“Would you like something to drink?”
That was said by Erva. She was trying to make Meredith feel more comfortable. But it stung that her guest had to remind her of her manners. God, she’d turned into a wolf with her etiquette, Meredith chided herself once more.
“Tea?” Meredith finally asked. “I’m sorry. I don’t have coffee.”
Erva’s amber eyes widened. “But you love coffee. I had to run across campus to get you your soy latte almost everyday.”
Meredith couldn’t stand to look at Erva then. The affirmation of what a bitch she’d been tore through her. Why had she been so demanding of Erva, making her run around fetching coffee? What had she been thinking? Meredith wasn’t the kind of woman who made others do her bidding. She’d never planned on being a tyrant.
Meredith knew she hadn’t been thinking when she’d been Erva’s supervisor for her PhD. She hadn’t been thinking at all. She’d only been hurting.
“I’m sorry,” Meredith whispered to a swirly grain in the wood of her table.
Erva sighed. “I, believe it or not, didn’t come here to rake you over the coals.”
“You could though.” Meredith couldn’t talk very loud, although she probably should. “It’s merited.”
“Jeez, Meredith, what happened to you?”
Meredith looked up, wondering about the question.
Erva slightly shook her head, staring at Meredith with incredulity. “I—I prepared to talk to a different woman. The woman who accused me of calling this perfect cabin small, that’s who I came here to talk to. The woman who made me run her errands, teach her classes, and kept holding my dissertation back, not letting me obtain my PhD. That’s who I came here to talk to.
“My husband and I spent hours role playing, so I could do this, talk to you. He wanted to be here—”
“You’re married now?” The familiar sting of envy cut into Meredith, breaking her heart and all her bones.
“Yes.” Erva’s smile appeared once more, and she beamed down at an emerald ring on her left hand. “Yes, I’m married now.” She glanced up again, trying to control her obvious joy. “I can tell you, since you’re here having your own glimpse that I—I met my dissertation, Lord General William Hill. He—we fell in love. And we—”
“He’s alive?”
Erva’s sunbeam of a smile brightened. “Yes. He lives with me now. We didn’t get to know each other very well before we married. I’m finding all sorts of weird things about him, like why he can’t clean one area of the sink that has all his whiskers. He really can’t seem to see that area, and it drives me nuts. But I’m sure I drive him nuts too. And how great is that? I’m very happy now.”
Meredith swallowed trying to wrap her head around what she’d been told. Because she’d been Erva’s supervisor, she knew Erva had studied General Hill to a point of exhaustion. She’d seemed almost obsessed about the long dead man. The research had been extensive and Erva wrote with such a passion and flow that Meredith’s envy had bitten into her all the more.
“Congratulations.” Meredith meant to make her voice sound happy, not hollow. She hated herself for her envy. She wanted to be happy for Erva. God knew the woman deserved it.
Erva’s jaw line ticked. Again. Her warm eyes hardened. “Thank you.” Her voice was metallic. “Now I can say it.” Erva’s lips thinned minutely in her noticeable anger. “I didn’t come here to rake you over the coals. But I did come here to confront you. You had no God damned right to do the things you did.”
“I know.”
“You held me back, and you know it.”
“I did.”
“You held my life back by holding onto my dissertation, not letting me argue it to the committee.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You—you—God damn it, would you let me finish? I had this all scripted out. Will and I spent hours on this.”
Something about imagining beautiful Erva sitting with a handsome British general who was supposed to die centuries ago, visualizing him helping her, supporting her, being proud of her, broke Meredith even more. She caved around herself, clasping onto her arms, bowing her head to cry.
“Oh, Meredith, I’m sorry for shouting.”
Meredith snorted an unladylike laugh through her tears. “Please, don’t be. You’re incredible, Erva. You have every right to hate me, but you apologize to me.”
“My silly manners drilled into me.”
Meredith shook her head then wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “No, that’s not it.”
Erva’s face tightened.
“It’s because you’re so beautiful on the inside, that’s why you apologize when you don’t have to. You’re an incredible person. And I managed to hurt you so much to make you hate me.”
“I don’t—”
Meredith shook her head. “You should.”
Erva slowly inhaled, straightening her lithe form. Her gaze bounced around Meredith’s face. She must have looked disgusting, but she wouldn’t try to cover it up anymore. She was a monster. She was a villain. She was the bad guy.
“You know, when we first met, I instantly liked you.” Erva softly but ruefully laughed. “I thought...Well, the reason I chose you to be my supervisor was because I thought we’d become friends. I wanted to become your friend. We had the history in common.”
Meredith laughed too, also with a touch of sad irony. They both were American Revolution experts. Erva specialized in the military history, while Meredith had politics and sociological aspects of colonial peoples. It was thanks to her own dissertation that Meredith had taken so well to 1887. She’d always wanted to know what it was like to be a frontier’s woman, making her own food, building her own lodgings, riding a horse with ease. Granted, Meredith had wished she’d been taken to 1776, seen the American forefathers for themselves—their very human side, not the hagiology she’d recited in her classes before she’d made Erva teach them. She’d wanted to see their faults, wanted to see their obvious bigotry, wanted to see that through all their errors they still made a country where freedom was a virtue.
Because if those mistake-driven men could do something that fabulous, then maybe she wasn’t such a villain.
But sitting across from Erva confirmed her worst fear: she was the bad guy.
“Being a professor too,” Meredith said, “you know the difference between jealousy and envy. I don’t know why most people say jealousy when they mean envy. It is envy when one covets. Jealousy is when one wants to keep something or someone.” She glanced through her wet eyelashes to see Erva nodding. So Meredith continued. “Envy sounds...horrible, while jealousy doesn’t have the stigma of being one of the deadly sins. Maybe that’s why people say jealousy when they mean envy.”
Erva took a big breath, her eyes beginning to glaze over. Meredith was stalling with a lesson in word usage, rather than what she wanted to say, what she needed to say. She scooped into her last reserve of nerve and gritted through, getting to her point.
“Envy sounds as if it should be easy to get over. Because if you covet something, you want it. You want what that person has. And, really, it is that simple. But our minds...my mind didn’t work that way. If I wanted what you had, and, God, I did...I wanted to be as passionate about history as you. I had been that excited at one time. I wanted to write like you. So clear, concise. You never covered your meanings in academic jargon. You just were you...lovely. You were a skeet champion, a former Army intelligence officer, and I doubt you have ever had one student of yours not instantly have a crush on you.”
Erva shook her head, her blonde brows knitting together.
“I wanted to be as lovely as you.”
“I’m not—you make me sound like—”
“Because you’re amazing, Erva.”
Erva looked down at her lap. “God damn it. See, I can’t confront you when you’re like this.”
Meredith smiled, even though it hurt like hell. But she wasn’t done explaining herself, even though she had
no right to do so. Still, she had to try. “The way envy works is by making me think of what I don’t have. I don’t have your body. I don’t have a smiling disposition. I don’t have my students gushing over me. It’s a constant reminder of what I’m not. I’m not beautiful. I’m not kind. I’m not good. I’m not good enough. Ever.”
“Meredith, that’s not true.”
“Try telling that to my envy.”
Erva swallowed, her eyes widening slightly, yet again compassion flaring in those warm orbs of hers.
“Envy whispers all the things I don’t have,” Meredith continued. “Then it starts to yell. It screams at me how I don’t have respect; I don’t have support; I don’t have love. No one loves me.” She looked down at her lap, beginning to cave in again.
“David, your husband, has had a few press releases, asking for information about where you are.”
Meredith snapped her head up, beyond angry. “David isn’t my husband.”
Erva’s lips pursed slightly. “I assumed, because he loves you—”
“Loves me? The man broke up with me. And rather publicly too on Twitter. He never wanted me. I was never good enough. I can guess the only reason he’s doing any kind of press release is because the university’s board pressured him to do it, or he’s getting some kind of kick from the attention.”
Meredith was surprised she was saying as much. But why hold back any longer? She was stuck in 1887 for Christ’s sake. Why not tell it all? “I was with that man for ten years as he strung me along, making promises he never kept. You want to know the stupidest part? I kept falling for it. For ten freaking years. I kept trying to believe he’d marry me, we’d move in together, we’d do all the things he said he wanted to do. But in the same breath he’d tell me how he’d marry me if I...could finally get a raise, make enough money to buy a large enough apartment that we deserved. Everything was contingent on me and needing to do something to earn a marriage, love. Another excuse to not marry was because I hadn’t published in a couple years, and I needed to do that in order for us to even talk to a realtor. So I had to get published. I had to make money. I had to lose weight, because it meant I’d get closer to our goal. I had to keep pushing, keep doing, keep—”
“Hustling.”
Meredith drew in a sharp breath, amazed Erva knew the answer. “Yes.”
Erva nodded. “I had a serious case of the hustles myself. But for different reasons, and mine manifested in different ways.”
Meredith looked back down at her hands. “Yes. You did everything I asked—”
“Becoming a doormat in the process.”
“I’m sorry.”
Erva shrugged. “And you became a—”
“Total bitch.”
Erva actually smiled. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
“Well, I am.” Meredith reached out across the table, but then realized what she was doing and snuck her hands back on her lap. “I don’t know whether you’d ever believe me, but I’m not usually like that. When I was a TA and got pushed around, I promised myself I’d never do that to another person. I’m not demanding. I’m not pushy. I’m not a bully.”
“But David was, huh?”
It took a long while to work around her too tight throat, but finally Meredith said, “If David were here, he’d tell me how my behavior had more to do with the way I was raised. He’d analyze it to death, all the things my parents did wrong. And maybe I didn’t grow up in the most functional family. But not many people do. I just...I just don’t understand why I let him string me along to the point where I started to lie, manipulate, and bully. I’m so sorry, Erva.”
She softly chuckled, shaking her head and looking at the ceiling. “Oh, Will warned me against saying this, but now that I know you better I’m going to.” She glanced again at Meredith. “You were not good to me, but what I wanted to say was...thank you. If it weren’t for what you did, I would have never known how strong I could be. I would have never met Will, the love of my life. And I wouldn’t have the life I have now—filled with love, support, and every day is a new adventure in so much joy. I never knew life could be this wonderful. Without you, I wouldn’t have any of this.”
Meredith glanced down at her lap again. A wave of shame cutting her so deep she was surprised she didn’t melt into a puddle of self-incrimination right there.
“That probably came out bitchy.”
Meredith shook her head. “Not at all.”
“Yes, it did. You were courageous enough to tell me of your envy, and I say how—”
“How wonderful your life is. I’m so glad it is. You deserve it.”
Erva straightened a little more. “So do you.”
Meredith’s breath caught, while shaking her head wildly. “I’m a thief.”
“You stole my research and called it your own. Even in this time, that’s not a crime. Intellectual property isn’t a firm idea for quite a while yet.”
“It is in our time. And even if it weren’t a crime here, I hate that I did it. I hate that I did that to you.”
Erva held her hand out across the table. “Now that I know more about David, hell, even I understand.”
Meredith continued to shake her head. “It’s not a good enough excuse. Nothing is.”
Erva huffed then slammed her fist against the table. “See, this is where I’m not too sure if I could like you or not. Why do you do that? Your self-flagellation is disturbing to watch. Yes, you seriously screwed me over. But guess what, Meredith? I forgive you. What are you going to do about that, huh? You can’t hang yourself on that cross anymore, because I forgive you.”
“But I made you get me stupid soy lattes.”
“I forgive you.”
“Made you teach my classes.”
“I friggin’ forgive you.”
“I wanted to be your friend; I wanted to talk with you and laugh, but I was horrible instead.”
Erva let out a long breath. “I still forgive you.” Her voice had gone so soft and tears surfaced in her pretty honey-colored eyes. “Now, here’s the real question: when are you going to forgive yourself?”
Meredith silently cried, caving in on herself once more, feeling the words unleash on her more like a tidal wave than anything redeeming. It was so hard to understand.
“I came here to confront you, but also to see about your placement.”
Meredith sniffed. “Placement?”
“Yeah, the muses wanted to apologize for leaving you here so long. They’d be here themselves, but they have a problem they’ve been dealing with the last few months.”
Meredith sniffed again, wiping any remaining moisture from her eyes. “You mean, I can leave?”
Erva shrugged. “They didn’t say anything about that. But since you’re having your glimpse—”
“You called it that before. What is a glimpse? What do you mean?”
“Well, the way I understand it, is you are brought back in time to help someone, and in so doing they will help you. At least, that’s the way my friend, Fleur, explained it. I never got as clear of instructions myself. Oh, Fleur, she was also flung back in time. Well, we haven’t had much time to get to know each other actually. We’re friends because we’re both academics who had a glimpse. But she’s having a hard time with her pregnancy, been really sick, and her husband has been gone a lot. His brother’s been missing, lost in time, it seems. That’s why the muses haven’t been here to check on you. They’re trying to find him.”
“Your friend’s husband’s brother is lost in time?”
Erva’s eyebrows puckered. “Yes. It sounds as complicated as a soap opera, doesn’t it? No, it sounds a lot weirder, huh?”
Meredith bit her bottom lip, not sure what it sounded like.
“Anyway, I’m here to check on you. See how things are going. Have you met the one you think you’re supposed to be here for?”
Meredith immediately thought of Jake. Oh, her stupid heart and mind.
So she changed the subject. “How
are the muses looking for the missing man?”
Erva rolled her eyes. “Okay, some of this is even hard for me to digest, and I’ve gone through a glimpse. In fact, I’ve visited my sisters in-law twice now in England in 1778, which required more time traveling, obviously. But what I’m about to tell you is...a lot to take in.”
Meredith braced herself.
“Odin stole him and won’t tell the muses where he put the poor man.”
“Odin, the Norse god?”
Erva nodded, stopped, then rolled her eyes. “It’s crazy when you know a muse, let alone two.”
Meredith actually laughed at that. It felt a lot better to laugh than to run screaming outside, pulling her hair, which she might have done, if she hadn’t before. Yes, it was crazy when you knew a muse. Or when they were angry with you, she thought.
“So—so I’m supposed to find someone who needs my help, and then I can go back to our time? When I can go to the hearing for stealing your work?”
Erva’s perfect lips gaped. “I never thought of it like that. But, since it’s just plagiarism—”
“I did serious wrong, Erva. And I should pay for what I’ve done.”
At that Erva finally did touch Meredith, along her arm in a warm hold. “Maybe you’ve already paid, Meredith. I’m sure the muses could think of a way for you to come back and not have to face that.”
“I’d be in muse protective services?”
Erva softly giggled. “Yeah. Sounds good, right?”
“Or I could stay here?”
Erva shrugged. “I’m not going to pretend I know how this works. And the muses were never all that clear with me either. Hell, they’re never clear, little tricksters. They gave me this to give to you.” She pulled out a cell phone. “This has some music and books downloaded. I didn’t know what you’d like, so a lot of it is my taste or Will’s. I’m sorry about that. He’s really into the big hair bands of the ‘90s right now. Anyway, it’s charged and will stay that way. And you can call if you need something. Or...if you just want to talk, you can call me. That’s the only number it can call. Me. So to recap, I’m not sure how your glimpse works, but I’m fairly certain you’ll have a lot of choices.”
Cowboy of Mine Page 9
