“Well, look at that. She’s shy,” Rosalie teased, while she flashed a bitter look at Truman. “Not that it matters, because I’m gonna shoot her anyway. After we’re finished.”
Jessica struggled in Henry’s tight grip. “If you kill me,” she said, “he’ll hate you more than ever.”
Truman held his hand up to hush her. “It’s not about me, is it, Rosie?”
Rosalie smiled maliciously. “You’re smart, Truman. That’s why I always liked you.”
“If you’re looking for the bank combination,” he said, “she doesn’t have it.”
Rosalie smirked. “I know she doesn’t have it, Truman, because I have it. It’s safely hidden in my corset, and has been all along. You’re welcome to come search for it, though. I won’t mind. In fact, I’d quite enjoy it.”
Jessica clenched her fists in an effort to control her rage.
“What are you doin’ out here anyway?” Rosalie asked. “This wasn’t in the plan, but you made things a lot easier by coming. Saved us from breaking into the jailhouse.”
Truman said nothing, and Jessica knew he was studying Rosalie’s grip on that rifle.
“You don’t get it, do you?” she said to Jessica. “Henry and I have been planning this ever since you came to town. I killed Lou. I wanted that safe combination, so I shot him. And when people thought you did it, the idea came to me. That’s when Henry suddenly became real attractive.” Rosalie looked at Truman. “I had him write those stories to keep folks thinkin’ she was an outlaw. So naturally, when the bank gets robbed tomorrow, and the sheriff’s found dead with a bullet between his eyes, folks won’t be lookin’ for me. They’ll be lookin’ for the notorious Junebug Jess. But unfortunately,” Rosalie added, “they won’t find her, because she’ll be six feet under.”
“What about Virgil?” Truman asked. “Why’d you kill him?”
“Everybody knew she didn’t like him. They all saw what happened that day, and when folks started to forget about her reputation, I wanted to freshen up their memories. It worked didn’t it? They want to hang her.”
“You won’t get away with this, Rosie.”
“Won’t I? Who’s gonna stop me?”
All at once, Truman whirled around and grabbed the revolver out of Henry’s hand.
Henry fell backwards against the house. Jessica screamed and ducked. A shot rang out, echoing off the barnyard buildings.
“I’m hit!” Rosalie yelled. “God help me, I’m hit!”
Everything was quiet except for the ring of a gunshot fading into the distance. When Jessica opened her eyes, Henry Gordon was standing over her, pointing. “Uh...” he stuttered.
“Truman!” Jessica fought for breath. He was halfway down the stairs, sprawled on his back with his hand on his chest. The front of his black shirt was drenched in blood, which was seeping through his fingers.
Jessica skidded down the stairs to his side and lifted his head onto her lap. “Oh my God, what happened?” she asked, realizing with horror that both guns had gone off at once.
His breath came in short gasps. “Dammit,” he whispered, struggling to sit up.
Rosalie was lying on the ground at the bottom of the steps, moaning. “Truman? I...I didn’t mean it!”
“Don’t even speak to him!” Jessica screamed. She cradled his head, pushed the hair away from his face. He tried again to get up, but she held him down. “Lie still.”
She hoped he didn’t hear the fear in her voice as it cracked hideously on the last word. Tears flooded her eyes as she opened his shirt and examined the wound—a bullet hole in the chest, not far from his heart, bleeding profusely. She tugged her skirt up to cover the wound and staunch the flow of blood.
She thought of her brother, Gregory…
“Jessica...my pocket.”
“What?” She could barely speak.
“My shirt p-pocket.” He was panting now.
She lifted the flap and reached inside, where she found something that belonged to her. The diamond necklace.
“You need it to get home,” he whispered.
“I won’t leave you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, coughing and panting.
His blood was all over her hands now and staining her skirt. Tears rained down her cheeks.
“Please, don’t go,” she sobbed, cradling his head in her arms.
“You can go back to your family now,” he said.
“I don’t want to go back.” She bent forward and kissed him on the mouth.
“Yes, you do. I’m sorry. I wanted more time with you.”
“Please hold on.” She looked up at Henry. “Don’t just stand there!” she shouted. “Get a doctor!” Henry took off down the stairs toward the barn.
“It’s too late,” Truman whispered.
“No, it’s not. Try and hold on.”
“I can’t.”
She kissed him on the forehead. “I love you,” she told him. “I love you.”
“Forever,” he whispered.
His eyes fell closed.
Jessica’s whole body shook uncontrollably with grief and rage. “Oh, no. Please wake up, Truman. Don’t leave me.”
Rosalie rolled over, clutching her leg. “Someone help me. I’m hurt.”
Jessica ignored her. It can’t be true. You aren’t dead. You said everything would be all right.
She laid her hand on his chest where his shirt was soaked with blood. Please, let there be a heartbeat.
There was nothing.
Jessica bowed her head and wept. Shivering, she buried her face in Truman’s shoulder. His hand fell limply off his stomach onto the step, but Jessica reached for it and drew it to her cheek.
Holding it there against her skin, she let one knee slip down a step so she could lie beside him.
“I love you, Truman.” Forever.
Clouds moved in front of the sun, and a gust of wind blew across the prairie.
From that moment, time stopped completely for Jessica. There was no difference between past and future. She didn’t care whether she went home or stayed in the past. Nothing mattered outside of her grief.
And yet, her heart continued to beat, and blood still moved through her veins….
Chapter 26
Two weeks later
“Baby? Can you hear me?”
Yes, she could hear things—the steady beeping of a heart monitor, voices in the corridor, water running from a tap—but her body simply wouldn’t respond. All she could do was lay there, paralyzed, listening to that familiar voice.
“Jessica…you’re safe now. You’re in the hospital. Please wake up.”
At last, she managed to open her eyes. “Mom?”
“Yes, I’m here. William! Come quick! She’s awake.”
Jessica squeezed her mother’s hand as her father stepped into view.
“Oh, thank God,” he said.
A terrible grief ripped through her heart, but she didn’t really understand it. She couldn’t seem to remember much of anything. What was she doing here?
Her mother leaned forward and hugged her. “We were so worried about you, but we never gave up.”
Jessica looked around groggily, while intense but ambiguous emotions clouded her thinking. Everything was foggy. “What happened to me?”
“You had a car accident.”
“A car accident,” she repeated in confusion. “Am I okay?”
“You’re fine, but you had us very worried.”
Whispers of memories flashed in her mind—images of wide-open prairies, horses and wagons....
It was all so vague. She shut her eyes and fought to remember. She felt dizzy and nauseous as she grasped for a clear image of something, anything, but her stomach churned violently, and the faint smell of food from a wheeled cart in the hall made her want t
o wretch.
Jessica touched her throat. “My necklace. Where’s my necklace?”
“Don’t panic. The nurses had to remove it. I have it in my purse.”
“And my watch?” She didn’t know why these items mattered so much to her, but the need to ensure their existence seemed imperative.
“I have that, too.”
Jessica needed to lie back. Her mother fluffed the pillow, while her father went to the corner table to turn on a little transistor radio. As he adjusted the tuning, static blared on and off until he found music.
Oh, Susanna. Don’t you cry for me...
Jessica bolted upright. “That song.”
“What about it?” Her mother frowned with concern.
“I remember it was playing in my car when I crashed.” Fleeting images of rain and mud and Junebugs flashed before her eyes, and she rubbed hard at them while the music seemed to overlap into some other world, some other existence that tore at her heart and filled her with grief and despair. What was going on?
“Sweetheart, do you remember what happened?” her mother asked. “We need to know.”
Her father moved closer. “Martha, give her time to recover. We can ask her later.”
“Ask me what?”
Her parents regarded each other warily. They hesitated for a long moment before her mother finally spoke. “Jessica, where were you?”
Her heart began to beat faster, and her father glanced with concern at the monitor.
“What do you mean?” she replied. “You said I had a car accident.”
“Yes, and we found you at the crash site. But before that, you were missing.”
“Missing?”
“Your accident happened more than a month ago. We found the car, totally flattened—there was no way you could have survived in it—but you were gone, as if you’d vanished into thin air.”
A tense silence weighed heavily in the room. Jessica tried to think, but her brain was in a stress-induced haze. “How did I end up here?”
The last thing she remembered was hydroplaning on the road and spinning around and around in the car.
But there was more. So much more.
She’d been to a funeral. Memories began to clog her brain. She’d been sick, so sick...throwing up from the grief.
A funeral. She’d lost him....
“A driver spotted you this morning in the same place we found your car,” her mother said. “You were lying unconscious on the side of the road.”
“How can that be?”
“Martha, stop,” her father said. “Are you all right, Jess? You look pale.”
Jessica stared blankly at him. “Could I have a glass of water?”
“Of course.” Her father went to the tiny bathroom and turned on the tap.
“Do you remember anything at all?” her mother asked.
Her father returned with a white paper cup and a straw. He helped her to sit up and take a drink. When she lay back down on the pillow, a man’s image appeared in her mind as clearly as if he were standing at the foot of the bed.
He wore a black hat and white shirt with a dark vest, and he was strikingly handsome with mesmerizing blue eyes.
“Jessica?”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember anything?”
She began to tremble. Maybe she shouldn’t have swallowed the water so fast. “No. I feel sick. I think I need to....”
Her mother grabbed a silver pan, held it under Jessica’s chin, and she retched into it. When she finished, she sat back on the bed and tried to take deep breaths. “What’s wrong with me?”
Her parents said nothing.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
Her father broke in. “Martha....”
Jessica’s gaze shot toward him. His forehead crinkled with concern.
“Mom, Dad, there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Just try to remember where you’ve been,” her father said. “It’s very important.”
“Why?”
Her mother lowered her gaze for a moment, then looked up again. “Jessica, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I suppose there is no right way to say it. You’re pregnant.”
Good God.
All at once, memories flooded her brain, and she burst into tears, sobbing and laughing at the same time.
“Are you all right?”
She covered her face with her hands, unable to explain why she was so distraught, so grief-stricken, and yet so happy at the same time—about a man whose identity was still a mystery to her.
“Baby, what happened to you?” her father asked.
She shook her head. “I can’t talk about it now. I need time to remember everything, and to understand it. It seems like a dream.”
Her parents looked at each with alarm.
“I just need to be alone for a while,” Jessica said. “I’m tired. I’ll tell you more later, I promise.”
They nodded reluctantly. “We’ll come back after dinner.” Her parents gathered their raincoats and headed for the door.
“Mom? Dad?” Jessica called, just before they left.
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
They both smiled. “We love you, too dear. We’re so glad you’re home.” The door swung shut behind them.
Jessica turned onto her side and stared at the radiator under the window. A bouquet of daisies and pink carnations were set in a vase on the sill, but they did little to elevate her spirits.
She’d never see him again. The man in the black vest.
His name was Truman.
It was all so misty. If only she could remember more…
She was carrying his child, and she would never be able to tell him.
A lingering grief washed over her. Heaven help me.
He died without knowing he was going to be a father.
Jessica lifted her wrist, examined the plastic hospital bracelet with her name on it, then dropped her arm onto the white sheets. Rain pelted against the window and an ambulance siren wailed outside.
For a long time, she lay alone in her hospital bed, longing for the sounds of wagons and the beating of hooves. Then slowly, more memories returned, until she was certain her heart was lost forever. Lost somewhere else in time.
She knew this familiar world couldn’t replace what she’d found there. Her parents couldn’t cure the pain she felt.
Where are you? If there’s a heaven, and you’re there, please wait for me.
With that prayer, she drifted off.
Jessica spent only one day in the hospital after the doctor examined her. He called it a miracle. Considering the damage done to her car, which had been crushed and mangled, it was astounding that she had survived.
“Your star was shining that day,” he said, pressing a cold stethoscope to her back.
Yes. That shiny star crafted of steel....
She had not yet told anyone where she had been. How could she possibly explain that she believed traveled through a doorway in time to the year 1881? She’d sound insane, and maybe she was.
So—after promising to see a therapist to help her remember the forgotten month—Jessica returned home.
As the hours and days passed, and she settled into her familiar routine, it all began to feel like a dream, as if it never really happened.
But it must have happened, she kept telling herself, because she was pregnant.
On the third day, Jessica decided to do some quiet investigating on her own. Her first destination was the State Archives at the Kansas Museum of History.
“Excuse me?” she said, approaching the reference desk. A young woman looked up from her work. Her brown hair and freckles reminded Jessica of a friend she had made—a friend named Wendy. “Do you have new
spapers from the 1800s?”
“Yes. We have most of them on microfilm.”
“Could I look at some?”
“Certainly. I’ll just need you to read our researcher policy, and I’ll need a photo ID.”
A few minutes later, the woman showed Jessica how to find the microfilm roll numbers using the card catalog. “Is there any particular date you’re looking for?”
“I’d like to see June and July of 1881. The Dodge City Chronicle.”
“You’re the second person to come in here for those dates. Are you doing some kind of project together?” The young woman searched for the correct rolls, while Jessica tried to contemplate what she had just said.
There was someone else?
“No, I’m not working with anyone,” she replied. “Do you know who this person was?”
“I don’t know his name, but he was very handsome. He’s been here a few times. He didn’t say what he was working on. Maybe he’s writing a book.”
Jessica’s mind began to sort through some interesting possibilities. Perhaps someone else knew about this doorway through time and was trying to learn more. Maybe someone had followed her back. “You’re sure you don’t know his name?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry.” The young woman handed her the rolls of microfilm, and showed her how to use the readers and make copies. “If there’s anything else you need, let me know, and when you’re finished, please return to rolls to the cart by the microfilm attendant’s desk.”
“Thank you.” Sitting down, Jessica loaded the reel into place, pressed the forward button, and began to search for the proper date.
The papers were slightly out of focus, so she adjusted the knob and continued. Pages and pages of newsprint sailed by, and Jessica stopped it every second or two to check the dates. When she found a June headline, she stopped and refocused her eyes. Her stomach flipped over with disbelief.
JUNEBUG JESS KILLS LEFT HAND LOU.
Jessica slumped back in the chair. It was true. It really happened. She suddenly felt weak and dizzy.
How would she explain this? No one was ever going to believe it.
Sitting forward, she adjusted the knob on the machine, skipped ahead a month, and searched for the date Truman was shot. It was beyond hope, she knew, but a part of her prayed that it hadn’t happened the way she remembered. Maybe, just maybe....
A Time For Love: (A Time Travel Romance) (Dodge City Brides Book 3) Page 21
