There and Now

by Linda Lael Miller

  A finger of ice traced the length of Elisabeth’s backbone. “Yes.”

  Expressive brown eyes linked with Elisabeth’s blue-green ones. “Be careful,” the dark-haired woman said.

  Elisabeth had dozens of questions, but she sensed Janet’s discomfort and didn’t want to make the situation worse.

  “What was that all about?” Janet asked when she and Elisabeth were in the car again, their various purchases loaded into the back. “I thought that woman was going to faint.”

  Chastity Pringle. Elisabeth hadn’t made an effort to remember the name she’d read on the woman’s laminated badge; she’d known it would still burn bright in her mind after nine minutes or nine decades. Whoever Ms. Pringle was, she knew Aunt Verity’s necklace was no ordinary piece of jewelry, and Elisabeth meant to find out the whole truth about it.

  “Elisabeth?”

  She jumped slightly. “Hmm?”

  “Didn’t you think it was weird the way that woman acted?”

  Elisabeth was navigating the early-afternoon traffic, which was never all that heavy in Pine River. “The world is full of weird people,” she answered.

  Having gotten the concession she wanted, Janet turned her mind to the afternoon’s entertainment. She and Elisabeth rented a stack of movies at the convenience store, put in an order for a pizza to be delivered later and returned to the house.

  By the time breakfast was over on Sunday morning, Janet was getting restless. When noon came, she loaded up her things, said goodbye and hastened back to the city, where her boyfriend and her job awaited.

  The moment Janet’s car turned onto the highway, Elisabeth dashed to the kitchen and began digging through drawers. Finding a battered phone book, she flipped to the P’s. There was a Paul Pringle listed, but no Chastity.

  After taking a deep breath, Elisabeth called the man and asked if he had a relative by the name of Chastity. He barked that nobody in his family would be fool enough to give an innocent little girl a name like that and hung up.

  Elisabeth got her purse and drove back to the fairgrounds. The quilting booth was manned by a chunky, gray-haired grandmother this time, and sunlight was reflected in the rhinestone-trimmed frames of her glasses as she smiled at Elisabeth.

  “Chastity Pringle? Seems like a body couldn’t forget a name like that one, but it appears as if I have, because it sure doesn’t ring a bell with me. If you’ll give me your phone number, I’ll have Wynne Singleton call you. She coordinated all of us, and she’d know where to find this woman you’re looking for.”

  “Thank you,” Elisabeth said, scrawling the name and phone number on the back of a receipt from the cash machine at her Seattle bank.

  Back at home, Elisabeth changed into old clothes again, but this time she tackled the yard, since the house was in good shape. She found an old lawn mower in the shed and fired it up, after making a run to the service station for gas, and spent a productive afternoon mowing the huge yard.

  When that was done, she weeded the flower beds. At sunset, weariness and hunger overcame her and she went inside.

  The little red light on the answering machine she’d hooked up to Aunt Verity’s old phone in the hallway was blinking. She pushed the button and held her breath when she heard Rue’s voice.

  “Hi, Cousin, sorry I missed you. Unless you get back to me within the next ten minutes, I’ll be gone again. Wish I could be there with you, but I’ve got another assignment. Talk to you soon. Bye.”

  Hastily, Elisabeth dialed Rue’s number, but the prescribed ten minutes had apparently passed. Rue’s machine picked up, and Elisabeth didn’t bother to leave a message. She felt like crying as she went wearily up the stairs to strip off her dirty jeans and T-shirt and take a bath.

  When she came downstairs again, she heated a piece of leftover pizza in the microwave and sat down for a solitary supper. Beyond the breakfast nook windows, the sky had a sullen, heavy look to it. Elisabeth hoped there wouldn’t be another storm.

  She ate, rinsed her dishes and went upstairs to bed, bringing along a candle and matches in case the power were to go out. Stretched out in bed, her body aching with exhaustion from the afternoon’s work, Elisabeth thoroughly expected to fall into a fathomless sleep.

  Instead, she was wide awake. She tossed from her left side to her right, from her stomach to her back. Finally, she got up, shoved her feet into her slippers and reached for her bathrobe.

  She made herself a cup her herbal tea downstairs, then settled at the desk in her room, reaching for a few sheets of Aunt Verity’s vellum writing paper and a pen.

  “Dear Rue,” she wrote. And then she poured out the whole experience of meeting Jonathan and Trista, starting with the first time she’d heard Trista’s piano. She put in every detail of the story, including the strange attraction she’d felt for Jonathan, ending with the fact that she’d awakened the next morning to find herself wearing his coat.

  She spent several hours going over the letter, rewriting parts of it, making it as accurate an account of her experience as she possibly could. Then she folded the missive, tucked it into an envelope, scrawled Rue’s name and address and applied a stamp.

  In the morning, she would put it in the mailbox down by the road, pull up the little metal flag and let the chips fall where they may. Rue was the best friend Elisabeth had, but she was also a pragmatic newswoman. She was just as likely to suggest professional help as Elisabeth’s father would be. Still, Elisabeth felt she had to tell somebody what was going on or she was going to burst.

  She was just coming upstairs, having carried the letter down and set it in the middle of the kitchen table so she wouldn’t forget to mail it the next morning, when she heard the giggles and saw the glow of light on the hallway floor.

  Elisabeth stopped, her hand on the necklace, her heart racing with scary exhilaration. They were back, Jonathan and Trista—she had only to open that door and step over the threshold.

  She went to the portal and put her ear against the wood, smiling as Trista’s voice chimed, “And then I said to him, Zeek Filbin, if you pull my hair again, I’ll send my papa over to take your tonsils out!”

  Elisabeth’s hand froze on the doorknob when another little girl responded with a burst of laughter and, “Zeek Filbin needed his wagon fixed, and you did it right and proper.” Vera, she thought. Trista’s best friend. How would the child explain it if Elisabeth simply walked into the room, appearing from out of nowhere?

  She knew she couldn’t do that, and yet she felt a longing for that world and for the presence of those people that went beyond curiosity or even nostalgia.

  The low, rich sound of Jonathan’s voice brought her eyes flying open. “Trista, you and Vera should have been asleep hours ago. Now settle down.”

  There was more giggling, but then the sound faded and the light gleaming beneath the door dimmed until the darkness had swallowed it completely. Elisabeth had missed her chance to step over the threshold into Jonathan’s world, and the knowledge left her feeling oddly bereft. She went to bed and slept soundly, awakening to the jangle of the telephone early the next morning.

  Since the device was sitting on the vanity table on the other side of the room, Elisabeth was forced to get out of bed and stumble across the rug to snatch up the receiver.

  “Yes?” she managed sleepily.

  “Is this Elisabeth McCartney?”

  Something about the female voice brought her fully awake. “Yes.”

  “My name is Wynne Singleton, and I’m president of the Pine River County Quilting Society. One of our members told me you were anxious to get in touch with Ms. Pringle.”

  Elisabeth sat up very straight and waited silently.

  “I can give you her address and telephone number, dear,” Mrs. Singleton said pleasantly, “but I’m afraid it won’t do you much good. She and her husband left just this morning on an extended business trip.”

  Disappointed, Elisabeth nonetheless wrote down the number and street address—Chastity Pringle a
pparently lived in the neighboring town of Cotton Creek—and thanked the caller for her help.

  After she hung up, Elisabeth dressed in a cotton skirt and matching top, even though the sky was still threatening rain, and made herself a poached egg and a piece of wheat toast for breakfast.

  When she’d eaten, she got into her car and drove to town. If Rue were here, she thought, she’d go to the newspaper office and to the library to see what facts she could gather pertaining to Aunt Verity’s house in general and Jonathan and Trista Fortner in particular.

  Only it was early and neither establishment was open yet. Undaunted, Elisabeth bought a bouquet of simple flowers at the supermarket and went on to the well-kept, fenced graveyard at the edge of town.

  She left the flowers on Aunt Verity’s grave and then began reading the names carved into the tilting, discolored stones in the oldest part of the cemetery. Jonathan and Trista were buried side by side, their graves surrounded by a low iron fence.

  Carefully, Elisabeth opened the gate and stepped through it, kneeling to push away the spring grass that nearly covered the aging stones. “Jonathan Stevens Fortner,” read the chiseled words. “Born August 5, 1856. Perished June 1892.”

  “What day?” Elisabeth whispered, turning to Trista’s grave. Like her father’s, the little girl’s headstone bore only her name, the date of her birth and the sad inscription, “Perished June 1892.”

  There were tears in Elisabeth’s eyes as she got to her feet again and left the cemetery.

  Chapter Four

  After leaving the Pine River graveyard, Elisabeth stopped by the post office to mail the letter she’d written to Rue the night before. Even though she loved and trusted her cousin, it was hard to drop the envelope through the scrolled brass slot, and the instant she had, she wanted to retrieve it.

  All she’d need to do was ask the sullen-looking man behind the grilled window to fetch the letter for her, and no one would ever know she was having delusions.

  Squaring her shoulders, Elisabeth made herself walk out of the post office with nothing more than a polite, “Good morning,” to the clerk.

  The library was open, but Elisabeth soon learned that there were virtually no records of the town’s history. There was, however, a thin, self-published autobiography called, My Life in Old Pine River, written by a Mrs. Carolina Meavers.

  While the librarian, a disinterested young lady with spiky blond hair and a mouthful of gum, issued a borrower’s card and entered Elisabeth’s name in the computer system, Elisabeth skimmed the book. Mrs. Meavers herself was surely dead, but it was possible she had family in the area.

  “Do you know anyone named Meavers?” she asked, holding up the book.

  The child librarian popped her gum and shrugged. “I don’t pay a lot of attention to old people.”

  Elisabeth suppressed a sigh of exasperation, took the book and her plastic library card and left the small, musty building. She and Rue had visited the place often during their summer visits to Pine River, devouring books they secretly thought they should have been too sophisticated to like. Elisabeth had loved Cherry Ames, student nurse, and Rue had consumed every volume of the Tarzan series.

  Feeling lonely again, Elisabeth crossed the wide street to the newspaper office, where the weekly Pine River Bugle was published.

  This time she was greeted by a competent-looking middle-aged man with a bald spot, wire-rimmed glasses and a friendly smile. “How can I help you?” he asked.

  Elisabeth returned his smile. “I’m doing research,” she said, having rehearsed her story as she crossed the street. “How long has the Bugle been in publication?”

  “One of the oldest newspapers in the state,” the man replied proudly. “Goes back to 1876.”

  Elisabeth’s eyes widened. “Do you have the old issues on microfilm?”

  “Most of them. If you’ll just step this way, Ms….?”

  “McCartney,” she answered. “Elisabeth McCartney.”

  “I’m Ben Robbins. Are you writing a book, Ms. McCartney?”

  Elisabeth smiled, shook her head and followed him through a small but very noisy press room and down a steep set of stairs into a dimly lit cellar.

  “They don’t call these places morgues for nothing,” Mr. Robbins said with a sigh. Then he gestured toward rows of file cases. “Help yourself,” he said. “The microfilm machine is over there, behind those cabinets.”

  Elisabeth nodded, feeling a little overwhelmed, and found the long table where the machine waited. After putting down her purse and the library book, she went to work.

  The four issues of the Bugle published in June of 1892 were on one spool of film, and once Elisabeth found that and figured out how to work the elaborate projection apparatus, the job didn’t seem so difficult.

  During the first week of that long-ago year, Elisabeth read, Anna Jean Maples, daughter of Albert and Hester Eustice Maples, had been married to Frank Peterson on the lawn of the First Presbyterian church. Kelsey’s Grocery had offered specials on canned salmon and “baseball goods.”

  The Bugle was not void of national news. It was rumored that Grover Cleveland would wrest the presidency back from Benjamin Harrison come November, and the people of Chicago were busy preparing for the World Columbian Exposition, to open in October.

  Elisabeth skimmed the second week, then the third. A painful sense of expectation was building in the pit of her stomach when she finally came upon the headline she’d been searching for.

  DR. FORTNER AND DAUGHTER PERISH IN HOUSE FIRE

  She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling sick. Then she anxiously read the brief account of the incident.

  No exact date was given—the article merely said, “This week, the people of Pine River suffered a tragic double loss.” The reporter went on to state that no bodies or remains of any kind had been found, “so hot did the hellish blazes burn.”

  Practically holding her breath, Elisabeth read on, feeling just a flicker of hope. She’d watched enough reruns of Quincy to know just how stubbornly indestructible human bones could be. If Jonathan’s and Trista’s remains had not been found, they probably hadn’t died in the fire.

  She paused to sigh and rub her eyes. If that was true, where had they gone? And why were there two graves with head-stones that bore their names?

  Elisabeth went back to the article, hoping to find a specific date. Near the end she read, “Surviving the inferno is a young and apparently indigent relative of the Fortners, known only as Lizzie. Marshal Farley Haynes has detained her for questioning.”

  After scanning the rest of that issue and finding nothing but quilting-bee notices and offers to sell bulls, buggies and nursery furniture, Elisabeth went on to late July of that fateful year.

  MYSTERIOUS LIZZIE TO BE TRIED FOR MURDER OF PINE RIVER FAMILY

  Pity twisted Elisabeth’s insides. Her head was pounding, and she was badly in need of some fresh air. After finding several coins in the bottom of her purse, she made copies of the last newspaper of June 1892, to read later. Then she carefully put the microfilm reel back in its cabinet and turned off the machine.

  Upstairs, she found Ben Robbins in a cubicle of an office, going over a stack of computer printouts.

  “I want to thank you for being so helpful,” Elisabeth said. Her mind was filled with dizzying thoughts. Had Trista and Jonathan died in that blasted fire or hadn’t they? And who the heck was this Lizzie person?

  Ben smiled and took off his glasses. “Find what you were looking for?”

  “Yes and no,” Elisabeth answered distractedly, frowning as she shuffled the stack of microfilm copies and the library book resting in the curve of her arm. “Did you know this woman—Carolina Meavers?”

  “Died when I was a boy,” Ben said with a shake of his head. “But she was good friends with the Buzbee sisters. If you have any questions about Carolina, they’d be the ones to ask.”

  The Buzbee sisters. Of course. She guessed this was a case of overlooking the obvious. E
lisabeth thanked him again and went out.

  Belying the glowering sky of the night before, the weather was sunny and scented with spring. Elisabeth got into her car and drove home.

  By the time she arrived, it was well past noon and she was hungry. She made a chicken-salad sandwich, took a diet cola from the refrigerator, found an old blanket and set out through the orchard behind the house in search of a picnic spot.

  She chose the grassy banks of Birch Creek, within sight of the old covered bridge that was now strictly off limits to any traffic. Elisabeth and Rue had come to this place often with Aunt Verity to wade in the sparkling, icy stream and listen to those endless and singularly remarkable stories.

  Elisabeth spread the blanket out on the ground and sat down to eat her sandwich and drink her soda. When she’d finished her lunch, she stretched out on her stomach to read about Lizzie’s arrest. Unfortunately, the piece had been written by the same verbose and flowery reporter who had covered the fire, and beyond the obvious facts, there was no real information.

  Glumly, Elisabeth set aside the photographs and flipped through the library book. There were pictures in the center, and she stopped to look at them. The author, with her family, posing on the porch—if those few rough planks of pine could be described as a porch—of a ramshackle shanty with a tarpaper roof. The author, standing on the steps of a country schoolhouse that had been gone long before Elisabeth’s birth, clutching her slate and spelling primer to her flat little chest.

  Elisabeth turned another page and her heart leapt up into her sinus passages to pound behind her cheeks. Practically the entire town must have been in that picture, and Elisabeth could see one side of the covered bridge. But it wasn’t that structure that caught her eye and caused her insides to go crazy with a strange, sweet anxiety.

  It was Jonathan’s image, smiling back at her from the photograph. He was wearing trousers and a vest, and his dark hair was attractively rumpled. Trista stood beside him, a basket brimming with wildflowers in one hand, regarding the camera solemnly.