A Gift from the Past

Her hair was still the color of corn silk, long and surprisingly thick. He wondered if she still used the same strawberry-scented shampoo?

Her eyes were as he remembered them…dark-lashed and gray as turbulent skies. They hadn’t always been that way…there had been a time when they’d been the color of passion, of dreams…of love.

“Joshua?”

Her irritated voice pulled him back from the past and he took the photo from her and looked at it once again. There was no mistake. The people in the photo were virtual clones of him and her.

“I don’t know…I don’t know how it’s possible,” he replied.

“But they look exactly like us,” she repeated, a sense of wonder in her voice.

He turned the picture over. There was writing on the back, so faint it was almost illegible. He read aloud, “Daniel and Sarah Walker, 1856.” He looked back at Claire. “It appears we have something of a mystery here.”

For a moment, their gazes remained locked, and in the depths of her smoky eyes he saw bewilderment, wonder and something soft and yielding. It was there only a moment, then gone, as dark shutters snapped into place.

“We don’t have anything,” she replied. “You have an old photo and I have nothing.” She turned to leave, stiffening as he fell into step beside her.

“Aren’t you curious?” he asked, as they made their way back through the woods.

“Curious about what?”

He held the tin box out in front of her. “About them? About Daniel and Sarah, about why they look like us? Maybe they’re long-lost relatives or, you know, what do you call them, doppelgängers.”

He wanted to ask her if she’d felt it, the strange tingle and warmth that had raced up his arm when he’d first picked up the photo.

“The only thing I’m curious about is why you’re walking with me instead of going back to wherever you came from,” she replied coolly.

As the path narrowed, he fell behind her. He dodged a sapling branch that nearly slapped him in the face as she passed by it. She still had the sexiest rear end he’d ever seen.

“I thought I’d stop in and say hello to Sarge,” he replied and forced his gaze upward from her shapely derriere.

He could tell she didn’t like the idea of him coming home with her by the way her shoulders stiffened and her strides grew faster.

He didn’t try to speak to her again. There would come a time later when they would have to talk, when the past and the future would have to be laid to rest. But now was not the time. He knew he’d shocked her by his unexpected presence and she needed time to adjust. He needed time to adjust, as well.

He’d thought he would breeze into Mayfield, take care of his unfinished business, then walk away without a backward glance. He hadn’t expected to feel a tug of crazy, mixed-up emotions when he saw her again.

When they hit the sidewalk outside City Hall, she continued to walk several paces in front of him, as if she didn’t want anyone who might see them to know they were together.

He looked around as they headed down Main Street, again noting the changes that had taken place in the small town since he’d left. Stores he remembered were gone, replaced either by empty storefronts or new shops.

“It’s funny, somehow everything looks smaller than I thought it was,” he observed. He pointed down the road to where in the distance were the remains of an old, two-story home. “I see Hazel Benton’s house burned.”

“Yeah, a couple of years ago. Faulty wiring.” She frowned, as if irritated that he’d forced her into talking.

“Remember when we were kids we all thought old Hazel was a witch and the rumor was that at night she wandered the streets of Mayfield looking for little children she could snatch and have for breakfast the next morning?”

“I remember,” she said. A ghost of a smile curved her lips. It wasn’t a real smile, but it was the closest thing he’d seen.

He suddenly wished for one of her smiles, the sound of her laughter. God, he’d always loved the sound of her laughter.

There had been a lot of laughter in the first two years of their marriage when they’d been too young, and perhaps too stupid to realize how life could take away all laughter if you allowed it.

Six years ago, he’d been a small-town boy in a small-town world married to the love of his life. In an instant of tragedy it had all been ripped apart. But he wasn’t here to pick over the carrion of what had once been.

As Sarge’s house came into view, surprise swept through him at the unkempt condition. The lawn that had always been well-manicured now desperately needed a mowing, and the house itself begged for a new coat of paint. A piece of guttering dangled precariously from one corner of the roof.

“Looks like Sarge has let things go a little bit,” he observed, quickening his footsteps once again to fall in beside her.

“You’ve been away a long time. Things have changed. Sarge has changed.” Her voice held an edge sharp enough to slice steel.

Apparently some things hadn’t changed…like the fact that she was still filled with a bitterness and rancor where he was concerned. When he told her he’d come back here for a divorce, he wondered if that would simply deepen her bitterness or finally set her free?

Chapter Two

Joshua followed Claire up onto the front porch; he and Claire had spent many evenings on the swing that had once hung there. It had been on the swing that he had asked her to marry him. They’d been barely eighteen years old and she’d been three months pregnant.

As he followed her through the front door, the house greeted him with familiar smells… The scent of old wood and lemon polish, of sun-washed curtains and the faint odor of the menthol rub Sarge had always used on his bad shoulder.

He and Claire had spent the five years of their marriage here, beneath this roof. They’d been too young to afford their own place and Joshua had no real family of his own. From the time he’d been fifteen and had begun dating Claire, Claire and Sarge had become his family.

He tried to hide his surprise as Wilma Iverson, the next-door neighbor, came into the living room from the kitchen. Her faded blue eyes registered her own surprise at the sight of him. “Land’s sakes, if it isn’t Joshua McCane.”

“Hello, Mrs. Iverson,” he replied.

She snorted. “Ah, today it’s Mrs. Iverson, but I still remember when you were nothing more than a snot-nosed kid and called me the battle-ax behind my back.”

“Why, I don’t remember any such thing,” Joshua laughed in protest.

“Where’s Sarge?” Claire asked.

Wilma nodded her head toward the hallway. “In his room, pouting.”

Joshua saw the tension that tugged at Claire’s delicate features. “What happened?” she asked.

“I caught him with a bag of candy and I took it away from him. I told him I wasn’t going to be a party to him killing himself.”

Joshua listened to all this with interest, wondering what Wilma was doing here and why she would take candy away from a grown man. An edge of disquiet surged up inside him.

“Sarge!” Claire yelled down the hallway. “Come on out. There’s somebody here to see you.”

“If it’s that creature from next door, I’m not coming out,” Sarge’s voice rang out, the strength in the tone soothing Joshua’s momentary alarm. Claire winced and offered a look of apology at Wilma.

“It’s not me. I’m leaving, you old coot,” she yelled down the hallway. She smiled at Claire and Joshua, then headed toward the door. “Let me know if you need me again, dear. You know where to find me.”

As she went out the front door, Joshua heard a bump, a resounding curse, then a strange whirring noise. He looked down the hallway, shock rocking him as he saw the frail, white-haired man in a motorized wheelchair making his way slowly down the hall.

Sarge. He appeared to have aged fifty years in the last five. He stopped short of the living room and turned his head from side to side. “Claire?”