When Cynthia questioned Lynne as why they had such a movie in their possession, her sister-in-law said, “We thought Betsy would like it.”
She couldn’t help but be touched that they had so stoutly held on to the belief that the two of them would come back
She refused to travel any further than the nearest good sized town where they checked into a two bedroom suite at a motel. Though neither of her relatives had commented on their strange dress, Lynne went shopping while Moss babysat little Jeremy and Betsy and Cynthia took long, hot baths.
Cynthia took her time in the elegant modern bathroom and by the time she had toweled herself dried and blown dry and styled her hair, Lynne was back and thrust a package containing jeans, shirt, underwear, jacket and canvas shoes through a crack in the door.
When she was dressed, Cynthia eyed herself in the mirror, thinking how slim and boyish she looked in these clothes as compared to the long full skirt and the upswept chignon in which she’d worn her hair. No wonder the people of Lavender thought she looked halfway indecent when she first arrived there.
When she emerged into the sitting room that lay between the two bedrooms, she found Betsy also in jeans and watching television while she ate a hamburger and French fries.
She smelled coffee and accepted gratefully when Moss handed her a cup. She sipped the beverage slowly, savoring every ounce and asked for a second cup before she began to eat the shrimp scampi, which one or the other of her relatives had remembered was a favorite meal.
“Ah,” she said lightly. “The luxuries of civilization.”
Surprisingly, Betsy, though caught in the intrigues of the Cartoon Channel, heard her. “I’ll bet Eddie would like a hamburger,” she said sadly.
Cynthia’s own heavy heart sank even lower. Glad as she was to see the members of her family again, wonderful as it was to taste hot coffee, her doubts about where she belonged had been banished.
No place would ever be home without Evan and the little girl she’d come to think of as her second daughter. And her patients! What about little Mary Davis, who was suffering through a troubling pregnancy, and found it hard to confide her problems to a male doctor, even if he was Doc Stephens, and five-year-old Tad Kennemer who wouldn’t take the medicine for croup unless she gave it to him.
Her mind whirled back to Evan and Eddie and she felt a sick longing to be with them.
“Cyn, what’s wrong?” her brother asked with sudden urgency.
She tried to brush the tears from her eye as she looked up at him. “She misses Papa,” Betsy informed him solemnly.
He looked questioningly at Cynthia and she shook her head. She wasn’t up to making explanations, not yet.
“Where’s the baby?” she asked, deliberately changing the question.
“Napping in our room,” Lynne said, “They brought up a crib for him.”
Moss refused to be diverted. “I’ve placed several calls, letting the authorities know the two of you have been found. The local police will be sending someone by to interview you.”
“Oh, no, Moss. We’re not up to that.” She glanced to where Betsy was once again absorbed by her television program.”
“Sorry, but there’s no choice. You have to understand there’s been a nationwide hunt for you because of the suspicions about Michael. When I tried to tell everyone that I was fairly sure you were all right, they just looked at me as though I was in denial. “
“The press has been all over us,” Lynne added. “We’ve had to sneak away to go back to the area where your car was found and look for you.”
“Press?” Cynthia asked weakly.
“I’ve arranged for a couple of bodyguards who should be here any minute now, but you’d better be prepared for an onslaught, as should the people who have been giving you refuge.”
There was nothing else to do but clue in her brother and his wife as to what had happened, whether they believed it or not. She couldn’t risk telling the truth to anyone else or they’d lock her up somewhere, thinking she’d lost her mind.
“Nobody can find them,” Betsy said, her eyes still on the screen, but obviously taking every word that was said. She laughed out loud. “They can’t find Evan, or Eddie, or Mrs. Myers, or Grandpa Forrest. They can’t find them anywhere can they, Mom?
Cynthia’s mouth twisted into a smile. “No danger of that,” she assured her daughter, then looked back to her brother’s frowning face. “It’s a really strange story, Moss, one I don’t want anyone else to hear. You’re probably not going to believe a word of it.”
She watched as Moss and Lynne exchanged glasses. “You might be surprised at what we would believe, Cynthia.”
She nodded, remembered things that Lynne had told her last year about how she and Moss had met. “It started with the letter I received from Lavender, Texas,” she said.
Chapter Twenty One
It was as though someone had died. Expressions of sympathy were given from practically everyone Evan met as he went about his practice. Bouquets of fall flowers were left at the house and dishes of food dropped off with Mrs. Myers in the kitchen.
He couldn’t help thinking that Cynthia would have been gratified to know how many friends she’d won over in her short time in Lavender and the whole community seemed to mourn her engaging little daughter.
“Her birthday’s in three more weeks,” Forrest Stephens said more than once. “I got her some roller skates and had a pretty dress made.”
“I was going to make her favorite cake,” Mrs. Myers contributed. She never cried where anybody could see, but her eyes were red-rimmed from tears shed in privacy.
Eddie took pride in never crying. Instead the reports from school, though never ideal, were worse than ever. She got into one act of mischief after another and Evan found it hard to deliver the necessary scolding, knowing it was the way she expressed her grief and anger over what had happened.
“I guess I should have been nicer to her, Papa. Do you think that’s why she left? Because I wasn’t nice?”
She tolerated his hug. “I don’t think they meant to leave, Eddie, either one of them.”
It was only the suffering of his family and friends that kept him from giving away to his own devastation and, in spite of what he’d said to Eddie, he wasn’t certain this hadn’t been Cynthia’s choice. Maybe she’d simply decided, perhaps somewhat impulsively, that she wanted to go home to her family in that other world.
He suspected that, like his daughter, he was getting irritable and difficult to get along with. It took every bit of self-possession he could draw on to be the kind of doctor his patients required. Nothing was left for a polite bedside manner. Still just about everybody was being tolerant of his behavior and each morning he resolved to do better.
Unlike the others he wasn’t entirely without hope. Twice now Cynthia and Betsy had crossed the barrier, an ability nobody else in the community seemed to possess. He rode Hero out there often just in hope of seeing some glimpse of them. He knew that the more adventurous of the community’s youth were going out there too, hoping to be able to be able to cross over into that other world.
The adults who had made the original decision were happy enough with things the way they were. He suspected, in fact, that they feared what they might find on the other side.
Maybe they would step out into a world so changed they wouldn’t even know where they were. They loved Lavender and its gentle way of life, most of them dreamed of no other home.
But the kids who were small children when the decision was made for them felt differently. They were beginning to grow up and want to make decisions of their own.
They were the ones he saw walking or riding out to the creek near the edge of the community, their attempts as futile as his own.
At the called meeting in the school auditorium, talk got heated when one of these new adults rose to speak and demanded to know “if there is a way out.” He accused his elders of deliberately keeping the truth from them.
Ma
ny faces turned in Evan’s direction. He saw no point in answering. Surely they could see that if he knew a way to leave Lavender he would be out there looking for Cynthia and Betsy.
His father, who could be his greatest critic, went red in the face at the implied criticism of his son. “We all knew what we were getting into and as far as I’m concerned we’re damned lucky to be here.” A small but vocal minority roared, while some women looked shocked at the word supposedly never said in the presence of ladies.
Forrest Stephens, who was not given to rough language even when ladies weren’t around, apologized. “Sorry,” he said gruffly, “but I am offended at the criticism of my father and my son, who have acted in the best interests of this community at great cost to themselves. My father gave his life and my son gave up a promising career in the outer world.”
This time there were cheers from the majority of those attending and the dissenting youngsters kept a shamefaced silence. The young man, barely over eighteen and so just of voting age, spoke quickly, “We didn’t mean anything against Doc,” he said hastily.
Forrest looked past him to where his son was seated in the audience. “Evan, do you know anything about how to get out of here?”
Evan shook his head. As everyone continued staring at him, he rose, “I can’t get out and you all know I have plenty of reason to want to go, at least for a little while. Though from what Mrs. Burden told me, I’m not sure I’d want to live out there.”
At that Forrest waved him forward to the stage. “Everybody can see you if you come up here,” he insisted.
Reluctantly Evan went forward. “Cynthia never said a great deal. She thought it wouldn’t be good for me to know much about the future.”
Talk broke out throughout the auditorium as those listening took in what he’d said. He waited until they were quiet before continuing, raising his voice to be certain he was heard in the back.
“That’s right. If you could just stroll past the creek and on the road that leads out of here, you wouldn’t necessarily be walking into the world we left behind. At least that’s not where Cynthia and her little girl came from. They came from 2013, where everybody you ever met in the outside world is long dead.”
The silence was complete. His voice was the only sound to be heard in the audience. He saw the shocked faces of his friends and neighbors before him.
“You might step out into yesterday or tomorrow or maybe into that world Cynthia told me about. It’s a place crowded with many more people than in our time and they’ve been through wars fought with weapons we can’t even imagine.”
He stopped. He’d said his say and the rest was up to them. He stepped down from the stage and went back to his seat. He wished he could leave, but couldn’t abandon his father to face this alone.
Forrest Stephens looked as though he might have a stroke at any minute.
“That’s all we can say,” he spoke when the crowd had grown a little quieter. “We might step out into a world we could recognize just eight years down the road from when we left. We might be in Mrs. Burden’s world that, frankly, sounds rather terrifying to me. Or we might be long dead, buried in our graves for over a hundred years.” He drew in a deep breath. “And now we need to go on to the question of hiring a new teacher for the high school.”
Evan sank deep in his seat, knowing that in spite of everything, he would run those risks his father had listed if there was a possibility he could find the woman he loved.
When Cynthia felt as though she was caught in a nightmare what with the tabloid press haunting her and Michael once more threatening to take Betsy away from her, she reminded herself that she was the same person who had stood at Evan’s side while he operated on the little Simmons boy on a kitchen table. She was the woman who had splinted a broken leg all by herself because Evan was out on another call.
She had sat with children struggling to breathe through the choking of severe croup. She had sat with a family dealing with the loss of their beloved grandmother.
She had dealt with things much harder than what she was going through now.
She’d persuaded Moss and Lynne to bring their baby and pay a visit to the big house on the California coast. With its high fences, locked gates, and enhanced security staff, their privacy could be more easily guarded than on the ranch in Oklahoma.
Today she’d learned that Michael was trying to have criminal kidnapping charges pressed against her for running away with his daughter. Her lawyers told her that he had little chance of success, considering that she’d had full custody of Betsy and he didn’t even have visitation rights.
But this latest development only gave the tabloids more fodder for their headlines and contempt of court charges had been filed against her for failure to show up for her court date with Michael.
Thankfully Betsy was unaware of most of this, though she was torn between wanting to go back to school and missing the family in Lavender. She told her aunt and uncle story after story of her life there, of the amazing things Eddie had done, “She’s so brave. She’s not afraid to do anything, but she’s always getting in trouble. I need to be there to help her not get into trouble.”
Her principal solace was little Jeremy, but Cynthia knew that her brother could not afford to leave the ranch and its animals too long in the care of neighbors and she dreaded the time when she and Betsy would be left alone. Well, not exactly alone, they had an estate full of staff, but that was not the same as having family near.
The press and public seemed to be in Michael’s corner and she tried to avoid even catching a glimpse of talk shows where a father’s right to contact with his daughter was debated and her state of mental health was talked about.
She had consistently refused to tell authorities where she’d taken refuge, saying she didn’t want to expose the family that had helped her to the media circus, which was certainly true enough and she had pointedly not made any comments to the press.
She longed to be back in Texas, making attempt after attempt to cross the barrier to Lavender, but for now she had to be in California to face the day in court Michael had demanded. He was asking for full custody of their daughter on the grounds that his former wife was mentally unstable.
Forgive me, Evan, she whispered the message she had no way of sending, I’ll go back to you as soon as I can.
But wait! She’d almost forgotten. Through some magic or loophole in the cosmos, they had been able to communicate before.
Chapter Twenty Two
Evan’s hands shook slightly as he opened the envelope.
He read:
My Dearest Evan,
I can only send this in the hope that we will once more defy logic and be able to reach out to each other. It means so much to me that you know I didn’t leave on purpose, that I would never choose to be so far away from you.
It was because of Betsy. She saw what I didn’t see. She looked across the barrier and saw my brother Moss, his wife Lynne, and their new little baby and, of course, she ran to them. All I knew was that I couldn’t let that barrier lie between me and my daughter and I ran after her so that we crossed into the other time holding hands.
We are at our house in California now. Michael is trying to gain custody of Betsy once again and next week we go to court. Pray for us because she will be miserable if she has to go to him and I will be so alone having lost both of you and dear Eddie as well .
Oh, Evan, I wish I had words to tell you how I feel about you. Even if I never see you again, I am so grateful that we had those months together. After everything that has happened to me, after Michael, I couldn’t even imagine anyone like you. I’m so proud of you, the way you give yourself to the people of Lavender, the kind of father you are to Eddie—and, dare I say it, to my Betsy.
We are different because of the time we have spent with you and your family, better, stronger, able to trust again.
I send you all my love.
Cynthia
He didn’t write back immediately becaus
e Roger Connelly, the superintendent of schools, pulled up out front in his buggy and came carrying Eddie into the house.
“Fell out of a tree, Doc,” the heavy-set man panted even though the nine-year-old didn’t weigh much. He put her down on the nearest sofa. “Even though she’s been told time and again that young ladies don’t climb trees.”
Evan looked at his daughter without too much alarm. She was trying really hard not to cry so her face was all scrunched up in a way that made her look angry. It was why people had trouble understanding his daughter. They couldn’t read her expressions.
She looked angry, but what he could see was that was both hurt and embarrassed.
He’d gone to school with Roger and knew well enough that the big man was not strongly gifted with empathy. He was annoyed because Eddie’s misbehavior had taken him away from his work. Also because he thought she was being defiant.
He didn’t understand that Eddie simply didn’t know how to be like other people. She was simply, honestly herself without any pretense.
“I’ll see to her, Roger. Thanks for bringing her home.”
“Sure.” Connelly looked uneasy. “And I’ve been meaning to tell you, Doc, how sorry I am about Betsy and her mother. We all miss them.”
Evan nodded, turning his attention to Eddie as the school superintendent saw himself out of the house. Thank goodness Mrs. Myers was out shopping; she’d have a fit between being worried for Eddie’s injuries and furious that she’d been climbing trees on the school grounds just as the boys did.
“I’m all right, Papa,” Eddie said.
Her face was scratched, her hair tangled with the ribbon Mrs. Myers had tied around it this morning now hanging like a necklace around her neck.
Letters From Another Town: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 2) Page 15
