Leaving Lavender: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 3) Read online

  But tonight he was tired and a little discouraged and the last thing he wanted was to be forced to make conversation even with these people whom he liked very much. Still he valued his residence on the ranch and the privacy it afforded, so he accepted the invitation as a command and promised Jerry he would join them at the house as soon as he’d fed and cared for Einstein.

  2004 Lavender

  Eddie had sunk so deep into the journals that she jumped about a foot when Betsy burst into the library. Her usually composed stepsister pushed a stack of irreplaceable books out of a chair, scattering them on the floor, and flopped down, sobbing noisily.

  Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face swollen and flushed. She looked as if she’d been crying for hours.

  Eddie stared in horror. This was so out of character for Betsy that she was immediately certain that someone close to them had died. It was the only explanation and she waited, her heart jolting, for the terrible announcement.

  “He did it,” Betsy choked out the words. “I didn’t. He did. He says he loves somebody else.”

  The jolting slowed slightly. Nobody was dead. The people she loved were still safe. Evan hadn’t dropped dead from a heart-attack, Cynthia hadn’t been run down by a wild team of horses. Nobody had strangled Sylvie, though sometimes with that mouthy girl, the temptation was strong.

  I’m getting my sense of humor back, Eddie thought. Maybe next I’ll be able to breathe.

  “Whatever’s wrong, Bets?” she asked gently. Ever since Betsy came to live with them in Lavender, they’d been important to each other. Well, admittedly Eddie had tried to run her off at first, but over time they’d confided in each other, told things they wouldn’t tell anyone else. Eddie tried to show Betsy a more adventurous side of life, while Betsy tried to tune down Eddie enough so that she didn’t break too many bones. But Eddie didn’t ever remember her sister coming to her in such deep distress.

  “My engagement is off,” Betsy said, looking up at her sister with her lovely face puffy and her eyes full of pleading.

  “Not again,” Eddie responded lightly. “You’ve broken another poor guy’s heart?”

  Betsy shook her head. “Jonas said he didn’t want to marry me. He’s fallen in love with someone else.”

  This was a shock. The young doctor being trained by her mother and father had seemed mesmerized by their golden-haired daughter. The only thing that had worried Eddie about their engagement was how he would deal with it when Betsy eventually decided she didn’t want to get married after all.

  “You mean it was real? You really love Jonas?” she asked in surprise.

  Betsy nodded.

  “But you thought it was real, each time. And you kept putting the weddings off.”

  Betsy couldn’t speak for sobbing. Finally she managed to choke out, “I love Jonas, that’s not the problem. Getting married is what makes me fearful.”

  Eddie frowned, not understanding at all.

  “Oh, Eddie, you remember about my dad. My own father didn’t love me and he was awful to my mother. How can I risk marrying any man when my dad couldn’t be trusted?”

  She’d thought she knew Betsy so well. She’d fitted into the family with such seeming ease. She knew Evan, her own father, thought of her as one of his daughters. And Grandpapa was as devoted to her as he was to Eddie and Sylvie. After all these years how could she still be troubled by the rotter of a father she and her mother had fled?

  This was a Betsy she didn’t know. The young woman she’d grown up with took things lightly and was always happy. All this time had the doubts lingered underneath?

  Her own mother had left when she was just a baby and she’d thought often enough about what Jenny Stephens was like and how she could leave her baby and husband behind, but it wasn’t like she had memories of that woman or had ever been actually afraid of her.

  Betsy had told her how her own father had tried to kidnap her from school and how he’d tried to steal her from the streets of the small town where she’d been shopping with her mother, striking her mother so hard that she’d arrived in Lavender with black eyes and a battered face.

  She’d supposed her sister had put such thoughts far behind her in the years that she’d shared Evan Stephens as a father and lived contentedly as one of Lavender’s best liked young persons.

  And now here she was crying her heart out. Eddie had no idea what to do to help.

  “I promised to take you out,” Betsy said, choking out the words between gradually lessening sobs. “I didn’t really want to, but I said I would.”

  “I won’t hold you to that promise,” Eddie said hastily, anxious to do anything that would make Betsy stop crying.

  Betsy scrubbed at her eyes like a little girl caught in embarrassing tears. Lovely as she was, crying did not set gracefully on her face, which now evidenced swollen eyes and a red nose. “No, you don’t understand. I want to get away. I don’t want to be here when Jonas marries someone else. I can’t stand it. We’ve got to leave?”

  “Oh!” Faced with the immediate fulfillment of her lifelong dream, Eddie found she was surprisingly shaken. “You’re sure?”

  Betsy nodded energetically. “Just for a while. We’ll come back. I couldn’t be away from Mama and Papa and all the family permanently.” She sniffed. “It’ll be like a vacation. We’ll visit my aunt and uncle and baby cousin. You’ll like them.”

  But what if we can’t get back? She didn’t say it out loud. She couldn’t back down on Betsy when she’d been pleading for this for years. “We’ll have to tell Cynthia and Evan. They’d be worried to death.”

  Betsy nodded again. “And Eddie, there’s one thing more. I want to locate my dad and find out why he treated us that way. I have to understand why he hated me.”

  Chapter Five

  2027 Oklahoma

  The last thing Zan wanted to do was offend Lynne Caldecott, but neither did he want to get involved in a pointless pen-pal thing with her niece. He didn’t even like personal email or texting, but he certainly didn’t have time or interest in exchanging actual letters.

  But he didn’t want to hurt his landlady’s feelings. He really liked living in the little cottage on the ranch she and her husband owned. He didn’t even much mind having the occasional meal with their little family or having their son drop by and interrupt his work.

  It wasn’t something he would have acknowledged to himself, but in the last year he’d been living at the ranch, the Caldecotts had become the closest he’d ever had to an actual family. He could talk to Moss Caldecott easier than he could talk to his own brother and as for his wife, little Lynne, well, he couldn’t bear to bring a hurt look to those gentle brown eyes.

  He finally decided there was only one thing to do. He had his secretary write a friendly letter to this girl named Betsy Burden—he smiled to think she sounded like a character in a kid book—typed the address on the envelope himself, 22 Crockett Street, Lavender, Texas. And he’d bought a five dollar stamp, stuck it on, and took it by the post office.

  There! Now he could tell Lynne he’d written that letter to her niece. That evening he ate chili and cornbread with the Caldecotts with a clear conscience and was almost disappointed when Lynne didn’t ask him if he’d written that letter to her beloved Betsy.

  1904 Lavender

  The household was sunk in gloom, though each of them tried to pretend that everything was normal. They were working so hard at being cheerful that it was absolutely sickening, Eddie thought.

  She and Betsy had faced up to things and had their conversation with their parents, admitting to Cynthia and Evan their plans to cross over the barriers and spend a few weeks with Betsy’s aunt and uncle and baby cousin.

  Caught entirely by surprise, both parents had said some very frank things about the dangers involved and how could they abandon their own family. Both had been unpleasantly surprised to learn that the girls had known since their early teens that Betsy and Betsy alone possessed the ability to cross over and take anothe
r person with her, just as she’d brought her mother all those years ago.

  Cynthia had forbidden them to go. Evan, who could be most persuasive, tried to talk them out of it.

  “Who will tell stories to our young people?” he’d asked. “Who will collect our history for future generations?”

  Cynthia played the trump card. “It will break Sylvie’s heart,” she said, “and Grandpapa’s.”

  “We’re twenty one,” Betsy said calmly.

  “I’m already twenty two,” Eddie added.

  “We’re both almost twenty two,” Betsy went on. “Back where we came from, we’d be away at college or working at jobs. Gracious, Mother, you were married and had a child when you were my age.”

  “And just look how that worked out,” Cynthia grumbled, quickly adding, “Not as far as you’re concerned, my darling, of course.”

  “We’ll be back before you hardly know we’re gone,” Eddie contributed.

  “But what about Jonas,” Cynthia didn’t give in that easily. “I thought you were planning a Christmas wedding.”

  “The engagement’s off,” Betsy said calmly and only Eddie saw that her mouth trembled slightly.

  “Not again,” Cynthia said with a sigh.

  “She’s too young to get married anyway,” Evan said.

  “You’re think that if she was forty,” his wife accused.

  The debate had gone on for hours and finally Eddie realized something significant. When you just kept insisting, quietly and firmly, nobody could derail your plans.

  After that Cynthia tried to coach them on what they would find and she helped them break the news to Sylvie and Grandpapa. Grandpapa protested and Sylvie wanted to go along. Betsy told her that as far as she knew, she could only escort one person at a time. Her turn, if she ever got a turn, would come when she was grownup.

  They agreed to keep the secret of the anticipated journey in the family.

  On the evening before they were to leave, a letter was left in the box outside the door and Sylvie came bouncing inside, bringing it to Betsy.

  “It says ‘Betsy Burden,” she said. “Guess that’s you.”

  Frowning, Betsy took the envelope, ripped it carelessly open, than handed it to Eddie. “It’s for you.”

  The paper felt stiff and crumbly in her hands as she opened the single sheet of paper. The words were not hand written, but printed neatly across the page.

  Miss Betsy Burden

  22 Crocket St.

  Lavender, Texas

  Dear Betsy:

  How kind of you to write to me. Your aunt has told me so much about you and what a sweet girl you are. She and your uncle and cousin have been so kind and thoughtful to me that we should be friends too, if we ever have a chance to meet.

  Yours in friendship,

  Alexander Alston

  The initials mm appeared at the bottom of the page.

  Eddie stared at the sheet. What a strange letter! It was as if the person writing it had struggled to fit a few polite words on the page. She went looking for Cynthia.

  “Cynthia,” she said. “What does it mean when initials are written at the bottom of a letter?”

  “Initials?” Cynthia frowned. “You mean like when it’s typed by a secretary and he or she initials it?”

  Eddie nodded. “Just what I meant,” she agreed.

  What a dunce this Alexander Alston must be. She’d gone out of her way to do a favor both for Betsy and Betsy’s aunt by writing to him and he’d had someone who worked for him put together a barely polite note.

  She just hoped she didn’t have to spend any time with him when she visited Betsy’s relatives.

  Sometimes Zan felt just a twinge of the emotion that must have struck scientists as they worked on the Manhattan Project. They probably did a lot of thinking about what was going to happen if that bomb they were building was actually put to use.

  And then, two of them were dropped on Japanese cities. You could argue politics all you wanted, whether it was better to use the bombs or go through the long agony of invasion, still he wouldn’t have wanted to be one of those scientists.

  He’d been inventing things, making discoveries since before he was old enough to be aware of such things. And now, for the first time, he was beginning to worry. He sent freight into space and now people were beginning to ride on his rocket powered ships. He liked that. Someday he planned to go himself, if he could ever talk his brother into allowing it.

  All his life he’d made the inventions and let Geoff make the business decisions. People didn’t talk much around him about what was going on, but there had been remarks lately.

  Remarks about Alston Adventures making weapons. He knew well enough that those adaptations could be made.

  And he knew there were those who thought a third world war might be coming. He didn’t want to think all his bright ideas, all those things his mind liked to dwell on, might be converting to new ways of killing and destroying .

  Geoff wouldn’t let that happen. He could trust his brother as he would trust his own conscience. He was almost certain of that.

  He tried to put the nagging worries out of his mind as he took Einstein for a run in the pasture, then met the family in the backyard for a picnic complete with fried chicken and home grown watermelon that was so much sweeter than what they served in restaurants. In fact, everything tasted better out on the ranch.

  Afterwards, he lay back against a tree trunk and breathed in the clover-scented sweet air. It was hard to believe that anything really bad could happen when you lived in a place like this.

  1904 Lavender

  Evan and Cynthia drove them in the buggy to the edge. As they jogged along through a crisp fall day, Cynthia kept thinking of last minute words of advice.

  “It’s not like you’ll walk out and be at your uncle’s ranch, Betsy. It’s hundreds of miles away and in another state.”

  Betsy nodded. She seemed sobered, uncertain about this journey they were about to take. Yet she had stubbornly refused to turn back, resisting all their parents’ arguments. “I remember, Mom,” she said. For the last few days she’d been saying ‘mom’ instead of ‘mama.’ Mom was what she’d called her mother when they first came here.

  “This is Texas. The ranch is northwest of Cheyenne in western Oklahoma.”

  “And don’t accept rides from anyone. It’s not like in Lavender where you know everyone and they know you. It would be very dangerous to get in a car with strangers.”

  Betsy nodded again, wearing a patient look on her pretty face. Eddie reminded herself that a car was a gasoline powered buggy that moved many times faster than any horse-drawn transportation. She’d have to remember to let Betsy do most of the talking. Cynthia had insisted they must not tell where they truly came from to anyone other than her family members, who would most certainly understand.

  “When you get to the nearest town, you’ll be able to rent a car. Maybe.” Cynthia looked worried. “I don’t know if the cards I’ve given you will be of any use, but surely you’ve enough cash to take care of your needs until you locate Lynne and Moss.”

  She continued to look worried. “We’ve been gone for nearly thirteen years now. Things will have changed.

  “And that’s another thing. We found that time there didn’t move evenly with time here. More than thirteen years may have passed and the seasons, well it could be summer here and winter there, or vice-versa.”

  Eddie felt a flutter of fear inside her chest, quickly removed by a wave of excitement. Finally she was going to see the world outside Lavender.

  They kissed their parents goodbye, everybody avoiding tears, though Eddie suspected those would come when they were separated. Then Betsy took Eddie’s left hand in her right one and, without looking back, they strode past the bend of the creek and kept walking. The pastoral quiet of the countryside, interrupted only by birdsong, faded behind them, turning into a great rushing of sound.

  Great looming metal carriages rushed past them
on a broad ribbon of some hard surface. Eddie caught her breath and grabbed on more tightly to her sister’s hand.

  Huge buildings, tall and shiny, loomed in the distance. Strangely dressed people walked past them, barely seeming to notice them except to be annoyed that they stood too close to the edge of the road.

  “Mom was right,” Betsy said, sounding awed. “Things have changed.”

  Betsy held her mother’s old handbag, which contained their money and some cards she’d said they might need, in her left hand so she had to release her hold on Eddie to raise her right hand and wave it in the air.

  Almost immediately a bright yellow vehicle swerved across the lanes of traffic to stop beside them. “Charge number?” a man’s voice sounded from within the vehicle, though Eddie saw not a sign of a human being inside.

  Betsy gulped while Eddie could do nothing but stare.

  “Permission to scan?” the voice repeated patiently.

  “We have money,” Betsy said in a firm voice.

  “Charge number?” the voice questioned again.

  “We don’t have a number,” Eddie squeaked out the admission.

  “Do you wish to reverse the charges?” the voice asked.

  “Yes,” Betsy said eagerly. “Please reverse the charges to Mr. Moss Caldecott at his ranch near Cheyenne, Oklahoma. I’m his niece Betsy Burden Stephens with my sister Eddie and we want to be taken to the ranch.”

  A bare instant of silence passed, than the voice spoke again. “Charges accepted,” the voice said.

  A door opened to the back seat and, a little fearfully, Eddie followed Betsy into the vehicle and they moved off at a speed that jolted every bone in her body.

  After catching her breath, Eddie glanced in Betsy’s direction. Her sister’s normally rosy cheeks looked drained of color. “I don’t understand, Bets,” she whispered. “I thought people steered these cars.”

  Betsy nodded. “That’s the way it used to be.”

  The voice that seemed to come from all around them now spoke again. “Moss Caldecott sends a message for the young women. He says to tell you both welcome home.”