Beneath a Beating Heart

by Lauri Robinson

  Once again, he’d give anything to touch her. For perhaps the first time, he seriously considered this may not be his Beth. Her parents were alive and well up in Billings. They sent messages regularly, asking how he was getting along. He sent a message in return each time, saying fine, he was fine, even though he wasn’t.

  Knowing how close she’d been to her parents, how much family meant to her, he whispered, “Aw, honey, I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you, but like I said, I don’t remember them, so I don’t miss them. However, I’ve always wondered about them.” Her grin was a bit sheepish. “And tried everything I could think of to find out more about them. I joined an online heritage site but didn’t even get a single leaf.”

  He bit his lips together to keep from asking what leaves had to do with any of this.

  “I tried being hypnotized, which was a complete failure as well. So was the fortune teller at a kiosk in the mall. She wouldn’t even take my money, saying she couldn’t read me, that there was nothing to read. I even called a few internet hotlines, only to be given vague answers like ‘your parents are at peace’ and several ‘there’s a tall dark stranger in your future.’ Which is complete garbage. Every dead person is at peace, and people walk past tall dark strangers every day.”

  It wasn’t easy, but he kept a straight face at her gibberish.

  “That’s why I was so drawn to Vivi Anne. She claims she’s not a psychic, but she is different. Not just her personality, which is a mixture of a child of the sixties and an eccentric elderly cat-lady. Vivi Anne is intuitive. Some of the things she knows, she senses, boggle a person’s mind. I was hoping she could tell me something more about myself.”

  “Vivi Anne is your friend, the one who owns the antique store?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has she told you anything about your parents?”

  “No.” She sighed as a thoughtful expression crossed her face. “But I don’t know if she’d tell me even if she knew something.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she isn’t like that. She’d want me to discover it myself.” Her expression softened. “And I think that’s why I’m here. In a way, I can relate to Robert. Maybe his life, his son’s life, his grandson’s life, would all be different if he’d known his real father.”

  He refused to allow himself to be provoked into anger. “I’m not his father, but if it will help you, if it’s what you want, I’ll help you discover who is.”

  Her eyes softened and he detected a fair amount of sadness in them.

  “You may not want to believe it right now, but given time, your pain will fade, and falling in love with someone else won’t seem so impossible.”

  Needing to be the sensible one, not the righteous one, he went for details. “All right, when was, or is, Robert born?”

  She frowned, and grimaced, and shook her head. “I’m not sure. I didn’t ask.”

  He doubted he’d love Beth any less five years from now but chose to push her logic. “If it’s five years from now, it might be plausible.” Not willing to give in too much, he shook his head. “But Nan’s niece, the one I met yesterday, isn’t going to wait five years to get pregnant.”

  She frowned, but then one brow lifted. “Maybe she sweeps you off your feet.”

  “I weigh a hundred and seventy pounds. Nothing sweeps me off my feet.”

  She pinched her lips together, but then, a rather insolent smile formed. “The right woman can sweep a man twice her size off his feet.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “You do?”

  He nodded and leaned closer to whisper. “Because I know how much you weigh.”

  Chapter Eight

  Liz couldn’t say she was any closer to convincing Rance he was Robert’s father, nor was she any closer to wanting that to be true, but at least, she had a starting point. Something tangible to work from. Her theory had depth. If he and this Cindy girl got married, his future would change drastically. So would Robert’s and possibly Leonard’s and then Lou’s and Nate’s. That one little incident could make all the difference in the world. He would never forget Beth. Liz knew that just by looking at him, but it could lighten the pain he harbored in his heart.

  She’d seen it. As unbelievable as that was, it had happened. Upstairs, when he’d told her to look into his eyes to see how much she meant to him, she had, and she’d seen it. Love. Strong, undeniable and unstoppable love. So powerful she’d felt it in her heart as surely as if he’d reached out and touched her.

  If someone had told her that was possible, she’d have questioned their stability. And hers. However, that had been before she’d been thrust into a dimension that allowed her to meet and converse with a man in the previous century. A man she wished lived in the here and now. He was so genuine, so authentic. There was nothing phony or bogus about him. He said what he believed and he believed what he said. If men like him still existed, she may have found the ability to believe in love. The way he did. Men like him might still exist somewhere and she’d just never encountered them. In fact, evolution would be a sad thing if they didn’t.

  She’d seen something else when she’d looked into his eyes. Sincerity. That had been why she’d told him about her parents, the car crash, and her search to find out more about them. About herself. He’d also offered to help. Of course he thought discovering who Robert’s father was would help her, and that was fine. He was the type who’d much rather help someone else rather than themselves.

  She spent a good portion of the day taking all that into consideration.

  The day, as it was, would forever remain with her as one of the strangest, yet most wonderful of her life. Finding Rance had changed her. Not only in opening her mind to ghosts and other such possibilities, but to herself. Maybe she’d thought she didn’t care about others because she’d never wanted to. At least not like she wanted to care about him.

  After his comment about knowing how much she weighed, the room upstairs had become as charged as the kitchen had this morning. Sparks practically filled the air. Not willing her mind to go down the kissing line again, she’d suggested they come back down stairs.

  He’d agreed, and as he put it, said the animals still needed to eat. He’d invited her outside, but even with both of them holding onto the mirror, once she stepped outside of the house, he disappeared. In the end, he went outside alone to complete his chores and afterward led her through the house pointing out various items for her to catalog in her notebook.

  The details he pointed out gave her a greater connection with specific antiques. As if she’d needed that. She hadn’t. She’d already felt connected to so many things. It had always been that way for her, and the reason she enjoyed visiting antique stores. All she’d had to do was close her eyes and she could see herself living amongst all sorts of old and wonderful things—even if they were mere castaways from other people’s lives.

  Here, in his house, those inner impressions were stronger and more powerful than she’d ever encountered before.

  Some things, like the stove and mirror, had grown tarnished again, while other things remained new, as perfect as the day they’d been in his time.

  It was all so strange. There didn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to any one piece of logic. Except for the fact she cared about each and every item he showed her. She cared about him, too.

  “Can we take a break?”

  Looking up from where she was making notes about a stack of playbills from what she knew to be one of Buffalo Bill’s first shows, she caught Rance’s image in the mirror, and his grimace. “Getting tired?” They’d made their way through several of the downstairs rooms and were in the front parlor, looking through a side cabinet full of miscellaneous paperwork.

  “Hungry.”

  She laughed.

  He frowned. “What’s funny about that?”

  She shook her head and shrugged. It was hard to explain, and uncanny, how comfortable she’d become around him. “I just didn’t expect a
ghost to worry about food.”

  “I’m not a ghost.”

  “I know, but my mind still wants to categorize you that way.” Mainly because she kept telling herself that.

  “Why?”

  To protect myself. Not able to admit that, she shrugged. “It’s easier to believe, I guess.” That and the fact that even though she could see him, he was a rather ghostly image. When the light hit him just right, she could see right through him.

  “Not for me.”

  It was pretty hard for her to believe, too. This was all so flipping crazy. And just kept getting crazier. Yet, she’d never felt so, well, whole as she did while with him. She closed her notebook and stuck the pen in the wire binding. “Okay. Let’s eat.”

  “I can fry some eggs, but not sure you’ll be able to eat them. In your time I mean,” he said as they walked toward the kitchen.

  Enticed by the half-grin, half-scowl on his face, she laughed again. “One-hundred-year-old eggs? No thank you. I have some things in my car. I’ll go get my lunch while you cook yours.”

  They stood next to the table but looked at each other as if waiting for the other to let go of the mirror. After several moments, they both laughed.

  “On the count of three,” he said.

  “All right. You count.”

  “Are you going to let go, or am I?” he asked. “I don’t want the mirror to fall.”

  She laughed again. Letting go of a mirror shouldn’t be this arduous. “You let go, and I’ll set the mirror on the table.”

  “All right. One. Two. Three.”

  He let go and disappeared.

  She held her breath and stance for a second, just to make sure she could still sense him. Satisfied by his presence, she set the mirror on the table. “I’ll be right back.”

  The kitchen looked completely empty when she returned with her food as well as the bag that held her camera and pricing book, but the hum told her it wasn’t. She grinned and sincerely wished she could see him.

  She took a chair at the table and knowing it would take him time to get the stove going, she took out the pricing book. A hum next to her ear had her touching the mirror. He appeared in the glass, behind her and gestured toward the book with his chin.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s called a three-ring binder. Viva Anne put it together from several books and magazines that set values on common antiques.”

  “That lamp on the top of the page, it looks like the one in the parlor,” he said.

  “Yes, it does, and the one you have is in excellent shape.”

  “Is that the price?”

  The shock in his tone had her glancing at the mirror, and smiling at the surprise on his face. “That is the approximate value of the one pictured. Yours is a duplex, meaning it has two wicks, so it’s worth is closer to the bottom price.” She pointed at the number. “Two-hundred and seventy-five dollars.”

  “That lamp isn’t worth that much. I know. I bought it, and believe me, I would never have paid anywhere close to that much. I’d have sat in the dark first.”

  “That’s what its worth in twenty-eighteen.” She stopped shy of saying that was the reason why Nate and Lou wanted to sell everything, it was getting harder and harder to stomach that idea. “How are your eggs coming?”

  “Stove’s heating up. Turn the page, what else is in that book?”

  She flipped through several pages until finding a table like the one in the parlor that the lamp sat on. “Your table with claw feet will easily appraise at seven-hundred-fifty.” Scrolling one finger to the page on the other side, she stopped to point at another picture. “And the dresser in your bedroom is a lot like this one, but larger, so it’ll appraise out at more.”

  “More than one-thousand-five-hundred?”

  “Yes.” Flipping a few more pages, she stopped on a page with kitchen items. “Here’s your ice box.”

  He whistled. “Fourteen-hundred?”

  “Yes.” She closed the book as a sickening feeling rose in her stomach. “Your stove should be hot.”

  His image disappeared from the mirror, and she let out a long breath. The thought of Lou and Nate benefitting from all of Rance’s personal possessions had never pleased her, but now the idea of selling his items hurt. It was odd, but she’d known about some of the items even before he mentioned when or where he’d acquired them. That could have been easy enough to decipher considering he’d clammed up every time an item had been one that Beth had brought with her from Montana upon their marriage. Other items hadn’t surprised her either, the Native American ones.

  He had been born in the eighteen-seventies when the west had been really wild. An era they made movies about. It was so easy to imagine him during that time, and she hadn’t been the least bit surprised when he’d said his father had been half Shoshone and had lived the nomadic life of a plainsman. Nor that his mother had been a white woman.

  Once again, a hum drew her attention and she touched the mirror. He was already seated at the table. She lifted the mirror and angled it enough to see a plate of scrambled eggs.

  “Those look good.” She laid the mirror flat again but adjusted the angle so she could see the reflection of his face.

  “They are. What are you eating?”

  She plucked things out of her bag with her free hand. “These are called granola bars, and this is dried fruit, and this, a bottle of water.”

  “Water? There’s water—” He shook his head. “What’s it in?”

  Letting go of the mirror long enough to open the bottle, she took a several swallows before setting down the cap and touching the mirror again. She drank enough that she could squeeze the bottle without any water flowing out, and did so. “It’s called plastic. Practically everything is made out of it in some shape or form. Even my car.”

  “Your car?”

  “Yes. Much harder plastic than this bottle, but plastic nonetheless.” She picked up the granola bar and bit the corner to tear open the package using only one hand. “Even this wrapper has plastic in it.”

  “What is that?”

  His reflection was staring at the granola bar, and his grimace said it looked utterly appalling to him.

  She grinned and took a bite.

  He flinched and looked as if he was about to gag.

  She had to swallow fast, twice, to keep from choking as a laugh bubbled up her throat. A drink of water helped wash down the granola. “It’s not that bad.”

  “I won’t even say what that looks like, but I’ve cleaned up plenty of it.”

  “Are you saying my lunch looks like horse shit?”

  “Guess you’ve cleaned up some too.”

  She laughed at his quick wit. “Actually, I haven’t, but I’ve always had a faint memory about horses.” That was true, for as long as she could remember, she had an inkling there were horses in her past. The Walkers never had any animals, but her memories had been before then. Like when she was really, really little. “It’s not really a memory, more like a feeling deep in my stomach.”

  “It’s probably the food.”

  She tried not to laugh again, but failed. “How are your eggs?”

  “Good.” He made a show of poking a fork full of scrambled eggs into his mouth. “Mmmm. Too bad you can’t taste them.”

  More than willing to play along, she took bite of her granola bar and closed her eyes as she chewed, pretending it was the most delicious thing she’d ever eaten. After swallowing, she opened her eyes. “I know mine is better, it has chocolate chips.”

  He lifted a brow. “What are chocolate chips?”

  She leaned in his direction. “Oh, you have no idea what you’re missing.”

  “Yes, I do,” he said.

  He wasn’t referring to chocolate, and that sent a rush of heat throughout her system. How could she possibly have the hots for someone who was over a hundred years older than her, still mourning the loss of his wife, and a ghost? Time warp or not, he was not alive and well in twenty-eighte
en.

  “So, what else do you have to eat?”

  She picked up a small bag. “Dried tropical fruit.”

  “Is that the only kind of food you have in your time? Dried stuff?” He nodded toward the binder. “Is it because everything is so expensive?”

  “No, we have lots of other foods. We still have eggs and bacon. The world loves bacon. They even put it on ice cream.”

  “They do?”

  “Yes, if I had my computer I’d show you pictures, or if I had better cell service.”

  “What’s a computer and cell service?”

  That started an in-depth conversation about modern things. Of which he thought she was fibbing most of the time. Some of the things she told him about made him laugh, others, like the wars and diseases made him thoughtful and forlorn, and he seriously didn’t believe her when she said men had walked on the moon.

  He’d told her things too, surprising details she hadn’t thought about until he started talking. Like all the horses he trained for Buffalo Bill Cody, and the man’s Wild West Shows. The performances were a phenomenon in his era, worldwide.

  She asked questions about his family, but it was as if she knew the answers, in part at least, before he answered. As strange as it was, and it was strange, her knowledge hadn’t come from Edith last night or her years of studying American History. She intuitively knew things about him. They just popped into her head moments before he said them. His father’s father had been white, a trapper, who lived each winter with his father’s mother’s tribe.

  Liz searched her mind as he talked but found no explanation for knowing the things she did. Perhaps, because of his way of life, she knew he’d been raised white. But that didn’t explain how she knew other things, things he skirted around but didn’t completely say. Like how he’d lived with his mother’s parents near Laramie. His mother’s parents had never believed their daughter could have fallen in love with a heathen, as they called all Indians, and when she died after giving birth to him, they’d sent the army out to retrieve their grandchild. She questioned if it might be because, like her, he had no memory of his real parents. If that somehow gave them an internal connection. She didn’t ask that aloud. Mainly because, bottom line, it didn’t matter.