He pushed a lock of wet hair off her face. What could she say to convince him?
“I love you,” she said.
“You do?”
Faye nodded. “All this time I loved you.” It was true. She’d never fallen out of love with him. The dead can’t love the living but the living can love the dead, and that was the greatest tragedy of her life.
“You love me?” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
He looked away to the corner of the room, his brow furrowed, his hands clenched into fists as if he was trying to hold himself back from touching her again.
“Don’t you love me, too?” Faye asked.
He pressed his lips to her forehead and his body vibrated with the shuddering breath he took.
“Will...” she said, pleading. She would wake any minute, any second. They had no time to lose.
“Will I what?” he asked.
The question puzzled her.
“Faith? What’s the matter?” he asked. Faye narrowed her eyes at him, slid back on the bed a few inches to put some distance between her and him. He looked at her, confused, and she saw he had a scar on his rib cage, reddish pink and about six inches long. Will had no such scars. No scars and no beard and no crow’s-feet.
For all that he looked like Will... Faye had the sudden sinking sensation that he wasn’t Will at all.
She remembered something. Another name. A familiar face but another name.
“Carrick,” she said.
“Aye, lass?”
Faye clamped a hand over her mouth, silencing a scream.
“Love?” he said. “What is it? Say something. You look half-sick.”
“I...” Faye didn’t know what to say. Her body shook as if she were freezing, and yet a sheen of sweat covered her from head to toe. The urge to vomit was nearly overwhelming but her mouth was dry and her stomach empty.
Carrick.
Carrick Morgan.
This man wasn’t her Will. And this wasn’t 2015. And this wasn’t happening.
But it was happening.
Faye started at the earsplitting sound of an old-fashioned windup alarm clock ringing madly in another room.
She gasped. Her heart was caught halfway between her throat and her mouth.
“It’s just the alarm,” he said as if she should know. “You know, for the clockwork.”
“The what?”
He stood up and pulled the covers over her legs.
“I’ll be right back—promise,” he said. “Just rest. You had a rough night.”
When he reached the door she said his name again, practicing it.
“Carrick.”
“Yes?” He turned in the doorway to face her.
“When someone hits their head you’re supposed to ask them to name the year and the president and that sort of thing.”
“Are you?” he asked, skeptical.
“Yes. But I don’t know my name or the year or the president. Tell me.”
He came back to the bed and sat down in front of her.
“I can’t blame you for not knowing your name. I keep forgetting it myself. But you’re Faith Morgan now. It’s ’21. And you’re better off not knowing who the president is. I wish I didn’t know.”
Faye racked her aching brain. She’d majored in American studies in college. She should know. Better off not knowing? A bad president, then. And 1920s?
“Warren Harding,” she said.
Carrick smiled. “That’s it.”
“And I’m Faith Morgan. And it’s 1921.”
“See? You’re all right. Now stay here and rest. I’ll be back in a flash.”
She sensed he wanted to kiss her again but held back. From the doorway he gave her one last look before walking away into the darkness of the hallway beyond.
He’d left the hurricane lamp on the bedside table and Faye saw a pile of wet clothes on the floor. She left the bed and knelt on the floor. These weren’t her clothes. She’d been wearing a black tank top and jeans. In her hands she held a long skirt made of heavy cotton and a fussy white blouse with a collar that would cover her all the way to her throat.
The room might have been lovely had it been a room in a bed-and-breakfast in Charleston, but in her present circumstances it horrified her. No television. No radio. No electric lamps. No cords. No outlets. She opened the side table drawer and found it packed with delicate lace handkerchiefs, a small Bible, and some matches. She took one handkerchief from the drawer and studied it. The edges were embroidered with pink-and-yellow flowers, and in one corner she saw someone had starting sewing a monogram into the fabric.
An F and then part of an M.
Faith Morgan.
This was Faith Morgan’s handkerchief.
And this was Faith Morgan’s bedroom.
And that man, the man who’d kissed her, was Faith Morgan’s father, Carrick Morgan.
And Carrick Morgan had kissed her.
No...
Faye shook so hard she couldn’t stand. She sat on the bed again because if she didn’t, she would faint. Yet she also wanted to faint, to slip into oblivion again in the hopes when she woke up this nightmare would be over.
“I hit my head,” she whispered to herself. “I went to the lighthouse, and the wave hit me, and there must have been a rock. There must have been a rock under the water. The water dragged me under, and I hit my head. And now I’m in a coma or hallucinating or delusional. This isn’t real. None of it is real. It’s not 1921. That’s not possible. Head injuries are possible, and going back in time isn’t possible. This is a fantasy. This is a dream. This is a hallucination.”
On the bed Faye rocked back and forth, back and forth, trying to soothe herself. She put her hands into her hair and touched her scalp all over, looking for a wound, a bump, proof of an injury that would explain why she was seeing what she was seeing. She didn’t feel anything, but that meant nothing. A bump might not have come up yet. She could have intracranial bleeding. Her brain could be swelling right now, and any minute she’d slip into unconsciousness and die.
“Am I dying, Will?” she asked. “Can you hear me, baby? Are you there? Am I going to die?”
Hot tears flooded her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. It struck her then and struck her hard, the sudden certainty that she did not, absolutely did not, want to die.
“I don’t want to die,” she said. Even as she said it, she realized it was possibly the first time in four years she could say that with 100 percent honesty. Maybe she was experiencing a severe head injury. Surely that was the only explanation. Death stared her in the face. Death called her name. Death held out his hand to her. Over the past four years she’d been tempted to take Death by his outstretched hand, but there on that crazy quilt in that lamp-lit room with the lighthouse blinking behind her, Faye knew she did not want to die.
She heard footsteps in the house. Impossible not to when it was so eerily quiet. No air conditioner kicked on and off. No fluorescent lights buzzed. No traffic rumbled in the distance. Faye closed her eyes tight, pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead and rocked back and forth again. It was in that position the man found her. She heard him enter the room, and felt him sink onto the bed beside her and gather her into his bare arms and against his bare chest. His body was hot from exertion.
“Breathe, sweet girl. In and out,” he said, his voice strong and calm as she gasped and swallowed air. “In and out...”
“Am I dying?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. Not on my watch.”
Faye wept openly then, shaking and shivering in his arms. She wept because he had Will’s face and because he spoke Will’s words. But he wasn’t Will. And if he wasn’t Will, why did she want to love him?
Slowly, breath by breath, Faye’s shaking subsided. Fear still held her by the heart, and its iron fingers would not let go, but she could breathe again. A small victory.
“I must have hi
t my head,” she whispered against the man’s chest. Carrick’s chest. “Something’s not right.”
“I can call over to Hunting for help. We’ll go into town, take you to the doctor.”
She shook her head. “No. No doctors.”
If it was 1921, then a doctor would do more harm than good. Who knew what dangerous drug he’d prescribe, what unnecessary surgery he’d perform and in what sort of unsanitary conditions? And if she had no visible injuries and was still hallucinating, she could easily end up in an insane asylum.
“If you’re hurt...”
“No doctors,” she said again. “I won’t go.”
“All right, then. I can’t make you.”
“Why can’t you make me?” Faye asked. “Aren’t I your daughter?”
He laughed softly, a sort of ironic-sounding chuckle.
“That’s what we tell them,” he said. “Come on now. Look at me, love.”
She slowly lifted her head and met his eyes. Once more she started, stunned nearly senseless by his resemblance to Will. How could it not be him?
“Hold still,” he said, and he raised his hands to her head and gently rubbed his fingertips through her hair, over her scalp. His brow furrowed. “I don’t feel a bump or a knot. The skin’s not broken. Does it hurt anywhere?”
“No. How long was I under water?”
“Too long.”
“Maybe I’m... Maybe I have oxygen deprivation?”
“Oxygen deprivation?” He smiled as he said it, as if she’d suddenly broken into a foreign language. “I suppose that could be why you’re so out of sorts.”
“I kissed you.”
“We’ll blame the oxygen deprivation,” he said, letting his hands drop from her hair.
“You kissed me back.”
He exhaled heavily.
“Don’t know what to blame for that. Wish I did.”
She laughed despite herself. It sounded just like something Will would have said.
“I’m not... I’m not your daughter.”
He raised a finger to his lips, shushing her.
“Our little secret.”
9
What was the secret? She wasn’t his daughter. But if she wasn’t his daughter, who the hell was she?
“I should sleep,” Faye said, suddenly needing to be alone. She had to think, to figure things out, and she couldn’t do that with Carrick here. He’d ask her questions she wouldn’t be able to answer. If she told him the truth, that she was either hallucinating or had somehow traveled ninety-four years back in time, she would end up in a padded cell. There were no high quality mental hospitals in 1921. It was the cuckoo’s nest—water cures that were water torture, brain surgeries and straitjackets.
“That sounds like a fine idea. You want me to stay?”
“No.” Faye shook her head. “You can go. I’ll go to sleep right now.”
“I’ll check on you in an hour or two. I won’t wake you unless I think I oughta.”
He kissed her forehead again, and Faye closed her eyes as his lips met her skin. For one second she allowed herself to pretend it was Will, her beautiful Will, and he’d come to her in a dream and now he’d leave again, but not without kissing her goodbye first. Will would never leave her without kissing her goodbye. The only time he ever had was the day he died.
“Sleep well, sweet girl,” he whispered. He stood up as she lay back in the bed. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”
He gave her one last look, almost longing, and left her alone in the room. She listened in the dark, heard his footsteps travel down the hall, the house creaking with his every step. She heard his sure feet on a staircase, heard a door open and close, making a grunt as it rubbed against the frame. Faye closed her eyes and whispered words to herself in the dark.
“My name is Victoria Faye Barlow. I’ve always gone by Faye because Vicky is my mom. I was born June 5, 1985 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I went to Columbia and graduated with a bachelor’s in American studies because I couldn’t figure out what else to major in. I was twenty-five when I met William Jacob Fielding who was twenty-three and played shortstop in Rhode Island for the PawSox. We were married on a pier in Newport, Rhode Island. We were happy together, happier than anyone has a right to be. He died the next year during a carjacking. I would have died of the grief, but I was pregnant and had Will’s baby to take care of. I am not crazy. I did not make any of that up. And when I open my eyes it’ll be June of 2015, and I’ll be at the Church Street house and I’ll go to Ty’s room and tell him about the crazy dream I just had, and he will laugh at me and I will feel better. Just as soon as I open my eyes...”
Gradually...slowly...millimeter by millimeter, Faye opened her eyes.
She saw a white light flash outside the window, saw a crazy quilt lying over her body, heard the ocean rushing and retreating on the shore.
“Shit,” she said.
She tried it again, her incantation. But no matter how many times she told herself who she was, when she opened her eyes she was in a cottage by a lighthouse manned by a keeper named Carrick Morgan.
A keeper named Carrick Morgan who looked just like her dead husband.
It wasn’t a dream and it wasn’t a hallucination.
It was real.
Faye rolled onto her side and pulled her knees in tight. She had to plan. She had to think. She had to...she had to leave. She definitely had to leave. There was no way she could stay here. But where could she go? It was 1921, and her grandparents weren’t even alive yet. Her mother’s father wouldn’t be born for three more years. Her mother wouldn’t be born for thirty more years. Could she go to her great-grandparents? Could she even find them? Her maternal great-grandparents had lived somewhere in Massachusetts and would be newlyweds. What would they do if she showed up at their door and told them she was their great-granddaughter from the future and that they would both be dead before she was born? Maybe she could go to New York or Washington, DC, and start a new life. She could be a working girl. She knew how to type, although she’d never used a manual typewriter in her life. She didn’t know shorthand or how to take dictation. And she’d need money to get there. Was there any money stashed in this house? Did anyone in South Carolina have money in 1921? Maybe she could be a fortune-teller. She’d warn everyone of the stock-market crash looming and the threat of Nazi Germany on the horizon. Could she change the outcome of world events? Or would she simply get tossed into an asylum?
Faye heard the door rattle, followed by a soft knock.
“I’m fine,” she called out.
“I’m coming in,” Carrick said. Faye sat up straight and pulled the covers up to her neck.
Carrick cracked the door open and looked inside at her with Will’s eyes in Will’s face. She thought she even saw a little of Will’s old love in his expression, but she pretended not to see it.
“I brought you some milk.”
He handed her a blue-and-white tin cup, warm to the touch.
“Thank you.”
“Do you need anything before I go back up?”
“Up?”
“Up.” He pointed up.