and sweet coral earrings dangled from her ears. The taffeta ribbons on her hat matched her outfit.
Catching Leigh’s gaze, Katherine raised her eyes to the brim of her hat. She grinned infectiously before releasing Leigh’s hands to remove her hat.
“I know, I know. You’ll get used to them.”
“I think I should let you two ladies get acquainted in private. Would you like some coffee or tea?” Jeremiah asked.
Katherine looked at Leigh.
“Coffee for me,” Leigh said.
“Sounds good to me. Thank you, Jeremiah.”
He nodded and left the room. Katherine moved to the sofa and beckoned to Leigh to join her.
“So, how do you feel?” Katherine asked. “Physically? Mentally? Are you scared?”
Leigh guessed her to be about thirty years old.
“Yes, yes, and yes if there’s a third question.”
Katherine nodded with sympathy. “I know. It’s a shock, but you only have to stay for a year...unless you want to stay.” She looked toward the door. “Jeremiah’s nice, isn’t he?”
Leigh’s cheeks heated up. “Yes, he is.”
“I’m just saying,” Katherine murmured.
“I’ve already heard about Tanya.”
“From Jeremiah? Wow! I didn’t think he talked about her.”
“I don’t think he likes to. Mrs. Jackson told me about her.”
“Yeah, Tanya couldn’t stay. She wanted to, but at the last minute, she bailed and went home.”
“Is that how you see it? Bailing?”
Katherine shook her head. “No. Poor choice of words. I think I meant that she agreed to marry Jeremiah and then just left. She told him minutes before she left.”
Leigh shook her head with sympathy for Jeremiah, but something Katherine said caught her interest.
“How did she leave? You said ‘minutes before she left.’ How do we leave?”
Katherine nodded, as if Leigh had answered a question. “It sounds like you want to go back. Most people do. Well, I’ve never gone back, but I guess you return to the place where you appeared at the exact time you appeared...one year later, on the summer solstice.”
Leigh drew in a sharp breath.
“You mean the window to go back is that narrow? Solstice doesn’t even come on the same date every year, and I don’t know the exact hour and minute that I traveled through time.”
“Well, you’d better try to remember now, because your memory will fade in a year. I suppose you could hang out at that place for an hour or two or however long it takes to travel back. Where did you appear?”
“At the back corner of Jeremiah’s house. I touched the foundation, and that’s when it happened.”
“It does seem to be unique to each individual. I wonder why,” Katherine murmured.
“Probably just random.”
“Maybe.”
“So what happens as far as you know? They go back to where they traveled, and poof? They’re gone?”
“I guess so. I haven’t ever watched anyone go back. I don’t know if Jeremiah was there when Tanya returned. I didn’t have the heart to ask him.”
“So he was pretty torn up about her?” Leigh didn’t know why she kept pressing the issue. She already knew that Jeremiah had been in love with Tanya.
“I guess. He doesn’t talk about his feelings much, not even to John, and they’re good friends.”
Leigh nodded and decided to ask no further questions about Jeremiah.
“You like him, don’t you?” Katherine asked.
“Me?” Leigh pretended surprise at the question. “Well, he’s been very nice to me, and he’s letting me live here rent-free and giving me a job working for him.”
“Oh! That is nice. Are you a nurse like Tanya?”
Leigh shook her head. She didn’t want to be anything like Tanya, whatever that meant.
“Not at all! In fact, I have a bit of paranoia about medicine, hospitals and doctors’ offices.” She saw Katherine’s questioning look. “My mom died a slow, painful death from cancer when I was a child. It affected me.”
“I can imagine,” Katherine said with a sympathetic expression. “So what are you going to be doing for Jeremiah?”
“He said appointments, greeting his patients, maybe his books. I can do all that.”
“What did you do in your time?”
“I worked from home evaluating disability claims for an insurance company.”
“That should come in handy,” Katherine said. “You’re going to miss computers though.”
“I already do, and my phone. I’d left it in the car when I came down to the lakeside to walk. Speaking of which, I suppose they’ll tow my car away.”
“And report you missing. You might even hit the news for a while. A disappearance.”
Leigh rolled her eyes. “No kidding! I’m so glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad you’re here too. I love John, and I love my kids, but I get lonely for folks from my time.”
Leigh took Katherine’s hand in hers.
“I’m here for now. I hope we can be friends. I’m sure we’ll be friends.”
“Yes, I think so too,” Katherine said. “We have a lot in common.”
“Do you work outside the home now?”
“Outside the home,” Katherine repeated with a chuckle. “You can imagine they don’t use that term here.”
Leigh laughed. “I guess not.”
“No, I take care of the house and the kids, and being the minister’s wife keeps me busy. I make the rounds, check in on the needy, stuff like that.”
“I imagine that’s a full-time job. What did you do before you came to Kaskade?”
Katherine wrinkled her nose. “John and Jeremiah are the only ones who know. Tanya did too, but I don’t tell many people.”
Leigh drew her brows together in confusion. “Is that because most people don’t know about us?”
“Well, that’s true, but no, that’s not the only reason. Mrs. Jackson knows about us, but she doesn’t know what I did for a living.”
Leigh tilted her head. “I’m intrigued,” she said with a smile. “CIA? NSA? Covert stuff?”
“More overt, really.”
“Okay, stop hinting. Just tell me.”
Katherine winced and blushed. She looked down at her clasped hands. “I was an exotic dancer.”
Leigh blinked but forced herself to say nothing. Katherine watched her, and she forced herself to meet Katherine’s eyes st
eadily.
“You’re surprised,” Katherine said.
“I am,” Leigh agreed. She imagined Katherine working the pole in a seedy bar, scantly clad in a G-string and no more. She certainly had the figure for it.
“I worked in Las Vegas for years but finally left the life and came home to Tacoma, to my mom and dad’s house. I was just searching for a job doing something else, when I was thrown back in time.”
“Oh! You worked in Las Vegas? What a pretty city! I’ve been there once for a week. I love the lights.”
“Yes, I danced in some of the shows in the hotels.”
“With the big feathers on your head?”
“Yes, though that was just about all we wore. I did some of the late shows where we wore less clothing.”
Leigh nodded but said nothing.
“John knows. He said as long as I don’t take up dancing half-naked around here, he’s fine with it.”
Leigh couldn’t help but laugh.
Jeremiah returned to the parlor with a tray, and Leigh watched him. If he had any problems with Katherine’s past employment, he didn’t show it.
“I will take a cup and leave you ladies to chat. I’m going to shut the door to my office and do some work.”
“Do you need me to help?” Leigh asked. “I should begin my employment sometime, don’t you think?”
“You have been here less than twenty-four hours and have done so much already,” Jeremiah said, pouring out three cups of coffee. “Your help with Harry alone has been invaluable. Perhaps if...and when...he is on the mend.”
Leigh turned to Katherine.
“And oh, by the way, Harry Johnson is my fourth great-grandfather, and I can’t even tell him. But I’m super excited to meet his daughter and granddaughter, my third and second great-grandmothers!”
“You’re kidding!” Katherine exclaimed. “How exciting! How is he doing, by the way? I heard you’d brought him here because he refused to go to the hospital.”
“News travels fast,” Jeremiah said. “Where did you hear that?”
“Frank at the stable.”
“Of course,” Jeremiah said, picking up his cup and saucer. “I hope he does not tell too many more people. I cannot run a hospital. There is a perfectly good one in Tacoma.”
“I understand,” Katherine said. “I won’t tell anyone else except for John.”
Jeremiah winced. “I do not mean that Harry’s presence in my house to be a secret necessarily. We have far too many of those in Kaskade, do we not? But I do not want to encourage other people to refuse appropriate hospitalization. I simply do not have the resources to turn the house into a hospital.”
He gave them a nod and went into the office, shutting the door behind him.
Katherine and Leigh looked at each other, then back at the door before picking up their cups of coffee. When Katherine spoke, she kept her voice low.
“What a coincidence about Harry!” she murmured. “To meet your fourth great-grandfather! I was adopted so have no idea who my ancestors were, but what a thrill. How is he really? You know, in modern medical terms.”
Leigh shrugged. “I’m no expert, really. Pneumonia is so tricky, and they don’t have antibiotics.”
Katherine frowned and shook her head. “No. I wish I’d been a lab technician with a petri dish instead of a dancer. Then I could have been more useful.”
Leigh nodded. “Me too. I don’t think my skills will be very useful either. I hope Harry gets better. I can’t remember when he passes away. My mother would have known right off the top of her head. She loved genealogy. That’s how I recognized Harry’s name.”
“I wonder why I didn’t know that Harry had family. We should have contacted them before. They would have wanted to know he was ill.”
Leigh sighed. “Sadly, it seems like his daughter—my third great-grandmother—won’t talk to him, and I guess his granddaughter doesn’t either, by extension. I’m going to find a way to go see them and see if I can fix whatever is the problem.”
“Good idea,” Katherine said. “You’re not going to tell them you’re related to them though, right?”
“No, we couldn’t handle that information in our time. I doubt they can handle it any easier in the early nineteen hundreds.”
A loud thud from overhead resounded, and Leigh shot up off the sofa.
“Harry!” she shrieked. She grabbed up her skirts and ran out of the parlor. Footsteps sounded behind her, but she didn’t look around. She ran up the stairs and down the hall, bursting into Harry’s room without knocking.
Harry lay on the floor, moaning.
Chapter Eleven
“Harry!” Leigh cried out, rushing to her great-grandfather’s side. “What happened?”
Behind her, Jeremiah muttered an unexpected curse.
“Don’t move him,” he ordered, dropping down on his knees beside Leigh.
“Can I help?” Katherine called out from the doorway.
“What on earth happened?” Mrs. Jackson said, stepping into the room.
“Harry? Did you hit your head?”
Harry moaned and opened his eyes. “Don’t know, Doc,” he said. “I rolled out of bed.”
Leigh didn’t dare touch him in case he had broken something. She knelt at his side, clasping her hands in her lap, prepared to take direction from Jeremiah.
“Are you injured? Do you feel pain anywhere?”
Harry wheezed. “Just my backside, Doc. I fell right on my backside.”
“On your buttocks?” Jeremiah asked.
He turned to Leigh. “Help me roll him onto his side.”
Leigh complied, and together, they maneuvered Harry onto his side so that Jeremiah could examine his back. Harry moaned a bit when Jeremiah pressed against his tailbone.
“There? Do you hurt there?”
“A little,” Harry muttered. “Not enough for you to keep poking me there though. I don’t think I broke anything. I know what a broken bone feels like. Had quite a few in my day felling timber.”
“How about around your ribs?” Jeremiah asked. “Any pain there when I press?”
“No. I just can’t breathe,” Harry said. “If I’m dying, I wish you’d tell me, Doc.”
“You’re not dying, Harry,” Jeremiah said. He glanced at Leigh with his lips pressed tightly together, and she wondered what message he was trying to send.
She drew in a shaky breath. Harry wasn’t dying, was he?
“Feels like it,” he said.
“Mrs. Jackson, Leigh, can you help me lift him back onto the bed? I don’t think he broke anything.” Jeremiah thrust his hands under Harry’s arms. Mrs. Jackson and Leigh took Harry’s skinny legs and helped lift him onto the bed while Katherine hovered solicitously.
Mrs. Jackson and Leigh pulled the quilt over him and stood back, waiting for Jeremiah’s instructions. Jeremiah pulled out his ubiquitous stethoscope and listened to Harry’s lungs. Leigh tried to read his expression, but she didn’t feel she knew him well enough to know what he was thinking.
“You’ll contact my daughter, won’t you, Doc?” Harry asked.
The weakness in his voice frightened Leigh. She couldn’t bear to witness her own great-grandfather’s death. Not more death.
“We’re going to try, Harry,” Jeremiah said. “I can’t promise that she’ll come, but we’re going to try.”
Leigh, standing next to Jeremiah, was startled to feel Harry’s cold fingers wrap around her wrist.
“She’ll come if you ask her, miss. There’s something about you. Will you ask her?”
“Oh, Harry,” Leigh murmured, wrapping her warm hands around his. “Yes, of course I’ll ask her. As soon as I can.”
“Tomorrow? Can you go tomorrow? I don’t think I have much time.”
“Harry, you have time,” Jeremiah said. “Rest now.” He turned to Leigh. “Will you stay with him?”
Leigh nodded. “Yes.”
“We’ll let him go back to sleep, ladies,” Jeremiah said to Kat
herine and Mrs. Jackson.
Leigh, still trying to infuse some warmth into Harry’s hand, sat down on the edge of the bed as Jeremiah escorted the women out of the room. Katherine waved silently from the doorway, and Leigh nodded a farewell, hoping she would see her again soon. The door shut behind them, and Leigh returned her attention to Harry.
His eyes had closed, and he breathed shallowly. She studied his face, looking for a resemblance to her mother. Her mother had died young, and Harry was in his late sixties. If they shared any traits, it was in the thickness of their hair and perhaps the widow’s peak. She had inherited her thick hair and widow’s peak from her mother.
Leigh smoothed Harry’s hair back from his forehead. Poor old man. What had happened to bring him to such a lonely state?
Once she was sure her great-grandfather had fallen asleep, she let go of his hand and reached for the two pillows beside him. She stuffed those along his side on the outer edge of the bed, and then pulled a chair up to his bedside. Settling in, Leigh rested her head against the chair back. Exhaustion swept over her, and she closed her eyes.
A tap on the door startled her, and she turned to see Jeremiah stepping in carrying a plate and glass of liquid.
“You need to eat as well,” he said, setting the plate and glass down on the nightstand. “Mrs. Jackson made you a sandwich and a glass of lemonade.”
“Oh, thank you!” Leigh said, eyeing the food appreciatively. She hadn’t realized she was hungry. She reached for the sandwich, then stopped self-consciously.
“What about you? Did you eat?”
“No, not yet.” Jeremiah retrieved the last chair in the room and pulled it beside her.
“We could share the sandwich,” Leigh offered. “It’s huge. I can’t eat all that.”
“Well, thank you!” he said. “If you are sure?”
“I’m sure,” Leigh said.
Jeremiah picked up the plate and offered it to her. She took half of the cut sandwich and bit in.
“I can watch him,” she said. “You can go do whatever else you doctors need to do.”
“This doctor is done for the day. I have no other tasks. I think it would be beneficial for Harry to see his family, and I look forward to going up to Orting tomorrow.”
“Me too!” Leigh said.