Linda Lael Miller Bundle

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I’ll just get it right back for you,” Cecily replied briskly. And she went out into the hallway, calling for a nurse.

  Half an hour later, Elisabeth had her necklace back. Just wearing it made her feel closer to Jonathan and Trista.

  That evening when the doctor came by on his evening rounds, he took the IV needle from Elisabeth’s hand and pronounced her on the mend. His kindly eyes were full of questions as to where she could have contracted a virus modern medicine couldn’t identify, but he didn’t press her for answers.

  “I want to go home,” she announced when he’d finished a fairly routine examination. Weak as she was, she was conscious of every tick of the celestial clock, and it was hell not knowing what was happening to Jonathan and Trista.

  The physician smiled and shook his head. “Not for a few more days, I’m afraid. You’re in a very weakened state, Ms. McCartney.”

  “But I can recover just as well there as here….”

  “Let’s see how you feel on Friday,” he said, overruling her. And then he moved on to the next room.

  Elisabeth waited until it was dark before getting out of bed, staggering over to the door and peering down the lighted hallway to the nurses’ station. One woman was there, her head bent over some notes she was making, but other than that, the coast was clear.

  With enormous effort, Elisabeth put on the jeans and sweatshirt Janet had brought her from the house, brushed her tangled hair and crept out into the hallway. A city hospital would have been more difficult to escape, but this one was small and understaffed, and Elisabeth made it into the elevator without being challenged.

  She leaned back, clutching the metal railing in both hands and summoning up all her strength. She still had to get to her house, which was several miles away. And Pine River wasn’t exactly bustling with available taxi cabs.

  Elisabeth didn’t have her purse—that was locked away for safekeeping in the hospital and, of course, she didn’t dare ask for it—but there was a spare house key hidden in the woodshed.

  She started walking, and it soon became apparent that she was simply too weak to walk all the way home. Praying she wouldn’t find herself hooked up with a serial killer, like women she’d read about, she stuck out her thumb.

  Presently a rattly old pickup truck with one missing fender came to a stop beside her and a young man leaned across the seat to push open the door. His smile was downright ingenuous.

  “Your car break down?” he asked.

  Elisabeth eyed him wearily, waiting for negative vibes to strike her, but there weren’t any. The kid kind of reminded her of Wally Cleaver. She nodded, not wanting to explain that she’d just sprung herself from the hospital, and climbed into the truck.

  Just that effort exhausted her and she collapsed against the back of the lumpy old seat, terrified that she would pass out.

  “Hey,” the teenage boy began, shifting the vehicle into gear and stepping on the gas with enthusiasm. “You sick or something? There’s a hospital right back there….” He cocked his thumb over one shoulder.

  Elisabeth shook her head. “I’m fine,” she managed, rallying enough to smile. “I live out on Schoolhouse Road.”

  The young man looked at her with amused interest. “You don’t mean that haunted place across from the Buzbees, do you?”

  Elisabeth debated between laughing and crying, and settled on the former, mostly to keep from alarming her rescuer. “Sure do,” she said.

  He uttered an exclamation, and Elisabeth could see that he was truly impressed. “Ever see any spooks or anything like that?”

  They were passing through the main part of town, and Elisabeth felt a bittersweet pang as she looked at the lighted windows and signs. She hoped to be back with Jonathan soon, and when that happened, the modern world would be a memory. If something that didn’t exist yet could be called a memory.

  “No,” she said, pushing back her hair with one hand. “To tell you the truth, I don’t believe in ghosts. I think there’s a scientific explanation for everything—it’s just that there are so many natural laws we don’t understand.”

  “So you’ve never seen nothing suspicious, huh?”

  As a teacher, Elisabeth winced at his grammar. “I’ve seen things I can’t explain,” she admitted. She figured she owed him that much, since he was giving her a ride home.

  “Like what?”

  Elisabeth sighed, unsure how much to say. After all, if he went home and told his parents she’d talked about traveling between one century and the next, the authorities would probably come and cart her off to a padded room. “Just—things. Shadows. The kind of stuff you catch a glimpse of out of the corner of an eye and wonder what you really saw.”

  Her companion shuddered as he turned into Elisabeth’s driveway. She could tell the sight of the dark house looming in the night didn’t thrill him.

  “Thanks,” she said, opening the door and getting out of the truck. Her knees seemed to have all the substance of whipped egg whites, and she clung to the door for a moment to steady herself.

  The boy swallowed. “No problem,” he answered. He gunned the engine, though it was probably an unconscious motion. “Want me to stick around until you’re inside?”

  Elisabeth looked back over her shoulder at the beloved house that had always been her refuge. “I’ll be perfectly all right,” she said. And then she turned and walked away.

  Her young knight in shining armor wasted no time in backing out of the driveway and speeding away down the highway. Elisabeth smiled as she made her way around the house to the woodshed to extract the back door key from its hiding place.

  The lights in the kitchen glowed brightly when she flipped the switch, and Elisabeth felt the need of a cup of tea to brace herself, but she didn’t want to take the time. Her strength was about to give out, and she yearned to be with Jonathan.

  Upstairs, however, she found the door to the past sealed against her, even though she was wearing the necklace. After a half hour of trying, she went into the master bedroom and collapsed on the bed, too weary even to cry out her desolate frustration.

  In the morning, she tried once again to cross the threshold, and once again, the effort was fruitless. She didn’t let herself consider the possibility that the window in time had closed forever, because the prospect was beyond bearing.

  She listened listlessly to the messages on her answering machine—the last one was from her doctor, urging her to return to the hospital—then shut off the machine without returning any of the calls. She thumbed through her mail and, finding nothing from Rue, tossed the lot of it into the trash, unopened.

  In the kitchen, she brewed hot tea and made toast with a couple slices of bread from a bag in the freezer. She was feeling a little better this morning, but she knew she hadn’t recovered a tenth of her normal strength.

  After finishing her toast, she wrote another long letter to Rue, stamped it and carried it out to the mailbox. By the time she returned, carrying a batch of fourth-class mail with her, she was on the verge of collapse.

  Numbly, Elisabeth climbed the stairs again, found herself a fresh set of clothes and ran a deep, hot bath. After shampooing her hair, she settled in to soak. The heat revived her, and she had some of her zip back when she got out and dressed in black jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of planet Earth on the front.

  Pausing in the hallway, she leaned against the door, both palms resting against the wood, and called, “Jonathan?”

  There was no answer, and Elisabeth couldn’t help wondering if that was because there was no longer a Jonathan. There were tears brimming in her eyes when she went back downstairs and stretched out on the sofa.

  The jangle of the hallway telephone awakened her and, for a moment, Elisabeth considered not answering. Then she decided she’d caused people enough worry as it was, without ignoring their attempts to reach her.

  She was shaky and breathless when she picked up the receiver in the hallway and blurted, “Hello?”

 
“What are you doing home?” Janet demanded. “Your doctor expressly told me you were supposed to stay until Friday, at least.”

  Elisabeth wound her finger in the cord, smiling sadly. She was going to miss Janet, and she hoped her friend wouldn’t suffer too much over her disappearance. “I was resting until you called,” she said, making an effort to sound like her old self.

  “I’m wasting my time trying to get you to come to Seattle, aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” Elisabeth answered gently. “But don’t think your kindness doesn’t mean a lot to me, Janet, because it does. It’s just that, well, I’m up against something I have to work out for myself.”

  “I understand,” Janet said uncertainly. “You’ll call if you change your mind?”

  Elisabeth promised she would, hung up and immediately dialed her father’s number at Lake Tahoe. These conversations would be remembered as goodbyes, she supposed, if she managed to make it back to 1892.

  The call was picked up by an answering machine, though, and Elisabeth was almost relieved. She identified herself, said she was out of the hospital and feeling fine, and hung up.

  Early that afternoon, while Elisabeth was heating a can of soup at the stove, a light rain began to fall and the electricity flickered. She glanced uneasily at the darkening sky and wondered if it was about to storm where Jonathan and Trista were.

  Just the thought of them brought a tightness to her throat and the sting of tears to her eyes. She was eating her soup and watching a soap opera on TV when a messenger from the hospital brought her purse. Later, if she felt better and she still couldn’t get across the threshold, she would get into her car and drive to town for groceries. Because she’d been away so much, she had practically nothing in the cupboards except for canned goods.

  Thunder shook the walls, lightning flashed and the TV went dead. Not caring, Elisabeth went upstairs. Once again, longingly, she paused in front of the door.

  There was nothing beyond it, she told herself sternly, besides a long fall to the roof of the sun porch. She was having a nervous breakdown or something, that was all, and Jonathan and Trista were mere figments of her imagination. They were the family she’d longed for but never really had.

  She leaned against the door, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. The hope of returning was all she had to cling to, and even that was fading fast.

  Presently, Elisabeth grew weary of crying and straightened. She knotted one fist and pounded. “Jonathan!” she yelled.

  Nothing.

  She splashed her face with cold water at the bathroom sink, then went resolutely downstairs. Amazed at how simple exertions could exhaust her, she got her purse and forced herself out to her car.

  Shopping was an ordeal, and Elisabeth felt so shaky, she feared she’d fall over in a dead faint right there in the supermarket. Hastily, she bought fruit and a stack of frozen entrés and left the store.

  At home, she found the electricity had been restored, and she put one of the packaged dinners into the microwave. She hardly tasted the food.

  Following her solitary meal, Elisabeth spent a few disconsolate minutes at the piano, running her fingers over the keys. The songs she played reminded her too much of Trista, though, and of Jonathan, and she finally had to stop. And she had to admit she’d been hoping to hear the sound of Trista’s piano echoing back across the century that separated them.

  Figuring she might as well give up on getting back to 1892—for that day at least—Elisabeth gathered an armload of Aunt Verity’s journals from one of the bookshelves in the parlor and took herself upstairs. After building a fire with the last of the wood, she curled up in the middle of the bed and began to read.

  At first, the entries were ordinary enough. Verity talked about her marriage, how much she loved her husband, how she longed for children. After her mate’s untimely death in a hunting accident, she wrote about sadness and grief. And then came the account of Barbara Fortner’s appearance in the upstairs hallway.

  Elisabeth sat bolt upright as she read about the woman’s baffled disbelief and Verity’s efforts to make her feel at home. The words Elisabeth’s aunt had written shed new light on the stories Verity had told her teenage nieces during their summer visits, and Elisabeth felt the pang of grief.

  By midnight, Elisabeth’s eyes were drooping. She closed the journals and stacked them neatly on the bedside table, then changed into a nightshirt, brushed her teeth and crawled into bed. “Jonathan,” she whispered. His name reverberated through her heart.

  She was never sure whether minutes had passed or hours when the sound of a child’s sobs prodded her awake. Trista.

  Elisabeth sat up and flung the covers back, her fingers gripping the necklace as she hurried into the hallway. Her hand trembled violently as she reached for the knob on the sealed door, praying with all her heart that it would open.

  The child’s name left her throat in a rush, like a sigh of relief, when the knob turned under her hand and the hinges creaked.

  There was a lamp burning on Trista’s bedside table, and she stared at Elisabeth as though she couldn’t believe she was really seeing her. Then her small face contorted with childish fury. “Where were you? Why did you leave me like that?”

  Elisabeth sat down on the edge of the bed and gathered the little girl into her arms, holding her very close. “I was sick, sweetheart,” she said as joyous tears pooled in her eyes. “Believe me, the last thing I wanted to do was leave you.”

  “You’ll stay here now?” Trista sniffled, pulling back in Elisabeth’s embrace to look up into her face. “You won’t leave us again?”

  Elisabeth thought of Rue, her father, Janet. She would miss them all, but she knew she belonged here in this time, with these people. She kissed Trista’s forehead. “I won’t leave you again,” she promised. “Were you all alone? Is that why you were crying?”

  Trista nodded. “I was scared.”

  “Where’s your papa?”

  Jonathan’s daughter allowed herself to be settled back on the pillows and tucked in. “He’s just out in the barn, but I heard noises and I imagined Mr. Marley was coming down the hall, rattling his chains and moaning.”

  Elisabeth smiled at the reference to the Dickens ghost. “I’m the only apparition in this house tonight,” she said. Then she kissed Trista again, turned down the wick in the lamp and went downstairs.

  Before she went to Jonathan and told him she’d marry him if he still wanted her, before she threw herself into his arms, there was something she had to find out.

  CHAPTER 13

  Elizabeth stood in the kitchen, staring helplessly at Jonathan’s calendar. Never before had it been so crucial to know the exact date, but the small numbered squares told her nothing except that it was still June.

  The sudden opening of the back door and a rush of cool, night air made her turn. Pure joy caused her spirit to pirouette within her. Jonathan was standing there, looking at her as though he didn’t quite dare to trust his eyes.

  With a strangled cry, she launched herself across the room and into his embrace, her arms tight around his neck.

  “Lizzie,” he rasped, holding her. “Thank God you’re all right.”

  She tilted her head back and kissed him soundly before replying, “It was hell not knowing what was happening here. I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to get back, and I was even more frightened by what I might find if I did.”

  Jonathan laughed and gave her a squeeze before setting her on her feet. His hand smoothed her hair with infinite gentleness, and his gaze seemed to caress her. “Are you well again?”

  She shrugged, then slipped her arms around his lean waist. “I’m a little shaky, but I’m going to make it.”

  A haunted expression crossed his face. “I wanted to go with you, to make sure you got help, but when I stepped over the threshold, you vanished from my arms.”

  Elisabeth glanced back at the calendar. “Jonathan…”

  He smiled and crooked a finger under her chin. �
��That’s one thing you were wrong about,” he said. “It’s the twenty-third of June—Thursday, to be exact—and there’s been no fire.”

  His words lessened Elisabeth’s dread a little. After all, she knew next to nothing about this phenomenon, and it was possible that she or Jonathan had inadvertently changed fate somehow.

  In the next instant, however, another matter involving dates and cycles leapt into her mind, and the shock made her sway in Jonathan’s arms.

  He eased her into a chair. “Elisabeth, what is it?”

  “I…” Her throat felt dry and she had to stop and swallow. “My…Jonathan, I haven’t had my…I could be pregnant.”

  His eyes glowed bright as the kerosene lantern in the middle of the table. “You not only came back to me,” he smiled. “You brought someone with you.”

  Tears of happiness gathered on Elisabeth’s lashes. Once, during her marriage, she’d gotten pregnant and then miscarried, and Ian had been pleased. He’d said it was for the best and that he hoped Elisabeth wouldn’t take too long getting her figure back.

  “Y-you’re glad?”

  Jonathan crouched in front of her chair and took her hands in his. A sheen of moisture glimmered in his eyes. “What do you think? I love you, Lizzie. And a child is the best gift you could give me.” He frowned. “You won’t leave again, will you?”

  Elisabeth reached back to unclasp the necklace and place it in his palm. “For all I care, you can drop this down the well. I’m here to stay.”

  He put the pendant into his shirt pocket and stood, drawing Elisabeth with him. “I’d like to take you straight to bed,” he said, “but you’re still looking a little peaky, and we have to think about Trista.” Jonathan paused and kissed her. “Will you marry me in the morning, Lizzie?”

  She nodded. “I know it wouldn’t be right for us to make love,” she said shyly, “but I need for you to hold me. Being apart from you was awful.”