A Timely Concerto (8 page)

“Ah!” Howard said, with a sigh of pure pleasure. Blissful was the word that described his face. “This is wonderful. Feel that sunshine. Come up here, behind the carriage house and stand still. If you look along the edge of the hill – see, where the railroad tracks are – and look due west, you can see the farm.”

She squinted but could see little more than some distant hills. If she tried very hard, she could make out lines of trees. “I think I see it.”

“We could saddle up one of the horses and take the buggy out if you want,” Howard said. From his expression, she realized he wanted to do so very much. If the house was his “baby”, then the farm was his firstborn.

“I’d love to see it. But will my appearance start a lot of gossip?” Although the eras were decades apart, she had not forgotten how tongues wagged about Scarlett O’Hara’s behavior and she did not want to ruin Howard’s reputation. Shugie’s response had been more than enough to remind her that times had changed.

His smile drooped. “It might; I hadn’t thought of that. Although many women come to pick berries, I have never brought a young lady out with me to the farm. Let’s take a walk around to the front of the house, then.”

Halfway there, the heel on her left pump broke and bend beneath her foot. She staggered, losing her balance and would have fell in a heap on the just mown lawn if he had not caught her.

“Are you hurt?” At the concern in his voice, she melted and snuggled up against him.

“No, I’m fine but my shoe isn’t. The heel broke. I can limp back inside and hope your mother wears the same shoe size.”

“That won’t do,” Howard said and with one swift motion swept her into his arms and carried her toward the house. His muscles rippled beneath the blue serge jacket, strained against the immaculate white linen shirt and she reminded herself that as a farmer he was strong, that unlike most of the men of her era, he was physically fit. Although he bore her full weight, he mounted the front steps of the house with ease and she felt very safe in a way she had never felt with a man before.

Unbidden, the memory of her earliest days with Joe returned. Evenings after he came home, from the pharmacy, he read the newspaper and she would crawl up onto his lap, leaning back against him as he perused the news. Although he quit smoking later, he smoked then, rich Camels and the aroma of the cigarettes combined with his embrace had made her feel safe. Nothing had come close in years until now. Snug against Howard’s chest, in his arms, she felt a wonderful rush of harmony.

Like some romantic love song heard on the radio, she felt so right.

“Oh, Howard, I really do love you.”

His voice, though muffled, was clear. “You are a daisy, dear Lillian.”

As he paused to open the massive front door, he shifted her position but his grasp was firm until the door swung wide and she dangled, lacking support. Three seconds warning was all she had before she crashed hard on the wooden floorboards. The impact hurt and she cried out, wondering why he had drop
ped her but she did not see him.

“What happened?” She voiced her concern. “Howard, what in the world are you doing?”

As she turned her head around to search for him, she saw her purse, draped against the bottom stair post where she had left it when she came home from downtown. Deep inside the bag, her cell phone beeped an insidious demand for attention to a missed phone call and she began to cry. They were back and that meant that Howard, dear, sweet Howard, was a ghost again. Where was he, she wondered, her free now free flowing as she wondered if she had come back but he had not.

“Please, no.” She wasn’t sure if it was a prayer or just a cry from the heart but she began to sob at the possibility. Those moments in his arms, his very real and physical arms, had confirmed what she had suspected for days; she was in love with Howard. “Howard? Howard, are you here?”

“Lillian, I’m here.” His voice came from the top of the stairs and she craned her head to find him, seated near the first landing on a step. He sounded as miserable as she felt but that did not help much. “I apologize for your fall; I would not have ever dropped you if I could have prevented it.”

That went without saying,
she knew. “I’m fine. But what the hell happened here?”

His sigh echoed down the stairs and he rose, descending to where she sat on the floor.

“Somehow we were back there, back in 1904. For a short space of time, I was human again, alive and well. It was, real, was it not?”

She unfolded her hand
to show him the now crushed pink rose. “It was. There aren’t any roses outside now and I have cake crumbs on my skirt. However, how – or why – we got there and how we got back is beyond me. I have no idea.”

“I was happy.” His blue eyes did not focus on her but stared across the wide entry hall into nothing. “I don’t know that I have ever been as happy as for that little while, Lillian.”

He was sad, no surprise, so was she. As much as he missed his own time and possessing a physical body, she longed to touch him again but could not. “Me, either. I meant what I said, though, Howard. I love you.”

If she thought her declaration would cheer him, she was wrong. Tears magnified his blue eyes and he shook his head. “And I love you too, dear darling girl but it’s hopeless here. You are a woman and here I am nothing, a vapor, a spirit, a haunt. I thought I was long reconciled to that fact but now, I am not. I want to live and I want you; I can have neither.”

“Don’t be sad.” Lillian wanted to wrap her arms around him to ease his anguish but she could not. “If we did it once, maybe we can do it again – and stay.”

Howard shook his head. “I am not sure if that is possible.”

Thwarted, her one desire was to get what they both wanted so she scrambled to find words that would encourage. “Look, if someone asked me a few months ago if there was any such thing as ghosts, I would have said no and meant it. However, you are a ghost and so I know that such things are real, not every spooky story is true but that it is possible. I have not had a chance to tell you about all the research I did on hauntings but I will and I can research time travel too. Where there is a will, there’s a way, Howard.”

His lips curled into a half-smile. “Mother used to say that. Times were when I despaired of ever building up the farm to what it became and she would quote that same adage to me.
She made me believe that it would happen and dear heart, I want to believe you.”

With effort, Lillian pulled herself off the floor, brushed away the crumbs from her skirt, and limped over to the wooden bench. Her shin ached and would likely bruise but that did not matter.

“Then do. What happened to my other shoe?”

He removed the shoe and the broken heel from his pocket. “It’s made of covered cardboard. No wonder it did not last. Did you hurt yourself when you fell, Lillian?”

“I may bruise a little but I’m all right. Let me go change clothes and put on some other shoes. Then we can talk, Howard.”

He nodded. “I’ll be in the parlor.”

Facing her, he raised his fingers as if he could touch her face and moved them. A slight whisper of a touch brushed her lips and her throat closed around a lump. Those sweet, fleeting moments they shared could not be all she ever had of Howard. Determined to find a way that their love could work, she left him and although she did not look back, she knew he watched until she passed out of sight.

NOW

Transformed from an Edwardian lady back into an everyday woman, Lillian hung up her vintage garments with care. More than anything, she wanted to fling herself down on the bed and sob but instead she splashed her face with cold water and went downstairs to explain hauntings to a ghost. The music that floated up the wide front stair was melancholy, an indication that Howard shared her overwhelming disappointment. It was harder for him, she realized, because back then, where they had gone, he was alive and here he was not. The music was not familiar, not a piece she could name, but the poignant notes said more than words could.

Howard did not hear her step so she paused in the doorway of the rear parlor to watch him, hands skimming over the ivory keys with the easy skill of long practice. Never musically inclined, Lillian could not plink out the simplest tune on a piano but she admired anyone who could. Somehow, in a way that she could not understand, Howard vented his emotions into the music, the sad notes resonating with his feelings. Sadness, disappointment, and a touch of anger made the music his own. Awed and moved Lillian said nothing until he finished playing, hands resting on the keys and gaze staring into the wall.

“Howard?”

He turned and now, having experienced him in the flesh, she noted how spectral he appeared. His complexion was pale and although he was three dimensional, he was flat, like a cardboard cutout.

“Yes, my dear Lillian.”

What could she say that wouldn’t sound empty and silly after his magnificent music? She was not sure but she said what she felt.

“I am so sorry, Howard, sorry that it didn’t last.”

“Sorry does not begin to describe how I feel.”

She so wanted to touch him, to comfort him but she could not. “Your music said it very well. Some men would smash things or kick a dog but you expressed what you felt in the music.”

His lips attempted a smile. “Well, that’s the Quaker in me coming out. My father’s family was Quaker from Pennsylvania and Quakers are very non-violent. As a boy I wasn’t allowed to beat my fists in rage or throw a temper fit so I learned to use music to express what I felt.”

“You do it well.”

Rising from the piano bench, he bowed and settled into a corner of the small sofa. “Thank you. Now that I have unburdened myself with music, we can move forward. So, explain to me about hauntings and time travel and the like.”

Lillian sat down, thoughts whirling like a windmill in a storm.
“I’m not really an expert but I did do some research when I went back to Kansas City. There are three basic types of hauntings according to the experts. There are residual hauntings where the ghost is nothing more than an impression, like a picture imprinted on a place that does the same thing over and over. You are not residual.

“Then there is poltergeist activity but that often centers around an adolescent and is characterized by a lot of physical activity, objects moving, things being moved, and noise. Poltergeists rap on the walls, knock on
floors, or tap on ceilings but they don’t play the piano.

“Last is what is called an intelligent haunting and the ghost is cognizant of who they are – or were – and can communicate.”

Howard had listened but when she paused for breath, he wrinkled his nose. “At least I’m considered intelligent.”

“Well, yes,
” Lillian floundered, facts jumbled together in her head like confetti. The books she had read, the programs she watched, and the information she gleaned congealed into a blob that was hard to separate into facts. What she learned from self-proclaimed psychics, ghost hunters, and paranormal professionals now seemed vague and too simple.

“You do interact with me and you are what is known as a full figured apparition but in every other way, you’re not like any of the ghosts I read about. Most of the books mentioned that intelligent hauntings are around because they want or need something or have unfinished business. I read chapters about how people can help ghosts go to the
light, which seems to be another way to say send them to Heaven. Or how they resolve a mystery or reveal where the money was hidden but you don’t fit any of those, I don’t think.”

He crossed one leg over the other, pondering what she said. “No, I don’t suppose that I do. I have believed that
if Heaven or hell had been my destination, I would have gone but I do not seem able to do so. Nor do I have unfinished business except that my life ended much too soon. There was so much more I had hoped to do, Lillian. I built this home for a family, to find a wife, and I died before that could happen. That, I suppose, could be unfinished business.”

“
Yes. However, short of telling you to move on to Heaven, I don’t see where any of the things I researched can help you. If that’s what you want, to go on, then I’ll do what I can to help but I would miss you.”

Tears clogged her throat and she fumbled the last words. Setting Howard free to reach the hereafter sounded like the right thing to do but she didn’t want to part with him. If he wanted to go, however, to be free after more than a hundred years, how could she keep him? She swallowed a sob and waited.

“I won’t leave you, Lillian,” Howard said, as he stood, moving across the room to stand before her. “As cursed as I have felt as a ghost, I could not leave you, my love. Earlier you said, where there is a will, there is a way. It lies to us to find it. What do you know about time travel?”

She wanted to cry, wail like an abandoned baby on a doorstep. “Even less than I know about ghosts.”

Laughter was not the reaction she expected but he hooted. Quizzical, she turned to him,

“What could be funny?”

“You are much more of an expert than you think, Lillian. After all, you have just returned from time traveling which is, I daresay, more than H.G. Wells or his Time Traveler ever managed to do. Is time travel considered possible in your time?”

“Well, in theory only,
” Lillian said, shaking her head. “There are a lot of books and movies but there is some serious research. Einstein, the scientist, had a theory that time is like a river but I would have to refresh my memory on the rest of it. I guess you’ve read Wells’
The Time Machine?
”

“Avidly. The notion intrigued me although his fictional account is much more fanciful than what we just experienced. I would settle for returning to 1904, to my life. I would trade the Morlocks for the life I had and adventure for domesticity. You intrigue me with this Einstein. Who is he?”

“He was one of the greatest scientists ever,” Lillian said, wondering just how to condense Einstein’s career and many discoveries into a nutshell for Howard. “Sometime I’ll tell you all about him but for now, the thing that is important is that he believed time was like a river. He wasn’t much of a believer in time travel at first but one of his colleagues at Princeton, Kurt Goedel, I think, came up with the idea that time’s river has whirlpools that allow for time travel, to go back. Other scientists believe that Einstein’s theory of relativity creates the possibility of time travel. Most of his other theories were proven to be true so – as we now know – time travel
is
possible.”

“So it seems.
I also appear to be fading fast so bid me adieu, dearest.”

Before she could say a word, he vanished and was gone.

“Damn!” The aggravation would kill her if the suspense did not. Love relationships were hard enough with a flesh and blood partner but Howard’s disappearing act was beyond difficult. There had to be some way, she thought, to cross the boundaries of time so that she and Howard could be together and Lillian resolved to figure out how.

Although she would rather bawl with frustration, she took action. The local library was the only place that might have the materials she sought so she Googled Einstein’s theories on one of the public computers. What she read led to her read about Goedal, the other Princeton scientist she mentioned to Howard and to others, everyone from Stephen Hawking to Igor D. Novikov. A search of simply “time travel” linked to Washington Irving’s legend of Rip Van Winkle, King Arthur’s daughter Gwenth, to Carroll’s Alice, and even to Sleeping Beauty. The mish-mash of information was confusing but as she sorted through it, reading and considering it all, a sense of excitement crept over her. Repeatedly from very diverse sources, she read that time travel might be possible, not from crackpots or harebrained pseudo scientists but from people at the top of their field.

No one explained how it worked but most acknowledged the possibility. As she surfed the World Wide Web, she jotted down books to read and movies to watch. Dean Koontz had written a novel about time travel called
Lightning
and a woman named Diana Gabaldon had penned an entire series of novels based on time travel. Movies like
Kate and Leopold
and
Somewhere in Time,
the last based on a novel by Richard Matheson, intrigued her.

Lost in research, Lillian did not realize how late it had become until the librarian tapped her shoulder.

“I’m sorry but we close in fifteen minutes.”

Head aching with fatigue, mind whirling with information, she gathered up her copious notes and walked out to the parking lot. Her car was alone beneath the vapor lights and although she was weary, Lillian was too restless to go home. Instead, she drove across town and up the business highway to where Howard’s farm had been.

The neat orchards she hoped to find were gone and instead a housing subdivision sprawled over the fertile ground that made Howard’s fortune. Most of the ranch style homes dated to the late 1950’s or early 1960’s but on the far edges, newer homes ringed the original neighborhood. The railroad track she recalled from her dream and the hills with a few gnarled old apple and peach trees were all that remained of the former fruit farm. Somehow, that made her sad and she knew Howard would feel the same. As her headlights swept through the subdivision, she searched for any other signs of Speakman’s Farm but found none so she retreated to Seven Oaks.

In the humid summer night, her fatigue felt like a heavy blanket and Lillian was almost too tired to drag herself up the stairs. As she wandered through the dark downstairs rooms, she called his name but Howard did not answer. Missing him was an ache and so weary, emotions drained, she lay down across the bed, too tired to even undress and fell asleep.

Shadows of the tree branches made lacy silhouettes across the ceiling of the bedroom when she woke, moving shadows that danced with the wind. Although she had no clue what time of day it might be, Lillian felt too somnolent to rise so she lay, tangled in the bedspread and tried to sort her myriad emotions. Joy at Howard’s declaration of love dimmed when she considered the difficulties of their unique relationship and a strange prickling delight came as she remembered visiting 1904. As the wind rushed through the trees like whispers, she struggled to make sense of time travel, to figure out a way to make it possible on a permanent basis.

Details, theories, and thoughts warred until she sat up, limbs protesting the motion after too many hours of deep sleep, with a revelation. They didn’t need the books, she would not have to know the properties of relativity after all, and there was no set formula that promised success but that did not matter because she had done it. If they could get there when they were just playing, travel to the past without trying, it was obvious that they could and would by design.

“Elementary, my dear Watson,” Lillian murmured, stretching as she swung her legs to the floor. “It’s simple, really.”

With one ear cocked for any sound that might indicate Howard’s return, Lillian bathed and dressed, brushing her teeth to rid her mouth of an unpleasant film that coated teeth and gums. She picked up her watch from the dresser and nodded. It was just now noon; she had not slept away as much of the day as she had guessed. That was good because she had many things to do and plans to make. Singing, she floated with elation downstairs to make coffee and make a list. Time travel was doable and she would do it or die. Either way, she would be with Howard.

By the time, he appeared, dapper in a blue and white checked Madras shirt worn over dark brown trousers held up with suspenders striped the same colors as the shirt, she had scribbled half a notebook full of things to do or buy or look up. Intent on the next item, she did not realize he was with her until she felt his spirit caress, light as a breath, across the back of her neck.

“What are you plotting, my dear heart?” He asked, sitting down across the kitchen table.

“We can do it, Howard.” She put down her pen to reach out for his hand and then remembered she couldn’t hold it. “Time travel, I mean. All we have to do is believe it and live it. If we could do it when we were just pretending, we can do it. Everything has to be just right and I have so many things to get and things to do but we can. Isn’t it wonderful?”

He smiled, the expression giving him more of a lifelike appearance. “Yes, Lillian. But, are you sure? And will you want to leave everything you have known behind to come back with me?”

If she had ever been certain of anything, this was it. “Yes, Howard. I love you and I want to spend my life with you.”

He sighed, a heavy, happy sound. “And I with you, my lady. When will we attempt this journey?”