by Bess McBride
FOR ALL MY RELATIONS:
A TIME TRAVEL STORY
(Book One)
Bess McBride
For All My Relations
Copyright 2020 Bess McBride
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the publisher and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Cover art by Tara West
Contact information: [email protected]
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
For All My Relations, my ancestors, the ones who came before me who survived by some miracle to have children and pass on their DNA.
I am alive because of you.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Other Books by Bess McBride
About the Author
Foreword
Dear Reader,
Thank you for purchasing For All My Relations: A Time Travel Story. For All My Relations is book 1 of the For All My Relations series.
What would it take to go back in time and fix the past? Not your past, but that of your ancestors? As an amateur genealogist with a passion for my ancestors, I’ve long wished that I could go back in time and fix what went wrong—be it accidents or illness. Looking back on our ancestors’ lives, we are able to see how their lives began and how they ended, all in a matter of minutes by reviewing the records of their existence—sources such as birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates and newspaper clippings, to name a few.
My second great-grandmother and her young son died of typhoid fever from eating tainted ice cream. This story and the ones to come in the For All My Relations series of time travel stories are the only thing I can do to make sense of their losses. I write these For All My Relations.
After years of scouring online genealogy records and databases, Annie Warner, longtime genealogy buff, discovers her second great-grandmother’s death certificate from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Cause of death: Belinda Sellers died in 1913 from hemorrhaging due to typhoid fever. She was only thirty-four, a mother of six young children. Ted, her six-year-old son, died only days later from the same typhoid fever. An email exchange from a distant cousin revealed that their mutual ancestress had contracted typhoid fever from eating tainted ice cream.
Annie grieves for her second great-grandmother and wonders at the awful miracle that her own great-grandmother, then thirteen, survived. Why? How? Mostly, why? Life is so tenuous, so fragile, so random. Annie, whose parents died when she was in her early twenties and whose only sister died when Annie was fifteen, knows that better than most.
For years genealogy has been Annie’s way of recreating a family, a sense of belonging. She’s met cousins online along the way, but most are too busy to incorporate another family member in real time. The occasional annual email is enough. Annie longs for so much more.
Even a burgeoning relationship with a long-lost love can’t satisfy Annie’s desire for family.
She studies the death certificate wishing that she could go back and warn her second great-grandmother, Belinda, of the danger. What if she could save her life and that of her young son? What if?
The world shifts on its axis or time turns on itself, and Annie finds herself thrown back in time to 1913, just in time to warn her second great-grandmother. Can she change the past? Is it wise? Without a copy of the death certificate, how can she convince her family that she can predict the future? And how does she get back to the lost love whom she found again after years apart?
For All My Relations begins Annie’s adventures into solving past tragedies, meddling in love lives and bringing families together, all the while hoping she doesn’t obliterate her own future existence.
Chapter One
Annie Warner studied the death certificate in her hand for the third time. Belinda Ann Sellers died in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on December 3, 1913 at the age of thirty-four from typhoid fever, which she had contracted on November 20. Born in Maryland to John Burman and Mary Moller, her occupation was listed as housewife. The informant was Monroe Sellers.
Annie recognized the name of the informant as her second great-grandfather, Belinda’s husband. The death certificate showed his address and the name of the cemetery where Belinda would be buried, Greenwood Cemetery.
Tears slid down Annie’s cheeks, and she wiped them away. Genealogy had moments of sadness, joy, humor, confusion, elation and frustration, but she had never before experienced the sudden piercing grief she felt at that moment.
She pushed the paper aside to look at another second death certificate. Belinda’s son, little six-year-old Ted Sellers, had been hospitalized on the day his mother died, and he had died two weeks later on December 17, 1913, from cerebromeningitis due to typhoid fever. His father, Monroe Sellers, was the informant, and he too was buried at Greenwood Cemetery.
Annie could not imagine what Monroe must have gone through at the time—a thirty-six-year-old man whose wife and young son died suddenly, leaving him in his grief with four motherless young children. Her own great-grandmother, Claire Sellers, had only been thirteen when Belinda died.
Annie traced little Ted’s name on the certificate. Poor kiddo. He would never grow up to marry, to become a father, to have his own family, to grow whiskers.
Annie had known for a few months that her second great-grandmother had died in 1913 of typhoid fever along with one of her children, but she hadn’t realized how young both ancestors were at the time of their deaths.
Two months before, she had met a fellow genealogist online, a fourth cousin with whom she shared DNA, who reported that her side of the family shared an oral history that Belinda and her son had come down with typhoid fever from eating tainted ice cream soon after the family’s move from Maryland to Pennsylvania. Susan, descended through one of Belinda’s other surviving children, hadn’t known if any of those children had eaten the ice cream or sickened. She noted that their mutual third great-grandmother, Sally Sellers, had left her home (and husband) in Baltimore and gone to her son’s aid to help him raise his family.
Research of the censuses showed that great-great-great-grandma Sall
y had indeed left husband and home and moved to Lancaster, where she stayed for about ten years. Annie had wondered at that sacrifice. Sally’s other children had families of their own, but her husband, Will, had not accompanied his wife. He instead went to live with their adult married daughter in Baltimore. Why hadn’t he accompanied his wife? Work? A job?
Annie looked down at Belinda’s death certificate again. “Poor grandma,” she whispered in a constricted throat. “I’m so, so sorry. And little Ted. How heartbreaking. If only someone could have warned you.”
She leaned back in her chair and looked at a print on the wall next to her desk, something she had seen in a store and couldn’t resist buying. Black lettering on a white background said simply “For All My Relations.” Annie had once attended a women’s sweat ceremony as a guest on a nearby Native American reservation. At the beginning of each round, the leader would begin prayer with the words “For All My Relations.” In the leader’s case, she explained that it was a reference to the interconnectedness of all life.
For Annie, the words felt like an homage to her ancestors, the people without whom she could not have come to be. Annie, longing for family, for relations, for ancestors, instantly connected with the words heard over and over in the sweat, and when she saw the simple poster, she knew it was for her.
Annie’s phone chirped, the sound dragging her back from the past. She picked it up to scan the text message, and her pulse quickened at the sight of Daniel Douglas’s name. She read his morning message to her, something he had started doing about a month ago when they had reconnected over social media after years apart.
I still love you. I always have and I always will.
Danny finished off his text with a heart icon, a romantic gesture that reminded her of the power he’d held over her twelve years before when they were an inseparable couple on the cusp of graduating from high school. Danny had never misused that power, but he must have known that an intent gaze of his jade-green eyes or the way he tenderly cupped the back of her head when they kissed turned her legs to spaghetti. She had often thought that her heart stopped a dozen times a day when he touched her, but she supposed it had only felt that way.
Annie stared at the phone knowing she should respond to Danny’s text. He would be waiting. She felt unequal to expressing how she felt about him. She wanted to tell him how much she adored him too, but she didn’t know if she could find the right words. It would do no good to copy him, to repeat the same words.
But their rekindled love was so very new. She loved him with all her heart—again—and she feared what the future would hold if they couldn’t make a go of it again.
She typed, I love you too.
Dry, so very dry. She hadn’t used those words in years, so they should have sounded more meaningful, but they reminded her of the words her parents had expressed before she had gone to bed at night as a child. Genuine sentiments but not particularly descriptive or original.
Annie erased her typing and read Danny’s text again.
I still love you. I always have and I always will.
She felt the same. She couldn’t possibly text “ditto,” nor did she want to. She tried to stuff a memory, but it burst into her conscious, as it had many times over the past month.
Danny had gone away to college on a scholarship to a small farming town on the eastern side of Washington State. Annie’s scholarship in English, language and literature had been at the University of Washington in Seattle, on the western side of the state. They had agreed they would see each other as often as possible despite the six-hour drive between them.
When they first parted, Danny had come home for a long weekend, and she had gone to visit him on another long weekend. Winter had come, and travel through the snowy passes in the Cascade Mountains made travel difficult. Video chatting hadn’t really taken off then, and their phone calls had taken on a mechanical tone. She had pined for a chance to see Danny’s face, to feel the touch of his hands, but they hadn’t been in financial positions to leave their respective schools and reunite.
Christmas break had come, and as was common in winter, the roads through the mountains were still impassable. When they reopened, Danny couldn’t get time off from his part-time job at the veterinary clinic.
Annie too found herself committed to working over the majority of the holiday break at her job in the university bookstore. Work and school failed to dull her aching loneliness, and she started mingling with fellow student employees after the bookstore closed. As a group, they often stopped for pizza or coffee before dispersing to their homes.
Annie had connected with one young man, Len, who seemed as lonely as she. Len’s girlfriend had taken a year foreign-study program in Germany. He and Annie bonded over their shared long-distance relationships.
As time passed, Danny had grown busier with his job such that his calls tapered off, and he returned only some of her calls, perhaps one out of three. When they did connect, he had been loving but very, very busy.
Annie ruminated about the future—six more years of separation, of loneliness while Danny worked on his undergraduate then graduate classes. A vision of a future with Danny faded, growing as distant as their relationship.
Annie stopped calling, and she began a romantic relationship with Len, whose own relationship failed the test of distance and time. On one final phone call to Danny, Annie told him that she had begun dating someone else, but he didn’t seem surprised. Of course, he had always known her. He didn’t fight for her then, didn’t fight to keep their love alive. Nor had she.
When Annie, in a period of reflection about the loss in her life of her parents and older sister, found Danny on social media, she had contacted him to say hello, albeit with butterflies in her stomach after fifteen years. Like her deceased parents and sister, Danny too had been a loss. She had hoped to say hello, to exchange details of their lives and just generally ensure that he was alive, happy and well. So many people in her life were not.
Danny had responded to her greeting almost immediately.
Hello, honey,
I’m so glad to hear from you. I’ve been following you, your life, but I didn’t want to haunt you like a ghost from the past. I’m so, so glad to hear from you. Tell me everything!
Love,
Danny
Annie’s scarred heart had thawed, warmed even. She had fallen in love with him again during their first phone call, maybe even his message. The rumble of his voice, the tenderness of his words brought everything back. The years had fallen away, and she was once again that young girl who adored her boyfriend.
Yet Annie held back, perhaps in shame for turning her back on him, for lacking the character to love a person even when they couldn’t be with them. How could she now tell Danny that she had never stopped loving him? Wouldn’t it seem trite? A lie? What was the truth?
She’d typed, I’m sorry.
She held her breath. He would know what she meant. It wasn’t the first time she had said those words. That had been the second thing she had told them on their first phone call. The first had been “hello.”
Shhhh, he sent back right away. It takes two to destroy a relationship.
Annie’s eyes watered. She was struggling to articulate an equally romantic response, when he texted again.
I love you. Have a good day!
You too! she typed, then searched her icons for a suitable romantic symbol. The red heart seemed effusive and cutesy, more confident than she felt. She settled for a conservative smiley face.
Annie checked the time on her phone. Danny, now a veterinarian with his own practice, was probably on his way to work about a half hour from where he lived. After pursuing a practice in eastern Washington, he had left that business and returned to their hometown of Tacoma the year before. In the intervening years, he had married and divorced, and it was the divorce that galvanized him to leave Spokane and come home.
Annie had never married. Her relationship with Len had been short lived, lastin
g only an unfulfilled month, but by then, friends reported that Danny had met someone at college, a fellow veterinarian student.
Annie had dated over the years, had even refused an offer of marriage, but when Danny responded to her on social media, she realized why she had never truly connected with another man. She had always been in love with Danny. Always. Everything else and everyone else had just been a distraction.
Her phone chirped again, and she jumped at the sound. She really had to change her notifications. The chirp was simply far too festive!
Dinner tonight? Pick you up at 7?
Annie’s cheeks ached from her wide grin.
Yes, please, she texted back.
She set the phone down again and returned to her genealogy, a spare part of her brain wondering what she would wear to dinner. A freelance editor, she was taking a few moments from her work and indulging in one of her favorite hobbies. She had just found copies of her ancestors’ death certificates in an online database, and she had printed both certificates to study in depth.
The fourth cousin that she had briefly corresponded with via email told her their mutual second great-grandparents had traveled “up the river” from Baltimore to Lancaster and that Belinda had died less than a year after their arrival.
Annie wondered again about her maternal great-grandmother, Claire. She had met her only once as a child, and Annie didn’t really trust that her youthful memories were particularly accurate. She remembered Great-Grandma Claire as a crabby, plump old woman who was rumored to have a penchant for bottles of liquor. At least, that was what Annie had heard whispered by her mother and grandmother when they thought six-year-old Annie was watching TV.
