Linda Lael Miller Bundle (47 page)

“Here, dear, drink this. You look as waxen as a ghost.”

Rue might have smiled under other circumstances. As it was, she only reached out a trembling hand for the glass and drank with desperate thirst. Once she felt a little steadier, she thanked Mrs. Blake, carefully folded Bethie’s letter and tucked it into her purse.

“I can’t share it,” she confessed softly. “I hope you understand.”

Mrs. Blake’s smile was reminiscent of Elisabeth’s. “I won’t say I’m not curious, dear,” she replied, “but I understand. There are mysteries aplenty in this life, and I’ve learned to accept the fact.”

Rue kissed the old lady’s cheek lightly. “Thank you again, Mrs. Blake. And goodbye.”

Barely an hour later, Rue was back in Pine River, her eyes puffy and sore. Alone in the Land Rover, insulated from a world that couldn’t have comprehended her pain, Rue had screamed in rage and grief over her husband’s unfair death. Tears had left acid trails on her cheeks, and her throat was so constricted, she could barely breathe.

Instead of heading for Aunt Verity’s house, Rue stopped at the churchyard. She found Farley’s grave, under the old oak tree as the clerk in the church office had told her. If there had ever been a stone or a wooden marker, no trace remained.

Rue was mourning a man who’d been dead a century, and there wasn’t even a monument to honor his memory.

The cemetery was cold on that grim winter day, and Rue’s strength was almost gone. She turned—she would visit Elisabeth’s and Aunt Verity’s graves some other day—and made her way back to the muddy Land Rover.

Moving like a person in a voodoo documentary, Rue bought soup and soap and tea and other supplies at Pine River’s state-of-the-art supermarket, then drove to the house where all her adventures had begun.

The mail was knee-deep in front of the slot in the door, and there were so many messages on the answering machine that the tape had run out. Rue didn’t play them back. She just put away her groceries, made a bowl of tomato soup and ate without actually tasting a single spoonful.

After rinsing the bowl, she went upstairs, put fresh sheets on one of the beds, took a shower and collapsed. She slept for fourteen hours straight, got up and made herself another bowl of soup, then went back to sleep for another seven.

When she awakened, rested at last, but still numb with sorrow, Rue took Elisabeth’s earlier letters from their hiding place in the rolltop desk in the parlor and read them again.

Her heart began to thump. Time did not necessarily run parallel between then and now, she remembered, with growing excitement. If she found a way back—and the whereabouts of the necklace was teasing the edges of her consciousness even then—she would probably arrive after Farley’s shooting. But she could also get there before it happened.

Maybe she could intercede.

She ran to find her purse—she’d discarded it on the floor of the downstairs hallway when she first returned—pulled out the letter Mrs. Blake had kept for her and scanned it.

Her gaze snagged on one particular sentence. “…I can only tell you to remember that rainy afternoon when we were thirteen and we decided to make a time capsule.”

Rue yelped in frustration and began to pace. Her memory wasn’t good when it came to things like that, though she could reel off statistics and stock prices and phone numbers until her voice gave out.

“Time capsule, time capsule, time capsule.” She repeated the words like a litany, hoping they would trigger some rusty catch deep down in her mind.

Suddenly, gloriously, the memory was there.

Rain on a leaky roof. The smell of dam dust and moldy hay. Two adolescent girls, herself and Elisabeth, in the barn loft, talking about the distant future. They’d wanted posterity to know about their lives, so they’d swiped a lidded plastic bowl from Aunt Verity’s kitchen and put in things they considered representative of Planet Earth in the 1970s. Lip gloss. Pictures of their favorite rock group, carefully snipped from fan magazines. A candy bar with peanuts and caramel….

Rue hurried through the house and outside, crossing the dead winter grass in long strides. The barn was old and flimsy and should have been torn down years before, but safety was the last thing on Rue’s mind as she went inside.

She did test the ladder leading up to the loft, but only in a quick and cursory way. The boards under her feet swayed a little when she reached the top, but that didn’t stop her, either. She and Elisabeth had put their time capsule into the creaky framework where the floor and wall met with great ceremony.

“X marks the spot,” she said breathlessly when she found the hiding place and knelt to wrench back a board. The whole loft seemed to shimmy at the intrusion, but again Rue was undaunted.

Behind the filthy, weathered board was a dirty plastic container riddled with the tooth marks of some creature that could probably qualify for top billing in a horror movie. Rue tossed the bowl aside without lifting the lid to look inside and peered into the crevice behind it.

At first, she could see nothing but darkness, dirt and spider webs, but after a few moments her vision seemed to sharpen. Well behind the place where her and Elisabeth’s treasures had been hidden, a solid-looking shadow lurked in the gloom.

Rue grimaced, reached deep into the unknown and closed her hand around the object. Having found what she sought, she drew back so fast that a splinter or the tip of a nail made a long, shallow gash in her arm.

She paid no attention to the wound; all she could see was the round, rusted tin she held. Once it had held salve, and the distinct possibility that it was nothing more than a stray piece of trash raised panic into Rue’s throat like bile.

“Please,” she whispered, and it was at once the most sincere and the most succinct prayer she had ever said.

It was hard, and she broke a couple of fingernails, but Rue finally managed to pry off the lid of the tin. Inside, dusty and tarnished and as full of mystery as ever, lay the necklace.

Rue’s eyes filled with tears of relief, and she clutched the pendant to her chest. Now, if only the magic would work again.

Nothing happened, so Rue carefully tucked the necklace into the pocket of her jacket. Only then did she notice that the bit of paper lining the salve tin had writing on it.

Carefully, Rue lifted it to the thin light coming in through one of the wide cracks in the barn wall. “I knew you wouldn’t listen!” Elisabeth had scrawled.

Rue smiled, dried her eyes with the back of one hand and climbed cautiously down the ladder again.

Inside the house, she laid the necklace on the drainboard beside the kitchen sink and washed it with cotton balls, mild soap and water. When the pendant was clean, she patted it dry with a soft paper towel, draped the chain around her neck and carefully closed the clasp.

She shut her eyes, gripped the edge of the counter and waited. Hoped.

At first, nothing happened, but then a humming sound filled Rue’s ears, rising steadily in pitch. The floor buckled and rolled under her feet, and it seemed that she could feel the spin of the earth itself.

Someone screamed and something crashed to the floor.

Rue opened her eyes to see Bethie’s housekeeper standing there, aghast and staring, a shattered crockery bowl at her feet. Its contents covered the length of the woman’s calico skirts.

“Ellen, for heaven’s sake…” a familiar voice complained, and then Elisabeth appeared in the doorway leading to the main parlor. When she saw her cousin, her blue-green eyes widened and her face lit up with a dazzling smile. “Rue!”

“She just came out of nowhere, missus,” Ellen blathered. “I’m telling you, I don’t know about the goings-on in this house. I just don’t know. And now I’ve got myself a sick headache.”

“You’d better go and lie down,” Elisabeth told her gently, but she didn’t look at the housekeeper again. She gave Rue a gentle hug.

“Is he dead?” Rue whispered, unable to bear the agony of wondering for another moment.

“Who?” Bethie asked, and her look of puzzlement raised Rue’s spirits considerably.

“Farley. Farley Haynes, the marshal.” For the first time, the thought occurred to Rue that she might have come back not only before her husband’s death, but before he knew her.

“Well, he hasn’t been very happy about being separated from you,” Elisabeth said with a fond smile, “but people don’t usually die of a broken heart. They just
wish
they could.”

Farley was alive, and he would know her. Rue’s knees literally went slack with relief, and she might have collapsed if Elisabeth hadn’t steadied her.

“I’ve got to go to him right now,” she said after a few deep breaths.

“But you’re shaken—you need to sit down and have a cup of tea—”

“I need to find my husband!” Rue said. “Is there a horse I can borrow?”

Elisabeth offered no further argument; she knew her cousin too well. “There’s a chestnut mare in the barn. Her name is Maisie, and she prefers to be ridden bareback.”

Rue hugged her cousin, bade her a good life with Jonathan and raced out the back door, nearly tripping because the steps were different from the ones she was used to. The barn that had been a teetering disaster the last time she entered it was sturdy now, and well maintained.

Quickly, Rue bridled the small mare and swung up onto its back. A woman in pants, riding astride no less, was going to come as yet another shock to the fine people of Pine River, but that could not be helped. The necklace had slipped beneath her shirt; it felt warm against her collarbone, and she was filled with a new and terrifying sense of urgency.

She’d gotten back in time, but just barely. There wasn’t a second to lose.

Sure enough, Rue heard the shots just as she and Maisie hit the foot of the town’s main street. Rue spurred the animal through the uproar and confusion—everybody was trying to take cover—weaving her way around wagons and buggies and other horses.

Undaunted, Rue rode hell-bent for the bank. If she had to, she would catch that outlaw’s bullet herself before she let it strike Farley.

Two men ran out of the bank, their faces, except for their eyes and foreheads, covered by dirty bandannas. It was just like a scene in a John Wayne movie, except that here the bullets were real.

Rue looked frantically for Farley, which was why she was caught completely unprepared when an arm as hard as iron wrenched her off the mare’s back and onto another horse. After that, everything was a dizzying blur.

Either she was dreaming, or she was sitting sidesaddle behind Farley, clutching his canvas duster with both hands. The magnificent animal carrying them both was Lobo. She felt the swift, skilled movement of the marshal’s arm as he drew his .45. Then she heard two shots in rapid succession and felt the recoil in the muscles between Farley’s shoulder blades, where her cheek rested. The air seemed thick with the smells of horse manure and burned powder, and Rue figured if she survived this, the first thing she was going to do was vomit.

In that moment, of all moments, she realized she was definitely pregnant.

A brief silence followed. Rue clung to Farley, soaking in the hard strength of his body in front of her. He was alive, and so was she.

He turned his head to look back at her, and although a muscle in his jaw jumped in irritation, Rue could see joy in his eyes. “That was a damn fool thing to do,” he bit out. “You could have been killed.”

The necklace was searing Rue’s skin. She locked her hands together in front of his stomach, determined that even a brand new Big Bang wouldn’t blast her loose. “I love you, too, Farley Haynes,” she said.

The magic was beginning again; the air was filled with a vibrant silence so noisy that Rue could hear nothing besides her own voice and Farley’s heartbeat. She threw back her head and shouted for joy, at the same time tearing the necklace from her throat and flinging it away.

They might land in heaven or in hell. Either way, the die was cast.

“Tarnation,” Farley marveled when the spiritual storm subsided. The marshal, Rue and Lobo were square in the middle of the deserted parking lot at Pine River High School. It was twilight, and the wind was chilly, but to Rue, the sky had never looked brighter nor had the air felt warmer.

Farley turned, his beautiful teeth showing in a broad grin. “Well, Mrs. Haynes,” he asked, just before he kissed her, “what do we do now?”

It was a long moment before Rue caught her breath. “That’s easy, Mr. Haynes,” she replied. “We ride off into the sunset.”