A Whisper in Time (35 page)

“No.”

He gaped at me in utter disbelief. “You promised not to go back.”

“I am breaking that promise.” His entire demeanor condemned me, and it was deserved. “I’m sorry, Mark. I meant to honor my promise, but I’m to blame for Phoebe’s quandary.”

“You were going to disappear again. Just go off and let me wonder.”

“Yes.”

His eyes closed, as if in pain. “How can I trust you now?”

I stiffened, taken aback at the depth of emotion that crackled about him. “You can trust that I will always to do the right thing for those I love.”

There was a long silence, fraught with tension. When his eyes opened again, he looked dazed. “What’s the rush?”

“Phoebe must give her answer by the middle of October. Today is the twelfth.”

“She gives an answer in 1801, Susanna. You live in 2016.”

“The waterfall has always returned us to the same day, different year.”

He raked a hand through his sweaty hair, leaving it in disarray. “How about waiting until next spring? Ask the waterfall to take us back to April 1801. Then maybe you can prevent this whole mess from ever happening.”

Here was the reason I had hoped to avoid this argument. He’d given a reasonable suggestion which I had no intention of taking. “I cannot bear to wait that long. I need to act now.”

He shook his head, over and over again. A dozen times or more. “Okay, Susanna. Let’s hear the plan.”

“Pardon?”

“How are you going to get there?”

“I shall take my bike.”

“You’re not good enough.”

“Perhaps…” I started to protest but the narrowing of his eyes stopped me.

“You’re not good enough yet and you know it. What if you fell and broke something? What if you busted a tire? Would you know what to do?”

I had not considered problems with the bike. “You have given contingencies I had not pondered.”

“Great. Give me a moment, and I’ll come up with others.”

I turned my back on him. I didn’t want to be dissuaded. “Phoebe is worth the risk.”

“
You
are worth more.” He stepped closer, the heat of his breath tickling my neck. “Susanna, your sister is a big girl. She can make her own decisions.”

“She might pick Jacob. She will have a hard life and die young.” My voice trembled.

“How would marriage to William be better?”

“She loves him.” I shook at the intensity of my feelings, unable to imagine the pain of saying goodbye forever to Mark. It would bring grief without end. I could not stand by and let my sister go through the same—not when it was my fault that she’d fallen in love. “If her life is fated to be short, why should it not be at the side of the man she loves?”

He slipped his arms around my waist, his lips brushing my temple. “I’ll go.”

Had I heard him correctly? “What did you say?”

“I’ll go in your place. I’ll take the buttons and the message. I’ll talk to her.”

I spun in his arms. “Mark, it is dangerous for you too.”

“Pratt wants you more than me.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “I’m faster on the bike. He’d have a hard time catching me. An hour over, an hour there, an hour back. I’ll be fine.”

“It is too much.”

“Oh, you’ll pay.”

My eyes widened at the edge behind his words. “How?”

“You have to promise to stay here.”

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
-E
IGHT

W
ORTH
A
S
HOT

My phone rang right after supper. “Yeah, Granddad?”

“Got any plans tonight?”

“Some homework. Why?”

“Peggy Merritt wants to take a look at the evidence.”

My heart slammed into race-level adrenaline mode. Oh, man, I hadn’t expected a response so quickly. “When?”

“Monday.”

Why hadn’t I anticipated this? “I don’t have the stuff put together yet.”

He grunted. “That’s what I figured. Want to come out here? We could have an evidence-faking party. Gran made cupcakes.”

I had to have the coolest grandparents ever born. “Sounds like a plan. Does the typewriter still work?”

“Yep. What else?”

“We need a baptismal certificate.”

He sniffed with irritation. “I don’t happen to have a spare one at home. I’ll have to deal with that later.”

Wow. Was it really that easy? “You know where to get one?”

“Sure do, Mark. Unlike you, I attend church every Sunday. I know the process.”

“Thanks, Granddad. See you in an hour.”

Click
.

I ran up to my room, grabbed my backpack, some printouts, and the Bible. Next, I rummaged in my dad’s office for my Social Security card, and my mom’s special set of fountain pens.

“What are you doing?”

I looked at Mom over my shoulder. “I’m taking Susanna out to the lake house.”

“It’s a school night. Why?”

Honesty, in this instance, might be the best policy. “To fake an identity for her.”

“Can I come?”

I smiled. “Sure. Meet me at the truck in five minutes.”

She took off, running up the stairs at an amazingly fast pace.

I headed up the back stairs to the apartment. It was time to tell Susanna.

* * *

Gran and Mom took on the task of converting my Social Security card into Susanna’s. I handed them the instructions I’d printed from the web. Gran fed it into the typewriter’s roller-thing and soon the metallic tapping began.

Susanna sat beside my grandfather, quietly answering his questions. On the way over, I’d expected her to freak out at the thought of what we were about to do. But she’d surprised me, simply commenting that we would need to speak the truth as much as possible.

Yeah, I could live with that.

“What’s your middle name?” Granddad asked her.

“I do not have one.” She sat on the edge of her chair, watching him closely, fists clenched in her lap.

“You have to have a middle name.” He scowled in thought. “What would you like it to be?”

She squinted at the legal pad he was writing on. “I can choose?”

“Don’t see why not. Pick a name from someone you like.” He nodded. “We don’t want to use your mother’s. Susanna
Anne
doesn’t sound right. How about your sister?”

“Phoebe?” She shook her head. “It is her own name. I cannot take it.”

I pulled out the chair next to her and flopped down. “What about your dad?”

“Josiah?”

“Jo.” I smiled. She revered her father. From what I could tell, she’d been a daddy’s girl from the moment of birth. He’d taught her more and treated her better than most girls had dreamed about in the eighteenth century, and she’d never entirely gotten over his death. “You can be Susanna Jo Marsh.”

She turned to face me and…holy shit. Her expression left me hot and shaky and wishing I could get her alone.

“I shall take Mark’s suggestion. Susanna Jo.”

“That’s a fine name.” Granddad pushed the legal pad to the side and opened his laptop. “Now, we need to make a transcript. I copied a homeschool template off the web.”

I relaxed in my chair and watched the two of them go. It was kind of fun to be a spectator on this project.

“What is a homeschool?” Susanna asked.

“It’s for kids who stay at home every day and have their parents for teachers.”

“My father was my teacher.”

He laughed. “Hence, the homeschool transcript.” He pecked at the laptop’s keyboard with his index finger. “We’ll put your father down as the school administrator.”
Click, click, click…

Damn, he was slow. “Give it here, Granddad, and let me type. I have homework due this century.”

He smiled and slid the computer across the table. I keyed in “Josiah Marsh” and looked at the next field. “Lead teacher?”

“Put me down,” Gran said. “And use my phone number.” She pulled the modified Social Security card out of the typewriter and handed it to Mom, who carried it into the kitchen. The faucet turned on.

“Okay. The junk at the top is filled in. What about classes?”

I looked at Susanna.

Her cheeks turned pink. “I have taken no classes in eight years,” she said in a husky voice.

Granddad scowled at her. “Do you know more about gardens than Mark?”

She smiled. “He knows very little. It isn’t fair to compare.”

Granddad waved a hand at me. “Give her a botany credit. What about animals?”

“Certainly, I know about farm animals and the creatures of the forest—”

“Another credit for agricultural science. Ever heard about the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights?”

“Indeed. I have studied them closely of late, and my father was rather interested in the document that preceded them, the Articles of Confederation.”

“American government credit.”

Mom butted in. “Do you know what makes dough rise?”

Susanna nodded.

“Chemistry.”

Susanna shifted closer to my chair and watched me type as Granddad and Mom continued calling out ideas. It didn’t take long to fill the page. When we were done, I sat back and looked at her. She stared at the transcript, eyes wide with wonder.

“It looks quite impressive,” she said, her gaze meeting mine.

“
You
are. Quite impressive, that is.”

She jumped to her feet, lips trembling, and ran outside, her shoes echoing briefly across the deck. I stood more slowly to follow her out. When I reached the door, I turned to Mom and my grandparents. “I will never be able to thank you enough for what you did for her tonight.”

* * *

Thursday had to be the day I traveled back through time. Dad and I were leaving Friday afternoon for Virginia. Even though Susanna had promised to stay put, I wasn’t sure I trusted her.

At some level, I almost hoped the waterfall wouldn’t let me through. Why did it keep letting us go back in time and tweak things? Did it trust us not to screw up anything big? Did it have a reason for wanting us to stay connected with that time?

Yeah, I needed Whisper Falls to be on top of this, because I didn’t want to think about it too hard. My goal now was to keep Susanna safely on this side of history. If that meant traveling two hundred years, I would.

To get ready, I checked out “1801 clothing” online. The shirts were the same, but some of the pants were beginning to look less dorky, like I might be able to get by with a pair of khakis—which I would try because I hated those stupid-ass breeches and stockings. Zippers might be hard to explain, but I didn’t intend on anybody getting close enough to have a good look.

Next, I packed all the food, drink, and tools that I could fit in a canvas bag. Then I went to bed early.

At dawn, I dressed in my modified tradesman costume, grabbed the canvas bag and the bag of buttons, and wheeled the bike down to the waterfall.

Susanna stood on the rock in modern clothes. At least that was a good sign.

She turned to face me, dejection written all over her face. “You won’t go today.”

I stared at the water. It was normal. Not a sparkle in sight. “How long should we wait?”

“It recognizes us, Mark. It knows what we want. It doesn’t want us to go through yet.” She would sound crazy to anyone except me.

“How does it know what we want?”

“I explained the need to Whisper Falls yesterday.”

She didn’t leave anything to chance. “Before you went to buy the buttons?”

“Yes.”

We returned to the house silently. She waited for me in the kitchen while I stashed my canvas bag in the garage and swapped out shirts.

“Any sign of my folks?” I asked from the relative safety of the laundry room.

“No.” She smiled tentatively. “Tomorrow, then?”

“Susanna, I have to go to Virginia.”

“You said it would take only three hours to visit Phoebe.”

“That’s cutting it too close.”

“Of course.” She gave me a calm nod.

“You promised not to go.”

“I promised to stay behind if you went.”

My whole body strained with the effort to keep calm. “Does that mean you’ll go if I don’t?”

“Of course.”

“Shit.” I stormed upstairs with enough noise to get my parents staring at me out the master suite door.

* * *

When I reached the falls Friday morning, the water was sparkling.

My first reaction was to be pissed off. I couldn’t imagine a worse day to do this. I texted a message to Mr. Rainey.

heading to newman. an excused absence
.

Then I dropped the phone in the canvas bag and lifted the bike. In an instant, I was on the other side. The nineteenth century, this time.

I’d forgotten the feel of being here. Like everything was on hyper-senses. Bright colors. Clear sounds. And the deeply intense smell of earth.

Might as well put that from my mind. I wouldn’t be here long and I was never coming back.

I carried the bike until I reached hard-packed dirt. No need to risk the unnecessary noise of riding in the water or on the pebble-strewn bank. Hopping on, I adjusted the helmet and took off.

The main road was deserted. As I pedaled, I thought about what this land would look like in two hundred years. In my century, I’d be biking past all of the small farms that the NCSU Vet School maintained. In 1801, it was rolling hills with no fences, barns, or sidewalks.

I zipped past the future site of the Museum of Art, down a valley that would one day have a multi-lane highway running through it, and headed straight for the heart of Raleigh.

It didn’t take long to reach the western edge of the city. Susanna had drilled into me the location of Phoebe’s employer; there should be no problem finding it. The pattern of the streets hadn’t changed all that much from my century. I hid the bike and made my way into the city, through back streets, ducking this way and that, like I was on some kind of spy mission.

When I reached the right shop, I walked boldly in the door.

“What is it, sir?” A young boy popped up from behind the counter.

“I’m looking for Phoebe Marsh.”

“What do you want with her?”

“I have a message.”

He disappeared into the back. While he was gone, I looked around. The shop was hardly wider than a closet. Bolts of fabric crowded shelves on one side. Cloth purses and scarves lay in stacks on the other.