But Not Forever Read online

  She was a certified Jekyll and Hyde.

  I tore the loathsome green bow out of my hair as I scooted back up. Shoving the bedroom door shut, I dragged off the layers of Emma’s stifling picnic costume and batted them away. With vicious stabs, I took the buttonhook to her shoes and kicked them across the room. I marched to the closet in the old-fashioned underwear. A small high window let in light. The shelves were empty and the pile of broken junk had been swept away. I shut the door behind me.

  Was this the way back? I sat on the floor and squeezed my eyes shut, my muscles taut with the intensity of my wish.

  I wanted to go home. I had never been hated before. I didn’t know how to behave—how to be meek and docile. Mom and Dad treated me as if I was one of the three most remarkable kids that had ever been born. Cliché Jules, with her cheerleading and club-joining and popularity. And almost as cliché Evan, with his sports and good grades and multitudes of friends. Then there was me. Lacking in their social skills, but with a brain that made pretty much everything as easy as snapping my fingers. Until now.

  Nothing. I banged back against the wall and cracked the closet door open—the stupid little closet door I never should have opened in the first place, that day. I should have listened to my head. Not the siren sound of Rapp’s voice.

  And now here I was. Broken into a million pieces. Shattered.

  Why? Why?

  There was no logic to it. Nothing made sense.

  My body felt hollow, emptied of anything special. Wonderful, smart me, the girl who went out of her way to minimize mistakes, was now gone, replaced with something alien, someone who was only making mistakes.

  Someone even I didn’t recognize.

  I ran my palm down the smooth pink bead board and thought about Emma, who had been sentenced to live out her life in this beautiful, lonely bedroom. My sanctuary . . . a gilded cage.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Emma

  2015

  Emma took up a quilt from where it had fallen off the end of Lia’s bed and wrapped herself up in it. She drew the gauzy curtains away from the open window and watched the brand-new morning sky cast its emergent light across the backyard and through the tall trees beyond the large wooden porch. Lia had called the porch a deck. Lia had called many things words she had never heard before.

  Yesterday had been a cascade of colors and an opera of sounds. Hordes of humans, of every creed and color, wearing bright apparel and calling out to each other, had dashed from place to place with no notice of a girl from 1895. Lines of cars blasted and rushed, and shiny, winged cylinders of metal roared overhead. Emma’s ears had rung with the noise, and her heart had raced with the pandemonium. But she felt she had educated herself on more things yesterday than she had learned in her entire life. She was ready for this unexpected education.

  She took a deep breath. The air was salty like a beach and fragrant with the scent of Aunt Kate’s roses. Quiet morning sounds came from other rooms in the house. She smelled brewing coffee. Lia’s family gently stirred. In her Monte Cristo life, the inside of her parents’ home clanged with a silent bell of danger. Little Miles didn’t notice much . . . but dear Jacob did. She wondered if he was searching for her. Searching every nook and cranny. The thought brought a sudden sob to her throat.

  Stop, Emma. Worrying would help nothing.

  She took another breath of roses. Still and calm. She knew she had nothing to be afraid of here.

  She brought Sonnet’s book from the bedside table and sat down on a small white chair to wait for her new friend to awaken. The tale of a French girl wandering in a Vietnamese jungle teeming with slithering snakes, crouching tigers, and snapping crocodiles caught her attention.

  THE door opened a sliver. Aunt Kate put her head in the room and observed Lia’s sleeping form. She crooked a finger, bidding Emma to come.

  Emma put the book down. Excited and frightened all at once, her time on stage had arrived, and she would go alone without Lia. She hoped she was a good actress. And she wished more than anything that snarling Peetie dog wasn’t around.

  Aunt Kate, in a hurry like all these people, held Emma’s wrist and drew her through the hallway and down the staircase to the kitchen in a fast clip.

  “I’m just finishing up the cinnamon rolls. You can be my assistant. Then I want to show you something. Get your advice.”

  She bustled around, busy-busy, and poured a pink colored liquid into a large blue cup festooned with sailing boats, pushing it at Emma.

  “What is this?”

  “Are you still asleep? Hot pink lemonade. Your favorite.”

  Emma took a sip. Delicious. “Thank you.”

  Aunt Kate whirled like a ballerina from counter to appliance to counter again. She brought a small tin of cinnamon and a bowl of sugar to Emma and rolled out a layer of dough on the stone tabletop in the middle of the room. She smoothed butter over the thin membrane.

  “Sprinkle, honey.”

  Emma held the tin and shook it over the dough, sending a layer of cinnamon showering down. She tried out a new word. “Okay?”

  “Perfect. Now the sugar.”

  This was fun. She had never assisted in Cook’s kitchen. Helping the help was not allowed. Emma found a spoon and sprinkled sugar. Aunt Kate rolled the brown-and-white sprinkled dough into a long spool and sliced it into pieces. She helped put them on a baking tin. The tin went into a small heated closet in the wall.

  “Come with me.”

  Emma took the liquid gift and followed her back up the stairs to the master bedroom. Sleeping smells drifted in a room still messy with clothes from the day before. She watched from the doorway as Aunt Kate sat on an unmade bed and patted the spot next to her. She leaned over, taking a catalogue off the bedside table.

  “Come, Sonnet. Sit. I need your opinion.”

  Emma sat, mortified, her cheeks on fire. She had never been invited into her own parent’s bedchambers. Not once. And now here she was in an adult stranger’s room. She crossed one leg over the other and balanced the hot cup in her lap. She wished she were dressed in something other than Sonnet’s bedclothes.

  The bright catalogue thrust at her had pictures of matching beds and desks and dressers.

  “I like these two sets,” said Aunt Kate. “What do you think? Will she like either of them?”

  Would who like either one of them—did she refer to Lia? After a moment, Emma pointed at furniture painted a robin’s egg blue. “This color is beautiful. I would even like it for myself.”

  “Thought so. That’s the one, then. Won’t she be surprised on her birthday? She’s had that banged-up white set since she turned seven. Now don’t tell her. Promise?”

  “No, of course not. I promise.” Banged up and white. The bed she had been sleeping in and the chair she had been sitting on. The furniture was for Lia from a loving mother who thought of her and wished to please her. She clenched her jaw and swallowed, but too late. A fat, hot tear slid down her cheek.

  “Ahhh . . . sweetheart.” Aunt Kate put her arm around Emma’s shoulder and hugged her close, rocking and humming. She kissed Emma’s hair. The same hair her own mother turned from in disgust.

  Emma relaxed and let herself be lulled and petted as if she were a baby bird dropped out of its nest. Her body draped into maternal curves and creases and her arms stretched around the ample waist and hung on tight as her tears shed away like liquid drops of sadness into the sweet woman’s lap.

  How many days filled fifteen years? How many hours, minutes, seconds? Emma had waited that long to feel her head on a mother’s soft shoulder. She had waited that long to have a mother kiss her cheek. She lay still in the warmth of Aunt Kate’s arms, not wanting to break the magic.

  Emma had longed for this moment her entire life.

  LIA, Niki, and Jules, all still in their sleeping clothes, skated toward the bed, matching looks of alarm on their faces.

  Jules towed her out of Aunt Kate’s arms. “We couldn’t find you. We’ve gotta get re
ady to go to Rapp’s this morning. Remember, Sonnet? Evan’s gonna be waiting.”

  “What’s wrong, Mom?” asked Niki, wrinkling her face at Emma.

  “Just a bout of homesickness, I think. Oh, god, the cinnamon rolls!” She ran from the room toward a buzzing sound.

  Lia closed the door behind her mother. “You scared us, Emma. We didn’t know where you went. We’ve been searching the house and the yard and everywhere.”

  “What happened?” Niki asked. “Whatever possessed you to hang out in here with Mom?”

  Emma’s quavering breath plumbed the very depths of her soul. She felt peaceful, somehow. As if her tears and that woman’s loving arms had joined to chip off a few years of mistreatment at the hands of her own mother.

  “Aunt Kate came and found me in Lia’s bedroom. She made hot pink lemonade. Just for me. I helped her make cinnamon rolls. And then she brought me in here to discuss—odds and ends. Nothing important.” Emma wiped across her cheeks. “Besides our family cook, Niki, your mother is the kindest person I have ever met.”

  “Well, your mom must be hell,” said Jules.

  Lia glared at Jules and flicked her hard with a finger. “She’s having a moment, here.”

  “Oww!” Jules looked ready to flick Lia back.

  “God, Jules, she’s been through a lot,” said Lia. “Think about your words. Be nice.”

  “Actually, my mother is hell, Lia.”

  “See?” Jules gloated.

  “Okay, okay,” said Niki, getting between them. “Emma, just go with Lia and get dressed. We have to get ready. Meet us in my bedroom in forty-five minutes. We’ll go to the kitchen together, have something to eat, and then walk to Rapp’s for our meeting. We told him we’d be there before noon. And just remember, Emma, Sonnet wouldn’t be acting like this. She doesn’t get homesick. She loves it here. You need to be more careful.”

  “Perhaps Aunt Kate will assume I am still unwell.” Emma gazed into her blue cup. She wasn’t sure she could be more careful. She was drawn to that dear woman like a bee to a lilac tree.

  She wanted nothing more than to follow Aunt Kate back into the kitchen and be her special assistant for the rest of the day.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sonnet

  1895

  Kerry stood over me. “Get up, miss. Why do you slumber in the closet? ’Tis time to ready for supper.”

  Still half asleep, I crawled out and reached for the green picnic dress I had flung off earlier. Kerry smiled and took it from me. “You mustn’t wear that again. You wore it earlier in the day. Here, this dress will do for supper.” She put the petticoat back over my head and covered it with a light pink dress with vertical white stripes.

  Running from me to the wardrobe and back again, she dressed me and fixed my hair while I yawned and shook myself awake. “What would I do without you, Kerry? What took me over an hour today has taken you only ten minutes.”

  “I have had many years of practice . . . you but a few days. From the way you have described, in your time you need only set a wrinkled item of clothing on your body and a shake of your hair to be presentable. If that is the case, not even a child would need a helper to get dressed.”

  “No, children practically dress themselves by the time they’re three. You have to learn fast or get left behind—especially in big families.”

  “That is a wonderment, indeed, although it would certainly hasten the end of my working days.” Kerry stared out the window, thinking about that. “Well, I must go see to the boys. They could never manage without some help, sweet darlings.”

  I realized after she left that I hadn’t told her about Maxwell’s surprising message from his grandfather and opened the door to call her back. She had disappeared. I lay on the bed and watched the clock. At four minutes to seven, I pushed my heavily clothed body downstairs to the dining room.

  The air was stultifying in its muggy stillness. The big clock in the next room bonged seven times as I slid into my chair, its reverberations pulsating across the table. Without small talk, the Sweetwine family quietly dug into the food.

  After a half-meal’s worth of silence, the only sounds being the clinking of forks and knives on china, John cleared his throat. “Did you enjoy yourself searching for berries and picnicking today, Emma? I heard you and your friends had great success.”

  I popped up from my plate and stared directly into his eyes for our first-ever conversation. “Yes, I enjoyed it very much. Pearl, Olive, and I got two very large buckets of blackberries each.”

  “Very good. There will be pies and jam aplenty.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bopping up and down. “Well, how would you like to have lunch with me tomorrow at the Gold Nugget Hotel? We have not spent any time together lately, dear. I thought it would be a nice idea if we dined in town. Something special. They have a very nice restaurant—”

  “Can I go, too? I would very much like to eat out with you,” said Miles, batting his eyes at his father.

  “No, my pet. Your mother is going to take you and your brother for a pony ride instead. Would you like that, Miles?”

  “Yes!”

  “How about you, Jacob? You are very quiet tonight.”

  “Yes, I would like a pony ride, too, Father.”

  John said, “Well, Emma?”

  “Of course.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught Thorn’s triumph. She fit her hands into the shape of a steeple in front of her, tapping her thumbs together. “You will need to be ready at half past eleven, Emma. Wear the yellow silk day suit and the matching yellow shoes. Important people will see you and take notice. You will honor the Sweetwine name with your virtuous appearance.”

  I nodded and gulped down the rest of my dinner, the roast and potatoes and green beans glopping together in greasy lumps as I stuffed them down my throat. “Can I please be excused?”

  “No dessert, Emma? Cook baked a nice coconut cake. You love that.” Thorn smiled at me.

  The roller coaster was chugging up to the highest peak before it would certainly plunge straight down. “No, thank you. I’ll just go to my room.”

  I changed into the white flannel nightgown and lay on Emma’s bed, as stiff and tight as the doll in the corner, and waited until the house quieted. I opened the door and listened. Not a sound. I slipped down the hall in the opposite direction of the grand staircase, certain there was a second staircase up to the third floor leading to the maid’s quarters. It couldn’t be far.

  There it was.

  I climbed up the steep stairs into darkness, holding out my arms and skimming my hands along the walls as I went. A small lantern glimmered on a table at the end of the hallway. Six small, unpainted doors, three on each side, lined the narrow space. I tiptoed to the first one on the right and listened with my ear pressed up against the door panel. Snoring and whistling sounds streamed out from under the door. I opened it a crack to let in a touch of light. A bulky mound splayed out under the covers. Cook.

  I glided across to the first door on the left. No sound. I peered in. Bess, the housekeeper, had her back to me and was dragging an old, ratty nightgown on over her naked back. I quickly shut the door. My heart reeled as I pressed up against the wall, hoping against hope she hadn’t heard me. A minute passed before I moved to the next door.

  A light shined under it. I clicked it open a crack. Kerry sat on a little bed, a book in her lap, a small gaslight on a table next to her. A mess of red hair fell to her waist. I darted in and shut the door.

  She gawked up from the page. “Miss?”

  My hushed words burbled out. “I had to talk to you, and I was so sleepy. I forgot earlier—this just can’t wait until tomorrow. I met Maxwell today while I was picking blackberries. He secretly found me—he knows I’m not Emma. And his grandfather Simeon wants to meet me. Simeon had a vision about me and knows I don’t belong in this time. They want to help, but Maxwell spoke about it in a way I didn’t understand. Something about sleeping bears and fireflies . . .”<
br />
  “This is good news. They say old Simeon de la Croix has the sight. I have also heard it said Simeon’s mother was full-blood Salish Indian and his father a French trapper. He lives as a recluse on top of Foggy Peak.”

  I sat down on the end of Kerry’s narrow bed and tucked my bare feet under the white nightgown. “There’s something else. John wants to take me to lunch at the Gold Nugget Hotel tomorrow. Alone. I think something’s up. Thorn smiled at me at the dinner table tonight. She was gloating.”

  “The Gold Nugget! Well! If Mister Sweetwine is taking you to dine alone at a fine hotel . . .” Kerry paused and tapped her fingers on the bed. “He has something to tell you or something to ask of you. Something important. The madam would never allow Emma to be alone with him in town, or anywhere else for that matter, but especially for something as special as dining out.” She shook her head. “No, she wouldn’t miss it. Or allow her sons to miss it.”

  “She has agreed to it. In fact, it seemed like it was her plan.”

  “Unholy plan,” we whispered in unison.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something else, Kerry. Something I’ve been thinking about. We haven’t really talked about Emma. Like, what happened to her? What if we switched places? And if I’m here in Monte Cristo as Emma living her life, is she in Seattle as Sonnet living mine? Is she with my family? If that’s the case, my family would know what happened to me. And is there something about this we can use if they’re searching for a way to get me back there and to get Emma back here?”

  “Use? In what way? I’m not sure I quite understand.”