Reaching Through Time

  Once she stopped crying, she rose from the bed and peeled off the still-damp jeans. She found the long nightgown she’d been wearing freshened and neatly folded in a drawer and carried it into the bathroom that adjoined her room. The floor was cold, making her teeth chatter. She glanced at her image in the vanity mirror and was startled by what she saw.

  Her face looked gaunt and her eyes sunken, stamped by dark half circles, like bruises that hadn’t healed. She leaned closer to the mirror; it was old, and much of the silver coating was off the backside—but how would that explain why she looked so pale and thin? She looked in that same mirror every morning. Why hadn’t she noticed before now? She ate her fill at every meal and rode in the sunlight every day. And yet she looked awful … as pale as milk. She stepped back from her image, pulled on the gown and padded into the bedroom, trying to erase what she’d seen. What’s happening to me?

  She went to the windows, heard the wind howling outside and the spit of rain bouncing like marbles hitting the glass. Heath’s good to me, she told herself. He’d been kind and generous, sharing his estate, his horses, his woods and meadows, and now he had offered her himself, his name and heritage, his love.

  He’s shared everything he owns, Sarah told herself. She should be grateful. She should be crazy for him. Then she was struck by another thought. He’d shared everything and every place on his vast land except one. The only place he’d told her never to go.

  The maze.

  9

  Sarah realized instantly what she must do. She had to explore the maze, but without Heath’s knowing. She was certain she’d never get his permission or his approval. She’d have to sneak her way in. It was an underhanded thing to do, but it was the only thing she could think of. There was something about the maze that was different from anyplace else on the estate. Heath had stressed that it was dangerous, and maybe that was true. She needed to explore it for herself, though. Maybe she’d come out of it just fine. “Or,” she told herself aloud, “maybe I’ll get lost in it forever for the buzzards to find me.”

  She stood in the dark listening to the wind and pelting rain, begging both to stop before morning. If she was going, it had to be before sunrise. Urgency filled her head and heart. When the rain sounds ceased and only the wind sounds remained, Sarah decided to make her break for the maze.

  She put on a couple of sweaters, boots and jeans, grabbed candles and opened her bedroom door quietly. The hall was dimly lit by candle sconces. She hugged the wall to the staircase and crept down the stone steps, watchful for any movement. Perhaps the ghostly “helpers” only worked at night. She didn’t want to be seen. She didn’t want to have to explain why she was creeping around in the mansion alone when she should be sleeping.

  She paused at the front door, changed her mind about using it and instead crept to the morning room, then through the kitchen—where no one ever seemed to be working—and rummaged for a box of matches. She tucked a box into her jeans pocket and, clutching the candles, eased out the door. The wind howled around the corner of the great house and whipped through her clothing as if it were silk, not wool. She shuddered, clenched her teeth so they wouldn’t chatter.

  There was no moon. The night was pitch black. She was glad for the cover of darkness. And she was glad she’d ridden the property so much with Heath. She knew her way around. Her eyes adjusted and she was surprised at the acuity of her night vision. Sarah moved swiftly, taking a wide turn around the stables. She didn’t want the horses catching her scent and sounding an alarm of neighs and snorts. She headed down a slope toward the gardens and was rewarded by the sweet aroma of flowers. Her sense of direction had been right on, and she rewarded herself with “Good going, girl” under her breath.

  In spite of the dark, she made out the looming shape of the hedge that formed the maze. She placed her palms on the bushes and inched her way along until she discovered the doorway entrance, only to feel a chain zigzagging across it. She stopped short. Heath had done what she’d advised him to do—barred the opening. “Dumb idea, Sarah,” she told herself. Why had he listened to her? Why had she suggested it?

  She searched for a gap in the chain big enough to wiggle through, tugging and pushing the metal links as she did. She was able to wiggle the links more freely in the chain’s center and soon had worked an opening big enough for her to slip through. Inside the maze, it was even darker, but the wind was gone, held back by the thick snarl of boxwood leaves and branches. Sarah’s cold fingers fumbled with a candle and matches, finally getting the wick to ignite and throw feeble light in front of her.

  The sides of the maze rose very high, but the path was clean and solid. For a little-used place, it was surprisingly clear of growth and clutter. She had no trouble following the stone path, and she peered ahead anxiously, waiting for the first dead end, the first jog that might trap her if she took it. “What are you looking for?” she asked herself. No answer, because she didn’t know.

  She came to a junction. Right or left? She closed her eyes, trying to decide. And then she heard voices, whispers, using her name and telling her to “Come.” Without hesitation, she turned toward the voices, pushing the candle and its pale light forward. At every turn in the path she paused, closed her eyes and concentrated on the voices. They were leading her. But where?

  As the volume of the voices increased, she picked up her pace. She told herself that she had to get to them. She had to make them hear her. She had to discover who they were and why she felt such an urgency to be with them. The voice she now knew to be Justin’s kept saying he loved her and that he needed her. Her heart thumped against her chest because although she had only a vague recollection of him, she was sure that he was a part of her past, that she needed him too.

  She wove through the paths confidently, no longer fearing dead ends. With the voices at their loudest, she burst around a corner and skidded to a stop. In front of her stood a wall of solid stone. She recalled Heath’s telling her that a wall surrounded his estate.

  Sarah blinked in disbelief. She’d been certain that she would discover a group of people who knew her, confident that the sight of them would bring back her memory, fill in her blank spaces, tell her who she was and where she’d come from. Instead she faced a wall that stretched so high above her that she knew she couldn’t climb over it. She pressed her ear against the hard stone. The voices were muffled and fading. She threw herself against the wall, beat the surface until her fists throbbed painfully. “I’m here!” she yelled. “Listen to me! I’m right here. It’s me, Sarah!”

  “They can’t hear you,” a voice said from behind her.

  She whirled and stood face to face with Heath de Charon.

  He carried a torch that threw crackling fiery light around his head. Heath wore a long black cape with a hood that covered his head. Only his face shone from the depths of the hood—pallid skin and inky black eyes. He asked, “What are you doing here, Sarah? I warned you to stay away from the maze.”

  Her heart almost jumped out of her chest. She squared her shoulders, lowered her candle with its pitiful smear of light. “I’m trying to get over this wall. There are people on the other side. They keep calling out to me.”

  “How long have you been hearing their voices?” His question sounded patronizing.

  “I’m not crazy. I hear them. I have for … for”—she shrugged in frustration because she really had no concept of time anymore—“days,” she finished lamely.

  “And you never told me about them before now? Didn’t you trust me?”

  She refused to apologize. “Listen! Can’t you hear them?”

  Heath leveled his gaze at her. Behind her the voices had grown silent.

  She spun, pounded on the stone. “I’m here! It’s Sarah!”

  “Aren’t you happy here with me, Sarah? I’ve offered you everything I own. I want you to stay with me forever.”

  A chill shot up her back. “I’m thankful for everything. I really am. But … but there’s something on th
e other side of this wall that I need to go to. People who know me and love me and who want me too.” She took a deep breath. “And people I want to be with more than anything.” There. She’d said it. She’d told him what was in her heart.

  He stepped toward her, held out his hand. “Give me your hand, Sarah.”

  She knew better. Something murky happened to her thoughts when he touched her. “No!” she cried, pressing her back to the wall. “Please don’t touch me.”

  The torch in his hand flared. Sarah’s stomach twisted in a knot. She didn’t know what he was going to do. He was stronger and could overpower her, drag her away from the wall, force her to return to his home, force her to become his alone. Except that he didn’t. He simply stared, as if rooted to the ground. “I want you, Sarah. Come with me.”

  And then she realized something. He couldn’t make her go with him. That was the whole point of their meals together, the rides on fleet horses, the evenings in front of the fireplace, the picnic in the woods. He couldn’t make her stay. He had to persuade her to stay. He had to make her believe that staying was what she wanted.

  The insight emboldened her. She said, “You need me to tell you I want you too, don’t you?”

  Heath stood silent, his eyes dark orbs and his face an expressionless mask.

  She pressed harder into the wall and could have sworn the stones were growing softer. Impossible. “For some reason I have to agree to stay with you, don’t I? Why, Heath? Why are you trying so hard to make me agree that you’re what I want?”

  His expression turned thunderous, and wind whipped up, seeping through the hedge and blowing his cape. The torchlight danced but didn’t extinguish. “Don’t you know who I am?”

  “H-e-a-t-h.” She spelled his name out loud, substituting one letter for another—the H for a D. “Death,” she whispered, her knees going weak. “You’re Death and you want me to stay here. But for some reason I still have a choice.”

  He said nothing. She knew she was correct. She could leave.

  She pressed her hands flat against the wall and felt the stones getting warmer and softer. The wall was turning pliable at her back.

  The wind stopped. Silence reigned. Heath lowered his hood and she saw him in the light of the flame in all his cold terrible beauty. The black curls of hair. The smooth skin and sharp planes of his face and chiseled jaw, his full sensual lips. “I always win, Sarah,” he said quietly. “You can leave now, but I’ll come for you again.”

  “Not until I’m a very old woman,” she said defiantly, holding her chin high.

  Behind her the wall had become as soft as feathers. Heath reached for her. She pushed backward and went into free fall through the wall and into total blackness.

  10

  Sarah woke in a room, in a bed with white sheets and a machine beside it. She blinked, trying to bring the room into focus. She heard a chair scrape nearby and then Justin’s face appeared above her.

  “Oh my God! You’re awake! Oh, baby. You’re awake.”

  She tried to speak but couldn’t.

  “Don’t,” he shouted. “You have a tube down your throat. A doctor has to take it out.” He picked up a remote and pressed a button over and over. “I’ll get a nurse. Oh, Sarah … oh my gosh, you’re awake. Your mom and dad just went down to the cafeteria. I—I’ll go get them.” He got as far as the door, turned and ran back to her bed. He picked up her hand, kissed it. “No. I’m not going anywhere. Where’s that nurse?”

  Sarah gathered her strength and squeezed his hand. She watched tears form in his eyes. She wanted to say, “It’s okay. I’m okay,” but of course, she couldn’t speak.

  Justin bent, kissed her cheek and allowed himself to cry against her hair.

  It took several hours before Sarah was cognizant enough to hear what had happened to her. The story fell on her in bits and pieces, first from her exuberant parents, then from Justin and then doctors. One doctor pulled the tube from her throat. It hurt like crazy, but she could breathe on her own, and in a voice made raspy by the extraction of the tube past her vocal cords, she told her family and Justin she loved them.

  Her mother couldn’t stop sobbing happy tears and her dad couldn’t stop smiling. But no matter who was in the room, Sarah’s eyes kept connecting with Justin’s.

  She heard how she’d gotten sick—she vaguely remembered having a sore throat and terrible headache, a fever so high that she shivered uncontrollably, a stiff neck—and how she’d fallen unconscious on the family sofa. “I was fixing your lunch.” Her mom recounted Sarah’s ordeal. “When I found you, when I couldn’t wake you up, I called an ambulance.”

  She’d been rushed to the hospital, diagnosed with encephalitis, a swelling of her brain brought on by an infection. “You slipped into a coma,” her dad said.

  “How long?” Sarah rasped.

  “Ten days,” her mother answered.

  Incredulous, Sarah glanced at the doctor. “You were one sick girl,” he said. “We started you on IV antibiotics, intubated you, fed you via a feeding tube. Comas can be difficult, but I believed you’d come out of it. You’re young and generally healthy.”

  “I heard your voices,” she said, her own voice little more than a whisper.

  Her parents and Justin shared a knowing look. Justin said, “Researchers say that people in comas can often hear. They say that people who come out of comas tell them that they sometimes heard and remembered what people in the room said. So we devised a plan to talk to you and read to you round the clock.”

  Sarah’s dad clapped Justin on the shoulder. “His idea. I’m glad we did it.”

  “You read me stories,” Sarah said to her dad. “I remember that much.”

  Her dad looked sheepish. “Picture books, fairy tales from when you were a little girl. Your favorites.”

  “I just jabbered,” her mom confessed. “I told every family story I ever knew.”

  Sarah blinked back tears. “I heard you talking. I tried to tell you but you couldn’t hear me.”

  Justin jammed his hands into his jeans pockets. His face reddened and he dropped his gaze. “I—um—just talked.”

  “You said you loved me.”

  His redness deepened and he cut his eyes self-consciously toward her parents. “I did. I do.”

  “You brought me back.”

  Justin broke into a face-splitting smile. Sarah’s mother hugged him and Sarah closed her eyes in gratitude.

  “Where were you? When you were in the coma, I mean,” Justin asked. “I could see your body on the bed. You twitched. You moaned. But you didn’t wake up. So where was your mind? Was it like a dream?”

  Sarah was home again, still weak, but home with her family. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s all just a big blank spot in my head.”

  She and Justin sat on her living room sofa together. Her books and computer and notepads were strewn over the top of the coffee table. Her mother had told her, “I left everything as you’d left it. I couldn’t bear to move anything. I’d look at it, think about you touching it, and I’d start to cry. I just walked away.”

  Sarah picked up a book. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë. She thumbed the pages. The name Heathcliff jumped out at her. Something familiar and yet not quite right. “I was working on an essay for English Lit,” Sarah said.

  “I think it’s overdue,” Justin said. His brown eyes danced with mischief. “Although I think you can get an extension. I mean, a coma … that’s a pretty good excuse.”

  She swatted his arm. “Very funny.”

  “Here,” Justin said, thrusting the milk shake that he’d brought at her. “Your doc doesn’t want you scrimping on calories.”

  Sarah had lost weight during her ordeal. Her jeans and tees hung on her. She took the shake and sipped it. “Thanks for bringing this over.”

  “Any excuse to see you.”

  Her brow puckered. “Do you know the word Charon?”

  “Nope. Why?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s j
ust stuck in my head.”

  “I’ll do a Web search.” Justin picked up her laptop, turned it on and, once the machine had booted up, tapped the word into a search engine. “According to the online dictionary it comes from Greek mythology. Charon was the ferryman who took the souls of the dead into Hades.”

  Sarah made a face. “Gross. How about Lethe? That word’s nagging me too.”

  Justin tapped the keys. “It’s also Greek. Means ‘forgetfulness.’ A river in Hades. The souls who drank the water forgot everything.” He looked up. “Geez, creepy words.”

  Sarah made a face. The definitions left her feeling creeped out, and she had no idea why the words had popped into her head. “Did Dad read any mythology to me?”

  “Naw … just fairy tales. ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Sleeping Beauty’—they’re all the same. The girl ends up with Prince Charming. Boring.”

  “Girls love princess stories. We all want to meet our Prince Charming.”

  “How about me? Do I make the cut?” He waggled his eyebrows.

  He looked so adorable, she laughed. “You can’t be Prince Charming. You have no kingdom, no castle, no beautiful horse.”

  He hung his head. “So I’m a loser.”

  She kissed him. “Not totally.”

  Justin closed the computer. “Walk me to your door.”

  “Do you have to leave?”

  “I promised your mom I wouldn’t stay long. You’re still recuperating, you know.”

  They walked to the front door hand in hand. Justin opened it and she stepped outside with him. He held her, kissed her deeply. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

  “Me too.” His arms felt cozy and his breath tasted like mint.

  He headed to the driveway, opened his car door. “My faithful horse,” he said over his shoulder.

  She laughed. “Good night, Prince Charming.” She stood and watched the taillights of his car disappear down the street.