“Zoë, I can’t live like this anymore,” he said, then he shot himself through the temple.
For a moment she couldn’t move. She just stood there staring at him.
In the next second, his wife ran into the room. She looked from her husband, his bloody head slumped on the desk, then she looked at Zoë. She raised her hands in fists as she ran toward her.
“You killed him!” she shouted. “You killed my husband.”
“I…I didn’t,” Zoë stammered, backing up toward a wall of bookcases, her arms across her face to protect herself. When Karen appeared behind the woman, Zoë had never been so glad to see anyone in her life. Karen ran to Zoë, put her arm around her shoulders in a protective way, and led her out of the house while the wife ran to the phone.
“He shot himself,” Zoë said, her whole body shivering. “I saw it.”
“That’s what I was afraid would happen. Look, I have to do something, so you take the car, and—”
“Karen, you can’t go back in there. There’s a loaded gun in there. She’ll kill you.”
“I have to get some things. Look, Zoë, you take the car and go. Meet me at that drive-in on Fourth. I’ll be there as soon I can get there. All I ask is that if the police question you, you say I was with you.”
“You can’t—” Zoë began, but all she could see in her mind was that man shooting himself.
“Trust me,” Karen said as she led Zoë back to the hidden car. “I know I’ve not always been the easiest sister in the world, but you don’t want to see me in jail, do you?”
“Jail?”
“There are some things of mine in that house that could make people think I had something to do with his death.”
“Things?” Zoë asked. She couldn’t seem to think very well.
“Letters. I have to find them and get rid of them, and I have to have an alibi. Remember! I was with you all night. Now go.” She shoved Zoë behind the steering wheel and put her hand on the key. When Zoë didn’t react, Karen started the engine for her, then closed the door. She didn’t stay to wave goodbye, just ran back into the house.
“So I left,” Zoë said to Faith and Amy, “and about a mile away, I drove into a tree. When I woke up, I was slathered in bandages, I couldn’t remember anything, and the whole town hated me.”
“She put you behind the wheel of a car after you’d seen something like that,” Faith said in wonder.
“Your sister told the town the man was having an affair with you, didn’t she?” Amy said.
Zoë shrugged. “When all that was going on, I was in a hospital bed unconscious, and when I rewrote history, my accident hadn’t happened, but, yes, I think that’s what she did.”
“An all-time low,” Faith said. “Even for a sister.”
Zoë nodded. “As you pointed out, on the night I was supposed to be in the car wreck, I was in bed with the man I was to marry.”
“So what happened this time around?” Faith asked.
“After I left Russ’s apartment the next morning, I realized what day it was and I wondered if Mr. Johnson had still shot himself. Or had I changed things so much that he didn’t do it? I checked the Internet and he had, indeed, killed himself.”
“Was your sister there?” Amy asked.
“Yes,” Zoë said. “She told me she hadn’t really needed me that night, that I was just her cover, so when I wasn’t there, she went alone. She left Bob with the kids, put on her red dress, and went to see Alan Johnson.”
Zoë looked down at her empty plate. “I found out some things later, but I knew nothing that day in New York. When I got back to my apartment, I had four frantic messages on my phone from Karen. She said I had to call her, that I had to come home, that she needed me. She said I couldn’t abandon her after all she’d done for me.”
Faith put her hand over Zoë’s wrist to calm her.
“It took me a while to piece together the story of what happened the first time, but…” She looked at Amy.
“I don’t think it would have taken much on your sister’s part to make the woman believe that her husband was having an affair with you rather than the worn-out mother of two kids,” Amy said.
“I don’t think it did,” Zoë said, “and when I had the wreck and was conveniently in a coma for a while, I think my sister did everything she could to sully my name, and save her own skin.”
She smiled. “But the second time around, things happened in a very different way. When Mrs. Johnson came home, there was her husband dead, and my sister was tearing through the study trying to find the letters. Mrs. Johnson immediately called the police, and they…”
“They what?” Faith asked.
“Put my sister in jail for a few days.”
“Serves her right!” Amy said.
“I guess so,” Zoë said, “but she begged me to come back and be with her, but I wouldn’t. Thank heaven, this time around I’d had time away from her, not to mention three weeks in the eighteenth century, so I could tell her no. If it had happened right after I left—”
“You would have been stuck there for the rest of your life,” Amy said.
“Probably.”
“So what happened this time around?” Faith asked.
“They let my sister out of jail when they saw it was a suicide, but of course everyone wanted to know why such a great man had killed himself.”
“And of course they blamed a woman,” Faith said.
“Completely. The police found the letters my sister had written him, so everyone knew about the affair.”
“Why did he really kill himself?” Amy asked. “I don’t think that men of this century kill themselves over love.”
Zoë couldn’t help smiling. “How diplomatic of you. They certainly don’t kill themselves over trashy women like my sister.” She took a sip of wine. “It seems that the man had a gambling problem and was up to his ears in debt. It took a year for all the ugly details to come out, but everything he was involved in was a fake. He had no money, nothing. His wife lost everything and had to get a job.”
“And your sister?” Faith asked.
“Bob divorced her and kept the kids. Karen moved away and the last time I saw her…”
“What?” Faith asked.
“She visited me in New York and she thought I’d be the same little girl she’d bullied all her life. But I’d changed. When she said something nasty, I just laughed at her. I kept remembering that while I was lying in a hospital fighting for my life, my sister had been letting the town believe that Mr. Johnson and I had been having an affair.”
“It makes more sense that he’d want a gorgeous dame like you than a Tobacco Road girl,” Faith said.
Zoë laughed. “You two are good for my ego.”
“And what about Russ?” Amy asked. “Did she make a pass at him?”
“She’s doing it again,” Zoë said to Faith. “Yes, my sister in her polyester dress, with her four-pack-a-day habit, made a pass at my boyfriend. And when he pushed her away, she got so angry she tried to make me believe he’d come on to her.”
“Classic,” Amy said. “I bet she went away in a rage.”
“Oh, yeah,” Zoë said. “In a fury. But it didn’t bother me. In my head were the years of hurt I’d suffered at her hands. I didn’t realize it then, but I was really beaten down by what that town had done to me. There I was in a hospital with my cracked skull and they hated me without even trying to find out the truth.”
“Do you think she felt any guilt? I mean the first time,” Faith asked.
“Some. I remember her face when I saw her when I burned the car on the town square. She couldn’t get away from me fast enough. The truth is that I’m ashamed of myself because I can’t forgive her.”
Amy looked at Zoë. “Primrose said that there was always true love involved in anything Madame Zoya did. Where was your true love?”
“I’m not sure,” Zoë said. “I know I had a boyfriend of sorts. We’d gone together all during high school, b
ut he turned on me as soon as there was a hint of scandal. I didn’t miss him.”
“I think your true love is that art of yours,” Faith said. “When you thought you’d lose your talent, you were willing to keep the hatred of an entire town and the damage to your body. If that isn’t true love, I don’t know what is.”
“I never thought of that,” Zoë said, “but it makes sense. I think my true love has now expanded to my husband and daughter, but, yes, if I had a true love back then, it was the talent I’d been given. And art led me to the two men in my life.”
“So how much like Russell is the new guy?” Faith asked.
Zoë laughed. “Wait till we get to you. I’m going to ask you nothing but personal questions.”
“Like who’s the better lover of all my three men?” Faith asked.
Zoë laughed.
“What did you answer?” Amy asked Faith.
“I didn’t,” Faith said, and the women laughed together.
“I have a blueberry cobbler,” Amy said. “How about if we have it in the living room?”
“And hear Faith’s story,” Zoë said.
“My thoughts exactly,” Amy said.
Twenty-five
In record time, the three women had cleaned up the dishes, put everything away, and were ensconced in the living room, ready to hear Faith’s story.
“I think that you should guess,” Faith said.
“That’s not fair,” Zoë said. “I’m no good at stories.”
“I like the idea,” Amy said. “Let me see.” She stared hard at Faith. “I’m not sure that what we think happened, did.”
“You didn’t marry Eddie,” Zoë said. “That’s for sure. And I don’t think you were in love with William enough to want to find his descendants, so that means you married Tyler.”
Faith just smiled and looked at them over her wineglass.
“I don’t think so,” Amy said. “I think that your time in Tristan’s world changed you. I think that if you’d gone back in your time before that, you would have married Tyler, but…”
Zoë was looking from one to the other of them, then she got up, went to Jeanne’s cabinet and withdrew drawing supplies. “I’m glad to see that some things haven’t changed. Did I tell you two that some of my drawings have survived from the eighteenth century? They say they were done by a student of Russell Johns.”
“Any of the nudes of him?” Amy asked.
“How did you know about those?” Zoë asked.
“Tristan snooped through Russell’s room.”
“You’re kidding,” Zoë said. “He didn’t have the right to do that.”
“He owned the place and I think he felt that he could do what he wanted to,” Amy said. “So did any of those beefcake nudes survive the ages?”
“Actually, two of them did. Both of them are of Russell, but no one knows who they are. They think they’re of the local blacksmith. No one can believe the artist looked like that.”
“I know,” Amy said. “People today think we have the market cornered on beautiful men.”
“Speaking of which,” Faith said, “how did you and Tristan spend your last two days together?”
Amy smiled. “I want to hear how you’ve spent your last sixteen years. I see you’re married but, somehow, I don’t think it’s to either Eddie or Tyler.”
Zoë looked up from her drawing pad. “Don’t tell me she’s right.”
“She is.”
Zoë lifted her glass to Amy in tribute.
“Okay, that’s enough about me,” Amy said. “I want to hear about you.”
“If Tyler hadn’t died—”
“Been killed by your mother,” Zoë said.
“All right, but I don’t like to think about that,” Faith said. “My mother was a woman of deep passions and I’ll never know what really happened that day, but I’m sure it was spur of the moment. I’m sure she didn’t plan to kill him.”
“Dead is dead,” Zoë said, her eyes on her drawing.
“Yes, and that’s why I went back,” Faith said. “If it hadn’t been for Ty’s premature death, I wouldn’t have gone back to change anything.”
“You’re kidding,” Zoë said.
“No. After I came back from living in a place where I was a useful woman, I knew what I wanted to do with my life,” Faith said.
“And there were the seeds,” Amy said. “You were concerned about them. They’d made it through one transport, but you weren’t sure they’d stand another one.”
“Exactly!” Faith said.
Zoë looked at her. “Are you telling me that you would have given up a chance to take away all the dreadful things that had been done to you just for a plant?”
“Yes,” Faith said.
Zoë shook her head at her. “I’m almost glad Ty was killed if only to make you go back and rewrite your life.”
“Me, too,” Faith said. “I needed my youth to give the balm time to grow.”
“Start when Ty came through your window,” Amy said. “You told us that if you had a chance to do it again, you’d be packed and ready to leave with him.”
“I was packed all right, but I wasn’t leaving with any man.” She looked at Amy. “Can you figure it out?”
“I think…” she began, then looked up. “I think the problem was that you thought you had only two men to choose from. One was a motorcycle-riding hillbilly, and the other was a tea-drinking rich boy.”
Zoë looked at Faith.
“Is she right?”
“Perfectly,” Faith said. “After we returned from the eighteenth century, I realized that I could never be happy with either man. If I married Ty, even knowing what I do now, I knew I wouldn’t be happy with him. I had a vision of his working fourteen-hour days, seven days a week.”
“All to prove that he was as good a man as Eddie,” Amy said.
“Yes,” Faith said. “I’m not sure what made me see it, maybe it was that back in Tristan’s time, as Amy calls it, it was the first time that I was truly free. That sounds funny when you think of the centuries involved. We think women are free today, but were subjugated back then. For me, it was the opposite.”
“But then, in this time, you had two mothers telling you what to do—for your entire life,” Zoë said.
“It’s going to be hard to believe, but I think the mothers had very little to do with it,” Faith said. “I think I grew up loving that two boys were in love with me. I thought about my childhood as best I could without wallowing in emotion and sentimentality.”
She took a breath. “I think that I’ve always looked at my life entirely wrong. I always saw myself as a victim of my mother and later as the punching bag for Eddie’s mother. But when I looked at things from afar, I saw that I was the one who caused the problems.”
“You’ll have to explain that to me,” Zoë said, but Amy said nothing.
“I spent my whole childhood with two boys, Tyler and Eddie. I think it’s just possible that I was the strong one when we were kids, and I think I may have adopted them in a motherly way.”
“It’s easy to mother the men in your life,” Amy said. “It’s one of my great faults.”
“I didn’t realize how motherly I was until I was in that orangery with William. I thought I was a martyr for taking care of Eddie all those years, but William made me realize that I like helping people.”
Faith looked down at her hands. “I used to think that I overlooked the awful circumstances that Ty and Eddie lived in, but I came to realize that that’s what I liked about them.”
“They needed you,” Amy said.
“Yes, they did. Ty was trapped in horrible circumstances in his family life, and even though Eddie looked to be better off, he wasn’t. He just had more money.”
“You thought you had to marry one of them out of guilt,” Amy said.
“Right,” Faith said. “I had taken them out of their bad families and we’d formed our own family.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad
,” Zoë said.
“Someday, you have to push your children out of the nest,” Amy said. “I dread it. I want to buy houses for my sons that are next door to us. Even the thought of their going to college makes me ill.”
“I agree,” Faith said, “but I also know you well enough to know that, when the time comes, you won’t hold your children back.”
“No,” Amy said, sighing. “I’m sure that when I have to, I’ll get my courage together and let them go. However, I feel sorry for any girl who wants to marry one of my sons.”
Faith and Zoë laughed.
Faith continued. “I knew that if I was going to give Eddie and Ty a real chance at life I had to leave them. I didn’t plan to explain, just leave.”
“Like me,” Zoë said.
“Exactly. Sometimes words can’t fix anything,” Faith said, “and I knew this was such a case. If it had come to the point where my mother was willing to kill to make me marry the man of her choice, then I had to change everything.”
“So what did you do?” Amy asked.
“You can’t guess?” Zoë said.
“Maybe,” Amy said, “but I’d rather hear what actually happened.”
“When Ty climbed in my window that night, I wasn’t there. And I wasn’t there when Eddie came in and threw his jealous little fit. Instead, I went to Eddie’s mother.”
“You did what?!” Zoë said, her eyes wide. “I thought you hated her.”
“I did. I knew all the awful things she’d done to me over the years I was married to her son. It hadn’t happened yet and wasn’t going to, but I still remembered them. But I also knew that she’d been right.”
“You didn’t love Eddie,” Amy said.
“Yes she did,” Zoë said. “She loved both of them.”
“True,” Faith said. “I loved Eddie like a brother, and I loved Ty like a sex machine. I had fun with him, but in the end I married Eddie.”
“Why did you go to his mother?” Zoë asked.
Faith looked at Amy. “Do you know why?”
“I would think that you went to her for money.”
“Don’t tell me that’s true,” Zoë said. “I would have walked the streets before I asked her for money.”