Time of Departure (27 page)

I watched my mother. I expected her to return to the house, but as soon as my father's car disappeared from view, she lowered herself to the top step and sat there, watching the street. For a few seconds, the surrealism of where I was—of
when
I was—vanished from my conscious thoughts. My hand inched toward the door handle.

Abruptly, she rose to her feet and went back in the house.

Marc's voice brought me back. “Attractive girl. Sister?”

“Mother,” I replied dully.

He was silent. His cheek twitched. “She looks younger than you.”

I didn't answer.

“Are you planning to get out here?” he asked.

“I can't.”

“You said—”

“I know what I said! But I—I…” I let out a rattling breath and slumped against the door. “I don't know how to deal with this! It's so fucking crazy!”

“Nice language.”

“Drop me on the highway! I'll figure something out.”

“On the highway … with no money?”

No money.

Of course!

“That's right! I have no money … and no place to go!” I favored him with what must have seemed a spooky look. “But you must have done something about that.”

“I must have done something? What does that mean?”

“Never mind. To quote you: ‘One day you'll understand.' But just for right now, answer this: What do you do with lost girls after you take them into custody?”

“You're not in custody.”

“Maybe I'm not in police custody, but I'm in your custody.”

He couldn't help himself. His eyes flicked over my body. “Guess we could find you a meal and a bed.”

I locked him with a cool gaze.

He stammered. “I—I mean … I didn't mean…”

“Of course you didn't.”

“It's just that…”

“What?”

“You're right. You intrigue me.” He gave a nervous laugh. “There. I said it!”

I laughed.

It was unbelievable. I had just fallen down a rabbit hole into 1978, and this man had made me laugh.

He flushed. He started the engine. As the police car reversed through a one-point turn, I had one last, lingering view of my childhood home. Then we drove away.

As we rolled back through Archer, I recalled my conversation with Old Marc, when he'd promised to find the missing pages from that Ostergaard binder—the pages that should have explained the subheading:
PUTNAM COUNTY REPORT—WOMAN IN RIVER
.

Pages he must have deliberately removed.

Pages about me.

“What will you tell him?” I asked as we pulled back onto the highway and headed east.

“Tell who?”

“Your boss. About me.”

He kept his eyes on the road. “False lead. County cop got his facts wrong. I drove the lady home.”

“And my hospital bill?”

“We'll work something out.”

Yes, Claire, today is definitely when it all began. At least … for him.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I have a fishing camp on Lake Lochloosa.”

I nodded to myself, remembering the night I'd followed Marc's taxi to Cross Creek. “I should have guessed.”

“It's not a shack,” he said quickly, and a bit defensively. “It's got power, running water … It's a nice little place.”

“Is that where you live?”

“When I'm off shift. I have an apartment in town.”

It was all coming together, whether I wanted it or not.

Let it happen. It's not like you have any choice.

I settled back in my seat.

 

38

“Letting it happen” was a more dramatic transition than my reeling imagination could have conceived. On the long return journey east through Gainesville, and then south to Cross Creek, I said as little as possible. I resolved to watch, listen, and stay alert for clues remembered from the future that might serve as cues I would need here in the past.

Here in the past?

It was unnerving to realize how little time it had taken for me to adapt to the insane concept that I was living in 1978.

Maybe I really was a mental case, locked away in a psychiatric ward somewhere.

I shoved the thought aside, which only made room for another—one that had been lurking in the wings for hours: the mounting sense of inevitability with Marc. In many ways, this was hardly a surprise. I hadn't missed his younger version's perplexed but clearly intrigued smile; I knew already that I was destined to end up in his bed three decades from now; and I remembered how his older version had made love to me with such uncanny familiarity. I realized—with an acute spasm of remorse over my conduct when we parted—that when Marc Hastings stepped into my courtroom on that first day, he was already in love with me. He had waited for that moment for over thirty years.

He had waited for me to grow up.

Watched over me … and waited.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach.

I had actually allowed myself to suspect that Marc was the killer.

I swallowed, barely controlling the wave of nausea that almost overcame me. I released my seat belt and moved close to him.

“What's wrong?”

“Just hold me. Please.”

Without a word, he slid his arm around me. The bond between us was already there, even though he didn't understand it.

I laid my head against his shoulder and tried to empty my mind.

*   *   *

“Fishing camp” was not just a misnomer—it was completely misleading. A half mile south of Cross Creek, Marc turned into a narrow unmarked driveway. After a few hundred yards, the graveled surface decayed into a rutted track lined by ancient live oaks thick with Spanish moss, interspersed with sweet gum and hickory. Twisting limbs met overhead, creating a tunnel of foliage. Marc slowed the car to a crawl. A few minutes later, we debouched into a small clearing occupied by a rustic shake-roofed cottage nestled on the shore of a verdant cove.

Marc parked next to the front steps. He led me across the veranda and unlocked the door. A tour of the interior revealed a two-bedroom, one-bathroom affair, with beamed ceilings and tongue-and-groove pinewood floors. It had a galley kitchen with a banquette, a cozy lounge area complete with a native stone fireplace, and—as Marc proudly highlighted, swinging the bathroom door wide to prove this important point—full indoor plumbing.

When I admitted to being impressed, he reacted with almost boyish pleasure.

Eventually, I settled into the cushions of an old rocker on the veranda while Marc drove off to grab us a takeout supper from The Yearling. It was one of the few structures I'd noticed as we passed through Cross Creek that looked pretty much the same—at least on the outside—as it would thirty years from now.

Sitting in the rocker, gazing out over the cove and the lake beyond, I felt like I'd been catapulted back an extra forty years into a Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings novel.

The sun was sinking when Marc reappeared with containers of pub food and a six-pack of beer. The label on the cans read
BILLY
.

“‘Billy'?”

“President Carter's brother.” Marc paused, and then added, “He's a bit of an embarrassment.”

“You mean, to the president?”

“Yeah.”

I had a vague memory of reading somewhere that Jimmy Carter's brother had been a problem for him, but I'd never heard of “Billy” beer. In an odd way, that was at once comforting and disturbing. If I was crazy, how could my febrile brain dream up a brand of beer that I had never known existed?

It was evidence that I wasn't hallucinating.

But it was also evidence that I had, in fact, been catapulted into the past.

My lawyer's brain, always the heckler, butted in:
How is that evidence of anything? You dreamed up this cottage, didn't you?

Ignoring the contentious voices in my head, I surrendered to the impossible proposition that I was breathing the air of 1978 and gratefully accepted a cold beer. There was nothing imaginary about its taste in my mouth.

We ate at a small table on the veranda. Marc deliberately steered away from asking the many disturbing questions that must have been tumbling through his mind. No doubt he sensed my emotional fragility. How could he not, after the bizarre day he had just spent with me? Somehow he managed to confine the conversation to birds, fish, and stories about some of the unique local characters he had come across since buying the property five years earlier.

In our quieter moments, he sat looking at me with an expression of bewitched wonder, as if I were some marvelous, unexpected present that had dropped into his life from the sky.

In a very real sense, I was.

After we finished eating, he told me he had to drive back to Gainesville to return the police car. “I've got three more shifts in this rotation, but I'll come back every night.” He hesitated, then added, “That is, if you're planning to stay.”

“I'll be waiting.”

“Just like that? You'll stay?”

“Yes. You once told me I would understand. Now I do.”

His brow knitted. From his point of view, I was talking in riddles. But it was obvious that he was afraid to delve too deeply, in case I changed my mind. So he let it go with a doubting nod. “Okay. I'll bring some fresh groceries. Meanwhile, you won't starve. You'll find sandwich fixings in the fridge, and there's lots of canned stuff in the cupboard.”

He led me to the bathroom and found a new toothbrush that was still in its package.

“The guest room is yours. There's a bathrobe in the closet. What about a change of clothes?”

“Would be nice.”

He rooted through the drawers in his bedroom and found me a couple of shirts and some sweatpants. “Best I can do right now, sorry.”

“No apology needed. Thank you.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow night.” He gave me an awkward hug, and left.

I spent a dreamless night in a deliciously comfortable bed.

Three days later, my love affair with Marc Hastings began.

Again.

 

39

I heard Marc coming before I saw him. I was sitting on the veranda rocker, idly twirling a strand of my hair and watching a great blue heron stalking minnows in the shallows of the cove. I had showered late and slipped into one of the summer dresses Marc had bought for me. After seeing my hand-washed bra and panties dripping in the bathroom, he'd shown up the following evening with three shopping bags filled with new clothes.

I was frankly astonished. I started checking labels. “How did you get my size?”

“Looked for a salesgirl with your figure.” He smiled and added, “Took a while.”

I wasn't thrilled with some of the color choices, but everything fit perfectly.

Even the underwear.

Marc's Dodge pickup rumbled into view and parked in the usual spot. The first time I saw the truck, I'd been ready to laugh. I didn't have to. True to the understated personality I would come to know thirty years hence, Young Marc had spurned the usual Southern cracker yee-haw kit—oversized winch, vinyl seats, and obligatory gun rack. His canyon red pickup was factory standard, and surprisingly comfortable.

He stepped out of the truck and saw me. His eyes lit up.

He bounded up the steps and then stopped in his tracks when he noticed that I was staring at him, aghast.

“What's wrong?”

“What is that?” I demanded.

“What?

“That … thing you're wearing!”

He looked down at himself, puzzled. He plucked at the cloth of the dreadful shirt-jacket. “You mean this? It's a leisure suit! I thought I'd take you out for—”

“Wearing that?” I laughed. “Anyway, supper's made.”

“No kidding?”

“I can cook! It's not
all
fast food where I come from. And I mixed a couple of martinis. If you value my company,” I added with a sternness that was only partly simulated, “you'll get out of that getup! I mean … bell-bottoms? Are you kidding me?”

By now he was smiling. Apparently, my nagging-vixen routine amused him. “Okaaay! I'll change!” He ducked into the cabin.

The entire act was just a way of trying to bury my inner torment. I knew it wouldn't work for long. Over the past three days, I'd had plenty of time alone and plenty of time to think. It hadn't required much close analysis to calculate my extreme peril. I'd spent most of those days trying to work out an escape.

There wasn't one.

I was doomed, and I knew it.

Ten minutes later, Marc and I were sitting side by side on the veranda. He was infinitely more acceptable to my twenty-first-century eyes wearing jeans and polo shirt. We were sipping martinis from smoked-glass tumblers because, not surprisingly, it had never occurred to Marc to stock his “fishing camp” with stemware. Behind us, through the screen door, the kitchen radio was playing Gerry Rafferty's “Baker Street.” I'd always liked that song, although where I came from, it was played on the oldies stations.

Marc swirled his martini, watching the olives bounce around the bottom of the glass. I hadn't been able to find any toothpicks.

“Gin,” he commented.

“Yeah. Sorry. I'm not big on vodka martinis.”

“I don't keep gin out here. Don't remember buying olives, either.”

“The olives were jammed in the back of your fridge. The sell-by date is two years old, but they're fine.”

“And the gin?”

“The Yearling.”

“You walked all that way to buy gin?”

“I had that twenty you left me. I had a nice talk with the lady there … the bar manager.”

“Nonie.”

“Yeah. I like her.”

“What did you tell her?” He sounded alarmed.

“I didn't mention your name. I just said I was staying at a friend's cabin on Lochloosa.” I paused. “She offered me a job.”