She was positive he knew about Doran and her writing to each other, considering the little hints he would leave, when she least expected it, to encourage her to wait for him. Somehow he knew that he could not meet her as long as she was writing to his past-self. She just wondered how he knew about all those things that she believed only she and Doran of the past shared together. Either he could remember his past life and that she had been writing to him through time and space or… she didn’t know the or… She merely knew that he had access to things like the snow globe, he sent her. She figured he must have inherited that, but it was pretty risky giving it to her on her nineteenth birthday when she hadn’t even known about the gravestone at the time.
She began remembering other little things like the boy who had danced with her at the prom and said she would end up marrying him someday. It had to have been Doran of the future, only how did he know about her before she ever knew about Doran of the past?
That electric shock that went through her when he brushed against her, leaving Sal’s studio, still haunted her when she thought about it. She wondered if he felt it too. Only he always kept his distance. She never knew when he was around or if he was around, until he would leave some little reminder that he was still out there, and for her not to forget about him or give up on him.
Lately, she thought she could feel his presence when she was at the graveyard, but that could be her feeling the presence of Daron from the past, for all she knew. As the days grew closer for Doran’s past death, she began to feel more nervous. She had gotten used to writing letters to him and receiving his replies. She almost felt like she was married to him and he was just away on business, writing her letters while he was gone. Only she longed to touch him, feel his lips on hers… something she had not experienced yet, and wondered if she ever would.
“What do you mean you have met him, but you’re just waiting for him to show up?” her father broke in on her thoughts. “That makes no sense what-so-ever!”
“Yeah, I know. It is just hard to explain. It all has to do with that burned down plantation, and the family who owned it. You said you were going to look up some of the Foster history for me.”
“I did research them. You just never took the time to come ask me about it. The husband of your great, great aunt ended up getting killed, like it said on his grave, by Confederate raiders. His son was taken and raised by his mother. His brother-in-law, who was your great, great aunt’s brother and your great, great grandfather, died in a Union prison camp. His wife remarried and raised their two children in this area, and we ended up becoming a part of their lineage. Doran’s son, Matthew, had a son as well. The family managed to build their wealth back up, but it never excelled or even compared to what they had when they ran the plantation. Later, that son had a boy that got killed in the Second World War, but he managed to get married before he went to war, and his wife had a son, after her husband was killed. They named him after his great, great, grandfather, Doran Frank Foster.
“His grandfather died not long ago, and I think Doran and his mother live somewhere on the upper end in a nice house, so I hear. They still own the plantation. The grandfather planned on rebuilding the plantation again, but it never got accomplished.”
“They must be thinking about doing it now,” Emma, informed him. “I noticed when I go to tend the graveyard, someone has been cleaning the place up only no one is ever there when I come.”
“You should get permission to work at that graveyard. It’s on private property, you know.”
“No one has ever complained,” she shrugged. “I’m doing them a favor! If they have been there cleaning the place up, they can see I have been keeping the graveyard well-tended.”
“Why are you so interested in that particular graveyard, anyway? You have been going there for years, and you never took the same interest in other graveyards you have visited to do your etchings.”
“I guess that is what I wanted to talk to you about. I just don’t think you will believe me. Only it is almost time for Doran Foster to die and…”
“What are you talking about? Do you know the Doran Faster who owns the plantation? I thought you said you wanted to know more about the Foster family from me?”
“No, I have never met that Doran Forster, anyway not properly, yet.”
“That makes no sense at all! You keep talking riddles here, Emma.” Her father’s voice sounded exasperated.
“Yeah, I know. I just don’t really know how to explain it.” She pulled her letters from Doran that she had been saving over the years, from her purse. “It all started with me finding a letter inside a compartment in the headstone of Emma Foster, my great, great, aunt, who you named me after. I think you named me after her for a more important reason than you could ever guess.”
She handed the letters to her father, starting with the one she found in the beginning that was all yellowed. As he read it, she started to explain to him everything that had happened since she found the letter. When she was finished, both her mother and father just stared at her, not knowing whether to believe her or not.
“So you think this young Doran Foster is the reincarnation of his great, great, grandfather, and you are the reincarnation of his wife back then, and somehow you two are soul mates, but Doran Foster of old, has to die and stop writing to you before you can meet his great, great grandson,” her mother tried to piece it all together.
“It is the only way I think it can happen. Doran is so afraid I will stop writing to him through time, if I actually meet his future-self. He is going to be killed soon, and I believe, then, the letters will stop. I think his great, great, grandson knows it too. I just don’t know how he plans to actually meet me, once that happens.”
“Only his great, great, grandfather is already dead,” her mother insisted.
“Well, of course! Only the person I am able to contact exists before his death. Our timeline is the same, except that it is over a hundred years apart. The timeline started on my twentieth birthday, when I first found the letter, right after his wife died, and has been consistent ever since then. Because he wrote that letter, it must have been important for him to discover that her death wasn’t the end of their relationship together. Me being able to contact him was the only way to do it. Then, of course, he needed me to encourage him to carry on without her until his own death. Then his future-self could be reunited with me, but he had to know that before he died.
“I actually have been able to remember fragments of that life with him. And as you can tell from the photograph that he sent me, I know that I look like my great, great, aunt and Sal told me that Doran Foster of today looks like his great, great grandfather. So I will recognize him, when he finally decides to present himself to me.”
“This is all very unbelievable,” her mother shook her head. “If it weren’t for these letters and the research you have done on them, I wouldn’t believe it.”
“In another month, he is going to die, and I am not sure how I am going to take it, or what is going to happen, once the letters stop. I just thought I would let you know about it, though, so if Doran does show up, you would understand why I believe he is my soul mate and not think I am just falling for someone as soon as I meet him. I think I have actually known him on several levels for the last four years. I plan to be at his grave on the day that he dies.”
“You know we will support you in anything you choose for yourself,” Emma’s mother assured her. “If what you say is true, we will trust your judgment.”
“It all just seems so strange. Even though I have been anticipating this for a long time, I am pretty nervous and don’t really know how I am going to react when the time comes. What if Doran doesn’t show up? What if I have just been imagining all of this because I want the Doran from the past to have a future-self who comes like a knight in shining armor and saves me from … from...” She couldn’t finish because she didn’t know what to say. Then she hung her head, her whisper barely audible. “I have fal
len in love with a ghost, and I am not sure how to handle it?”
Emma’s father got up from his chair and patted her on the shoulder. “I guess you will just have to wait and see,” is all he said.
The month was passing too fast and too slow. It seemed like Emma had been waiting all her life for what she hoped would be discovering her true soul mate, and yet at the same time, she felt like she would be losing a soul mate from the past. The thought of never receiving letters from Doran again was too daunting. Knowing how he would die was too painful.
Wondering what had happened after he died confused her. His family should have had plenty of money to rebuild the plantation after he died, unless the Confederate raiders, who killed him, had found where he had hidden all his treasures. He had worried so much about the plantation burning and wanted to find a way of preventing it. Still, he was preparing for the worst by hiding his wealth, the way she suggested he do. She should never have told him about his plantation burning, she chided herself. It was just one more thing for him to worry about.
When the day came, Emma drove the familiar road to the plantation. She looked around, in hopes of seeing some sign that Doran was there as well, but she could see nothing. No tracks, even though she knew he had been there working on the gravesite. She had seen truck tire tracks, from whoever was cleaning the place up and carting away debris that had gathered over the years. They had not torn down the old barn yet, though, and the church was in well enough repair that it could remain standing, if they just put a new roof on it, she figured. They had carted away the part of the roof that had fallen in, so she was certain Doran, or whoever he had cleaning up the place, was planning on replacing that church roof. After all, it was the building his great, great, grandfather had been married in.
She brought blue flowers to put on Doran’s grave. She didn’t know the exact moment he would be killed. For all she knew, the Confederate raiders could have attacked him and he survived for a time before succumbing to his wounds. She only knew the date he had actually died.
She had brought her last letter, not even knowing if he would be able to read it before he died or even if it would pass through time like her other letters did if he had already died. It was yet to be seen.
The tears started before she even got to the grave. Five years of her life had been consumed with her connection to Doran Foster. She had a hard time accepting the fact that it would soon be over. She only hoped it would be what would usher in a new beginning to her life. If not, she could accept that. Those four years, falling in love with Doran through time and space had been worth it.
She felt she had grown so much since that first day she found the grave. She learned a lot about sacrifice and love…and even hope. She had learned she needed to trust, not only in the Doran of the past, but that his future-self would find her. She knew he already had, but she just had to believe he would show himself to her in the end.
Emma knelt beside the grave, laying the flowers against the headstone, tears landing on their petals, as her body shook. To her, Doran had not died over a hundred years ago. He was dying at that very moment in her heart. As she sat, remembering all the letters they had exchanged over the years, a breeze whipped up scattering the flowers. A chill ran through her, and she turned. For a split second she thought she saw Doran standing there, dressed in clothes from the past. She took in her breath.
“Doran?” she questioned, but then he was gone.
Emma knew on some subtle level, that Doran had passed. She would never receive letters from him again. The thought shook her. She looked through the brass door of the cubby hole, where she had replaced his first letter to his wife, and where she had also placed the last letter she had written to him. Only the faded letter to his wife remained.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
1863
Doran felt uneasy when he woke, but he didn’t know why. He had the uncanny need to check for a letter from Emma, even before he took time to eat breakfast. He could hear Mathew crying in the nursery, and there seemed to be a certain tension in the house that permeated his spirit. It could be the fact that Julia had just received word that Mark had died in the Union prison. He was angry that Mark had refused to save himself from suffering on the account of loyalty to the south! Now his children would be raised without a father.
He headed out across the expanse of gardens that led to the graveyard, his strides urgent and swift. When he arrived, he could see the new letter in the familiar flowered envelope behind the door. He could even smell the perfume…that wonderful smell that he couldn’t get enough of. Hastily, he bent down and retrieved the key to open the door. Once the letter was safe in his breast pocket, he returned to the house. He felt a little easier now, and decided to read the letter at his leisure, after he had his breakfast.
They had barely sat down at the table, when there was a loud banging on the front door, only before the door could be answered, Doran heard a crashing sound as the doors were forced open and a Confederate troop was invading his home, their muskets pointed at him and his family. Servants were screaming, Mathew added to their screams with his loud crying as Nanny Doris clutched him in her trembling arms. His mother grabbed his arm and half-hid behind him, as orders were being shouted out by the men who were dressed in ragged uniforms of the south.
They looked dirty and unkempt; most of them were mere skin and bones. Some, not even wearing shoes. When they saw the food on the table, they all converged and started eating as though they hadn’t seen a good meal in months, which was probably the case, Doran thought. While most of the men were grabbing at food and shoving it in their mouths, another held his musket on the surprised group as they watched the scene.
They were all herded into the parlor, the man holding the gun looked so tired Doran wondered he had the strength to hold the gun.
“Don’t cause any trouble, and we won’t hurt you,” the man with the rifle grunted. Someone coming into the room threw him a biscuit and he crammed it in his mouth. “We’re only looking for food and valuables,” he said as he chewed the biscuit. “As soon as we are through, we will let you gather a few things to tide you over after we leave. We plan to burn this place down!”
“You can’t do that,” Doran insisted. “We have children here. “They need a roof over their heads.” Only he knew they would do it. Emma had warned him of it.
“Ya got plenty of out-buildings for that,” the man sneered. ‘You’re a bunch of traitors to the south! You are following the wrong flag!”
Doran could hear the tramping of boots as the other men began searching the house. “For such a fancy house, ya don’t have much in the way of valuables,” the leader complained as he came into the parlor staring at Doran, who stood by the fireplace with the rest of the servants and family members, still under the watchful eye of the soldier holding the weapon on them.
“I gave them all to the Union soldiers who came here earlier,” Doran lied. “Only they did not threaten to burn down our house.”
“Well we ain’t no Union soldiers!” the man snapped. ‘What’s that behind you on the mantle? It looks valuable.” He started to reach for the snow-globe Doran had given to Emma for her nineteenth birthday.
“No,” Doran cried, lunging forward.
There was a loud blast, and Doran did not understand it at first, until he saw the smoke from soldier’s musket. It was then he felt the pain, but he tried to ignore it, as he grabbed for the mantle to support himself. His other hand was on his chest, where blood seeped through his fingers.
“It belonged to my dead wife,” he muttered, placing his hand on the globe. “Her brother was a Confederate soldier, just like you, only he died in a Union prison.”
“You don’t say?” the man smiled, a little wearily. “I guess out of respect for her brother, I will leave it. There is nothing else here, so go gather up some belongings before we start burning the place down!
“Go out and get the animals and what food you can carry,” he called to the o
thers, and then turned from the room.
“You have ten minutes before we put flame to this house,” the man with the rifle told Doran and the others, as he and the rest of the group removed themselves from the house.
Doran’s mother took her hanky and placed it under Doran’s shirt, where the blood was seeping, then placed his hand back over his jacket on top of the wound. “Hold this tight and rest here.” She nodded to the chair. “The servants and the rest of us will gather as much as we can manage.”
“Don’t forget my box of letters from Emma,” he mumbled, “and take the globe.”
Melissa reached up and grabbed the globe, and then headed upstairs to collect as much as she could stuff in a carpet bag.
Doran sank down in the chair, trying to catch his breath. He was feeling faint. Every time he moved, a sharp pain stabbed his chest. Then he remembered the letter he had taken from the headstone. He fumbled in his pocket, but couldn’t get the envelope open with one hand. He didn’t want to get blood on it, so he merely clutched it in his hand as he waited for his mother and the others to return from gathering what they could from the house.
He closed his eyes and the next moment, his mother was there, encouraging him to get up.
“Did you get the box of letters?” he asked. “It is very important. You can’t lose those letters, we need to make sure they are handed down in our family, so future generations know what happened between Emma and me. My future-self has to know Emma is there waiting for me in 1983.”
“Yes, I have them,” his mother cooed. “Don’t worry about it,” she mumbled as she allowed him to lean on her shoulder as one of their servants came to help her guide him out of the house.
“I need to tell you about what else is in the box,” Doran whispered, his voice faltering.
Letters From The Grave Page 18
