She gave him a dry laugh. “You want a nineteenth-century wife, too?”
“No thanks. I like being a bachelor.” He sat on the arm of the sofa while she continued to pace in small circles. “Look…I don’t know whether the Barrett journal is true, but I know your father’s story is. If you’re looking for a logical explanation you’re not going to find one. The Barrett journal is-what-it-is and the brooch holds an ancient Celtic secret. That’s hard to grasp.”
“I’ve had a ghost following me around since I was ten. The natural and supernatural coexist in my world.”
“Look at the way your parents raised you. You’ve been attending pioneer re-enactments your entire life. You can ride, shoot, and yoke the oxen as well as your father. Why’d he insist you learn to do that? Why’d he direct you toward the medical field? Why’d your mother teach you how to cook over a campfire? You probably never noticed how your speech pattern changes when you’re out on the trail. You turn into a nineteenth-century woman.”
He sipped his coffee and they were quiet for several minutes. “You may not want to hear this, but your father raised you to make this trip, or more accurately, to make a return trip. Sean would have told you the truth when he knew you were ready. Knowing him, I suspect he intended to go back with you someday.”
Elliott picked up a legal pad and thumbed through the pages. “When did Frances Barrett say those people were killed?”
“June sixteenth. Why?”
“Well, look, if you went to South Pass—”
“Have you ever been to South Pass, Wyoming? It’s a wide-open space now. Can you imagine what it looked like in 1852?”
“No. But if you could get there by June sixteenth you could see if anyone matches the little painting, get a hair sample for DNA and then come home. You’re a paramedic. Dead bodies don’t bother you.”
She shuddered and tried to block out the memory of her parents’ vacant eyes staring at her moments after the crash. “I’ve seen my share. They’ve all bothered me.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She paced the room, biting her nail. “If I went back in time—and I’m not saying I’m going—but if I did, the tricky part would be arriving in South Pass by the sixteenth.”
“When did Sean go back?” Elliott moved to the desk and put his feet up. “Sometime in the spring, wasn’t it? If you go back in March or April that would give you plenty of time to get to Wyoming, assuming the brooch takes you to the same place it took him.”
She turned again and headed toward the window. “Do you really think I could do it?”
“Well, you can’t change history or what happened in South Pass. That might obliterate your life in the twenty-first century. But yes, you’re physically able to handle the journey.”
Kit stopped pacing and stared at Elliot. “Okay, I’ll get the brooch and go.”
“Whoa.” He put his feet on the floor. “You can’t go off unprepared. We know from the journal that Sean returned with Mary and a covered wagon. So it seems logical that you can take supplies and emergency equipment with you.”
“You make it sound like I’m going off to a third-world country.”
“You’ve been on the trail. You know how primitive it can get. This isn’t a reenactment. It’ll be worse.” He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “Look, I know you. You’ll never be settled until you have the truth. If you go, I’d like to go with you.”
“If I decide to go, you can’t. You’ll need to cover for me, especially with Sandy.”
“And let you go off and have all the fun? That’s
not
going to happen.”
She’d sneak off without him, of course.
As much as she’d love to have Elliott along, she wouldn’t put him through a rigorous trip while he was recuperating from his fourth leg surgery in five years and facing another one before the year ended. If she went, she’d go alone.
KIT MULLED OVER her predicament for several weeks while devouring every word of her father’s journal. Then in the early morning hours of April Fools’ Day she rolled out of bed drenched in cold sweat. In a dream, she’d heard the voice of a young woman crying out for help.
Unable to go back to sleep, Kit wandered to the kitchen and steeped a cup of tea. Tate trotted into the room and whined to go outside. She opened the back door and stood there, arms folded, watching the sun peek above white-planked paddocks. The air smelled of horses and freshly turned earth. Tears slipped down her cheeks. It didn’t seem fair that their stallions could trace their line back over three hundred years to three foundational stallions, but she couldn’t draw a line back to her roots. She didn’t know where they were.
Somewhere in 1852. Maybe.
The not-knowing tied her up tighter than the twine wrapped around the bundle of old newspapers stacked at the door. As she wiped away a tear, she recalled a quote by
Anaïs
Nin. The words swirled inside her mind and tasted sweet on her tongue.
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
She slapped the door with the palms of her hands. Not knowing her identity was more painful than the risks she’d take going back in time. And at that singular moment, she knew what she would do. Not what she had to do, but what she chose to do.
KIT HUSTLED OUT of the house shortly before sunrise for her usual horseback ride around the farm. This morning though, she rode straight to the old tobacco barn where her supplies were already stowed in the covered wagon. After yoking the oxen used in the annual Old Kentucky Farm Days Celebration, she tied Stormy to the tailgate, slipped a nineteenth-century yellow gingham frock over her jeans, and shoved her flannel shirt into her carpetbag. A shiver of anxiety coursed through her as she removed the brooch from its velvet-lined box and tucked the jewelry into her pocket.
She climbed up on the wagon’s bench seat with her to-do list in hand. One item remained unchecked: tell her parents goodbye. She snapped the whip over the heads of the oxen and the team lumbered across the pasture toward Cemetery Hill.
At the crest of the knoll, pockets of a shimmering blue fog rose from the ground leaving only the tip of Thomas MacKlenna’s monolith visible in the pre-dawn light. Kit gathered her shawl around her, warding off the strong current of air that lifted dead leaves in upward spirals.
Something wavered in the tree line. She gasped.
Why is he here now?
Her blue-eyed ghost carried a shovel. Another apparition who resembled the first Sean MacKlenna appeared and together they glided across Cemetery Hill. Then her ghost rammed his shovel into the ground surrounding old Thomas’ monolith, marking the burial site as if it didn’t already exists.
“What’re you doing?” Kit asked.
Her ghost held his hand out toward her, but she shook her head and kept her distance. The Sean MacKlenna look-alike put his arm around her ghost’s shoulder and together they faded into the mist.
She shivered.
This is probably a good time to leave.
When she pulled the brooch from her pocket, the stone warmed both her palm and her mother’s wedding band she had worn on her right hand since the funerals. A notation she’d made in her notes popped into her mind.
Getting help will be easier if I pretend to be a widow.
She switched the ring to her left hand, feeling a twinge of guilt.
How can this hurt anyone?
It probably wouldn’t, but it was a lie. Once she started down that thin edge of a wedge, as her Granny Mac used to say, telling the next one would be easier.
She opened the stone as her father had described in his journal and read the Gaelic words aloud.
“
Chan ann le tìm no àite a bhios sinn a' tomhais an gaol ach 's ann le neart anama.”
Tendrils of mist, carrying the scent of heather and peat fires, wrapped her in a warm cocoon.
Tate barked, the wagon jerked, and dog tags jingled.
A swirling force propelled the wagon forward into amber light, taking Kit who-knew-where with six oxen, a Thoroughbred, and a high-spirited golden retriever.
Chapter Two
Independence, Missouri, April 4, 1852
KIT KEPT A white-knuckled grip on the bench seat until the frantic ride ended as abruptly as it had begun, cutting her loose in a fog. Fuzzy shapes appeared all around her.
Who’s out there? What’s out there?
Whatever or whoever it was, she wasn’t about to face the unknown without protection. She reached into the carpetbag at her feet, wrapped her fingers around an 1850 single-shot Henry Deringer pistol, one of the weapons she’d pilfered from her father’s gun collection, and slipped it between the folds of her skirt.
One shot. One chance. Not particularly good odds.
The fog lifted with the dramatic flair of a curtain rising on an opening act. The unfolding scene could easily be a refugee camp. Smokey campfires and hundreds of tents and wagons covered acres of land in a nineteenth-century version of uncontrolled urban sprawl.
Then,
wham.
The stench of garbage, manure, and burned coffee hit her nostrils, disturbing her already queasy stomach. A hammer’s clang rang from the blacksmith’s forge and reminded her of Hemingway’s
For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Not a good omen.
Kit’s gaze followed the haggard woman’s face as they cooked and tended to children. Men huddled in small groups with maps spread opened on makeshift tables.
No one’s pointing at me. I just dropped out of the sky and no one cares.
Tension unknotted in her shoulders, and her trigger finger relaxed.
The six oxen remained quiet, apparently undaunted by their journey through the time portal. Stormy had his tail up, ears pricked forward, and eyes focused. Tate jumped over the trunks and burlap bags, climbed up on the seat beside her, and licked her hand.
“Are you okay?” She dug her fingers into his dense, reddish-blond fur and scratched his neck, jiggling his dog tags. The collar had to come off and with it his flea protection. “Sorry, buddy, but I don’t think anyone would understand what this is.”
The weather felt warm against her skin but not hot, and sunlight filtered through a few wispy clouds in a deep, blue sky. A Renoir sky, her art teacher would say. The beauty beyond the smoky campsites warmed an urge to draw that had been stone cold since the crash, but now wasn’t the time. As soon as she found a wagon train bound for Oregon, she could sketch until she wore her pencils’ graphite tips to nubs. When she returned home, she’d have notebooks full of sketches and a lifetime to paint them.
Tate nudged her arm.
“You’re ready to go, aren’t you?”
His dark, deep-set eyes said, “Yes.”
Based on her research, she would begin at Waldo, Hall & Company, a freighting business operating out of a two-story brick building near Independence Square. If they couldn’t lead her to a wagon train, her next stop would be Hiram Young’s Wagon Shop.
A quick spank with the whip and the oxen lumbered up the hill following an old road toward town. When she spotted the freight office’s rusty sign swaying over an oak door, her hands turned cold and clammy. She gave herself a mental kick in the ass.
I’m a first responder. Fear has never held me back.
She stood on the edge of a panic attack.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
It took a couple of minutes, but by the time she halted the team in front of the freight office, her breathing had returned to normal.
Can I leave everything unattended?
Certainly not something she could do in her century.
With a nonchalant air, she glanced up and down the street. Some nasty-looking men were hanging around, and never-met-a-stranger Tate didn’t amount to much of a watchdog. The freight office though was only ten or so feet from the wagon. If she stayed close to the door, she would hear him bark if someone approached the wagon.
“Stay.”
He wagged his tail.
“I mean it, Tate. Stay. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
The door barely creaked when she pushed it open on a paper-cluttered office smelling of apple and cherry pipe tobacco. In a sunlit corner of the room, a man reading t
he
Independence Reporter
sat tipped back on a chair’s spindly rear legs, the heels of his muddy boots looped over the chair rung. A head of thick, black hair peeked above the newspaper. The man rustled the publication, turning pages slow and easy with long slim fingers.
Kit cleared her throat. “Can you help me? I want to join a wagon train heading to Oregon.”
The deep burr of a Highlander’s voice came from behind the newspaper. “We set out in the morning and have room for one more family.”
Kit stared at the newsprint still blocking the speaker’s face. “I don’t have a family.” She paused for a shaky breath then continued. “Could I— Can I still join up? I’m a widow” Her tongue caught on the lie, and a heated blush spread across her cheeks.
The chair dropped to the heart-of-pine floor with a heavy thud. The man unfolded his long, lean body and stood. She guessed him to be about six-one, one eighty. She was good at sizing up people whether they were standing or lying on a gurney.
Ropey veins in his forearms pulsed beneath red-flannel shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows. The loose shirt did little to disguise the broad expanse of his chest. He tossed the newspaper to the pedestal desk and turned toward her, glaring with vibrant blue eyes curtained by thick lashes. A rough layer of dark morning whiskers covered his square-jawed face.
The downy hairs on her neck stood upright.
Impossible.
She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Even facial scruff couldn’t hide the face as recognizable as her own. The face of her ghost.
The floor fell away from beneath her feet, and she swayed, but somehow remained standing. The man began to whistle the unmistakable strains of Bach’s
Joy of Man’s Desiring
. A Bach-whistling ghost look-alike. No. Her ghost always appeared clean-shaven and impeccably dressed, not scruffy like this Highlander.