Shaker Town (Taryn's Camera Book 4) (19 page)

T
o Taryn's disappointment, Matt didn't seem to appreciate Shaker Town nearly as much as she'd expected him to. She didn't count on him having her exact same interests, but sometimes they felt so far apart on the spectrum that she worried they wouldn't have enough to sustain them in old age, if it got that far. At the moment, their bond seemed to be rooted in a shared childhood and the ability to read one another's minds. She supposed other relationships had been built on less, but it felt like a slippery slope.

He ignored most of the quick tour she gave him on the way to her room, although he did express interest in her work and complimented her on that, and the only thing he cared about in her room was throwing her on the mattress, being careful of her hip, to “test it.” But she supposed that was probably a guy thing.

“How was the flight up?” she asked. He'd already started unpacking his clothing, hanging his bathrobe on the hook behind the door, lining his toiletries out on the sink. In comparison to her things, his things were military-neat.

“It was okay. I had that layover in Charlotte and it lasted nearly three hours. I could've driven here in that time,” he grumbled. “But I met a man who was reading Terry Pratchett in the rocking chair next to me and we talked about that for over an hour. It passed the time.”

“Restaurant is busy today so I made us dinner reservations at 8:00 pm. They're doing barbecue tonight and it's very good. They've lit up the big grill thingie outside. It's why that side of the park smells like meat.”

Matt's eyes lit up at this. There were few things he enjoyed talking about more than food. “That sounds very good. The last barbecue I had was at one of those chain places and it might as well have been shredded hot-dogs with ketchup.”

“Well, you'll like this.”

“By the way, I checked out that store you were talking about. That salvage place? On my GPS it looks like a fairly straight shot from here to there. If you want to go to Lexington tomorrow or something we could check it out.”

She wanted to tell him that Lexington might have been a “straight shot” as far as the crow flew but navigating the roads, and then the traffic in some of the heavy areas of town, was anything
but
convenient. Still, it was sweet he was trying to think of her.

“I think that sounds good,” she declared.

T
aryn took him to some of her favorite places in the park and as the day wore on her mood elevated.

The whole time she'd been waiting for Matt to drive up in his rental car she'd been giddy, restless. She missed him tremendously and had visions of throwing herself at him, wrapping her legs around his waist, planting a long and passionate kiss on him. Sitting under the maple tree at the pond she'd daydreamed about the two of them barely able to make it back to her room, pawing one another shamelessly until they'd fallen through her door in a passionate heap.

Reality was a bit of a disappointment.

Rather than attacking each other in a fever the distance and time seem to have made them timid and shy with each other. The man she'd had a quickie with on the front seat of his car because they couldn't wait to get inside his house after a movie one night now stood and looked at her with nervousness, not knowing whether to kiss her or shake her hand. The dirty emails they'd shared over the past month or so seemed to have been written by other people.

It got better, however, the longer he was there. They'd worked up to holding hands as they walked, and after not touching for a long time even that felt erotic.

Although she'd become friendly with some of the employees, and even formed friendships with a few, having someone with her who was expressly interested in her was different. It gave her added confidence and made her feel more daring. Alone, she often walked quietly, not making eye contact, lost in her own head. With Matt, she chattered incessantly, stopping to point things out, and waved at people she'd come to know. They all looked at Matt expectantly, curiosity burning their faces. She'd only mentioned him to a few people, although a simple Google search would have connected him with her through some of the paranormal blogs, and they were probably wondering where he'd come from.

“I think I'm going to start telling people you were a tourist I picked up on the side of the road and had my way with,” she teased him after a brief conversation with Eddie Jay.

“I'll go along with it,” he shrugged, slipping his arm around her shoulder. “You want me to pretend to be a biker?”

Taryn pulled back and studied his pressed khaki slacks, golf T-shirt, and loafers. “Dear, I think they'd buy me as a biker before you. Unless you mean mountain biker.”

When they got to the school Matt stopped and studied it. “Doesn't look like much from the outside, does it?”

Taryn shook her head. “No, not yet. But it will. They're very good at fixing these things up.”

“What do you think caused the doorway opening?” Matt asked her as he walked up to the old window and ran his finger along the cracked wooden frame.

Taryn looked down at her feet. Her bright blue toenail polish was chipped. She'd forgotten that. She should've made more of an effort for Matt since she hadn't seen him in weeks. Her hair was still damp from the shower, too, not styled at all. In her mind she looked beautiful and becoming and in her “natural” state. In reality, without makeup, her hair styled, and her fingernails groomed she looked like she'd just walked out of a women's prison.

“I've been thinking about it,” she admitted, “and now I can't help but wonder if I might have just been dreaming.”

“Why would you say that?” Matt asked with interest. “You said you felt the floor under you, heard the noises, could see detail in their faces.”

“I was also on some heavy drugs,” she pointed out. “I had morphine in my system. I've looked at a ton of pictures, studied this building for weeks, and learned a lot about the Shaker schools. And, as you know, I have a very vivid imagination and create story lines in my head when I paint. This could've been the result of all those things mixing together in my head.”

Matt didn't answer as they left the site and strolled to the pond. Taryn led him to the bench under the Maple tree and they sat together, hands touching, while they watched the water. There were children down there, throwing scraps of bread to the ducks. The ducks were skittish, wading off from the kids as quickly as they could, and a toddler charged after them, shrieking in a high-pitched babble that wasn't composed of real words.

Taryn thought Matt had forgotten about her comment back at the schoolhouse but, in typical Matt-style, he had just been thinking about it and trying to choose his words wisely. It often took Matt a while to process things. It's what made him a good scientist.

“Why would you talk yourself out of what happened?” he asked quietly. One of his fingers ran gently over her grandmother's ring, turning it around and around on her small finger. The blisters on her hand were gone; there was no sign she'd been in a struggle.

“I don't know,” she shrugged petulantly, like a child. “Because it sounds too fantastical maybe?”

The truth was, she couldn't believe it had really happened, not in the clear light of day. It made her sound crazy, like maybe she needed mental help, and it scared her. What if she was going crazy, that it had all just been part of her medical condition? And, worse, what if it never happened again?

“You're afraid of believing it because you want it to happen again, aren't you?” Matt pressed. Still reading her mind.

Taryn nodded miserably.

“You were afraid of that with Miss Dixie, too,” he pointed out. “And it continues to happen.”

“This is different. This is like time travel. That's just weird. I mean, if you think about it, have you ever noticed that nobody ever talks about time travel? I mean, you see articles in the National Enquirer all the time about people who have seen ghosts, met aliens, and visited Satan. But where are the time travelers?”

“You mean the ones calling the paper and going, 'I just went back in time and you won't believe who killed Kennedy'–those people?” Matt smiled.

“Yes! It can't be real.”

“As opposed to the people who were abducted by aliens and experimented on?”

“Hey, aliens could be real. It's an awfully big space out there.”

“Taryn, did you ever think that maybe the lack of stories is the very thing that gives it some credibility? Maybe people don't remember when they travel back. Kind of the time paradox? And, did you ever stop to think that you weren't exactly traveling back in time but went inside Miss Dixie and was seeing her world?”

Taryn's eyes grew big and her mouth dropped open a little. No, she had not considered either one of those. “OH my God, that's why it was so hazy,” she blurted out. “I went inside my own damn camera.”

“I think so.”

She aimlessly kicked at a small twig under her feet and sighed. “Yeah, like that's not any less weird.”

“Miss Dixie has shown you things that need to make sense. You're not putting this together like you want to. This time she tried something else. Think about the things she must see and doesn't show you,” he added.

The possibilities were endless and as Taryn gazed down at her camera she felt overwhelmed. The two of them worked together, her and her camera, and she didn't believe one really had much power without the other. But Miss Dixie seemed to have an unreasonable amount of supernatural ability for an electronic made in Southeast Asia. 

“
S
o Andy's a little bit of a weenie, huh?” Taryn laughed as they walked back to her room in the darkness. The moon hung low in the sky, partially shielded by the clouds, and the lanterns glowed warmly around them. They were the only people out and if Taryn closed her eyes just for a moment she could pretend they'd stepped back in time again, two Shakers sneaking around in the night.

Then a park vehicle drove towards them, headlights bright and radio blaring Eminem, and that fantasy flew out the window.

“He's okay,” Matt replied, always the diplomat. He didn't like to talk about people unless it was for a very good reason.

“I think he liked you, though,” Taryn conceded. “He's been very rude to me.”

They'd been seated with Andy at dinner, since they had reservations and he did not. Julie had caught her eye and sent her a sympathetic smile when she saw Andy pulling up a chair. The hostess, who didn't know Taryn well, clearly didn't realize the evening was the first she'd spent with Matt in a long time. Andy, in his booming “look-at-me” way, had chattered on and on, poking and prodding at Matt until he knew what his job title was, his annual income, and how much he'd paid for his house. Taryn was mortified but Matt took it in stride. By the end of the night, after Julie had sent several glasses of wine her way, Taryn had mellowed out a bit.

“The scientists I work with aren't always the most social creatures,” he smiled, linking his arm through hers. “Myself excluded, of course. I'm a veritable extrovert compared to some of them. I'm used to putting up with some odd behavior.”

It was a joke, of course. Matt was even more private than she was. His idea of a big night was making homemade ice cream and zoning out to a marathon of Star Trek episodes.

“Do you think you might be a little jealous of Andy?”

Taryn stopped in her tracks and looked at him in surprise. “What do you mean? I think he's jealous of me!”