Lightning Only Strikes Twice

by Fletcher, Stanalei

  “Absolutely not. We’re the perfect couple. Even the papers say we belong together. What am I going to say to the girls at the club?”

  For a while, he’d suspected much of his appeal was his money and prestige. Her last statement removed any doubt. “I don’t care what you tell your friends or the paper.”

  “Are you seeing another woman?” The words hissed through her clenched teeth.

  He started at the question,

  “Is it that little mouse who sold you the property?”

  “No,” Luke said. “Annie Crawford has nothing to do with this. I made the decision some time ago. I should have told you sooner.”

  Emmaline blinked and her eyes shimmered with unshed tears, she lowered her napkin to reveal a quivering lower lip. “You’re a son of a bitch to do this to me.”

  Luke should have been surprised by her act, but sadly, he wasn’t. “You’re a survivor, Emmaline. You always have been.” He stood, removed two hundred dollars from his wallet and tossed the bills on the table. “For dinner and a cab home.”

  She started to reach for cash, then snatched her hand back. “I don’t want your money,” she sniffed. “I want you.”

  “I don’t think you know the difference,” Luke said. He glanced through the shadows of the restaurant and spotted one of Emmaline’s old boyfriends. “You’ll do fine without me.”

  Emmaline’s gaze strayed to where Luke was looking. Her expression changed to one of opportunity.

  “Just have the decency to wait until my chair’s cooled,” Luke said.

  Her narrowed gaze speared him, but he ignored her.

  Straightening his tie, he found his way to the front of the restaurant. After tipping the valet, he sped away as though he’d just escaped a sacrifice on the devil’s altar.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Luke sat in his car across the street from Annie’s condo duplex watching the bluish glow of a television flicker behind her curtains. For the past fifteen minutes, he’d been contemplating going to her door and accepting her offer for coffee.

  He half suspected she’d made the invitation more out of politeness and gratitude rather than some deeper emotion. If he’d learned anything about Annie Crawford over the last few weeks, it was that she was courteous, even when it conflicted with her opinions. He smiled to himself, remembering how their colliding opinions triggered a chain of events neither of them could have imagined.

  He should be sitting across from Annie, listening to her soft voice as she talked about her day. He was totally at ease when he was around her.

  His thoughts back-pedaled. His recollections were based on impossible circumstances that might not have occurred.

  Regardless, he couldn’t completely relegate the experience to the background. Yet something kept him from accepting that he and Annie had really been in 1891.

  What he needed was proof of the time travel. Proof he hadn’t lost his mind. Proof that would denounce all those who said they’d had a freak accident.

  Without tangible evidence, the only place anything happened was in his head. Talking about it would make everyone believe he was crazy.

  How ironic that, here in the present, he was leery of frightening Annie. When they were in White Rock, he hadn’t thought twice about the lengths he’d gone to prove they’d traveled to the past. Was he so afraid of social pressure—his reputation—that he couldn’t get out of his car and confront the woman he’d come to love?

  Love? He’d never told her he loved when they were in White Rock…if they were in White Rock.

  He should have.

  She deserved to know he cared.

  He reached for the door handle.

  Across the street, the light in her front room went out. He’d taken too long to decide. He didn’t know if he was relieved or regretted the missed opportunity. At least for tonight, the choice was out of his hands.

  A few moments later, another light came on through the upstairs window and glowed warmly. Shadows moved back and forth across her curtains.

  Luke imagined Annie preparing for bed. Changing out of her work clothes, brushing her long, chestnut hair. Simply remembering those silky strands draped carelessly over his bare chest made his lower abdomen clench.

  A glare of headlights sliced across his windshield, momentarily blinding him. A police cruiser coasted past. The officer inside gave Luke a long, attentive look.

  Swearing silently to himself, Luke whipped out his cell phone and placed it against his ear. He didn’t need a citation for loitering, or worse, to be hauled to the station as a Peeping Tom.

  After the cruiser passed, he put the phone away and started the engine. With a final glance at Annie’s window, he shoved the car in gear. While he waited at the intersection for traffic to clear, he glimpsed in his rearview mirror.

  The cruiser had flipped a U-turn and advanced along the street toward him.

  A hole in the traffic opened and Luke turned right onto Broadway and headed to his apartment. Another check in his rearview mirror showed the patrol car turning the opposite direction.

  Luke pounded the steering wheel once in frustration. Obviously, if he was going to find the answers to what had happened to them, he couldn’t do it by staking out Annie’s neighborhood like a clichéd P.I. movie. It was smarter to stay away until he had a better handle on what to do next.

  He couldn’t go storming her home—declaring his feelings—if it had never happened.

  ****

  Annie fought the sheets tangled around her legs. Cold sweat coated her forehead and neck. She sat up in bed and listened.

  The baby’s cries had stopped.

  Her breath shuddered through her lips. There was no baby. It was a dream.

  Swinging her legs over the edge of the mattress, she stared at the digital alarm clock. Almost three a.m. The backlit numbers were a far cry from the singing robin that had awakened her each morning in White Rock. At least there, the daily labor had left her so exhausted she was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Tonight would be another long battle to capture an hour or two of rest.

  She wiped the dampness from her neck with the corner of the sheet and tried to shake off the effects of her dream. A dream where she watched Elizabeth die and awoke to the sound of baby Richard whimpering for his mother. A dream that was all too real.

  Although some memories were fading, she recalled other details with such clarity.

  Paul and Elizabeth Crawford weren’t simply names—she knew them. She knew Luke, too. Not as the state’s most eligible bachelor and wealthy developer, but as the man who’d made sweet love to her in the cool forest night.

  She knew the cadence of his voice as he talked about his day. The touch of his hand when conversation ran dry and they turned to each other for comfort. The taste of his kiss.

  A tear slid down her cheek. Annie brushed it away with an impatient hand.

  She relived his visit earlier tonight. If what happened in the aspen grove wasn’t a dream, then why hadn’t he said anything?

  Why hadn’t she said something?

  Luke acted like a polite acquaintance, not like the man who’d made love to her and proposed marriage.

  The newspapers said he already had a fiancée. Annie had no illusions she could compete with the pretty socialite in the photo.

  Luke hardly knew her. Her imagination had manufactured everything while unconscious under the pine tree.

  She wished she could rid herself of the feeling that it had all been real. She should accept that was an accident caused by the lightning.

  What she should do and what she could do, were worlds apart.

  Perhaps if she returned to the grove, she could put some perspective on these images and memories that haunted her.

  She padded into the bathroom and automatically reached for the light switch. Her hand froze. It was harder now to take modern conveniences for granted—harder not to appreciate the sacrifices made by her great-great grandparents. Remorse at the loss of her f
amily’s property crowded in her chest.

  She squared her shoulders. The sale was final. Even if she could, she wouldn’t renege on the contract.

  Running the cold water for a moment, she filled a glass to drink. The clear, fresh water slid down her throat, quenching her thirst.

  Whatever the future held for her, she’d face it with the same determination, courage, and grace Paul and Elizabeth had shown. Somehow, she’d find the strength to make it through long the days ahead.

  Annie turned out the light and climbed back in bed—hollowness blanketing her mood.

  Once there had been her grandfather, then Paul, Elizabeth…and Luke. Now there was no one.

  It was a while before sleep overtook her. This time, her dreams weren’t of a baby’s cry for his dying mother, but of a man who’d taught her about love. If only for a short while.

  ****

  The next day at work, Annie told her supervisor she had some unfinished business regarding the sale of her property and arranged to leave early.

  Her request wasn’t entirely untrue. Until she saw the land again, walked the places she been with Luke and Elizabeth, she wouldn’t be able to move forward with her life, let alone concentrate on her job. She was grateful her boss approved the time on such short notice.

  Following the roads out of the city, Annie turned her little Volkswagen onto Highway 21 and headed north toward White Rock. If the groundbreaking was on schedule, this visit might be the last time she would see the old mill.

  She arrived at the turn-off just before four in the afternoon. Tall lodgepole pines and quaking aspens lined the road into the property. A broken section of an old wood fence marked the entrance to the ghost town.

  Ignoring the NO TRESPASSING signs bearing the blue-and-white logo of Maxwell Development she continued through the entry and onto what was once her family’s land.

  Maxwell Development heavy equipment and trucks were parked in the clearing. Tires and the crew’s boots had flattened the spring grasses. Mud oozed in places where the delicate wildflowers wouldn’t grow back this year, if ever.

  Annie parked next to a pickup truck similar to the one Harry had driven when he took her home from the hospital.

  She climbed out of her car.

  “Hey, miss,” a man yelled. “You can’t be here.” He crossed the meadow with quick strides.

  Annie shut the door and walked out to meet him. “I’m Annie Crawford,” she shouted. As he drew closer she added, “I was here Saturday with Mr. Maxwell and Mr. Wade.”

  The man removed his hard hat. “I’m Mitch, the foreman on this project.” He held out his hand. “You’re the lady who sold Maxwell the property, aren’t you?”

  Annie nodded and shook his hand. “Would you mind if I looked around?” She turned and pointed to the hillside. “Over by the mill—”

  It was gone.

  Annie gasped. Her legs started to quake as she stared slack-jawed at the empty hillside. The last link to her family had been demolished like an unwanted eyesore.

  “Miss Crawford?” The foreman’s voice was filled with concern. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, not really hearing his words. “I can’t believe Luke tore down the mill.” After all it had meant to them…

  Except it hadn’t meant anything to Luke. What had happened to her wasn’t real. She and Luke hadn’t been here together in 1891. Luke wouldn’t have destroyed the mill if the time travel had been real.

  “Sorry, Miss Crawford. It had to come down.” The foreman gently took her arm. “You really shouldn’t be here.”

  Numbly, Annie let him walk her to the car. She fished keys out her jacket pocket and opened the door. As she looked back at the hillside, everything drained from her. Something in her face must have betrayed her pain.

  The foreman gave her a pitying look. “Will you be okay to drive home?” he said.

  His words broke through her shock. She remembered the tree where she and Luke had carved their initials. Those initials would prove her experience was real.

  She turned to the foreman. “There was a pine tree in the grove.”

  He frowned, looking confused. “There are lots of pine trees in this area. Which one are you referring to?”

  “In the middle of the aspen grove at the top of the hill behind the mill.” She blew out a quick breath. “Where the mill used to be.”

  He scratched his head and looked toward the hillside. “Just one tree? Are you sure?”

  Annie looked over the area. Rubble from the demolition littered the spot where the mill once stood.

  “Can I look?” she asked. “Luke—Mr. Maxwell—said I could have part of that tree trunk as a souvenir.”

  The foreman glanced at the hill again and shrugged. “I don’t suppose that’d be a problem.”

  Annie gave him a grateful smile and closed the car door.

  She’d only taken a couple of steps when he stopped her. “Wait a minute. I need to come with you. And you’ll have to wear one of these.” He tapped his hardhat. “Follow me.”

  He led her to one of the pickup trucks. Retrieving a hat, he handed it to her.

  She placed it on her head and together they walked toward the hillside.

  It was uncanny how quickly she oriented to the area. The mountains hadn’t changed.

  This is Main Street, Annie thought.

  If she closed her eyes, she could see the town...hear the children. A burst of vertigo swirled about her.

  She stopped walking and let the sensation wash through her. Why would the vertigo hit now that she was back in her own time?

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  She opened her eyes to see the foreman giving her a strange look.

  She smiled. “I’m just remembering something,” she offered. Thankfully, he didn’t press for an explanation.

  They skirted the demolished mill and hiked up the small hillside. Annie followed a trail toward the center of the grove. Here, the grass was bent and trampled from their rescue.

  They neared the center of the grove and the sweet scent of fresh pine grew stronger. The foreman stopped walking.

  She stared at the spot where the lone pine had stood.

  It was gone.

  Fresh sawdust covered the ground. Only a stump at the base of the trunk remained as evidence it had been there at all.

  “Huh.” The foreman tipped his hat back on his head. “Looks like someone cut it down. I didn’t realize anyone had been back in here.”

  She swallowed at the sudden lump in her throat.

  Everything was gone. The mill, the pine tree, her past…

  “Do you know who did this?” she asked.

  “Can’t say that I do.”

  “Hey, Mitch, whatcha doing back here?”

  Annie and the foreman turned as a younger man walked toward them.

  “What happened to the pine tree that was here?” Mitch asked.

  “We took that out this morning,” the other man answered. “Maxwell’s orders.”

  Relief flooded her. Luke hadn’t forgotten. At least she’d have the tree he promised. “Will you deliver it to my house this week?” she asked.

  The man frowned in confusion and shook his head. “We just had orders to remove it. Why would we take it to your place?”

  “Luke…Mr. Maxwell told me I could have the tree.”

  The man shrugged. “There wasn’t much left. It was charred all the way down to the ground. I’m not even sure why Mr. Maxwell wanted it.”

  “Oh.” Disappointment curled inside her chest.

  “So you cut the tree and sent it to Maxwell’s house?” the foreman asked.

  “What was left of it. Believe me, it was pretty much gone.”

  The foreman turned to Annie. “Sorry, Miss Crawford. I guess there’s nothing to see here.”

  Annie averted her face. “You’re right,” she whispered. “There’s nothing at all.”

  During the long drive home, Annie wondered what Luke wanted with t
he tree trunk. If it was that badly burned, remnants of her family’s initials wouldn’t show. The initials he’d carved would be gone too. The evidence she’d sought had simply vanished—as though it never existed.

  As she neared Boise, the city lights glowed against the night sky and dimmed the brilliance of the stars.

  In White Rock, she’d gazed for hours at the stars while in the grove with Luke by her side.

  Except she hadn’t, had she?

  How could a memory feel so genuine and not be true? Something had occurred to change her life—and not just a little. Dreams didn’t do that to a person.

  There must be a way to prove she’d gone back in time—to explain all the things she believed had been an actual experience.

  Maybe finding proof wouldn’t change things between her and Luke. Here, in the present, his life was different. He could walk away as though nothing happened. He’d never told her he loved her, so even if she could prove they’d lived in 1891, he had no obligation to her.

  However, she needed answers and couldn’t rest until she found something that made sense of what had happened to her.

  As she drove on toward her little home, a calm determination to find the truth replaced the emptiness, and gave her future purpose.

  ****

  After work the next afternoon, Annie went to the library. There she found a secluded corner in the section on local history. She prowled the shelves for information about White Rock and the surrounding region. Almost three hours later, scouring ancient volumes gleaned little information of the exact period she sought.

  She found several books about the silver strike, but the text skipped almost the entire decade before the fire of 1899 when most of the town was destroyed. There were footnotes about the mining accident and mention of residents moving on to better prospects after the veins ran dry.

  Her breath caught when she found a short paragraph mentioning Paul Crawford as the owner of the mill, but no mention of his wife, Elizabeth, or their son, Richard.

  Disappointed, Annie closed the book. This wasn’t evidence. All it proved was she had ancestors who had lived in the town. Information she already knew.

  She rose from the reading table and crossed to the shelf to return the book. The smell of books, pages old and new, filled the library. It had been a long time since she’d visited.