Mom warned her that little girls who told lies were sometimes taken away from their families and watched by doctors to find out what was the matter with them. Serena Larkin had normally been a sensitive, loving mother and Stacia had finally come to understand that she’d only tried to scare her daughter into compliant behavior because she was frightened of the very thing she warned her daughter against.
Serena had been afraid her daughter would be taken from her and so she’d built a wall around the girl, bidding her to keep silent, and giving her little of the freedom usually accorded as a little girl grew into a bobbysoxer and then into a young woman.
She’d been guarded like a hot house plant because her mother thought something was wrong inside her mind.
She closed her eyes now. Instinctively she knew that was also what her husband feared. A pragmatic, practical man he loved her so dearly that he would close her in a box to keep her safe, guarding her like a child who would wither if exposed to the harsh winds of reality.
Something of her own love edged away at the thought. Could she care for a man who did not respect the person she actually was?
“Hart?” The question came from another woman named Serena, Serena Hudson, her mother’s granddaughter named for her. “Are you all right? You look as though you’ve had a shock.”
Hart glanced past her to her granddaughter. Bobbi was an uncanny child, an old soul, part of the haunting that had made her life different.
“Why didn’t he want you to know?” Bobbi asked, her childish face set in a scowl.
Curiously she wanted to excuse him. “He wants to protect me,” she said.
“From who?” Bobbi asked.
“From me,” Hart answered simply. Her legs were shaking as she stood. “Please excuse me,” she said and without looking back went to the bedroom where she knew her husband would have gone seeking privacy from his unwanted guests.
She stepped into the room, closing the door firmly behind her. He lay on his stomach, his face pressed into the pillows on their bed. He looked unutterably weary, but she knew this couldn’t wait. They had to work through this or everything would be over for them.
“Alistair,” she said.
He didn’t move, but somehow she knew he was only pretending to be asleep. The last thing he wanted was a confrontation with her. She waited, knowing the power of patient silence.
Finally he stirred, than turned over, his face an inexpressive mask. She remembered that native Americans had once been known for their ability to keep their faces from showing their emotions. He wasn’t revealing anything of his feelings.
Well, she came from a different cultural background. The members of her family had been given to loud arguments and open displays of crying, rage and even affection. Her parents had kissed and hugged them, even as they had exerted their own stern discipline.
She absolutely could not stand cold disapproval or anger held in reserve as though it built up value by being kept inside.
She went over to sit on the end of the bed. “Alistair,” she said, “we must talk.”
“Sure,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”
“First of all, I want you to tell me about today?”
“What about today?”
She drew in a deep breath, irritated by his avoidance. “I saw the paper,” she said. “You failed in your attempt to burn it before I could see it. Bobbi fished it out.”
His forehead deepened into a frown. “What’s wrong with that kid?”
This was a side issue. He meant to lead the conversation in any direction other than the one she intended to confront. “Why did you try to burn the paper?”
He sat up, resting against the headboard of the bed. “No reason. I’d read it. No point leaving it laying around.”
Her lips tightened. “It was today’s paper. You’d just brought it home. You always leave it for me to read.”
“You were busy with Serena and Bobbi.”
“Alistair.” She turned around to face him, feeling the soft mattress give under her motion. “You didn’t want me to see it.”
“I thought it would be better if you heard from me what had happened today. You’ve had a lot to upset you and you’ve been worried about Jeffers.”
“It’s not like you found his body. Just his jumpsuit. At least that’s what the story said.”
“I was more concerned that you’d be disturbed by the bald report of his crime. The newspaper didn’t soft peddle the details.”
She nodded. “It was hard to read. I still find it impossible to believe that Mr. Jeffers did such a terrible thing.”
This time he was silent, letting her draw her own conclusions. “I just wish we could find him.”
“Me too. Before he hurts someone else.”
She could almost have laughed at the idea of that gentle old man harming anyone if she hadn’t just read that article. True, people did change over a lifetime and his life spent in prison might have taught him more of evil than good. For the first time she wavered just a little in her opinion of Nolan Jeffers.
“No matter,” she said. “What I wanted to talk to you about was this attempt you’re making to shelter me. I’m approaching my twenty fifth birthday and in my right mind. Don’t treat me like I’m a child.”
“Hart, you know you’re twenty six,” he reminded her gently. “You’ll be twenty seven.”
She stared at him until his face reddened. She’d forgotten that Hart was two years older than herself.
“Surely you’ve put that nonsense behind you. You can’t still imagine you were Stacia Larkin back in the ‘40s in old Medicine Stick.”
She closed her eyes. “You were there that night, Alistair. You saw Stacia and you knew she was me.”
“I was distraught. I didn’t know what was happening except I couldn’t find you and was scared to death at the thought of what might be happening to you.”
So there it was, said right out. He’d admitted the reality of her beliefs that night, but since then he’d managed to dismiss that conviction. He’d convinced himself that he’d been delusional. That was easier than believing that the strange happenings Hart had reported could be true.
That was it. She couldn’t go on with the marriage.
She got to her feet, but he must have seen something of her resolution in her expression because he leapt up and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her to him for a fierce kiss.
For a moment she yielded, giving in to the passion he induced in her. They grappled in a desperate embrace, then she struggled, managing to free herself from the superior strength in his arms and body because he allowed her to do so.
“Don’t leave, Hart,” he pleaded with quiet dignity. “You’re everything to me.”
She met his gaze. “Alistair,” she said in a broken voice. “You don’t even know who I am.”
When she got back to the living room, she found Serena and Bobbi sitting quietly, apparently watching an infomercial. Obviously they didn’t even know what was on the screen in front of them, but were just pretending not to be aware of the tension in the household.
Hart waited until they went to bed, then got blankets from the hall closet and went to sleep on the sofa. Sometime in the night she heard Alistair leave the house, but told herself it was only another sheriff’s department emergency and went back to sleep.
Chapter Ten
Luckily he had the ability to compartmentalize his thinking. It was the only way he’d survived, first as a deputy, then as the duly elected sheriff of Wichita County, considering that most of those he served were long time acquaintances, even friends, so that deaths or lives gone wrong always struck in a personal way.
Now he left the house, moving quietly past his sleeping wife who had chosen to abandon their mutual bed to rest on an uncomfortable sofa, and slip from his sorrow and anger over the state of affairs between them into work mode even as he went out the door.
It was just past midnight as he spun onto the highway, emotions
heated despite his resolve, and drove toward little Mountainside. Another citizen had reported seeing Nolan Jeffers and he intended to be personally involved in checking this call.
He wouldn’t think about Hart. He wouldn’t think about the two of them, alone in their house, together in their bed. He felt as though he’d been given a glimpse of paradise, then shut out.
With vague plans of maybe booking a room for herself, Hart led the way along the confusing back roads toward Medicine Stick Lodge where Serena had agreed to a couple of days stay. Bobbi had chosen to ride with Hart rather than with her grandmother, but she knew better than to be flattered. She was quite sure Bobbi simply wanted to avoid recriminations from Serena for as long as she could, having already been thoroughly scolded by phone this morning in a long call that had involved both her parents.
Hart got the feeling that the family was not accustomed to direct challenges from the girl. She guessed Bobbi had been good at getting her own way without causing too many disturbances.
It was a skill she wished she possessed, she thought wistfully, thinking of Alistair. But no, there would be no games between them. They must work things out or go their separate ways. The very thought of the latter made her heart hurt.
“I talked Granny into staying a few days,” Hart was saying. “So you’ve got to help me, Hart.”
“Help you?” Hart parried. “How can I do that?”
“You know. Tell me how you deal with it?”
“Deal with what?” she continued to evade, looking closely both ways as she pulled out on to the busier highway. Not that busy meant anything in terms of the traffic Bobbi was probably accustomed to seeing out in southern California, but they got fairly steady traffic through here as this was a main roadway down to Texas. Today there seemed to be an especially active flow of trucks so she zipped on, adjusting quickly to the higher speed and watching that Serena had followed her.
Oh, Lord, no! With everything going on, she’d forgotten. She hadn’t meant to drive again, particularly not with a passenger in the car. And now she was sandwiched in between two huge, fast-moving trucks and in the corner of her eye she was seeing a tiny fleck of light that shouldn’t be there.
She was being looped back in, caught in the past and if she slipped from her body in these circumstances, leaving it to unconsciousness, she and Bobbi and maybe others on the roadway might die.
“No! No!” she shouted and, for perhaps the first time, fought the transfer that would send her back into the past. “Hang on, hang on,” she told herself and trying to ignore the tiny light that grew larger in her peripheral vision, she clicked the indicator that would tell others she was trying to pull over to the right. Instead she hit the emergency flashers.
That was good. This was an emergency. She had to get off the highway and bring the Nissan to a stop.
As though from a distance she heard Bobbi’s frantic voice. “Hart, you’re driving crazy! What’s going on? Hart, is she taking over? Are you going back?”
Then, as she sensed herself slipping into that tunnel that led to the past, she felt Bobbi take hold of the wheel and knew that she was surrendering control to a fourteen-year-old who most likely had never driven a car before. She held on as long as she could, pressing her foot to the brake and trying to get the car slowed and off the road.
She heard Bobbi scream.
The strain of trying to slow the switch to the past left Stacia shaking and sick. She dropped the platter of fried chicken she was carrying and it fell into bits on the floor, the pieces of Mom’s perfectly browned chicken flying all over.
Stacia heard two voices screaming at once: Bobbi’s back on the highway and Helen’s here in the kitchen of the little house in Medicine Stick. “Mom, Stacia dropped the chicken,” Helen yelled, even as Bobbi’s shrieks faded into the background and then were gone.
Her mother came in scolding over her carelessness, but Stacia had a hard time considering the loss of the main dish for the family’s dinner seriously. Not when she couldn’t know what had happened to that car she’d been driving down the highway.
It was one thing to endanger herself, but she’d put Helen’s granddaughter and innocent travelers at risk by her carelessness in getting behind the wheel after her recent experience.
“I didn’t think,” she said out loud. “I forgot.”
She rushed outside to vomit into the red dirt in the front yard. Then she looked up to find that both Mom and Helen had followed her from the house.
“You’re sick, baby,” Mom said, taking her arm to lead her back into the house where she was sent to brush her teeth and wash her face. The smell of chicken in the air made her feel even more sick, but she managed to avoid disgracing herself by heading back to the bedroom she shared with Helen.
She closed her eyes and tried to push herself forward, back to Hart’s body, but though for the first time she’d managed to delay the switch for a few seconds, hopefully enough to prevent an accident, she seemed unable to exert any control now.
She saw herself in the vanity mirror, a red-haired young woman, not a child at least. Once more she was reliving the past, though she could see no purpose for doing so.
“Feeling better, Stacia?” Helen peered in, her eyes showing her concern.
She nodded.
“Mom said not to worry. She’d just washed the kitchen floor and she’ll pour water over the chicken and put it back in the skillet to heat up.”
Still halfway back in Hart’s time when the loss of a meal wouldn’t have meant much, she remembered that here a dinner of fried chicken was a big deal. Most days they had meatless meals, mostly beans and fried potatoes, and the whole family would be looking forward to Mom’s fried chicken.
She’d just bet Bobbi would be disgusted at the idea of picking the chicken up off the floor and washing it. She’d probably think it should be fed to the neighbor’s dog as being unworthy of human consumption.
The thought sobered her. Bobbi knew more than she should already. She’d even understood what was happening when Hart began to depart. That meant she had memories from both Hart and herself, or was she only able to recall Stacia’s past because of Hart’s visits to the past?
She only hoped the girl was all right.
Bobbi veered the nearly out of control car to the right by jerking on the wheel. She heard the truck behind them hit his brakes, than honk a long howl of reproof as he skidded on past the little Nissan. Hart slumped against her as she jammed her own smaller foot against the one already on the brake, bringing them to a jarring stop.
She watched as Serena in her rental car zoomed on past, apparently too focused on avoiding the truck that had suddenly slowed ahead of her to notice that Hart and Bobbi had pulled off the road.
Everybody seemed too occupied with getting somewhere in a hurry to pay any attention to them. Bobbi, accustomed as she was to the vast populations of southern California, was not surprised that nobody pulled over to offer help, though Hart, who still had not adjusted to the idea that you could drive past your neighbors without offering help, would have felt differently.
But Hart had gone somewhere and Bobbi wasn’t surprised at that either. Somewhere, vaguely, in some distant edge of her brain, she almost knew about this. Hart went away to Stacia’s world and Stacia came here. But there wasn’t any Hart any more, only Stacia.
How she knew this, she couldn’t say. But somehow she did and ever since her first visit to Oklahoma with Granny last year, this awareness had moved to the forefront so that nightly she seemed to dream and understand more.
Not that this didn’t make her afraid. Not that right now she wasn’t sitting in the little dark-blue car and wondering what she should do. She tried to shake Hart awake, but she lay limp and unresponsive against her slighter form.
She had her phone, but she could hardly call her friends in California for help. And if she called Granny and Granny realized that Hart had collapsed virtually in the midst of the highway, she’s have Bobbi out of here and
headed home before she had time to think of a good argument.
She had no choice. She fumbled in Hart’s purse, pulling out the little phone and checking numbers until she found the one that said Alistair.
She was just about to give him a call when Hart’s eyes opened.
“I came back,” she said. “I had to come back.” She smiled, a slow, lazy just waking up smile. “We’re both still alive,” she said with evident pleasure.
Bobbi drew in a deep breath, grateful not to have to call Hart’s intimidating husband. “Between us we managed,” she said.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, Bobbi allowing Hart to regain her equilibrium. Finally she said, “We probably should go on. Granny’s likely to come back looking for us.”
Hart shook her head, still looking pale. “I can’t risk driving,” she said.
“I’ve never driven,” Bobbi protested, “besides I’m only fourteen.”
Hart thought for a minute, than she took her car keys and the phone Bobbi still held in her hand and got out of the car, motioning the girl to do the same. Once out, she walked over to fling her keys into the tall grass in a nearby pasture where cows grazed. Then she made a call on her phone, “Alistair,” she said in the tone of one leaving a message rather than talking to another person. “I’ve lost my keys and can’t get in the car and am going to have to leave it on the highway about five miles before the Medicine Stick turnoff. Serena is coming to pick us up, but could you come by with the extra keys that are hanging in the kitchen when you get a chance?”
Hart stared at her. “What if Granny doesn’t come back?”
“We’ll call somebody, but I’ve got to have an excuse to avoid driving this car another mile. I’d be endangering everyone on the road.”
Bobbi nodded. She looked up and grateful to see Granny’s rental car coming back down the highway, she began to wave.
It wasn’t until they were in the other car and headed toward the lodge again that Hart realized. Having just protested her independence from her husband, he had been the first person she contacted when she needed help.
Wakening the Past: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series Book 2) Page 6
