Chapter 3
Chapter Three
The clock ticked. Snowflakes swirled outside the window.
Holden’s expression remained unreadable. What was she supposed to do with him?
She couldn’t leave him here. After she locked up, the motion sensors would trip and set off the alarm. Besides, waltzing away and leaving him alone seemed rude. She couldn’t take him to a hotel because he had no ID, no money, and too many questions she couldn’t answer.
Eliza and Wyatt flashed through her mind, but it was late. Which left one option, the one she didn’t want to say out loud.
She didn’t offload her mistakes. Instead, she slid the papers into her bag, hitched her tote strap onto her shoulder. “You can’t stay here. I’m taking you home with me.”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am. That’s unseemly. A single man don’t go into the home of a woman he’s not kin to.”
“Things aren’t like that in 2025.”
“Not to contradict you, ma’am, but I’m from 1878.”
She suppressed a grin and met his gaze. “Oh, I’m aware.”
A chin jut. “Take me to see Wyatt McCready if you don’t mind.”
“Not tonight. It’s too late. Wyatt and Eliza get up at three a.m. to open the bakery. I’ll take you to see him tomorrow. I have a spare room you can sleep in tonight.” She softened her voice to make her decision more palatable. He was a man out of another century, after all.
He ran a palm across his mouth. She watched him work through it, weighing propriety against necessity. Finally, he gave a curt nod.
“Come on.” She turned off the lamp, locked the office, and checked the hallway. Not that she expected anyone to be here on a Saturday evening, but she didn’t want to be seen with this unusual stranger.
Empty. She motioned for him to follow.
Keypad, code, door, cold air. The empty parking lot stretched out under the vapor light. Frost dulled the hood of her Toyota Camry. She unlocked the car. He studied how the latch worked and then opened his door without fumbling.
She demonstrated the seatbelt on herself. He found the buckle and clicked it into place.
Fast learner.
She started the engine, and the radio woke. Sleigh bells, piano, the opening line of a familiar carol. She thought of turning it off. It stirred memories she wasn’t ready for, but she left it on. Better than silence.
They rolled past the football field and the dark bleachers. They moved through the middle of town, rumbling over the railroad tracks.
“Hey,” he said. “The Union Pacific came to town.”
She peered over at him. “Oh yes, the railroad is the heart of Evergreen Springs. They didn’t have it in 1878?”
“No, ma’am. There was talk of it coming, but we were sure the powers that be in Washington were dead set on taking it further south toward the fort.”
Megan wondered what it was like to see the endpoint of a historical event a hundred and forty-seven years in the future, but she was still wrapping her head around time travel.
“Silent Night” bled from the speakers, and Holden started singing along. Not loudly. Not a performance. Just soft singing.
What a heavenly voice.
Megan found herself singing along. She turned to peer at him. He was studying her. They sang together, and the sound filled the car, and she felt…
Well, she felt right for the first time since Mom died.
The chorus ended. He folded back into quiet.
Her tires splashed through a puddle. She turned at Main Street and slowed at the four-way. The library’s strand of colored bulbs lit the snow, and she eased through the intersection.
Holbrook Hardware lay ahead, across the street from Zeke’s diner, where she and her friends usually met for girls’ night out. Scaffolding stood where the Chamber of Commerce was restoring the original mural.
No one could remember what the mural depicted.
The cleaning revealed a bare outline, a wash of sepia.
The actual painting would unfurl with the restoration, but there was motion in those strokes.
Some speculated it was a painting of four horsemen galloping across the plains, but Megan couldn’t see it.
“Holbrook’s,” Holden sat up straighter. “It’s still there.”
“You know the building?”
“It’s brand new in my time.”
“What was the mural?” she asked.
“Mural?”
“A painting on the side. No one alive remembers what it was.”
“There’s no painting on it,” he said. “Must have come after 1878.”
She still couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that the man in her passenger seat had time-traveled across centuries.
The light turned green. She took a right.
Her street appeared, the porch light doing its job and leading her home. She cut the engine and opened the door. The cold pinched her cheeks.
“We’re here,” she said.
He followed her up the steps, his head swiveling as he glanced around at her neighborhood. “It’s lit up like daylight. All these blinking colors.”
“Christmas lights,” she explained.
“You don’t say.” He wiped his boots on the mat. Manners. She liked that.
She unlocked the door and escorted him inside. A flick of the light switch illuminated the foyer.
He squinted at the overhead bulb. She wondered what it must be like to find yourself in a place so foreign.
At the coat tree, she unwound her scarf and unbuttoned her parka. “You can hang your coat and hat here.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Please, call me Megan.”
He offered her a soft smile. “Yessum.”
The house was chilly. She left the thermostat at sixty-two when she wasn’t home.
“I’ll turn up the heat,” she said and moved to the control panel.
She felt his gaze follow her. The heater kicked on, and warm air blew from the vent. Startled, Holden glanced up and raised a hand to feel the heat.
“What the devil?” He shook his head, his eyes rounding.
She explained how central heat and air worked. Modern convenience must seem like magic to him… or witchcraft.
“Let me show you the guest room.”
He moved behind her, too unruffled for a man out of time, sure of himself in a way that made her pulse misfire. He had a settled acceptance about him that intrigued her, the kind of man who rolled with the punches.
“Here we are.” She opened the door. The small room felt too personal for this cowboy. Her mother’s quilt on the bed, the photographs of Murray relatives on the dresser.
Holden stuffed his hands in his pockets. “This’ll do nicely.”
“I’ll show you how indoor plumbing works.” She went to the en suite bathroom and opened that door.
“Indoor plumbing?”
“What we use instead of an outhouse.”
He seemed amused by that, and when she demonstrated the faucet, the toilet, and the shower, he laughed out loud, turning the water off and on in the sink.
She set a new toothbrush on the vanity and tapped the paste, explaining what it was for, uncertain if teeth brushing was common practice in the Montana Territory.
“Thank you,” he said.
She nodded. Gratitude helped and complicated things at the same time. “Are you hungry?”
“I could eat.”
“Let’s head to the kitchen, and I’ll make something. I already ate at school.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but she was already leading the way down the hall. In the kitchen, she flicked on the light and motioned toward the table.
“Please sit. You’ll feel better with food in you.”
He hesitated, then pulled out a chair, as if he weren’t sure what counted as proper in this century.
She made him a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup, the simplest comfort food she could think of. He ate like a man who hadn’t had a meal in days, not leaving a crumb.
While he ate, she wiped the counter for something to do. The quiet between them wasn’t awkward exactly, just heavy with everything she didn’t know how to say.
“You’re a fine cook, ma’am…er…Miss Megan.” He got up, carried his dishes, and set them by the sink.
She rinsed and racked them. “I’ll let you get some sleep,” she said, drying her hands on a kitchen towel.
He hesitated as if uncertain where to go.
“The guest room is yours for as long as you’re staying,” she clarified.
He bobbed his head. “Thank you, kindly.” He paused again. “Goodnight, Miss Megan.”
“Goodnight…Mr. Holden.”
As she watched him walk away, Megan caught herself smiling.
* * *
The door clicked behind him, and Holden was alone for the first time since he arrived in 2025.
He stood by the bed, hat in hand, listening to the faint noise in the walls. No wind, no horses shifting, no smoke or leather. The stillness was soft and gentle.
Finally, he sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress gave under him. Nice. Soft. He ran his hand over the coverlet. Smooth as church linen.
The room itself confounded him. Walls painted smooth, no cracks from settling. Windows that fit tightly without gaps for wind. The lamp on the nightstand glowed steadily without oil or wick.
He stood, crossed to the window, and pushed back the lace curtain. The street outside glowed with light. Not a single one flickered. Houses lined up neat as soldiers. In his time, maybe one or two windows in town were lit after full dark. People saved their candles and went to bed with the sunset.
Here, night looked half like day.
A horseless wagon sat in the neighbor’s drive. She called hers a car. He’d felt the engine rumble beneath him, the unnatural speed as they moved down streets smoother than any road he knew. No ruts, no mud, just a black surface that went on forever.
The bathroom undid him most. A clawfoot tub with both hot and cold water from the same spout. No need to boil and haul water from the fire.
He thought of the cattle camp. Jeffers and Skeet sitting by the fire right now, wondering where he’d gone.
How he disappeared just like Wyatt, Cade, and Rhett.
Thinking of his friends settled here in 2025 heartened his spirits.
At least he wasn’t the only one pulled forward into this impossible future.
Tomorrow, he’d ask Miss Megan to take him to them.
2025. The number still didn’t sit right in his head. Everything he’d known had gone to dust while he stood in this room with smooth walls and strange lights.
Why was he here? Why now?
He thought about what Miss Megan had told him. That her family built a legend on his ride. That Captain Murray’s name was attached to his harrowing endeavor.
The unyielding storm lashed at his memory.
The world gone white, sky and earth the same.
He couldn’t see the trail, couldn’t even see his own gloved hands.
The wind howled so loud it stole the breath from his lungs.
He trusted his horse more than his eyes, letting the animal feel what he couldn’t. He would succeed or die trying.
He hadn’t ridden for glory. Folks were starving, and someone had to go.
But lies had a way of souring even the truth.
And Miss Megan, from Murray blood, aching to make it right. That part he couldn’t shake.
She looked horrified when she told him. Ashamed. Like she bore the weight of something she hadn’t done. He didn’t hold it against her. How could he?
Still, it complicated things. Best to keep his head clear until he knew what kind of place he’d landed in.
Holden unbuttoned his shirt and folded it on the chair. Boots next. The plush rug that stretched wall to wall swallowed sound. It was thick and soft, like walking on moss. Another reminder he had dropped into a tender world.
He reached for his gun belt, then remembered it was hanging by his bed back in the line shack. Unarmed. He was weaponless in a strange world. He felt naked without it. Exposed.
But here? Maybe weapons weren’t needed. Maybe this world had moved past that kind of relentless danger.
He patted his vest pocket and found the card. He drew it out and studied his portrait. Nothing about it looked magical now. Just paper and paint. Yet somehow, it had carried him across a century and a half.
Turning it over, he searched for anything out of the ordinary but found nothing. No heat, no shimmer, no pull. Just a Christmas card with his face.
If it could bring him here, it ought to be able to send him back. He rubbed his thumb along the edge. “Take me home.”
He waited.
Nothing.
Whatever this magic was, he had no clue about the rules of it. He slipped the card back into his vest pocket, keeping it nearby just in case.
He turned down the bed, settled onto the mattress, and lay back against the pillow. Out of propriety, he kept his pants on. Sleep might come, might not, but morning would.
His thoughts turned to Megan down the hall. Was she too lying awake, trying to sort impossible things?