The Night Mark(34)

He gave her one last look, almost longing, and left her alone in the room. She listened in the dark, heard his footsteps travel down the hall, the house creaking with his every step. She heard his sure feet on a staircase, heard a door open and close, making a grunt as it rubbed against the frame. Faye closed her eyes and whispered words to herself in the dark.

“My name is Victoria Faye Barlow. I’ve always gone by Faye because Vicky is my mom. I was born June 5, 1985 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I went to Columbia and graduated with a bachelor’s in American studies because I couldn’t figure out what else to major in. I was twenty-five when I met William Jacob Fielding who was twenty-three and played shortstop in Rhode Island for the PawSox. We were married on a pier in Newport, Rhode Island. We were happy together, happier than anyone has a right to be. He died the next year during a carjacking. I would have died of the grief, but I was pregnant and had Will’s baby to take care of. I am not crazy. I did not make any of that up. And when I open my eyes it’ll be June of 2015, and I’ll be at the Church Street house and I’ll go to Ty’s room and tell him about the crazy dream I just had, and he will laugh at me and I will feel better. Just as soon as I open my eyes...”

Gradually...slowly...millimeter by millimeter, Faye opened her eyes.

She saw a white light flash outside the window, saw a crazy quilt lying over her body, heard the ocean rushing and retreating on the shore.

“Shit,” she said.

She tried it again, her incantation. But no matter how many times she told herself who she was, when she opened her eyes she was in a cottage by a lighthouse manned by a keeper named Carrick Morgan.

A keeper named Carrick Morgan who looked just like her dead husband.

It wasn’t a dream and it wasn’t a hallucination.

It was real.

Faye rolled onto her side and pulled her knees in tight. She had to plan. She had to think. She had to...she had to leave. She definitely had to leave. There was no way she could stay here. But where could she go? It was 1921, and her grandparents weren’t even alive yet. Her mother’s father wouldn’t be born for three more years. Her mother wouldn’t be born for thirty more years. Could she go to her great-grandparents? Could she even find them? Her maternal great-grandparents had lived somewhere in Massachusetts and would be newlyweds. What would they do if she showed up at their door and told them she was their great-granddaughter from the future and that they would both be dead before she was born? Maybe she could go to New York or Washington, DC, and start a new life. She could be a working girl. She knew how to type, although she’d never used a manual typewriter in her life. She didn’t know shorthand or how to take dictation. And she’d need money to get there. Was there any money stashed in this house? Did anyone in South Carolina have money in 1921? Maybe she could be a fortune-teller. She’d warn everyone of the stock-market crash looming and the threat of Nazi Germany on the horizon. Could she change the outcome of world events? Or would she simply get tossed into an asylum?

Faye heard the door rattle, followed by a soft knock.

“I’m fine,” she called out.

“I’m coming in,” Carrick said. Faye sat up straight and pulled the covers up to her neck.

Carrick cracked the door open and looked inside at her with Will’s eyes in Will’s face. She thought she even saw a little of Will’s old love in his expression, but she pretended not to see it.

“I brought you some milk.”

He handed her a blue-and-white tin cup, warm to the touch.

“Thank you.”

“Do you need anything before I go back up?”

“Up?”

“Up.” He pointed up.

“Right. Up.” Up the lighthouse steps to do whatever it was lighthouse keepers did.

“How’s your head?” He gently caressed the side of her face.

It took everything Faye had in her to not recoil violently from the touch of his hand. Why was he so gentle? Why was he so like Will? She enjoyed his touch despite a voice inside her screaming in protest.

“It doesn’t really hurt,” she said.

“Good.” He nodded. “You can’t sleep?”

“Rough night.”

“That it is,” he said.

“You saved me, didn’t you?”

“Saved you? Nah. I saw you fall off the dock and pulled you out of the water. That’s all.”

“That’s kind of the definition of saving someone.”

“What was I going to do? Let you drown?”

“I guess you could have?”

“I’d be the world’s worst wickie if I let someone drown out of my own damned house. Sorry.”

“Sorry? For what?”

“I’m not used to a lady in the house. Well, a lady who can hear my foul mouth.”

“I don’t mind your foul mouth,” Faye said.

“That’s good. I’m out of practice. Give me another week and I might remember how to talk to a girl again.”

“Another week,” she said. “I haven’t been here long.” She could tell that from his tone and his words.

“No, but you’ll settle in if you give it a chance. I know it’s been hard for you these past few days. I know this isn’t what you hoped.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. It seemed to be what he wanted to hear.