“Do you think they were telling you the truth?”
Diamond nodded. “Ari was kind to me. Bryce, not so much, but I gave him a hard time in the twenty-first century. I suppose he thinks I deserve his abandonment.”
Though Jesse had never met the man, he’d heard rumors of Bryce’s ruthless business practices. But his stomach twisted at the thought of the man pitting his power and influence against Diamond.
“Ari would help me if she could. She’s giving me a new wardrobe, as if clothes could replace a stolen life.”
This is insane. But Diamond spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. She dropped Jesse’s arm and drew within a few feet of a calf. The animal watched them with soft brown eyes, apparently unafraid. A cow called after it and the spindly-legged creature obediently lumbered over to its mother.
He gazed beyond the cows at a row of houses. A steeple rose in the distance. The cows didn’t really belong here, even though they were on the outskirts of the city. “So you’re telling me that Bryce Poole, a wealthy St. Louis businessman, is a time traveler from the future.”
“Not exactly. According to Ari, both she and Bryce were born in the eighteenth century. They traveled to the future and when they came back, I got caught up in their wake.”
It might explain why Diamond was so inept at simple tasks, despite her grit. He’d assumed she relied on servants to do the work, but perhaps people didn’t need to light fires or clean fish in the future. “Have you been to St. Louis before? What does it look like in your time?”
“No cows, that’s for sure. It has skyscrapers, buildings twenty or more stories tall, and it isn’t even a big city by twenty-first century standards. Most roads are paved, and people no longer use horses. They drive cars, motor-driven vehicles originally called horseless carriages.”
Jesse couldn’t imagine how a vehicle could move without a horse or mule to pull it. And he didn’t understand how a building twenty stories tall wouldn’t collapse under its own weight. “And New Madrid? Does it also have tall buildings and cars?”
“I’ve never been to New Madrid, but it’s a small town. No tall buildings. Cars, however, are everywhere.”
“My home?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Probably gone.”
“Do I survive the war?”
“I don’t know.”
That made sense. It’s not like he could reel off a list of those who had lived and died in the Mexican War. Only a few of the famous ones. Apparently he wasn’t going to be famous. Not that he expected he would be, but still, didn’t all soldiers go off to war with dreams of glory?
“Do you believe me?”
Did he? “It explains your pack, knife and bungee cords.”
“And my clothes. Everyone wears jeans where I’m from, men and women.”
“Don’t women want to be feminine?”
“Sure, but we prefer to be treated as an equal.”
An equal? Jesse would never mistreat a woman, but he’d never considered them equal to men. Except, perhaps, Diamond. She’d shown a courage equal to that of a man.
“A woman ran for president in the last election. She didn’t win, but she ran.”
Jesse laughed. “You’re joking.”
“Dead serious.”
“Women can’t even vote. How can they hold office?”
“Women get the right to vote in 1920. Should have been earlier. We make up half the population.”
She had a point. A point he had never considered. Jesse found it hard to imagine a world where everyone wore trousers and women held positions of power. They completed the circle around the defunct lake and returned to their original position. The cows no longer took any notice of them. “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”
Diamond ticked the reasons off on her fingers. “We were on the run, you were half out of your mind with fever, and it’s a crazy story. You would never have believed me then. I’m not sure you believe me now.”
Jesse kept silent, but she had no reason to lie. Her knapsack and the things inside it were strange. Wonderful, but strange. Just like Diamond herself.
“Besides, I didn’t want to mess up the timeline.”
“I don’t understand.”
She told him all she had learned from Ari, how Bryce’s trip to the future had changed the timeline. “Anything I do now could impact future events. For instance, if I knew how to build modern weapons and explained it to you, the South might win the war and change history. The world I returned to would be different.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“It’s not that it’s good or bad. But the world as I know it would never exist. I could return to a world as alien to me as this one is.”
“Do you know how to build modern weapons?” He asked, half in jest.
“No.”
“But you wouldn’t tell me if you did.”
Diamond shrugged. “Now that I know I can never go home, I’m not as concerned with making mistakes, but I couldn’t in good conscience change something as drastic as who won a war. The implications could be devastating.”
Jesse thought the implications of the South losing the war was also devastating, but he understood what she was saying. If the United States split into two different countries, they wouldn’t be as strong as they were together. One or both countries might fall to an enemy and cease to exist at all.
“However, I’m willing to bet the Pooles used their knowledge of the future to make smart investments,” Diamond mused.
Jesse chucked. “An advantage my father would enjoy. You could do the same.” He warmed to his theme. “I’m sorry you can’t go home, Diamond, but is it really so bad here? Once the war is over, things will go back to normal. Won’t they?”
“Not for the South. Not for some time.”
Jesse’s gut tightened. He hated to think of his homeland in ruins. But Diamond needed his help now. She hadn’t given up on him even when he was near death. He couldn’t allow her to give up on herself. “Stay here in St. Louis. Accept Ari’s offer
