by Jina Bacarr
‘You sure have.’ His expression tells me he’s referring more to my kissing technique than my appearance. Still, he has something else on his mind. He runs his hand through his hair, mussing it up more than usual. Jeff pulls me farther into the back corner office where we won’t be seen. ‘Speaking of you growing up, I want to kiss you right now.’
‘You do?’ My eyes widen. I can still play the schoolgirl. Again, I ignore the advice of my sensible self and keep flirting with him.
‘Nothing’s changed between us, Kate, though I admit you gave me something to think about the other day with that kiss.’
Here it comes. The consequences of my foolishness.
‘About that—’ I begin, shuffling my feet.
I have to tell him about the gossip before anyone else does.
The clock strikes the hour. One… two… three.
Jeff breathes into my ear, making me shiver. ‘The bank is closed.’
‘Are we locked in here?’ I ask, curious.
‘Would you mind, Jelly Girl?’
He confesses that when he saw the company car pull up outside and me get out, he checked to make sure the back office was empty. Rushbrooke Mills is the bank’s biggest customer, so no one will question him if he lingers here after closing time to go over the bank’s books.
We’re alone. I let out a heavy sigh when he draws me close and presses me against his broad chest. Hidden behind a bookcase filled with massive handwritten tomes my worlds collide under the branding of his kiss. Burning desire consumes me, my lips on fire when he deepens the kiss and my knees wobble. This is no boyish fling with a pretty girl, but the raw hunger of a man turning me into a pool of melting passion. He can’t hold back and I do as I’ve wanted to do so many times. I surrender to him, digging my nails into his fine, wool tweed, knowing he’ll soon trade it for the leather of a bomber jacket. Not for long. There’s no uniform for a spy except the band of courage steeled into his bones.
I can’t send him off to war unfulfilled. I don’t protest when he picks me up and sits me on the fine mahogany desk empty except for a quill pen and bottle of ink. I should, since he’s put me in a compromising position. My younger self would tremble and the sheer look of innocence in her eyes would stop Jeff from going any farther. He’d pull back, not wanting to hurt me.
I push that thought aside as his hands roam up and down my ribcage, his mouth holding mine captive in a long, long kiss. I should say something before I lose all sense of reason. I can’t. I revel in his unexpected move, his zealous push to do what my eyes begged him, what my kiss promised. That he’ll find me all woman and ready to love him back in ways he never imagined.
He nuzzles his face in my hair. ‘With luck, they won’t find us till morning.’
‘Yes… morning.’
Before I contemplate that unsettling thought, his hands are everywhere on me and I thrill to his touch like I never have. That little voice warning me finally gets through when I knock over the ink. It spills. Making a big dark splotch on the gray blotter. Reminding me I can’t go through with this, that like the ink soaking deep into the blotter, I can’t take back my actions. I’m still a young woman in this time. I can’t ignore that little voice in my head telling me I have no guarantee I can change the future. We can’t do something we regret later.
I push him away. Gently. A push nonetheless.
‘No, Jeff, we can’t.’ To my surprise, he nods.
‘I know, Kate, but I wanted you all to myself for a little while.’ He pulls off his tie, which is half-undone as usual. That makes me smile. ‘I’m sorry I lost my head. I got carried away when I saw you, knowing no one will spy on us here.’
‘About that…’ I say, knowing I have to tell him about the phone call. ‘I’ve caused an awful mess, Jeff. It’s just I love you so much and I’m afraid of losing you.’
‘You’re stuck with me, Jelly Girl.’
‘Oh, if only that were true.’ I sigh. ‘Not everyone thinks so.’
‘You mean my mother.’
‘You heard.’
He smirks. ‘She lectured me for an hour this morning about my responsibility to the Rushbrooke name. I told her that’s why I fell in love with a girl like you.’
I gulp. ‘She knows about our plans to get married?’
‘No. That’s our secret, but I’m tired of sneaking around and pretending not to notice you when you’re the most wonderful girl in the world.’
‘I think you’re wonderful, too, Jeff, but we don’t want to upset your mother. We should respect her feelings. She’s trying to protect what she sees as her legacy.’
‘I love you for saying that, Kate. Once we’re married, she’ll have no choice but to accept you. Till then, we have to be careful.’ His arms tighten around me and he presses my head against his chest. ‘Monday can’t come soon enough for me.’
‘Me, neither.’
He lets me go, that indefinable grin on his face making me smile, too. ‘I’ll pick you up for the dance on Saturday night.’
‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’ There’s no telling what his mother will do if we show up together. ‘I can go with Lucy and meet you there.’ I don’t mention Freddie and his precocious advances and wanting to dance with me. It isn’t a big deal, so why worry?
He nods. ‘I’ll be working at the factory late seeing how we’ve stepped up production, but nothing can keep me from dancing with you. Not even Goebbels himself.’
He’s trying to make me smile but his words chill me, reminding me of the horrors to come.
‘Please believe me, Jeff, when I tell you we have many months before this war is won.’ Do I dare tell him more? ‘Many battles will be fought in the air over Germany and ground troops will fight hard to make advances in Italy… lives will be lost both in Europe and the Pacific. In places like Anzio and Iwo Jima.’
He looks at me like I’m crazy.
‘You’ve been watching too many newsreels, Kate. We’ll have those Nazis whipped before next Christmas. We’ll win in the Pacific, too.’ He regards my outburst with a strange cast in his eyes. ‘I don’t know who’s filling your head with this stuff. The government needs you to do your job here at home and leave the fighting to us.’
I’m upset. ‘You haven’t been called up yet.’
‘No, but I heard rumors swirling around Washington that something big is in the air. I’m hoping they’ll speed up the pilot training. Fourteen months is a long time to wait to get in a cockpit, thunder down the runway, and take off to show those Nazis they can’t destroy us.’
‘Oh, Jeff, if you only knew what you’re getting into.’
‘Knew what?’
I lower my eyes. ‘I’d tell you, but you won’t believe me.’ I suck in a sharp breath. ‘We need to have a serious talk about us.’
‘I know.’
I look up. ‘You do?’
He grins. ‘Sure. Enough war talk. I asked you to marry me and I don’t even have a ring to give you. Don’t worry, I’ll get you the prettiest wedding ring when we get to Washington. You can pick out anything you want and when we come home to Posey Creek, I’ve got a place picked out for us. A two story house near the river fixed up with new plumbing, nice and private. It used to be a refuge during colonial times for patriots hiding from the British. My family has owned it since then. No one uses it anymore. It’ll be swell.’
‘Yeah, swell.’ I clasp my hands together tight, my voice going up an octave, maybe two.
I can’t believe my ears. We never had this discussion back then and for once, I forget I’m supposed to be a more mature me and simply stare at the man. I’m filled with the joy and anticipation of a woman soon to be a bride. My own home? Is it possible? I grew up in a big old house with Ma at the helm and rightly so. Then in New York, I moved from one tiny brownstone to another, places where the sidewalks heat up in summer and become slippery decks in winter. No trees or flowers except for the tiny pots on my windowsill filled with geraniums and fresh herbs. A piece of home, even if I won�
�t admit it.
My heart swells. I always wanted my own home. Jeff knows it. He often commented on how his Jelly Girl should have her own kitchen to make his favorite jam. I can barely believe it, my mind whirling with the dream of us being together back in my own time. In that house. Of course I’ll find a job here in Posey Creek, hopefully writing for the Courier, and who says I can’t continue as a contributing food editor for a New York magazine? Send in my stories by mail. The stakes are even higher now, things moving so fast my head is spinning. I want to be near him, for he touches my soul like no other.
I let the urgency to tell him about the letter go. It stands between us, but without it I never could bridge the years between my time and now. He’s so excited about the future, he won’t believe me anyway. What catches in my craw is that saving him isn’t as simple as I first believed. I feel as though we’re worlds apart and I’m not sure we can close the gap between the girl I was then and who I am now. No man wants to be told how to run a war by a woman, even his fiancée. Unsettling, but I can’t let that stop me. I’ll have to tread carefully when it comes to revealing what I know. The problem is, while my heart sings with the joy of being a bride, my practical self reminds me I won’t be a bride if I don’t convince him I’m from the future. That I love him so much, somehow I found my way back to warn him. That my love for him is that strong. I have to bide my time, knowing I don’t have much of it left.
We plan to elope on Monday morning. Early. I have to tell him before he gets on that train. Make him see the danger and grab onto it, use it to save his life. Then we can have that house by the river.
The night watchman lets us out via the back door – he minds his own business, but I see he’s curious – and then Jeff drops me off at my house. He can’t promise, but he’ll try to meet me at the cherry tree tomorrow night. He leaves the engine running while he kisses me, long enough to stir intense feelings in the pit of my belly and make it hard for me to let him go. I needn’t worry, he’s gone before I catch my breath. It doesn’t matter. The damage is done. I see the curtain on the second floor move. Lucy saw us. I don’t care. I’m going to marry Jeff.
Nothing can stop us.
‘I saw you kissing Jeffrey Rushbrooke,’ my kid sister blurts out the minute I come through the front door. ‘Are you crazy, Kate?’
‘So?’ I say quickly. ‘We’re getting married.’
‘I don’t understand you. You were so secretive before, now you’re kissing the man right outside our front door.’ She peeks through the curtains. ‘You know that snoopy Mrs Widget never closes her drapes.’
‘Girls, set the table for supper.’ Ma shoos us into the kitchen. ‘Kate will tell us about it when she’s ready.’ She smiles at me with the biggest twinkle in her eyes, one I haven’t seen since she won the blue ribbon for her geraniums before the war.
‘Thanks, Ma.’ I hug her.
She lets out a sigh. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Katie Marie.’
I wince. Now Ma is using my nickname. That means she isn’t as easygoing about me marrying Jeff as she pretends. I see the corners of her eyes wrinkling into deep creases.
‘I do, Ma. You’ll see.’
‘How come you’re so easy on Kate, Ma?’ Lucy huffs and puffs, getting the silverware. ‘When I want something like my own face powder or get my hair done up, you say I’m too young. Whatever Kate wants, she gets.’
‘Your time will come, child,’ Ma says, fretting. I see how upset she is, something she never shows. Do her instincts tell her that her elder daughter is in over her head?
‘When, Ma?’ Lucy insists. ‘Girls my age are getting engaged every day. Sometimes to more than one soldier.’
Ma sets the dinner plates down on the table so hard, they rattle.
‘Lucy Arden, do you think this is a game you’re playing? Pulling on the heartstrings of these fine young men like a siren with a harp?’ Ma sits her down on the kitchen stool like she used to make us do when we were little and our feet couldn’t touch the floor. I keep quiet. I had no idea my mother has such thoughts. ‘It’s time we had a talk, young lady.’
Lucy and I both groan. Now that we’re grown up, it doesn’t mean we’re too big for one of her lectures. It’s a doozy.
‘I’m proud of my girls, how you put up the jams for the soldiers and greet those boys and girls serving our country. Tonight I’m ashamed, Lucy. The holiest of nights will soon be upon us and when those men are camped out under the stars, their rifles by their side, their God in their hearts, they’ll be thinking of the girl back home. Seeing her face in the stars like she’s an angel of victory. Seeing your face.’
‘Ma—’
‘I’m not saying don’t write to these young men. They need letters from home to comfort them. They don’t need false promises from girls who have no intention of keeping them.’
‘I do,’ she protests. ‘Then I meet another soldier, and I like him, too.’ She stares at Ma, puzzled. ‘What am I going to do?’
Ma smiles. ‘Don’t be in such a hurry to grow up, Lucy. Be the girl next door, their friend. Don’t try to be every soldier’s sweetheart. You can’t. For their sake and yours. Don’t fight with your sister. Kate’s going to have a rough time with her young man if things don’t simmer down. She doesn’t need you stirring the pot.’
‘Ma’s right, Lucy, let’s not fight,’ I tell her, trying to calm her down. The irony is Lucy will find her man and have a good home and three kids, while I lose Jeff in the war. I have to set the stage for her meeting her soldier and if she runs into trouble back in my own time, I’ll fix it. ‘I promise you’ll meet the handsomest soldier and live a wonderful life with him and have three beautiful children. A boy and twin girls.’
I wait for the winds of time to blow open the back door and send a scolding tempest my way. All I hear is the shrill whistle of the tea kettle. Ma turns it off. Then she goes back to her macaroni and cheese casserole finishing up in the oven, adding more paprika as she keeps her ear attuned to what I’m saying.
‘Twins?’ Lucy’s eyes spark. ‘You’re making that up.’ The smile on her face is so real, she wants to believe me because I described the life she wants so badly in her heart.
‘I wish I could tell you how I know,’ I say. ‘Maybe someday I will. For now, you’ve got to trust me.’
I’ve said more than I should, but I’m so frustrated at fighting the war alone, I can’t hold back anymore. Ma has already guessed something is afoot even if she doesn’t understand it, but she accepts it. Like a frost in late May or sun-warmed sprouts poking up out of the earth in the dead of winter. Like nature is playing a trick on her. She’s a wise, God-fearing woman, and if He’s behind it, I imagine her telling herself, who is she to doubt it?
Lucy needs more convincing.
‘You act different, Kate. The way you talk, move, your interest in the war news and what’s happening overseas. Like you figured out what’s going to happen before it does. A quirky sense none of us have, but you do. You were never like that before. I don’t know why you’ve changed. I guess I’m too young and too dumb to figure it out.’ She unties the ribbon in her hair and lets the soft curls fall around her shoulders like a mantle of womanhood. ‘For some crazy reason, I believe everything you said.’
‘Then stick by me like Ma says, because I know what’s coming, little sister, the biggest heartbreak any woman can experience, and unless I change it, I’m going to need you more than ever.’
She must have read something in my eyes I can’t hide. A desperation that turns them dark and melancholy, for I swear she grows up at that moment. Never again is she the innocent bobby-soxer.
‘Oh, Kate, I’m so sorry. I’ve been a mean, horrible person. Whatever it is, we’ll get through it together. I promise.’
She hugs me tight and I hear her catch her breath. I look over my shoulder and I see Ma smiling. Dabbing her eyes with her apron. Today is Thursday. The clock is ticking.
Reminding me I don’t have much time
left.
17
I almost give away my secret life when I meet up with Helen the next day. Friday, the day before the dance. My friend is strangely quiet when we rendezvous in front of the post office. The community center is a short walk away and although the air is crisp, I don’t feel the cold.
My thoughts bounce back and forth between the past I’m living now and the future I’m so set on changing when I push through the big double doors of the center. The sweet, sticky smell of pine invades my senses, a gentle reminder Christmas is in the air. Prickly cones strung on wires and interlaced with holly berries hang from the rafters, making the scent overpowering. It makes me dreamy-eyed. I enjoy the poignancy of revisiting the holiday season at a time when I’m young and filled with hope, such feelings heating my skin.
I try to focus on the task at hand but I want to jump out of my clothes, a romantic thought that doesn’t surprise me since I daydream often about Jeff’s strong body pressed next to mine after we’re married. Maybe even more often now I’m back here because I know I’ll lose him again if I take a misstep. That thought haunts me mercilessly, making me shake and, at the same time, fuels my determination to make things right, wake up with him in the mornings and kiss him. Call him my husband. I so blindly believe it isn’t impossible, if I’ve come this far it has to be. The moment to tell him about the letter will present itself, like finding a flower blooming under the snow.
It takes your breath away.
Until then, I have to pretend everything is normal. That means decorating the community center. Mr Clayborn insisted I leave work early to help out. True to his word, we never speak of our conversation again, but I know he’s cheering for me to be with Jeff.
Because I’m feeling so sure of myself I let my guard down around Helen. My journey is almost over, so I speak without thinking. It starts when Helen lays a bombshell on me.
‘I overheard a telephone conversation,’ Helen says, ‘between Mr Rushbrooke and some bigwig when I delivered a package to Wrightwood House.’ She seems both intrigued and puzzled. Like she knows it’s important, but she doesn’t know why. She confided in me that she gets a secret thrill spying on the Rushbrookes, as if she’s helping my romance. She has no idea what harm her eavesdropping can do if it goes any further than her telling me.