LEGEND Read online

  “Then who was it made for, if not Cole’s mother?”

  Ruth gave Kady a raised eyebrow look.

  “Oh, no, you can’t believe that it was made for me. I know it fit me, but how could anyone know that I was . . . I mean who could guess that—”

  “Me,” Ruth said simply. “I could have the dress made and put into a tin box.”

  Several times Kady opened her mouth to speak, but each time she closed it. Finally, she fell back against the chair. “This really doesn’t make sense. I think this is one of those chicken-or-the-egg things. I found the dress before I met you.”

  “Yes, but by your own admission, now is almost a hundred years before you find the dress. What’s to keep me from having the dress made and putting it in a box?”

  “Does that mean that all this is going to happen again? That I’m going to find the box later and return to Legend and put on a feast and—” Kady cut herself off, as the memories were too fresh and too painful.

  For a moment she tried to clear her head and think about what was going on. “What is it you want from me?” she asked Ruth cautiously. “What is it that you’re leading up to?”

  “I wish you could bring Cole back to life. I wish you could stop all the killings of my family and even—” She gulped. “I even wish Legend could have lived. But I don’t see how that can be achieved. Kady,” she said, smiling, “I am grateful to you for giving my grandson what you did. I wish I could have seen him as a man, but I know that, had he lived, he would have looked and acted just as you described.”

  Kady was waiting for the other shoe to drop because she could tell that Ruth Jordan was building up to something. “What do you want of me?” she asked again.

  “When you get back to your own time, I want you to see if I have any descendants. I want you to meet them.”

  Kady smiled. “And what do I tell them? That I knew their great-great-grandmother back in 1897? Or that I had a great adventure with their great-grand . . . cousin, or whatever, as an adult, but in reality he died when he was only nine years old? And that everything happened over a hundred years ago?”

  Ruth laughed. “Does sound a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it?”

  “And what about Gregory?” Kady asked. “No offense, but you Jordans have a knack for ignoring the man I love. The man I am going to marry. Somehow I don’t think he’s going to understand any of this.”

  “You’re going to tell him about this?” Ruth asked incredulously.

  “Tell him that I’ve spent the last days before my wedding with another man? Hardly.”

  “All right, I understand. I’m not going to ask for a promise from you. You’ve done more than enough for my family, for all of us, dead and alive. But promise me that if the opportunity comes up, you will visit my descendants. If I am so lucky as to have any, that is.”

  “All right, I promise,” Kady said, then yawned. The sky was beginning to show pink, and right now all she wanted was to go to bed. She’d told Ruth about the petroglyphs, and Ruth had said that everyone in Legend knew where they were. Yet another of Cole’s little jokes on her.

  “Are you ready to go home, my dear?”

  “Yes,” Kady answered honestly. She’d had enough of time travel and witchcraft. Now all she wanted was to sleep for a few hours, then go see Gregory. From now on she just wanted her life to be normal. Normal and boring.

  “Joseph!” Ruth said sharply, and instantly the man was beside her, helping her from the chair. To Kady’s eyes, Ruth had looked much younger when she’d first seen her. Right now she didn’t look as though she had much longer on earth.

  They rode in the carriage past the Hanging Tree, and as the sun came up, Kady could dimly see the outlines of the deserted town. And everywhere she looked she seemed able to hear voices calling, “Hello, Kady,” and “Thanks, Kady,” and “Great grub, Kady.”

  When Ruth distracted her with questions, Kady was grateful. As they rode, Ruth wrote in a little notebook facts about Kady’s twentieth-century life: where she was born, mother’s name, father’s, her address in Alexandria. Laughing, Kady supplied her social security number as well. “I wish I knew my passport number, too,” she said.

  Ruth didn’t so much as smile. “What was the date when you came to Cole?” she asked, and when Kady told her, Ruth said, “I will give you six weeks from then. If you haven’t contacted my son’s descendants by that time, it will be clear that you’re not going to.”

  “Fair enough,” Kady answered as the carriage halted at the base of the rocks she had come to know rather well in the last weeks.

  “Are you sure the way will be open?” Ruth asked, sounding as though she hoped that Kady would have to stay in the nineteenth century forever.

  “I think it’s like Dorothy’s ruby slippers and I’ve always had the power to go home.” At the puzzled look on Ruth’s face, Kady smiled, then on impulse, grabbed the older woman and hugged her frail body.

  “Thank you, Kady,” Ruth whispered. “Thank you for what you did for my grandson.” Pulling away, she looked at Kady, and just like her grandson, she smoothed a dark curl behind Kady’s ear. “Thank you for what you’ve done for me. I am going to do what I can to repair the hurt I caused my younger son. And maybe, if I can, I’ll be able to do something about Legend.” Her voice lowered. “If I have time.”

  Kady didn’t like to think what she meant by that. When Kady returned to Virginia, Ruth Jordan would have been dead for many years.

  As Kady started to get out of the carriage, Ruth told Joseph to go with her, but Kady said that no, she wanted to go alone. She could tell by Ruth’s eyes that she understood that Kady wanted to say good-bye to Cole, for every inch of the path up the mountain reminded her of her time with Cole.

  After one more press of her hand, Kady turned and ran toward the path up the mountain, hurrying up it as fast as she could go. Her time in the past was over, and it was better to put it behind her. Now she should look to the future, to the future and to Gregory—the man she loved.

  When she reached the petroglyphs, she was not surprised to see what was now almost a familiar sight: the opening in the rock through which she could see her apartment with the flour tin on the floor, her dirty chef’s smock tossed across the couch. Refusing to allow herself a backward glance, she leaped through the opening, and instantly, the hole behind her closed.

  For a moment Kady stood alone in her apartment and looked about it. It had been more than two weeks since she’d been here, and she had no idea how much time had passed in the twentieth-century world. Feeling disoriented, she picked up the remote control to the TV, and after a moment of looking at the instrument as though it were from another planet, she clicked the TV on, switched to Channel Two, and saw that it was about two A.M. on the day she’d left. No time at all had passed.

  Again feeling awkward, she pushed the button on her answering machine only to hear a computer trying to sell her aluminum siding.

  At her feet on the stained, cheap carpet of her apartment, was the empty flour tin. There was no wedding dress or Jordan watch, or a photograph of a once-happy family. All those things had been left behind in Legend. What she did have were the clothes she was wearing, a long prairie skirt, cotton blouse, and a wide leather belt. Nothing in the least remarkable about them; they weren’t even very old looking. She had absolutely nothing to show that she had just returned from an extraordinary adventure.

  For a moment, loneliness so overwhelmed Kady that she thought she might collapse on the floor and cry, but she wouldn’t allow herself to do that. She was not going to allow herself to grieve for a man who had never lived to be the man she’d met. She was going to think of everything in the way Ruth did: that Kady had given Cole something he would not otherwise have had.

  Smiling, she thought of Scarlett. “I’ll think about it tomorrow. If I think about it today, I’ll go crazy.”

  Still smiling, Kady went to her bedroom and fell across the bed. She was asleep instantly.

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