“Invite Anna and have her bring a member of her family, preferably her father, to the house tomorrow evening after supper. Have her bring a letter of recommendation from Missus Love and anyone else who has used her services. I will handle any difficulties. If she can start right away, Kerry can train her before she leaves.”
Emma went around the desk and put her arms around his neck. She kissed his cheek. This time there was no stiffening, no resistance. “Thank you, Father. And you will get used to affections from me. Your daughter has changed in every way and is eager to show you her love.”
“THE madam thinks we have all conspired against her and she had no say in the matter,” said Kerry. “She would not acknowledge me this morning and handed the boys’ apparel around me straight into Anna’s hands.”
“Well, what she thinks is true. We did conspire against her. And now we will both have our freedom.”
“Sweet freedom. I am ready for that, miss.”
“And I, too.” Emma’s eyes sparkled over the trunks at Kerry. “Please, will you do me the honor of calling me Emma?” She thought Kerry might fight her. But she only smiled.
“I will.”
“Okay?”
“Hey, Emma. No problem. Okay!”
They laughed at each other for a long moment. Kerry had learned modern-speak, too, a secret language all their own. Their divergent lives were now very much the same, touched by good people from a faraway place. They both knew their ordered world would soon tumble headlong into a time of human intermingling, where a concept called diversity would allow Emma and Kerry and Maxwell to be friends. The new realm would be built on competence, not breeding. She and Kerry had been taught well.
Together they burrowed into the clothing, rescuing fine dresses from their tissue-wrapped layers. They set aside the school uniforms and spread eight new gowns on the bed. The red velvet slipped like the finest suede across Emma’s face. She let the cool material hang for a moment across her cheek and then considered its form, seeing where it could be altered to make it more presentable in a less fashionable society. Seattle was still a pioneer town, an outpost, not a sophisticated city like Baltimore. Not yet anyway.
She studied the rest. The white silk with the gold embroidery was a fancy she would never wear. The fine dresses were meant to entice a man to marriage and she would have no need of that.
They combed through Emma’s too-small and worn garments that had been left hanging or sitting in piles in the wardrobe. Most were still in good condition. Emma gave Kerry all her old clothes and then set the embroidered silk dress on top. “A white dress for your wedding day. With altering, it will fit you beautifully.”
Kerry laughed. “I’m only off to be a nanny somewhere. And a bride with no groom does not a marriage make.”
Even in her shapeless uniform, Kerry presented grace and timelessness in a freckled sort of way. Her childish body belied her quiet inner strength and bravery, capable of handling anything life threw at her. She would be as much a prize as any other woman in Seattle. A man would be lucky to have her.
“You will be a bride someday, Kerry. And you will have family that will stretch out far behind you. I believe that is your destiny. And if I am lucky, that will be my destiny, too.”
Kerry opened the stuffed pillowcase she had carried with her into the room and drew out a stack of freshly laundered clothes and a pair of turquoise tennis shoes. She bent and spread them out across the bottom of the biggest trunk. “You just never know when modern attire might come in handy.”
Emma clapped her hands together and laughed, tickled to the heavens. Yes. You just never know.
THEIR fussing over the dresses done, Emma closed the door behind Kerry, unlocked her writing drawer, and retrieved Sonnet’s unopened letter. She plucked the book, Little Women, off the fireplace mantel. Opening it, she slid the letter between the pages.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Sonnet
2015
I’m just glad your parents are meeting you in London and flying back to Cape Town with you,” said Aunt Kate. The Macadangdang family had walked the McKay kids through SeaTac Airport as far as they could without airline tickets of their own. The security maze came next, and then the long trek to their international gate.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” said Evan, laughing. “It’s not like we haven’t already flown a million times by ourselves.”
“Millions and millions of times. Tough guy, huh?” Uncle Vince threw a fake punch at Evan and then grabbed him around the neck, giving him a tight squeeze. “I’m going to miss you kids. The house will be too quiet.”
“You know, your dad and mom have been trying to get us to come visit for the last couple of years. We’ve been talking about it . . .” Aunt Kate gazed at Uncle Vince. “Since you’re leaving South Africa next summer, we thought we might come for Christmas vacation. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
I twirled around amid the screams and took Lia’s arms, shaking them. “Oh, we’ll have a good time. You’ll love Cape Town. We can ride horses around. Have some crazy fun.”
“Right. Crazy fun—just what we need,” she said, laughing.
“No, just normal-crazy fun. Go on a safari and see the animals. Swim in our big pool at night. You can meet my friends. It’s your birthday next, Lia. We can celebrate while you’re there.”
Uncle Vince took his phone out of his pocket. “Time for you guys to go. Let me snap a couple of photos first. I’ll forward them to Terry and Pam—let them know their kids are on the way. They’ll be happy to know we had a nice couple of weeks without them. Parents can be such worriers.”
Niki and Lia in their tank tops, shorts, and flip-flops, and Jules, Evan, and I in our traveling clothes, lined up against a wall tiled in swimming salmon. We hooked our arms around each other’s, big secret smiles on our faces, bound accomplices in our clandestine, top-secret adventure—lips sealed—always and forever.
“LET me switch, Evan,” said Jules. The usual flying arrangement had Evan between Jules and me. Today she wanted Evan out of the way. He set his pillow up against the window, wiggled around for a minute, and fell asleep.
Jules said, “We really didn’t talk. As usual, Lia kept hogging you.”
“That’s rich coming from you, girl-conjoined-at-the-hip-with-Niki.”
Jules laughed and shrugged. “You have a point. Anyway, we were all so worried about you. After we figured out what happened I thought I’d never see you again. It was really scary. In fact, I have never been so scared in my entire life.”
“I was pretty scared, too. I can barely stand to have it in the pondering part of my head, yet.”
“You know what I think? Emma went back and hid the photos and the receipt for the Baltimore school so we could find them. I mean, really, how else would those things just happen to be there? I’m not sure about the tin soldier, though.”
I thought about Jacob and Miles and the tin soldiers. I would miss them, my little brothers who had worshipped me. “The soldier in the fireplace grate might just stay a mystery.”
“Why were you chosen to go there?”
“Chosen? How would I be chosen, Jules?”
“I don’t know. By the gods or Great Spirit or something. You got picked to go on that great escapade.”
“You’re funny. It just happened. Nothing or nobody chose me. Destiny just happens.”
“You just always seem so lucky, though. You get to be the smartest. You get to be one of the fawned-over twins. And now you travel back in time.”
My mouth hung open. “You’re envious . . . of me?”
“Well, you have a lucky charm that I don’t have.”
“You’re the beautiful one that all the guys fall in love with. I’d be happy with just that.”
“You are the smartest, Sonnet. And you do have the best hair. It’s way thicker than mine.”
Remarking positively on someone’s looks was the greatest compliment Jules could give. I took it in the spirit it was
intended. “Okay. I will admit I do have good hair.”
“What happened to Emma? Did she get with Tor and live happily ever after?”
“Yes. I’m sure of it.” I hoped so with all my heart.
“Which might make Rapp related to Emma, too.”
I nodded. And related to Jacob and Miles and John . . . and even Thorn. The very idea I had been wondering about all along.
“Uncle Jack said he’ll start checking into their Loken genealogy. We’ll have news the next time we come back. And then you can write a book, ’cause it would make a good story, maybe even have it made into a movie. If you ever tell us your side of it. Too bad you didn’t keep a journal.”
I didn’t need a journal. The past weeks were seared into me forever. “I’ll write about it eventually. I’m still dealing with it now. It was semi-terrifying.”
“And semi-what else?”
“Semi-heaven. You know, meeting awesome people. Going around to amazing places. And then just regular stuff in between. Like eating and sleeping and hanging around the bedroom.”
“Life in 1895 sounds just like life in 2015.”
“Pretty much.” The plane had jolted us up through the clouds and was now gliding smooth and fast toward Europe and Africa and home. I held the armrest between our seats and turned to face Jules, and she did the same to me, reaching out her hand and running her finger across my birthday ring’s sheen. Her eyes—Kerry’s eyes—stared back at me for a moment before they closed.
I twisted my ring around my finger as a star-filled sky sped by out the window past my brother’s sleeping head. Jules had called the last couple weeks a great escapade, but they felt more like a precious gift to me. I was grateful for every bit of my time in Monte Cristo, grateful for every moment that had bounced me like a ball between sweet pleasure and cutting pain.
That quiet place between darkness and dreams tugged me in. Floating free, as if a scarred and callused hand let go of mine, I drifted up like the wispy clouds hugging Simeon’s mountain, gliding on a jasmine-scented breeze above giant trees and cliffs painted shades of dark emerald and stone. A grand home sat alone in a clearing. Its giant wood-whorled clock bonged twice.
A hot Chinook wind whipped at my hem and blew me toward the heavens. Too far, too fast, I felt myself slip-sliding away. Someone caught my arm and pulled me close as we tumbled back to earth, splashing down into a mighty river.
She wore what I wore, was a mirror image of me. She had been with me from the beginning. How had I not known?
We swam together through clear, green water, dodging speckled fish and skimming over river rocks and nuggets of shiny gold.
She smiled at me, and I knew I was forgiven.
And then Emma let me go.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Emma
1895
Emma waded through the meadow to her hiding place . . . a hollowed-out area of the hill, close to the gravel road and just up the slope from a gnarled tree where tiny red birds hopped and chirped. Dense bushes, heavy with late August blackberries, hid her from the mansion’s many windows and the eyes that peeked for her. She lay back on the flower carpet, putting her nose close to an orange blossom, fragrant like honey.
In her hands was Little Women. She opened its worn leather cover and flipped through the pages, blurring the words of the loving March family, characters she had adored since she was small. It was only fitting that very same book now held a secret message for her.
The envelope felt as light as a puff of smoke, surely not weighty enough to hold the words of a girl who had traveled to 1895 from the future. A girl who, for a short time, lived as “Emma.” Who had come to her home and changed her life forevermore.
The day she and her Seattle friends had found the boarding school receipt in her mother’s closet, Emma had told them she would run away before getting on a train to Baltimore. But she knew in her heart of hearts it would have been impossible with her old way of thinking. Her old way of being. Where Sonnet had seen family when she looked at Kerry and Maxwell, Emma would have only seen a yawning gulf. An impassible divide. She would not have had the help or have known how to ask for it. She would not have had the courage to fight for herself or the wisdom to know what to do.
If not for Sonnet, she would have been on that train to Baltimore, and any chance for a life with Tor snuffed out.
Emma Sweetwine. Pressed with force, Sonnet had formed the script in bold, up-and-down block letters, so unlike the ornamental, flourish-prone handwriting of the Victorians. The difference in methods summed up the dissimilar worlds more than Emma could do with the spoken language. She would keep this letter close and practice hers and with time she would make her own writing stronger.
The envelope crackled open.
Emma,
I’m leaving soon for the Ice Caves Fair. I won’t come back to this house to live. Whatever happens, it’s impossible for me to be here any longer with Rose. I’ve caused trouble for you and I’m sorry for that.
I want to thank you for allowing Tor in my life. I know you didn’t give your permission— I just took it. But I couldn’t have survived this without him. He is a good guy, Emma, and he loves you so much. By helping me, he helped get you back. And for Tor, that was really all he ever wanted.
Because for him, I was you, Emma. I was always just you.
You are my forever sister.
Love,
Sonnet
The paper fluttered to her waist.
Except for a few white clouds hanging from Foggy Peak, the afternoon sky was as clear and blue as Emma had ever seen it. The shadows thrown from the tall evergreens were cooler now. It would soon be fall and with that the weather would change. Rain would come and then snow. The gold mining town would be buried for months under a white-blue carpet of snowflakes. Emma would be gone from here, living a life in Seattle. A life that would burst with the kind of freedom she had found on Lake Washington with her beloved tribe.
And Tor would be there, too, building a future for them with his hammer and nails.
A rush of flapping shook the loftiest branches in front of her, trembling pinecones to the ground. She lifted her eyes to the eagle, its feathered black wings stretched like arms ready to embrace a luminous world. The regal bird soared away into the sun’s fading rays and led her thoughts to a boy with dark shaggy hair. This time, instead of pushing Rapp away, she let the idea of him sit there in all its handsome wonder. She turned it around and around in her mind and nudged at it from every angle.
Tor’s progeny, most certainly. And hers, most probably. Emma’s heart expanded at last with simple understanding.
There was a reason for everything, under the sun.
“Thank you, forever sister,” Emma whispered to the mountain wind. It was too small a gesture for all the gratitude she had welling inside—but there would be a lifetime to show appreciation for the path Sonnet had laid out before her.
“Where are you, Emma? Come push us!”
Emma nestled the precious letter back in its envelope and then again between the pages of her favorite book. Holding it tight against her heart, she strode away from the twittering red birds and the sweet smell of blackberries toward her brothers’ waving hands.
In the distance, the Sweetwine mansion, whom some knew as Sylvia, stood pleased before a green arc of towering trees. Her pastel beauty lit up the land and the people she touched, reflections from the dying sunlight of a most perfect Monte Cristo day.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book came to me like a sandstorm, blasting me on a scorching August day, literally a hair-on-fire day, as I lounged around my Bahraini home trying like the devil to cool off. I was imagining rain-drenched ferns and mossy logs and the deep, dark shade of a majestic evergreen tree. Suddenly I was fifteen years old again and, with my parents and four brothers, hiking through a forest in a ghost town called Monte Cristo, an abandoned gold mining town in the North Cascades. That “what if” thing started happening and a full-b
lown story came tumbling into my mind. A genre, a plot, a Victorian mansion. And characters with names. Sonnet and Emma were more than two teenagers on a page. They were every girl I had ever known, including me. But Not Forever was born.
I want to thank those parents, Fib Peterson and Kathleen McLoughlin, for taking me on hikes in Monte Cristo. And of course, my brothers—Jer Peterson, Kirk Peterson, Kris Peterson, and Karl Peterson— for scaring the bejesus out of me on those hikes, without them this story would have never happened.
Along the way I had all sorts of help, usually doled out from a very long distance— virtual critiquing, hand-holding, hugging, and humor. In no particular order, here you are. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart: Geri Peterson, Bonnie Unsell, Nancy Bardue, Tami Scheibach, Joanne Peterson, Kris Barrows, Maddy Brindle, Marny Lund, Dottie Perkins, Michael and Sam Morton, Brent Hartinger, Anne Clermont, Mary Kole, The Bahrain Writer’s Circle, P4S, Brooke Warner and Lauren Wise at SparkPress, and Crystal Patriarche and Madison Rowbotham at BookSparks.
Finally, for putting up with this new obsession called writing, I want to especially thank my husband, Greg Von Schleh, and my biggest fans, Damon and Terry Siguenza. This book would not have been possible without your support, wisdom, and love.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jan Von Schleh is a third-generation Seattleite who has lived and worked around the world in fascinating places including Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, Democratic Republic of Congo, Turkmenistan, and the Kingdom of Bahrain. When she’s not writing, she likes to explore ancient buildings wherever she can find them and wonder about the stories they would tell—if only they could talk. She is sure that whatever those stories are, they most probably have to do with love.
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