Begging-sobbing-screaming, I tried with both hands to staunch the flow of his blood.
Fallon leaned close to my ear. “Don’t bother. He’s beyond help. It’s fate, you see.”
“What the fuck?” someone was yelling from behind us, perhaps the cab driver; I had no idea. He bellowed, “Jesus Christ, this man’s been shot! Get help!”
Too late, too late…
Fallon was already gone.
You can’t stop him, Christina had said. No one can.
Chapter Twenty
Montana Territory - June, 1882
I WOKE SHROUDED BY UNEASE, THE REMNANTS OF A BAD dream lingering for a last second before wakefulness swept them away. Our room was veiled in darkness but I sensed the approaching dawn, hunching my knees toward my belly and closing my eyes, attempting to cling to the images so recently playing out in my head – did they seem more ominous than a normal jumble of bad dreams, or was I imagining that? So many worries crowded my mind by day; I had so few solutions to any of them, it only made sense they would find an outlet at night. But I was someone who trusted her instinct, and mine suggested this sequence of dreams contained deeper significance –
I could not shake the feeling that Tish and Camille had been screaming for my attention from the opposite side of a wide chasm. I knew they were out there in actuality, not just trapped within the confines of a nightmare, both terrified for me and made helpless by the longtime lack of news. Had more than a year passed in their lives, as it had here? Marshall and I had reason to believe time flowed differently here in the past, but did it move more swiftly, or less? And who besides Fallon Yancy could answer such a question? Against my will, Fallon’s face burned across the screen of my mind, slender and lethal, eye sockets like deep holes; he was laughing and I slammed the door on the image, conjuring instead a picture of my older sisters.
Tish, I thought, first separating her face from Patricia’s, trying yet again to reach her through the unimaginable barriers separating us. Camille’s features took form more readily because I had no one here with whom to confuse her. Camille. I’m here. What were you trying to tell me?
Marshall and I had spent an afternoon last week writing a note, selecting an appropriate location we prayed would contain the metal lockbox until its intended twenty-first century discovery, and then digging a deep, narrow hole in which to bury both. A sense of foreboding had crept in as we worked, stealthy as a predator, but I’d refused to acknowledge its presence. Because I was pregnant, Marshall would not allow me to help him with either the initial digging or the replacing of turned earth atop the lockbox and so I sat in silence, watching him work with quiet efficiency; thoughts of gravedigging kept intruding. I’d reminded myself countless times that Marshall was not shoveling dirt onto a coffin.
“It’s the best we can do, for now,” he’d said afterward. Though we didn’t speak a word of it, I knew both of us harbored doubts. But the very act of doing something lent us a sense, however fleeting, of accomplishment.
Now, just over an uneventful week later, I rolled to the opposite side and latched an arm and leg around Marshall’s naked body, seeking the only security I knew; he was still snoring but responded to my touch by clasping a protective hand around my thigh. I nuzzled the warm skin between his shoulder blades, hoping to claim a little more sleep, when he surprised me by murmuring, “I was dreaming about Garth and Case and Mathias, just now.”
Adrenaline erupted in my blood, eradicating any urge to continue resting. I lifted to an elbow, hooking my chin over his shoulder. “I dreamed about my sisters.”
Marshall shifted to his back; his eyes were troubled.
“What did you dream?” I insisted, cupping his stubbled jaw.
“They were singing at The Spoke, which isn’t so strange, I suppose. I mean, I dream pretty often about us all being there together. But this time…I don’t know, it was eerie, Ruthie. Behind them, almost like I could see through the wall to what was happening outside, there was this huge ocean wave. Like something in a disaster movie, a huge gray breaker swelling over Jalesville, higher than the entire town. If I hadn’t woken up just now it would have swept over everything in its path. Swept them all away.”
My spine ached at this description.
Marshall drew me closer to his warmth. “It was a big crowd, like they were playing a weekend show or something. There were a couple other guys on stage with them but I couldn’t tell who they were…”
“Did you see my sisters in the crowd?”
“I didn’t. Shit, this scares me. I hate to admit it.” He searched my eyes. “What did you dream, angel?”
“I can’t remember exactly. Tish and Camille were screaming for my attention. More than usual, though. They were frantic. Oh God, they’re trying to tell us something, Marsh. Something maybe even worse than us being trapped here.”
Awareness descended, drowning us in momentary silence.
When I could bear it no longer I sat straight, throwing off the covers, furious at the level of our vulnerability, our inability to know what was happening to our families.
“I agree.” Marshall spoke with quiet resignation and I was glad he hadn’t tried to tell me everything was all right. “I’m goddamn sick of having no answers.” His tone softened. “I know you are too, love.”
Angry moisture blurred my vision; the last thing I wanted to do was cry, but these were not tears of sadness. I was hot with fury. I wished something constructed of glass or china was within arm’s reach, if only so I could hurl it against the wall and hear the satisfying sounds of demolition. “I hate feeling so helpless. We have no way of
