Wakening the Past: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series Book 2)

Wakening the Past: A Time Travel Romance

Book Two in the Medicine Stick, Oklahoma Trilogy

Barbara Bartholomew

Wakening the Past

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Epilogue

Even after months back home in California, Bobbi tossed uneasily too many nights, caught in nightmares where a crazed-looking woman with a gun in her hand was threatening a familiar red-haired woman she knew by the name of Stacia.

Somehow she was nowhere, nothing, caught in between, and she heard a horrified male voice call, “
No!”

Time suspended as she saw
a finger begin to squeeze a trigger. This was her fault, not because she had encouraged Ray Forrester’s attentions in any way, but just by being in Medicine Stick, choosing to linger there where she, who had so little in the way of family, had come to love Helen, Mom and Dad, and the boys. For the first time, she’d belonged in a big family and been surrounded by friends and neighbors in a small close community, and had fallen in love.

She’d stolen Stacia’s life and not been anxious to return to her own. And now Stacia stood, about to be the innocent victim of her choices.

Deliberately Hart made her move. She shoved Stacia from her body and took her place.

And felt the bullet hit her
forehead.

Hart decided you had to be a resident of western Oklahoma
to have your spirits lifted by trudging through puddles of cold water in the third day of epic rainfall in gray February. She smiled to herself as she huddled under her coat to walk past the guards and enter the state prison where she worked as librarian, envisioning fields soaking up water and long-dry ponds filling to the brim.

Everybody she met
talked about the weather, bragging about the inches of water in their rain gauges. Wichita County was in a collective spirit of rejoicing after three years of soul-sucking drought that had reduced the normally arid region to near desert status.

Even the guards were joking and cheerful as they escorted her to her library where prisoners who saw little of the outside world
also seemed mildly elated by the change in the weather. All of them, it seemed, but Nolan Jeffers. The elderly man who was her favorite patron sagged in his chair, looking as dejected as though every bone in his body ached.

“Morning, Mrs. Redhawk,” he said. Unlike the other trustees who
frequented the library and attended her classes, he had refused to call her by her first name as invited. He was old-fashioned, he said, but a gentleman did not call a lady by her given name on early acquaintance.

Hart had a difficult time thinking of the gallant old man who had spent most of his life incarcerated as the murderer she’d been told he was.

“You okay, Mr. Jeffers?” she inquired. She couldn’t guess his age, but supposed he had to be somewhere in his late sixties. Perhaps the rainy weather was bringing on aches and pains.

“Fine.” He glanced with something like disinterest at the small row of new paperbacks she’d put on display before she left yesterday. This was unusual in a man who mostly devoted his days to the books he loved. It was a kinship he and Hart, who was an avid reader herself, shared. “I’m just missing the past today. You know how it is when you dream you
’re back there and then wake up to find you’re still here.”

That thought touched close to the bone. She didn’t tell others with the exception of her husband that she’d been born
in the 1920s and lived through the days of the great depression and the second world war, only coming to this modern age on a regular basis last year. She didn’t tell because she wasn’t eager to be locked up as a mad woman, but like Nolan Jeffers, she knew what it was to visit the past and even now lived somewhat uneasily on the edge of a world that often seemed strange to her.

She selected a book she thought he would like and handed it to him so he could retreat to his favorite comfortable chair in the far corner of the library to read. At his age
and with his health problems, he wasn’t expected to labor any more on the prison farm, but the other prisoners visiting her library only had an hour to select their books before they would be picked up for today’s work detail so she concentrated on them until the library was cleared and she and Mr. Jeffers were left alone with the guard who was always present when she worked with prisoners, even the old man.

She went over to take the chair next to him, prepared to devote a little time to cheering him up. “You don’t look well today, Mr. J
effers. This weather must be getting to you. Could I get you something hot to drink?”

He looked up as though not
noticing until this instant that she was there. “You are most kind, Mrs. Redhawk, but I’m just feeling a little thoughtful. I’m coming up for my annual review, you know.”

She shook her head.

“Every year now they take another look at my case and decide to renew my lease,” he said with a wry grin. “Its pure formality, but I used to get rather excited about the idea that I might be let go. Now, well I’m not certain I’d know how to manage out in the real world. Anyway, as long as one of the Maxwell brothers is alive, it’s not going to happen. Stirs up a lot of resentment in folks just to see those two walking around.”

She hardly knew what to say. He’d been sentenced to life in prison at an early age, she knew that much, but had no other details.

“The Maxwells are the sons of the man I’m supposed to have murdered,” he explained in a bitter tone. “Bill and Terry Maxwell show up each year to protest any idea of my release.”

He was so matter-of-fact about it that she found herself responding, “Wouldn’t you like to be free
?”

He sighed, his gentle face taking on a wistful look. “I used to pray that I would
get out. I even imagined the warden coming to me and saying, ‘We discovered the real murderer, Nolan, and we know you’re innocent. You can walk out the front gates anytime you want.’” He smiled as though amused at himself. “The trouble was that after a while I couldn’t imagine what was out there. From what I’ve seen on television things have changed so much since I was sixteen that I wouldn’t even know how to live.”

“Sixteen? You were just sixteen when you were sent to prison?”

He nodded. “It was 1957 and I had just finished my sophomore year at Mountainside High. I was a good student, a very good student, and there was talk that I might even get a scholarship to go to college. Can you imagine me going to college?” He chuckled as though he’d said something funny.

“Yes, Mr. J
effers, I can imagine that well enough,” she said softly, “considering the way you love reading.”

When she’d first starting working here she’d been careful to select books for him by popular authors who appealed to male readers, but since then she’d learned nothing was beyond his interest. He was as likely to read Homer
as Stephen King; his tastes were eclectic.

“Well, life doesn’t always work out the way we hope.” His smile was reminiscent. “There was a girl. Her name was Bonnie Jo Bretton and she was in my class. Smart as a whip and prettiest thing you ever saw with brown hair and green eyes.”

He went into a reverie, his eyes dreamy and lost in the faraway past. She could almost see the sixteen-year-old he must have been. He was probably handsome back then because in spite of his age, he was still good looking.

Finally Hart said softly, “Was she your girlfriend?”

“Oh no,” he disclaimed that honor. “I barely dared speak to Bonnie Jo, but in my dreams I’d always say something so brilliant she’d be impressed and then I’d ask her to the picture show and from then on we would have been a couple.” He sighed. “It might’ve even have worked out like that, if I’d ever had a chance.”

She knew what happened after that. He’d been arrested for murder, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

Though ‘life’ didn’t always mean forever. She was surprised, considering his age when convicted, that he hadn’t been released years ago. Especially since he had to be an exemplary prisoner to be allowed in-person access to her library and classes.

He looked up at her to say with sudden earnestness, “I didn’t do it, you know. I didn’t kill Stout Maxwell.”

Uneasily she reminded herself that it was what they usually said, these men, and all of them couldn’t be innocent. Still she wanted to believe this gentle old man.

Even though he was county sheriff, Alistair Redhawk didn’t like interfering in people’s business. An intensely private man himself, he preferred to give other people their due regard, but he told himself now that where his wife was concerned, this was his business.

So when he found his brother-in-law out in the front yard of the house shaded by the mountain in Mountainside, he showed no sign of hesitation in walking up and peering under the hood where Tommy Benson was working
in such concentration.

“Tommy,” he said.

Tommy straightened so abruptly he bonged his head against the hood and pulled out, rubbing the sore spot. “Dammit, sheriff, you startled me.”

“Sorry,” the apology was perfunctory. Alistair and Tommy might be related by marriage but that didn’t mean they were friendly. Tommy had once, in fact, publicly accused him of killing Hart. Fortunately his wife had disproved that charge by showing up very much alive.

“Need to talk to you about something, Tommy,” he said.

The round-faced man who carried a few extra pounds on a
blocky frame led the way to the shade on the front porch, flopping so hard into a fold-out chair that Alistair thought for a minute it would collapse. He seated himself gingerly in a similar chair, not too sure it would hold his own weight. He was lean, but muscled, with the distinctive look of his Kiowa heritage.

“Talk away,” Tommy Benson challenged, then frowned to ask, “Nothing wrong with my sister?”

“Hart’s fine,” Alistair lied. It was none of Tommy’s business what was going on in his marriage and anyway he and Hart would work things out. “It’s your wife I’m here to talk about. She’s giving Hart a bad time and it’s got to stop.”

Tommy frowned. “Nikki’s the sweetest woman in the world. She doesn’t give anybody a bad time.”

“Nothing against Nikki, but she might be a little over-protective where you’re concerned and she’s always going after Hart about money.”

“I
haven’t been gambling,” Tommy avoided looking at Alistair.

“That’s your business. None of my affair, but when Nikki keeps harassing Hart, especially in front of other people, it bothers me.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Tommy muttered, getting up to go back to his work and ignoring his brother-in-law.

That hadn’t gone well, but then he hadn’t expected it would. It was necessary, though, to remove Nikki from the
equation if he and Hart were to get their lives in balance. They had enough to deal with without having Nikki showing up to alternately badmouth and plead with Hart for money.

Not that he cared about the money. Hart could give it all to her brother for all he cared, but he wouldn’t stand for her being continually upset this way.

He went back to his car and was instantly absorbed in other matters. His concerns for Hart were put on the shelf for the rest of the day.

Hart was getting ready to end her day in the library when the call came through. “You know anything about Nolan Jeffers?”

She recognized her husband’s voice and laughed. “No greeting. No
‘how was your day, Hart?’”

“Honey, he’s gone missing.”

Her heart jolted. “Gone missing? He’s in lock-up, how could he be missing? What are you talking about, Alistair?”

“His parole review was this afternoon.”

“He mentioned that it was coming up. Didn’t think he stood a chance.”

“Well, apparently he arranged an outing for himself.
The deputy was taking him back to jail afterwards and somehow he got away. We’re trying to find him now.”

She felt sure he was teasing, knowing her affection for the old man. “What’d he do, punch your deputy in the jaw and take off?” she returned the joke.

“He went around a corner ahead of Deputy Long and disappeared. When Long followed him, he couldn’t see him anywhere. He’d taken off.”

The idea was appalling. Poor Mr. Jeffers wouldn’t do such a thing. At least she didn’t think he would. She couldn’t help thinking how he’d spoken of the girl he’d admired in high school. “Maybe he’s gone looking for his Bonnie Jo,” she murmured more to herself than for her husband’s benefit.

“What? Bonnie who?”

“You’re not kidding, are you, Alistair? You really think he took off?” She was still in disbelief.

“Damn serious. Anything could happen to him out there, he’s been locked up his whole life. Hey, Eisenhower was president when he went to prison.”

She let her gaze roam the little library, abandoned at this time of
day, thinking of the man who had told her his story so somberly only this morning. Then she remembered something vital.

“Alistair, he would never have even tried to escape. He didn’t want to be free. He’s agoraphobic.
He has a fear of open spaces.”