by Sable Hunter
And with that – he was gone.
“Great! I’m such a coward.” She walked to the stove to stir a pot of chicken and dumplings. “I don’t know any more than I knew to start with.”
…Reno almost ran to the barn. How odd it felt to be fleeing from the one person he loved above all else. And he did love her more than anyone. More than his brother, more than Ela – more than the whole fucking planet put together. This sure knowledge was the reason for his decision. Only he couldn’t tell her. Not yet. He had to be sure before he offered her the world, then had to jerk it back and break her heart.
“Kota! Are you here?”
“I’m mucking the stalls. Grab your shovel.”
“Just what I need,” he mumbled – but he found a shovel. “At your service.”
He nodded at Traveler’s stall. “Do your buddy’s digs.”
“I have no idea what you just said.” But he got the basic idea. Without quibbling, he set to work shoveling horse manure. “Journey asked me if I still wanted to get married.”
“She senses your uncertainty.”
“Not about marrying her she doesn’t. I want her to be my wife more than anything.”
Kota worked methodically. Shovel. Toss. Shovel. Toss. “You need to talk to her.”
“I can’t. Not yet. She’ll try to talk me out of it.”
“You can’t make a decision like this without talking to her. You’ll destroy her trust. She’ll blame herself. No marriage will survive such a blow.”
Reno knew Kota was right. He just needed to make sure he could live with his decision.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Anybody home?”
Journey almost jumped for joy. “Lou!” This was one of those times that she needed her best friend. “Come in. Come in.” She ran to help her in. “How are you?”
“Oh, I’m good.” They hugged. “I’m glad you’re not mad at me anymore.”
“I was never mad at you, Lou. I just wanted you to say what I wanted to hear.”
“I understand.” She took a moment to kneel and greet the animals. “These kittens are growing. I think they’ve doubled in size since you sent me pictures.”
“They are getting big. He won’t admit it, but Reno’s going to miss them when he goes.” She shook her head to dispel bad thoughts. “Let’s put your things in your room, then we’ll visit.”
Once that was done, they took a seat at the kitchen table. “I like your hair,” Journey admired Lou’s new cut.
She patted the shorter locks. “I wanted to look nice for the wedding.” Raising her eyebrows, she giggled. “I’m lying. I wanted to look sexy for that fundraiser. I’m hoping there’ll be some eligible bachelors to chase.”
“I think there are some. They should wear identifying sashes. It would make things easier for you.” Journey stirred her coffee, then jumped to her feet. “You’ve got to see my dress!”
Lou smiled as her friend scurried away. “Be careful. You’ll fall. You’re pregnant now, remember?”
“How could I forget!” Journey yelled from the back. “Reno reminds me a dozen times a day.”
“He loves you, Jo.”
“Yes, he does. I know he does.” Even with his vexing behavior, she couldn’t deny he loved her. “Look at this.” She held up the dress as she moved closer to Lou. “Isn’t the lace exquisite?”
“Oh, yea. Beautiful. Where did you find it?”
“A little vintage shop in Fredericksburg.”
“It’s perfect. You’re going to be stunning in it. Where’s the wedding going to be?”
Journey pointed in the window. “In the rose garden; if the weather permits. You and Aunt Myra will be our only witnesses. We were going to ask a Justice of the Peace to marry us, but there’s no way we can get a marriage license with Reno having no ID. Instead, Kota, as a shaman of the Apache tribe, will perform the ceremony. I know Reno wishes Clay could’ve married us, but he wouldn’t hear of waiting. Plus, I wanted Aunt Myra to have the memory of seeing me get married.” She folded her arms on the table. “Before she left, she cried because she’s going to miss out on so many things. I told her I’d bury a lot of mementos and pictures so she could find them.” Journey rubbed her forehead. “I guess that’ll work, won’t it?”
Lou blew a breath from the side of her mouth. “The more I learn about this stuff, the less I know. I think it would be worth a try. One thing I’m going to do, as a test of sorts, is write down everything about the past that I think might change because of Reno’s actions. You know, like Cole’s execution, and the massacre. If he is successful, I don’t know that we’ll retain the memory of how it was before.”
Journey made a face. “Wow. That’s complicated.” Her eyes widened. “Will you remember me?”
“Sure. Of course. I think so. My supposition is that anything we’ve lived through we’ll retain, but if something changed in the past, we’ll only know the result of the change.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “Truly, we have nothing to rely on to tell us what will happen. Even with all those stories I told you, there’s no hard data. Most will deny this has ever happened before. Hell, most will deny Reno’s journey ever took place. They’ll call us liars.”
“I know you’re going to want evidence. How will you gather it?”
“I’m working on some ideas. That’s one of the things I talked to Dr. Sculler about.”
“I know Reno will be anxious to talk to you. Did you learn anything new when you talked to Dr. Sculler?”
Lou patted her purse. “Not really. He did show more interest this time. I think he’s worried I’m onto something and he’s going to miss out. Big time.”
“That’s good enough for him.” Journey laughed, then soothed her hand over the surface of the table.
“I guess I can see his point. So much of the research these days is on machines like Tipler Cylinders and the Hadron Collider. Yet, even with all that technology, there’s been no success. A true time machine is still in the realm of science fiction. Fortunately, what we’re dealing with is a natural phenomenon, not a vehicle with dials and controls. And speaking of practical, I did bring the gemstones Kota asked for. I also determined the full moon will emerge at 7:01 p.m. on the 18th.”
“I’m totally invested in this, but it’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I’ll soon be going back in time. If I hadn’t lived through this whole thing with Reno, I’d consider it to be a fairy tale.”
“I don’t believe you.” Lou shook her head and took Journey’s hand. “In some ways, I think you wished him here. Conjured him like a genie from a lamp.”
“Maybe. I wished hard enough if that counts. Still…time travel. It’s mind-boggling. Am I going to fit in to this new world? Will going through the portal be painful?”
Lou nodded, her fingers trailing through the ends of her own hair. “I can certainly understand your questions. Most scientists who give any credence to time travel at all, consider going to the past to be impossible. They site paradoxes as the problem. Of course, Reno has only come forward to the future, he hasn’t gone back in time yet. So, all of this is conjecture.”
“It’s got to work. If it doesn’t, it’ll kill him. He’ll never be able to live with the guilt.”
“Time will tell.” She took Journey’s hands. “If it does work, I’m certainly going to miss you. I won’t lie and say that being part of this event could be the opportunity of a lifetime for me, but losing my best friend is a high price to pay.”
“You’re not losing me.” Even as she said the words, Journey knew it wasn’t true. She would be gone. The same as dead and gone.
“Oh, I’ll know you’ll be out there…somewhere. Time is tenseless. The future and past are no less real than the present.”
All of a sudden, Journey began to cry.
“What’s wrong?” Lou asked with concern. “What did I say?”
Journey waved her hands. “I’m going to miss you too, if I go.”
“What do you mean
if you go? I thought it was all settled.”
In a rush of emotion, Journey confessed everything. Reno’s concern and how he was acting. “He won’t discuss our leaving. We can talk about anything else in the world, but he won’t go there. It’s like he’s in denial about it. I don’t understand.”
“Well…I know he was concerned for your safety before you found out you were pregnant. I can only imagine how worried he is now.”
“Oh, hell. See? I know you’re voicing his concerns. I just wish he’d talk to me about it. This is a risk I’m willing to take.”
“Maybe he’s not so willing.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” She got up to pace the room. “I don’t think I could survive without him. I’ll go crazy if he goes without me.”
“Journey, calm down. Remember the baby.”
She wheeled on her friend. “Don’t you start! I’m pregnant, not sick.”
“Yes, but they used to call it a ‘delicate condition’ for a reason.”
She ignored Lou, her mind reeling with questions. “At one time, he said he’d come back to me. Just as soon as he did what he needed to do, he’d turn around and come back.”
When Lou said nothing, Journey rushed over to sit next to her. “Tell me that would be a possibility.”
Lou shrugged. “I told you. I can’t be sure of anything.”
“I know.” She played with the gold band on her finger. “That’s why I’ve got to go when he goes. If something happens to him, I want it to happen to me too.”
“Journey, the baby…”
“The baby is precious to me.” She touched the place where it lay beneath her heart. “Very precious.” She lifted her eyes to Lou. “But not as precious as Reno.”
When Lou didn’t look shocked, Journey leaned forward. “Is that a sin, Lou? A betrayal of my motherly instincts?”
“No. I don’t think so. You’re one of the lucky women who have found the love of her life. You don’t want to lose him. I can’t blame you for that.”
Lou’s empathy calmed Journey down a bit. “I still need to make him talk to me. Earlier, I was going to pin him down. I ended up chickening out. Instead of asking him if he wanted me to go back in time, I asked him if he still wanted to get married?”
“And what did he say?”
She stuck her tongue out at Lou. “Well, the wedding is still on. He was adamant that he wanted to marry me more than anything.”
Lou shook her finger at Journey. “You need to stop doubting your man. You’ve got one in a million there. Even if he wasn’t a miracle from the past, he’d be any girl’s dreamboat.”
Journey smiled. “You’re right about that. I need to count my blessings as Aunt Myra would say?”
“When’s your aunt coming home?”
Journey looked out the window. “Today, supposedly. Uncle Myles is still hanging in there. I know she wants to come home, but she wants to be with him too. You can’t really complain because it takes a long time for a person to die.”
“No,” Lou agreed. “That would be a bit crass.”
“When he’s lucid, they’re enjoying their time together. Still, I expect her any moment. She would’ve called if she’d been delayed.”
Journey no more than finished her sentence when Myra drove up.
From a distance, Reno saw her and came forward to help with the luggage.
“Oh, there’s my boy. How are you Reno?”
“I’m good, Aunt Myra. How’s your brother?”
“He appreciated you taking the time to answer those questions for him. I bet he read your email a dozen times.”
“I enjoyed the process. It made me think. Sharing my memories of Saul and the children was cathartic for me. Saul didn’t record everything in that journal of his, and now those memories won’t be lost in time.”
“Oh, he put those answers in a safe place – right by the Bixby letter.”
“Hi, Aunt Myra!”
Seeing Journey, she hurried on ahead, leaving Reno to bring up the rear. As he followed the older woman up the stairs, he spotted Lou. He gave her a nod of greeting, then when the opportunity arose, he asked to speak with her.
“Of course.”
Since Myra and her great-niece were visiting, Reno and Lou went for a walk. “Thanks for this. I just wanted a few moments to speak to you in private.”
“Oh? I don’t normally keep secrets from my friend – especially those told to me by her fiancé. She’d kill me.”
Reno laughed at Lou’s candidness. “I can imagine. We don’t want to incur the wrath of Journey, but this is important. And for her own good.”
“You’re still worried about her going through the portal.”
“Of course, I am. I love her. Like you and Kota have both reiterated, we cannot be sure of anything. I may be flung somewhere out in space. Journey was my anchor to this time. Will Cole or Clay be enough of an anchor to pull me back to when I left? I don’t know. What if we get separated? What if something happens to the baby? There’s a chance this pregnancy could be dangerous for her. With medical advancements, she has a good chance here. The past doesn’t offer those types of assurances.”
Lou sighed, folding her arms over her chest as she strode beside him. “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“Too much probably. I keep changing my mind. If only there was a way to know for sure what’s best.”
“Everyone who ever made a hard decision has wished to know for sure. Unless you know a psychic, I can’t help you.”
“A psychic, huh?” He thought a minute. “Journey told me one of the McCoy women or their friends was a pretty famous psychic. Who was that?”
“Oh, I don’t know those people. I was kidding, by the way.”
Reno chuckled. “Yea, I guess I’m grasping at straws.”
They walked up to the paddock fence and looked out at the horses grazing in the field. “Do you have any new insights for me?”
“There are a couple of things.”
“Great. I want to hear anything you’ve got to tell me.”
“I won’t say it’s good news, but I think you have a right to know, or at least consider the point. Now, you know by now that nothing we speak of is anything more than hypothesis. You are the authority on this subject. The rest of us are dreamers – more or less. We might use scientific theories and principles, but in the end, it’s still a guess. The great minds of the early 1900’s vowed airplanes would never fly. Similar great minds insisted we’d never travel in space. So, these naysayers about time travel may well fall into the trap of those who couldn’t fathom the things mankind is capable of.” She waved her hands as if discounting everything she’d just said and almost fell off the fence. If Reno hadn’t put out a hand to catch her, she would’ve landed on her rear. “Thanks. Regardless, I must tell you that it’s the consensus of the scientific community that time travel to the future is a possibility, but time travel to the past is not.”
“What? I don’t buy that.”
“They also say that if one were able to travel to the past that events cannot be changed.”
“How do they know?” He paused for an answer, when he didn’t get one – he answered his own question. “They don’t know, do they?”
“No. Or course not. I’ve been told recently by my esteemed colleagues that my opinion in the matter is an uneducated one, but I tend to agree with you. I feel that if you change the past, it will be like a series of dominoes falling. So, the future would just fall into place. For example, if you go back in time and kill Hitler, then return to this age, World War II and the Holocaust will have never happened, and no one would know the difference. Millions of lives would’ve been saved, and their descendants would’ve lived full and happy lives – or not as the case may be.”
“Journey took me to the Nimitz Museum, but my knowledge of that war is sparse.”
“It’s mind-boggling when you think about it,” Lou continued on with her thought process. “We don’t really k
now how many times that’s happened, do we? The past might’ve been changed a thousand times. We might all wake up in a new world regularly. Maybe that’s what dreams are all about.”
“No offense, but I think I can rely on Ela’s sight more than I can modern science.”
“You’re probably correct in doing so.” She laughed as she stepped off the fence. “Either way, I’m ready for anything and everything. We’ve got a lot to look forward to. A wedding. A handsome man beauty contest. And a bon voyage party like no other.”
* * *
“Thanks for bringing this, Aunt Myra. Reno is going to love it.” She stared at the beautiful gold pocket watch. “I had no idea this even existed.”
“Neither did I. Myles had it put back for safe keeping. Our father gave it to him. Isn’t it amazing?”
“It is.” She read the inscription with tears in her eyes. For Saul. Reno would be proud of you. Love, Tess. “This is the perfect wedding present. I’ll give it to him tonight. I know he’ll want to wear it to the wedding.”
“Wonderful. I’m glad he had it to give to you.” She walked to the mirror to check her lipstick. “Oh, Kota’s coming for dinner.”
“Oh?” She giggled. “I can’t wait to see you two together.”
Myra waggled her finger at Journey. “Don’t embarrass me or I’ll tell Reno about the time you groped that salesclerk in the men’s department store.”
“Don’t you dare. You know I thought he was a mannequin. For as long as we were shopping, he didn’t move a muscle. His skin was absolutely perfect. And the store was dimly lit!”
“Yea, you thought he was well-endowed too. That’s why you copped a feel.”
“I did not! I was checking out the fabric of his trousers.”
Aunt Myra shook her head. “So, you say now.”
Journey gave up. “I’ll go set the table and finish up supper. You should take time to bond with the kittens.”
“I can’t believe you foisted those little monsters off on me. What must my pups think?”
“The pups love them and so will you. Just wait and see.” When Myra didn’t say anything, Journey glanced at her to find her crying. “What’s wrong?”
