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  “We know, believe me,” Boyd said. “I’ve had that bastard in my gun-sights. I’ve regretted not killing him many a time.” His observant eyes missed nothing; his voice softened as he said, “He’s the one burned up the Rawleys’ homestead, ain’t he?”

  Lorie saw in my eyes that I could not handle speaking of it; without drama, she rose from her chair and skirted the table.

  “You have traveled far and endured much. Never mind eating just now,” she murmured, leading me up a flight of steps to the hotel room where I had earlier bathed and changed clothes. This time, however, she remained behind. “I’ll sit with you a spell, dear one, if you’ve a mind to let me.”

  I curled around my belly on the narrow, squeaky bed and panic assaulted, hard and merciless. I suddenly couldn’t remember what Marshall had been wearing when I saw him last – for a few horrible seconds I could not even conjure up his face. I sobbed, “He’s gone, he’s gone, oh God, he’s gone…this time he won’t be back and I can’t bear it…”

  Lorie lay beside me and wrapped an arm over my ribs; she did not try to offer words of comfort as I wept, my body wracked by tremors, but she did not release her hold. At long last my breathing slowed, my blood calmed; the sun had shifted, tinting the white curtains the color of weak tea. She smoothed hair from my wet face and I pretended that she was Mom, somehow here to take care of me, her youngest; her lost daughter. It had been so long since I’d seen my mother. Lorie even smelled like her, just faintly of peaches.

  “Stay,” I begged, even though she had not moved.

  “Of course I will,” she whispered, and when I woke the next morning she was still holding me.

  At least half a dozen people met the wagon as it rolled up to a massive wooden barn and a smaller, wood-framed house. I stared with wonder, despite everything, at the structures in the same clearing where my family’s cafe would one day exist. The shoreline was unchanged, though the barn and house had been constructed much further from the lake than Shore Leave would one day perch to face Flickertail with both porches. I let my gaze trace the imaginary path of the steps leading from the cafe to the water and then out over the dock, steps I had raced down a hundred thousand times to jump into the lake. No dock at the moment, only a floating, raft-like platform anchored about ten feet from shore.

  Childish voices, high with excitement, rang through the air. Sawyer jumped down from the wagon seat and was mobbed by his children. He picked up a small boy and tossed him in the air, grinning widely. Upon catching his son, he tipped the boy forward and planted a kiss on his cheek.

  “Daddy, who’s here?”

  “Hi, Mama!”

  “Daddy, can I ride into the barn with you?”

  “Mama, Jemmy hit me!”

  “I did not!”

  Introductions were made, Lorie taking care to repeat each child’s name so that I retained a small hope of remembering them. Rose was the eldest, a somber girl of about fourteen with gossamer hair and golden-green eyes, just like Sawyer’s; she could have been a young version of my mother. Next in line were rowdy, blue-eyed twin boys, James and William, followed by a second fair-haired daughter, Ellie, and the youngest, a son also named Sawyer. I marveled at their faces and voices, these youngsters whose descendents would one day become my family. And just as quickly, horror assaulted; how vulnerable they were, how easily destroyed if Fallon should appear here to harm them.

  No. It’s not up to you.

  You failed Celia and Jacob.

  You failed Marshall and your baby.

  It’s time now to go.

  The young woman in charge in Lorie’s absence was named Libby Miller, grown daughter of Jacob and Hannah Miller, whose family lived a few miles around the lake.

  Miller…

  As in, Dodge and Justin Miller?

  Libby wore her long black hair in a single braid hanging nearly to her waist; tanned to a deep brown and with large, expressive dark eyes, her speech carried the sound of someone raised speaking more than one language.

  “I brought everyone over after lunch, when they could wait no longer,” Libby informed Lorie, brandishing a hand at the excited brood of children. “They have been begging since sunrise to come home!”

  “Did you behave for your aunt and uncle?” Lorie asked her children, hands on hips.

  “Of course we did, Mama!”

  Rose touched her mother’s elbow, a quiet request for attention; only because I was close enough did I hear her soft, beseeching question. “Did Malcolm come home with you, Mama?” The girl’s beautiful eyes contained an agony of hope, and certainty resounded in my head, a deep awareness of something beyond all of us; I recognized, She’s in love with him.

  Lorie shook her head, resting a hand lightly to her daughter’s cheek.

  I would wish, later, I remembered more about that evening. Awash in grief, I strayed to the periphery, caught up in studying the familiar lakeshore and imagining my childhood home more than seeking company or conversation. I had been introduced as Ruthann Rawley and the children, other than perhaps Rose, were young enough not to speculate too deeply about my presence. The assumption was that I would live with the Davises indefinitely, which Malcolm had arranged. And it was obvious Lorie and Sawyer loved and trusted Malcolm, and did not question his opinion, even regarding something as substantial as a widowed woman arriving to make her home with them for the foreseeable future.

  The wagon was unloaded and horses cared for. Dinner was prepared, eaten, cleaned up. The sun eventually sank over Flickertail in a rosy wash of orange and peach. As though mesmerized, I watched it melt and sizzle into the shimmering blue water; it was not lost on me that this sunset was my last. I listened to the others discuss the trip to St. Paul, Malcolm’s potential whereabouts, and the upcoming funeral for Blythe Tilson. The world grew increasingly surreal. I felt as if I sat watching a muted television screen, attempting to make sense by lip-reading. With each incremental darkening of the air, I grew colder.

  Soon.

  But wait until they’ve gone to bed.

  It’s horrible, what you’re doing. It’s not the answer.

  I don’t care anymore…

  And so I waited until the household sank to quiet, all lanterns extinguished, all whispered voices hushed. I had been given a bed in the girls’ room; Rose and Ellie talked in quiet murmurs, interspersed with giggles, shifting around their shared bed as I lay flat on my spine in a narrow trundle bed nearby, whispering a response only if addressed. All of my belongings had burned in the fire and both Lorie and Rebecca lent me clothing until new items could be made; and so it was that I would sneak outside to drown myself in a borrowed white nightgown embroidered with daffodils and lilies.

  If I thought too much about what I intended to do, I grew frightened.

  So I kept all thoughts submerged, save one; I gave over to the memories of Marshall’s face and voice and body, his scent and every last feeling he had ever conjured and inspired and wrought forth from me.

  Forgive me, I thought as I slipped from the house with the illumination of nothing but a three-quarters moon. Silver-white light pooling around my shoulders and toes as I crept down the bank toward Flickertail, its windless surface otherworldly in the moonglow, I clung to my image of Marshall. I knew just where the dock would someday jut over the water and stood exactly there, small, jagged pebbles and larger, smoother stones pressing up against my bare feet. The lake was cold around my toes, then my calves. I sucked a sharp breath and kept walking.

  Once submerged to my neck, mosquitoes whining around my ears, I retracted my feet from the marshy bottom and kicked forward, toes pointed, angling for the center. It had been a long time since I’d pumped my arms and fluttered my ankles but my limbs had not forgotten the motion of swimming. The nightgown became transparent immediately and I felt a surge of embarrassment over it; I should have dressed to die in something opaque. I swam faster, spurred by the chill water and a notion that I needed to get this over.

  It’s time. />
  Dead center from either shore I ceased my crawl stroke and hung suspended, treading water with legs no longer accustomed to this kind of exertion. The lake might have been suspended on a distant planet, as alien to me as anything I’d ever experienced; the black water continued to ripple in the wake of my passage, shattering apart the moon’s reflection, leading back to the point of no return. I turned in a slow circle, eyes wide, absorbing these last moments of life before whispering, “Forgive me.”

  I lifted my arms in a rush, the splash echoing across the silent water, and plunged beneath the surface.

  Soon…

  It took effort to force my body down when nature insisted I float, but I made sawing motions with each forearm, aiding gravity in this case rather than fighting it, and so I sank, eyes closed, the water temperature dropping along with my body. I opened my mouth and prepared to inhale –

  No!

  NO!

  It happened just as I would have filled my lungs with lakewater. A shift, a pull – and then shrieking, hurtling passage along a space devoid of color and sound and light. I knew this feeling; I’d been sucked through this abyss before. Aware it was happening but helpless to fight it I simply gave up, surrendering to the flow of time that I, for reasons unfathomable and beyond my control, was allowed to traverse. Barriers which kept most people stationary in the timeline to which they were born.

  Take me. Go on, take me.

  Kill me this time. You almost did the first time.

  The motionless motion slammed to a halt with enough force that I was almost knocked unconscious, tumbled end over end. This time, my mouth truly filled with water.

  Underwater –

  I was still beneath dark, icy water. I thrashed, unable to scream, clumsy in my disorientation. Instinct asserted itself and I kicked, then kicked again, propelling my body toward the murky light wavering in the distance. It may have been up, down, or sideways; I had lost all sense of direction. I rolled and heaved, like a rock in a tumbler.

  Air – I need air –

  Lungs blazing, I kicked and fought the heavy water, straining for the surface; I broke through with a gasp, thrashing to remain above. A shrill gasping noise, not quite a scream, burst from my lips. Muted voices grew sharp. Frantic and coming closer. A man splashed through the water and grasped my armpits, dragging me from the lake. My unbalanced weight took us both down before we cleared the bank but there was no longer any danger of sinking beneath; we were in the shallows now, close to shore. He braced on both elbows, gasping at the cold, while I tumbled over his chest and fell sideways. A woman splashed to our sides, crying, bending to us and speaking my name, over and over.

  She knew me.

  I knew her.

  Adrenaline pierced my heart.

  I tried to speak her name but my teeth were chattering too hard; I reached both hands toward her instead, realizing that Mathias had been the one to charge into Flickertail. He slogged to all fours before regaining his footing, and together he and Camille helped me stand up.

  “Ruthie! Oh God, Ruthie, it’s you…” Camille crushed me against her warmth; I clung, wracked by shuddering cold, reeling with disbelief, unable to process what this meant.

  Milla…

  My lips moved but no sound emerged.

  “She’s freezing, help me get her up there, hurry!” Camille wrapped me in her coat as she issued instructions, bundling it around my shivering body.

  Mathias gathered me in his arms without another word and carried me up the bank toward the glowing lights of Shore Leave. My home. My family’s home, which I thought I would never see again. Quivering with shock and cold I huddled close to the warmth radiating from Mathias; he shouted for help as he jogged over the snow-slushy yard.

  “Mom!” Camille raced ahead, slipping on the porch steps.

  My chest heaved and stuttered, cracking apart with the force of my emotions. Mom, Aunt Jilly, Tish, Clint – all of them streamed outside, a river of love and life to surround me. To sustain me. I had returned to them. I had tried to die and was instead returned to them. My lips were blue and numb, my skin a sheet of thin ice, but deep in my chest my heart had started beating again.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Landon, MN - March, 2014

  “WE HAVE TO GO BACK.”

  “I can’t let you leave yet.” Mom wrapped both hands around one of mine when I insisted that returning to the past was the only option. “My baby. My Ruthann. You’ve already been taken from me and I can’t let it happen again. Not yet.”

  I interlaced our fingers, unable to argue with her. “I know. I’m not going anywhere tonight.” At that point the conversation had been so intense a pause seemed overdue, and entirely necessary, and I stood to wrap my arms, and the quilt, around my mother.

  The big, classroom-style clock over the pass-through door had now edged past midnight. I was dry and blessedly warm but still required a blanket over my shoulders to ward off the chills. Rather than retreat to the house we stayed in the cafe; the amount of caffeine pumping through my veins would probably prevent sleep until next week. But I had no intention of sleeping. Explanations had blown around us like miniature tornadoes for the past two hours. Absorbing everything which had occurred in my absence was impossible but the most crucial information had been exchanged. We were now armed with information to reverse what Fallon had done to the timeline. Or, so I prayed.

  Table three, our perpetual gathering spot, was surrounded by chairs, coffee rings decorating the ivory plastic surface beneath our elbows and forearms. Mom and Aunt Jilly left to traverse the slippery path leading to the main house; I hated to see them retire to bed, craving the security of their faces and voices, but it was late. Sleep deprivation would help no one. Tish, Clint, Robbie Benson, Derrick, and I crowded around table three while Mathias and Camille sat together at the booth a few feet away; they could not bear to stop touching.

  Derrick Yancy, the least sentimental of anyone present, was positioned straight across from me; I found I appreciated his blunt, almost cynical, attitude. He leaned forward once again. “How certain are you that we can reach the correct moment in time?”

  I hesitated and his eyebrows lowered; there was no point lying. “I’m not certain at all. But if what I believe is true, we can come close. I’ve never had a particular date or year in mind when I’ve…traveled. I’ve always been pulled. But I believe that pull exists for a reason. I would never attempt this if I didn’t think we had a chance of reaching the right destination. If we focus on a particular moment, it’s my hope we can be pulled there.”

  “And that moment is June thirtieth, 1882?” Tish pressed. “The day Blythe Tilson was killed and the night of the fire at the Rawleys’ homestead, right?”

  I nodded. “But that’s cutting it way too close. If we jump from Minnesota, we’ll land in Minnesota. We have to give ourselves enough time to get where we need to go. For me, that’s Montana, and for you,” I indicated Derrick, “that’s Iowa City.”

  He exhaled slowly through his nostrils, reabsorbing what he had agreed to do.

  Please, oh God, please, don’t back out on us, I thought.

  “Two weeks, you think? Will you be able to find them?” Camille’s intensity escalated another few notches. I knew she really meant ‘Will you be able to find Malcolm?’ I had told her everything I could about him but she wanted more. Despite unfathomable circumstances, including his marriage to another woman, Camille had not moved an inch from her position on Mathias’s lap; he kept his arms locked around her waist. Their need for physical contact only intensified my desperate longing for Marshall but I refused to let aching thoughts chisel away my self-control.

  I’m coming for you, Marsh. I will find you, I swear to you. I will make this work.

  “Wouldn’t it make more sense to start from those locations in the first place, rather than the other way around?” Robbie asked, lightly tapping his empty coffee mug on the table. “I mean, isn’t it like a hundred times easier to travel by
car or plane than by, like, I don’t know, donkey cart? How did people travel around then? It sounds fucking horrible.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather we went together,” Derrick admitted, focusing again on me. “I’d prefer a traveling companion who knows the time period.”

  “If we left from different places, we’d have no way to know whether the other one made it there,” I agreed. “Robbie’s right about the inconvenience of travel, but two weeks should be plenty of time. Trains run east to west in 1882.”

  “Will you be safe, Ruthie?” Concern furrowed Clint’s brow.

  “I’ll be as safe as I can,” I assured my cousin, submerging all guilt over omitting certain events I’d lived through in the 1880s. My own safety was lower on my list of priorities than I would ever admit. “And there are plenty of people to help me once I get back to 1882. Our own family, for one, the Davises.”

  “Besides, how safe are any of us? Jesus, it gives me the fucking heebiejeebies to think of Fallon just appearing here, right this minute. What’s to stop that insane motherfucker from killing all of us like he killed Case?” Robbie shot a belated apologetic look toward Tish, wrapping an arm around her slumped shoulders before muttering to Derrick, “Sorry, I know he’s your brother.”

  “He’s no brother of mine,” Derrick said, with quiet sincerity. “He is insane. And I’m tired of fearing him.” And then he surprised me, resting his fingertips lightly on my forearm. “I’ll protect you, Ruthann, to the best of my abilities. I feel responsible for much of what has happened. I’ve known for years that Fallon should be stopped, and I’ve done nothing.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered. I hesitated for only a second. “I think you should know I intend to kill him.” I kept my gaze steady on Derrick’s as I made this vow.

  There was a beat of silence before Derrick made a steeple of his fingertips and then nodded. “I intend the same.”

  The air felt expectant and fragile, as if a wrong word or thought could shatter its integrity to jagged pieces, and I fought a wave of seizure-like shivers. What if I’d succeeded in drowning myself in Flickertail in 1882? What would have become of my family here in 2014? They would have been doomed to a life in this altered world, a place without Grandma and Aunt Ellen, Mom and Blythe, Aunt Jilly and Uncle Justin, without my sisters and their men. Without Marshall. No nieces or nephews or little brothers. In this timeline Case was dead and the Rawleys vanished. It was hell on Earth as we knew it and I had almost condemned them to this reality. I brought a fist to my lips and pressed against my teeth.