“Has Mr. Poole arrived?”
“Yes, he’s in the parlor,” the maid replied.
“Bring tea, please.” Arianne entered the room to their left. An elegant sofa sat under the bay window bathed in sunlight and an elaborately carved table stood in the center of the room flanked by matching chairs. A fire burned in the hearth, but the room still held a chill. An old man stood by the window, leaning on a cane, his face cast in shadow. Bryce.
“What’s wrong, Ari? Who is this woman?”
“You don’t recognize her? Think back to the day we came home, when we were in the ATV and about to activate the necklace.”
“Di Merrell?” He stepped away from the window. His handsome features had softened with age, except for his nose which jutted fiercely from his face. His hair was white, but his eyes were still a piercing blue. “How is this possible? She hasn’t aged a day.”
“While the stone brought us to 1812, it deposited Diamond in 1862.”
“Interesting.”
Diamond had had enough. “No, not interesting. Disastrous. You need to send me back.”
A knock on the door signaled the return of the maid with a tray of tea and cookies. She set it on the table and withdrew. Arianne exchanged a look with Bryce and went to pour the tea. “Do you take sugar? Cream?”
Diamond closed her eyes and counted to ten. “Sugar, no cream. Or skip the formalities and just get me the hell out of here.”
Arianne poured three cups of tea, added sugar to them all and cream to her own. Only when they each had a steaming cup and a china plate with a cookie, did she speak. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. We no longer have the stone.”
For a moment Diamond thought she might faint. Her vision dimmed and her ears rang. “You can’t be serious. How could you lose something so valuable?” Needing caffeine and sugar, she took a careful sip of tea. She had come so far and been through so much. She had to get home.
“Few people know about the power of the necklace, but those who do want it rather badly,” Bryce said.
Diamond longed to scream at him, but kept her tone moderate. “You got me into this mess. Get me out.” She swallowed, trying to think. Panic made it difficult. “Who stole the stone?”
“They kidnapped our daughter, Hannah,” Arianne said.
“And demanded we give them the necklace to get her back,” Bryce continued.
Great. “Who are these people? When did this happen?” If it was fifty years ago, how would she ever be able to trace the current ownership of the stone?
“It was a couple from New Orleans. They kidnapped Hannah shortly after we arrived here.”
Diamond set her cup down with a clatter and rested her head in her hands. “The Confederates still hold New Orleans, right? How on earth am I going to get down there? Will this couple still have the stone? Will they even still be alive? Why didn’t you try to get it back from them?” She remembered the night Bryce had gone out on the lake. She still suspected he might have been dropping a body. He was doing something illegal. She had a hard time imagining him passively handing over the time travel device. He would have done what was necessary to save his daughter, but then he would have gone after the kidnappers.
But what if the kidnappers had killed Hannah? No, Arianne had already told her that Hannah was still alive. If the stone had been missing for fifty years, it would be very hard to find.
A look passed between the older couple. Arianne cleared her throat. “We don’t know for sure what happened to the kidnappers, but they don’t have the stone anymore. Bryce’s father acquired it.”
Sounds like the kidnappers got their just desserts. Diamond was glad to hear it, but she still didn’t understand why the Poole’s would allow such a valuable tool to get away from them. She glared at Bryce. “Is your father still alive?”
“No,” Bryce said. “He died years ago. We suspected he had the stone, but Ari and I readjusted to living in this time. We opened the store and had other children. We no longer wanted to return to the twenty-first century.”
Arianne continued the story, “But Hannah wanted to go home. She was born in the twenty-first century and remembered the wonders of technology. We allowed her to take the necklace.”
“So Hannah has the stone?” Diamond wished they would just get to the point and tell her where the stone was now. She would do whatever it took to get it back. She’d already crossed miles of war-torn countryside.
“Yes,” Ari said, “but she took it with her to the future. There’s no way to use it to send you home.”
Diamond rose to her feet, her head buzzing. “No, you’re lying to me. It’s your fault I’m here. And your responsibility to make things right. I can’t stay here in this primitive time period, in a land at war with itself. I just can’t.”
“How is it our fault?” Bryce asked coolly. “We asked you to leave us alone, but you continued to follow us and plague us with your endless questions. You are responsible for your predicament.”
“So bringing me back in time with you was your twisted idea of revenge?”
“Of course not. We didn’t know the vortex caught you until you walked into the store this morning. We were only trying to get home.”
Bryce set his cup down and wandered back to his place by the window. “I wonder if that’s why she traveled to 1862 instead of 1812? She was close enough for the power to reach her, but not close enough to come as far back as we did.”
“I don’t know. We still know very little about how the stone works,” Ari said.
“I don’t care how it works. This isn’t an intellectual puzzle for me. It’s my life. Contact Hannah and have her come get me.”
“How would you propose we
