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  Camille’s intense gaze moved between Case and me. “You think Franklin is the time traveler. That he’s the danger Derrick mentioned at Marshall’s birthday party, not Ron Turnbull.” I kept my sister well informed. She had not been at that particular celebration, which we’d held for Marsh last fall at The Spoke, but she knew about the events of the evening. I could almost see the sparks created by her spinning thoughts. “You know what this means. It means return is possible! It means Ruthann and Marshall can come home, here, where they belong.” Tears created a glossy sheen in her eyes, immediately mirrored in mine.

  “Where is Franklin now? Has he been seen since that day? What about Derrick?” Mathias persisted.

  “Derrick hasn’t returned to Jalesville and Jackson hasn’t seen Franklin in Chicago,” Case answered. “He’s keeping tabs on the Yancys and Turnbulls, both.” As were we, in a slightly different fashion; in addition to Mutt and Tiny and our newest dog, a lean, alert-eyed shepherd mix named Ranger, Case kept his father’s double-barrel shotgun positioned near our bed. We assumed the worst when it came to Ron Turnbull and the Yancys, and were taking no chances.

  “Dad’s made discreet efforts to contact Franklin,” I added. “But he’s out of the country, apparently.”

  “So when he travels ‘out of the country,’ maybe he’s really traveling to another century altogether?” Mathias asked.

  I nodded. “It’s the most plausible theory we have to work with. We know time travel is possible, we know Ruthie and Marsh are capable. For whatever reason, they’re both able to move through the…” I faltered, struggling to remember the way Ruthie described the sensation. She had hated to talk about it; I could hardly bear to recall the sight of her fading before my eyes like a scene from a science fiction movie, her long hair and familiar face and limbs growing as transparent as sunbeams. Somehow the barriers, the locks and dams holding most people fixed in a certain time, did not have power over or simply did not apply to Ruthann and Marshall. Or, perhaps, Franklin Yancy.

  “The boundaries of time,” Case finished for me. His voice was husky with both concern and the late hour.

  “But whereas Ruthie and Marsh seemed to have no control over it, it seems Franklin does. If what we believe is true and he can return here from the past, it suggests he has some ability to manage the travel. With Ruthie, it was always because a physical object from the past…pulled at her.” I struggled not to grit my teeth at the memory.

  “Maybe the real question is where does this man passing himself off as Franklin Yancy come from?” Mathias asked. “What time period is he from, originally, if not this one? And what are his motives for pretending to be a Yancy?”

  “Derrick has to know the truth. He’s the key, like I’ve said before.” I chewed my thumbnail. “I’m certain he was the one who texted Robbie that night. There’s some part of him that wants the truth known.”

  Camille appeared to be attempting to peer into my brain, even though we were fairly adept at reading each other’s thoughts. Changing the focus just slightly, she whispered, “Do you think Marsh found her? What if he went too far back, or not far enough?”

  “I believe he found her.” It took effort but I mustered my conviction. “I truly believe that. I’ve dreamed about them. They were sitting together in the sunshine. I don’t know when exactly, but long before we were born. I consider it a sign.”

  “Do you think she’s seen Malcolm?” The hope in Camille’s voice was apparent even in a whisper.

  “Oh God, I hope so. I hope she’s found all of them, the Spicers and the Rawleys.”

  “She seems so close, Tish, almost like we could hear her if we really concentrated. I feel it more strongly than ever now that we’re here in Montana.”

  My spine twitched at her words; I felt the same.

  “We think we have to pull them back, somehow,” Case said, returning to an earlier discussion. “Marshall’s presence was able to bring Ruthie back that night in January, right here in our trailer. He was able to stop her from completely disappearing. It’s not much to go on, but Tish and I believe there’s some way to pull them back here, to us. To the place they belong. And it’s up to us to do it.”

  “Marshall saved her that night,” I whispered, recalling Ruthie’s twenty-third birthday, two months and about a hundred lifetimes ago. “Marsh was shouting her name and somehow his will was enough to stall the effects of the force field dragging at her. I believe if he’d been there that day in the snowstorm, when she disappeared from her car, that his presence would have kept her stable in time.”

  “Then what’s to prevent them from being stuck in the past?” Camille asked. This was a no-holds-barred conversation and we all knew it. Nothing was to be gained by avoidance. “If Marshall is with Ruthie now, I mean. What if…they’re meant to stay there?”

  I could not accept this as truth. “No. No, we can’t think like that. Al and I have already combed through every archive and record book available in the special collections section at the library. There’s nothing to go on, no mention of them through all the decades until now. They didn’t stay in the nineteenth century, I know it.” My conviction blazed like acid in my veins, every bit as painful. It was blind faith and I hated being reduced to it, but what was the alternative? Allow the past to swallow my little sister and Marshall? Give up without even trying?

  “That brings us to another subject.” Case gently released my hand and made a steeple of his fingertips, wishing he did not have to relay this further devastating news.

  “The homestead claims,” Mathias understood, sitting straighter. “Clark told us some.”

  Case nodded agreement and explained, “Thomas Yancy was killed in June of 1882, as Derrick revealed in court back in February. He produced an obituary posted in a Chicago newspaper from that month. Cause of death is noted as a gunshot wound. Derrick has no way to prove who pulled the trigger that day but he alleged it was Cole Spicer, a longtime enemy of his ancestor’s. To make matters even more complicated, the homestead documents my father and Clark possessed show dates of purchase near the end of August, 1882. More than a month after Thomas Yancy’s death, but somehow signed and dated by him. The deed Derrick holds, one he’d been searching for since he arrived in Jalesville, shows Thomas Yancy as the primary landowner, with no record of having sold the acreages in his lifetime. It’s a goddamn mess and a half.”

  Case squared his shoulders in an unconscious gesture of defensiveness before continuing. “I will be the first to admit that my ancestors don’t have a solid track record in the character department. The ones I knew were slackers at their best and mean drunks who beat their kids at their worst, so who’s to say my great-something grandfather didn’t kill Thomas Yancy? I may never know the truth. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to roll over and let the Yancys take our land in this century. No way in hell.”

  “If Cole Spicer killed him, he had a damn good reason,” Mathias said, and I loved him for his confidence in my husband’s family; in that moment, a good word from Mathias meant more than anything I could have spoken, which Case would surely interpret as obligatory on my part, as his wife.

  I hated how Case’s troubled upbringing loomed now and again to broadside his sense of self, to make him question his heritage. Case’s father, Owen Spicer, was lucky he’d never met me; I would have given the son of a bitch a piece of my mind. Would have smashed him upside the head for hurting Case in any way, shape, or form; Case hadn’t always been the tough, physically-imposing man he was today. Long ago he’d been a despairing little boy who’d lost his beloved mother and was forced into the role of surrogate father to his younger brother, Gus. Just the thought of Case as a small, vulnerable child at the mercy of a cruel father made both my heart and gut clench. The metal flowers expanded yet again, rigid petals digging into my internal flesh.

  I issued a sharp intake of breath, stomach acid ricocheting up my esophagus with the suddenness of a geyser. Covering my mouth with one hand I fled for the bathroom, hea
ring everyone exclaim at my abrupt departure. Case was there in an instant, kneeling to hold my hair as I vomited, gripping the toilet seat with both hands; at the corner of my vision I saw Camille framed in the open doorway. It took me a second to realize the baby I heard wailing in the background was hers and not the one she was talking about…

  “Tish, why didn’t you tell me?” she implored, advancing into the bathroom. “I suppose I could have guessed, you’ve been so pale and tired, but I thought it was due to all this stress…”

  Case’s head jerked toward my sister.

  Hanging limp over a porcelain bowl, I struggled to put two and two together.

  Mathias appeared next, cuddling little James, all five of us crowded into a space barely large enough for one. I supposed it was only to be expected; in our family there was never much for privacy. We kept nothing from each other.

  Mathias pressed a soft kiss to his son’s forehead and murmured, “Sounds like you’re getting another cousin pretty soon here, buddy.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Iowa Plains - June, 1882

  Axton.

  Snared in the dark reaches of fevered sleep, his name was a soft exhalation of longing, a need hidden by day but which broiled to life each night, forcing acknowledgment. Watching events unfold on two separate planes of a recurring dream, I saw him from a distance, astride Ranger and riding closer at a galloping pace while I seemed to hover, both on a horizontal axis and a vertical one. Suspended perhaps twelve feet above the prairie I was reduced to nothing but mute observation. I knew he was in danger. Certainty pierced my transparent dream-body and I cried out in warning.

  He could not hear my words – or would not heed them. Though damnable distance kept us apart I beheld his face as if only a breath away, cast in the fire of day’s end and set in stubborn lines by the force of his will, the force of his love for me. There was no guile in this recognition; that Axton loved me was the one conviction to which I clung. In the wretched, aching chamber of my soul where all secrets were laid bare, I loved him without reservation. Axton Douglas owned my heart as surely as I owned his – but I would go to my grave without him. There was no other choice, not anymore. I recognized this, too.

  His gaze darted upward – and in seeing me only a few hundred yards ahead, he heeled Ranger and leaned over the animal’s muscular neck. Tears streaked my face and poured down my hovering body, wetting trails along my clothing and rolling from my hem, creating a gray mud-slick of the ground beneath my feet. Lacking control to prevent events from unfolding but knowing exactly how they would play out, I screamed anew for him to stop, both arms extended. Ranger’s strong legs were a blur of rippling motion and Axton could not see the depth of the water, now a mass of swirling energy in which he would plunge headlong and drown.

  Axton!

  Patricia!

  Stop! Axton, stop!

  “Patricia! Wake up!”

  Cole’s voice, gritty with trepidation, intruded upon the dream and shredded my view of the darkening prairie and Axton and Ranger upon it. A different prairie smote my senses, this one shrouded by a bleak, predawn gray. My face was sticky with tears and I gripped Cole’s elbows, seeking reassurance. I couldn’t draw a full breath and therefore tell him I was all right. It was an outright lie, anyway. I was far from all right. I was beside myself with grief and strain, depleted and ill. I had been plagued by the dull ache of a fever for the past twenty-four hours. Cole’s concern was nearly palpable and I focused on him, shutting out the remnants of the dream.

  You are a mother now, Patricia. You must set aside your despicable selfishness.

  Upon seeing my open eyes, Cole exhaled a sigh of relief and lowered his forehead to my neck, gathering me close to his solid strength. He rolled to his right side, tucking me closer, bracketing my nape with one hand. We remained sheltered in the unforgiving wagon bed, over which Cole and Malcolm had stretched a crude canvas top, enough to keep the worst of the weather at bay.

  “You’re burning up, love,” he murmured, resting his cheek to my temple.

  I opened my mouth to tell him I was well but could not manage the words. My lips and tongue were too dry.

  Just beyond the wagon I heard Malcolm Carter murmuring in a companionable fashion to my son, picturing him crouched near the crackling flames of the breakfast fire with Monty tucked in his arms. Interspersed with these sounds was the low-pitched rumble of another male voice, belonging to a man who had joined our journey only a few days ago; Blythe Tilson had in fact been awaiting our arrival at the homestead of Charley and Fannie Rawley, intending to travel north with Malcolm into Minnesota.

  Exhausted and overwhelmed, I had paid little attention to the addition to our party, other than to note the most basic facts – Blythe Tilson was a giant, weathered bear of a man, whose elderly father, Edward Tilson, resided with Malcolm’s family in Landon. After many years of wandering, Blythe wished to reunite with his last remaining relative; the two Tilsons, elder and younger, had not been in one another’s company since before the War Between the States.

  Though Cole and I had intended to make the journey to Minnesota alongside Malcolm, my ill health temporarily overrode those intentions. I’d heard the men discussing the situation last night, a conversation I recalled only in patches as I listened between bouts of restless dozing.

  “I wish Uncle Edward was here just now,” Malcolm had said, the words undulating in slow waves to reach me in the wagon. “He’s a fine physician, one I trust with my life. He would know what was best for Patricia.”

  “I won’t press on with her in this condition,” Cole pronounced, grim but resolute. “Once we reach Iowa City, I’ll get us a room in a boardinghouse. We can make the remainder of the journey when she is recovered. We can rejoin you by late summer.”

  Malcolm was a long time silent – or perhaps sleep had claimed my mind for a span of time. At last he replied, “I hate to part ways. And to leave you behind in that city, in particular.”

  “We haven’t been followed,” Cole said, again after a strange, disorienting lull. “We’ll be safe in town, among so many others. You and Blythe can make better time without the wagon.”

  When I had first clapped eyes upon Cole Spicer last July, shortly after my initial arrival in Montana Territory, I could not drag my enchanted gaze from the magnificent sight of him. Tall and grinning, auburn hair sparking in the sun, he cut a figure such as I had never seen. I supposed my infatuation with his physicality reflected nothing so much as simple conceit, the shallow naiveté of a spoiled young woman only recently, albeit regrettably, married; Cole was Dredd Yancy’s opposite in all ways. There had been span of a time during which I would have given anything to claim every precious moment of Cole’s attention – my father’s fortune, my husband’s fortune, my very eyes. No price seemed too great for the privilege.

  I was vain; foolhardy to an unforgiveable degree.

  Paces away, outside in the gathering dawn, my newborn son issued a small grunt, the sort which inevitably led to full-scale cries. My nipples swelled and prickled in an immediate unspoken response to this demand. Seconds later Malcolm called in a hushed voice, “This little fella’s wantin’ his breakfast, I’d wager.”

  “I’ll fetch him, love,” Cole whispered, planting a soft kiss upon my brow before extricating himself from our makeshift bed and climbing from the wagon with his characteristic grace. He and Malcolm exchanged a few quiet words before Cole reentered bearing the baby and a canteen, from which he helped me to sip.

  “Take a bit more, if you’re able,” he whispered, with gentle insistence.

  The reality of my depleted and ragged physical form retreated to a space at the back of my mind as Cole surrendered Monty to my embrace. With only a little difficulty, I freed my left breast from the damp confines of my tattered, sour-smelling blouse; the shock of the baby’s hard gums upon my tender nipples had long since receded, becoming tolerable pain. Monty latched hold with no trouble, as he had from the first, and proceeded
to gulp with noisy contentment, the side of his small, soft face melting into my overheated skin as though we were one entity rather than two. I lowered my head to an outstretched arm.

  “I am so sorry for this hard travel, love. We’ll reach the town by tomorrow.” Cole eased full-length alongside us, bracketing my waist with one hand. The light had shifted with advancing day, allowing me to perceive his features in the gloom of the wagon. To claim I did not love Cole would be yet another lie. I could not deny my love for him any more than I could deny Axton’s presence in my innermost heart. The distinction was something I sensed at a level comparable only to instinct; I loved Cole, had made love with him, taken his body within mine and his seed into my womb, and yet the idea of spending the remainder of my life as his wife was a quiet resignation rather than a rejoicing.

  No matter; the choice was no longer within my ability to make. I was determined to love Cole Montgomery Spicer as he deserved to be loved. And yet – dear God, forgive me though I do not deserve forgiveness – I wanted that sacred, indefinable thing which my dear Ruthann shared with Marshall Rawley. How did one person become the one, the only one, for another? To the point that all others, no matter how well-meaning or desirable, fell short, unable to compete with that one. It seemed a notion both insensible and childish; a little girl’s dream with no basis in reality.

  But I knew.

  When you know, you just know, Axton had whispered before he rode away from me for the first time, last summer at Grant Rawley’s homestead; even then we possessed no certainty regarding when we would next meet. And I know you are for me, Patricia.

  I would tear myself innards-out to understand. I could not reach a satisfactory explanation; the truth defied logic. The undeniable certainty of Axton Douglas. Deep in the night, awakening from dreams of him, I lay steeped in memories of the moments I had shared with Axton before my own choices separated us. I blamed no one but myself. I had been the one whose desire to understand lovemaking overrode sensibility – and I had wanted Cole that clear, yellow autumn afternoon, only hours before Miles Rawley was shot and killed in the dooryard of his brother’s homestead.