Finding You in Time (Train Through Time Series)

by Bess McBride

  “No problem. If I could see your ID? And how much did you wish to withdraw?” She took the withdrawal slip from Amanda, and began to fill it in.

  “Well, see, that’s the thing,” Amanda said. “My ID was in my wallet.”

  The teller looked up. “Oh! Well, do you have anything with your picture and name on it?” She scanned Amanda as if looking for some form of identification. A birthmark?

  Amanda bit her lip and said patiently, “No, that was all in my wallet. I don’t even think I have anything else at the apartment with picture and name. What if I managed to get home and found a piece of mail with my name on it, like a utility bill? Would that suffice?”

  The teller favored her with a sympathetic look and shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. We would really need to see some picture identification.”

  Amanda gritted her teeth and thought fast. She only needed a little bit of money, enough to get back on the train. The problem was how to get it.

  “Could I talk to your manager?”

  “Yes, certainly.” She turned without expression and called another woman over, not much older than herself.

  “Yes, can I help you?”

  Amanda explained the same scenario, and the manager sighed and shook her head sympathetically. If nothing else, she was getting plenty of sympathy.

  “No, I’m sorry. We have to see some picture ID. I wish there were another way. Do you have any other identification at home?”

  Amanda looked at the clock on the wall. She had neither picture ID at home, nor did she have keys to get into her apartment, nor did she have time or money to get a taxi, get home, get back to a bank, and get back on the train.

  “No, I don’t. Gosh, I wish I kept my money under the mattress,” she muttered. “Okay, thanks anyway.” She moved away from the sympathetic faces, ignored the looks from other customers as they eyed her from head to toe, and left the bank.

  She stared at the train station in the distance. She could ask to borrow a cell phone to call a friend to pick her up and deal with the almost certain questions regarding her dress. She might get dropped off at her apartment complex and hope that the office was open. If the apartment management staff even let her in—without identification—she would have to find some sort of picture ID somewhere, perhaps her high school yearbook. She would then have to find a nearby bank, withdraw money, get back to the train station and purchase a ticket—all in about three hours. It wasn’t going to happen, not in Seattle in three hours.

  She shoved her hands in her pockets in frustration, and felt a wad of something in her right-hand pocket. She pulled it out. The money Nathan had given her at the bank several days ago. She was wearing the same skirt she had worn that day, the new navy blue skirt they had bought at Mrs. Murphy’s.

  With shaking hands, Amanda unfolded the cash. The five bills, appearing to be new and crisp, were in denominations of twenty dollars, totaling one hundred dollars. Amanda sighed. She didn’t think that wouldn’t be enough to get a ticket to Wenatchee, but she would give it a try.

  The face on the bills was unfamiliar to her. Who was on the face of twenty-dollar bills? A president, certainly. Andrew Jackson? She couldn’t remember off the top of her head. She peered closely at the money. The portrait on the bills from Nathan’s era was a Hugh McCulloch. Who was he?

  She stared harder at the bills. First National Bank of Wenatchee? National currency? Was that even legal tender? Did banks print their own money?

  She looked over her shoulder at the bank. Maybe she could take it in there and exchange it? She shook her head, imaging the scene where the teller and bank manager smiled even more sympathetically but shook their head at her feeble attempts to come up with money.

  A coin shop! She could sell the money to a coin shop. It was probably worth a lot more than twenty dollars now, wasn’t it? Even if it were just printed at the First National Bank of Wenatchee. Hadn’t Nathan said he survived selling off his “old” money? That the bills were new and crisp should only add value.

  Amanda scanned the street, but no sign reading “Ye Olde Coin Shop” presented itself. Where was a phone booth, one with a phone book in it? She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen an actual telephone booth. She looked over her shoulder again at the bank. No, she couldn’t face them. But she had to.

  She entered the bank again and waited behind two people, hoping another teller would help her. But Miss Blonde Sympathy drew her number, and Amanda approached the counter again. The teller smiled pleasantly.

  “Did you find picture identification?”

  Amanda shook her head. “No, not yet. But I did find a pocket full of old money. There’s no chance I can redeem it here for new currency, right?”

  “May I see it?”

  Amanda fished the money out of her pocket and handed it over.

  The teller picked one of the bills up and studied it. She held it up to the light as if looking for a watermark.

  “Goodness, this was printed in May 1905. Look at that!” The teller placed the twenty-dollar bill reverentially on top of the other four bills. She shook her head and smiled sympathetically. Amanda was really growing to dislike the girl.

  “No, I’m sorry. We can’t take money that old. However, there is a gold shop just around the corner behind the bank here, and I think they might offer you something for the money. I don’t know how much though. It might just be worth face value.”

  “Thank you!” Amanda exclaimed. She flew out of the bank and turned the corner, grabbing up her skirts to make better time. She spotted the gold shop, and she dashed inside and came to a stop. Packed from wall to wall with either poor people or collectors—she didn’t know which—she was advised to take a number. She pulled a number off a ticket machine and sat down to wait, again ignoring the stares of the people around her. She fingered the money in her pocket while brushing imaginary wrinkles from her skirt.

  Her number was called sooner rather than later, and she popped up and hurried over to the counter.

  “Yes, may I help you,” a tall, handsome you man said in a bored tone.

  “Well, I hope so. I have some old money, it’s not much, a hundred dollars, but I was hoping it was worth more. Could you take a look at it? Do you buy old money?”

  “Sure,” he said, stifling a yawn. He quirked an expectant eyebrow and eyed the counter pointedly.

  Amanda handed the money over and waited, holding her breath.

  The young man took the wad of bills and spread them out. Both eyebrows went up, and he bent closer to eye the money.

  “This looks new!” he exclaimed. “Just a minute. Hold onto these.”

  He moved away and entered a door toward the back. Amanda had the worst feeling he was going to appear with the police in tow to arrest her for forgery. She picked up the money and stuffed it back into her pocket, searching the shop for cameras. Four overhead cameras focused on her, and she backed away from the counter in preparation for flight.

  The young man emerged from the back with a middle-aged gentleman in tow.

  “Wait, where are you going?” he called out as she turned to flee. “Could you show my boss the currency? He would know better what it’s worth than I would.”

  Amanda paused and turned slowly. No undercover cop, the middle-aged man wore the same bored look the younger fellow had. They must have been related.

  She approached the counter again and offered one of the bills. She wasn’t letting go of the others until she was sure they weren’t going to confiscate it. Even if it were worth nothing, it was worth a great deal to her in that Nathan had given it to her.

  The boss picked up the bill and eyed it. His eyes widened, and he turned it over.

  “Just a minute,” he said as he bent down behind the counter. Amanda stood up on tiptoe to see what he was doing. A silent alarm?

  He produced a large binder and flipped through it until he came to the page he must have been searching for. He studied it and picked up the bill to compare it.

>   “Just a minute,” he muttered again, and he turned around to address a computer screen behind him.

  Amanda didn’t like the way she was feeling, and she suspected she should trust her instincts. They thought the money was forged or stolen or something, and she was going to have to answer questions she couldn’t answer.

  “Where did you get this currency?” the young man asked in the meantime.

  Amanda shrugged. “My grandfather left it to me.” How Nathan would chuckle at that.

  The boss turned around to the younger man. “Did you say there was more?”

  “Yes, she has five of the twenty-dollar bills.”

  Amanda narrowed her eyes, prepared to fight.

  “We can give you two-thousand five hundred dollars for the lot,” the middle aged man said. “That’s five-hundred dollars a bill.”

  Amanda’s jaw dropped. She literally felt it drop, and her knees turned to rubber.

  “Twenty-five hundred dollars?”

  “Yes, that’s all we can do. And that’s with the fact that you folded it. It’s in mint condition, but I wish you hadn’t folded it. Still, I think we can straighten it out.” The boss looked like he was prepared to battle a negotiator, but Amanda had no intention of fighting for more. She had no idea what the money was worth, but five hundred dollars for a twenty-dollar bill sounded like a good deal to her.

  “I’ll take it,” she said.

  They took an excruciatingly long time to write up the transaction while Amanda hopped from foot to foot watching the clock. She still had time until the train left, but she felt anxious to get back to the station.

  Finally, they handed her the money in an envelope, and she tucked it in her skirt, looked furtively around to see which villains might follow her to mug her, and left the shop, keeping an eye over her shoulder. No one followed.

  She hurried back to the train station and proudly produced her money for a ticket. She bought a sleeping compartment because that was where she met Nathan the first time, where she was when the time travel occurred.

  She found a seat on a bench near the platform gate and waited. The train already waited on the tracks but the door to the platform was shut and a sign advised passengers to wait until a boarding announcement was made. Time passed, and Amanda felt a depression settle on her. Now that the adrenaline from trying to find money had receded, sadness replaced it, and she swallowed several times to keep from crying.

  She had no idea what she was doing, boarding a train so she could attempt to travel back in time. To a particular time? Before Nathan died. It was insane. No one would believe her. No one except Robert or Mr. Carpenter, and they weren’t around. They hadn’t been around for a long time. She blocked the thought. She couldn’t think of any more death at the moment.

  One of the station agents finally announced the imminent boarding of the train and a sleeping car attendant came into the station and began taking tickets for the first-class passengers, those who had booked sleeping compartments. Amanda handed over her ticket and tried to ignore his curious look.

  “My legs are cold,” she said as she hurried aboard the train. No stranger to the train, she knew exactly where her compartment was. It was on the first level which was just where she wanted to be. The compartments were a bit more isolated down there, and she had more privacy. More privacy to practice her mumbo jumbo as she tried to travel in time.

  The train left within twenty minutes, and Amanda closed her eyes to rest for a moment. She couldn’t sleep because she needed to make her wish somewhere before arriving in Wenatchee, but she was so tired. The rhythmic motion of the train lulled her, and she drifted off, dreaming of finding Nathan alive and well somewhere in time.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nathan fell again, his hands and feet raw and bleeding. He pushed himself up as he had done so many times during the long and arduous trek, knowing he must be getting close to Wenatchee. Night had fallen hard and cold hours ago. He had no idea what time it was. Near midnight? He knew he should give up for the night. It was unsafe to continue to scramble along the steep banks in the dark. He could easily slip and fall into the river. He’d had many close calls already that day. The bank had leveled out only briefly before returning to its forty-five degree angle. The hills on his side of the river seemed insurmountable. He could see no feasible way to climb them, not unless he was a mountain goat.

  As desperate as he was to get back to Wenatchee and Amanda, Nathan gave in and dropped down onto the embankment. He forwent trying to dig out a trench for warmth. The cold air felt refreshing on his battered hands and feet and even his knees, which had borne some of the brunt of his falls.

  Where was Amanda now? Was she safe? Nathan stared at the stars and wished upon them. He wished that Amanda were safe and warm and that she had not suffered too much in thinking him dead. He wished that Robert had stayed by her side and helped her. He wished that a boat would come by to rescue him. The now-nightly howling caught his attention again. There was no moon. What did the infernal animals howl at? He wished the wolves would find a den somewhere and go to sleep. As he was himself. He wrapped his arms around his chest, pulled his knees close and slept.

  ****

  Dawn came and with it, a frosty layer on some nearby low-lying sagebrush. Nathan rubbed his cold cheeks, wishing he still had his beard. It had kept his face warm many a night at the Spokane train station. He sat up and attempted to rise, falling back for a moment as his stiff and no doubt bruised knees refused to cooperate.

  Light, the color of a ripe peach, reflected off the hills and onto the river. It was a beautiful sight, but not one that he appreciated at the moment. He thought it might look lovely from the veranda of a house built on the hillsides. He and Amanda could take their morning coffee on the porch and gaze out upon the river. They would watch the sternwheelers paddle downstream or upstream and reminisce about the accident—always thankful that they had survived. And they had survived. He vowed that Amanda had survived. He could not lose her again.

  Nathan pushed himself to his feet again and took a few tentative steps on the steeply angled bank until the pain in his feet subsided into numbness, then he set out.

  He hobbled his way along the river for a few hours until he came around a bend. There in the distance lay Wenatchee, its apple orchards spreading across the valley. A light layer of snow capped the mountains on either side of the valley. Smoke from chimneys drifted up across the town. A freight train lingered at the railroad station. He hurried his step, ignoring the pain shooting up into his legs. Occasionally, he grabbed at sagebrush as he slid down the bank.

  He stopped short when he spotted what he knew to be the Wenatchee River ahead of him. He had not remembered the Wenatchee River flowed into the Columbia at the confluence. Although he was on the same side of the Columbia River as the town of Wenatchee, he had no idea how to get across. He neared it, marveling at the wide expanse of the river as the Wenatchee and Columbia converged. In the near distance upriver on the Wenatchee, he noted a small landing and a side-wheeled ferry. A few buildings huddled alongside, but the area seemed sparsely inhabited.

  He made his way to the wharf and entered a small wooden building opposite the ferry.

  “Out,” a woman said, coming out from behind a counter. “Out now! I’m tired of you folks coming in here to warm up. You’ve got to find somewhere else to go.” She approached him with a shooing motion.

  “Madam, please! Hear me out.”

  She shook her gray head and waved her arms as if she waved at crows in a field. “No, out you go. No money, no ferry, no hanging out in here.”

  Nathan rushed to speak. In the time that she could forcibly push him out, he would have had his say.

  “My name is Nathan Carpenter. I was on the sternwheeler, Cascades, when it ran aground. I was thrown into the water, and swam for shore. I have just now made it back to Wenatchee, but I need to get across the river. My wallet was in my jacket, and I shed that in the river.”

  Sh
e dropped her arms and eyed him incredulously.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so? Goodness, look at you! I heard about the accident. Well, everyone did, and we heard about you. They thought you were drowned. You were the only one who went missing. So, you’ve been crawling about in the mud?” She gave him an appraising look.

  Nathan gave a nearby chair a longing look but stood his ground as best he could stand. His heart thudded loudly in his chest to hear that everyone else had survived. Amanda must have survived.

  “Yes, I have. I know I look a sight. I would be happy to reimburse you the cost of a ferry ride across the river if you can trust me. I am so anxious to get back. My wife...” He left the words hanging, afraid of the emotion in his voice. Given his exhaustion, he wasn’t quite sure he wouldn’t break down into tears of thankfulness. Amanda was all right.

  The woman nodded, and wiped her hands on her apron. “I heard your wife was fine. Take a chair, and I’ll get you some hot coffee. The ferry leaves in an hour and not a moment sooner, but I’ll get you on for free. The steamboat company will reimburse me.”

  Nathan dropped into the chair and sighed heavily.

  “Thank you, Mrs...?”

  “Mrs. Canton. My son and I run this ferry. We have a lot of trouble with folks wanting to come into the ferry office to warm themselves. I know it’s getting cold out there, but they gotta find somewhere else to go. Getting worse every year. There’s a shanty town downriver. That’s where most of them are headed anyway.” She nodded briskly. “Let me get you that coffee. Your feet are a mess. What did you do with your shoes?”

  She moved away toward a stove upon which a coffeepot stood.

  “I had to kick them off in the river, couldn’t swim with them on.”