I flopped back down into my body and jetted away from the room and the craziness, feeling Thorn’s eyes on the back of my neck. I knew for her—for Emma’s aunt—this wasn’t over.
IN silence, the Sweetwine family boarded the black-and-blue carriage and headed to town to take in the opening of the Ice Caves Fair. Jacob sat across from me on his mother’s lap and stared. The powder had taken the edge off Thorn’s handprint and scratches, but the pain across Jacob’s little five-year-old face as he looked at me spoke volumes. The brutality inflicted by his mother on his sister was plain for him to see.
Jacob had a bruise and a cut on his cheekbone and skinned knees. And Miles, sidled up against me, had cuts on both hands and scratches across his forehead and legs. Collateral damage. Fight night at the Sweetwine house.
I took Miles into my lap and turned to the window, hugging him and kissing the top of his sweet, blond head. I couldn’t stand to look at her.
AS the senior townsperson, and along with the Mayor of Monte Cristo, John had been tapped to make one of the opening speeches before the throngs of expectant revelers. As he climbed to the wooden stage, I slowly backed away from the family and slipped into the crowd.
I felt Tor come up from behind. He took my hand and swept his gaze across my face, wincing. “I saw the entire thing. I was running down the hill when Mister Sweetwine came home.” He ran his finger down my cheek. “You are still the most beautiful girl here, even with her marks on your face. What’s this?” He touched the scab on my lip.
“A thorn bite.” I kissed his finger and edged close to his side. “A thorn from her rosebush. Her proxy.”
“I would kill her if I could.”
“As long as I have you with me right now, I’m happy, Tor.” I rubbed my fingers over his and felt calluses. “You and I wouldn’t make sense to anyone else, would we?”
“No, we scarcely make sense to ourselves.”
I kissed his hand and dropped it. It wasn’t worth the risk. “After we went into the house there was another fight between those two about long-buried secrets. Emma’s mother is really her aunt and it turns out Emma’s real mother is dead. They were the Irish maid’s children in John’s childhood home and Genevieve had Emma when she was just fifteen. It must have been a scandal! John called Genevieve beautiful and sweet and good, and the way he said it, it was as if he still loved her. Like he had never gotten over her.”
“Beautiful and sweet and good, like you and Emma.” He started to laugh. “Madam Sweetwine . . . an Irish immigrant’s spawn. A paddy. That pompous woman. She’s still competing with a dead sister for her husband’s love and taking out her misery on a blameless girl. You remind her every day she was not his first.”
“Gen-e-vieve,” I breathed. “Even the name sounds like romance.”
“And Mister Sweetwine knows he was a lucky man to have loved like that. Even if but once. I feel for him.”
“Me, too.”
A dirt path led to the main tent where John could be heard finishing up his speech—the wooden megaphone did an impressive job transferring his booming voice over the fairground. Stalls were set up on either side of us. Vendors hawked food and trinkets, games for prizes. Soon fairgoers would be here lining up for the fun. Tor stopped and bought cotton candy. I took a couple of sweet bites and let the strings of pink, fragranced sugar melt in my mouth. I handed it back and sighed. It was time to go, and I was in enough trouble. “I better get back before they miss me.”
A sudden jolt of electricity ran down my spine and seared across my skin, knocking my breath away. I could smell flowers. Jasmine? Across the path stood a woman in a long ruby gown. Red-and-white-striped curtains covering the stall behind her fluttered in the breeze and stood as a backdrop to her coffee-colored beauty. Above her head hung a red board painted in black letters: FORTUNE-TELLER – FUTURE TOLD BY LEROUX. Her brown eyes bore into mine.
I wandered over, drawn to her.
“You have to go on back to your family now.” Her words played in a gentle rhythm. “You come see me tomorrow when you have more time.”
“You stare at me like you know me,” I said. “I could feel you from across the way.”
She reached over with a cool hand and moved the hair away from my forehead, scanning across my scar and the powder-covered handprint staining my cheek. The tip of her finger touched the scab on my lip. “Come see me tomorrow. Get along, now. It would be no good if you stayed. Haven’t you had enough trouble already today?”
“I’ve had enough trouble for a lifetime.” I couldn’t get along. I couldn’t move. She was like an oasis of shady palm trees in the middle of a hot desert, a raft of the smoothest wood suddenly appearing on choppy water. I could no more twist my eyes away than I could slit my own wrists. “You read people’s futures and their pasts?”
“Special people.”
Another jolt of electricity and an overwhelming feeling of excitement lit me up. “Okay, then! See you tomorrow, Leroux.”
I squeezed Tor’s hand and let it fall. “Gotta go!” I turned and ran, as well as I could in the cumbersome dress, to the big tent where John and Thorn were probably already missing me.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Emma
2015
“Just a sec.” Evan set his phone down on a rotten tree stump and pressed on it. “Thanks for calling, Professor Kapoor. We’re in Monte Cristo, hiking up to the house for a second day of searching for clues. Everyone’s listening. You’re on speakerphone.”
“Emma’s still with you?”
“Yeah, she’s here. She’s listening.”
“I’ve been doing some research and I wanted to inform you of some vital information. Information I trust—I hope—will be helpful in your decision. You ready?”
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve spoken to other experts in the field, and we all agree that Sonnet and Emma can’t meet. I told you this the other day. They trade places or they both stay put. There’s more, though. It has to do with corrupted time distention and gravitational impart waves, but I’ll break it down into layman’s terms. In order for Emma and Sonnet to pass each other in transport and land in the correct time arc, they must have identical circumstances implemented at the right moment, just as before. In other words, you somehow must mimic exactly the conditions of last time, and they must be done at exactly the optimum moment on both ends. The time-flaps— the different timelines bumping up against each other—must open and close in sync. I truly don’t know how you will coordinate this. We believe the first time occurred by happenstance. In other words—you were lucky.”
“What do you mean about making our decision, Professor Kapoor?” asked Jules “There’s a decision to make?”
“I won’t sugarcoat it. This will be a dangerous journey. Best case scenario, you somehow pull it off. The second-best case scenario, Sonnet and Emma stay where they are. I believe this is the safest bet.”
“What’s worst case scenario?” Evan stared at the phone.
The professor’s voice grew soft. “We believe that the worst case will find them landing in the wrong time continuum. Or even worse, maybe one leaves and the other doesn’t make it out, putting them together in the same time.”
“Wow, that’s a lot to wrap our heads around. Okay, Professor. Thanks. We’ll get back with you if we have any more questions.” Evan pressed his phone to off. An owl hooted in the silence, sitting somewhere above in a cedar tree. Team Switch looked around at each other, digesting the news.
“Maybe Sylvia is ready to give up her secrets,” Rapp said. “We’ll just rip into her. As they say, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’”
“Yeah. Let’s go tear her apart. There’s gotta be something there. Sonnet has left us something. I can feel it.” Lia swept at branches, ready to plow through only to suddenly spin around. “The piano!” She turned and started running.
They fell on the baby grand like locusts. Sticky cobwebs clung to their skin and rodent droppings fl
attened under their feet. Clouds of dust rose up in spirals as they moved above, below, and over the sides of the rotting wood. They raised the cover and felt down around the piano wire. Rapp crawled underneath and turned his flashlight on, pointing it at the underside. Lia crawled in and lay next to him, running the tips of her fingers up in between the slats.
Rapp focused the light. “I see something. There, Lia.” The flashlight fell on a tiny yellowed strip of paper. Lia grasped an edge. It broke off in her hand and turned to dust.
“It’s stuck.” Lia wiggled her hand in as far as it would go and felt around. “I think it’s all nibbled up.”
Jules crawled in. “Let me try from this side.” The edge she touched turned to powder between her fingers, too. “We need a knife or something. Every time we tug, tiny chunks break off. If we could just catch it.”
“We should just rip this bad boy apart. A knife’s not gonna do it,” said Rapp, pulling at a board.
“Wait,” said Evan, running from the room and calling back over his shoulder. “I saw an old, rusted saw under the house yesterday. I’ll be right back.”
Emma wandered with Lia out onto the porch to find a spot of sunshine. The crow sat sentinel on a knob of railing, watching them with black, darting eyes. It kept track of their plodding labors throughout the ruin it thought of as its own. It was getting used to them by now, approaching ever closer and closer.
“You’re awfully quiet, Emma.”
“The professor’s words troubled me. I listened carefully. What I understood is the journey back to my time is perilous and even with trying, I might not return. I felt the professor’s choice was for me to stay here and for Sonnet to stay there in order to minimize harm.”
Lia sighed. The professor’s words had struck dread into all of them. On the other side of looming danger dangled Sonnet.
Emma broke off a brown strand of blackberry bush. “What shall I do?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I love my new life here. I have never had such a good time, not in my entire fifteen years. But, I want to go back to Tor or die trying. I’m ready to give all this up.”
“You’re not scared?”
“Of course, I am.” Emma rolled a hard, dusty blackberry around her palm. It took hot sunshine to love a blackberry to fruition. “If Sonnet and I are unable to switch places—if I stay here and she stays there—will she love the ones I love? Will she be me and live my life?”
“You mean love Tor? Is that what you would want?”
“As hard as it is to imagine that, the thought of him being alone is worse to me than the thought of my own death,” Emma said. She turned to the crow. It blinked twice. As if it understood.
“This someday marriage to Tor is way more than just a convenience to get you out of your house and away from your awful mother, isn’t it?” asked Lia.
“I love him.” She threw the blackberry over the railing. “Does it seem odd I would want them together? Sonnet is the closest thing to being me.”
“No. What it sounds like is that you really love the ones you love. Enough to let them be loved by someone else if you can’t be there. But let’s just stay upbeat that this will work out. That you and Sonnet do switch places and everything turns out okay. We’ll be paralyzed if we sink into negativity.”
Emma hugged Lia tightly, a gesture of affection she had taken to with passion. “You always say the right thing. I’ll miss this wonderful existence—this thrilling world made as much for girls as for boys. I have had the time of my life here. And I have never had a true friend before. I am lucky to have Tor, this I know, but Sonnet is lucky to have a friend and cousin like you.”
And, besides, this was Sonnet’s life, not hers.
Unless she stayed—
Evan ran by, waving around a rusty piece of metal. “Hey, you saps. I found the saw.”
“Let’s go watch,” said Lia.
Evan crawled under the piano and raised the saw above his body. His first cut back and forth rained wood bits down on his face. “Ugh.” He sat up on his elbow and swung his head, shaking off fragments.
“We can push the piano over, Evan.” Emma said.
“Huh?”
“On its side. It will make it easier to work on.”
“It might disintegrate.” Evan crawled back out.
Rapp said, “Who cares, right Emma?”
“Not I.”
They lined up across the curved side.
Niki said, “On the count of three. One . . . two . . . three.”
With an almost human moan, the beast turned over and crashed to the floor, sending a foul mixture of dirt and splinters of wood flying into the air. A dull, off-key crescendo vibrated through the house. Its front leg snapped. It rocked and creaked and groaned and finally settled.
“Mother’s piano rests at long last,” said Emma into the swirling cloud.
Evan stepped forward with the saw. “This will make it easier. Someone hold the board in place so it doesn’t just fall off.”
With the cuts made, Rapp rocked the section from its resting place and held it upright in his hand. Pieces of paper lay scattered across the wood. He set it down on the floor.
Lia got down on her knees with Niki next to her. “Rapp, shine the light here.” She prodded. “This little piece in the middle. There’s an O and an M. And a space and then SO.”
Niki said, “It could be F-R-O-M-S-O-N-N-E-T.”
“Yes! What else could it be? And it could have been an envelope with a letter inside. See the layers?” Jules leaned across Niki and made an attempt to pick up a piece only to have it crumble. “It’s unreadable.”
“I won’t give up. We have the rest of the day to dig around this big house. If she left one note to us, she left others,” said Lia.
Rapp’s phone rang. “We’ll be right down.” He stuffed it back in his pocket. “Uncle Jack and Keko fixed lunch. Let’s go eat and come back later.”
“I’m all for that,” said Evan, brushing his palm back and forth across his bristly, dirt-drenched hair. “Fortify for our afternoon work.”
TEAM Switch, with Uncle Jack and Keko in tow, returned after lunch. Keko found a rusted tin soldier with a paint-chipped blue uniform caught in the back of a fireplace grate in the nursery. Except for wear, it looked exactly like the ones clutched in the little hands of Jacob and Miles in the second photograph.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sonnet
1895
Saturday and bath day. I sat back in the tub and let the warm water lap over my shoulders. The row of half-empty trunks would be filled to overflowing later today. Missus Love would deliver the newly made dresses, and Bess would fold them in tissue paper and add them to the already-wrapped mounds. The clothes, shoes, and accessories Emma had either outgrown or were considered too deplorable for her fancy new Baltimore life hung on hangers or sat in piles on the bottom of the wardrobe.
I sighed, my thoughts rummaging around in the corners of the Tor complication. There was nothing to do about it—and at the same time, no getting over it.
Little feet scampered down the hallway. Jacob and Miles chased each other and played, their high-pitched voices seeping through the crack under the door. I wrenched myself out of my daydream and dipped my head back into the cooling bathwater, swooshing my hair around. After soaping up, I grabbed two pitchers of clean water and poured them over me. It would soon be time to go see Leroux. The reflection in the mirror still showed a handprint and scratches across my face. I would have to remember to dust powder on them.
I had one precious hour before the carriage left for the fair. I dressed and hurried out to my secret place in the meadow to write my last letter.
JOHN held the door open and gave a hand to his silent family as we filed, one by one, into the carriage. Jacob and Miles, in their best linen sailor suits and black button shoes, sat on either side of me, their blond hair glowing, their curls still partially wet. It had been bath day for them, too.
Maxwell had orders to drop the family off at the boardwalk and return to the house to pick up Kerry, Cook, Bess, and the hired hands. John had given the staff the entire day off together. A first of its kind, according to Kerry. A peace offering over the war they had all witnessed yesterday. Even Maxwell had five precious hours to himself before he rendezvoused with the family at the boardwalk to take us back up the hill to home.
John stepped from the carriage and lifted his youngest son into his arms. “Come children, there are games to be played.” He strode off with Miles on his hip and Jacob at his heels. I followed close behind.
“John, the family photographs.” Thorn called after them, demanding his attention. “I want to arrive early before the riff-raff gather. And the children will get soiled if you take them to play . . .”
He continued along the path and yelled back, “After the fun, Rose. I’m taking the children to enjoy a game. As you well know, they more than deserve a good time at the fair today. If you want to meet us at the photographer’s booth, please do. Or come. Either way.”
John turned his face into the mountain wind, his elegant, high-topped shoes already gathering dust, and wound down through the entertainment stalls to find a ball-throwing game. He put a penny down on a counter and opened his palm to the red ball. “I shall instruct you as to how it is done, boys, and then you will each have a turn.” He squinted at the hoop. With a convoluted, whirling backhand he pitched the ball forward and missed.
The man behind the counter gave him another ball. “You get three chances, sir. Different prizes depending on how many of the three go in. I move the target back each time.”
He missed again. I held my breath. He wobbled out his arm, swung, and threw his third ball. This one hit the rim, teetered for a second and plopped through the wooden circle. Jacob and Miles cheered. The man handed John a tin soldier, its uniform painted bright blue with white-and-red accents.
But Not Forever Page 15
