16. Chapter 16
Chapter 16
H ands in pockets, Emily stared at the trampled snow path of the park in downtown Hartford. Dad walked next to her, mostly silent even though this trip was his idea.
At least the scratches and bruises on her feet hadn’t transported to the present. She could walk fine.
“And over there is the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch,” Dad said.
Emily raised her eyes. She could at least appear polite. Two red brick towers with cone-shaped roofs peeked above the bare treetops at the edge of the park.
“It’s from the 19th century. Restored since then. The reliefs in the frieze—you can’t see them from here—depict scenes from the Civil War. You have Grant inspecting the troops on this side, and soldiers returning home to Hartford on the other. The monument is dedicated to them. Four thousand citizens, soldiers from Hartford, who went to fight in the war, and four hundred who never made it home.”
Soldiers. Like Brayden. How weird that only yesterday, she saw him at home, and today, he might be a name on that monument. She gulped. She wasn’t feeling sad about him, was she? Yeah, he appeared to be nice, but he was just a name on flimsy old paper. And Fabienne was the means to an end—a solution for her problem.
She realized she’d stopped, and ran after Dad. “How do you know all this?”
“I spent a few summers here with my grandparents. The summer before they sold the house, I applied to be a tour guide for the park. A nice enough summer job—learn what you need, be good at conveying it. Still botched it the first time. Mixed up all the dates. But they didn’t tell on me.” He smiled. When had she last seen him do that?
A snowball barely missed her ear, and a woman chasing a little girl ran by, apologizing on the way. Slipping on the snow, she nearly collided with a man who caught her, then raised the girl up and kissed her nose.
Did they use to look like that? Laughing, happy? Emily averted her gaze and twirled her foot, trampling the snow even further.
“How is…” Dad swallowed and started again. “How is Veronica?”
“I wish I could talk to her,” came out of Emily’s mouth before she could slap the Not Sharing with Dad sticker on it.
“You could… you can…”
Please, don’t say “talk to me instead”. He wasn’t even a contender.
“Could I come visit her?” Dad shot out instead.
“You always can, it’s not forbidden. I just don’t know why you’d—”
“I didn’t want to distress you. Her,” he said gently.
“You wouldn’t.” Emily didn’t think Mama could be distressed, or happy, or anything anymore. Just silent.
“Then may I?”
“Like I said, it’s up to you.” By now, she’d drilled through the snow all the way to the sodden brown grass. She hated the spark of hope that started to flare up at his words—an old spark, from the days she hadn’t yet fully understood the divorce and thought Dad would come back at any moment.
“There’s an ice skating rink further down.” He swayed back on his heels. “When you were little, you liked to ice skate. We took you to a rink in front of City Hall. Do you remember?”
A short, but vivid scene flashed in her memory. Garlands of golden Christmas lights dotting the inky night sky above her. Incredibly tall buildings. And Dad, holding her gloved hand, smiling at her.
She looked at him. “Maybe.”
“Would you… would you like to go? Ice skating?”
She nodded, the spark eager to ignite.
“Okay.” Dad gave her a shy smile. “And afterward, maybe we could go to the movies?”
Forcefully, she pushed it down, but still allowed herself a smile. “I’d like that.”
The next day, Emily went for a second spying session around the Marshall House. She’d recovered the brown dress from its hiding spot and nicked a pair of boots from the stables. They were too big for her and strange; she thought she’d put them on wrong twice before she realized they didn’t distinguish between the left and right foot.
The front door opened, and from her position—hiding behind the bushes near the garden—Emily spied two women exit and head down the road. Hunched down, Emily skittered across the meadow to catch the women around the bend, where a cluster of trees allowed her to move closer. One had removed her headgear, flinging it around in her hand. She had black hair and wore a loose white blouse, cinched at the waist with a wide leather belt, and a plum-colored skirt. The other was a bit shorter, plumper, and wore a gray patterned dress. Emily couldn’t catch what they were saying, but the tone appeared friendly.
Emily moved along with them sporadically, jumping from one bush to the other. They neared the house she’d stolen her clothes from, and she hid behind a hedgerow. The women were right on the other side, close enough to pick up words of their conversation.
“… picked up an edition of Godey’s, and I must show you one of the designs. You’d look splendid in that gown.” The plumper woman headed to the house, then turned back halfway. “Fabienne! Come on, dear.”
Emily’s heart leaped. She found her! She pushed away a twig to get a better look at her. Fabienne. Here. Living and breathing and so real.
What would she feel like if Emily touched her?
Ugh. Stop. Creepy.
The women retreated into the house, keeping close together. Emily sat down by the hedge. What was she to do? How was she to get Fabienne on her own?
And if she got her alone, what would she say? Hey, I know you’re trying to save your family; I was wondering if you had any tips on how I could save mine. Oh, and, by the way, real nice husband you got there.
Stupid. Silly. Yes, Fabienne was a time traveler, but she hadn’t mentioned any travels to the future. For all intents and purposes, she was a nineteenth-century woman. Emily would be as much of an alien to her as… well, as an alien would be to Emily.
“You! Yes, you there!” a shrill voice interrupted her gloomy thoughts. A tall, thin woman stomped down the road, looking straight at Emily.
Oh, shit. The one from yesterday—the one she—
“You stole from me! Give that dress back this instant!”
Emily leaped to her feet and ran toward the house, hopping awkwardly in her boots.
“Stop! Somebody, stop her! Thief!”
Around the corner, Emily pulled up the watch and set the hands, fingers shaking, heart beating fast. She completed the sequence as footsteps approached, and then she was gone.
Safely back in her room, she collapsed on the bed, heart beating rapidly from the scare, until she calmed down and transitioned into laughter. Oh, that woman must be so confused!
Her dress was lost—that was less funny—so she’d have to rinse and repeat. Just like with Mama. She went to the dining room to grab a snack and, as she munched on Millie’s blueberry muffins, rethought her situation. No sense in going back to the exact same date. She knew Fabienne wasn’t alone then. She’d go to a few days later, nick another dress, set watch again.
Emily tried three more trips until she spotted the clothes drying out again by the small house. Heh . Never learn, do they? She sneaked down the hill, picked a gray dress this time (some variety never hurt) and was tugging on a pair of thick woolen socks—nice bonus—when a hand grabbed her shoulder.
She shrieked.
“Got you!” The man roughly turned her around. He wore a dark blue coat, a uniform—a soldier? Emily’s gaze lowered from his mustachioed, nearly-snarling mouth to a crest-shaped silver badge on his chest.
Not a soldier. Police .
“A-ha!” Another man, dressed the same, appeared around the corner. “It appears we have our thief.”
Stunned, Emily barely managed to whisper the “Wh” from “What”.
“We’ve received a report of a young woman sneaking around, stealing,” the first policeman said with a steel voice. “Why don’t we take you down to the station and we’ll sort this out.”
“No, no, no. Y’all got this wrong.” Emily tried a smile, although she was sure it came out more creepy than sweet. “I’m just visiting.”
“Good God, you hear her?” Mustachio Man looked at his colleague, then back at her. “You’re a Southern spy!”
“What? No!” Emily cringed internally. Of all the times, she had to pull off the perfect Mark Wahlberg now ?
“And so young, too.” The other man shook his head. “Shame what they’ll have them do. Don’t you know you could hang for this?”
“Come on, then.” Mustachio Man tugged her into a walk. A clunky carriage with bars on the windows was parked farther down the road. At least with him grabbing only one arm—probably considered her too weak to fight—Emily had the other one free to rummage for her watch in the dress pocket.
It wasn’t there.
The other man joined, sandwiching Emily between them. “What did you think you could find out around here, huh? You people planning another invasion into the North?”
Cold sweat trickled down her spine. The watch. Where was the watch?
“Or she’s twisting people around,” Mustachio Man said. “Pretty young thing like this, men are bound to fall for it. Could get them to steal supplies and whatnot.”
“The execution won’t be pretty.” The other man tapped the holster on his hip. Hold on. They didn’t mean to kill her right now, did they?
“No, stop. Listen.” Emily dug her half-stocked feet into the ground. “This isn’t what you think it is.” Her eyes darted around, wildly searching for an idea, an explanation, until they stopped on something shining in the grass, by the clothesline, and her heart nearly dropped—this time, from relief. The watch.
“I need to pee,” she said. Not very effective as far as distraction sentences go, but its sheer weirdness must’ve caught Mustachio Man by surprise, because he weakened his grip, and Emily didn’t waste another second. She darted toward the watch. The two men yelled and ran after her. She slipped, tangled into the stocking, and Mustachio Man tackled her in his best impression of an action movie hero. They tumbled down, right in front of the watch—close enough for her to snatch it.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said.
Emily rotated the hands of the watch. “Agree to disagree,” she panted and clicked the crown. The grass tickling her mouth disappeared, as did the men. She fell back on the bed, closed her eyes, and stayed like that for a good, long time as the shaking started, grew, then slowly dissipated.
To get herself together, in the afternoon, Emily went for a walk. In this time. For now, she had no pressing urges to go back to 1864 again. That woman, and now the police, were after her, and even if she went to a time before that, there was no guarantee she wouldn’t land up in some other kind of trouble.
Just like with saving Mama, simply trying to get to Fabienne turned out to be too hard for her.
The chill bit her cheeks and condensed her breath in a cloud of fog. As her thoughts ran rampant, her feet took initiative of their own, leading her in the now-familiar direction. Out of the B the other…
Emily took a freezing breath, barely bothered by the cold.
The house was still here.
Delight turned into disappointment. It was the Marshall House, no doubt. It had the same steep-pitched roof with dormers and a small porch at the front door, supported by two columns.
It was also falling apart.
Fine, falling apart was a bit dramatic, but it looked abandoned, or at least not well taken care of. The plaster had fallen off in several places, the lower windows were boarded up, and one side of the roof was ready to collapse inward.
The door opened and two men came out, followed by—she squinted— Dad ?
They shook hands and the two men headed for a car parked nearby. Dad glanced at the house, then turned down the road.
“Dad!” She forced her feet to spring into action.
“Emily! What are you doing here?”
“Taking a walk. What are you doing here?”
“Concluding my business.”
“Your…” She looked from him to the house, knitting her eyebrows. “This is your business?”
“It’s the house Grandma sold. I’m finishing the deal.”
“The…” Her mouth fell open. “This house was Grandma’s? I mean, my great-grandma’s?”
“Yes. Emily, what’s the matter?”
Oh, that was too weird. “How long was it hers? I mean, did she buy it?”
Dad narrowed his eyes. “Inherited. It’s been in the family for generations.”
“Generations? Like, how many are we talking about? Three? Six? Far back into the 19th century?”
“I… I don’t know exactly.” He threw his hands in the air. “Why is that important?”
First the diary and the watch, now the house. All from different aspects of her life—and all connected. How was that possible? “Do you have a record of the previous owners? Or a family tree?”
“Family—”
“Our family tree, Dad. Of the people who inherited this house through the generations.” She shook her hands. Couldn’t he just answer?
“Emily, calm down.” He nodded for them to keep moving. “There isn’t much to tell. Grandpa inherited the house. His side of the family was French, and he and Grandma Jackie came here every once in a while, brought my mom along when she was little. Later, on one of the trips, she met my dad, and moved with him to Philly. Then Grandpa died, and Grandma Jackie decided she didn’t like the climate so much anymore, sold the house and went back to France. I’m told the winters are much kinder in Provence.” He shrugged. “That’s it.”
Several French generations in her family. Related to Fabienne? But… wouldn’t Brayden be the one to own the house and pass it down? Why were they all so French, if Fabienne lived in the States and married an American?
“Why did you let it fall apart like that?” Emily asked.
“I didn’t. The new owners did. Or old owners, as it is. Turns out there was something wrong with the papers Grandma signed, and they didn’t have proper permissions—but the man who made the deal had died since. His nephew contacted me a few weeks ago. Given how upset he was, I had to finalize the deal quickly. Now, what was that about a family tree?”
“Sorry?”
“You were rambling about some family tree. Whether there is one.”
“Oh. Right.”
“There should be. Mom worked on it, though I’m not sure how far she got.”
“Could you show it to me?”
He chuckled. “I’ll have to find it first. But I’ll take a look, if you’re interested.”
“Yes! Please.”
“I’ll do it as soon as I get home.”
“Thanks, Dad.” She smiled. He returned it, and his hand twitched, as if he was about to reach out… then he stuck it in his pocket and looked away.
Still, it was probably the least awkward—and wordiest—conversation she’d had with him so far.
They were leaving early the next day. Emily had packed and, with an hour left before they’d head to the airport, visited the house again. She sat on the bench in the park, where she had a nice view of the property, and sulked.
They let it go. She knew it was silly of her, but as she watched that decaying facade, tears gathered in the corner of her eyes. Her visits to the past still seemed like a part of a dream—or a nightmare, if you count that last one—but here was a reminder it was all real. That once upon a time, Fabienne and Brayden and all the others weren’t just names on flimsy old paper.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. In the early morning, she was alone in this corner of the park. Or she should be. Her breath caught, and she swallowed, her senses sharpening. She twitched her head slightly. In her peripheral vision, a dark shape lurked by a tree a few yards away. A man? Dark clothes. Dark hair.
The goosebumps spread.
Fingers stiff, she reached for the phone in her pocket.
The figure slid behind the trunk, and Emily snapped. She jumped up and marched toward the tree. “I saw you! You’ve nowhere to go! Don’t think I didn’t notice you stalking me! Show yourself, you coward!”
The words of anger streamed out—not only toward the stalking creep, but toward Dad for selling the house, toward the ones who bought it, toward her great-grandma for selling it in the first place, toward the damn keys she couldn’t hide, toward the turkey, toward stupid time travel for existing at all. Anger, because she failed, because she was useless—and on top of it, this guy thought he could mock her.
“Gotcha—” she yelled, leaping behind the tree.
No one was there.
She glanced around; a few people on the other side of the park were too far away to be the stalker. And she would’ve seen him running.
There were tracks in the snow, but they could be old. Footprints of different sizes, even animals—that didn’t help her. Anger subsided and fear took over. What was she seeing—that same man, over and over again? In Reynolds Square, at her school, here, hundreds of miles away? That had to be one dedicated stalker.
Or it wasn’t a stalker. Emily had lived in Savannah for long enough to have heard every single ghost story there was. And there were plenty. Plenty of ghosts.
Maybe she had a personal one.