Always Read online

  “Amazing,” Darci said.

  For a while they were silent as they stared over the porch rail toward the town. Just down from them was what was probably Main Street, cute and quaint—except for the piles of horse manure in the street. Darci thought that maybe a peek into a hospital might jolt Jack back to reality. Had doctors learned to wash their hands by this time?

  “Anyway,” Jack said after a while, “Lavender got her father to get the buggy out and we went to where I’d left you sleeping. No one asked what or why so it made me think they were used to…”

  When he gave Darci a sidelong glance, she wanted to shout, Not fair! “Are you saying that no one said anything because they’re used to my doing weird things?”

  “I’m not sure, but since you didn’t exist before today, you might be able to make up whatever you want to be.”

  “But no one thought it was strange that your sister was sleeping in the woods and you couldn’t wake her up?”

  “Apparently not.” Jack was smiling. “When we got there, you were just as I’d left you, sound asleep. I picked you up and put you in the backseat of the buggy. You traveled back to the house with your head in Lavey’s lap and your feet in mine. And for the whole ride, Lavender and I just looked at each other. We never spoke a word, but it was the most exciting time in my life. Better than any foreplay I’ve ever had or given.” His voice lowered. “She’s a virgin and we’re waiting for our wedding night. Can you imagine that happening in our time?”

  “What then?” Darci asked tightly. She was glad for Jack to experience such happiness, but she kept thinking, He will never voluntarily leave here. Could she return to her own time alone? Did she have to return with Jack? Did all three of them have to return together? She, Jack, and Lavender’s angry spirit? If she had her powers she could have found out this information in an instant. But here she had no powers. Here she had nothing extraordinary or unusual. Annoyed, she said, “What happened then?”

  Jack had carried Darci into Lavender’s house, put her on the couch in her parents’ living room, and her mother’s two sisters had all hovered about her, reviving her with smelling salts.

  “They smell awful.”

  Jack grinned. “Young women fainting isn’t unusual in this time. It’s your undergarments—which I’m not supposed to mention. They’re too tight. On you, that is. These clothes feel good to me, but I think the reason everything is strange to you is because you didn’t exist here before so you have no memories as I do.”

  Unnecessarily, Jack said, “I don’t want to return to the twenty-first century. I want to stay with Lavender. And I really don’t want to talk about returning.”

  “I’m not sure it’ll be our decision whether we leave or not.”

  “Then whose decision is it?” Jack snapped.

  “Whoever made this happen.”

  “Your Devlin?”

  “I don’t know that he has enough power to do something like this.” But maybe Henry does, Darci thought. Since she’d met Henry in Alabama she’d begun to think that he might have more power than anyone else on earth. Had Henry sent her—and Jack—back to the past for a reason?

  “Do you know where the box is?” she asked.

  “It’s in my room but the key is missing. When I woke up, before new memories came to me, I looked for it on the ground. I looked everywhere but I couldn’t find it.”

  Darci sipped her lemonade and thought back to when she’d first found the key. She’d been walking with her father when they’d passed an antiques shop. She’d felt as though she had to go into that shop. Curious, she’d entered and was drawn to a little ceramic man, about four inches high. He was in a bowl full of dirty, broken dishes and glasses. “There’s something inside it,” she’d told her father. When they got home, her father had used a hammer to try to break it open, but the ceramic didn’t even crack. Frustrated, he’d looked at the object under a magnifying glass and thought he saw some markings on it. Since the little man was too dirty to be able to read, her father had taken it to the sink to wash. The second the water touched the little statue, the outer covering dissolved and inside was the key.

  Darci wondered what was supposed to have happened as opposed to what did happen. She knew she was supposed to find the box in Jack’s father’s house but she’d had no intention of opening it while she was in that house. In fact, it had crossed her mind to go to Henry in Alabama and open it in his presence. But Jack’s interference and the spirit that had escaped Devlin had changed all that.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t believe that it was meant for all three of them to go back in time. Maybe the spirit that had so clung to Jack had known what the box was for and the spirit had meant for her and Jack to return. Did that mean that Darci’s return was an accident? That Darci wasn’t meant to go back with them?

  She glanced quickly at Jack and kept her thoughts to herself. All she knew for sure was that she must return to her own time. She had a daughter, and her missing husband and sister-in-law were in the twenty-first century.

  As she thought of Jack’s story, she wondered if he’d been sent back because he needed to be. Obviously, he had to solve some things in his modern life. If he solved his problems with the angry spirit that had been hanging around him all his life, then what? Would he return to the twenty-first century and take over his father’s job of being a philanthropist? The way things were now, if his father died, Jack wouldn’t claim his inheritance and his relatives would get everything. What evil would they do with all those billions?

  As Darci looked at Jack she decided to tell him as little as possible about what she was planning to do. She knew what love like his felt like. If someone had told her that something—anything—was going to take her away from her husband, she would have…

  Unbidden, Darci remembered that horrible night in the tunnels when she’d had to kill four people. She didn’t want to remember what she’d had to do to keep Adam from being taken from her.

  Yes, if Jack felt the same way about Lavender, then it would be better not to press the issue of his leaving her. He just might save Lavender by pushing Darci off the roof. Ha ha.

  When she picked up her lemonade glass, her hand shook a bit. It was scary not knowing whether other people’s intentions were good or bad. And it was scary knowing that she couldn’t use her mind to control anything.

  “Is it all right if I look around?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Jack said, smiling. “I plan to spend every second with Lavender so you’re free.”

  Standing, Darci smiled back at him and she was glad he couldn’t read her thoughts. She was going to do all that she could to find her way back to her own time.

  Chapter Nine

  AFTER A TRIP TO THE OUTHOUSE—WHICH MADE Darci harden her resolve to get out of the nineteenth century—she went through a side door into the house.

  It was a nice house, sparse by modern standards, but she liked the furniture. It was newly constructed but it still looked old. She’d never been able to live with antiques before because she’d felt every emotion of the past owners. Every tear anyone had shed near the objects came to her when she touched them.

  But not now. Now she ran her hand across the smooth, clean surfaces and felt nothing but the wood. Looking about, she saw that every surface seemed to hold a piece of crochet and she hoped she wasn’t the one who was supposed to produce the things.

  She walked through the living room—or the parlor, she thought—to the entrance hall and the staircase. Pausing for a moment, she wished she could sense whether anyone was near or not. She didn’t like having to rely on her eyes and ears to know whether or not she was being spied on.

  She heard no one, saw no one, felt no one, but still…still, she felt, well, creepy in the empty house. She knew Jack was on the porch just on the other side of the door, but she didn’t want to be so cowardly as to ask him to go upstairs with her.

  As she climbed the stairs she thought, So this is how other people feel all the