Wrong Face in the Mirror: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series) (4 page)

Long ago, Alistair had learned not to take offense, though he could have told the kid that an awful lot of Oklahoma’s residents were at least part Native American. Anyhow, he was proud of his heritage. “Kiowa,” he said briefly. “I’m
Sheriff Alistair Redhawk.”

“Alistair doesn’t sound like an Indian name,” the boy objected as though all his illusions had been shattered.

“Scots,” Alistair enlightened him. “Also part of my family background.” He looked at the deputy. “What’s going on here, Joey?”

The boy, Joey had said his name was Tim, spoke first, his tone excited. “We were diving . .  .well, not exactly diving, more like wading around because the water’s so shallow and we looked in what was left of an old building under the water and found this skeleton.”

“Old stucco building,” Joey added, his round face earnest. “Crumbling with time, but still enough left to tell what it was.”

The other boys nodded agreement with their friend’s description. “Downright spooky,” a small lad with a heavily freckled face added, “Like something you’d see in a Halloween fun house.”

The boys were caught between having a really exciting time and being a little scared. Alistair made sure his deputy had names and brief statements from each of them and then sent them to their folks. They left, looking back reluctantly as they headed toward their bikes.

After a rather tense day at work, Hart decided to drive through Medicine Stick Park to unwind a little before going home. She’d set this evening as the time when she would tell Tommy and Nikki that she was moving out. She’d found out that Mrs. Harris, the owner, had arranged for the cleaning of the apartment once she’d heard Hart was returning. The loft was rented, Hart had stocked the refrigerator; she was hoping she might be able to sleep in her own place tonight.

She was fairly sure Nikki wouldn’t be displeased to see her go, but Tommy might object. He didn’t seem to feel she could manage on her own.

She would drive through a peaceful little park that she’d probably been too many times in her life even though she couldn’t remember those occasions. This, she was sure, would help to settle her mind so that she could prepare for the confrontation with her brother.

Not many people were camping at this time of year, though it was actually more pleasant than it was a few
days ago when a dome of summer heat was settled over the southern plains.

Like the rest of this part of the state, the park grounds were suffering from the prolonged dry spell with grass drained of color and trees looking thin of foliage with only scanty leaves remaining in place.

She couldn’t remember what the lake should look like, but as she drove up toward the lodge, she could clearly see that the water was devastatingly low and the water looked a sickly green.

Then she saw ahead fully clothed men wading out into the water while a woman watched from shore. Three official looking cars were parked further in and she identified one of them as the sheriff’s car.

She wondered if someone was in danger, perhaps a child out in the water, and she should stop and offer to help. She really wanted to drive past, telling herself that the scene was in professional hands, but somehow instead she found herself driving her car to a stop by the others and getting out to at least offer assistance.

A woman in a uniform of some sort turned to watch her approach. A park ranger, Hart guessed. “Can I be of help?” she asked politely. “Is something wrong?”

“We don’t need gawkers,” the woman responded curtly. “Just go back to your car and drive on.”

Hart barely heard, though she did start to turn around and go back, but with the motion, she glimpse
d the scene from the corner of her eye. It seemed as though the lake was gone and a little town, more of a village really, lay in front of her. She saw a white-painted stucco building and a girl waving urgently to her as though something was wrong.

Abruptly swinging around so that she could see full faced and with a direct gaze, the illusion did not disappear, but became a reality into which she started walking.

The pretty red-haired girl still waved to her, motioning her forward so that almost beyond thought, she obeyed. From somewhere at a great distance she heard a voice calling, “Wait a minute, Miss. You can’t just walk into the lake. That’s a crime scene.”

Strangely enough she heard the sound of her own feet moving through shallow water at the same time she saw only a sandy road ahead, her attention focused on the girl summoning her.

“Stacia,” she said as she drew closer, not knowing where the name came from, but somehow aware that the pretty girl’s name was indeed Stacia and was someone she knew quite well. As she watched, the smile faded from the girl’s face and she collapsed to the ground, falling hard against the wall of the building. “Stacia!” she called, running forward, only to be jerked to a stop.

She blinked her eyes and found she was standing in murky lake water halfway up to her knee and was held in strong masculine arms that restrained her. The girl she’d called Stacia was gone and instead there lay, only half exposed by the shallow water, what looked like a human skeleton
huddled against the wall of a cracked and broken building.

“Stacia,” she said for a third time, her voice soft in her distress, and she turned away from that sight of all that was left of what had been a living breathing human person and pressed her face against the
hard badge on a man’s chest. She felt sick as though she might soon start to vomit and felt the man’s arms steady her so that she did not sink down into the water.

He lifted her in his arms, carrying her from the murky lake and putting her down on the seat of a vehicle. She looked around, grateful that she could only see what was
actually there.

Then she heard Alistair Redhawk’s voice asking gently, “Who was Stacia, Hart?”

She stared up at his granite face. Only his eyes betrayed concern. She shook her head. “I don’t know anybody by that name.”

Alistair had no idea why she was lying, but both Joey and the park ranger were looking at her with open suspicion. He couldn’t help feeling a little protective considering that she looked sick and pale as though she’d just had the shock of her life.

He could understand that if she’d been confronted by a possible murder victim’s fleshly body, but the fact that only a skeleton remained and the death had probably happened back before the little town was flooded with water made her reaction a little over the top.

He didn’t know what to believe about Hart anymore. She had fooled him so completely before that he couldn’t even trust his own reactions.

Quickly he gave orders, instructing the deputy to contact the state boys and set a guard on the scene until they could get somebody out here. He listened to the ranger in the background telling him of the outrageous behavior of the intruder who had ignored her demands to leave with only half a mind as he worried and wondered about Hart.

He turned back to Joey, telling him to get someone out to drive her car into town, th
an lifted her in his arms once again to place her in the passenger seat of his own official car so he could take her home.

“She’s got some questions to answer,” the deputy said.

“If you ask me she’s just an idiot,” the ranger said, “you know that’s Hart Benson, don’t you, and people say she’s losing her mind or having a nervous breakdown or something.”

“I know,” Alistair said. Apparently word of his marriage had not traveled far beyond Mountainside or the ranger was fairly secluded at her job in the park. But, of course, everybody had news, mostly incorrect, about what had happened to Hart. “The idiot is my wife,” he said and drove away quietly, not turning on his lights or siren. This was an emergency only in his
own eyes.

They had traveled several miles in silence when she managed to stir, shift
ing her position so that she could look at him. “Where are you taking me?”

Her skin color glowed faintly green. “Home,” he said, “Unless you feel like you need to go to the hospital.”

She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fin
e.”

“Thanks, sheriff, always appreciate a compliment.”

He didn’t apologize for indicating that she looked sick.

“You can’t arrest me,” she said, trying to sound playful. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Not illegal anyway,” he agreed grimly. “At least not as far as I know.”

She seemed to take that in for several miles before responding. “What did I do to make you so mad at me?”

“Don’t play games with me, Hart.”

“I’m not playing games. I don’t remember.”

“Tell that to somebody who believes it. And then explain to me why you called that skeleton Stacia?”

Suddenly she was visibly shivering as though freezing and, realizing she was acting like a person in shock, he pulled to the side of the road. Ignoring his logical brain that warned him against this action, he pulled her into his arms, murmuring soothingly, “It’s all right, Hart. It’s all right. You’re safe and I’m here.” He held her while her vibrating body slowly became calm.

“Sorry,” she finally gasped. “Don’t know what’s wrong with me?”

He patted her back, th
an touched his lips against silken hair, all his submerged instincts back in place. “You were really shocked when you saw that skeleton, Hart?”

He felt her try to nod her head. “For just a minute, I saw a girl lying there dead. Not a skeleton, but a flesh and blood girl, someone I knew. I called her Stacia and it hurt so much to see her like that.”

She pulled away to look up at him with those beseeching blue eyes. “And then I was standing in the lake and didn’t know how I got there or who Stacia was. That’s the truth, Sheriff. Honest.”

He knew her well enough to feel she believed what she was saying, no matter how unlikely her story seemed. For the first time he felt a slight twinge of doubt
in his conviction that she was fooling everyone.

Maybe Hart really was suffering some kind of breakdown and truly couldn’t remember what had happened between them.

Hart insisted he
go to her apartment rather than to Tommy’s house, feeling she couldn’t face her family right now. He protested, but finally took her there, then saw her into the building, making sure she locked the door after she was safely inside.

She’d
assured him she’d go to her brother’s house after she’d had a chance to regain her composure and he told her he’d see that her car was left parked outside the antique shop door.

She’d been having such a good day, she thought mournfully. Her job was going well, she had a car and an apartment of her own, she was beginning to feel almost like the twenty six year old young woman they’d told her she was.

And now this. An innocent little drive through the state park and she was wondering again about her own sanity. Her behavior at the lake, the things she’d thought she’d seen could not be real. No wonder her marriage had broken if this was the way she’d acted when she was married to Alistair Redhawk.

He’d probably thought she was out of her mind. She sat in the big chair in her own living room and tried to figure things out, but when that turned out to be more a matter of going in mental circles, she began to clean instead, dusting the furniture, sweeping the floor, neither of which needed dusting or sweeping, and then she decided to make nut bread from the ingredients she’d stored in her cabinets and refrigerator. Banana nut bread
, that sounded even better.

Surprisingly she didn’t need to look up a recipe in her new cookbook. She knew how to make banana nut bread, though she didn’t remember how she knew.

Once the bananas were smashed into a pulp and added to the egg, flour, butter, sugar and sour milk mixture, plus a pinch of baking soda, she put the mixture into a loaf pan and placed it in the oven to bake.

It was Stacia’s mother’s recipe. Mrs. Larkin had t
aught her and her sister how to bake starting when they were just little primary school girls.

Stacia? But she didn’t know who Stacia was and certainly didn’t know her mother. The illusory scene out at the lake flooded her mind again and once more she relived the moment when she’d seen the body of a girl sprawled on the sand.

And then it had turned into a skeleton, just broken bones and an old building, both worn away from water and time.

Shaken and ill, she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. If she kept them shut tightly, then surely no undesired images would come to mind.

She began over again. Her name was Hart Benson, the first name had been chosen as a variation on her grandmother’s family name, Hartley. She was twenty six years old and had a master’s degree in American literature, though her self-proclaimed favorite book was by an English writer.

Getting slowly to her feet, she went to the bedroom, coming back with the worn, rather small, brownish book, reading the title aloud as though it offered some reassurance, “Take Three Tenses: A Fugue in Time.”

She couldn’t recall the details of her own life, but she remembered the story she’d read more than once. It was two love stories, one centered in the past and another in the present, World War II in London. It was also the story of a family that had lived in the same house through a period of one hundred years.

The story slipped back and forth in time between the different generations. Was that what was happening to her? Was she slipping in time? It would be easier for her to believe that she was suffering from some malady of the brain.

A knock from downstairs startled her so that she dropped the old book. “I’m coming,” she called, picking up the book before heading downstairs, peering through the thick glass of the door to see that the sheriff stood outside.

She didn’t want to open the door to let him in, but somehow the silence and the sun glint
ing through the windows to turn both dust and cobwebs golden seemed to cast a spell so that she moved automatically, unlocking the door and staring wordlessly up at the tall man who stood there.

“You all right?” he asked.

She nodded. Of course she wasn’t, but she didn’t know him well enough to tell him the way she actually felt. He wasn’t her friend, she reminded herself, he was enraged about something she’d done to him and she had no idea what it had been.

“Need company?” he asked, surprising her.
She’d expected him to complain that she hadn’t gone to her brother’s house yet.

Again she nodded without having any intention of doing so.

“This old building can get creepy even at this time of day. It must have been years since it was a real live business and I’m sure the ghosts have gathered in the meantime.”

She lifted a startled gaze to his face and was relieved to see a trace of a smile on his face.

“Just kidding,” he said, lifting his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Sometimes I wonder,” she tried to play up to his teasing, but not with any particular success. She drew in a deep breath. “I’m baking banana bread,” she said. “It should be done about now. Come up and have some with iced tea.”

He seemed to hesitate as though surprised at the invitation, than without protest, followed her through the store and up to the apartment.

The scent of the fruit bread lingered pleasantly in the air as they entered and she was glad to be able to busy herself with taking it out of the oven and fixing the tea while he settled himself at the little kitchen table. She didn’t know why she’d invited him up except that right now she couldn’t seem to bear her own company.

Anyway, she told herself, it was time they had a little talk so that she could better understand her own past with this man.