Later I would wonder, tearing my heart out, if things might have been different, had I joined them.
“It does me a good turn to see you remembering things,” Celia said. “I hated to see you suffering so last summer, when you didn’t know your people.”
Hesitation cut a quick, inadvertent path across my forehead. I knew she sensed I was withholding information; her shrewd gray eyes missed nothing.
But if anyone understood the necessity of keeping secrets, it was Celia. Instead of further comment she gently released my arm, making her way toward the tree beneath which Miles lay buried; the creek flowed only a few yards beyond his grave. The afternoon air had grown hot and stifling, a wide, deep oven spanning the foothills. Inspired by the sight of the creek, its surface speckled with golden drops of sunlight, I sat in the tall grass, with care, to remove my shoes.
“You ain’t planning to swim, are you?” Celia asked over her shoulder.
“No, just wade. I don’t think the water’s deep enough for swimming.” Flickertail Lake loomed in my memory, clear and lovely, a hundred shades of blue. I knew my family was absent from its shores in this time period, but homesickness swelled within my chest cavity nonetheless. I cupped my lower belly, blindsided by missing the womenfolk. Tears stung the bridge of my nose and I closed my eyes.
Mom, Tish, Milla. I’m pregnant.
Do you hear me? I’m having a baby.
I want Aunt Jilly to tell me she knows he’s a boy. I want Grandma to smooth my hair and call me ‘little one.’ I want Aunt Ellen to hug me close and make me hot chocolate and blueberry pancakes. I want to see Blythe and my brothers, and Clint and Dodge and Rich. I want the Rawleys to know Marshall is going to be a father.
I pretended to dally over my shoes until Celia knelt near the wooden cross bearing Miles’s name; I didn’t want her to notice my distress any more than I wished to intrude upon her weekly conversation with Miles. Half-hidden in long, scratchy grass, I knuckled my eye sockets, tears seeping. My chest bounced with quiet, aching sobs.
Oh God, Mom. I miss you. I need to feel your arms around me. It’s been so long.
I want to turn around and see Clark’s house instead of Grant and Birdie’s.
I want to see Garth and Becky, Sean and Quinn and Wy.
I want to go home to the Jalesville I know.
Her back to me, Celia spoke to Miles in low tones, a continuous, one-sided dialogue. I knew she was telling him about their son, a ritual she observed without fail. At last I gathered my wits and swiped the last of the moisture from my cheeks; there was no point in kneeling in the dirt, crying, and I stood and headed for the creek, cautious in my bare feet. I lifted my hem, toes sinking into the gooey mud on the bank, and imagined Marshall and me bringing our son here in a few years, each of us holding one of his chubby hands as he giggled and splashed. With a secret smile, I fit a palm against the smooth roundness of my abdomen, thinking of Patricia’s baby, named Cole Montgomery Spicer after his father.
Marshall Augustus, Junior, I thought, indulging in my vision of wading in the creek with Marshall and our son. Your daddy and I already love you so. Someday you’ll meet your whole family, every last one of them. You have so many cousins already, baby. So many people to love you. Mathias and Camille have Millie Jo, Brantley, Henry, Lorie, and James. Garth and Becky have Tommy, and Becky was pregnant when I left, and I bet Case and Tish are going to have a baby any time now…
My twenty-first century family claimed the upper hand in my thoughts, seeming close enough to touch. Just beyond the limits of my perception the earth tilted and the sun shifted, its lower curve bisected by a rocky peak; brilliant orange light seared my retinas.
I recognized what was happening a second too late.
No!
My arms flew outward, palms extended. As though I exerted any control over it – I never had. And there it was all at once, backhanding me to awareness, the deep, insistent pull of time. A pull so powerful my cells buzzed, my skull rang.
No, oh God, no! Not without Marshall!
Fighting it, I scrambled for the bank and dropped to my knees, grabbing stalks of grass with both hands, holding for all I was worth.
I should have known, I should have known…
It had been this same location that Marshall and I once felt the pull of the past, the star-bright night we’d ridden Arrow to this very creek bank. And, just now, my awareness had been consumed by thoughts of our families in the future.
NO!
“Ruthie!” Celia’s voice cut through the buzzing nonsense. She flew to my side, slipping in the mud in her hurry to kneel and clutch hold of my upper arms. “What in God’s name? What’s wrong?!”
Shaking, wet from hips to hem, I clung to the security of her warmth, her solidity, concentrating for all I was worth on her immediate presence.
“Don’t let me go,” I begged, numb with fear. “Don’t let me go until it stops.”
“I got you. Hold to me, girl, hold fast.”
And I did until the pull receded, a long, undulating wave drawn back to the endless, infinite expanse of liquid called time.
Chapter Twenty-One
Montana Territory -June, 1882
CELIA DID NOT ATTEMPT TO ASK QUESTIONS ON OUR RE-turn walk. I didn’t even thank her, a mistake I regretted in the aftermath. So many necessary things left unsaid.
The what-ifs would not assault until later that night – and every night thereafter, a torture so excruciating I would have died to end it, if only Axton would have let me.
What if I’d returned to 2014 in that moment?
What if I
