Reaching Through Time (8 page)

Sarah was home again, still weak, but home with her family. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s all just a big blank spot in my head.”

She and Justin sat on her living room sofa together. Her books and computer and notepads were strewn over the top of the coffee table. Her mother had told her, “I left everything as you’d left it. I couldn’t bear to move anything. I’d look at it, think about you touching it, and I’d start to cry. I just walked away.”

Sarah picked up a book.
Wuthering Heights
, by Emily Brontë. She thumbed the pages. The name Heathcliff jumped out at her. Something familiar and yet not quite right. “I was working on an essay for English Lit,” Sarah said.

“I think it’s overdue,” Justin said. His brown eyes danced with mischief. “Although I think you can get an
extension. I mean, a coma … that’s a pretty good excuse.”

She swatted his arm. “Very funny.”

“Here,” Justin said, thrusting the milk shake that he’d brought at her. “Your doc doesn’t want you scrimping on calories.”

Sarah had lost weight during her ordeal. Her jeans and tees hung on her. She took the shake and sipped it. “Thanks for bringing this over.”

“Any excuse to see you.”

Her brow puckered. “Do you know the word
Charon
?”

“Nope. Why?”

“I’m not sure. It’s just stuck in my head.”

“I’ll do a Web search.” Justin picked up her laptop, turned it on and, once the machine had booted up, tapped the word into a search engine. “According to the online dictionary it comes from Greek mythology. Charon was the ferryman who took the souls of the dead into Hades.”

Sarah made a face. “Gross. How about
Lethe
? That word’s nagging me too.”

Justin tapped the keys. “It’s also Greek. Means ‘forgetfulness.’ A river in Hades. The souls who drank the water forgot everything.” He looked up. “Geez, creepy words.”

Sarah made a face. The definitions left her feeling creeped out, and she had no idea why the words had popped into her head. “Did Dad read any mythology to me?”

“Naw … just fairy tales. ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Sleeping
Beauty’—they’re all the same. The girl ends up with Prince Charming. Boring.”

“Girls love princess stories. We all want to meet our Prince Charming.”

“How about me? Do I make the cut?” He waggled his eyebrows.

He looked so adorable, she laughed. “You can’t be Prince Charming. You have no kingdom, no castle, no beautiful horse.”

He hung his head. “So I’m a loser.”

She kissed him. “Not totally.”

Justin closed the computer. “Walk me to your door.”

“Do you have to leave?”

“I promised your mom I wouldn’t stay long. You’re still recuperating, you know.”

They walked to the front door hand in hand. Justin opened it and she stepped outside with him. He held her, kissed her deeply. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

“Me too.” His arms felt cozy and his breath tasted like mint.

He headed to the driveway, opened his car door. “My faithful horse,” he said over his shoulder.

She laughed. “Good night, Prince Charming.” She stood and watched the taillights of his car disappear down the street.

Sarah took deep breaths, looked upward. The night sky was studded with stars. Thin wispy clouds skittered across the moon, which was huge, perfectly divided in
half, one side aglow with luminous white light, the other half pitch black. It was either coming or going toward fullness. She didn’t know which.

All at once an apparition appeared that stole her breath.

She saw the ghostly features of a male face, his skin icy pale and his deep-set eyes clear as glass, the color of rain.

Sarah jumped backward, her heart thudding uncontrollably. A chill sent shivers up her body and her blood turned cold. As quickly as the face had appeared, it dissolved. Only a trick of the night sky, she told herself. Wasn’t it? She turned, opened the door of her house and hurried into the warmth and light. I’ll see my Prince Charming tomorrow, she thought, and shut the door tight.

D
rake Iverson looked at the ad for the first job he’d been interested in pursuing in his two-week-long daily search. Not a lot out there for sixteen-year-olds, especially sixteen-year-olds like him.

He heard his mother clatter down the stairs of their townhome, and he glanced up at the clock on the kitchen wall.

She burst into the kitchen, throwing him a harried look. “I know I’m running late. The alarm didn’t go off—forgot to change the batteries, and I knew they were low.”
She ran to the pot of coffee that Drake had already brewed and filled her travel mug. “Got to go.”

“Whoa,” Drake said. He was sitting at the kitchen counter that jutted into the family room and served as their informal table. “There’s always time for breakfast.” That was what she always said to him when he was running late on school days.

“Ha-ha,” she said.

Drake shoved a protein bar toward her. “Eat this in the car, Mom. You’d never let me run off without breakfast.”

She juggled her coffee mug and briefcase, snatched up the food bar, got to the doorway and paused. “You going to be all right all day alone?”

“Haven’t I always been?”

“You should go out and explore.”

They’d been in Sanderson, North Carolina, for three weeks. His mother had taken a new and better job there in May and moved them to the town nestled in the Smokies as soon as Drake had finished his sophomore year. Drake knew she felt guilty about moving him away from Ohio and his school and his friends. It wasn’t a big deal to Drake. He’d only had a few friends anyway, and he could attend school anyplace. No love lost between him and Ohio. His consolation prize for the move had been his own car. It wasn’t hot or sporty, but it did give him mobility.

“I’m going to take a look at this job in today’s paper. You know where Sandstone Mountain is?”

“Not a clue.”

“I’ll Google it.”

“Be careful.”

He rolled his shoulders. “Aren’t I always?”

She came back to the table and kissed his cheek. “I love you.”

“I’ll start dinner,” he said, shrugging her off. “Spaghetti okay?”

“Hamburger’s already thawed. You call me anytime.”

She left and Drake slid off the stool and lurched awkwardly toward the desk and computer set up in the family room. He’d been born with cerebral palsy, a birth defect that marked him for life. His left leg was short, and underdeveloped muscles caused a permanent rocking limp. He was spastic, a crip, a gimp, a weirdo. He’d heard all of these terms for himself over the years from the perfectly formed, the physically elite. Many kids with CP were in worse shape; only one of Drake’s legs was affected. He had no learning problems, no uncontrollable tremors, no tendency to drool. Still he’d been branded a “retard” by those with fleshly symmetry.

Drake turned on the computer and waited for it to boot up. In elementary school his mother had protected him as if he were her wounded wolf cub, even going so far as instituting a schoolwide CP Day to “spread understanding” when he’d been in the second grade. He remembered the embarrassment of being singled out, of hearing kids whisper about him in the halls and cafeteria.
She’d meant well, but CP Day had been a nightmare for him. Once he’d hit middle and high school, the last thing he’d wanted was his mother hovering over him and running interference on his behalf. So he took the teasing and jabs from peers stoically.

The computer screen glowed and Drake called up the Internet, then a map search of Sandstone Mountain. The mountain was sparsely populated, a mecca for wealthy summer residents, and houses were far apart, surrounded by woods. He found homes numbered twelve and fourteen, a good ten miles apart from one another. There was no number thirteen. He grumbled, wondered if the newspaper had given the wrong address, and printed a map. He’d go to both addresses and ask for the professor who’d placed the ad. It was probably a sit-down job, one a cripple like him could handle. He didn’t want to spend the summer trapped at home, but he wasn’t ready to try for an out-in-the-public grunt job either. He wanted
this
job.

The road up Sandstone was paved—mostly. Drake drove carefully. He’d grown up in a flat part of Ohio, so he wasn’t used to the mountain curves. The higher he got, the rougher the road became. It went from paved to pea-rock to rutted dirt. He finally saw a sign that directed him to number thirteen and a hidden driveway. The Internet mapmakers had missed a house. At the foot of the hidden driveway, overgrown shrubs and vines halted his car.
A handwritten sign on a fence gate read:
NO AUTOS BEYOND THIS POINT. NO TRESPASSING
.

“Great. Just great,” Drake grumbled. He’d have to go the rest of the way on foot. Not easy, but he’d manage. He wedged his car into a weed-infested opening beside the dirt road and started up the path, hoping it wouldn’t be too difficult for him navigate. The air this high up was cooler than in the city, and felt good to him. He climbed, rounded a curve, edged a clump of trees and stopped short, breathing hard. His bad leg trembled with exertion. The view was amazing but had remained completely hidden until he’d come out of the bend in the path.

A house built of gray river stone, with a long porch and a turret that jutted into the blue sky, stood on a stretch of manicured lawn bordered by a white picket fence. Blooming hydrangeas, their flowery heads drooping in the sun, surrounded the porch. The house was impressive—Drake had studied architecture, hoping to become an architect one day.

He stood staring because the house and grounds looked picture-perfect, the colors so saturated and pure that the scene resembled a photograph. Thirteen Sandstone Mountain was a vision from another era.

He made his way to a gate beneath a trellis heavy with wisteria vines and limped up a flagstone walkway to the porch, where he grabbed the handrail, pulled himself up the steps and rang the front bell.

The door was opened by a portly man with a brown
beard and bushy eyebrows. He smelled of pipe tobacco. “Yes?”

“Um—I’m here about your ad,” Drake stammered. “The cataloging job.”

The man eyed him. “You had no trouble finding my house?”

“Drove right here,” Drake said. No need to mention that the Web maps had no record of the address. Plus, if anyone else applied, they might not be so lucky about finding the place.

The man studied Drake keenly, then held out his hand. “I’m Avery Dennison, professor of archaeology at Harvard.”

“Drake Iverson.”

“Come in.”

Drake stepped into the house. Its design and dark wood floor, doorframes and moldings were reminiscent of another century. “Wow,” he said, then caught himself and added, “Nice place. I—I like architecture.”

“Our summer place,” the professor said. “We like to get out of Cambridge and the heat. I like the mountains.”

Drake nodded. He hated adult small talk, but he wanted to make a good impression. “About the job,” he said.

“Yes, of course. How old are you, Mr. Iverson?”

“Almost seventeen. And I’m literate.”

The professor chuckled. “I only wanted serious applicants.” Behind the professor, in the hallway, stood an
ancient grandfather clock that chimed nine o’clock. Drake assumed it was wrong. He’d left his house at nine, and the drive had taken him forty minutes.

Just then, a door in the back of the house opened and Drake saw someone approaching down the long shotgun-style hallway. A girl with an armload of flowers came into the foyer. The professor turned and stepped aside. “My daughter, Regina,” Professor Dennison said.

All the air left Drake’s lungs. The girl was about his age, with white blond hair that fell past her shoulders, big blue eyes and the face of an angel.