The House Near the River

by Barbara Bartholomew

  Dad called them in then. He scolded them for being out in the heat in the middle of the day. In this country, people watched their kids to keep them safe from dangerously hot temperatures much as those way up north protected them from extreme cold.

  He made them sip glasses of cold water so as not to get dehydrated and Angie found she didn’t much mind being treated as though she were David’s age. It was rather pleasant to feel she was being looked after by someone who loved her, considering everything that had happened lately.

  Her thoughts suddenly hit a brake. David had said Matthew was nearby and watching after them. Was it possible that drawn by his need to find her back in 1946, he’d found his way to where she was now, standing on land so close they could have seen each other if they hadn’t been separated by decades of time.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  She would never find the dog tags. How could she? Buried under the plaster of the old wall that way? And would she even know what they were supposed to mean?

  Matthew stacked bales of hay in the little shed he’d built, storing up feed for the cattle to make it through the winter. He hoped by keeping busy he could kick off this feeling of hopelessness that was creeping all around him.

  He hadn’t been so sure lately. Maybe the school wasn’t where Ange was in some future time.

  Maybe the school wasn’t even there. In all the years in between it had probably been torn down and his dog tags tossed away in the rubble. Somewhere in some unknown future some farmer with whatever was the latest of tractors was plowing his cotton stubble, making the first preparations for next spring’s crop.

  It didn’t help any when he recognized the shiny new Ford Coupe gathering a coat of dust on its shiny surface as it came up the road in his direction.

  If he’d wanted to see anybody hereabouts, it might have at one time been Salina, but weeks back, he’d begun to see she wanted more from him than he could give. To save both their feelings, he’d told her he was not ready for anything more, trying to be tactful to keep from hurting her.

  At no time had he a sense that she loved him, but only that she was desperate for life to move on.

  He wondered why she would be coming out here now and stood waiting, covered as he was with hay and dirt and telling himself he should be humble enough to realize that an attractive, well-off woman like Salina wouldn’t come chasing after him.

  What could he offer that half a dozen young men with good educations and great prospects couldn’t top?

  The somewhat less shiny car pulled to a stop alongside him and Salina, dressed in some kind of red dress that probably cost the earth, got out. “Howdy, farmer,” she greeted him jokingly.

  He played along. “Howdy, ma’am. You must be from Texas from the way you talk.”

  She stopped the pretense, not even bothering to smile at his weak humor.

  “It’s his birthday,” she said. “He would have been twenty seven today.”

  He didn’t have to ask who he was. It was always about her husband with Salina. She was always talking about moving on, but never seemed to be able to do it.

  He didn’t know how to advise her. He couldn’t help thinking daily about how another December 8 was just around the corner, another landmark that Ange was still not in his life.

  She stared at him. “I’ve got to do something or die.”

  He nodded, understanding that. He felt that way himself sometimes. “Just think hard about what you’re doing. You know that old saying about jumping from the frying pan into the fire.”

  She grabbed his arm, her face contorted. “I am in the fire right now, Matthew. I’m burning in hell. Do you know what it is to wake up in the morning having dreamed he was still alive and everything was all right. And then, almost instantly, you remember.”

  He nodded, but she was too focused on herself to pay attention to him. He had learned that those in the most pain weren’t always able to be sensitive to pain in others. Their whole being was consumed by what they were feeling.

  “He isn’t coming back, Matthew. I know that know. I’ve been deceiving myself.”

  She held his arm so tightly that it hurt, her long fingernails piercing his skin, but he didn’t let on. “Has something happened? Have you learned something new?”

  She shook her head, flinging tears in his direction. “I’ve just faced facts. He’s never going to come through that door to hug his son and kiss me. It’s over. He’s dead.”

  He waited, not knowing what she wanted him to say. It would hardly be right to urge false hope on her. Chances were she was right and her husband’s bones lay in an ocean half a world away. He didn’t want to remind her of that either.

  So he waited for what she would say next. “Kirby has asked me to marry him,” she blurted out.

  He knew Kirby Fox only slightly. A young attorney, he handled some of her father’s legal business for him. People said he was bright and ambitious, the kind of young man who was going places.

  “It isn’t fair to any of us the way we’re living now. My son needs a dad and I need a husband. Oh, Matthew, I need so much to be normal and live like other people.”

  The thought that came to him was that he doubted many people felt normal. There was no knowing the secrets hurts they hid, the pain that woke them every morning. They only looked okay from the outside.

  But she didn’t want to hear that. In the depths of her sorrow, she wanted to believe that something very different was possible. She wanted days so uneventful that they grew boring, days where she didn’t have to worry about anything more than what to have for supper or what pretty dress she should put on the next day.

  Her mother had died before she could remember and she’d been the pampered daughter of an adoring parent, then the sheltered wife of a successful young man. Life hadn’t prepared her for what she now faced.

  “You do what you gotta do,” he said because it was so obviously the truth. He sure had no business judging someone else’s choice.

  “But I don’t want to marry Kirby, though everybody says I’m lucky to have a man like him take interest in me. He’s pressing for us getting married next month and moving into a house in town. It’s a real pretty house, a big two-story on Pennsylvania Street and close enough to the school that my boy could walk when he’s old enough to go.”

  He’d noticed before that she rarely called the child who had been born after his dad’s death by his name. He was always her son or baby . . . somehow she had not accepted him as a person. Once he had a name, Matthew guessed from the heart of his own understanding, he became vulnerable. She could lose him as she’d lost her husband.

  He’d heard of times when so many people lost children young that they didn’t start to name them until they were four or five years old and they had a better chance at life.

  Finally she released her hold on him, staring now up into his face. “If I’ve got to marry, Matthew, I’d rather it be to you than to Kirby.”

  Somehow he wasn’t as surprised as he should have been. “Salina,” he said gently. “You don’t love me and I’ll never love anybody but my Ange.”

  “I do love you. You are a sweet, strong man who makes me feel safe. You’re the only one I can talk to about how I really feel. Kirby just squirms when I try to say something serious and tells me it’s time to put all that behind me now.”

  “You don’t love me,” was the only response he could make.

  “I love you. I’m not in love with you the way I was with my husband, but I love you. And I’ve got to do something, Matthew, I think all the time about ways to end it all.”

  He cried out in wordless protest, even though he had himself at times come close to this final decision. “You can’t do that to your boy or to your dad. You’d ruin their lives.”

  “Sometimes I think the way I am now is ruining their lives. No doubt they’d be better off without me. A
nyhow, this is what I’ve decided. I can’t pull out of this myself, just trying to go on. I’ve got to start a new life. If you don’t want to marry me, I’ll say yes to Kirby.

  “Nothing wrong with Kirby,” he said slowly, not even sure this was a wrong turn for her to take. Who can tell what would get her started again? But the one thing he was certain was that it wasn’t right for him.

  “I can’t say you’re making a mistake. At least you’re trying to go on. But I’m not ready to give up on Ange, not by a long sight.”

  She stepped away from him, looking up into his face. “Will you ever give up on her, Matthew?” she asked, her look full of pity.

  He grinned, though he didn’t find any of this in any way humorous. “Reckon when St. Peter comes to call me to the golden gates, I will walk up there looking for her,” he said simply.

  She nodded, hesitated a second, then wrapped him in a hug. “Let’s make a pact that no matter what happens we don’t give up . . . you know, that way.”

  She meant not to exit life by her own hand. He was more afraid for her than he was for himself. He nodded. “It’s a pact,” he said solemnly.

  He watched her get back in the car and drive away, lost in silent prayers for her well-being in this new life she was choosing.

  When she was gone, he turned to stare at the school. Maybe she was right and he was wrong, but no matter he had no choice but to keep on trying to reach Ange.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Angie supposed she should have known. If you wanted to find a needle in a haystack, set a small child to looking. Before long that child would be trying to put the needle in his mouth.

  She remembered Grandma’s story of how after many years of marriage, she’d looked in dismay to find the small diamond missing from her engagement ring. Since she’d covered many miles since she’d actually seen it that morning, she considered it hopelessly gone.

  But Grandpa, wise in the ways of little boys, announced a ten dollar prize to any sharp-eyed youngster who could find the diamond. Soon their visiting nephews were scouring the farm inside and outside, looking for a speck of light.

  By mid-afternoon the tiny diamond was located in the living room rug by an enterprising six-year-old who gloated over his ten dollars in front of his brothers.

  Not that she knew an item was hidden away for her to find. Such a thought had occurred to her as she spent days dreaming over the possibility that Matthew was, in some sense, close to her. Other days she was sure she was imagining things, but when David came to her, jangling a chain with what looked like dog tags on the end of it, she felt a tingle as if electricity had run through her body.

  Dog tags, she thought. Like you put on dogs so they could be found if lost.

  Dog tags. Like soldiers wore around their necks so they could be identified if the worst came to the worst.

  She grabbed for them, but David jumped out of her reach. “It’s mine,” he said, “I found it.”

  She knew her smile was shaky. She knew. She just knew this was important. “Where did you find it, David?”

  “It fell out of the wall. It was in some junk where they were working on the wall in the kitchen. It’s okay if I keep it. Nobody wants it.”

  Behind the plaster! Just where he might have chosen to hide it to send as a message to her.

  Come on, Angie girl, you’re imagining things again.

  She smiled her sweetest smile. “Won’t you let me look at it, David? I promise to give it back.”

  He thought a minute and then decided to trust her. “If you’ll promise to give it right back.” He handed it to her and her fingers burned.

  She was almost afraid to look. When she did, she saw his name. Matthew’s name, a number, some information about immunizations . . .

  She blinked tears from her eyes. It was real. He was here. He had come to her.

  “Give it back,” David demanded.

  She hated to let it go from her hand, the chain that carried the dog tags he’d had with him throughout the war, but she had no choice. She had promised.

  Angie gave the dog tags back to her brother.

  All day she negotiated with him, offering anything she thought he might desire in exchange, but he resisted temptation. “It’s my found treasure,” he said, frowning at her.

  She was so afraid he would lose the dog tags.

  Finally he agreed to give her the tags if she would take him to town and let him select any toy he wanted from the Dollar Store.

  “Two toys,” she promised hastily.

  She immediately drove him to the nearest town where he spent a long half hour selecting a small truck and a bottle of bubbles. Only when she placed the sack containing his purchases in his hands, did he release the tags to her.

  She drove back to the inn, conscious of the tags she’d put in her purse. Inside she felt a kind of humming, a sense of contentment as though she’d made a great stride forward.

  At home, Dad took charge of David, a slight frown of puzzlement on his face at something he saw in Angie, though he asked no questions.

  Angie stood on the porch, pleased to finally be alone with her treasure. She took the tags out and caressed them, then touched the cold metal to her lips in what was almost a kiss.

  But now what? How did this help her to find him. He had sent her a message, ‘I am here.’ But how did that change things.

  Never had she seen even the glimmer of an opening such as she saw all the time at the farm in Oklahoma. Not here.

  There she was so troubled by visions that she could hardly get on with her life. Here she felt dumped out and left abandoned.

  And then she remembered that painful moment in Belgium when she had inadvertently stepped away from an injured Matthew. The opening had come and gobbled her up. She might never know why.

  But it proved one thing. Time portals didn’t come for her only at the house near the river in Oklahoma.

  Openings must be all around her and everyone else. Maybe when those moments came when she thought she knew how someone in the past felt, when she felt particularly close to a long distant relative, she had slipped just for an instance in and out of one of those openings. Maybe that happened to everyone now and then.

  Somehow she seemed to have a special talent that allowed her to cross more easily than others. She saw things other people could not see, blessing or curse which ever that might be.

  David stumbled into such openings, but might it not be simply her proximity that put him at risk.

  If so, might she not extend such an ability to Matthew, either to go to him or have him come to her.

  As she thought, Dad came out without David. “You have that look,” he said.

  “What look?” She smiled warmly at him. Poor Dad he put up with a lot when it came to his daughter.

  “Like you’re going wandering again. Promise me one thing, Angie. Promise me that if you ever go away and stay, you’ll do the best you can to get word to me that you’re all right. I couldn’t stand living the rest of my life not knowing if you were all right.”

  “Scout’s honor, Dad.”

  “Hey!” He pretended to dismay. “You were never a scout, young lady.”

  They smiled at each other in a rare moment of complete understanding.

  After he went back inside, she began to walk the property. In restoring the red brick building, her mom and dad had done everything they could to keep the original character of the school house. The modern kitchen was placed where the children had eaten their meals, the classroom with their cloakrooms became bedrooms with adjoining baths. The auditorium where children gathered for plays and programs was now an entertainment center.

  But outside must be very different, Angie supposed. Once children had played out here. She stopped to look at an artistically laid straw stack.

  But when Mom and Dad bought the old pr
operty, it had been a working farm surrounding a deserted building. Had this once been Matthew’s farm?

  She peered around, hoping to find a way to him.

  Clemmie said they’d married and were expecting a child. For that to happen, they had to find each other.

  She wandered out to the graveled road that led past the inn and began strolling down it to the south. Sometimes walking helped get her brain going.

  Today wasn’t as hot as the days that had passed recently. Probably not more than ninety nine degrees. Hot enough. She wouldn’t be able to walk far.

  The Hereford cows that normally grazed on the farm just down the road stood in the shade of a small grove of trees. A real estate agency’s for sale sign stood just outside the fence. She didn’t need a crystal ball to see into the future of this property. It was destined to either development into acreage lots for building, or as the site for a mini-mansion.

  She’d bet on the development. Builders had more to invest than those individuals who wanted a private mansion in the country. People with enough money were looking for small properties where they could keep a horse along country roads close enough to the cities for a commute. She sighed, feeling sure the future for the Prairie House as a sampling of country life was strictly limited. Maybe Dad was right and it was time to sell out.

  All the openings into time had been at Grandma’s farm until that one that led to Belgium, she reminded herself again. There had to be some kind of clue in that.

  Matthew’s presence. He had been there and in danger.

  She didn’t want him to ever be in that kind of danger again, but surely he needed her, longed for her as she longed for him.

  Angie had a sense that he was close to her, that she could almost reach out and touch him.

  Then she saw him, leaning against a wooden fence that hadn’t been there a moment before.

  Their eyes met. His face, that beloved face that looked so much more sad and worn than when she’d left him at the farm, brightened with joy.