But Not Forever Page 6

1895

  “Now, for the picnic outing today,” said Kerry. “You cannot just choose your clothing willy-nilly. I must select what you will wear until you have learned how to dress yourself properly. You must be impeccable or the lady of the house will notice and take it out on both of us. Here is a light shawl in case the wind picks up.”

  I ran the softness through my fingers. “I hate wasting my time on a dumb picnic when I could be scouting for a way home.”

  “Everything must remain ordinary. You have no choice but to go.” Kerry stood in front of the carved oak wardrobe with her hands on her hips. She reached inside, her arms flying in and out of drawers and off wooden hangers. “The green linen and matching bow for your hair. The high button shoes with the dark bone buttons will do. These are the undergarments to go with the picnic costume. And I implore you to not forget this handkerchief. You may need it to wave the flies away.”

  “High button shoes?” Sonnet held one out in front of her. “They look like little boots to me.”

  “Heavens no! Boots are for working men and women. For the hired class. The inside help like me and the woodcutters and miners you see out the window.” Kerry held up her dress and flashed her scuffed brown boots. Dirty laces braided through small holes up the center and were tied in small bows at her ankles. “High button shoes are for the civilized class, not for the likes of me. When the snow flies, women of society would have their feet turn to blocks of ice rather than be seen in mannish foot apparel.”

  “Too many rules around here.”

  “Yes, there are many rules. But there it is. We must live with it, and you must call things as they are or risk being found out. Now, another rule. It shan’t matter how ravenous you are. A small sandwich or chicken wing, some lemonade, and perhaps a bite of cookie is all you are allowed, no matter how bulging the picnic basket. Any more and you shall be thought of as a repulsive animal.”

  “She already thinks I’m a repulsive animal.”

  Kerry laughed. “You were a rampaging fiend in both our eyes yesterday. Fortunately for me, I know now why. Unlike her.” She laid the pile of clothing out on the brass bed. “Here you go. You must dress yourself and I must go see to Master Jacob. Will the buttons on the shoes be too difficult? Can you manage without my help? Here is the buttonhook.”

  I slid the hook out of her hand and hugged her in thanks before she went down the hall to the boys’ nursery. She hugged me back.

  “You’re starting to like the relaxed ways of one hundred and twenty years from now, aren’t you, Kerry?”

  “Well, I must admit you are rather demonstrative. Except for the boys, I haven’t had so much blessed attention since I left my Ma and Pa when I was twelve.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “In honesty . . . there was just not enough money to feed all the children in my family. My father was often sick with the black lung disease. Being the eldest of seven, it was high time for me to go to work and find my own support.”

  “Go to work!? Support yourself? You were twelve!”

  “Don’t feel bad, miss. No tears for me. I am in America, away from that sorrowful country of Ireland. I eat well, surely better than the wee ones I left behind. With the kindness of others, I have taught myself to read and write and speak like a lady. So much good is mine. I believe everything happens for a reason. I am here, right now, because I’m supposed to be. And as mysterious as it is, I believe that about you, too. Just as you are meant to go on the picnic today.”

  “I’ve been so caught up in my own troubles, I hadn’t even considered yours. I hadn’t considered you at all, Kerry.”

  She smiled. “Get on with you. You would be advised not to keep Thorn waiting.”

  “Thorn.” I laughed and rubbed the tears from my eyelashes. I would cry for this heroic girl on my own time. “How old are you now?”

  “Sixteen,” said Kerry.

  “The same age as my sister, Jules, and cousin Niki.”

  “You are rich with family. Hold them tight,” she said, as she left the room.

  Kerry might never see her family again, which made her an expert on missing people. I thrust those excruciating thoughts out of my head and surveyed the complicated clothes laid out in the order of putting them on.

  I started with the long, satin-trimmed knickers and chemise and the stiff petticoat. I rolled cotton leggings up around my thighs and pulled the green linen and lace dress over my head, tying the sash in the back. The shoes slid on easily but the buttons fought the hook for twenty minutes. I brushed out my hair and tried a dozen times to style it like Kerry had the night before. The bow flopped and sagged.

  At last the oval mirror reflected a hot and sweaty child covered in ruffles and lace. Sonnet had disappeared under the picnic costume disguise. I flapped my arms around and fanned myself with my handkerchief.

  A horse whinnied. I stuck my stifling body out the open window as far as it would go and let a cool breeze wash over my face and neck. Below me, Cook loaded up a red-and-gold carriage with a large basket. One of the workers who had brought me my tub yesterday tossed in blankets and umbrellas.

  I gathered up the parasol and shawl and wandered downstairs and out to the front porch, determined not to let that woman destroy my day. The sun felt delicious on my face, after my three-day imprisonment. I twirled the parasol out in front of me and watched pink and green blend and swirl.

  A pair of spotted Appaloosas, hitched to the carriage, waited in the driveway. I stood in front of them and cooed, stroking their muzzles. “Wish I could ride you, pretty girls.” They nuzzled my shoulder and then dipped their heads to where a pocket would be if I had a jacket on. “No, I don’t have any sugar for you,” I murmured, and nuzzled them back.

  “Starlight stands there on the right and Moonbeam on the left, miss,” said a quiet voice behind me. “They fancy you.”

  Moonbeam nudged my shoulder while I laughed and turned toward an ugly squawking noise. Thorn. I had already forgotten myself and the picnic hadn’t even started.

  “Get into the carriage, Emma,” she said. “We are late.” She shoved in front of me.

  I took the offered hand and climbed in after her onto the tufted red leather bench next to Jacob. Thorn sat across from us.

  “Precious little boy,” I whispered at Jacob as he scooted closer to me across the seat.

  Chaos reigned out the window as we wound down a lane through the miners’ cabins and outbuildings. Tough men with bushy beards and dirty clothes trudged on the side of the road and in the fields. Some held pickaxes on their shoulders or maneuvered wheelbarrows. Others led donkeys piled high with gear. Human odor, mixed with the smell of animals, blew in the open carriage windows. The men tipped their stained leather hats our way.

  “Those dogs,” I said to Jacob. “Where in the world did they come from?”

  “They belong to the miners. They chase away the bears and the cougars. You remember, Father told us when we first moved to Monte Cristo.”

  A gurgled harrumph came at us from Thorn’s throat. I turned away. “Of course. I knew that.” I smiled at him. “Do you want to play a game? It’s called ‘I see.’ We both yell out what we see and whoever says it first wins. Like, I say, ‘I see five dogs.’ and then you yell out, ‘I see a man with a red coat!’”

  Jacob eyed his mother’s pinched face. “I would prefer to sit quietly, Emma.”

  “You would be correctly advised to follow the boy’s instruction. And your language is especially atrocious today.” Thorn smoldered, shaking her head. “Really, when a five-year-old knows proper comportment while riding in a carriage and a fifteen-year-old does not . . .”

  Her laser-like focus on me was a nonstop tsunami, boring down, pounding and pounding on the shores of my new life. Mean. Just plain mean.

  I swiveled my body away from her to the window and laid my head back against the leather. I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes at the bushy, sun-dappled evergreens along the side of the narrow dirt roadway. They rus
hed backwards away from the carriage—green-colored blurs through my eyelashes, as hazy as this mysterious world.

  A dark red horse stood in a curve of trees. The rider sat still in the saddle. Rapp? I sat up and craned my neck to look. Sun flashed in the window. He disappeared as we rounded a curve in the road.

  No, I scolded my jumping heart. Impossible. I was seeing things. No way.

  THE carriage crunched to a stop in a large meadow. The driver jumped from his perch and held out his hand as I stepped out into the light. Ahhh . . . The sun hovered hot and the woodsy, shredded-bark scent was intoxicating. It was good to finally be out of that dreary house. I held the parasol over my head and walked to the cluster of waiting females and one small boy who wagged their hands at us. A wooden table stood next to the river with eight matching wooden chairs and a wildflower-filled vase.

  Olive, Pearl, and I sat next to each other as the bows in our hair, each in a different color, blew around in the river breeze. The two girls gossiped while china and crystal clinked and tinkled and my half-eaten cream cheese and pimento sandwich sat stewing in the sun. I stared at my plate and slowly counted to one hundred.

  “I’ve been requested to pick blackberries today for pies and jam. I should get started. Would you girls like to join me?” I veered away from the table and avoided Thorn’s eyes.

  Pearl’s mother tied white aprons over our dresses and Jacob and William waved goodbye from the riverbank. I blew sweet Jacob a kiss. Pearl struck out toward the clearing and the trees beyond the carriages, and Olive and I followed her lead, the mind-numbing picnic receding behind us.

  As we passed the three carriages and headed into the woods, Pearl twirled around with a smile, her pink lacy dress covered in the white apron ballooning out from her knees. “It is good to be momentarily freed from the restrictive environment of our mothers. Now if only a swashbuckling pirate might ride by.”

  “Pearl, you read far too many racy books. And the restrictions are for our own good. What do you say, Emma? Please do, join in,” said Olive, with a smug face.

  She was setting a trap. “I have no opinion on this topic because I’m concentrating on finding blackberries.”

  “Really, Emma. You are very vocal today. And Pearl, if your mother only knew, she would lock you up. I find your independent nature offensive. Pirate, indeed.”

  Oh, brother. I pivoted toward a clump of blackberry bushes before anything could escape my mouth. The pine-scented forest edge, still and cool as a wet cloth on my hot forehead, dried the sweat running down my back under the layers of clothes. I waded into a small, girl-sized depression in a large bush and nipped the soft, fragrant berries from their thorny nests. They hit the tin bucket like summer rain striking a tin roof. Pretty soon the berries found a soft landing on top of each other and Olive and Pearl’s voices ebbed away into the distance. Making up for the dismal lunch, I popped a few fat berries into my mouth and thought about warm and sugary pies.

  I filled the first bucket to overflowing and placed it back on the trail behind me. I started filling the second bucket and ate every seventh berry. Why not? The juicy lumps burst with sweetness and their smell was heaven. Ping-ping-ping sounded as the blackberries hit the tin. Olive and Pearl had wandered far away and freedom felt wonderful.

  I reached to the top of the bush and strained for some big ones. A bee buzzed close by, attracted like me to the sweet taste. Humming, I fell into a leisurely rhythm and thought of all the times my family had picked wild blackberries together.

  Huh? I peered over the top of the bush and behind me. I was sure I had heard twigs snapping. From the corner of my eye I saw something move. A boy’s head behind me. Or a man’s head? It disappeared.

  And then it appeared again. He came bobbing down the path. Standing in the middle of a blackberry thicket, the only way out was the trail where I had placed the first bucket. And that was where he now stood. I slid off the heavy apron to make it easier to run.

  “I have not come to harm you, miss.”

  “What do you want? I’ll scream—”

  He took a step backwards. “Please, you needn’t scream. I just want to speak to you.” Coarse dark hair hung under a red-and-gold-checked cap. Eyes, with long black lashes, sat in his light brown face, wet and soft like drops of melted chocolate. He wasn’t much older than me. “My grandfather and I are trying to understand why you are here among us.”

  “What do you mean why I am here among you?”

  “Why are you here in this time? You are not from this time.”

  I froze. His eyes betrayed nothing but curiosity and concern. “I don’t know why I’m here,” I whispered, afraid Olive lurked within striking distance. Afraid she would hear and report back to her mother. “I banged into a closet in an abandoned house in Monte Cristo. I woke up one hundred and twenty years earlier in the Sweetwine home. That’s all I know.”

  “My grandfather saw you in a vision. Said you are not from our age, our time. You are not Emma. What is your name, miss?”

  I could have dropped to my knees and kissed his brown mannish working boots. For the second time in two days I said my name out loud to someone who believed me. “Sonnet McKay.”

  He nodded, as if he ran into time travelers picking blackberries in a forest every day. “My grandfather wishes to meet you, Miss McKay.”

  “Who are you? Who’s your grandfather?”

  “I am Maxwell. My grandfather is Simeon. I have seen it now and know for certain. Emma is skittish around horses. Not you.”

  “Can you help me? I’m desperate to get home. I don’t know what to do—”

  “Nature and spirits keep their own timeline. Whether we want them to or not, a bear slumbers all winter and fireflies appear to us only at night.”

  “Do you mean I should I just sit back and wait for something to happen instead of searching for an answer? You’re confusing me.”

  Olive and Pearl’s nattering voices coasted toward us through the blackberry bushes. Maxwell backed away and crossed the trail.

  “Wait! Don’t go, Maxwell. Please.”

  He tipped his cap and disappeared into the forest. My brain did cartwheels.

  “Is that you in there, Emma? We have two large buckets filled to the brim apiece. How many do you have?” Olive and Pearl stood on the trail where Maxwell had just been.

  I hated that they had interrupted us. I stopped myself from shoving past their linen and lace covered bodies and fleeing into the woods after Maxwell. “Almost two buckets, Olive.”

  “Is that all? And where is your pinafore?” Olive narrowed her bulging gray eyes at my thrown-off apron lying crumpled at my feet and then turned them on my blackberry-stained lips.

  “I was hot.” I ripped the apron off the ground and put it back on. Olive was insufferable. Emma hadn’t wanted to talk to her and neither did I. “Wait, let me just fill this last bucket. I can’t go back to . . . my mother without as many blackberries as you both have.”

  “We can help,” said Pearl.

  With the bucket filled, the girls continued their silly conversation about boys and pirates as we walked back to the river. I followed silently in their shadows.

  Jacob threw his arms around my waist and hugged me as if I had been gone for days. I kissed the top of his head.

  Missus Jenkins fussed around our heaping buckets. “Superb blackberry-picking, girls.”

  Throwing my dirt- and blackberry-stained apron on the empty picnic table, I walked away and sat under a tree next to the riverbank with Jacob by my side. I listened to picnic gear clank around as the drivers heaved it back to the carriages waiting in the meadow.

  Jacob’s little hand stretched out to mine, and together we watched the cold, crystal water gurgle and swirl as it ran over smooth gray rocks. A fish swam by with speckles on its side, dotting a silver, shimmery casing. If I stared long enough, I might see gold glittering in this mining town river. I bent forward and dipped my fingers into the water and brought them to my hot face. I let r
iver water drip down my cheeks—

  “What are you doing?” Thorn blocked the sun.

  I twitched.

  Jacob squeezed my hand.

  Her finger struck out at me. She caught my chin and turned it toward her, blue eyes sweeping across my face. “Where is your parasol? You are as brown as an Indian.”

  She snatched Jacob’s arm and walked her beautiful high button shoes up to the others, leaving me by myself.

  I shuffled behind, kicking at the rocky dirt and shrubby grass. Tall trees beyond the carriages called my name, lured me to keep walking, begged to swallow me up, hide me from her. I wondered if it would be possible to just disappear, camp out, find a hollow tree trunk to live in, survive on blackberries and speckled fish and river water until I could figure this thing out. Maybe Kerry could bring me blankets, maybe Maxwell and his grandfather could guide me.

  The horse and carriage driver held his hand out as I hopped up to take my place on the red leather seat. A red-and-gold checked cap sat at a jaunty angle on his head.

  “Maxwell?” I opened my mouth to say something else but he shook his head at me. I sat in silence, my face turned to the open window, my hand holding Jacob’s little one. I had learned my lesson.

  AT the house, I held back and let Thorn and Jacob out of the carriage in front of me. Maxwell helped me down. I stalled for a minute and then whispered, just loud enough for him to hear, “Kerry’s our friend. She knows who I am and who I’m not.”

  He nodded. I walked across the gravel path and entered the house.

  “Emma.”

  I whirled around.

  “Go to your room now and stay there. I do not want to see you again until supper.”

  “Fine with me.”

  Thorn took my arm before I could bolt. Her voice softened. “Teaching you to act like a lady is my job. When you are willful, I must correct you.”

  My eyes skated over her thin, taut neck. Being with her was like being on a dangerous roller coaster. I nodded, extracted my ensnared arm, and ran up the stairs.

  Halfway down the hallway, piano chords and laughter suddenly made me turn around. I had heard those sounds before. I crept back down and peeked into the parlor. Thorn sat on the piano bench with Jacob and Miles on either side of her, running her fingers over the keys. Miles turned to her and said something with a chortle. She laughed her answer back to him and kissed the top of his head. Jacob had his arm around her waist and she turned to kiss him, too. And there she sat, a loving mother, between her boys.