"Well, she doesn’t mean anything by it, Hannah. Elvira’s a nurse, and it’s made her bossy."
"You ask me, she was born that way.”
Elvira Taylor believed she had the solution to every one of the world’s problems, which irked Hannah because it seemed to her that Elvira should begin solving her own first, at home.
"It’s not only that she’s bossy, either. She’s a terrible backseat driver. Don’t you remember the day I took you both to that tea in Ladysmith?” The memory still made Hannah shudder. "And does she still have that problem with her bladder?"
Daisy hesitated. "She's been to the doctor. He gave her exercises to do.”
Hannah groaned and shut her eyes. "Lordie. We'll be stopping every five miles so she can pee. It'll take all four days just to get halfway there, never mind up and back again. I'll probably be late for my own wedding just because of Elvira’s leaky bladder.”
"Oh, don’t be silly.” Daisy waved a hand in the air, airily dismissing Hannah’s concern. "Klaus has to go quite often, too, so it won’t make any real difference, will it? Stopping for one, you might as well stop for two.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. A trip with Daisy, Elvira, and her mother’s dog would be nothing short of a nightmare. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn't do it. A wave of absolute rebellion rose in her, along with a mental vision of all the things in her life that didn’t seem to be working out as well as she’d hoped.
For an intoxicating moment, Hannah seriously considered telling her mother she’d changed her mind about making the trip. And she wouldn’t tell Brad either, she plotted. She could go somewhere all by herself for the weekend, sort of a last private holiday before marriage.
The idea was so appealing that Hannah opened her mouth to tell her mother Barkerville was off and that was that, but Daisy spoke before she could say a word.
“I’ve made us a huge lunch for the trip, those vegetable samosas you like so much, Hannah, and oatmeal cookies and some date squares to take along. And I thought maybe that pasta salad, the one with olives and feta cheese. It would travel well, don’t you think?"
For the first time in months, Daisy had been cooking. Cooking had always been her passion, but since Michael’s death, she’d seemed to live on toast and tea and canned soup.
It was the food and that touch of animation in her mother's voice that made Hannah cave in. What the heck. It was only four days out of her life. How bad could it be?
“Sounds wonderful, Mom.” She got to her feet. "I'll pick you up at seven tomorrow morning.”
"I’ll call Elvira right now. We’ll try to be ready on time, dear."
But Hannah already knew it would be closer to nine before they got away. Elvira was prompt, but Daisy was chronically late, unable ever to meet a deadline of any sort.
Damn. It was going to be a memorable weekend, all right, in the very worst sense of the word.
By six the next evening, Hannah fully understood and sympathized with Lizzie Borden and the forty whacks she’d purportedly given her mother. If there’d been an ax handy, the temptation to use it on all three of her traveling companions might have been overwhelming.
“Hannah, I hate to say it again, but the draft from that window is going to bring on one of my sinus attacks. It's blowing my hair all over, too, and it's chilly back here. I swear that rain is turning to sleet,” Elvira complained for the twentieth time in the same number of minutes.
“Can't help it. I can’t stand the smell in here," Hannah growled, crouching over the wheel and scowling through the windshield at the steady downpour. She'd turned off onto this narrow two-lane highway a short time ago. It represented the final lap on a journey that felt as if it had lasted years instead of a single day.
The interior of the van stank because Klaus had been sick repeatedly, and even worse than the pungent odor of dog vomit was the sickly sweet smell of the air freshener Daisy sprayed around each time Klaus heaved.
“Poor wee doggie, this long drive is too much for him, isn’t it, Klausie?" Daisy crooned and patted the animal sprawled across her lap. “I still think we should have stopped at a motel in that last town, Hannah," she said in a plaintive voice. "We could have made the rest of the trip in the morning and arrived feeling refreshed. This way, we’re all going to be exhausted by the time we get there."
"My sentiments exactly," Elvira immediately chimed in. "The man back at that gas station told me there were plenty of nice motels in Quesnel.”
"He also said the drive to Barkerville would only take us one more hour. One ... measly ... hour,” Hannah pointed out through gritted teeth. "I want to get where we're going and settle in without having to get up and drive again in the morning. We're booked into the Wells Hotel tonight, and that’s where we're going.”
Barkerville was a ghost town without accommodation. The small community of Wells, eight kilometers this side of Barkerville, apparently had several restaurants as well as the hotel.
“No need to be snappish, Hannah. Your mother and I were only making a suggestion," Elvira said in an aggrieved tone. “You’re certainly not in the best of moods, are you?” She sniffed several times and blew her nose noisily before she lapsed into injured silence.
Hannah prayed that it would last for the remainder of this damnable drive. Just as she'd feared, the day had been a nightmare from beginning to end. She'd been prepared for Elvira’s constant backseat driving, her litany of complaints about Gordon, and her bladder problems, but she hadn’t anticipated Klaus’s newfound and voracious appetite for samosas.
The piggish little animal had devoured four of the spicy concoctions, and then vomited up what seemed like seven. Then he'd whined incessantly, feeling sorry for himself.
Even the weather had conspired against her. It had been drizzling when they left Victoria at eight-thirty that morning, and the rain had turned to a downpour as the day progressed.
In spite of it, Daisy and Elvira had insisted on stopping at every single tourist attraction their guide books mentioned, and, of course, every rest stop. Fast food outlets also became a point of contention as the hours passed.
In spite of the huge basket of food Daisy had packed, the women insisted they needed fresh coffee or more juice at regular intervals, which of course meant even more frequent stops at bathrooms.
Hannah’s temper had shortened as the miles crawled by, and now she was near exploding. Her head ached in earnest, and it seemed it was growing more difficult by the moment to see where she was going. The road had been quite decent until now, winding up and down the mountainous terrain, but in the past two kilometers it had narrowed into a tortuous path snaking its way along the bottom of a rocky canyon. A fast-flowing river bordered the highway.
“Look, Daisy. I’m sure this gorge we're going through is the place my guidebook calls Robber’s Roost,” Elvira trumpeted from the backseat.
Hannah glanced at her in the rearview mirror. Elvira’s thin blond hair barely covered her pink scalp, and her sharp features were dwarfed by the large glasses she wore. Undaunted by the growing darkness, she was using a small flashlight to illuminate her guidebook.
“It says here this was a popular place for hold-ups back in the 1860s," she continued. "The stagecoaches had to slow down to get through here because the road was twisty, and there was a bridge over this river to our right. That's where the ambush usually took place, it says. Of course the bridge is gone now. They put a culvert in when the road was improved . .."
But the guidebook was wrong. Hannah rounded a comer at that moment, and the headlights illuminated a narrow, flat wooden bridge, peculiarly unsuited to the paved highway they’d been driving along.
It had grown darker these last few moments, and the rain had turned to hail, pelting the van with huge, frozen globs of white that the headlights couldn’t seem to penetrate.
Hannah squinted through the windshield. The hail and what looked like a thick mist obscured the other end of the bridge, and it suddenly felt as if she were driving
into oblivion.
She stepped hard on the brakes, slowing the van. A chill crept up her spine, and she quickly rolled up the window beside her. Her heart began to beat a little faster, and she gripped the steering wheel with both hands as the front wheels bumped hard onto the wooden surface.
Something didn’t feel right about this bridge. The double row of planks that formed a track for the wheels of vehicles looked strangely rickety and extraordinarily narrow. And why on earth had the road crew used only logs as a surface, with no side railings?
Daisy sat up straight and peered out, giving a little squeak of fear. “Oh, be careful, Hannah, it's so narrow—"
"Steady on, steady on.” Elvira leaned forward, her head almost on Hannah’s shoulder, her stale coffee breath wafting to Hannah's nostrils. "This doesn’t look very sturdy, does it?” Her loud voice was higher than usual. “The rain must have washed out the culvert and they've put up this temporary crossing. Just look at the fog up there. Be sure your wheels are straight on, now...”
The warning trailed off as Hannah braked again, concentrating on keeping the wheels of the van on the planks. When it seemed the rickety structure was able to support them, she stepped a little harder on the gas, wanting desperately to get safely across this barrier.
But the wheels spun on the slick surface and the van skidded.
Daisy squealed, a series of short, sharp bursts of sound which sent Klaus into a barking fit.
Elvira babbled directly into her ear, "Easy, Hannah, take it easy, there’s no guard rails, we could—”
Hannah, fighting to get the van back under control, heard the chaotic, frightened noises that her companions made, but they seemed to come from far away.
The bridge, which she'd thought to be short, barely more than two van lengths, had inexplicably extended until it seemed as if it had no end. The van shuddered and steadied, and she pressed harder on the gas, and still harder.
This simply couldn’t be. The van was rocketing ahead, and still they were on this confounded bridge.
Hannah had the uncanny feeling that she’d become trapped in a nightmare, that whatever was happening couldn’t be real.
In a panic now, she depressed the gas pedal even further and with white-knuckled hands gripped the wheel, willing the van ahead. If only she could see....
Obligingly, the enveloping white cloud parted for just an instant, and Hannah’s mouth opened wide in a soundless scream.
There was a horse on the bridge, trotting straight towards her. She was about to hit it full-on.
The animal’s terrified eyes flashed in the headlights’ gleam, and as Hannah applied every ounce of her strength to the brake pedal, she saw the horse rear. Only then did she realize it was hitched to an open wagon.
In the chaotic instant before she turned the wheel and steered off the side of the bridge, she saw the man sitting on the wagon. He wore a brimmed hat and a dark coat. His mouth was open wide in a scream, and on his whiskered face was an expression of abject terror.
The van went over the edge with a thunk, and then there was an endless, silent instant when they were airborne. They landed, right side up, with a thud that jarred every bone in Hannah's body.
The jolt sent her lurching forward, and her head connected hard with the steering wheel. There was a magnificent explosion of unbelievable color inside her brain, and she lost consciousness.
Yesterday’s Gold: Chapter Three
Somewhere far away a dog was yapping, and the sound annoyed Hannah.
It interfered with this lovely darkness and the perfect sense of peace. Something cold and wet and horrid flopped across her face, and she gasped. She had to wake up to get rid of it.
With great reluctance and a sense of outrage, she opened her eyes. Darkness and light swam in dizzy circles and cold water trickled miserably down her cheeks and into her ears and the neckline of her T- shirt.
Hannah raised an arm and tried to remove the sopping cloth clamped to her forehead, but Elvira had wrists of steel.
"There, she’s coming around now. Hannah, can you hear me? Do you know who I am?”
Hannah realized the car door was open and Elvira was standing there, shining her flashlight right into Hannah's eyes. Her head ached with a force that made her nauseated.
"Please turn out that light," she begged. But Elvira was pitiless. She went on shining it into Hannah’s eyes and repeating, "Do you know who I am? Do you remember what happened?"
Hannah swatted at the flashlight as disturbing images came back to her—a horse and a man and a bridge.
“I drove off the bridge. Oh, my God." She tried to sit up straight. “Mother? Oh my God, where’s my mom?"
“Fine. She’s just fine. She’s over there on the bank of this river. Klaus is fine too, he fell in the water and went for a little swim, but Daisy managed to grab him." Elvira snorted. "Damn good thing it’s not flood season. We could all have drowned if this water was even two feet deeper." As it was, Elvira was standing in water that reached almost to the knees of her white polyester pants. "This isn’t doing my bladder one bit of good, I’ll tell you that. Now, are you going to be able to climb out of here by yourself so we can both get somewhere where it's at least dry?"
"I think so. Ouch." Hannah put a hand up to her forehead, encountering an impressive lump that made her wince when she touched it. Memories suddenly flooded back.
“The horse, Elvira. There was a man in a wagon, and a horse."
"Up there.” Elvira jutted her chin towards the bridge that loomed above them. "We’ll go see about them the moment you feel able to move. First things first." A trace of concern tinged Elvira’s matter-of-fact voice. "You are able to move, Hannah? Nothing's broken? You don't feel as though there might be internal injuries?"
"Nope." Hannah shook her head and swore under her breath at the pain the movement caused. She swung her legs out the door. Apart from the discomfort in her skull, she figured she was intact.
“Owww, that water’s like ice.” She shuddered when her feet hit the stream.
"The bottom's slippery, too, be careful," Elvira warned, and Hannah gingerly took one step and then another. Her good summer sandals would be ruined, and the bottoms of her jeans were getting soaked.
"Take it slow." With one hand Elvira took a firm grip on Hannah’s upper arm. With the other she used the flashlight to indicate where the shore was.
"Is Hannah all right? Are you all right, Hannah?” Daisy’s voice was panicky, coming from out of the darkness somewhere ahead.
"She’s fine, just a little bump on the head like I said," Elvira assured her friend.
Hannah was doing her best to overcome the dizzying waves of nausea that washed over her each time she took a step.
None too soon for her, they were out of the water and Daisy had wrapped her arms around Hannah, the top of her head resting on Hannah’s breasts, her arms clenched around her daughter's waist.
Daisy was soaked, her cotton pants and shirt clinging to her thin frame.
Hannah could feel the tremors that rippled through her mother's body, and Daisy's voice also trembled when she said, "Oh, my dearest, I was so scared. Your head hit on that wheel, and then Klaus fell out the door and almost drowned, and I fell trying to get to him. And now what are we going to do?"
Hannah held her mother close for a long moment, peering over her head at the dark outline of the van and wondering exactly what they were going to do. At least the weather had cleared. It wasn’t raining or hailing any longer, and all of a sudden a gigantic full moon popped out from behind a cloud, making it much easier to see.
The van had somehow, miraculously, landed upright, on all four wheels, Hannah noted. Maybe it wouldn’t be too hard for a tow truck to pull it out. Maybe it would even run. And it was likely there’d be a car along any minute. This road to Barkerville must carry a fair amount of traffic.
She sagged with relief. Maybe this wouldn't be a total catastrophe after all. At least none of them had been seriously hurt.<
br />
"Come up here, you two." Elvira’s voice came from above them, up on the bridge. “I need help. This man’s unconscious.”
Hannah grabbed her mother's hand, feeling sick with guilt for forgetting about him. What if he were dead? A new wave of dread spilled through her. It had been an accident, but maybe she’d been driving too fast. There’d been that moment of panic, when she’d imagined the bridge was endless and stepped on the gas.
"C’mon, Mom." Tugging Daisy along, Hannah scrambled up the steep bank, slipping and sliding on the wet grass, more or less dragging her mother behind her. Puffing, they reached the road and hurried towards Elvira’s flashlight beam.
The wagon was on the bridge. It had overturned, but fortunately it hadn’t slipped over the edge of the narrow logs. An assortment of what looked like camping gear lay scattered across the bridge, and it was obvious that part of the wagon’s load had probably fallen into the creek.
The poor horse was still attached to the overturned wagon and he was making terrified noises. The whites of his eyes showed silver in the moonlight. He was down on his hind end, caught in the harness, trying repeatedly to struggle to his feet.
Daisy whimpered fearfully as Hannah edged past the animal to where Elvira crouched some distance away, still on the wooden logs of the bridge, beside the crumpled figure of a man lying face down.
“Hold this light, Daisy, so I can see if he’s got any broken bones." Elvira handed the flashlight over and made a swift and efficient survey of the man’s arms and legs. "Nothing broken from what I can tell. He might have internal injuries, but there’s no real way of knowing. Breathing seems okay, face is lacerated from this wood. He’s got a contusion on his scalp, heartbeat seems steady.” Elvira muttered away as she conducted her examination. “Hannah, help me get him turned over so I can check his ribs. If all he’s got is a simple concussion, he oughta be waking up before long. If not, there’s nothing I can do anyway except keep him warm and make sure his airway’s clear. Daisy, go see if there was a blanket on that wagon. Damn it all, I should’ve brought the one from the van. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 40
