Here and Then Read online

  Then Rue’s eyes fell on the bill and she realized she’d tried to pay for the pizza with some of her 1892 poker winnings. The mistake had been a natural one; just the other day, she’d left some money on her dresser. Apparently, she’d automatically done the same with these bills.

  “I’m a collector,” she said, snatching back the bill. “Just a second and I’ll get you something a little more…current.”

  With that, Rue reluctantly left the pizza on the hall table and hurried upstairs. When she returned, she paid the delivery boy with modern currency and a smile.

  The young man thanked her and hurried back down the walk and through the front gate to his economy car. He kept glancing back over one shoulder, as though he expected to find that the house had moved a foot closer to the road while he wasn’t looking.

  Rue smiled and closed the door.

  In the kitchen, she consumed two slices of pizza and put the rest into the refrigerator for later—or earlier. In this house, time had a way of getting turned around.

  On one level, Rue felt grindingly tired, as though she could crawl into bed and sleep for two weeks without so much as a quiver of her eyelids. On another, however, she was restless and frustrated.

  As a newswoman, Rue especially hated not knowing the whole story. She wanted to find her cousin, and she wanted to uncover the secret of this house. If there was one thing Rue was sure of, it was that the human race lived in a cause-and-effect universe and there was some concrete, measurable reason for the phenomenon she and Elisabeth had experienced.

  She found her purse and the keys to her Land Rover and smiled to herself as she carefully locked the front door. Maybe the dead bolt would keep out burglars and vandals, but here all the action tended to be on the inside.

  Rue drove into town, past the library and the courthouse and the supermarket, marveling. It had only been that morning—and yet, it had not been—that the marshal’s office and the general store and the Hang-Dog Saloon had stood in their places. The road, rutted and dusty and dappled with manure in Farley’s time was now paved and relatively clean.

  Only when she reached the churchyard did Rue realize she’d intended to come there all along. She parked by a neatly painted wooden fence and walked past the old-fashioned clapboard church to the cemetery beyond.

  The place was a historical monument—there were people buried here who had been born back East in the late seventeen hundreds.

  Rue paused briefly by Aunt Verity’s headstone, crouching to pull a few weeds, then went on to the oldest section. Almost immediately, she found the Fortner plot, a collection of graves surrounded by a low, iron fence.

  She opened the little gate, which creaked on rusty hinges, and stepped inside.

  Jonathan Fortner’s grave was in the center and beside his stone was another one, marked Elisabeth Fortner. Rue felt tears sting her eyes; maybe Bethie was still alive in that other dimension, but she was long dead in this one. So were her husband and all her children.

  After she’d recovered from the shock of standing beside Bethie’s grave, Rue studied the other stones. Sons, daughters, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law, even grandchildren, most of whom had lived to adulthood, were buried there. Obviously, Jonathan and Elisabeth’s union had been a very fruitful one, and that consoled Rue a little. More than anything else, her cousin had wanted a lot of children.

  When Rue turned, she was startled to see a handsome young man crouched by the metal gate, oiling the creaky hinges. He smiled, and something about the expression was jarringly familiar.

  “Friend of the family?” he asked pleasantly. Rue had him pegged for the kind of kid who had played the lead in all the high school drama productions and taken the prettiest girl in his class to the prom.

  Rue allowed herself a slight smile. “You might say that. And you?”

  “Jonathan and Elisabeth Fortner were my great-great-grandparents,” he said, rising to his feet. He looked nothing like Bethie, this tall young man with his dark hair and eyes, and yet his words struck a note of truth deep inside Rue.

  For a moment, she was completely speechless. It seemed that every time she managed to come to terms with one element of this time-travel business, another aspect presented itself.

  Rue summoned up a smile and offered her hand. “I guess you could say Bethie—Elisabeth—was my great-great-cousin. My name is Rue Claridge.”

  “Michael Blake,” he replied, clasping her fingers firmly.

  Rue searched her memory, but she couldn’t recall Aunt Verity ever mentioning this branch of the family. “Do you live in Pine River, Michael?”

  He shook his head and, once again, Rue felt a charge of recognition. “Seattle—I go to the university. I just like to come out here once in a while and—well—I don’t know exactly how to explain it. It’s like there’s this unseen connection and I’m one of the links. I guess this is my way of telling them—and myself—that I haven’t broken the chain.”

  Rue only nodded; she was thinking of the overwhelming significance a simple decision or random happenstance could have. If Bethie hadn’t stumbled into that other dimension or whatever it was, then Michael would probably never have existed. In fact, just a few months before, when Elisabeth had not yet stepped over the threshold to meet and fall in love with her country doctor, there had surely been no Michael Blake. That would explain why Aunt Verity had never talked about him or his family.

  On the other hand, Michael had grown to youthful manhood; he had a life, a history. He was as solid and real as anyone she’d ever met.

  Rue’s head was spinning.

  “Are you all right?” Michael asked, firmly taking her elbow and helping her to a nearby bench. “You look pale.”

  Rue sat down gratefully and rubbed her right temple with a shaking hand. “I’m fine,” she said hastily. “Honestly.”

  “I could get you some water….”

  “No,” Rue protested. “I’m okay. Really.”

  Michael brought a small black notebook from his jacket pocket, along with a stub of a pencil. “My grandmother would really like to meet you, since you’re a shirttail relation and everything. She lives with my mom and dad in Seattle. Why don’t you give her a call sometime?”

  Rue grinned at the ease with which he invited a total stranger into the inner circle of the family, but then that was the sort of thing kids did. “Thanks, Michael.”

  He wedged one hand into the pocket of his jacket, holding the can of spray lubricant in the other. “Well, I guess I’d better be getting back to the city. Nice meeting you.”

  “Nice meeting you,” Rue said hoarsely, looking away. Did you think about what it means to change history, Bethie? she thought. I know I never did.

  Michael had long-since driven away in a small blue sports car when Rue finally rose from the bench and went to stand beside her cousin’s grave once again.

  “Maybe I should just leave it all alone,” she murmured as a shower of gold, crimson and chocolate-colored leaves floated down onto the little plot from the surrounding maple trees. “Maybe it would be better to walk away and pretend I believe the official explanation for your disappearance, Bethie. But I just can’t do it. Even though I know I could stir up ripples that might be felt all the way into this century, I have to hear you say, in person, that you want to stay there. I have to look into your eyes and know that you understand your decision.”

  And I have to see Farley Haynes again.

  The stray, ragtag thought trailed in after the others, and Rue immediately evicted it from her mind. For all practical intents and purposes, Farley was just a figment of her imagination, she reminded herself, little more than a character she’d seen in a movie or read about in a book.

  The idea left a keen, biting sense of loneliness in its wake, but Rue was determined to accept the fact and get on with her life.

  Of course, before she could do that, she had to see Bethie just once more.

  Instead of going home, Rue drove into Seattle.

&n
bsp; She visited a coin shop first, where she purchased an expensive selection of bills and coins issued between 1880 and 1892. After that, Rue visited a dusty little secondhand store tucked away in an alley behind a delicatessen, and bought herself a graceful ivory gown with tatting on the cuffs and collar, and a waist-length capelet to match. A little searching unearthed a pair of brown, high-button shoes and a parasol.

  Rue coughed as the shop’s proprietress shook out the ancient garment and prepared to wrap it. “Is this a theatrical costume, or was it a part of a real wardrobe?”

  The other woman smiled wistfully. “I suspect this gown came from a camphor trunk in someone’s attic, since it’s in relatively good condition. If you’ll look closely at the handwork, you’ll see it’s made to last.”

  “Is it washable?”

  “I wouldn’t try that. The fabric is terribly old; water or dry-cleaning solution might dissolve the fibers.”

  Rue nodded, feeling fond of that romantic old relic of a dress already, and hoping she could make it hold together long enough to get back to 1892, have a couple of practical calico dresses made and find Elisabeth. Between her poker winnings and the old currency she’d purchased at the coin shop, Rue figured she’d have enough money to catch a boat or a train to San Francisco, where Elisabeth and Jonathan were supposed to have gone.

  As Rue was driving back to Pine River, a light rain began to fall. She found a classical station on the car radio—Rue’s musical tastes covered the full range, but on that particular night, Mozart had the greatest appeal.

  It truly startled her to realize, just as she reached the outskirts of Pine River, that there were tears on her face.

  Rue rarely cried, not because she was in any way above it, but because she’d long ago learned that weeping solved nothing. In fact, it usually just complicated matters.

  Nevertheless, her cheeks seemed as wet as the windshield, and her feelings were an odd, explosive tangle. Methodically, she began to separate them.

  Meeting Michael Blake had given her a shattering sense of the gossamer threads that link the past with the present and the future. If for some reason Elisabeth changed her mind about staying in 1892 and following through with the new destiny she’d created for herself by making that choice, Michael and a lot of other people would simply be obliterated.

  To make matters worse, the problem wouldn’t stop with Michael’s generation. Whole branches of the family tree that might have lived and loved, laughed and cried, would never come into being at all.

  Rue’s hands began to tremble so badly that she had to pull over to the side of the road and sit with her forehead resting against the steering wheel.

  Finally, after several minutes, she was able to drive on, but she was still crying, and there were more feelings to be faced and dealt with.

  Next came the most prickly fact of all, the one Rue could no longer deny: she was lonely. From an emotional standpoint, she sometimes felt as though everyone on the planet had stepped into a parallel dimension. She could see them and hear their voices, but they seemed somehow inaccessible, forever out of reach.

  Only her grandfather, Aunt Verity and Elisabeth had been able to reach through the invisible barrier to touch her, and now they were all gone.

  Rue sniffled. There was one positive aspect to this experience she and Elisabeth shared, however: it opened the door to all sorts of possibilities. Maybe the philosophers and poets were right and she would see her loved ones again someday. Maybe Aunt Verity and Gramps were carrying on happy lives in some other time and place, just as Elisabeth seemed to be.

  It was all too mystical for a pragmatic mind like Rue’s.

  Darkness had fallen by the time she reached home but, as always, the atmosphere of the house was friendly.

  After carefully hanging up the dress she’d purchased and setting the high-button shoes side by side on the floor of the armoire, Rue went downstairs and made supper: a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of microwave soup.

  She was too tired and overwrought to think clearly or make further plans. After a warm bath, Rue crawled into bed, read two chapters of a political biography and promptly drifted off to sleep.

  In the early hours of the morning, Rue dreamed she was back in Baghdad, at the start of the Gulf War, hiding out in the basement of a hotel with several other news people and trying not to flinch every time a bomb exploded. She forcibly woke herself from the nightmare, but the loud noises continued.

  Rue’s fingers immediately rushed to the necklace at her throat. Once again, the pendant felt warm, almost hot, to the touch. And the predawn air reverberated with gunshots.

  Muttering, Rue tossed back the covers and stumbled through the hallway to the sealed door. Sure enough, it opened when she turned the knob, and now she could hear drunken male laughter and the nervous whinnying of horses on the road, though the thick darkness prevented her from seeing anything.

  There was more shooting, and Rue cringed. Obviously, a few of the boys where whooping it up, as they used to say on TV, and that made her furious. Someone could be shot!

  She gripped the sooty sides of the doorframe and yelled, “Hey, you guys! Knock it off before you hurt somebody!”

  Surprisingly, an immediate silence fell. Rue listened for a moment, smiled and closed the door. True, she had unfinished business in 1892, but she wasn’t going to attend to it in her nightgown.

  There was no point in trying to go back to sleep, thanks to the James Gang. Rue set up her portable computer at the kitchen table and brewed a cup of herbal tea in the microwave. Then she sat down, her toes hooked behind the rung of her chair, and began tapping out an account of the things that had happened to her. Like Bethie with her letters, Rue felt a fundamental need to record her experiences with an orderly succession of words.

  Rue had been writing steadily for over half an hour, and the first thin light was flowing in through the window above the sink, when suddenly the keyboard vanished from beneath her fingertips.

  Rue looked up, stunned to see that the room had changed completely. Dr. Fortner’s cast-iron cookstove stood near the back door. There was no tile, only rough wood flooring, and the wooden icebox had returned, along with the bulky pump handle and the clunky metal sink.

  Just as quickly, the modern kitchen appeared. The computer keyboard materialized in front of Rue, and the sleek appliances stood in their customary places.

  Rue swallowed hard, remembering the time she’d been standing in the front parlor, looking into the mirror above the mantel. The room had altered that day, too, and she’d even caught a glimpse of a woman dusting a piano.

  These experiences gave new credence to Aunt Verity’s hazy theory that the necklace had a mind of its own.

  She sat back in her chair, pressing her palms to her cheeks, half expecting to find she had a raging fever. Instead, her face felt cool.

  After a few moments spent gathering her composure, Rue got out Elisabeth’s letters and read them again, carefully, word by word. Not once did Bethie mention seeing a room change; she’d gone back and forth between the present and the past all right, but only by way of the threshold upstairs.

  Clearly, the common denominator was the necklace.

  Rue rubbed the antique pendant thoughtfully between her thumb and forefinger. She, unlike her cousin, had twice caught glimpses of that other world while just going about her business. Did that mean the invisible passageway between the two eras was changing, expanding? If that were the case, it might also shrink just as unpredictably, or disappear entirely.

  Forever.

  Rue sighed and shoved splayed fingers through her hair, then began pounding at the keys of her computer again, rushing to record everything. She had always believed that reality was a solid, measurable thing, but there was something going on in and around the house that superceded all the normal rules.

  There were no more incidents that day, and Rue spent the time resting and making preparations to return to old-time Pine River. She carefully aired a
nd pressed the fragile dress she’d bought, watched a few soap operas and made herself a tuna sandwich for lunch.

  Then on a foray into the dusty attic, she found one of Aunt Verity’s many caches of unique jewelry and helped herself to a brooch and set of tarnished, sterling combs.

  Later, in her bedroom, she put on the dress and sat at the vanity table, putting her hair up and learning to use the combs strategically. When she’d mastered the technique, Rue sat looking at her reflection for a long time, liking the wistful, romantic image she made.

  The faintly musty scent of the fabric was a subtle reminder, however, that she and the garment belonged to two distinctly different times.

  Carefully, Rue unpinned her hair, took off the dress and got back into her jeans and sweatshirt. She felt a strong draw to 1892, but she wasn’t quite ready to go back. She needed to gather all her internal forces and make this trip count.

  Just to make certain there wouldn’t be any unscheduled visits to the Outer Limits, Rue unclasped the necklace and carefully placed it inside an alabaster box on the vanity. She wondered briefly if the pendant was capable of slipping back and forth between then and now all on its own.

  That concept caused Rue a case of keen, if momentary, panic. She reached for the necklace, drew back her hand, reached again. Finally, she turned purposefully and walked away, determined not to be held hostage by a chunk of antique gold on a chain.

  The pull of the necklace was strong, though, and Rue had to leave the house to keep away from it.

  She decided to call on the Buzbee sisters, the two spinsters who lived on the other side of the road, and find out if they could shed any light on the situation.

  Roberta Buzbee, a plain and angular woman, greeted Rue at the door. She seemed pleased to have company and, after explaining that her sister was “indisposed,” invited Rue in for tea.

  They sat in the front parlor before a blazing applewood fire. It was a cozy room, except for the shrunken head prominently displayed on top of the piano. Rue didn’t ask how the sisters had come to acquire the memento because she was pretty sure Miss Roberta would tell her. In detail.