There and Now

Her knees began to quiver and for a moment, she thought she’d be sick right where she stood. She collapsed onto the vanity bench and covered her face with both hands, peeking through her fingers at her reflection.

“It wasn’t a dream,” she whispered, hardly able to believe the words. She ran one hand down the rough woolen sleeve of the old-fashioned coat. “I was really there.”

For a moment, the room dipped and swayed, and Elisabeth was sure she was going to faint. She pushed the bench back from the table and bent to put her head between her knees. “Don’t swoon, Beth,” she lectured herself. “There’s a perfectly logical explanation for this. Okay, it beats the hell out of me what it could be, but there is an answer!”

Once she was sure she wasn’t going to pass out, Elisabeth sat up again and drew measured breaths until she had achieved a reasonable sense of calm. She stared at her pale face in the mirror and at her startled blue eyes. But mostly she stared at Dr. Jonathan Fortner’s coat.

She put her hand into the right pocket and found the necklace. Slowly lifting it out, she spread it gently on the vanity table. The necklace was broken near the catch, but the pendant was unharmed.

Elisabeth pulled in a deep breath, let it out slowly. Then, calmly, she stood up, removed Dr. Fortner’s coat and proceeded into the bathroom.

During her shower and shampoo, she almost succeeded in convincing herself that she’d imagined the suitcoat as well as the broken necklace. But when she came out, wrapped in a towel, they were where she’d left them, silent proof that something very strange had happened to her.

With a lift of her chin, Elisabeth dressed in gray corduroy slacks and a raspberry sweater, then carefully blew her hair dry and styled it. She took the necklace with her when she went out of the room, but left the suitcoat behind.

In the hallway, her eyes locked on the door across the hall. She tried the knob, but it was rusted in place, and the plastic seal that surrounded the passage was unbroken.

“Trista?” she whispered.

There was no answer.

Elisabeth went slowly down the back staircase, recalling that there had been two of them in her “dream.” She ate cereal, coffee and fruit while staring at the kitchen table, fetched her purse, got into her car and drove slowly along the puddled driveway toward the main road.

The house still needed cleaning, but Elisabeth’s priorities had been altered slightly. Before she did anything else, she meant to have the necklace repaired.

Chapter Three

“It should be ready by Friday morning,” said the clerk in Pine River’s one and only jewelry store, dropping Aunt Verity’s necklace into a small brown envelope.

Elisabeth felt oddly deflated. She didn’t know what was happening to her, but she suspected that the antique pendant was at the core of things, given Aunt Verity’s stories, and she didn’t want to let it out of her sight. “Thank you,” she said with a sigh, and left the shop.

After doing a little more shopping at the supermarket, she drove staunchly back to the house, changed into old clothes, covered her hair with a bandanna and set to work dusting and sweeping and scrubbing.

She’d finished the large parlor and was starting on the dining room when the doorbell sounded. Elisabeth straightened her bandanna and smoothed her palms down the front of her frayed flannel shirt, then answered the rather peremptory summons.

Ian was standing on the porch, looking dapper in his three-piece business suit. His eyes assessed Elisabeth’s work clothes with a patronizing expression that made her want to slap him.

Ironic as it was, he seemed to have no texture, no reality. It was as though he were the other-worldly being, not Jonathan.

“Hello, Bethie,” he said.

She made no move to invite him in. “What do you want?” she asked bluntly. Her ex-husband was handsome, with his glossy chestnut hair and dark blue eyes, but Elisabeth had no illusions where he was concerned. To think she’d once believed he was an idealist!

He patted the expensive briefcase he carried under one arm. “Papers to sign,” he said with a guileless lift of his eyebrows. “No big deal.”

Reluctantly, Elisabeth stepped back out of the doorway. Since she didn’t feel up to a sparring match with Ian, she didn’t state the obvious: if Ian had left his very profitable seminars and taping sessions to deliver these papers personally, they were, indeed, a “big deal.”

She saw his gaze sweep over the valuable antique furnishings as he stepped into the main parlor. Had his brain been an adding machine, it would have been spitting out paper tape.

“Your father called,” he said, perching in a leather wing chair near the fireplace. “He’s been worried about you.”

Elisabeth kept her distance, standing with her arms folded. “I know. I talked to him.”

Ian sighed and opened the briefcase on his lap, taking out a sheaf of papers. “I’m concerned about your inheritance, Bethie,—”

“I’ll just bet you are,” she interjected, holding her shoulders a little straighter.

He gave her a look of indulgent reprimand. “I have no intention of trying to take anything from you,” he told her, shaking a verbal finger in her face. “It’s just that I have questions about your ability to manage your share of the estate.” He looked around again at the paintings, the substantial furniture and the costly knickknacks. “I don’t think you realize what a bonanza you have here. You could easily be taken in.”

“And your suggestion is…?” Elisabeth prompted dryly.

“That you allow my accountant to run an audit and give you some advice on how to manage—”

“Put the papers back in your briefcase, Ian. Neither Rue nor I want to sell this place or anything that’s in it. Besides that, Rue’s father had everything appraised soon after the will was read.”

Ian’s chiseled face was flushed. Clearly he was annoyed that he’d taken time away from his motivational company to visit his hopelessly old-fashioned ex-wife. “Elisabeth, you can’t be serious about keeping this cavernous, drafty old house. Why, you could live anywhere in the world on your share of the take….”

Elisabeth walked to the front door and opened it, and Ian followed, somewhat unwillingly. Not for one moment did she believe the man had ever had her best interests at heart—he’d been planning to file for changes in the divorce agreement and get a piece of what he called “the take.”

“Goodbye,” she said.

“I’m getting married next Saturday,” he replied, almost smugly, as he swept through the doorway.

“Congratulations,” Elisabeth answered. “You’ll understand if I don’t send a sterling-silver pickle dish?” With that, she shut the door firmly and leaned against it, her arms folded.

Her throat thickened as she remembered her own wedding, right here in this marvelous old house, nearly a decade before. There had been flowers, old-fashioned dresses and organ music. Somehow, she’d missed the glaring fact that Ian didn’t fit into the picture, with his supersophistication and jet-set values.

In retrospect, she saw that Ian had always been emotionally unavailable, just like her father, and she’d seen his cool distance as a challenge, something to surmount with her love.

After a few years, she’d realized her mistake—Ian didn’t want children or a real home the way she did, and he cared far more about money than the ideals he touted in his lectures and books. Furthermore, there would be no breaching the emotional wall he’d built around his soul.

Elisabeth had quietly returned to teaching school, biding her time and saving her money until she’d built up the courage to file for a divorce and move out of Ian’s luxury condo in Seattle.

With a sigh, she thrust herself away from the door and went back to her cleaning. The road to emotional maturity had been a painful, rocky one for her, but she’d learned who she was and what she wanted. To her way of thinking, that put her way out in front of the crowd.

Carefully, she removed Dresden figurines and Haviland plates from the big china closet in the dining room. As she worked, Elisabeth cataloged the qualities she would look for in a second husband. She wanted a gentle man, but he had to be strong, too. Tall, maybe, with dark hair and broad shoulders—

Elisabeth realized she was describing Jonathan Fortner and put down the stack of dessert plates she’d been about to carry to the kitchen for washing. Her hands were trembling.

He’s not real, she reminded herself firmly. But another part of her mind argued that he was. She had his suitcoat to prove it.

Didn’t she?

What with all the things that had been happening to her since her return to Pine River, Elisabeth was beginning to wonder if she really knew what was real and what wasn’t. She hurried up the back stairs and along the hallway to her bedroom, ignoring the sealed doorway in the outside wall, and marched straight to the armoire.

After opening one heavy door, she reached inside and pulled out the coat, pressing it to her face with both hands. It still smelled of Jonathan, and the mingled scents filled Elisabeth with a bittersweet yearning to be near him.

Which was downright silly, she decided, since the man obviously lived in some other time—or some other universe. She would probably never see him again.