Then she understood Camisha’s disbelief. This was no colonial artifact; it was a section of a modern newspaper from the year 1994. And in the center of it was this headline:
Three girls found living in squalor
Just below the story—even larger than the story—was an arresting photograph. Three children, looking exactly like they were—hungry, terrified orphans, their faces smudged with dirt. They looked like the poor rural children Marley had gone to school with while growing up: clothing worn, bodies thin with hunger, faces as apt as not to be dirty, their parents more focused on finding their next fix than caring for their children.
Except Juliana’s. Rachel had kept her as polished and neat as a new penny, neglecting herself to care for her sisters.
Tears overwhelmed Marley at the memories of those days—when Rachel had sheltered them both, just as she was doing in the photograph, holding Baby Juliana tightly with one arm, holding Marley with the other, her body awkwardly bent around her as if to shield her from the threat of the strangers surrounding them.
“Don’t you worry, you little sweeties. Mama and Daddy will come for us, soon.” Rachel had said, how many times, during those terrifying days and frightening nights of endless darkness. Nothing was darker than an abandoned farmhouse in the country at night. Darkness had come to terrify Marley in those days.
The tears that ran silently down her cheeks came from a source she couldn’t identify. She thought she’d mourned those days of unending loss. Her stern, bookish father, her whimsical fairy of a mother, murdered in an unspeakable act that only Rachel had witnessed, about which Marley still didn’t know all the details. As always, she had taken care of her sisters, stopping Marley from venturing into the room when she was afraid of the dark in the closet where she’d huddled, holding little Julie in her lap.
Then, returning to tell them they were going camping, that Mama and Daddy were hurt and their girls had to go away so they could get better.
She would not see Stonefield again, until she returned to the home with Nan. Alone. Her sisters, gone—and where, she did not know.
And then, the rest followed. She quickly read the article. Nothing she didn’t already know.
“Do you remember your childhood, Marley? Because Rachel didn’t. For years, she blocked out every single bit of her life before she was adopted by Max Sheppard.”
And Marley was so consumed by the memory of her grief that the name Max Sheppard didn’t register in her memory. At least, not yet.
She nodded, trying to swallow down the tears as Camisha stroked her with her free arm. Shonny grew quiet, reaching over to pat her face, his usually joyful face serious with sadness for her weeping. She smiled at him and kissed his cheek. “I’m okay, Shonny,” she said, but could not even then stop her tears.
“I remember everything except that day. When my parents were … you know. And there are details about being separated from Rachel and Juliana that I can’t get straight. I’ve forgotten most of them. I just still don’t understand how they wouldn’t let Nan keep us all together. You know how those systems are. They’ll do almost anything to keep siblings together. Nan’s always told me it was because she couldn’t afford to …”
Abruptly, the women looked at each other. “She was lying,” Camisha said.
Now, anger overtook Marley’s tears. The rage boiled up within her grief, and, noticing Shonny, she bit her lip and turned away, trying to force it all down.
“Mother?”
Marley looked over her shoulder. Parks was headed their way, and Camisha waved at her.
Hastily, she wiped at her tears, but it was hopeless, and she walked a few feet away, staring at the faded photograph of her and her sisters.
Camisha sent Shonny off with Parks, calling, “We’ll be there in a moment, dear. Keep an eye on him and make sure he eats something. He’s going to be cranky soon if he doesn’t.”
A few moments later, Camisha touched her shoulders, embracing her as if to impart her own steely inner strength.
“I believe you were angry?” she prompted her, and Marley gave a listless chuckle.
“What’s the point of anger, now? It’s all gone. Rachel and Juliana have already grown up with other families, and our parents are still dead.”
“Marley, we don’t know the whole truth yet. I knew Hannah when she was a young girl. I don’t know anything about her before I met her, but I can guarantee you she was born in this century. How did she wind up raising you in the twenty-first?”
“I don’t care. I never want to see her again.”
“We don’t know her reasons for what she did, or even if she did anything wrong. Most people do the best they can—they just don’t know they can do better.”
Marley turned to her and hugged her, wearied by her grief.
“Where did this newspaper come from, anyway?” she asked when she leaned back.
“I found it in the bedroom of the man who adopted Rachel, after the tragedy. It’s a long story. I found it with a locket—the locket was empty, though; it had no portraits in it.”
Marley reached again for the necklace. She withdrew the pillbox and snapped it open, letting the small portrait fall out into her hand. She again showed it to Camisha. “Can you guess who this is?”
“I don’t need to guess. It’s Rachel. I knew her from … well, Marley, I knew her from the time you lost her, until the time I lost her.”
The tears shone in Marley’s eyes as she closed the locket. “Then if I had to lose her, I’m glad she found you.”
“You know, I’ve learned that grief does pass, and in it one can find the seeds of joy. And now, the joy I find is that, finally, I have a friend, a dear friend, who knows the truth! I can tell you everything. I can explain it all. I’ve told Ashanti, but still at times I wonder if he thinks I’m crazy. Then I tell him something I know will happen in the next year, and that shuts him up for a while.”
The women laughed, and something about Camisha’s utter joy at life crystallized in Marley’s memory. And she knew why Camisha had been familiar to her. She had seen her, that last day she’d spent in Williamsburg; walking along the street, laughing with Rachel.
And she remembered looking into the other woman’s eyes and seeing her own sister—and the woman looking away without recognition.
“Now I know why I’ve had a feeling I knew you, since I first met you.”
“Because of the amount of Rachel I have in me?”
“Perhaps. But I saw you in Williamsburg—with Rachel. You were with an older couple. Rachel looked right at me, but then she didn’t remember she even had a sister.”
Camisha gave a sound of exasperation, then laughed.
“What?”
“I started to ask you why you didn’t say hello. Or at least, see you later.”
Together, the women laughed and Camisha turned away from the shared past of her friendship with Marley’s sister, and into the new joy of knowing Marley.
Chapter Thirty-One
As they walked back toward the others, Camisha spoke, with a gravity Marley had never seen in her. Not even when the woman had discussed the deaths of her children. “You know you can’t discuss this with anyone.”
“Not even Bronson? I don’t think I can’t not speak of it with him. He’ll ask me where you and I have been, for one thing, and I would have to lie even to answer that.”
Camisha hesitated. “Ashanti knows the truth, but he would never admit it to anyone, including you. He’s too fearful of the truth. I should not be in this time—neither should you. But fate—or, as I believe, God—has allowed it for reasons beyond our understanding. I choose to do small acts of good that can’t change the tides of history, but that might help the lives of ordinary people. I never thought about it, but I guess it’s the same kind of thing I used to do as a pro bono lawyer. Just try to help brighten one corner of the world. Sure helped prepare me for the life I live now.
“I should never, for example, attempt to persuade Th
omas Jefferson that he must include the famed slavery clause in the Declaration of Independence. If he did do that, as much as I might like it as a modern woman, perhaps the very disagreements that make our country so unique would destroy us before we ever started. And these colonies would remain under British rule forever. And, yes, it is more important that this country be born than that its pedigree be unimpeachable.”
“But—I can’t tell Bronson?” she asked again. “He could keep the secret as well as Ashanti. They’re secret agents for George Washington, for Pete’s sake.”
“It isn’t a matter of his trustworthiness, it’s a matter of his allegiances. First of all, you have to remember how you felt when you first realized the truth.”
“I thought I was crazy. Or maybe in a coma.”
“Exactly. And Bronson’s only confidant, as far as I can tell, for his entire life, has been Rashall. By the way, I heard the boys mocking Hastings, but Ray was named after Rachel, like I was named after my father. His name was actually Cameron.”
“Are you like him?”
“I don’t know. He was a police officer, and he died when I was just a little girl—I don’t remember him. Anyway, that’s why I named him Rashall. Most all the time, I called her Rae. And those boys have the sort of friendship Rachel and I had.”
“So you don’t think I should trust him with the truth?”
“Marley—why do you suppose your grandmother called you that, by the way? Rachel told me the family called you Merri. Well, no matter. If you and Bronson marry, you can swear him to secrecy. That may be sticky, though. He and Ray are joined at the ear. You tell one, you’re telling the other. We know Ray can be trusted, but you have to learn to deal with that relationship, and that’s what I mean by allegiances. Their brotherhood—it’s rare in men. No doubt the result of saving each other’s necks on multiple occasions. Always understand that if he’s forced to choose between you, he will choose you, as I chose Ashanti when I remained in this time. But, as Ashanti can tell you, there will always be a Rachel-sized hole in me. And if you can avoid that with our boys, that will be God’s handiwork.”
Then she remembered the old article she’d read, her last day at work in Williamsburg—of three people disappearing through this very entryway, and a black woman named Ruth screaming and running away. She explained it to Camisha.
“If that’s a time portal, I think Ruth might have seen someone travel in time. Has she never mentioned it?”
“No. I think she might be too afraid of it—you know, superstitiously.”
“Let’s face it, you couldn’t blame anyone for being skeptical here. But who did she see, I wonder? I forget the date of the article, but it was long after the fire.”
They mused over this. By the time they had begun walking back toward the group, Marley knew the secrets of Rachel’s life, and her own, that had eluded her for so long. She knew where her scar had come from, she knew about her sisters, her own past, and how Rachel had grown up. There were still many questions, many missing pieces. But many, too, had been filled in.
“Camisha, don’t you miss the conveniences of modern life?”
“Don’t you?” A moment later, she held up a finger. “Think of being with Bronson before you answer. Perhaps on the ship, where I know conveniences are at a minimum.”
Marley nodded. “I see what you mean. A price I would gladly pay, if I were given the choice. But the surprising truth is, there are many—many—aspects of modern life I don’t miss. The constant distractions of technology stopping us from living in the moment, the needless and endless ‘improvements’ of that same technology that only further serve to distance us from one another.”
“Amen, sister. You tell me, when I see my rear end get just a little bit softer, whether I wish my husband had a smartphone where he’d be in there every day looking for Kim Kardashian’s fake butt, or some little twinkie in the next town where he could … ugh.” She shuddered.
Marley laughed out loud. “Fake, really? You think so?”
Camisha smirked at her. “Child, we don’t care! We don’t have to worry about that! Look at that Bronson of yours. That face of his? Him young enough to be my son, and I’ve had to shut down shameful thoughts of that boy. In the twentieth century, he’d be doing something stupid like designing web pages, and he’d have silly women throwing their silly selves at him every day, thinking that makes them empowered. He’d be useless as a human being.”
She shook her head and went on.
“No, ma’am. There are things I miss. Not a day passes that I don’t miss my best girlfriend and pray for her and her family. And seeing her, seeing her girls—it did this old heart good, I tell you that.
“Not a day passes that I don’t miss the conveniences, the inventions, most definitely the medicine. When … when my little Martin died of smallpox, I took that opportunity to inoculate the other children, the way I’d read about when I was in school. Abigail Adams will be doing the same to her own children in the coming months; I was fortunate to know about that twenty years ago. Ashanti was terrified—he doted on our children, and he didn’t want to lose another. He’d survived it as a child, but he lost his mother and his sister to it.
“But our time runs short, Marley, and we must continue later. I will tell, you, though, even with all of that—living with ignorance in a world where the lie of race was created to control those who can’t stand up to the powerful—all of it is the price I pay to enjoy the life God meant me to live, and do the work he meant for me to do. I do not change the world, I just try to improve life where I believe I can.”
They returned to the table, where Godfrey Hastings was now sitting alone, being entertained by one of the children. The little girl found his embroidered waistcoat endlessly fascinating, her tiny fingers patting a bird here, following the braided cuff there.
Marley sat beside him, and Camisha, across from him. “You will never believe who Marley just met. Shonny, too, but he’s always meeting imaginary people.” Her face went comically serious. “Maybe I better take that kid a little more seriously. Well, maybe if he brings up his imaginary friend Kanye.”
Hastings gazed back at her. “I take it Mr. Kanye is a luminary of the distant future? One who can glide through the air on the power of his mental acumen or his dashing demeanor?”
Camisha made a face. “Well. I don’t know about that. Maybe on the power of his ego.”
The women laughed.
“Marley met Rachel!”
He nodded, responding as if she’d named the mistress of a neighboring plantation. “I see. And how is she?”
“Happy. Still as trim and pretty as she was thirty years ago. She was with Emily, who has a little girl of her own.”
“And did she call Merrilea by that detestable sobriquet?”
“Of course not. She knows her as Merri.”
“And who do you think garbled the young lady’s name beyond recognition?”
Camisha and Marley exchanged a glance. “Hannah.”
“The same person who chose to call her Hastings, rather than Miller, her given name. As proud as I am of my family’s name, I despise it being associated with whatever nefarious activity she cloaked.”
“My last name is Miller?”
“Your father’s name was Miller. Your mother was Cassandra Hastings. Hannah used the name to conceal the truth from you. Had you known this, I presume you could have found Rachel quite easily.”
Marley absorbed this. So at least part of the story Nan had told in Thomas Trelawney’s kitchen was true. Her father was Robert Miller, not Robert Hastings.
“No wonder I never could find anything about him on any basic web search.”
“I’ve no idea what constitutes a web nor a spider in the twentieth century, but I gather it has to do with the spinning of all of mankind’s knowledge.”
“That’s actually right,” Marley said. “The only thing I still don’t understand is why Nan couldn’t take on Rachel and Juliana, as well as me. An
d I wish I knew where Juliana was.”
Hastings straightened. “Yes. Well, perhaps our dear Camisha here has stored in her eidetic memory the recipe for a truth libation of some sort. The amount of knowledge stuffed in that head makes me wonder if she ate of forbidden fruit.”
Camisha pointed. “Now how’d you know that word?”
“Fruit? Oh, truth libation? I fabricated it. It runs in the family, you know.”
“No, eidetic. In the twentieth century, we refer to photographic memory to mean essentially the same thing.”
“And when did eidetic enter the collective vocabulary?”
She looked to the side, thinking. “Not sure.”
“I see. Well, as soon as the dictionary is invented, perhaps you can get back to me.”
Marley laughed out loud, loving this little man. He looked at her with a merry smile that she suspected was rare. It held a bit of a guilty look to it, as if he himself knew that smiling at his own wit spoiled it. Or as if he were still a schoolboy, one who’d been scolded for that wit many decades before.
“For now, all this unthinkably luxurious feast, including the turkey, has made me sleepy. I dare not conjecture why for fear of blurting an anachronism and being branded a time jockey myself.”
Camisha threw back her head, laughing. “You know good and well I told you about tryptophan, that time we visited back twenty-five years ago. It was the first time we had Thanksgiving dinner down here—and it was when I met Hannah. That was when I first told you about the time portal in the ruins—”
She stopped, remembering. “That’s how Hannah knew about it. She overheard me telling you. She was in the house that day—in fact, when I walked out of your office, she was loitering in the hallway. She pretended to be dusting. I knew I couldn’t trust that woman.”
Hastings sighed, then patted Marley’s knee. “My dear, could you fetch your young man, so he might accompany me home? I believe he and the Adams men lurk near the wooded line over there, watching us, smoking those dreadful cigars.”
Immortal (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Book 2) Page 26
