Despite everything he had not released my wrists. He’d gently removed my hands from his face but held them now between us, our arms bent in tight, acute triangles. His thumbs enclosed my bones, which felt so fragile in the strength of his long fingers. I caught the scent of whiskey on his breath and my heart constricted further; in our normal life he had long since given up drinking hard liquor. I truly did not believe I was imagining that he was currently a man radiating with lonely despair. I longed so deeply to wrap him in my full embrace that it hurt my limbs to remain immobile. His eyes drove into mine and I knew there was a part of him that wanted to believe me.
And so I continued babbling. “Then I talked to Derrick on the phone and he told me that Franklin Yancy is really Fallon Yancy, they’re the same person, Case, that was the detail we were missing before. Derrick said that Fallon has done something terrible, sweetheart, to hurt us. To hurt Marshall and Ruthie, and everyone we love. You have to trust me.”
Lynnette had closed the distance between us and overheard my last few words. “Are you fucking kidding me, Case, you’re actually listening to this crazy bitch?” She grabbed my upper arm and yanked me around to face her; under normal circumstances such behavior would have activated a sort of Gran-style offense mode and my normal assertive self would have shrieked to existence, but I had been hollowed out by desperation. Lynnette wasn’t quite tall enough to meet my gaze head on, but rage lent her height; I didn’t fight her grip.
“Let go!” Case ordered her harshly, coming between us. But instead of sheltering me he hooked an arm around Lynnette’s waist and hauled her a few paces away, next grasping her shoulders and speaking with a sincerity that lacerated my breaking heart. “Lynn, come on, please calm down. I do not know this woman, all right? Would you listen to me? I don’t know what’s going on here. I swear I’m just as surprised as you are.”
“Well, she sure knows you!” Lynnette twisted free to confront me yet again. “How do you know my husband? Are you from around here?”
“No,” I whispered, staring at Case, who stared right back. The tilt of his wide shoulders told me with no words that he was strung with indecision, but he remained silent. I didn’t advance toward him this time as I implored, “Can we drive over to the Rawleys? They’ll still be up. Maybe they’ll remember, maybe they can help you remember.” My tortured mind had missed a detail and I demanded, “Is Marshall home? When was the last time you saw him?”
Maybe I’d already known it was coming as Case asked, “Who’s Marshall? Who are the Rawleys?”
Despite the intensifying doom, I could not stop badgering. “What do you mean? Clark and Faye helped raise you! Garth and Marshall are your best friends. They’ve been your neighbors all your life. Their ranch is only minutes from here.”
Case gripped the nape of his neck with both hands, conveying increasing concern. He slowly shook his head, elbows pointed at the sky. “No, you’re mistaken. There’s never been a family by that name in Jalesville.” Having brought Lynnette under partial control of her emotions, he addressed me now with quiet courtesy. “Ma’am, I apologize, I truly do, but I don’t know these people. And…” He paused for an eternal second, his gaze holding mine. “And I don’t know you.”
Had I been summarily gutted with a dull fishing knife it would not have hurt worse.
I could not accept these statements as truth. Maybe it was selfishness, or pure desperation, but in that moment I exercised zero control; I didn’t consider how what I was saying could hurt him, or Lynnette, as I cried, “Case, oh God, please listen to me! You do know me. Somewhere inside, you have to know me. I’m in love with you. Where I just came from, we were married. I was pregnant…with our little girl.” Sobs broke through and I covered my mouth with both hands.
“I knew it, Case! You son of a bitch!” Lynnette was at it in full force again.
“Shut the hell up!” I directed my monstrous agony at her, fair or not. “You have absolutely nothing to do with this!”
She rocketed toward me, fury twisting her face, hands fisted. “Case is my husband, you bitch. I will not shut up. Get the fuck off our property!”
Camille was at my side in an instant, curling me close, the protector now, just as I had been earlier this nightmarish evening. Weeping, devastated, I allowed her to lead me toward the car. Case did not attempt to stop us, though I sensed his shock as he watched us walk away. Both the driver’s and passenger’s side doors remained wide open and looked like broken wings. Camille was murmuring to me but I derived no sense from her words. I hid my face in my palms and she helped me within the car; she claimed the driver’s seat this time. I could not manage the strength to lift my head long enough to look back as she drove away.
The Rawleys were nowhere to be found.
No house, no barns, no corrals or beautiful, stone-ringed fire pit. No horses, no tack room, no Clark or Marshall, Sean, Quinn, or sweet Wyatt. Each and every one gone. The land formerly occupied by their home, which had belonged to the Rawleys for many generations, was in the process of residential development. A work trailer was parked on the street, adorned by the name of an unfamiliar construction company. There was a small billboard proclaiming that this would be the future site of a condominium complex called Mountain Heights. Earthmoving equipment hunched in the darkness like sleeping beasts. The foundations already excavated loomed like gaping wounds.
This time I was the one shrieking my pain to the star-studded black sky, bending to tear clumps from the ground, the dirt cold and thick against my palms. Inane with grief I repeated the motion again and again, grabbing handfuls of earth and hurtling them like tiny, rage-filled bombs at the work trailer and the small billboard until the offending words were all but obscured by exploded muck. Camille sank to the ground, out of range, and did not attempt to stop me.
“Motherfucker!” I bellowed, addressing Fallon Yancy, wherever the hell he existed at this moment. “I will kill you a thousand times, you fucking bastard, you goddamn piece of shit! You think you’re the puppet master out there, that you can fuck with us like this, but I will find you! I will motherfucking find you!”
I howled and screamed until no additional sound would emerge, my clothing smeared in dirt. I had slipped and fallen too many times to count; my ankles ached, along with my tailbone. Several of my fingernails had torn past the quick and bled with silent reproach. And still no pain rivaled that of Case not knowing me. Case married to Lynnette, Case drunk and miserable, trapped in a life he believed he deserved. A life in which we had never met – whether because the Rawleys were not here, or because Mathias and Camille had not traveled to Montana in 2006, or a hundred other possibilities I could not begin to conjure; I had no idea. Not a notion of where to start.
Death seemed a friendly option as I stood on shifting earth at the edge of a huge, square foundation hole, heaving with uneven breaths, staring at the faintly darker line against the western horizon indicating the peaks of the mountains in the distance. I did not hear Camille until she appeared at my side and wrapped her arms around my upper body.
“What should we do?” I whispered, ragged with exhaustion.
“I don’t know, God help me, Tish. I don’t know.”
Chapter Thirteen
Landon, MN - March, 2014
WE DROVE EAST TOWARD THE SUNRISE, AIMING FOR THE home of our teenaged years and our younger hearts, where we had confirmed before dawn our mother still resided. Unwilling to frighten her, I’d throttled my emotions to a level of manageability in order to make the call. Camille likewise had adopted a resolute, dogged mien; both of us focusing now on what we could do other than give up. Other than let Fallon win. I tried not to notice how my sister’s hands shook, or the way her skin was pale enough to resemble bare bone. I knew the desolation in her eyes was mirrored in mine; I’d been avoiding my own reflection. By tacit agreement, we shied from any discussion of our virtual helplessness to restore our real lives.
“You’re cutting your trip short?” Mom had asked a
lmost immediately and I played along, attempting to learn as much as I could without asking direct questions and arousing her suspicion, mustering all my lawyerly skills.
Clearly our mother belonged to this alternate universe, unwittingly delivering one shocking blow after another as I slumped in the passenger seat while Camille broke the interstate speed limit. We had decided after leaving the Rawleys’ property there was no point remaining in Jalesville where no one knew us. Though I realized he too would consider me a stranger, I planned to call Al for any information he might be able to provide but ultimately we had no place to stay and no real idea what to do; we would return to Montana if it proved to be the right choice after we collected our bearings.
When we crossed the border into North Dakota I watched over my shoulder as the state where Case lived receded into the distance. Then I buried my head in my arms and pressed my fingertips against my eye sockets hard enough to leave bruises; not hard enough to keep from weeping.
Based on my sunrise conversation with Mom, we learned that she and Dad had divorced only a few years back, shortly after my graduation from a Chicago high school. In our original timeline this event had taken place well over a decade ago, in the spring of 2003, and during the course of that fateful summer Mom had met and fallen in love with Blythe Tilson, eventually marrying him and remaining in Landon. In this alternate timeline Mom had never heard of someone named Blythe Tilson and we had returned to Chicago after only a short visit that summer, summarily nullifying every event and memory of our lives in Landon thereafter.
Most stupefying of all was that in this timeline, Ruthann had never been born.
The first clue came when Mom prefaced a comment with, “After your grandma and Aunt Ellen died –”
I restrained a hard, tight gasp.
“How long…has it been now?” I could hardly manage to ask, dreading the answer.
Mom sighed, a soft sound rife with sadness. “The car accident was twenty-four years ago, next month. I know, I can hardly believe they’ve been gone so long. I should have stayed in Landon after that. It’s funny, I had a feeling even then that I should stay but I didn’t want to take you and Camille away from your father. You two were so little.”
“This was 1990?” I whispered, rapidly calculating. “You weren’t around Dad that spring or summer?” Ruthann would have been born the next January, in 1991.
“No. You probably wouldn’t remember, but we stayed in Landon until that fall.”
I knew I shouldn’t ask but I couldn’t stop the question. “What about Ruthann?”
“Who, sweetie? I don’t think I heard you right.”
I disconnected the call and whimpered, “Stop the car…”
Camille veered to the shoulder just in time for me to clamber from the passenger seat and puke up stomach acid in a colorless ditch clogged with the knee-high remnants of dead weeds.
“It’s all right,” Camille kept saying, as though this phrase had the power to alleviate anything. I knew she was hanging on by the thinnest of threads, same as me, and so I did not beg her to shut up.
“Mom must think we’re crazy,” I whispered later, after we were back on the road. I sat huddled around my own midsection, focusing on each subsequent breath. “I kept asking all these questions I should have known the answers to. Oh God, Milla, Grandma and Aunt Ellen died in a car accident in 1990. Twenty-four years ago.”
My lips were numb, as if I’d been recently injected with an anesthetic. I felt like a cartoon version of myself, picturing a bubble filled with strings of jumbled words each time I spoke. Absurd, insensible words that could not possibly reflect reality.
“Ruthie wasn’t born,” I croaked for the hundredth time, clutching my ribcage. I was afraid my innards might start spilling out if I released hold too soon. “She wasn’t born. Does that mean she still exists where we came from? Is she still in the nineteenth century?”
“It means we have to figure this out as quickly as we can.” Cartoon bubbles floated from Camille’s mouth too; I wondered if she could see them. The day flashing past outside the car was windswept, flat gray in color. The foothills gave way to the plains of North Dakota, the land level as a tabletop in either direction, the ditches congested with endless cordons of dirty snow long since scraped from the roadway. Camille’s knuckles stood out like pearls beneath her skin as she gripped the steering wheel. She glanced my way and her eyes were electric with intensity, the only real sign of life on her face. “For whatever reason, you and I remember our original timeline. The right timeline, not this sick fucking offshoot, or whatever the fuck it is. The only advantage we have just now is that we remember what’s right.”
I tried to nod, my head jerking through the movement like a clunky wooden puppet’s. I tried not to think of what I’d screamed last night, about Fallon being the puppet master. I could not lose focus in such a way, not anymore. Camille was right; if we had any chance at all, it was because we remembered. Squeezing my torso with both arms, I whispered, “You’re right. We have to stay calm. It’s just so – oh God…”
“I know, Tish, I know. We have to keep picturing them how we remember or we’ll go crazy. I’ve been repeating their names in my head all morning. Millie Joelle, Brantley Malcolm, Henry Mathias, Lorissa Anne, James Boyd…” Her throat bobbed violently, like she was attempting to swallow an unsliced apple. “They’re still out there, I believe this. We have to save them. We can’t think otherwise.”
I sat slightly straighter, rallying my wits, ticking off what we knew on my fingers. “The Rawleys are gone. Case said there has never been a family by that name in Jalesville. Fallon’s message to Derrick suggested that he’d had a new, better idea about how to hurt us. And Fallon said…” I struggled to recall those seconds in the parking lot. “He said he hoped we’d remember and that she did. He must have meant Ruthann. So whatever he did, he did to her in the nineteenth century, which suggests she is still there in…” Again I searched my memory for Derrick’s words; he had helped us more than he may ever know and I hadn’t even thanked him. “In 1882. If only we could communicate with her somehow. We have to know what she knows. It’s critical.” I cupped the lower half of my face, staring out the window, envisioning my little sister. I begged, “Ruthie, oh God, hear us reaching out to you. Hear us.”
“He wiped out their family,” Camille mused softly. “Fallon, I mean, he wiped out the entire Rawley family. There’s only one way a person could achieve such a thing…”
“Fallon would need to have known the exact ancestor whose line of descendants led to the family we know in the twenty-first century,” I said, my thoughts at last flaring to something resembling life, able to problem-solve in the abstract. “Clark’s ancestor whose name is on the land deed is Grantley Rawley. Their family was the first to live on that homestead. Remember, Clark only knew the two brothers, Grantley and then the one who died young. Miles was his name.”
“Ruthie and Marshall might be there right now, with that family…”
“If we could warn them somehow…but how?”
Hours later, once we’d crossed the border into northern Minnesota, our conversation rolled back around to the fact that our mother and Blythe had never married. Overtaken by the odd surge of stimulation that accompanies extreme exhaustion, I drummed my fists on my thighs. “Mom didn’t know who I meant, which probably means Blythe never came to Shore Leave for a summer job. And he was the main reason we stayed in Landon instead of going back to Chicago that summer. Well, that and you getting pregnant with Millie Jo.”
It was close to noon. We had not eaten, slept, or exited at a rest stop since driving out of Jalesville in the darkness of predawn. Our list of facts had tentatively lengthened; I’d spoken earlier to Robbie, whose voice brought hot tears bursting to my eyes and throat. It was on the tip of my tongue to warn him of the danger to his life, to beg him to be careful; Robbie seemed completely unchanged in this lifetime, dishing out droll sarcasm exactly as I recalled from college.
“Gordon, please hurry back from your trip. This place blows without you around. I fucking hate spring break when I’m not springing or breaking someplace with topless chicks and rivers of booze. I hate being responsible and shit.”
“What place?” I had whispered, holding the phone to my ear with both hands.
“What’s with you? You sound weird. Are you and your sister fighting or something?”
“No, I’m just…I’m just tired.”
“Did you find a hot cowboy to ride, like you were hoping? Maybe two or three?” He cracked what sounded like a piece of gum and I could exactly picture his smirking smile. His words, delivered as one friend relishing the chance to mess with another, pierced the pieces of my already-shredded heart in ways he could not begin to imagine.
“What place?” I repeated, ignoring his taunting.
“Tish, come on. Our place of business, Turnbull and Hinckley, or have you forgotten where you work?”
Radiation zizzed through my limbs and I sat arrow-straight, startling Camille. Before I thought I cried, “We work at Turnbull and Hinckley?”
“Did you by any chance partake in drug usage last night? Maybe excessive grain alcohol consumption? Shit, I’m jealous…”
I bit down on my stupidity and conjured an authoritative tone. “Rob, what do you know about the Yancys? Franklin and Derrick, specifically.”
“The Brothers Grimm?” He chuckled at his own joke. “Their holdings are affiliated with several of Ron’s subsidiaries, as you well know. Don’t act like you don’t remember how Derrick tried to snag your sweet ass for, like, our entire last year of law school. He had it bad for you, Gordon. Probably still does, I don’t know. Haven’t seen him in a month or so.”
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