Wakening the Past: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series Book 2) (5 page)

Looking composed and slightly annoyed, Serena Hudson got out of her rental car in front of the Redhawks’ ranch house and strode forward. Hart couldn’t help being glad she wasn’t the runaway granddaughter in this case because auburn-haired Serena looked like she meant business.

Hair probably colored at her age, Hart thought randomly, but it’s the same shade as Helen’s was. Well, Helen was her mother. It was always hard to remember that Helen was gone, as if each day she had to gradually absorb knowledge of the loss of her only sister.

“Roberta Louise Lawrence,” she said, stopping in front of her granddaughter, who for once in her life looked almost scared. Hart was surprised; she’d only thought the things that happened to her in dreams frightened the girl, who seemed intimidated by few things in the real world.

“Hi, Granny.” With a visible degree of caution, the fourteen-year-old reached up to kiss her grandmother’s cheek. “Hope you had a good trip.”

“Roberta Louise,” Hart mused aloud. “I had no idea.”

“Isn’t it hideous?” Bobbi asked plaintively, her round face troubled.

“It’s a lovely name,” her grandmother countered. “Your father picked it out.”

“You always say Daddy has no taste,” Bobbi said, grinning as though she felt the worst moment was past.

“Roberta, I would never say such a thing.”

“Well, it’s what you think anyway.”

Serena ignored her granddaughter to greet Hart and thank her for looking after the wayward girl. Hart, who guessed the older woman was probably weary from the long journey and worrying about her granddaughter, invited her inside, than left the two alone while she went into the kitchen for iced tea.

Surprisingly after the ice storm of only the day before, today was warm and spring-like and the idea of
cold tea was refreshing. She refrained from heavily sweetening the drink, however, since her guest was not local, but put a sugar bowl and a container of artificial sweetener on the tray with the pitcher and glasses, wondering if she’d given them long enough to get through the first few rough moments.

No such luck. They were in the midst of a spirited argument as she came in and she would have turned to walk right out if Serena Hudson hadn’t imperiously waved her into the room. “My apologies, Mrs. Redhawk,” she said once Hart had put her tray down on the coffee table and seated herself. “My granddaughter shouldn’t have drawn you into a family matter like this.”

“I had to come here,” Bobbi protested, “I didn’t know where else to go. Besides, Hart and me, we have a connection.”

Hart was afraid that was true. She didn’t want to be drawn into this matter, but remember
ing how she’d felt as a girl when people acted like she was weird when she tried to tell them the things that were happening to her, she knew she had no choice but to defend Bobbi.

“I think she was resourceful, coming here on her own and all,” the words petered out as she faced Serena’s strong look. “Mrs. Hudson, she felt she could trust us.” She looked past the woman to the girl’s troubled face. “She can.”

“All I know is that we will be leaving for the airport first thing in the morning. I’ve booked tickets home for both of us.”

“No, Granny!” Bobbi protested.

“Please give her some time here,” Hart added. “She’s troubled by what she’s experienced and needs time to work her feelings through.”

She began to pour tea over the ice already in the glasses, handing one to each of her guests and offering sugar and lemon, which both refused.

“You sound as though Bobbi has been through some sort of trauma,” Serena protested, putting her glass down on the table without so much as a sip.

“I believe she has been troubled by the story of what happened to your aunt,” Hart suggested. “She had a terrible nightmare last night.”

Serena frowned. “She has been having nightmares and that’s not like her. Bobbi is a resilient child, not given to imaginings.”

That seemed to be true enough to Hart. Bobbi was a confident extrovert, nothing like the real Hart who had been sensitive, quiet and very imaginative. She couldn’t see
her as a reborn version of Hart and yet something was seriously off with the girl.

She couldn’t let Serena
hustle her back to California where there would be nobody who had a chance of understanding what was happening to her.

“Why don’t you stay here for a few days,” she suggested, managing a rather stiff smile. “Visit a little.”

She heard the front door open, then familiar footsteps. Alistair was home and he would be furious with her since he’d made it so clear he wasn’t ready for visitors. As for herself, she’d be almost glad to have company in the house, standing between her and this strange, unspoken quarrel she was having with her husband.

She looked around as he came into the room, his face tight with tension. Another bad day. “No luck with finding Mr. Jeffers?” she asked anxiously.

He shook his head, looking past her to Serena Hudson. “I’m glad you’re here, Mrs. Hudson, so I can tell you in person. We got word today from the state. They’ve confirmed that the bones found in the lake matched your family’s DNA. It seems very likely that the murdered woman was your mother’s sister.”

Serena’s face contorted with distress, but Hart quickly looked from her to Bobby. The girl gave a little cry, th
an fell in a dead faint.

Alistair didn’t want to talk about anything weird. He was a practical man who believed in the reality around him and didn’t go in for spooks or spirits nor tales of either so he busied himself with starting a fire in the grill and beginning to cook hamburgers for supper. Certainly neither Serena or her granddaughter was in shape to drive on out to the lodge in the darkness and there was no other hostelry in the immediate area, so they were stuck with them as guests for the night.

Hart slipped a frozen blackberry cobbler into the oven to bake for dessert and put together a salad to go with the hamburgers.

Bobbi, seeming recovered from her fainting spell and unwilling to discuss the incident, ate two hamburgers, a pile of salad, and a large helping of cobbler with vanilla ice cream while her grandmother nibbled at her dinner. Having not taken time to eat all day, Alistair ate hungrily, but didn’t protest when the two women took over the dishes and cleanup, telling him he looked exhausted.

He found himself in the living room with the television on to a cable news network and only Bobbi for company. “You all right?” he asked gruffly.

She nodded, apparently intent on a news story that he was quite sure would have no interest for a girl her age.

So she was going to ignore him. His debt to civilized behavior to
ward a guest in his home satisfied, he picked up the newspaper that had been published in Wichita today and read of the futile search of the junk shop, ending with the orange jump suit as the only bounty. Various townspeople were briefly interviewed to round out the story and expressed their fears that the escaped murderer offered a threat to the community.

The story of that long ago murder was repeated. Jeffers, a friend of the victim’s teenaged son had gone into an irrational rage and, in front of the younger son, had beaten the disabled older Maxwell to death. It had been a brutal killing and, in those days, little ground was given for the youth of the attacker. Nolan Jeffers, the only child of a widowed mother who died of grief after his incarceration, had pleaded his innocence, but nobody believed him. The testimony of the Maxwell child had been heart-breakingly convincing.

He supposed Hart had to know this latest happening, but he preferred to tell her himself and he wanted to spare her reading the cold hard facts of Jeffers’ original crime. She was fond of the old man. Crumpling the newspaper, he tossed it toward the fire and strode from the room.

He didn’t see that behind him, a frowning Bobbi took the iron poker and fished the newspaper from the ashes. The ebbing fire was only beginning to crisp the edges and she la
id it on the stones in front of the fireplace and blew out the fire. Then, giving it a couple of minutes to cool, she began to read the story that Alistair had tried to obliterate.

Bobbi didn’t much like Alistair Redhawk; she didn’t know why. But if he was trying to keep a secret from Hart, then it was her job to know why.

For some reason, she felt protective toward Hart, kind of like she was a sister or something. She brushed the idea aside, vaguely uncomfortable with the notion. This was all part of the strangeness that had become a part of her life lately.

Though come on, Bobbi
, she told herself.
You’ve always been strange. Up to now, you’ve just been good at hiding it.

She glanced at the front page. The top story, left hand above the fold, was about a high school basketball game. The one on the right was about some old man who had walked away from prison.

Didn’t seem to be anything in either one that Alistair would have been reluctant to have his wife see. Quickly she glanced through the rest of the page. Nothing much there. Mostly about meetings and school events.

Her gaze went back to the escaped prisoner story. Sure enough, Alistair was mentioned in the first paragraph. He’d headed up an investigation after a tip that the escapee was seen at an unoccupied downtown building.

That building was the old store where Hart had once lived in a loft. She’d gone by there after the fire to tell her goodbye.

She read through the rest of the story. Ugh! She wouldn’t want to run into the old guy who had beaten someone to death. He’d be really creepy.

But why wouldn’t Alistair want Hart to read this story? She didn’t trust him. She went into the kitchen and thrust the newspaper before Hart’s face.

“What’s this?”
Hart asked, putting the last of the dishes away. She wrinkled her nose at the scent of the scorched newspaper.

“Read it,” Bobbi commanded, going over to sit at the kitchen table, putting the paper down on the table next to her.

Granny glanced at it. “Basketball?” she asked in disbelief.

Bobbi waited until Hart took the chair next to her. “Read this,” she said, placing a finger on the relevant news story. “Then tell me why your husband tried to burn the paper before you could read it.”

Alistair was years older than her and held a position of responsibility. She was accustomed to looking up to him. Maybe that was why it was so hard when, after she’d finished reading the news story Bobbi had pointed out to her,
she had to confront him.

Sometimes she still felt like the little girl who had been warned by her parents not to tell made
-up stories about how she sometimes lived in another girl’s body, a girl called Hart.

Mom warned her that little girls who told lies were sometimes taken away from their families and watched by doctors to find out what was the matter with them. Serena Larkin had normally been a sensitive, loving mother and
Stacia had finally come to understand that she’d only tried to scare her daughter into compliant behavior because she was frightened of the very thing she warned her daughter against.

Serena had been afraid her daughter would be taken from her and so she’d built a wall around the girl, bidding her to keep silent, and giving her little of the freedom usually accorded as a little girl grew into a bobbysoxer and then into a young woman.

She’d been guarded like a hot house plant because her mother thought something was wrong inside her mind.

She closed her eyes now. Instinctively she knew that was also what her husband feared. A pragmatic, practical man he loved her so dearly that he would close her in a box to keep her safe, guarding her like a child
who would wither if exposed to the harsh winds of reality.

Something of her own love edged away at the thought. Could she
care for a man who did not respect the person she actually was?

“Hart?” The question came from another woman named Serena, Serena Hudson, her mother’s granddaughter named for her. “Are you all right? You look as though you’ve had a shock.”

Hart glanced past her to her granddaughter. Bobbi was an uncanny child, an old soul, part of the haunting that had made her life different.

“Why didn’t he want you to know?” Bobbi asked, her childish face set in a scowl.

Curiously she wanted to excuse him. “He wants to protect me,” she said.

“From who?” Bobbi asked.

“From me,” Hart answered simply. Her legs were shaking as she stood. “Please excuse me,” she said and without looking back went to the bedroom where she knew her husband would have gone seeking privacy from his unwanted guests.

She stepped into the room, closing the door firmly behind her. He lay on his stomach, his face pressed into the pillows on their bed. He looked unutterably weary, but she knew this couldn’t wait. They had to work through this or everything would be over for them.

“Alistair,” she said.

He didn’t move, but somehow she knew he was only pretending to be asleep. The last thing he wanted was a confrontation with her. She waited, knowing the power of patient silence.

Finally he stirred, than turned over, his face an inexpressive mask. She remembered that native Americans had once been known for their ability to keep their faces from showing their emotions. He wasn’t revealing anything of his feelings.

Well, she came from a different cultural background. The members of her family had been given to loud arguments and open displays of crying, rage and even affection. Her parents had kissed and hugged them, even as they had exerted their own stern discipline.

She absolutely could not stand cold disapproval or anger held in reserve as though it built up value by being kept inside.

She went over to sit on the end of the bed. “Alistair,” she said, “we must talk.”

“Sure,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”

“First of all, I want you to tell me about today?”

“What about today?”

She drew in a deep breath, irritated by his avoidance. “I saw the paper,” she said. “You failed in your attempt to burn it before I could see it. Bobbi fished it out.”

His forehead deepened into a frown. “What’s wrong with that kid?”

This was a side issue. He meant to lead the conversation in any direction other than the one she intended to confront.
“Why did you try to burn the paper?”

He sat up, resting against the headboard of the bed. “No reason. I’d read it. No point leaving it l
aying around.”

Her lips tightened. “It was today’s paper. You’d just brought it home. You always leave it for me to read.”

“You were busy with Serena and Bobbi.”

“Alistair.” She turned around to face him, feeling the soft mattress give under her motion. “You didn’t want me to see it.”

“I thought it would be better if you heard from me what had happened today. You’ve had a lot to upset you and you’ve been worried about Jeffers.”

“It’s not like you found his body. Just his jumpsuit. At least that’s what the story said.”

“I was more concerned that you’d be disturbed by the bald report of his crime. The newspaper didn’t soft peddle the details.”

She nodded. “It was hard to read. I still find it impossible to believe that Mr. Jeffers did such a terrible thing.”

This time he was silent, letting her draw her own conclusions. “I just wish we could find him.”

“Me too. Before he hurts someone else.”

She could almost have laughed at the idea of that gentle old man harming anyone if she hadn’t just read that article. True, people did change over a lifetime and his life spent in prison might have taught him more of evil than good. For the first time she wavered just a little in her opinion of Nolan Jeffers.

“No matter,” she said. “What I wanted to talk to you about was this attempt you’re making to shelter me. I’m approaching my twenty
fifth birthday and in my right mind. Don’t treat me like I’m a child.”

“Hart, you know you’re
twenty six,” he reminded her gently. “You’ll be twenty seven.”

She stared at him until his face reddened.
She’d forgotten that Hart was two years older than herself.

“Surely you’ve put that nonsense behind you. You can’t still imagine you were Stacia Larkin back in the ‘40s in old Medicine Stick.”

She closed her eyes. “You were there that night, Alistair. You saw Stacia and you knew she was me.”

“I was distraught. I didn’t know what was happening except I couldn’t find you and was scared to death at the thought of what might be happening to you.”

So there it was, said right out. He’d admitted the reality of her beliefs that night, but since then he’d managed to dismiss that conviction. He’d convinced himself that he’d been delusional. That was easier than believing that the strange happenings Hart had reported could be true.

That was it. She couldn’t go on with the marriage.

She got to her feet, but he must have seen something of her resolution in her expression because he leapt up and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her to him for a fierce kiss.

For a moment she yielded, giving in to the passion he induced in her. They grappled in a desperate embrace, then she struggled, managing to free herself from the superior strength in his arms and body because he allowed her to do so.

“Don’t leave, Hart,” he pleaded with quiet dignity. “You’re everything to me.”

She met his gaze. “Alistair,” she said in a broken voice. “You don’t even know who I am.”

When she got back to the living room, she found Serena and Bobbi sitting quietly, apparently watching an infomercial. Obviously they didn’t even know what was on the screen in front of them, but were just pretending not to be aware of the tension in the household.

Hart waited until they went to bed, then got
blankets from the hall closet and went to sleep on the sofa. Sometime in the night she heard Alistair leave the house, but told herself it was only another sheriff’s department emergency and went back to sleep.