She was returning when the unthinkable happened, paralyzing her in the middle of the path. As she watched, her eyes wide with amazement and horror, a bolt of lightning zigzagged out of the dark sky, like a laser beam from an unseen spacecraft, and literally splintered the roof of the house. For one terrible moment, the entire landscape was aglow, the trees and mountains like dazed sleepers under the glare of a flashlight.
Immediately, flames shot up from the roof, and Elisabeth screamed. The animals in the barn had heard the crash and had probably caught the scent of fire. They were going wild with fear. Elisabeth dared not take the time to calm them. She had to reach Jonathan and Trista.
She hurled herself through the barrier of terrified inertia that had blocked her way and ran into the house, coughing and shrieking Jonathan’s and Trista’s names.
The short stairway leading to Trista’s room was filled with black, roiling smoke. The stuff was so noxious that it felt greasy against Elisabeth’s skin. Breathing was impossible.
Beyond the wall of smoke, she could hear Trista screaming, “Papa! Papa!”
Elisabeth dragged herself a few more steps upward, but then she couldn’t go farther. Her lungs were empty, and she was becoming disoriented, unsure of which way was up and which was down. She began to sob, and felt herself slipping, the stairs bruising her as she lost her grip.
The next thing she knew, someone was grasping her by her flannel nightgown. Strong hands hoisted her into steely arms, and for a moment she thought Jonathan had found her and Trista, and that the three of them were safe.
But then Elisabeth heard a voice. She didn’t recognize it. She felt a huge drop of rain strike her face, warm as bathwater, and opened her eyes to look into the haunted features of Farley Haynes.
Looking around her, she saw the man from across the road, along with his five sons. The shapes of other men moved through the hellish, flickering light of the flames, and Elisabeth saw that they’d formed a bucket brigade between the well and the house. Frantic horses had been released from the endangered barn into the pasture.
The barn won’t burn, Elisabeth thought with despondent certainty, remembering the newspaper accounts she’d read in that other world, so faraway. Only the house.
Marshal Haynes set her down, and she stood trembling in the silky grass, her nightgown streaked with soot.
“Jonathan—Trista—” she gasped hoarsely, starting back toward the house.
But the marshal encircled her waist with one arm and hauled her back. “It’s too late,” he said, his voice a miserable rasp. “All three stairways are blocked.”
At that moment, part of the roof fell in with a fierce crash, and Elisabeth screamed, struggled wildly in the marshal’s grasp and then lost consciousness.
When she awakened, gasping, sobbing before she even became fully aware of her surroundings, Elisabeth found herself in a wagon, bumping and jostling along the dark road that led to town. She sat up, twisting to look at the man who sat in the box, driving the team.
She raised herself to her knees, hair flying wildly around her face, filthy nightgown covered with bit of hay and straw, and clasped the low back of the wagon seat. “Jonathan and Trista,” she managed to choke out. “Did you get them out? Did anyone get them out?”
Marshal Haynes turned slightly to look back at her, but the night was moonless and she could see only the outline of his tall, brawny figure and Western hat. The rain that had begun to fall after she’d been pulled from the house started to come down in earnest in that moment, so that he had to raise his voice to be heard.
“That’s somethin’ you and I are going to have to talk about, little lady,” he said.
Elisabeth remembered the sight of the roof of Jonathan’s house caving in, and she closed her eyes tightly, heedless of the drops that were wetting her hair and her dirty nightgown. Nothing mattered, nothing in the universe, except Jonathan and Trista’s safety. She knelt there, unable to speak, holding tightly to the back of the wagon seat, letting the temperate summer rain drench her.
Only when Farley brought the wagon to a stop in front of the jailhouse did Elisabeth’s state of shock begin to abate. Bile rushed into her throat as she recalled the events she’d read about—the fire, no bodies found in the ruins, her own arrest and trial for murder.
And despite the horror of what she faced, Elisabeth felt the first stirring of hope. No bodies. Perhaps, just perhaps, Jonathan had found the necklace and he and Trista had managed to get over the threshold into the safety of the next century.
The marshal hoisted her down from the wagon and hustled her into his office. While Elisabeth stood shivering and looking around—the place was like something out of a museum—Marshal Haynes hung his sodden hat on a peg beside the door and crouched in front of the wood stove to get a fire going.
“Now, I suppose you’re going to arrest me for murder,” Elisabeth said, her teeth chattering.
Farley looked back at her over one shoulder, his expression sober. “Actually, ma’am, I just brought you here to wait for the church ladies. They’ll be along to collect you any minute now, I reckon.”
The guy was like something out of the late show. “You’ll try me for murder,” Elisabeth said with dismal conviction, stepping a little closer to the stove as the blaze caught and Farley closed the metal door with a clank. “I read it in the newspaper.”
“I heard you were a little crazy,” the marshal said thoughtfully. His eyes slid over Elisabeth’s nightgown, which was probably transparent, and he brought her a long canvas coat that had been draped over his desk chair. “Here, put this on and go sit there next to the fire. All I need is for the Presbyterians to decide I’ve been mistreating you.”
Elisabeth’s knees were weak, and she couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. She sank into the rocking chair he indicated, closing the coat demurely around her legs. “I didn’t kill anybody,” she said.
“Nobody is claiming you did,” Farley answered, pouring syrupy black coffee into a metal mug and handing it to her. But he was staring at Elisabeth as though she were a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve, and she wondered hysterically if she’d already said too much.
The chair creaked as Elisabeth rocked, and the heat from the stove and the terrible coffee began to thaw out her frozen senses. “Jonathan and Trista are not dead,” she insisted, speaking over the rim of the cup. She had to cling to that, to believe it, or she would go mad, right then and there.
Farley looked pained as he finally shrugged out of his own coat and came to stand near the stove, giving Elisabeth a sidelong glance and pouring himself a cup of coffee. His beard-stubbled face was gray with grief, and his brown hair was rumpled from repeated rakings of his fingers and wet with the rain. His green-blue eyes reflected weariness and misery. “There’s no way anybody could have survived a blaze like that, Miss Lizzie,” he said with gruff gentleness. “They’re dead, all right.” He paused and sighed sadly. “We’ll get their bodies out tomorrow and bury them proper.”
Elisabeth felt the coffee back up into her throat in an acid rush, and it was only by monumental effort that she kept herself from throwing up on the marshal’s dirty, plankboard floor. “No, you won’t,” she said when she could manage it. “You won’t find their bodies because they’re not there.”
Farley sidled over and touched Elisabeth’s forehead with the back of one big hand, frowning. Then he went back to his place by the stove. “What do you mean they’re not there? Me and four other men tried to get in, and all the staircases were blocked. We couldn’t get to Jonathan and the little girl, and we damn near didn’t get to you.”
A headache throbbed under Elisabeth’s temples, and she could feel her sinus passages closing up. “Don’t think I’m not grateful, Marshal,” she said. “As for what I meant—well, I—” What could she say? That Jonathan and Trista might have disappeared into another time, another dimension? “I believe they got out and that they’re wandering somewhere, perhaps not recalling who they are.”
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br /> “I’ve known Jonathan Fortner for ten years,” Farley answered, staring off at some vision Elisabeth couldn’t see. “He wouldn’t have left that house unless he was taking everybody inside with him. He wasn’t that kind of man.”
Elisabeth felt tears burn her eyes. No one was ever going to believe her theory that Jonathan and Trista had taken the only escape open to them, and she would have to accept the fact. Furthermore, even though the man she loved, the father of the baby growing inside her at that very moment, had not died, he might well be permanently lost to her. Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to find his way back, or perhaps the mysterious passageway, whatever it was, had been sealed forever….
Farley fetched a bottle from his desk drawer and poured a dollop of potent-smelling whiskey into Elisabeth’s coffee. “You mentioned murder a few minutes ago,” he said, “and you talked of reading about what happened in the papers. What did you mean by that?”
Elisabeth normally didn’t drink anything stronger than white wine, but she lifted the whiskey-laced coffee gratefully to her mouth, her hands shaking. “There hasn’t been a murder. It’s just that you’re going to think…” Her voice failed as she realized how crazy any explanation she could make would sound. She squirmed in the chair. “You won’t find any bodies in that house, Marshal, because no one is dead.”
A metallic ring echoed through the small, cluttered office when Farley set his cup on the stove top and disappeared into the single cell to drag a blanket off the cot. “Put this around you,” he ordered, returning to shove the cover at Elisabeth. “You’re out of your head with the shock of what you’ve been through.”
Elisabeth wrapped herself in the blanket. By that time, her mixed-up emotions had undergone another radical shift and she was convinced that Jonathan would come walking through the door at any moment, his clothes blackened and torn, to collect her and prove to the marshal that he was alive. Trista, she decided, was safe at Vera’s house.
Farley stooped to peer into her face. “You didn’t set that fire, did you?”
She jerked her head back, as though the words had been a physical blow. “Set it? Marshal, the roof was struck by lightning—I saw it happen!”
“Seems to me something like that would be pretty unlikely,” he mused, rubbing his chin with a thumb and two fingers as he considered the possibilities.
“Oh, really?” Elisabeth demanded, frightened now because the scenario was beginning to go the way she’d feared it would. “Well, it split one of the apple trees in the orchard right down the middle. Maybe you’d like to go and see for yourself.”
“Who are you?” Farley inquired, and Elisabeth was sure he hadn’t heard a word she said. “Where did you come from?”
She swallowed. Jonathan had told various people in the community that she was his late wife’s sister, and now Elisabeth had no choice but to maintain the lie. If—when—she saw him again, she was going to give him hell for getting her into this mess. “My name is Lizzie McCartney, and I was born in Boston,” she said, her chin quivering.
“Yes, I remember that Barbara’s family lived in Boston,” the marshal answered calmly. “If you’ll just give me your father’s name and street address, I’ll get in touch with your family and tell them you’re going to need some help.”
Elisabeth felt the color drain from her face. She couldn’t relay the information the marshal wanted because she didn’t know the answers to his questions. “I’d rather handle this on my own,” she said after a hesitation that was a fraction too long.
The marshal took a watch from the pocket of his trousers, flipped the case open with his thumb and frowned at the time. “Now where do you suppose those Presbyterians are?” he muttered.
“I don’t imagine they’ll be coming by for me at all,” Elisabeth ventured to say, and her throat felt thick because Jonathan and Trista were gone and she might have to live out what was left of her life alone in a strange place. “My guess would be the ladies of Pine River don’t entirely approve of the fact that I’ve been staying in Jonathan’s house.”
“Well, you’d better get some sleep. You can bunk in there, on the cot.” He pointed toward the cell and Elisabeth shuddered to think of some of the types who might have used it before her. “In the morning, we’ll contact your people.”
Elisabeth was shaking, and not in her wildest imaginings would she have expected to sleep, but she went obediently into the cell all the same. When the marshal had blown out all the lamps and disappeared into his own undoubtedly humble quarters out back, she stripped off the wet nightgown, wrapped herself tightly in the blanket and laid down on the rickety bed.
Two sleepless hours passed, during which Elisabeth alternately listened for Jonathan to storm the citadel and cried because she knew the twentieth century would never surrender him. She was tortured by worries about how he was faring and whether he and Trista had been hurt or not. Jonathan was a doctor and an extremely intelligent man, but Elisabeth wasn’t sure he’d know how to get help in her world.
What if Jonathan and Trista were in pain? What if they weren’t in the twentieth century at all, but some weird place in between? Worst of all, what if they had died in the fire and their remains simply hadn’t been found yet?
The cell was brimming with sunshine when the marshal appeared, bearing an ugly brown calico dress in one hand. “You can put this on,” he said, shoving it through the bars. Actually, he looked rather handsome in an Old West sort of way, with his brown hair brushed shiny, his jaw shaved and his substantial mustache trimmed.
“At least have the courtesy to turn your back,” Elisabeth said, rising awkwardly in her scratchy blanket to reach for the garment.
Farley obliged, folding his beefy arms in front of his chest. “Looks like you’ll be staying with us for a while,” he said with a sort of grim heartiness. “I had a talk with Jon’s housekeeper, and she managed to find some family papers in the part of the house that didn’t burn. Then I sent a telegram to Barbara’s family, back there in Massachusetts. They wired me that they never had a daughter named Lizzie.”
Elisabeth felt panic sweeping her toward the edge like a giant broom, but somehow she contrived to keep her voice even. “I guess I’m just lucky I didn’t end up in the 1600s,” she said, pulling on the charity dress and fastening the buttons. The thing was a good three sizes too big. “They probably would have burned me at the stake as a witch.”
“I’d be careful about how I talked,” Farley advised, turning around to face her. “The people around here don’t hold much with witches and the like.”
“I don’t imagine they do,” Elisabeth remarked sweetly, wondering how the heck she was going to get out of this one. “Tell me, whose dress is this?”
“Belongs to Big Lil over at the Phifer Hotel. She’s the cook.”
“And she’s in the habit of lending her clothes to prisoners?”
Farley’s powerful shoulders moved in an offhanded shrug. “Not really. I believe she left that here the last time I had to run her in for disturbing the peace.”
Elisabeth gripped the bars in both hands and peered through with guileless eyes. “I hardly dare ask what Big Lil was wearing when she left.”
To her satisfaction, the marshal’s neck went a dull red, and he averted his eyes for a moment. “She had her daughter bring her some things,” he mumbled.
If it hadn’t been for the gravity of her situation and all the dreadful possibilities she was holding at bay, Elisabeth might have smiled. As it was, her sense of humor was strained to the breaking point.
“Exactly what am I charged with?” she asked as Farley went to the stove and touched the big enamel coffeepot with an inquiring finger. “You can’t pin a murder on somebody if there aren’t any bodies.”
Farley stared at her, looking bewildered and just a touch sick. “What makes you so sure we didn’t find…remains?”
He’d never buy the truth, of course. “I just know,” Elisabeth said with a little shrug. She wriggled her eyebro
ws. “Maybe I am a witch.” The marshal hooked his thumbs under his suspenders and regarded Elisabeth somberly. “What did you do with them? Drop ’em down the well? Dump ’em into the river?”
Elisabeth spread her hands wide of her body and the horrendous brown dress that was practically swallowing her. “Do I look big enough to overcome a man Jonathan’s size?”
Farley arched an eyebrow. “You could have poisoned him or hit him over the head. As for disposing of the bodies, you might even have had an accomplice.”
Knowing the townspeople were going to believe some version of that story, Elisabeth cringed inwardly. Still, she had to at least try to save her skin. “What motive would I have for doing that?”
“What motive did you have for lying about who you are?” Farley countered, rapid-fire. “I’ll bet you lied to Jonathan, too—told him you were family, so to speak. He took you in, and you repaid him by—”
“Before you whip out a violin,” Elisabeth interrupted, “let me say that Jonathan does know who I am. And telling people I was Barbara’s sister was his idea, not mine.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have anybody’s word for that but yours. And it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference if we did.” He came to the cell door and glared at her through the bars, his hands gripping the black iron so hard that his knuckles went white. “What did you do to Dr. Fortner and his little girl?”
Elisabeth backed away from the bars because, suddenly, Farley looked fierce. “Damn it, I didn’t do anything to them,” she whispered. “To me, Jonathan and Trista are the most important people in the world!”
Glowering, Farley turned away. “Big Lil will be by with your breakfast pretty soon,” he said, taking a gun belt down from a hook on the wall and strapping it on with disturbing deftness. “See you don’t try to escape or anything. Lil is mean as a wet badger and tall enough to waltz with a bear.”
Again, Elisabeth had the feeling that she would have been amused, if her circumstances hadn’t been so dire. “I’ll be sure I don’t try to dance with her,” she replied, slumping forlornly on the edge of the cot.
There and Now Page 20
