He was searching her dresser before he consciously acknowledged the desperate decision he’d made. Finding the necklace in a top drawer, under a stack of carefully laundered and folded pantaloons, he went back to Elisabeth’s bedside and fastened the tarnished chain around her neck.
For a long time, he just stood there, staring down at her, marveling at how deeply he’d come to cherish her in the short time they’d had together. Even when he’d thought she was demented, he’d loved her.
The daylight was fading at the windows when he finally looked up. He turned and went rapidly down the rear stairway to check on Trista.
Earlier, he’d given her a bowl of Elisabeth’s chicken broth. He found her sleeping now, and her fever had finally broken.
Jonathan bent and, smoothing back his daughter’s dark hair with a gentle hand, kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised in a husky whisper.
Upstairs again, he lifted Elisabeth from the bed and carried her down the back stairs into the kitchen and then up the other set of steps leading to Trista’s room. Within moments, they were standing at the threshold.
Although he’d never been a religious man, Jonathan prayed devoutly in those moments. Then he closed his eyes and stepped across.
The immediate lightness in his arms swung a hoarse cry of despair from his throat. He was still in his time—the same pictures hung from the walls and the familiar runner was under his feet.
But Elisabeth was gone.
Miss Cecily Buzbee hovered and fretted while the young men from the county hospital lifted Elisabeth’s inert form onto a gurney and started an IV flowing into a vein in her left hand.
“It’s a lucky thing I came by to check on her, that’s all I can say,” Miss Cecily said, following as Elisabeth was carried down the stairs and out through the front door. “There’s something strange going on in this house, you mark my words, and Sister and I have a good mind to telephone the sheriff….”
The paramedics lifted the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, and one of them climbed in with it.
“Heaven only knows how long she’s been lying there in that hallway,” Cecily babbled on, trailing after the second man as he walked around to get behind the wheel.
“Does Ms. McCartney have any allergies that you know about?” he asked, speaking to her through the open window on the driver’s side of the ominous-looking vehicle.
Cecily had no idea and it was agony that she couldn’t help.
The young man shifted the ambulance into gear. “Well, if she’s got any family, you’d better get in touch with them right away.”
The words struck Cecily like a blow. She didn’t know Elisabeth well, but she cared what happened to her. Merciful heavens, the poor thing was too young and beautiful to die—she hadn’t had a proper chance to live.
Cecily watched until the ambulance had turned onto the main road, lights slicing the twilight, siren blaring. Then she hurried back into the house and began searching for Elisabeth’s address book.
“Jonathan?” The name hurt Elisabeth’s throat as she said it, and she wasn’t sure whether she was whispering or shouting. She tried to sit up, but she was too weak. And she was immediately pressed back to her pillows by a nurse anyway.
A nurse.
Every muscle in Elisabeth’s limp and aching body tensed as a rush of alarm swept through her. Her eyes darted about the room wildly, looking for the one face that would make everything all right.
But there was no sign of Jonathan, and the reason was painfully obvious. Somehow, she’d found her way back into the twentieth century, though she had no conscious memory of making the transition. And that meant she was separated from the man she loved.
The nurse was a young woman, tall, with short, curly, brown hair and friendly eyes. “Just relax,” she said. “You’re safe and sound in the county hospital.”
Elisabeth could barely control the panic that seized her. “How long have I been here?” she rasped, as the nurse—the tag on her uniform said her name was Vicki Webster—held a glass of cool water up so that Elisabeth could drink through a straw.
“Just a couple of days,” Vicki replied. “One of your friends has been here practically the whole time. Would you like to see her?”
For a moment, Elisabeth soared with the hope that Rue had come back from her assignment, but in the next instant, she knew better. Rue was family and she would never have introduced herself to the staff as a friend.
Minutes later, Janet appeared, looking haggard. Her hair was a mess, her raincoat was crumpled and there were dark smudges under her eyes. “Do you know how worried I’ve been?” she demanded, coming to stand beside the bed. “First I talked to that strange man on the telephone, and then I couldn’t get anyone to answer at all….”
Elisabeth gripped Janet’s hand. “Janet, what day is this?”
Janet’s brow furrowed with concern and she bit her lips. “It’s the tenth of June,” she said.
“The tenth…” Elisabeth closed her eyes, too drained to go on. Time was racing by, not only here, but in the nineteenth century, as well. Perhaps Jonathan and Trista were trapped in a burning house at that very moment—perhaps they were already dead!
Janet snatched a tissue from the box on the bedside stand and gently wiped away tears Elisabeth hadn’t even realized she was shedding. “Beth, I know you’re sick, and it’s obvious you’re depressed, but you can’t give up. You’ve got to keep putting one foot in front of the other until you get past whatever it is that’s troubling you so much.”
Elisabeth was too tired to say any more, and Janet stayed a while longer, then left again. The next morning, a big bouquet of flowers arrived from Elisabeth’s father, along with a note saying that he and Traci hoped she was feeling better.
As it happened, Elisabeth was feeling stronger, if not better, and she was growing more and more desperate to return to Jonathan and Trista. But here she was, too frail even to walk to the bathroom by herself. She fought off rising panic only because she knew it would drain her and delay the time when she’d be able to leave the hospital.
“I’m taking you home with me,” Janet announced three evenings later. A true friend, she’d been making the drive to Pine River every day after she finished teaching her classes. “The term is almost over, so I’ll have lots of time to play nurse.”
Elisabeth smiled wanly and shook her head. “I want to go home,” she said in a quiet voice. To Jonathan, and Trista—please, God.
Janet cleared her throat and averted her eyes for just a moment. When she looked back at Elisabeth, her gaze was steady. “Who was that man, Bethie—the one who answered the telephone when I called that day?”
Elisabeth imagined Jonathan glaring at the instrument as it rang, and she smiled again. “That was Jonathan,” she said. “The man I love.”
“So where is he?” Janet demanded, somewhat impatiently. “If you two are so wild about each other, why haven’t I had so much as a glimpse of the guy?” She waved one hand to take in the flowers that banked the room—even Ian and his new bride had sent carnations. “Where’s the bouquet with his name on the card?”
Elisabeth sighed. She was too tired to explain about Jonathan, and even if she attempted it, Janet would never believe her. In fact, she would probably go straight to the nearest doctor and the next thing Elisabeth knew, she’d be in the psychiatric ward, weaving potholders. “He’s out of the…country,” she lied, staring up at the ceiling so she wouldn’t have to meet Janet’s eyes. “And he’s called every day.”
When Elisabeth dared look at Janet again, she saw patent disbelief in her friend’s face. “There’s something very weird here,” Janet said.
You don’t know the half of it, Elisabeth thought. She was relieved when Janet left a few minutes later.
Almost immediately, however, the Buzbee sisters appeared with colorful zinnias from their garden and a stack of books that probably came from their personal library.
“I
saw the ghost through the front window one day,” Cecily confided to Elisabeth in a whisper, when her sister had gone down the hall to say hello to a friend who was recovering from gall-bladder surgery.
Elisabeth felt herself go pale. “The ghost?”
Cecily nodded. “Dr. Fortner it was—I’d know him anywhere.” She took one of the books from the pile she’d brought, thumbed through it and held it out to Elisabeth. “See? He’s standing second from the left, beside the little girl.”
Elisabeth’s throat tightened as she stared at the old picture, taken by the Pine River Bridge on Founder’s Day 1892. Jonathan gazed back at her, and so did Trista, but that wasn’t really what shook her, since this was a copy of the same book she’d checked out from the library and she’d seen the picture before. No, it was the fact that her own image had been added, standing just to Jonathan’s right. Cecily probably hadn’t noticed because Elisabeth looked very different in period clothes and an old-fashioned hairstyle, and because she’d been looking at the picture with the careless eyes of familiarity.
“You’ve seen this man, haven’t you?” Cecily challenged, though not unkindly. She poured water for Elisabeth and held the straw to her lips, as though alarmed by Elisabeth’s sudden pallor.
Tears squeezed past Elisabeth’s closed eyelids and tickled in her lashes. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve seen him.”
Cecily patted Elisabeth’s forehead. “There, there, dear. I’m sorry if I upset you. You’ve probably been frightened half out of your mind these past few weeks, and then you let yourself get run-down and you caught—what is it you caught?”
Elisabeth’s disease had been diagnosed simply as a “virus,” and she knew the medical community was puzzled by it. “I—I guess it’s pneumonia,” she said. She put her hand to her throat and turned pleading eyes on Cecily. “They took my necklace.”
“I’ll just get it right back for you,” Cecily replied briskly. And she went out into the hallway, calling for a nurse.
Half an hour later, Elisabeth had her necklace back. Just wearing it made her feel closer to Jonathan and Trista.
That evening when the doctor came by on his evening rounds, he took the IV needle from Elisabeth’s hand and pronounced her on the mend. His kindly eyes were full of questions as to where she could have contracted a virus modern medicine couldn’t identify, but he didn’t press her for answers.
“I want to go home,” she announced when he’d finished a fairly routine examination. Weak as she was, she was conscious of every tick of the celestial clock, and it was hell not knowing what was happening to Jonathan and Trista.
The physician smiled and shook his head. “Not for a few more days, I’m afraid. You’re in a very weakened state, Ms. McCartney.”
“But I can recover just as well there as here….”
“Let’s see how you feel on Friday,” he said, overruling her. And then he moved on to the next room.
Elisabeth waited until it was dark before getting out of bed, staggering over to the door and peering down the lighted hallway to the nurses’ station. One woman was there, her head bent over some notes she was making, but other than that, the coast was clear.
With enormous effort, Elisabeth put on the jeans and sweatshirt Janet had brought her from the house, brushed her tangled hair and crept out into the hallway. A city hospital would have been more difficult to escape, but this one was small and understaffed, and Elisabeth made it into the elevator without being challenged.
She leaned back, clutching the metal railing in both hands and summoning up all her strength. She still had to get to her house, which was several miles away. And Pine River wasn’t exactly bustling with available taxi cabs.
Elisabeth didn’t have her purse—that was locked away for safekeeping in the hospital and, of course, she didn’t dare ask for it—but there was a spare house key hidden in the woodshed.
She started walking, and it soon became apparent that she was simply too weak to walk all the way home. Praying she wouldn’t find herself hooked up with a serial killer, like women she’d read about, she stuck out her thumb.
Presently a rattly old pickup truck with one missing fender came to a stop beside her and a young man leaned across the seat to push open the door. His smile was downright ingenuous.
“Your car break down?” he asked.
Elisabeth eyed him wearily, waiting for negative vibes to strike her, but there weren’t any. The kid kind of reminded her of Wally Cleaver. She nodded, not wanting to explain that she’d just sprung herself from the hospital, and climbed into the truck.
Just that effort exhausted her and she collapsed against the back of the lumpy old seat, terrified that she would pass out.
“Hey,” the teenage boy began, shifting the vehicle into gear and stepping on the gas with enthusiasm. “You sick or something? There’s a hospital right back there….” He cocked his thumb over one shoulder.
Elisabeth shook her head. “I’m fine,” she managed, rallying enough to smile. “I live out on Schoolhouse Road.”
The young man looked at her with amused interest. “You don’t mean that haunted place across from the Buzbees, do you?”
Elisabeth debated between laughing and crying, and settled on the former, mostly to keep from alarming her rescuer. “Sure do,” she said.
He uttered an exclamation, and Elisabeth could see that he was truly impressed. “Ever see any spooks or anything like that?”
They were passing through the main part of town, and Elisabeth felt a bittersweet pang as she looked at the lighted windows and signs. She hoped to be back with Jonathan soon, and when that happened, the modern world would be a memory. If something that didn’t exist yet could be called a memory.
“No,” she said, pushing back her hair with one hand. “To tell you the truth, I don’t believe in ghosts. I think there’s a scientific explanation for everything—it’s just that there are so many natural laws we don’t understand.”
“So you’ve never seen nothing suspicious, huh?”
As a teacher, Elisabeth winced at his grammar. “I’ve seen things I can’t explain,” she admitted. She figured she owed him that much, since he was giving her a ride home.
“Like what?”
Elisabeth sighed, unsure how much to say. After all, if he went home and told his parents she’d talked about traveling between one century and the next, the authorities would probably come and cart her off to a padded room. “Just—things. Shadows. The kind of stuff you catch a glimpse of out of the corner of an eye and wonder what you really saw.”
Her companion shuddered as he turned into Elisabeth’s driveway. She could tell the sight of the dark house looming in the night didn’t thrill him.
“Thanks,” she said, opening the door and getting out of the truck. Her knees seemed to have all the substance of whipped egg whites, and she clung to the door for a moment to steady herself.
The boy swallowed. “No problem,” he answered. He gunned the engine, though it was probably an unconscious motion. “Want me to stick around until you’re inside?”
Elisabeth looked back over her shoulder at the beloved house that had always been her refuge. “I’ll be perfectly all right,” she said. And then she turned and walked away.
Her young knight in shining armor wasted no time in backing out of the driveway and speeding away down the highway. Elisabeth smiled as she made her way around the house to the woodshed to extract the back door key from its hiding place.
The lights in the kitchen glowed brightly when she flipped the switch, and Elisabeth felt the need of a cup of tea to brace herself, but she didn’t want to take the time. Her strength was about to give out, and she yearned to be with Jonathan.
Upstairs, however, she found the door to the past sealed against her, even though she was wearing the necklace. After a half hour of trying, she went into the master bedroom and collapsed on the bed, too weary even to cry out her desolate frustration.
In the morning, she tried once aga
in to cross the threshold, and once again, the effort was fruitless. She didn’t let herself consider the possibility that the window in time had closed forever, because the prospect was beyond bearing.
She listened listlessly to the messages on her answering machine—the last one was from her doctor, urging her to return to the hospital—then shut off the machine without returning any of the calls. She thumbed through her mail and, finding nothing from Rue, tossed the lot of it into the trash, unopened.
In the kitchen, she brewed hot tea and made toast with a couple slices of bread from a bag in the freezer. She was feeling a little better this morning, but she knew she hadn’t recovered a tenth of her normal strength.
After finishing her toast, she wrote another long letter to Rue, stamped it and carried it out to the mailbox. By the time she returned, carrying a batch of fourth-class mail with her, she was on the verge of collapse.
Numbly, Elisabeth climbed the stairs again, found herself a fresh set of clothes and ran a deep, hot bath. After shampooing her hair, she settled in to soak. The heat revived her, and she had some of her zip back when she got out and dressed in black jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of planet Earth on the front.
Pausing in the hallway, she leaned against the door, both palms resting against the wood, and called, “Jonathan?”
There was no answer, and Elisabeth couldn’t help wondering if that was because there was no longer a Jonathan. There were tears brimming in her eyes when she went back downstairs and stretched out on the sofa.
The jangle of the hallway telephone awakened her and, for a moment, Elisabeth considered not answering. Then she decided she’d caused people enough worry as it was, without ignoring their attempts to reach her.
She was shaky and breathless when she picked up the receiver in the hallway and blurted, “Hello?”
There and Now Page 17
