Return to Yesterday

by Abbie Williams

  Be safe.

  I will, angel.

  He and Ax paused to look back and wave before they were out of sight.

  I watched until they rode out of view over the horizon.

  After supper Celia and I walked down to the creek to visit Miles’s grave, arm in arm, taking our time through the knee-high grass and abundant wildflowers blooming in riots of color as summer advanced. I eyed the mountain peaks bordering the western horizon, attempting to focus on this moment rather than allowing my thoughts to scurry across the distance separating me from Marshall. I couldn’t bear to think about the coming night hours, when terrible images would swarm – stealthy figures stalking him and Axton, bullets flying from the darkness to pierce their bodies. Axton had already survived three gunshot wounds; I had assisted Birdie in stitching his first two. It had proven harrowing enough to witness Ax in pain; I refused to imagine Marshall enduring the same.

  “They’ll have reached Howardsville by now, I’m certain.” Celia infused her voice with confidence, for my sake. “Don’t you fret, little Ruth, not in your condition.”

  “I’m fine,” I murmured, squeezing her elbow more securely to my side, I hoped conveying my sincerity.

  “I know a lie when I hear one. I promised your man I’d watch out for you, so don’t you go getting me in any trouble,” she warned, with a subtle air of good humor. “I know enough about the Rawley temper to avoid stepping straight into it.”

  I couldn’t quite manage a laugh, muttering, “Damn right.”

  “Besides, that man loves you like I never seen. He’ll hurry on back here, be home before you know it.”

  I stretched to tiptoes and kissed her soft cheek, catching the scent of her warm skin, a lingering essence of lavender oil. Strands of hair had escaped the heavy knot at the crown of her head to drift around her flushed face.

  She bestowed her soft smile. “If you’re too lonely tonight, you come right on downstairs. You can bunk in with me and the baby, if you’d like.”

  “Thank you,” I murmured. “I just might. I hate sleeping alone. I never did. My sisters and I shared a room forever. Sleeping alone feels like…I don’t know…being contagious or something.”

  Later I would wonder, tearing my heart out, if things might have been different, had I joined them.

  “It does me a good turn to see you remembering things,” Celia said. “I hated to see you suffering so last summer, when you didn’t know your people.”

  Hesitation cut a quick, inadvertent path across my forehead. I knew she sensed I was withholding information; her shrewd gray eyes missed nothing.

  But if anyone understood the necessity of keeping secrets, it was Celia. Instead of further comment she gently released my arm, making her way toward the tree beneath which Miles lay buried; the creek flowed only a few yards beyond his grave. The afternoon air had grown hot and stifling, a wide, deep oven spanning the foothills. Inspired by the sight of the creek, its surface speckled with golden drops of sunlight, I sat in the tall grass, with care, to remove my shoes.

  “You ain’t planning to swim, are you?” Celia asked over her shoulder.

  “No, just wade. I don’t think the water’s deep enough for swimming.” Flickertail Lake loomed in my memory, clear and lovely, a hundred shades of blue. I knew my family was absent from its shores in this time period, but homesickness swelled within my chest cavity nonetheless. I cupped my lower belly, blindsided by missing the womenfolk. Tears stung the bridge of my nose and I closed my eyes.

  Mom, Tish, Milla. I’m pregnant.

  Do you hear me? I’m having a baby.

  I want Aunt Jilly to tell me she knows he’s a boy. I want Grandma to smooth my hair and call me ‘little one.’ I want Aunt Ellen to hug me close and make me hot chocolate and blueberry pancakes. I want to see Blythe and my brothers, and Clint and Dodge and Rich. I want the Rawleys to know Marshall is going to be a father.

  I pretended to dally over my shoes until Celia knelt near the wooden cross bearing Miles’s name; I didn’t want her to notice my distress any more than I wished to intrude upon her weekly conversation with Miles. Half-hidden in long, scratchy grass, I knuckled my eye sockets, tears seeping. My chest bounced with quiet, aching sobs.

  Oh God, Mom. I miss you. I need to feel your arms around me. It’s been so long.

  I want to turn around and see Clark’s house instead of Grant and Birdie’s.

  I want to see Garth and Becky, Sean and Quinn and Wy.

  I want to go home to the Jalesville I know.

  Her back to me, Celia spoke to Miles in low tones, a continuous, one-sided dialogue. I knew she was telling him about their son, a ritual she observed without fail. At last I gathered my wits and swiped the last of the moisture from my cheeks; there was no point in kneeling in the dirt, crying, and I stood and headed for the creek, cautious in my bare feet. I lifted my hem, toes sinking into the gooey mud on the bank, and imagined Marshall and me bringing our son here in a few years, each of us holding one of his chubby hands as he giggled and splashed. With a secret smile, I fit a palm against the smooth roundness of my abdomen, thinking of Patricia’s baby, named Cole Montgomery Spicer after his father.

  Marshall Augustus, Junior, I thought, indulging in my vision of wading in the creek with Marshall and our son. Your daddy and I already love you so. Someday you’ll meet your whole family, every last one of them. You have so many cousins already, baby. So many people to love you. Mathias and Camille have Millie Jo, Brantley, Henry, Lorie, and James. Garth and Becky have Tommy, and Becky was pregnant when I left, and I bet Case and Tish are going to have a baby any time now…

  My twenty-first century family claimed the upper hand in my thoughts, seeming close enough to touch. Just beyond the limits of my perception the earth tilted and the sun shifted, its lower curve bisected by a rocky peak; brilliant orange light seared my retinas.

  I recognized what was happening a second too late.

  No!

  My arms flew outward, palms extended. As though I exerted any control over it – I never had. And there it was all at once, backhanding me to awareness, the deep, insistent pull of time. A pull so powerful my cells buzzed, my skull rang.

  No, oh God, no! Not without Marshall!

  Fighting it, I scrambled for the bank and dropped to my knees, grabbing stalks of grass with both hands, holding for all I was worth.

  I should have known, I should have known…

  It had been this same location that Marshall and I once felt the pull of the past, the star-bright night we’d ridden Arrow to this very creek bank. And, just now, my awareness had been consumed by thoughts of our families in the future.

  NO!

  “Ruthie!” Celia’s voice cut through the buzzing nonsense. She flew to my side, slipping in the mud in her hurry to kneel and clutch hold of my upper arms. “What in God’s name? What’s wrong?!”

  Shaking, wet from hips to hem, I clung to the security of her warmth, her solidity, concentrating for all I was worth on her immediate presence.

  “Don’t let me go,” I begged, numb with fear. “Don’t let me go until it stops.”

  “I got you. Hold to me, girl, hold fast.”

  And I did until the pull receded, a long, undulating wave drawn back to the endless, infinite expanse of liquid called time.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Montana Territory -June, 1882

  CELIA DID NOT ATTEMPT TO ASK QUESTIONS ON OUR RE-turn walk. I didn’t even thank her, a mistake I regretted in the aftermath. So many necessary things left unsaid.

  The what-ifs would not assault until later that night – and every night thereafter, a torture so excruciating I would have died to end it, if only Axton would have let me.

  What if I’d returned to 2014 in that moment?

  What if I hadn’t resisted the pull?

  Would he have survived then?

  Too shaken, I declined Birdie’s invitation to join everyone at the fire and retreated upstairs, curling up atop the blank
ets of my unmade bed, listening as Grant and several of his ranch hands made music for many long hours. A spectacularly full moon began a slow ascent; one elbow bent beneath my right temple, I watched it rise across my narrow window in a perfect diagonal pattern.

  I kept thoughts of what had happened at the creek firmly from my mind, instead imagining Marshall and Axton in Howardsville. A new jailhouse and marshal’s quarters had been constructed since last summer, when Aemon Turnbull and the man called Vole burned down the original structures, and I pictured Marshall and Ax safely ensconced therein, laughing and talking over plates of biscuits and gravy from one of the nearby saloons.

  He’ll be home tomorrow evening at the latest.

  Hurry back to me, Marshall, I’m so scared, sweetheart.

  In this era, until this evening I had not once experienced the sensation of displacement, of being literally yanked through time, and did not know what to make of today’s occurrence. Marshall and I had spent many hours near the creek in this century, to no avail. Nothing. Not so much as a glimmer, a breath, a hint, of our twenty-first century lives. And I was almost too scared to tell him the truth – that the door or the current, or whatever it was, still very much existed. If we returned to the creek together and I felt the same pull but Marshall did not –

  I won’t chance it.

  Hours ticked past. The hands on duty rode out for their night shift. Grant, Birdie, Celia, and the boys retired to bed, their muted voices drifting to my ears before quiet settled over the house. The moon vanished above the peak of the roof. I shifted from one side to the other probably a hundred times, hot and restive, utterly unable to sleep. At some point after midnight I could no longer deny the need to use the outhouse. Though there was a small porcelain bedpan tucked beneath the bed, I felt clumsy using it; maybe a brief walk through fresh air would do me some good.

  I slipped through the sleeping household, tracing my fingers along the wooden banister, taking care to avoid the creaky step third from the top. I didn’t normally ghost about the house at this time of night and squelched a surge of painful remembrance; a year ago Miles had been shot and killed in the front yard. Earlier that same evening, despite qualms, I’d accepted his marriage proposal. My feet stalled on the last stair and I paused there, grimly studying the empty space where we’d stood when Miles kissed me for the last time. I wrapped both arms about my waist, suddenly uneasy to venture another step.

  Forgive me, dear Miles, I thought, and swore for an instant he hovered close enough to touch. My eyes darted around the dimness of the large living space, seeking his reassuring presence; the bright moon had long since set, leaving the earth swathed in darkness. Despite my better judgment, I whispered, “Is that you? Can you hear me?”

  I imagined Miles appearing at the foot of the stairs and taking my hand; just as swiftly, urgency filled the air. I swore I heard his voice.

  Sweet Ruthann, how I have missed you.

  Shivers erupted along my limbs.

  Stop it, I reprimanded with my next exhalation. Go to the bathroom and get back to bed. You’re all right. It’s all right.

  I crept outside, feeling the night’s immediate encroachment on my body. I knew my way and hadn’t bothered to tote along a lantern, having long since grown accustomed to the absence of artificial light; no streetlamps, no batteries or flashlights or electric bulbs connected to wires and transmitters. I’d come to regard the darkness as a natural, even friendly, presence and tried to scrounge up that particular feeling as I hurried to the closest outhouse. The enormous barn loomed to my right, the bunkhouses beyond; it was just my imagination that it seemed too quiet…

  Stop it. It’s all right.

  He moved without sound, catching me from behind just as my fingertips made contact with the rough wooden handle on the outhouse door. An inflexible palm covered my mouth, blocking any attempt to scream for help, and a body jammed up against my spine as I tried to buck the hold. He was wiry and strong, inevitable as death, and I knew a fraction of a second before he pressed his mouth to my ear to whisper, “Ruthann. I’ve missed you.”

  I went limp in his grasp, strangled by shock and fear; the words were almost exactly the ones I’d just imagined Miles speaking.

  Another word rotated on a slow axis through my mind, repeating until it became nonsensical.

  Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Of course Fallon would reappear. He was always going to reappear. How could we have thought otherwise?

  You can’t stop me, he’d once told me in a nightmare. No one can.

  He walked backward at what seemed a leisurely pace, in this way keeping our gazes directed toward the main house where the Rawleys slept; he spoke into my left ear, narrating in a low, mocking whisper as together we made a slow, deliberate retreat.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to come outside. I knew you would. It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it, dearest Ruthann? I meant to kill you the very moment I next laid eyes upon you, as you may know. You broke my forearm, after all, but something occurred to me while I was away. You see, death brings a certain measure of peace. No more chance for suffering once you’re dead, at least to my knowledge.” His sigh ruffled my loose hair. “I once told Boyd Carter the same thing.” He lowered his left hand – the one not locked over my mouth – and cupped my right breast.

  A growl of vicious loathing rose from my throat and he increased the pressure to a painful level. I bit back all sound.

  “Good girl. Fate is with me, as you will soon be unable to deny. I realized something quite profound yesterday. You see, Dredd did something useful for the first time in his miserable life. He took action. Just as I am now taking action.”

  I had recognized Fallon’s ruthless arrogance the last time I’d been in his company, on a train bound for Chicago, but he hadn’t sounded insane that evening. Tonight he did, blatantly so. There was an agitated, unhinged quality to his voice not present during our previous interaction. My thoughts spun, fixating on one-syllable words in the extremity of my fear.

  Bad.

  This is badbadbadbadbad.

  Help me.

  Oh God, helpmehelpmehelpmehelpme.

  “You and Dredd’s whore wife thought you could escape with her bastard, didn’t you?” He issued a clucking noise of reprimand and the ice chunks in my gut multiplied. “She didn’t escape and neither will you. But I am not going to kill you quite yet. There’s something I’d like you to watch, first. They should be ready any second. I told them to give me five minutes…”

  He halted. We were over fifty paces from the main house but close enough for a clear view as flames leaped to existence around the entire structure. My eyes bulged, unable to process the sight. I screamed behind his palm, struggling and thrashing, with fewer odds of escape than a rabbit in the jaws of a steel trap.

  “Gasoline would be preferable, of course, but that won’t be in widespread use until 1913. Fortunately, alcohol burns almost as well. The structure is wooden, a further advantage, as is the dry air. They’ll be engulfed in less than two minutes by my best estimation.”

  He released my mouth and wailing cries tore free.

  Celia – Jacob – Birdie – Grant –

  Every one of Marshall’s ancestors in Montana lay sleeping inside that house.

  Every last Rawley in Montana.

  Fallon let me scream, keeping me tightly restrained, my arms pinned; he knew I was no threat to his plans at this point. No one could hear me from this distance. I watched black stick figures swarm the house, men on foot and horseback – Grant’s ranch hands trying to tame an inferno already blazing beyond control. Drained, destroyed, I finally fell silent and Fallon’s hold on my torso relaxed ever so slightly. The second he did I jutted my head backward in the vain hope I would connect with his face. He grunted, stumbling sideways, and flung me to the ground; I had underestimated his strength once again.

  “You’re a fighter,” he whispered, pinning me supine with one knee on my chest; his head and shoulde
rs created a silhouette darker than the night sky. Stars turned cartwheels at the edges of my vision. “And probably a hell of a fuck. I don’t have time just now but I’ll teach you a thing or two when we meet again.” He bent and licked my cheek, his breath rough and elevated; he was excited by all of this. “We’ll meet again, I promise you.”

  And then he struck my temple with a small, blunt object.

  Axton found me in the gray light of dawn. It was almost surreal, regaining painful consciousness to the sight of his face just as I had a year earlier, when I’d first arrived in the nineteenth century; only this time I wasn’t numbed by the anesthesia of amnesia and disbelief. I blinked at the bits of char and ash drifting and twirling in the air around his head. There was a beat of deep silence between us, a speck of eternity during which our gazes held fast.

  I saw his eyes and I knew.

  “Ax…” I moaned.

  I knew.

  He bent and collected me to his chest, which heaved with deep, choking sobs. I clamped my teeth around the material of his canvas jacket; I wanted to cover my ears, to block out everything he would proceed to tell me in the next minute. I wanted to scream at him to shut the fuck up; I wanted to run out into the foothills and never return. Axton rocked us side to side, gripping the back of my head the way he would an infant’s fragile skull.

  “Ruthie, oh Jesus Christ, Marshall disappeared.” Choking over the words, wishing he did not have to speak them. “He just up and disappeared and there was nothing I could do…”

  Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up…

  Later, I would not remember the brief span of time during which I knelt with Axton in the tall grass, the charred shell of the Rawleys’ house visible in the distance, smoke drifting in lazy blue-gray curls from the ruins. I would not remember struggling to my feet and running headlong for the creek, sobbing as I fell to my knees, begging time to sweep me away. I would not remember my vicious struggle to remain there in the cold water when Axton tried to haul me out, I would not recall his words or mine – I only knew later because I made Ax tell me everything.