A Thief in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 1)

by Cidney Swanson

  Halley’s gaze darkened. She undid her buckle, climbed out of the truck, and slammed the door. Edmund followed, chasing her up the narrow stairs and inside the apartment. Only once the door was closed behind them did Halley respond to Edmund’s question.

  “I refuse to act like my mother.”

  “The two actions are dissimilar, lady. Your mother took your ring without permission. I offer you this ring freely, as a gift.”

  Surely she saw the difference. She must accept that he was right. But instead of indicating her acceptance, she shook her head.

  “It might not look the same to you, but it feels the same to me,” she said. “I’ve already had this conversation with Jillian about the same issue. I’m no good at explaining it.”

  “I am not Mistress Jillian. Might not I understand where she could not?”

  Halley seemed to consider his question. She sank onto a low couch. After a minute had passed, she spoke again, her voice calmer than before.

  “Here’s the thing,” she said. “There must have been a moment, once, when my mother said yes to something that was offered to her, just like you’re offering your ring to me. Mom must have said yes. And that yes led to another yes, and another, and another, until she couldn’t tell the difference between when she was accepting things and when she was demanding them, and now that’s all she does—she demands things. She expects things. She takes and takes and takes, and if I say yes to you now—” She broke off, wiping her eyes. “What if this is the action that sends me down the same path? I won’t risk that.”

  There were tears running down her face. Edmund reached to wipe them away, but she turned, preventing him.

  He spoke softly. “It is not this act which would liken you to her—”

  Halley looked weary as she turned back to meet his eyes. “You don’t know that.”

  “Lady—”

  Halley cut him off again. “You don’t know what it’s like living with my mother.”

  Ah, but he knew what it was like living with Geoffrey. What it had been like living with his father. Why could Halley not see she was nothing like any of them?

  He tried again, using a different tack.

  “Lady, we can none of us alter the circumstances of our birth. Can an apple sprung from an apple tree declare it would be a . . . a strawberry from hence forward? Nay, and yet . . .” He paused to consider the remainder of his argument, but before he could speak, sharp words flew from her mouth.

  “I refuse to believe that. If I believed that, I might as well give up. I might as well—”

  She turned away from him, her dark hair tossing as a mare might shake its mane before battle. Oh, but she was glorious in anger.

  How ever would he bear to leave her?

  50

  • HALLEY •

  Halley took a slow, shaky breath. She needed to pull back from Edmund. Even though everything in her said, yes, this, him, it was time to get out of the pool and towel off, not take a jump off the high dive.

  “I need to . . .” She needed to what? She needed to stop thinking about him? She needed to get him out of her head? She needed to walk away?

  “I need to take a walk,” she murmured. She needed to clear her head. To polish the surface of her memory until the reflection of her amber-eyed earl was erased.

  She crossed to the door and shut it behind her, not waiting for a response.

  She thought about taking her truck, but she needed to move. She was full of adrenaline, angry, aching, restless. She walked all the way to Butterfly Beach and then turned west, walking along the south-facing shore.

  At first, she thought only of how angry Edmund had made her, calling her just another apple from the apple tree, but gradually she admitted it wasn’t Edmund she was mad at, not really. It was . . . everything. It was the fact of him and the loss of him. It was the unexpected acceptance into Club 33 and the even-less-expected annual dues hitting her like a slap in the face. It was the discovery that her mom had taken and sold the ring from Jillian. It was everything. It was all the things that were given to her only to be snatched away.

  She looked at the ocean. The tide was out now. Suddenly her life felt like a battle against a hungry, ever-receding sea, which pulled from her all that she valued, all that she desired.

  The low tide allowed her to skirt the cliffs below the cemetery at the far end of Butterfly Beach, so she continued walking, first to the long expanse of East Beach and then on to Leadbetter Beach.

  Why did everything she wanted have to be taken from her? Why couldn’t the tide of her life turn, bringing hope within reach, spilling treasures at her feet so that she could comb through them, gathering them at will? She kicked a dried clump of sea kelp from her path, stirring up a contingency of flies. The beach stank of decay.

  She thought again about Edmund’s ring. About how easy it should have been to say yes instead of no. About how impossible it was to say yes instead of no. About how, despite what Edmund said to the contrary, it would be just like what her mom did. Like Jillian, he’d argued there were differences, and like Jillian, he couldn’t see that the differences didn’t matter. The similarities were what mattered, and would matter for years to come. The taking would be the same, and the selling would be the same, and if Halley paid for Club 33 with the money from Edmund’s ring, she’d be reminded of her mother’s selfish, careless cruelties every day of her life. Every time Halley ascended the stairs to the elegant club, she would remember seeing her ring in the pawn shop. She would remember the ache of her mother’s betrayal. She would shudder, wondering if her genes were turning her into the same person. And those remembrances, that fear, would poison her club membership; they would intrude every time she searched the faces at the bar, hoping to see one face that looked familiar.

  Halley’s feet had begun dragging sometime after she’d passed Stearn’s Wharf. Shoreline Park stretched ahead, and it was almost dark. She needed to get home. She needed to sleep. Tomorrow she had to get up early and set the booth up by herself. Turning, she began walking east, stepping onto the sidewalk because it was easier to walk on than the sand.

  Finding herself back on the art show’s sidewalk, she experienced a minute of self-doubt. Was she doing the wrong thing?

  She lifted her eyes and continued walking. She might not be doing the right thing, but she was doing the only thing she could do. Edmund was leaving. Her friends would move away next month. Club 33 offered hope, and Halley didn’t think she could bear to go on living without hope.

  She was tired. So tired. It had been stupid to walk so far away. But she’d needed the time to sort out everything she was feeling.

  She called an Uber and was back to her apartment twenty-one minutes later, a few dollars further away from being able to pay the club’s annual dues. The lights were all out in the apartment, and when she entered, she found Edmund asleep on the sagging couch wedged between the oven and refrigerator. He’d managed to open the apartment’s one working window, so that the small space was redolent with the scent of the eucalyptus lining one side of the parking lot.

  Halley stood in the dark apartment. She was hungry. She was exhausted. She was terrified of what tomorrow might—or might not—bring to her. She stared at Edmund, watching his right shoulder rise and fall in the rhythm of sound sleep. He’d draped his scarf over his torso so that it looked like a toddler-size blanket. Sighing, Halley went into the room she shared with her mother and grabbed an afghan off her mother’s queen-size bed. After draping it softly over Edmund’s sleeping form, Halley returned to the bedroom, where she threw herself on her own twin-size bed and curled into a tight ball, eventually crying herself to sleep.

  51

  • HALLEY •

  Halley woke early the next morning to the sound of her cell phone’s alarm. Rising, she moved in virtual silence. Edmund was still asleep in the combined kitchen and family room. She didn’t want to wake him. She didn’t want his smile drawing her in any deeper. She had to learn how to live wi
thout it.

  Outside and downstairs, she unlocked the storage closet where her booth and paintings waited and loaded them into her truck. When she passed a dark window on her last trip to the truck, she saw a lonely girl looking back. She turned away.

  At the foot of the stairs, she debated whether or not to return to the apartment for a bag of stale potato chips she’d seen in the bedroom.

  Her hunger won out. When she opened the door, Edmund was still asleep on his side, with one arm draped over his exposed ear. He looked so peaceful. So beautiful.

  Suddenly, she wanted to beg him to come and stay with her in the booth today, their last day together.

  But wouldn’t that make it even harder to say goodbye?

  She needed to let him go.

  After leaving him a note to say she’d be back at 6:40 p.m. and that Jillian would be coming by to pick him up at 10:00 a.m. for the gallery opening, she slipped out the front door.

  She felt a pang of regret—for Edmund, for the opening—but what choice did she have? The booth space was a one-shot deal. Tomorrow, when Edmund was gone, it would be too late to make the money she needed.

  She was doing the right thing. She was doing the only thing.

  Steeling herself, she walked back down the stairs and checked the back of the pickup to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. Change box? Check. Stool? Check. Receipt book, booth, sign . . . Everything was there. Except her bag of potato chips. She’d forgotten them again, distracted by Edmund.

  A part of her leapt at the chance to look at him one more time.

  She started the truck engine and drove away.

  Without help from Jillian and DaVinci, it took Halley nearly two hours to set up the booth. She arranged Jillian’s fruit sculptures prominently in the front of the booth. If she sold her friends’ pieces, it might soften the blow of her absence. But even as she thought this, she knew the truth: nothing would make up for not being at the gallery. Certainly not dollar bills.

  A seagull swooped down, attempting to make off with a sculpted strawberry. Halley shooed the bird away, and it screamed at her, accusing.

  She was making a terrible mistake. She should tear the booth down, pack up, and race over to the gallery right now. She had just enough time…. But then she remembered the creamy vellum of the invitation to join Club 33. For eleven years she’d waited for this opportunity. For more than half her life. She was too close to turn her back on her dream, annual dues or no. Another sale today would get her the rest of the way there.

  If there had been any possible way for her to be there for DaVinci, she would have. It came down to this: Halley had no other way to get the money she needed. She didn’t have wealthy parents like Jillian. She didn’t have generous parents like DaVinci. This was what she had. This was all she had. It was the only way.

  Halley pasted on a smile for a woman who crossed inside the booth to examine the asparagus painting. She took a deep breath when the customer gestured for a man to come take a closer look at the painting. Held that breath when the woman, immaculately dressed and wearing a diamond sparkly enough to power a small city, turned and addressed Halley.

  “Our daughter paints, too.”

  “That’s . . . great,” said Halley. It meant the couple already understood that artists had a living to make. Her heart began to beat faster. If she made her first sale right away, there might still be time to race up to the gallery.

  “This piece is really lovely. Are you the artist?”

  Halley smiled and nodded. “It’s been a real favorite this weekend.” Was that what Jillian would have said? Or was that just stupid humble-bragging?

  “You’ve got a great eye for color,” said the woman. Then she turned to her husband. “Chip, I know exactly what I’m going to ask Muffy to paint for us for our anniversary!” The woman smiled, oblivious to the hopes she had raised and dashed.

  Halley’s face heated with anger, but she just smiled and wished the woman and her Sperry-shoed, argyle-sweatered husband a good morning.

  The same painting continued to garner praise throughout the increasingly hot morning. There was no breeze, and Halley realized she’d forgotten to pack a water bottle. Occasional beads of sweat tickled down her spine, but she kept smiling, kept wishing people a great day, kept thinking, This is the one!, every time someone stepped into the booth to admire the three green stripes on the charcoal background.

  Several stepped close enough to examine the price. Half a dozen said maybe they’d come back later. Two asked if there was some wiggle-room in the pricing. One laughed at the price. Forty-five thousand dollars. What had she been thinking? She should scratch one of those zeroes off right now. But if she did, it wouldn’t quite cover the gap between what she had and what she needed. As the day wore on, she began to answer that, yes, there was room for negotiating on price.

  At two o’clock, when she still hadn’t sold a single painting, Halley found a piece of paper and wrote “Buy One Painting, Get One Free” on it, pinning the paper to the front of the booth. By three o’clock, she was worried the sign made her look desperate, and she pulled it down. At half past three, an earlier admirer of the asparagus painting returned with her son. Both were dressed in the sort of casual elegance that spelled old money in Santa Barbara. Halley let slip that she had lived in Montecito all her life. Then immediately regretted it. Her own apparel—vintage St. Vinnie’s—gave her away as a poseur.

  The mother and son smiled politely and drifted out of the booth without having made any overtures to purchase. By four thirty Halley was fighting back tears. And then, at five, her mother appeared, exiting a taxi from across Cabrillo Boulevard and heading straight for Halley’s booth.

  52

  • HALLEY •

  Halley was in no mood to talk to her mother, but seeing her at least had the effect of completely quenching the tears. She wasn’t letting her mom see her cry.

  “Halley!” Her mother beelined for the booth, waving wildly, apparently on the off chance Halley hadn’t noticed her. Her loud cries, in concert with her loud billowing silks and loud red sunhat made it unlikely anyone within a quarter mile failed to notice her.

  Halley, accustomed to her mother’s noisy entrances, felt only the barest twinge of embarrassment, and even this was swiftly drowned in a swell of anger as she remembered her discovery in the pawn shop yesterday. How could her mother pawn her ring from Jillian? And say nothing about it—even when Halley had asked if she’d seen it?

  Halley forced herself to take a slow breath. This was not the time to confront her mother about the ring. This was her place of business and she had only one more hour to sell a painting.

  Her mother waited until she entered the booth before she spoke.

  “I just heard you sold a painting for over ten thousand dollars two days ago.” The accusation rang sharply in the tiny booth. “I had to hear this from DaVinci’s mom. When were you planning to tell me?”

  Halley felt her own accusation welling up inside, but reminded herself why she was here, stuck in a booth on East Beach. She closed her eyes and took a calming breath.

  “It’s been busy—”

  “Obviously. You’re too busy to let your own mother into your life.”

  “Mom,” began Halley. But then she stopped.

  She had nothing more to say. There was no, Mom, I’m sorry, or Mom, I meant to tell you, or Mom, isn’t it exciting?

  The woman in her booth was a stranger. Someone she’d shared living space with, but nothing more. The thought was freeing, and Halley felt her lungs expanding with the new revelation. But just as quickly, she felt the pressing devastation of it. She was motherless. She was alone.

  Her mother didn’t wait for Halley to continue.

  “I just want to be clear that after this . . . stunt, you can buy your own tires. And our refrigerator needs replacing. Since you’re in the apartment more than I am, I think we can agree, you should be the one to replace it.”

  Halley’s eyes grew w
ide. She wasn’t hearing this.

  Her mother plucked one of Jillian’s sculptures off a display table.

  “Put that down,” snapped Halley.

  “It’s not like you’re even contributing to the rent,” continued her mother, snorting at the price of Jillian’s sculpture.

  “I said put that down!”

  The bowl of painted apricots clunked onto the display table.

  “You’re almost eighteen. It’s high time you contributed to this family,” murmured her mother.

  High time she contributed to the family? To the family? What family? Where was this family? She sure as hell hadn’t seen it anytime in the last decade.

  Halley threw her shoulders back. “We are not a family. DaVinci has a family. Jillian has a family—”

  “We are too a family!”

  “No, Mom—”

  “There’s no ‘Dad’ in our lives? Is that your problem? I thought you’d gotten over that childish obsession.”

  Something solidified inside Halley. Something cold, icy, metallic. “The lack of a father is not what keeps us from being a family. We’re not a family because you treat me like a . . . like a . . . a roommate instead of a daughter.”

  Her mother’s refined nostrils flared. “Well, excuse me if my European style of parenting doesn’t suit your American ideal of family.”

  “European style of parenting?” Halley coughed out a single laugh. Her mom had no parenting style, Danish, American, or otherwise.

  “Becoming a parent was the stupidest thing I ever did,” muttered her mother.

  There it was: the simple truth, battery-acid caustic. Corrosive. Honest.

  Angry tears burned behind Halley’s eyes. She blinked hard. Tried to focus on where she was. On what she had to do. Taking in a shaky breath, she spoke.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. This is my place of business. I am working right now.”

  “I paid twenty dollars to take a taxi here to speak to my daughter—”

  Halley opened the cash box. Held out a twenty. “Which you did. Go. Now.”