Home in Time for Christmas (16 page)

“Oh, I so wish that I did!” Mark told her. “Please…no, no, no, wait. I have it now. I did take a hallucinatory drug. It was last night. Then again, maybe they were trying to play a trick on me. They gave me more this morning. I'm being…it's a practical joke. Okay,
I've got it. You work with Jake Mallory, you're an historian somewhere, or whatever they call it now—historical interpreter. And you all are just trying to make me think I'm crazy.”

She stared at him blankly. All that she seemed to take from his entire exposition was the fact that he really knew Jake Mallory.

She stepped closer, the fire poker tightly in her hands. “I want my brother back here. Now. What have you done with him?”

“Nothing. Nothing—I swear, I haven't done a thing with your brother!” Mark told her. He swallowed. Oddly enough, in his confusion and fear, he became aware that whatever was cooking in the pot did not smell like any strange potion.

It held a wonderful aroma. Like a stew flavored to perfection.

It was morning. Who cooked stew in the morning?

“What is the year?” he asked again.

“You seriously don't know?” she asked. “Please?”

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“I'm Mark. My name is Mark Hathaway.”

“And where are you from?”

“Gloucester, Massachusetts. Originally. I've been working in New York the last few years. My family—my immediate family has passed away, I'm afraid. I came to see—to see friends living back in my hometown. Last night, I went to a party. It was a Wiccan party. I drank—”

“A Wiccan party? Near Christmas? Oh, you are a dastardly liar!” she cried.

Dastardly?

She wasn't that big. Surely—and with no harm done the woman—he could wrest the fire poker from her. Then he could step outside, and see exactly what was going on. Why in God's name had Melody never been able to see that her parents were certifiably crazy?

“I'm telling you, I came to see my friends, but they were out. The neighbors told me where they were, and so I went to the party. Thank God I took a cab, because the drinks were killer. I'm telling you the absolute truth. This morning, they were playing around with some black hole or something of the like. They're—they're a little on the odd side. The dad is a scientist, an inventor—he came up with a real great broom or mop or something of the like, and I guess he thinks he's Edison or something.” She stared at him blankly and he continued. “The mom is…well, I don't know what she is. A hippie, I guess. New Age, in a way. A Catholic New Age. Like a Catholic Wiccan. If you can be such a thing. Anyway, she made this potion thing and…”

His voice trailed away. She had stepped back.

“What?”

“Go on. Go on with your story.”

Mark shook his head. If this was a prank being played on him, the girl was wasting her time on small stuff. Her expression was one of pure amazement and question. “Oh, come on, please,” he said. “Is this a prank? Why are you dressed that way?”

“This is my customary house apparel,” she said, her tone aggravated. “And believe me, I am in no disposition for pranks of any kind.”

“Right. Right!” He ignored the poker and turned around, striding to the door. He threw it open.

Snow covered the ground.

Snow and more snow.

And that was all that he could see. There was no house across the street.

There was a picket fence around a side yard, and a furry horse was nuzzling through the snow.

He closed the door.

Hallucinogenic!

Had to be, oh, God, had to be.

“Get in here! You're letting the heat out.”

Mark turned to face her. He shook his head. He blinked. He slapped himself.

He still stood exactly where he had been, facing the beautiful girl.

“What year is it? Please, just tell me that. What time is it, what year is it?”

“Seventeen seventy-six. It's Christmas Eve, Seventeen seventy-six.”

 

“What on earth are we going to do? This is enough to make you crazy,” Melody said.

She stood on the porch steps with Keith and Jake.

They had been thrown out of the house.

“Get in the car,” Keith said.

“What? Why? Where are we going?” Melody demanded.

“Just get in,” Keith said.

Jake shrugged and started to agree. He followed Keith.

“Jake!” Melody said. “What are you doing? He won't tell us his plan?”

“Well, he's getting in the car, and I don't have a plan, so I thought I should get in, as well,” Jake said. He was quiet and thoughtful, and had been for the last hour.

In contrast, Melody felt as if she were a mouse in a field of traps.

And Keith…

“Melody?” Jake asked, turning back.

She threw up her hands. “You two are too much. And Mom! We don't know where Mark is. We don't know what will happen. And we have to wait for sunset on Christmas Eve to even try a crazy stunt to find Mark. And if we find Mark, then Jake is lost somewhere in time, and we'll never know if—”

“Melody!” Jake interrupted.

“What?”

“Chill!” Keith said.

She hadn't paid any attention to the direction in which Keith had headed when they'd left the house. Now, biting her lip and trying to remain silent, she realized that they were heading away from town.

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

“You'll see,” Keith said, and turned up the radio.

Bing Crosby was singing “White Christmas.”

“Beautiful,” Jake murmured.

A few minutes later, they turned off the road, and Melody knew where they were going. Her father had an old hunting lodge back on property in the woods.

He'd never hunted anything.

It had just been a place where he went with his old cronies now and then. And where they had all gone sometimes, just to be away. It was two rooms. Made of wood, with a bedroom, and an all-purpose room. The refrigerator was small and hadn't worked in years. The plumbing was iffy.

“Get out,” Keith said to Melody, pulling to a stop.

“What?” she asked incredulously.

“Get out. You're driving everyone crazy,” Keith said.

“You can't throw me out at this old lodge!” Melody said. “It's freezing. There's no heat. There's no—there's nothing out here.”

“Actually, there is,” Keith said. “Mom and Dad have been using the place now and then for a getaway. There's a new little refrigerator, and they have one of those automatic fireplaces in there now. You just turn it on. So—get out.”

“Keith!”

Jake got out of the car.

“Hey, I didn't mean that you had to get out. I mean, she's driving you as crazy as me, right?” Keith asked.

“I'm not leaving your sister alone in the woods,” Jake said.

Keith shrugged. He turned to Melody, next to him in the front passenger's seat. “Get out,” he said quietly. “It's going to work out all right. I know it. We'll find Mark, and we'll get Jake back where he needs to be. But you're never going to be in love with Mark, and you are in love with Jake.”

“I can't be in love with him,” she whispered. “I barely know him.”

“Get to know him then. I'll be back at three. We can't miss the sunset, and God knows, it will come early tonight, we've got to be back at the house, ready. Melody, this is your last chance. Spend some time with him. I'll see you at three.”

She saw the gentle mischief in her brother's eyes—and also the love he bore for her.

She smiled, kissed his cheek and hopped out of the car.

She stared at the house, aware that Jake was by her.

She spun back around to stop Keith before he could drive away.

“Keys!” she told him, but he was already tossing them to her.

She walked to the house, Jake behind her, as the car drove away. She opened the door, shivering. “We'll build a fire,” Jake said.

“We don't need to; we just have to turn one on,” she told him. And, walking to the stone-enclosed fireplace, she flicked the switch. A fire leaped to life.

“Incredible. Quite incredible. I will miss all these things,” Jake said, staring at the flames. Then he looked at her. “More than anything, I will miss you,” he said softly.

“Will you really?” she asked him. “I didn't believe a word you said—not really—until this morning. I haven't been at all charitable. Okay, frankly, I suppose I have been something of a bitch. And I don't begin to understand what it is that you could be seeing in me….”

Her voice trailed away. He had taken a step toward her, and he was smiling. “You took me home. From what I've seen of your world, most people would have driven away. Or dropped me at the nearest facility for the insane. You brought me home, and you wanted to make things right. Home is a special place, and you have made me feel special in yours.”

She thought that he was going to take her into his arms, but he didn't. He walked past her, taking a framed picture from the mantel.

She had all but forgotten the picture. It was a charcoal sketch. She had done it when she was about seventeen; it had once been part of her portfolio.

It was a sketch of her parents. Her mother was reading
a book, and her father was a foot away at the end of the sofa.

But, somehow, she had caught her father's expression perfectly as he looked at her mother. And her mother had just looked up to see, and give him the same smile of absolute love and affection in return.

Actually, at the time, she hadn't known how good it was.

“This is yours,” he said.

“Yes.”

“It's very, very good.”

“Thank you.”

“You should never stop with your art,” he told her.

“No…never,” she said. “Mark—he never understood. I want the same things as most human beings—in anytime in history and beyond. We all want to be loved. Need to be loved, perhaps. I just like the world we live in, where we're allowed to love and be loved and have children and still pursue our interests. I mean, I don't want my children raised by strangers, either, but—” She broke off and suddenly turned away from him, hurrying over to the kitchen area. She hoped that she still had what had always been “Melody's drawer.”

She did. There was a sketch pad, her pencils and her chalk.

She didn't want a chalk drawing, she decided. She wanted a pencil sketch.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I—I want to remember you,” she told him.

“I will never forget you,” he told her.

She lowered her head, surprised at the way she was blushing. “Please? Will you…just sit?”

“Of course, as you wish.”

But he didn't just sit. He talked, and that didn't matter. “I tried to think last night about all the wonders I've seen, and weigh them against my world, my time. First, the lights amazed me. And being able to talk to someone miles away in a second on a telephone—and a cell phone. And then there is television, radio and computers…and, from what I have learned, wonders that can come from medical breakthroughs. And, of course, I've thought, too, about some of what has been lost. We have no computers, no video games, and so we talk when we are home at night, and we learn to whittle, and to play instruments. We have our books, of course. They are precious and not so easily obtained, and so we treat them tenderly.”

As he spoke, musing, she sketched. He came to life beautifully on the page. All the animation of his features was apparent in the sketch, and she was good, she believed in herself, and was usually determined to work with a drawing until she was proud of it.

This drawing…

The subject. He made the drawing amazing.

“May I?” he asked when she looked up.

She knew that she was blushing again as she showed it to him. He stared at it a long while, and looked at her.

They both sat upon the sofa then, facing the warmth of the fire, and she found that she trembled when his eyes touched hers.
His wasn't a showy strength,
she thought. He wasn't the kind of man who needed to raise his voice to be heard. He had fought for his country; he had faced a hangman's noose, and she believed that he had done so with dignity. Despite the fact that she
hadn't believed him, he had steadfastly set his course, and she had been forced to believe in him at last.

Because others had done so, she realized. She wasn't unlike Mark herself.

There was so much magic in her world. But Jake had shown her real magic. The beauty of lights at night. The love that came so freely to her that she had forgotten to appreciate it.

He set the sketch down and turned to her, taking her hands.

“Okay, well, we are alone here at last, and now time is the enemy. So. Tell me, what about your friend Mark? Is it…perhaps you've just had an argument. Perhaps you'll make up once he's back,” Jake said.

Melody shook her head. “I like Mark. I care about Mark. I'm not in love with Mark, and I never will be. But I would never hurt him, and I pray that I haven't done so.”

“We'll bring him home,” he assured her. “But…I do feel that we—you and I—have formed something. Something of a bond. And I believe you care for me, and if time and the world were not what they were, I would fall deeply in love with you, and you with me. And yet, I'm so much like Mark.”

Something of a bond. Obsession,
she thought.
I want to hear you speak forever. I want to see the way your mind works. I love the sound of your laughter, and even your forehead when you frown. I don't remember my life before I picked you up out on that snowy road.

Yes, he looked a lot like Mark.

But there was something different.

She often thought that she would die, or explode or
implode if she didn't touch him. And she knew that the world was going to be empty when he was gone.