Wrong Face in the Mirror: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series) (9 page)

In the light of the cold, late September morning Alistair, feeling as smoky, grimy and dejected as the half burned old building stood with two young volunteer firemen, looking at the damage, and only half listening to their chatter.

“Awesome that we managed to save what we did,” one of them said with tired pride. “Old Miz Harris may be able to savage some of her belongings.”

The other nodded. “Nobody died and we kept the other buildings from getting on fire. That’s one for our side.”

Alistair nodded. They deserved more in the way of accolades, these volunteers who practiced and prepared, then got out on an instant to fight for their townspeople, but he was too tired for speech and scared too. From first examination, it looked like a deliberate fire set so as to
destroy Hart’s apartment. He knew he was too exhausted to feel anything but negative right now, but it seemed to him as though someone had tried to kill his wife. If he hadn’t insisted on taking her home with him . . .  He let the thought trail away, anxious about her well being right at this moment.

Everybody had seen Tommy take her home so she should be okay, but right now he just wanted his eyes on her to make sure.

“State fire marshal will come in later today and we’ll get the official word, but my guess is its arson,” one of the youngsters at his side said. He knew both their names, but right now didn’t even try to remember what they were. His brain was too fuggy for extra effort.

All he could think was he had to get to Hart so he started for his car.

“Get some rest, Sheriff,” one of them called after him. Damn, but those two seemed bright and annoyingly cheery after the long night. He had put in many an all night’s work himself and emerged in fine condition, but the hard labor and adrenalin rush of firefighting had left him limp and not thinking too clearly.

He didn’t trust anybody with Hart, not even her own kin. Somehow, even in his current state, he couldn’t imagine Tommy or Nikki creeping around her building with a can of gasoline, but he wasn’t sure they’d be alert enough to protect her from whoever wanted to do her harm.

If such a person actually existed. Of course there were those sick people who just liked to start fires to see them burn. He wanted to accept that explanation, but it didn’t quite fit.

He drove to Tommy’s house. It was already after nine. The family should be up. He pressed the doorbell and when there was no immediate response knocked loudly.

Nobody answered. He looked around. Tommy’s one-ton work truck was gone, as was the little car Nikki drove to her job as coach and teacher. By this time of the morning both she and the girls would be at school.

He felt a rising anger that they’d gone off and left Hart alone. He knocked again and when nobody answered this time, he felt ready to tear the door down.

Then it occurred to him that maybe she too had gone to work. Hurriedly he cal
led the prison, identified himself and asked if she was there. A positive answer left him slumped in relief and, checking in again to his own office to determine that nothing urgent was underway, he drove home for a bath, some breakfast and a couple of hours of necessary sleep. He suspected that a lot of volunteer firefighters were either in bed or just about dead on their feet this morning.

She’d gotten little sleep the previous night and still felt numb at the knowledge she’d lost her apartment and all her possessions including the new television and computer, but her brother and sister-in-law had gone to work, so she’d asked Nikki to drop her by to pick up her car and, hoping Alistair would see to the pickup she’d left downtown, she’d driven out to the prison to begin her usual day’s routine.

The pants and shirt she’d borrowed from Nikki were too loose and the pants not quite long enough so that she looked as though she was ready to go wading, but at least she’d shown up and the guys in their orange suits wouldn’t tease her about her apparel.

She’d been glad enough to escape her brother’s home and her sister-in-law’s not too veiled remarks about how it looked like they were going to have a house guest once again.

She got on the computer to look for local rentals and found exactly none. Most housing in Wichita County, such as it was, was occupied. She resolved to just drive the streets once she got off work until she found someone willing to rent to her. She could not stay at Tommy’s when his wife made it so evident she was anything but welcome.

Mr. Jeffers shuffled over to her, asking for a book recommendation and she put aside her own concerns to help him find something. It wasn’t always easy as he read a book every day or two and had gone through most of the small library’s offerings.

By the time she’d gotten through her library chores and the day’s offering of a GED class for those working to get high school accreditation, she was more than ready to go home—if she’d had a home.

She stepped out into still frigid winds, clasping her heavy coat around her and thinking she had to invest in warm gloves and a cap when she noticed the sheriff’s car parked next to her own.

Alistair got out to
open the passenger door and since it was too cold to argue in the open, she got in. “You look like something dragged through a knothole,” he said with concern once both doors were closed and the harsh wind shut outside.

“You don’t look so hot yourself,” she returned.

“You should have seen me before the shower.” He grinned.

“And I’d look a lot better if I were wearing my own clothes, but I don’t have many anymore and Nikki was good enough to lend me this outfit.”

“Not exactly your style,” he agreed.

“Not even my size.” She leaned back, then startled to alert when he started the
motor. “I have my car and I’ve got things to do.”

“Like what?”

She was too tired to argue that this wasn’t any of his business. “I’m going to find a place to live.”

He drove slowly from the parking lot, passing past the guard station with a familiar wave. “Your car will be safe here and you don’t need to start looking this afternoon. You’re too tired. You’ll go home with me.”

Somehow this was a welcome suggestion. She leaned back against the car seat and closed her eyes, too weary to try to work anything out, falling almost instantly to sleep as the vehicle moved past the highway and down the country roads toward Alistair’s ranch house.

Somehow she wasn’t allowed the luxury of sleep, but went straight into that other woman’s dreams. She heard Helen calling her and surfaced from the new book that her friend had loaned her with difficulty to call back, “In the bedroom. I’m in here.”

And then it wasn’t a dream anymore, but she was in the reality of that other time.

He was glad she’d gone to sleep. She’d worked all day after an interrupted last night. He’d be willing to bet she hadn’t gotten a wink after word of the fire reached her.

He shifted positions slightly so that her head could rest against his shoulder, all the anger he’d felt after their abrupt parting dissipating in an overwhelming tenderness as he glanced down at the silky
dark hair and the peaceful features of the woman he’d loved and married.

He wanted the drive to last forever, but all too soon he was pulling down the long drive of pines his dad had planted years ago as a windbreak that came in handy on this day when the wind was definitely sweeping down the plains and across the mountains as well. When he pulled to a stop in front of the rambling ranch house that was his home, he whispered, “We’re home, Hart,” but she didn’t move.

He chuckled. She was really out. Well, no wonder, considering everything she’d been through. He went around to lift her into his arms and carried her inside and through the back hall to the guest bedroom where she’d slept the night before. The coverlet was still tossed from her hurried departure and scented with whatever floral cologne she’d worn.

He
pulled off her shirt and pants, leaving her in her undergarments and tucked her in, touched her forehead with his lips, half hoping she would awaken. But she was still deeply asleep, so he turned off the light that had been left on the night before and closed the door softly before going to his computer to check out any incoming messages.

Stacia slipped easily into the body that fitted so much better than that other one she wore. Some people didn’t like to have red hair, but she’d always been pleased with her own. It marked her out as different and she liked that.

Other members of the family had touches of red, her brothers had the kind of orange-red hair that went with freckles, while Helen’s was
what her sister called mahogany. But Stacia’s was the kind of red that looked good in the new Technicolor movies with the creamy skin that went along with it.

Curvy yet graceful of form, she’d grown up used to being told she should be a movie star and though her own down-to-earth mind told her that there had to be hundreds, maybe even thousands, of girls across the country more beautiful, she knew she was matchless in little Medicine Stick and that was good enough for her.

Mom told her that beauty came from within and she supposed that was true enough, but outside beauty had its own rewards. The one thing she would hate was being plain and ordinary.

And now, most of the time, that was what she was. Stacia, her exuberant personality quailed for the first time in her life,
tried to remember for both of them. She could recall her own past from the time she was a little girl, past the moment that was now, and knew that somewhere in the very near future she was destined to be shot to death.

And at the same time, she could
only remember that other girl’s life in spotty fashion. Most strongly, she remembered the time right before she’d gotten to know Alistair Redhawk for the first time.  Oh, that girl had always known him, they’d grown up in the same community, but it wasn’t until Stacia stepped into her form, exchanged places with her, that it had happened.

She’d smiled. He’d smiled back. Hart had been attending some event at her nieces
’ school when they’d changed places. This wasn’t exactly a shock. She and Hart been trading about willy-nilly as long as Stacia could remember and yet since they were never in the same place, it wasn’t like they were friends, but barely acquaintances with knowledge of each other through the wisps of memory that floated in their brains. At least that was the way it was for Stacia.

She’d tried to tell Mom about it when she was four or five, about being in that other girl’s body in a strange place and time.

Mom had laughed and told her she had quite an imagination. Later, when the stories continued, she’d seemed annoyed and told her to quit telling lies.

As she got older both Mom and Dad got to looking at her in a worried way and she’d caught on that they thought there was something wrong with her brain and afraid other people might notice and insist she be locked up in an asylum.

That became her greatest fear so that she did everything to cover up the mind switches and hid her knowledge of that other girl’s life as best she could.

Now she looked around at her family eating breakfast together, the boys scuffling over who got the last of the bacon while Helen slowly ate her way through a pancake. Her little sister looked about
ten so she’d gone back into the past, her past, and was reliving a day there.

She tried to savor it, knowing they were all gone now, though the truth was, of course, that for anyone the people of a precise moment in the past would be gone. A mother
reviewing her toddlers would know that those chubby babies were forever gone, replaced by young men and women who sometimes seemed to barely remember them.

She supposed she should feel blessed, she was consciously aware that her young looking parents, the siblings who were still children were infinitely precious. But that wasn’t how it felt at all, but more like she was an automaton moving through predetermined steps, or an actress in a movie.

There must be some purpose to this, some reason. Always before she’d been progressing, moving ahead in her own life or even in the few minutes she spent in Hart’s, but now this scene seemed to play on and on, a mixture of torture and delight.

She wanted to tell them how much she loved them but instead she went on eating breakfast, arguing with one of her brothers, then going outside for the walk to school. She was more of a visitor to this version of Stacia then the person herself.

She was almost relieved when she felt herself going back, the last look at the little town with the trail of youngsters heading to Medicine Stick School, even a glance at the long-legged red-haired teen who was herself at fourteen and then the familiar seconds of non-being and she was once again back. For a minute she was confused. The last she remembered she’d been slumped at Alistair’s side inside his police car and he was taking her back to the ranch house.

She peered through darkness to see shadows of familiar furniture and knew she was in the comfortable bed in his guest room. She was a long time falling asleep because of the ache where her heart should be.

When she woke in the morning it took only seconds to recall who she was and where she was. She got up to shower Hart Benson’s body and dress it in the clothes she’d worn the previous day, joining Alistair for a breakfast of toast and juice while he ate bacon and eggs and fussed about how she didn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.