“There has to be some explanation. Let’s just see what happens when Doran shows up to look for your letter in the tombstone.”
“Yeah… and then we will make him explain to us how he did it,” Emma agreed.
The two sat and talked for several hours, and then they ate some of the food they had brought. When it started to get dark, they both laid down on the blankets and stared in the direction of the road, waiting for a car to drive up. By midnight, no one had come.
Emma slept off and on, but she kept her ear open for the sound of a car, which she never heard. She woke early, still watching the road. There weren’t that many trees to hide the road, and she could see easily across the whole field that the road cut through. There was no dust being stirred up by the tires of a car. Maybe he would come by later this morning, she thought, as she pulled herself up and walked over to Emma’s grave. Cassandra was still fast asleep.
He had to come looking for a new letter soon, she thought, as she glanced down at the tombstone, and then she just stared. The letter she had put in the cubbyhole was no longer there. He couldn’t have come in the night! She opened the door to make sure, but there was just the one original letter sitting in the cubbyhole, and nothing more.
Emma ran to road beside the graveyard, which was really a mere trail, but the only tracks she could see there were the tracks of her own car tires. Her tires were small, and she always parked in the same place. There were no tire tracks leading down the trail to the graveyard but her car’s tire tracks. He wouldn’t have walked all the way out here, and even if he had, his foot prints would be somewhere, and there were only her footprints, on the trail, next to where she always parked her car, and then to the graveyard itself. This was becoming more confusing by the moment.
“Cassandra, my letter is gone,” she called, as she saw Cassandra coming towards her. “There are no new tracks in the road by the graveyard, and there are no footprints but mine and yours around the grave. The letter is not in the cubbyhole. No one could have taken it out because I put the key in my pocket last night.” She presented the key she had replaced in her pocket after opening the door and seeing her letter missing. Both girls stared at it.
“Well, if he couldn’t find the key he wouldn’t have…” Cassandra stopped.
“That is the whole point. While he could not put a new letter in the hole, he also could not take the other one out! And it is not there anymore. None of this makes sense, unless he had his own key. Only there are no new tracks, so even if he did have a key, he would have had to fly here, and hover over the tomestone!” Emma exclaimed. “This is crazy! We’re sure not going to figure it out any time soon. Come on. I’m tired and I want a shower. We are never going to learn the answer to all of this.”
“It must be true. The letters must be going through time,” Cassandra breathed.
“Either that, or Doran Foster of today knows how to fly,” Emma smirked, “and that would be just as hard to believe as my letters going through time.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
1978
Doran had been patient. As much as he wanted to meet Emma again, he only watched her from afar, and it pained him when he saw her kissing David, or sharing time with him and having so much fun. Doran wished it were him having fun with her, but in the back of his mind he knew that she wouldn’t marry David. It was because David had accused her of being unfaithful. Since she was being faithful to him, there was no reason for David to believe that, though. It was up to him to make David believe that, he decided. He just didn’t know how was he going to go about doing it?
Maybe if he went somewhere that he knew they would both be at, and just went up and kissed Emma, where David would be sure to see them… that would make him believe she was cheating on him. The only problem with that plan, was that Emma just might slap him, and then David would beat the crap out of him for kissing his girl and Emma would think he was a creep. There had to be another way.
It was by chance that he overheard her talking to her girlfriend, as he followed behind them while they walked together in the park, that he learned about a Birthday party that David was going to throw for Emma. It sounded like it was going to be a large affair, and if there were a lot of guests, perhaps he could mingle among them and not be noticed that much. Even if he didn’t talk to her, at least he would be in the same room with her, being able to watch her enjoy her birthday. He would bring a special gift, he thought.
His grandfather had given him a glass globe with figurines kissing inside of it, and if you turned it upside down, glitter fell down around the couple. His grandfather said it had been given to him, by his grandmother, who claimed the globe had been a gift from Doran to his wife on her nineteenth birthday. It was only one of the few things his grandmother had been able to save from the fire, during the Civil War, she claimed. This would be Emma’s nineteenth birthday as well. Perhaps it would make her remember the past when she had been given that globe before. It would be worth a try, and it would be the first wedge he would put between David and Emma, when he signed the card, ‘remember our love, Doran,’ he smiled to himself.
Having followed Emma all year, since the prom, he knew where David lived, and that the party would take place at his apartment. He had just moved there by himself, and was proud of having a place of his own. It seemed that he and Emma had plenty of friends, as people kept showing up and there was a long line of cars parked on every street surrounding the apartment building.
Doran followed a group of old football buddies, into the apartment, hoping he wouldn’t be noticed, as he mingled in the group, until he could pull away unobserved by Emma. He placed his gift among the rest of the gifts that made a sizable pile. He didn’t want Emma to see him, in case she remembered him from the prom, so he stayed in the shadows, and watched from a distance, hoping she did not look his way, and if she did, he would turn his back, or leave and go into another part of the apartment, and mingle with others that didn’t seem to care that they did not know him. They probably thought he was a relative or someone Emma knew, that they had not met yet.
Emma spent most of her time with David, and just before she was to open her presents, David made the announcement that Emma had accepted his proposal of marriage. When Doran heard the announcement, it was all he could do to not lose hope. After all, according to her letter to his great, great grandfather, she never married him, he kept telling himself, but the love in her eyes, when she looked at David, and then gave him a long lingering kiss, still pained him.
Strange, his great, great Grandfather got to see a glimpse of the future through Emma’s letters, and he too knew about her future, through her letters, up to the age of twenty five, anyway. He could not believe that he still had several more years to wait before he could even let her know that he existed, and wanted to be a part of her life. What if she rejected him? What if she didn’t believe he was her soul mate and the reincarnation of her husband in a past life?
The only problem was she would not be totally in the dark about him, because her letters indicated he had let her know of his existence, and now he had to follow that path, even though it had not happened in his time frame yet. If he didn’t follow the outcome of the letters to a tee, would it cause everything to change for both him, and Emma, not to mention his great, great grandfather?
He tried to shake off the worries, as he watched Emma turn to her pile of presents, and begin unwrapping them, exclaiming about each gift, and thanking the person who gave it to her. The presents consisted of things like art supplies, or perfume, or costume jewelry, nothing really exceptional. When she opened his present, and then read the card inside, aloud, a puzzled look came upon her face.
“What does it mean, remember our love,” David asked Emma, when she read the card. “I am the only one you have ever loved, right?”
“I don’t even know a Doran,” Emma, murmured. “This must be a mistake.”
“It was addressed to you, so apparently he knows you,” David said. “A
nd it has two people kissing inside the globe. It looks antique. I have never seen anything like it before,” he said, holding the globe up to the light.
“Well, I don’t know who gave it to me,” Emma insisted, as she grabbed it from him, and stuck it back in the box. Her eyes wandered around the room, as though trying to search out who had given her the gift. Doran ducked behind a potted plant.
“I don’t know a Doran either,” David admitted, “but apparently he has shown up at your party, so you can’t deny that you know him.”
“I don’t know him,” Emma insisted. “Honest, David, you are the only guy I have ever gone out with. We have known each other since we were in middle school.”
“It just seems strange that on the day I announce that we are going to get married, you receive a gift from someone telling you to remember their love. It doesn’t make sense, Emma, unless you are lying to me.”
“I am not lying to you!” Emma almost shrieked.
“Alright, whoever you are,” David called out. “You need to explain yourself about this gift.” David also looked around for the signs of someone he did not know who might be in the room. Everyone began looking at each other and shrugging, talking among themselves, wondering who the person was that gave Emma the gift.
Doran smiled to himself. It was having the very affect he wanted it to have. He would have to think up some more ways to make David doubt Emma, he told himself. It was a mean trick, but Emma was his soul mate, not David’s, he rationalized firmly to himself.
The cake was brought in, all alight with candles, which distracted everyone, and David stopped questioning Emma, but Doran noticed that every once in a while Emma would glance, with her brows pulled together in perplexity, at the glass glob, which was cushioned inside of the box with tissue paper. He decided that this was his best opportunity to drift back out, while everyone was singing happy birthday, and go back to waiting for Emma to finish writing letters to his great, great grandfather, for the next several years.
As he walked back to his car, he thought about a letter that Emma had written about taking her artwork to Sal’s studio. This would not happen for another year, and she would be broken up with David by then, but even though he was merely thinking about going to the studio to see her paintings, another letter she had written had indicated he had gone there. The bad part was, that apparently she had bumped into him on her way into the studio, and claimed in her letter to his great, great, grandfather, that her friend Sal had mentioned a Doran Foster had asked about her paintings of the tombstones of his great, great grandparents. It was his intention to go to the shop, once she submitted them, and buy them, before anyone else could, but apparently he had used the letter as reference to the day she was bringing them in, only he must have shown up before she came. Now his future was mixed up in her letters, and if he did not go to the shop before her, would that change anything? The letters were already written. It apparently was going to happen in her future, so was it up to him to make it happen, even though he knew it would shake her belief that she was actually writing to someone in the past? The truth was, he wanted her to know that Doran Forster did exist in her own time, and was looking for her. He just couldn’t meet her until after she stopped writing the letters.
How did time work, he kept asking himself? If he didn’t show up at the shop before her, would that letter she wrote just disappear? Was man’s future actions already planned out? Were we supposed to follow along the way some puppet master had decided we should go? Was it necessary for certain things to happen, so other events could follow? He did not believe that his great, great grandfather could have stopped his death, even if he had known what would happen, or prevented the plantation from being burned down, even though Emma had warned him about it. So could he alter things by just not showing up at the art studio before her, he wondered? Or maybe, no matter what time he showed up, he would get there before her, he thought. Would it make it worse if he didn’t, go on that day at all? According to her letter, he had gone on that day, so he resolved he would make sure he followed the future according to her letters, because maybe she needed to have bumped into him at that time, he decided. Maybe it would confirm something else in her mind that he knew nothing about yet, because she had not mentioned it in her letters.
Sometimes he wished he had never seen the letters. Maybe he should have just let time dictate his future, and follow his own hunches. Now he was as caught up in all of this the same way Emma was and she hadn’t even found the graves yet, he thought ironically to himself.
Life certainly was a mystery, but the thought of the reward in the end, when he finally did get to meet her openly, and tell her who he was, was the light at the end of the tunnel that prodded him forward. If it was meant for them to discover they were soul mates, destiny would find a way, he decided.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1859
Everything was up in the air. Mark Harrison was due to arrive later that day, and Doran was going to have to go to the train station to pick him up. He could send a servant, but it just didn’t seem right, considering Mark’s sister had died, and Mark had just learned of it. Doran had just received the strangest letter from Emma, that he was trying to understand, and Matthew had been crying with a bout of colic, according to nanny Doris, and nothing she did seemed to sooth him, so Doran’s mind was a jangled mess. He needed some solitude, he decided, and he found his footsteps leading to the stone church, across from the graveyard. There he read Emma’s letter again, trying to figure out what it all meant.
Apparently she had actually bumped into the Doran Foster she had read about in that phone book, but he had done something that might change everything between them, because now she didn’t seem to believe that she was actually writing to him through time, and if he tried to convince her of it, she might think it was this other Doran that was playing a trick on her. He too wondered how his future self knew about her bringing the paintings to that studio before she ever did it. Could his future-self look into the future of his day somehow, he wondered?
This troubled him, because if she tried to hunt that Doran down, and discovered he was the reincarnation of himself, she may never write to him in the past again. It could cause the magic to end and he would never hear from her again, and that was something he did not want to face at the moment, even if it meant his future-self would find her. His present-self had barely discovered her, and there were so many things he wanted to discuss with her. In her letter, she sounded like she did not want to write to him again because she seemed to be losing faith that his letters were really coming from the past. What could he say to her, to convince her that as unusual as it seemed, it was all happening to both of them, he wondered?
He began to pace the floor, as he contemplated the question, and as he did, he stepped on a stone-flooring that seemed to be loose. He never spent much time in the church in the past, except during his wedding to Emma and so he did not know if the stone had always been loose, but as he looked down at his foot, he noticed the stone did not look like the other stones in the floor, and upon closer inspection, he discovered a small chip was out of the edge of the stone, where it seemed to depress, when he stepped on it.
Why this bothered him, he wasn’t sure, but he knelt to take a closer look at the missing chip, and he realized it wasn’t a chip missing, but it had been fashioned that way, and he could actually reach his fingers down into the open space, and feel under the stone. When he did, he discovered a latch, which with one flick of the finger was released, and the stone rose slowly on some sort of spring system.
Doran saw stairs leading down into whatever was under the stone opening and, of course, he was anxious to investigate. He lit one of the lanterns, hanging on the wall of the church, and descended the stairs, to discover a room that was larger than he expected. The moment the light illuminated the room, he knew exactly what it was. It appeared to be a place where runaway slaves could be hidden. He vaguely remembered that after his grandfather re
leased his slaves from bondage at his death, that there were rumors of the Underground Railroad being active in this area. His father had turned a blind eye to it, the same as he had, because neither of them believed in slavery, either. So it stood to reason that his black workers would help protect other slaves trying to escape to the north.
The church had been built for the workers to worship in, and so it wasn’t surprising that this room had either been a part of the blue print, or had been added later. He would have to talk to his workers about it, but another plan was forming in his head. This would be the perfect place to hide all the valuables in the house, once the war started. He could take things down a little bit at a time, so it didn’t appear that he was even doing it, and place them here for safe keeping, and then nothing could happen to them. According to Emma, the church was still standing in her day. It couldn’t burn along with the house, because it was made of stone, and once the danger was past they would have their valuables to fall back on in order to rebuild the plantation, if necessary.
He decided that he would keep the plan to himself though, and only write to Emma about it, seeing as how she couldn’t tell anyone in his day. Also he needed to make it very clear to his workers, that if he ever caught any of his servants using the secret room in the church, for hiding slaves or for any other reason, that he would dismiss them.
Well at least one problem was solved, he told himself, as he walked back up the stairs, and let the stone flooring fall back into place, but now he had to think up something to write to Emma to put her mind at ease and help her believe that he was really from the past writing to a woman from the future. And then he remembered when he had sat with his back to the tombstone, and her letter had appeared there. Now he knew what he would tell her to do, in order to prove that someone in her time was not reading her letters, or putting his own letters in the tombstone.
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