Way Back

by Williams, Abbie;

  “What did you dream, baby?” he murmured, kissing my forehead. I felt his breath on my eyelids, the familiar sweetness of it; he sounded drowsy, for which I was grateful. Neither of us had slept well in the past few days.

  “I saw them sitting in the sunshine,” I whispered. I didn’t know if my subconscious was simply trying to prevent me from going crazy, therefore conjuring and providing me with a dream of my sister and Marshall appearing safe, or if it was an actual message from them.

  “Tish,” Case whispered, and I heard the pain in his voice. “It’s good they were together. It seems like a sign. I think they would try to send us a message, if that’s possible.”

  If that’s possible.

  Despite everything, I continued to grapple with the irrationality of all of this. But if what we believed was true, Marshall and my sister had traveled through time. Was a message contained in a dream any less plausible?

  “I think it’s possible,” I whispered, letting myself be momentarily comforted. As a lawyer, I’d been trained to find proof, to root out the logical evidence. And everything about this situation defied all known logic. Since moving to Montana I had learned to trust my intuition and to recognize its critical importance – part of which had led me to Case. I closed my eyes and snuggled closer to his warmth, and he made a sound deep in his throat and drew my thigh tighter around his hip.

  “Both mornings since they’ve been gone I’ve woken up with this horrible feeling you won’t be here.” He was more awake now, his voice low and hoarse. He hadn’t mentioned this and I snuggled closer in response. The agony of my sister’s disappearance, and of Marshall’s, whom Case and I both loved like a brother, was unbearable.

  Hot tears dripped from my nose and splashed onto his chest. I longed for the mornings when we lay laughing and teasing beneath the covers, wrapped in our happiness; had I dared to take our easy laughter for granted? I longed for my sister and Marshall to be returned to us. Laughter would never be the same; it would forever be colored by the loss of them, if they never returned.

  Please let them come back, oh God, oh please…

  Marshall thought a week, maybe two…

  But what if…

  I clamped down on any errant thoughts that Marshall would not succeed, that he would fail to find Ruthie. Their absence remained a mystery to most people; at first, Case and I were the only ones who understood the truth of where, and when, they’d gone. If Marshall and my sister did not return within the month, we’d been tasked with delivering the truth to our respective families; the very idea of such a conversation with my family sent shards of glass through my bowels. Of course I’d talked to the womenfolk in Landon – my mom and my older sister Camille, my dear Aunt Jilly, Grandma and Great-Aunt Ellen – at least twice a day since Ruthie’s disappearance. The inability to speak to Ruthann had torn a hole in each of our souls.

  Aunt Jilly had been the one to ask, “They’ve gone back, haven’t they? I promise I won’t tell Jo unless you want me to, Tish.”

  “Not yet,” I’d begged, cradling the phone in the middle of the night, whispering with my beloved auntie, who had always possessed intuition far beyond an average person. “Not just yet.”

  “Camille knows. I can see it in her eyes.”

  “I know,” I’d whispered to Aunt Jilly; to my mother I could only promise, “Ruthie will be back. You have to trust me.”

  And I was clinging to this conviction with everything in me.

  Clark Rawley and his sons knew the truth; Case and I had told them yesterday evening, after much debate. Debate because Marshall thought there was a chance he and Ruthie might return before anyone even realized he was gone, therefore sparing our families additional worry. Case and I finally decided we needed to tell Clark, no matter Marshall’s orders.

  “Could we all go back there? Like, right now?” Sean had asked while we were gathered in Clark’s familiar living room, the brothers crowded around us with their expressions uncharacteristically grave. Only Becky was absent from the family group, home with her and Garth’s new baby. Sean had been perched on the edge of the sofa, his hands in loose fists, tense with energy. The Rawley boys all looked so much alike I could almost, from the corner of my eye, pretend Marshall was there anyway.

  Except that he wasn’t.

  “I don’t know how to explain it, exactly.” I felt ill at my basic inability to help them understand; I didn’t even understand. I was a woman who took action, who did not usually hesitate, but these circumstances rendered me helpless. I studied Clark, Marshall’s father; Clark appeared haggard, the lines of his thin, craggy face exaggerated by the flickering flames in the hearth. His mouth was solemn, his thick mustache obscuring his upper lip as he looked between Case and me. Garth, the oldest brother, sat to Clark’s left, bent forward over his thighs, wide shoulders hunched, fingers laced and eyebrows drawn inward. Quinn perched beside Sean on the sofa, their faces grim, while Wy, the youngest at sixteen, sat on the floor with his back resting on the edge of Clark’s chair, wrists dangling over his bent knees. He hadn’t removed his eyes from my face, nor had he spoken a word.

  Case took up the reins. “As far as we can tell, only certain people are able to feel the pull of the past. Ruthie seemed especially susceptible. She would touch Una’s letters and…”

  I curled my fingers around Case’s hand as he faltered; I finished for him, “And she would start to shimmer, like she was becoming invisible. We watched her disappear before our eyes, back in January. It was horrible.” I gritted my teeth against the memory. “But Marsh was there that night and he…somehow he pulled her back. He stopped it from happening.”

  None of them knew how to respond; I could feel the weighty mass of their combined stun the way I would a cord of wood resting on my shoulders.

  His tone begging for answers, Clark demanded quietly, “But how?” Garth glared at us, bristling with frustration and growing anger. “Why didn’t Marsh tell us? Why didn’t you guys tell us? Why in the hell are we just hearing this now?”

  I sensed more than saw the way Case’s shoulders squared. Garth was like a brother to him, not to mention his longtime best friend, and so Case kept his voice calm as he answered, “Because we could hardly believe it either. Who the hell can? It seems impossible. We hid away Una’s letters and thought if Ruthie never touched them again, it would be fine.”

  Garth stormed to his feet, plunging both hands through his thick brown hair. “But it wasn’t fine! Where are the letters now? Why didn’t Marsh tell us he planned to leave? What the fuck?”

  “If you think for a second we aren’t just as horrified…” I couldn’t keep the angry tremble from my voice any more than I could the tears from my eyes.

  Case squeezed my hand. “We will do whatever we can, whatever it takes, but we need your help, you guys. Believe me, I want to punch through a brick wall but it won’t do any goddamn good.”

  Addressing Case, Clark requested, “Start at the beginning if you would, son.” Clark was Case’s surrogate father and the tenderness in his voice as he spoke this word to Case reassured me more than anything he could have said in that moment. Clark reached for Garth’s wrist and tugged his oldest back to the couch. He murmured, “Sit, son, please. Let’s listen.”

  Together Case and I explained what we believed had happened since last fall, concluding at the moment in time which found us all in the Rawleys’ living room with an icy winter night pressing against the wide bay windows. Ruthie’s Buick had been found yesterday, lodged in a snowbank off Interstate 94, near the Montana-North Dakota border. The hood was crumpled, the seat belt still fastened, her puffy winter coat balled up on the floor of the passenger side, as though she’d been too warm while driving and shucked it. But no sign of my sister. No boot prints through the snow, no note. No cell phone call or explanatory voice message. Nothing.

  “My boy loves Ruthann like I’ve never seen him love anyone,” Clark acknowledged when Case and I finished speaking. His kind brown eyes glistene
d with tears. “I know if Marshall thought he could save her, he would do whatever it took. I’d do the same for my Faye, just as I know you boys would for your women.” Clark’s voice grew abruptly hoarse. “Marsh tried to take Arrow, didn’t he?”

  I was sobbing by then, no use trying to stifle it. I nodded confirmation of this fact, unable to speak, and Case drew me to his side, kissing my temple. I closed my eyes and rested my palm to his heartbeat, just to reassure myself. Arrow had appeared at the Rawleys’ barn, saddled and agitated; none of the supplies Marshall attempted to bring with had accompanied him into the past. Arrow returning without his master was the catalyst for telling the Rawleys sooner than later.

  “Marsh thought they’d be back soon,” Case said. “He didn’t want us to say anything until a week or so had passed, but we thought it was best to come and talk to all of you.”

  Glancing at Garth, Sean said, “This is like back when Cora’s spirit visited you in the middle of the night. No one could explain it, but it was real. She was real.”

  Garth, hunched on the edge of the seat cushion, plunged both hands through his hair. His eyes shone with the tears none of us could contain. I hated to see them all this way, this rowdy, loving family who had been instrumental in raising Case, who loved him dearly. Once, I would have thought nothing could dampen the Rawleys’ spirits.

  Garth whispered, “You’re right. Cora was real, I never doubted it. But this is just…”

  “Crazy,” Case finished for him. “I know, it’s fucking crazy. But no less real.”

  “What about Derrick Yancy?” Quinn asked, leaning forward. “He talks like he knows these people from the past, right? Do you think he can travel through time, too?”

  “That’s a good point.” I swiped impatiently at my tears. Derrick Yancy did speak of people and events from the nineteenth century with unusual familiarity. My mind clicked along, and after days of a stagnant and inept thought-flow, I welcomed the sensation. Maybe Derrick didn’t just remember a past life, like the rest of us; maybe he’d actually been there.

  Garth said, “The bastard was supposedly in Chicago for the holidays. Do you think he was…back in time instead?”

  If it was true, it meant Derrick possessed the ability to return to the present; it meant return was possible, that there was a way back. I sat straighter. “Then how did he get back here, to 2014? He must have more control over it…”

  “And why would he go in the first place?” Quinn wondered.

  “When did the Yancys acquire their wealth?” Case asked, and I could hear the same thread of determination creeping into his voice. “When did they become the powerful family they are today? What do we actually know about their past?”

  “Research,” I whispered, and felt a small pinprick of purpose; I had always loved researching. “I’ll start tomorrow. 1893 was when they founded the original corporation, in Chicago. Fallon Yancy is listed as the founder but I don’t know much else.”

  “We’ll see Derrick in court in Forsyth within the month,” Clark said. “Now, more than ever, we have to prove this land is ours.”

  It had been at Thanksgiving, only months ago, that Derrick Yancy appeared at the Rawleys like a nightmare we’d collectively shared, carrying service of process documents claiming the acreage belonging to Clark, and Case’s adjacent acreage, in actuality belonged to his family, and had been stolen after the murder of a man named Thomas Yancy in the late nineteenth century. In my spotty attempts at researching this Yancy ancestor, I’d learned little about Thomas other than that he was the father of two boys, Dredd and Fallon, and he’d fought in the Civil War. But now I planned to renew researching him, with a vengeance.

  “I will make it my business to find out,” I declared. “Every bit of available information. Al will help me.”

  Al Howe was my boss at our little law firm in Jalesville and I loved him dearly; Al would help me get to the bottom of this. He was a far more decent man, and lawyer, than my own father, Jackson Gordon, and I could admit this to myself at last. Despite hero-worshiping my dad, attending his alma mater for law school and doing my damnedest to please him, the wool had finally been ripped from my eyes; my dad was a cheater, a liar, and quite possibly involved in dirty business dealings with fellow Chicago lawyer Ron Turnbull; Ron was a partner at Turnbull and Hinckley, a firm for which I’d nearly sold my soul to become an employee.

  Robbie, I thought, agony surging anew. Robbie’s death in the wake of Ruthie’s disappearance was almost more than I could handle; I’d been purposely avoiding dealing with it, and with the subsequent guilty sadness.

  Robbie Benson had been my classmate at Northwestern, a trust-funded, privileged only child. We’d been rivals, then grudging friends, and in the last few months, investigative partners. Robbie, newly employed at Turnbull and Hinckley in Chicago, had been quietly delving into Ron’s business dealings, keeping me posted with bi-weekly phone calls or texts. Both of us were certain if we dug deeply enough we could connect Ron to numerous heinous acts, including an attempt to kill Case and me by ordering someone to set fire to our barn. Just before Ruthie and Marsh disappeared, Robbie had sent me a message which I’d kept on my phone; the text indicated he’d found something potentially big. Something implicating Derrick’s older brother, Franklin, and Ron’s wife, Christina.

  But what?

  And now Robbie was dead. An apparent overdose – a conclusion I did not for one fucking second swallow as truth. Discovered in his apartment in downtown Chicago; my father had called to tell me the news. I was stunned, devastated by Robbie’s death. Since last autumn Robbie had proven he was a true friend, not just the spoiled, overbred rich kid – an image he’d played up in college, even if it was just to get laid, never mind grade favoring – everyone thought he was. Robbie showed me he could be moved to care about something other than himself, he’d discovered important information, and now he was gone.

  I’m so sorry, Robbie, you could never know how sorry.

  What the hell did you find?

  Something dangerous. Something that scared Ron enough to go after you.

  How is it fucking possible we live in this world – one in which the man I once idolized, the powerful lawyer I wanted to model myself after, is this much a monster?

  Robbie, I’m so sorry and you’ll never even know. It wasn’t worth your life.

  Now, hours after arriving home from Clark’s, Case and I held each other in the dimness of our room, dawn tinting the sky with the gloomy pewter tones of winter. And something occurred to me as swiftly as a stomach cramp, a hundred times more painful. It had been gnawing at the back of my mind since we’d been at Clark’s and now sprang for my heart.

  “Case,” I implored, and he heard the urgency in my voice and sat up immediately, clicking on the bedside lamp. I squinted in the sudden yellow glow.

  “What is it? What is it, sweetheart?”

  “That text…” My pupils adjusted to the light. I tried to swallow past the taste of bitter fear in my mouth. “Oh God, that text…”

  “Tell me.” His face was stark with concern. “What do you mean, baby?”

  “I didn’t think…” I gripped my temples, attempting to absorb my own stupidity. “Oh God, I didn’t think…”

  “Patricia,” my husband insisted quietly.

  “My phone,” I whispered, gesturing at our dresser.

  Case bounded from bed and brought me the phone. I scrolled to Robbie’s last text, a message about finding something on Number One and that Fancy was smarter than he’d thought. ‘Number One’ was our code name for Franklin Yancy, while we referred to Christina Turnbull as ‘Fancy.’ What were the odds a reasonably intelligent individual looking for incriminating texts on Robbie’s phone would decipher those nicknames? Worse yet, despite never using Ron’s name, we’d used ‘Hot Shot’ at least two dozen times, and with plenty of contextual evidence; our final code name was ‘Number Two,’ which of course referred to Derrick and the huge chip on his shoulder.

&n
bsp; “Look,” I whispered, showing Case my response to Robbie’s text. I’d sent it just before we found out about Ruthie’s disappearance, just before Dad had called to tell me Robbie was dead; Robbie was already gone when I sent the message, which of course I hadn’t known then, and his phone could very well be in the current possession of Ron Turnbull. I moaned, “Oh Jesus, Case…”

  My reply to Robbie read, Unless of course you actually found something!

  Dust coated my tongue. Case reread both messages. He sank to the bed beside me. “Who do you think might have Robbie’s phone? Who might have read this?”

  I shook my head miserably. “I don’t know. I’ll call Dad later this morning. He asked if we wanted to come to the funeral so I have to call him anyway. Dad said Asher and Stella – that’s Robbie’s parents – would like to see some of his friends from college.”

  Case inhaled slowly and rested his hand on my back; the simple gesture served to calm me, to let me know he was here, and would never fail to be here. My gratitude for this was overwhelming, striking at me like hail, or ocean breakers preceding a storm. I thought, Why does life have to be so fucking precarious?

  Why did the fear of losing Case stab at my sense of security?

  We’d already been down that road; again I was dragged to the nightmare I’d experienced at his bedside last August, when he’d been recovering from smoke inhalation and heart surgery, when he’d almost been taken from me. In my recurring nightmare, Case was shot in the stomach and dying before my eyes, literally on my lap, and I was able to do exactly nothing. I could scream until my throat was shredded, fight until I fell to the ground, but nothing could stop his blood from pouring forth over my thighs.

  “I have…to throw up…” I gagged, stumbling for the bathroom.

  Case held my hair away from my damp face as I retched, gripping the toilet seat with both hands. In between bouts of puking, I apologized profusely. Case didn’t try to stop either from happening; when I was finally still, and silent, he helped me to the shower, climbing in with me, stripping my lone pajama top and gathering up the new showerhead we’d had installed, one on a long extension, using it to cleanse my sweating body.