She nodded sympathetically. “Think instead that you’re really in love for the first time in your life.”
He brought the gelding to a halt and she moved her mare to his side as they watched a couple of ducks and a tall, long-legged bird on the pond. “I would have hated to die without ever being in love. Though in some ways, it makes things so much harder, knowing we have such a brief time together and nothing . . .substantial between us,” he finished off neatly, feeling he’d managed to express himself delicately enough for a woman being years his senior.
Maud was having none of his delicacy. “You mean because you can’t make love to each other? You can’t touch and feel and kiss each other. You can’t go to bed together?”
“Something like that,” he agreed, so stirred that he had to speak over a lump in his throat that threatened to choke him.
“Theirs is nothing quite like making love on a feather bed along side the road when you’re traveling to California,” she agreed.
He hardly knew what to say. With his wide experience of the seamier sides of life and open and vulgar expressions of the basic facts, he couldn’t help being mildly embarrassed by the frankness of this elderly woman. “I supposed you’ve enjoyed that experience,” he finally managed to observe.
She nodded, an expression so sweet coming to her face that he was deeply touched. “Mother wouldn’t let us marry and his family wasn’t any happier about us. Rather than stay and face the fuss, we ran away. It was long before the highways were built, no Highway 66 for us. We took his old car and he had to make constant repairs with my help, but we packed the feather mattress from my bed into the back of the car and cooked our meals over campfires. It was the adventure of my life. He was the love of my life.”
“You eloped?”
“We meant to be married once we got safely there. I would become Mrs. Edward Sandford. We went on to California, working as we went because we had very little money.”
“And when you got to California?”
“It was so different. I liked the mountains and the sea, but we were in an accident and Edward was killed. There I was eighteen years old, all by myself in a strange place with only a few dollars to my name and overwhelmed with losing him.” Her voice, so matter-of-fact, dwindled away to nothing.
“”After so many years, it still hurts?”
“Not the same. Softened, not so raw and hopeless, but I have missed him all my life. There was no one else like Edward.”
He understood immediately. “And for me there’s no one else but Lynne.”
“That’s why,” she said. “That’s why you must fight to live. For her?”
“Didn’t he fight, your Edward. Didn’t he try to stay with you?”
“It was all over in a minute. He had no chance. That’s why I’m urging you to hang on, to keep trying. You must understand how blessed you are.”
It was not the way he’d looked at matters. To him it seemed that fate had been singularly unkind to him. He’d spent years locked up for something that wasn’t his fault and then, on his first real day of freedom he’d indulged in some fast driving, and wham—it was all over. And this old woman had the nerve to call him blessed.
Simmering with anger, he was about to really let her have it and tell her exactly what he thought of such an insensitive attitude. Then he saw her smile.
“Anyone who finds love, real love, in this life, no matter how briefly, is blessed,” she said.
He closed his eyes, breathing deeply of the cool, moist air. “I can’t touch her, I can’t kiss her and I have no control over when we can even see each other so dimly as thorough a fogged over looking glass . . .”
“I wish I could meet her,” Maud said wistfully.
“She’s getting to know you,” he said. “She’s reading your journal for her mother’s research. She’s doing this book about you and some other writers.”
Maud laughed as though he’d said something really funny. “Oh, dear,” she said, “much good that will do her. Most of the time I only wrote in the most superficial way in those journals. They were only meant to remind me of what happened, there are no details that will help anyone else.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand.”
The laughter faded to a reminiscent grin. “My mother believed it her duty to know everything about me. Each night after I’d gone to bed, she read what I’d written that day. There are no secrets in my journals, Moss. Your young woman will find nothing to help her there.”
Lynne awakened early, knowing it was Thursday. In one more day she would meet with the board that governed Maud Bailey Sandford’s trust so they could quiz her about her progress on Maud’s journal, a test she was sure to fail.
Worse yet, it was only four more days until the hospital meant to disconnect Moss from the aides that kept him alive and she didn’t have a clue what to do to help him.
It was all enough to make her want to crawl back under her coverlet and lose herself in sleep, but instead she got up and hurriedly dressed. One thing she could do was call Moss’s sister and try again to talk her into at least coming to Oklahoma to see her brother.
She waited until after she’d had her coffee, than called. The only reply she got was a message that Cynthia wasn’t available and to call again later please.
Drat! Of course Cynthia didn’t want to hear from her. Her only choice was to send a text message. Please talk to me, Cynthia. Please come to see your brother while he is still alive.
Too nauseated from tension to even think about breakfast, she went into the little office and picked one of Maud’s journals from the shelves, choosing at random. If she was going to be able to impress board members, she would have to work hard to compress the research that she should have been doing in the last weeks into today and tomorrow.
She forced her mind to focus and began to read.
March 27, 1912
My Jeanie is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I sit and hold her in my arms, rocking, long after she has fallen asleep just for the pure pleasure of gazing into her tiny face. Mama says I will spoil her and that I shouldn’t pick her up each time she begins to cry. But she is my baby and I will choose how to raise her!
Wait a minute! Lynne stared at the fading handwriting in front of her. Maud hadn’t mentioned a marriage or an expected child. She began to page backward in the little book that served Maud as a journal, scanning through the entries for details of the child’s birth and information about who her father was.
She knew, of course, that Maud had married. Bailey was her family name, Sandford her married name. Mom had told her that much.
The last entry before the Mary 2012 one had taken place over a year earlier. It read.
February 10, 1911
Heavy snow last night and both of us had a hard day getting hay to the cattle and horses. The snow is beautiful, though, covering all the sere brown of winter grass and plants with a coating that looks like white frosting on top of a cake.
A blank year. After having written the details of ranch life day after day in some detail, she’d left out a whole year of her life and apparently that had been a very significant year.
She began to read from the entry about the baby, moving quickly through the pages, searching for information about the romance that had left her married and with a child, but what she found was only a day to day account of the little girl’s progress and small problems. Maud mentioned her mother only in passing. It was as if her world was inhabited only by herself and her daughter and the only emotion she expressed was her love for little Jeanie.
Finally Lynne closed the journal. For a woman who would end up eventually writing fiction that was reputed to capture the feelings of women during the settlement years in the southwest, her journal was spare and, frankly, boring. Anybody, any ordinary girl could have written these lines. She’d thought this was not unexpected when Maud had been writing as an inexperienced teen, but she wasn’t getting any better as she grew older.
Deeply discouraged, Lynne put the journal aside. She went for a walk down to the pond in the pasture. Even though it was only mid-morning, it was already hot outside, the air seeming to burn her lungs as she breathed, the day still and air-less. It hadn’t rained since she’d come here and the grass, which should have been springy and green at this time of year, crunched with each step she took.
She stopped long enough to text Cynthia once again. Please come home. She didn’t suppose it would do any good, but she had to do what she could. And if Cynthia wouldn’t receive her calls, texting was all she had.
When she got back to the house Moss was just inside, waiting for her. His face brightened at the sight of her. “I was afraid you hadn’t come back yet.”
“I’d just gone for a walk,” she said, so glad to see him that she was trembling. She walked as close as she could to him and just stood there. He reached out with one hand to touch the outlines of her form. Neither of them could feel the other, but there was some comfort in simply knowing how close they were to each other.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had to go.” She considered not even telling him about her unsuccessful mission, but then she looked up into his eyes, so full of love, and knew he deserved all the honesty she could give him. There would be no deception, no withholding between them.
“I went to California to your old home, hoping I might find some clues to locating your sister.”
“I’d guess the place was sold long ago and strangers are living there,” he said the words lightly, as though the thought didn’t pain him, but she doubted that was so.
“To the contrary. Your sister has held on to it, though nobody has lived there for years. But she and her daughter returned a week ago and are staying there while they decide what to do with the property.”
“Little Cynthia has a daughter?”
“Betsy is six years old and her father has left them alone. You will like your niece. She’s bright and adorable.”
“A niece,” he said, seeming struck by this information. “I have family.”
Her legs would hardly hold her. She went to sit down on the sofa, motioning him to her side. When they were settled together, she waited to let him speak first, finding peace in just being with him at the same time she feared what he would say next.
It was not what she expected. “You found them for me, Lynne. I am very grateful.”
“I failed,” she confessed. “She won’t come here.”
“She’s cast me out of her life. I understand that.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it.” She hesitated, trying to think how to explain. “She has good memories of you. She told me about your fixing her bike and looking after her. It’s just that her life’s been so painful. Losing you and her parents and the break with her husband just happened and she doesn’t want to risk more pain right now. I think she’s afraid if she comes here and sees you in the hospital, she’ll hurt again.”
He looked bewildered. “So she’s shut me out?”
She reached over to pat the place where his hand rested. She’d never known it could be so difficult to not be able to offer physical comfort, the touch of a hand, a kiss on the cheek. “She doesn’t believe you will know the difference.”
“I would like to see my sister and her little girl before I die.”
She wanted to shake him. Because she couldn’t, she flung herself to her feet and paced up and down the long room. After several trips back and forth, she turned to face him. “You won’t die. I won’t let you.”
He laughed. “You and Maud should get together. You are both stubborn as mules.”
She winced at the reminder. “I’m going to be kicked out of here,” she said. “The board is meeting tomorrow evening to question me about what I’ve learned from studying her journals and I haven’t spent enough time—oh, Moss, the journals tell me so little. The honest truth is they are boring!”
To her surprise he broke into soft laughter and several minutes passed before he was able to explain. “She said that. She said it was only a record for her own benefit, that she would remember all the details when she read her own entries for past years. She wouldn’t give away her own inmost thoughts because she knew her mother sneaked in and read the journals.”
Appalled, she stared at him. “How awful! How could she do that?”
“Maud didn’t seem shocked. She said her mother was only trying to look after her. She seemed to regard it as kind of a game.”
“Then I’m screwed! The board is going to throw me out.”
He smiled at her. “Not going to happen. This is one problem I can help you with.”
Moss scanned his memory for what he could tell her about Maud Bailey Sandford. He told how at seventy she could ride a horse with the ease of a girl, though she had to board by standing on a fence, and how she enjoyed her rides across the ranch where she’d lived most of her life.
He told how her mama had lovingly dominated her, trying so hard to protect her that she’d barely been able to live her life and then when she was in her thirties and Mama died, she’d found the life she wanted was still right here with her land and animals, with her books and writing and the few neighbors she’d called friends.
Kept here by Mama until the third decade of her life, she’d stayed afterwards because she could imagine no other life. She’d raised her daughter much as she’d been raised, though she’d sent her on the bus to school instead of relying entirely on home education the way her mother had. “I think Jeanie still probably learned more from her mother about art and books and history than she got at school,” he concluded with a grin.
She had listened intently and without interruption to this point, but now she asked, “What was the name of the man she married, Moss? Who was the father of her daughter? She left out quite a few details.”
“She didn’t marry. She and Edward Sandford ran away together, intending to marry once they reached California. They’d barely arrived there when a drunk hit their car. She survived, but he was killed. Her mother came and got her and took her home. The baby was his.”
“She just used the name?”
“For Jeanie’s sake. She said that’s what Edward would have wanted.”
“The same Edward who gave her Salome, her mare, when she was seventeen?”
“They were neighbors and there was never anyone else for either of them.”
“The neighbors Mama didn’t get along with.”
“It was mutual, a family feud that was a leftover from civil war days. They had only contempt for each other.”
“Oh, my!”
“Having a child out of wedlock was especially tough in those days, but Maud held her head high and kept on going. She’s quite a lady, Lynne. As was Mama, who held her own head just as high, and would tolerate no criticism of either her daughter or granddaughter. It was after she died that Maud submitted her first book for publication. The money she made from her writing, what there was of it, paid for a first rate education for Jeanie.”
“I’ve never read any of her books. My job here was just to thoroughly research her journals. Mom said she was always such a private person that little was known and of course, nationally she wasn’t important enough to attract scholarly research until now. Mom says interest in regional writers is growing.”
She looked up to smile at him. “I’m going to wow that board tomorrow night.”
He stretched just as though he ached from sitting still so long. “I’ve got heaps more to tell you,” he said, “but right now, can’t we just sit and hold hands for a while.”
Her laughter sounded almost like a young girl’s giggle. She went over to sit beside him and he reached out to rest his hand against hers and, even though they could not feel each other’s hands at all, the sense of intimacy was all the greater.
Chapter Fifteen
Moss came to awareness in his closed down body in the hospital room with a surprising sense of euphoria. His mind lingered on the feeling he’d had w
hen he and Lynne had rested their hands against each other’s and told himself it was almost worth everything he’d gone through just for that experience.
Even though he couldn’t touch her, he’d never felt so close to anyone.
The voices from the other side, the medical personnel who looked after him, were chatting and he heard them as from far away.
“I hate working on Saturday,” a woman’s voice complained. “It’s my day with the kids. Benjamin is playing baseball this afternoon and I will miss out.”
“I’d about as soon work here as at home,” a second woman spoke up. “Dishes, vacuuming, it never gets all done. At least I get a paycheck for what I do here.”
Saturday! What had happened to Thursday and Friday. On Friday, Lynne was to meet with the board of trustees. What had happened? Was she still at the ranch?
Even worse, that was two more days lost before he got to the fatal Monday when he was to be disconnected from life support. He and Lynne had needed those two days, they were precious, and now they were irrevocably gone. Once again he’d been cheated by fate.
For the first time, he struggled to wake himself from this unwanted sleep. His mind told his fingers to wiggle, his eyes to open, his mouth to speak.
It didn’t work. Nothing happened. He felt a rising panic. Young and strong, he’d always felt in control of his body, even though he controlled nothing else in his life within the walls of a prison. But now, he lay still, more helpless than any newborn babe.
He had fought to stay alive within the prison, he’d busied his mind with his studies and exercised his body faithfully. He had stood up to the challenge that fate had put before him.
Now he had so much more to live for. He had Lynne and the love they felt for each other. He would not give up without a fight.
His body was weak and helpless, but his spirit was still strong. Now he pushed to separate his essential self from that body and for the first time was able to consciously lift and move away. Lynne, he thought, Lynne!
The Ghost and Miss Hallam: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 1) Page 12
