Mystic Memories (34 page)

Been there, done that
, she mused with a tired smile of irony.

After calling her sister, Cara turned down the volume on her answering machine and went to bed. By noon she gave up trying to sleep and took a shower. Dressed in a blue chambray shirt and jeans, she paced her living room floor in spite of her exhaustion, ignoring the ringing telephone, unwilling to deal with solicitors or anyone else at the moment. Her mind went over and over the speculation that had been gnawing at her all morning. Blake must have gone back to 1979, and yet she sensed a strong, tangible connection to him, as if he were somewhere near.

Somewhere . . . but where?

She sank down onto her rattan rocker and went through the steps to quiet her thoughts so she could pick up any information about him. Instead, she saw a vision of Andrew talking to his father. Cara knew in her heart that Andrew would be okay.

But what about Blake?

Nothing came to her.

She tried to block any outside thoughts, but her mind kept going back to the memories of Blake holding her and loving her. When the pain became too great for her to bear, she shot to her feet. “Why?” she cried out in anguish, shaking her fists at the ceiling.

She demanded an answer. She
deserved
an answer.

A sudden impulse drove her to grab her keys and run out the door.

Chapter 2
1

W
ithin twenty minutes, Cara arrived at her aunt’s doorstep.

“I knew you would come,” said Gabriella, holding out her arms for a hug. Cara went to her and felt the comfort and love she so desperately needed right now.

“Please help me, Aunt Gaby. I’ve got to try and make some sense of all this or I’ll go mad.”

Gabriella took her hand and led her into the living room, where both of them sat down together on the sofa.

Cara looked at her aunt. “I don’t know what reality is anymore,” she said, chilled by the idea that she might very well be losing her mind. “I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams.”

“You have been through so much, I know. But there are reasons for everything. You have to believe.”

“Believe in what?” Her despair turned to anger. “I’m supposed to believe in some god, some universal force that goes around messing with people’s lives, then leaves them in a state of shock, wondering if they are insane? Why! Tell me why this had to happen, especially to Andrew and Blake. They were just kids!”

“Children disappear all the time throughout the world. Hundreds. Thousands,” explained Gabriella with the gentleness of an old soul passing along her wisdom of the ages. “They slip through to another time more easily than adults because they have not yet built a wall in their minds of superstitions and beliefs about what is really real and what is not. Their minds are fertile, craving to learn more, willing to accept the impossible. They go and never come back. Or rarely ever come back.”

“Then why did I interfere? Why did you talk me into searching for Andrew?”

“It was as much your own destiny as Andrew’s and Blake’s. You have the gift of believing in the things that most people refuse to admit are possible—seeing and hearing and knowing beyond the scope of defined reality in this present-day culture.”

“But why the children? And why the abuse?”

“Not every child who goes to another time is hurt and abused. Most of them find loving homes. Think of it, Cara. A child travels on a train, then goes back in time and grows up to become an inventor who knows that trains are possible because he has already experienced it. Such knowledge for a child can move technology forward unlike anything an adult time-traveler could ever do. The adults are often crippled by their fears and their determination to make sense of their supernatural journey through time. They put all their energy into trying to get back. A child adapts sooner. A child can arrive less conspicuously and be taken in by a loving family who cares for him until he is of age. A child who has lived in another time never questions the advances in technology but is at the forefront of advances, leading the way. Think about the leaders in science, in religion, in social reform. They are often called freethinkers, and ‘ahead of their time.’ How many of them might have been children who had come through from another time?”

Cara asked, “But what about Andrew and the other children who return from their travels?”

“Usually they convince themselves their time-traveling was all a fantastic dream.”

“Or a nightmare,” muttered Cara. A shudder went through her as she recalled the horrible visions she’d seen of both Andrew and Blake. “But they can’t even talk about their traumatic experience because it would sound crazy to people of today. A kid could be convinced that it was all a bad dream. But an adult? What about Blake?”

Gabriella patted Cara’s hand reassuringly. “When you live in a society of limited beliefs, you tend to unconsciously mold yourself to the accepted reality. And so, as an adult with certain fears and a certain shutting down of reality, Blake might very well have also relegated his previous experience in another time to merely a dream.”

A finality in her aunt’s tone of voice prompted Cara to persist in seeking her answers. “But where does all of  this leave me? Where is Blake? How do I find him?”

“What does your heart tell you?”

“I don’t need riddles, Aunt Gaby. Please tell me.”

“No, it is not up to me to tell you what to do. I have given you the information. Now it is up to you to choose the path you will take. And you already know what it is. Look inside, Cara.”

Unable to deny the strong pull toward the
Mystic
, Cara searched her aunt’s eyes, drawing strength and wisdom from her. She realized she had only one choice.

“I’m going back.”

The warm spring day had drawn a heavy crowd to the beach by midday, causing congested traffic on the freeways by late afternoon. Still dressed in her chambray shirt and jeans, Cara cursed the extra time she had taken to retrieve the period clothing that she’d left at her house. As her car crept along at a snail’s pace, she glanced over at the costume lying on the passenger seat. She was scared as hell, but the flutter in her stomach told her she was doing the right thing.

It was twilight by the time she reached Dana Point. The institute was closed and the longboats locked away for the night. She had no alternative but to “borrow” a small inflatable lifeboat from the marina.

Under the cloak of darkness, she rowed along the curve of the shoreline rather than taking the more direct route from the west basin, which might have aroused suspicion.

Instead, she came around near the institute so as to appear to be someone going out to check the ship.

Her heart raced with a rush of adrenaline during her final strokes of the oars. She grabbed the small bundle of clothes she’d tied with the belt and climbed aboard the brig.

The smell of tarred timbers and salt air intensified her memories of Blake, bringing her closer to him. The earlier feeling of a strong connection intensified, as if he were all around her.

She had slipped down into the mate’s cabin and started to change her clothes when her hand paused on the zipper of her jeans. A sense of dread crept up from her toes. Slowly, she reached out toward the bulkhead. Her fingertips touched the wood. She leaned forward, pressing harder.

No! It can’t be!

Frantic, she placed both hands on the rough panel, sliding them this way and that way, trying to find the void. Nothing happened. The wood was as solid as the floor beneath her feet.

She spun around and headed toward the captain’s quarters, groping her way through the shadowy interior of the ship, stumbling again and again.

Inside the large cabin, she rushed to the wall and searched for the portal from the past. But not even her sixth sense perceived that anything was there, or ever had been there.

Unable to hold back the overwhelming sense of pain and loss, she pounded her fists against the wood panel, crying and cursing at her fate. How could she have finally found love again only to have it snatched away? She didn’t even get to say good-bye.

“Why was I given this psychic gift to help others and not myself?” Sinking to her knees, she buried her hands in her face. “Why can’t I see him just one last time?”

“I’m here, Cara.”

Her head jerked up. She turned to see a man descending the steps into the captain’s quarters. Blinking back tears, her gaze traveled up the tan slacks to a white cotton Henley that set off a dark tan. His wavy black hair had a touch of silver at the temples. Deep-blue eyes gazed expectantly at her.

In an instant, her heart knew.

“Blake!” She vaulted to her feet and rushed into his arms. In her crazy euphoria, she kissed his lips, his chin, his nose, his eyes until he reached up and captured her face between his two hands. She stilled, staring at him in disbelief.

His cheeks were streaked with tears as he spoke to her in a husky rasp. “God, how I’ve missed you.”

He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, parting her lips with his tongue. He probed and caressed and promised more, leaving her yearning to take him into her completely.

As he dropped his face into her neck and pulled her tight against him, she arched her body into him. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“So did I,” he murmured.

She tried to talk despite her tears of happiness. “How did you get here?”

Blake straightened and looked down into her eyes with a cocky smile. “I own the
Mystic
. Or more accurately, my corporation is the legal owner.”

“You what?” Her jaw dropped.

Ignoring her question, he kissed her quickly, then gently demanded, “Where have you been? I waited for you this morning on the dock. When you didn’t disembark with the rest of them, I panicked, thinking you might not have returned from the past. I nearly went after you, until I learned from the captain that you’d left the ship in the middle of the night. I called your house nearly a dozen times today. I even drove to your house early this afternoon, but you weren’t there. About an hour ago, I felt an overwhelming need to come back to the ship.”

He kissed her again, then led her over to the berth.

“I must have been drawn here by you. It seems that a little of your psychic abilities have rubbed off on me.” The corner of his mouth tilted up in a boyish grin.

Though she couldn’t help but return the smile, she still eyed him with curiosity. “Were you the corporate exec who gave permission for me to work undercover as one of the crew?”

He nodded smugly.

“Do you mean to tell me you have been here all along?” Again, he nodded, sitting down on the edge of the mattress. “If I had approached you in February and told you about our life together in 1833, I know you wouldn’t have believed me. In this day and age, you’d have thought I was a crazy man stalking you.”

Cara remembered the reaction by Mr. Charles when she’d tried to convince him of his son’s adventures in the past with her. She knew she’d sounded like a wacko. She couldn’t blame the father for telling her to get lost.

“You’re right.” Sitting down next to him, she touched his cheek. “I wish I could be mad at you, but I understand why you had to do it.”

“If you had known about me before you’d traveled back in time, it might very well have changed the outcome.” She could see his point. Searching his eyes, she asked, “But what happened after you stepped through the bulkhead? Where were you? Where did you go?”

Telling her of his own experience, he confirmed her speculation that he had wound up in Mystic back in 1979. But he was not the twelve-year-old boy who had gone on the ship’s tour. He had spent eighteen years on the sea. As a grown man of thirty, it had been impossible to go home to tell his parents that he was alive and well. So he’d left New England, fully aware of his past in the early nineteenth century and yet not quite sure about the actual reality of it.

Haunted by those mystic memories, he had become obsessed with making his meeting with Cara come true. Unable to share his dream with anyone, he had set in motion all the right conditions for her to travel back in time, including the purchase and renovation of the brig that he’d renamed the
Mystic
. Had it not been this need to bring the ship to California, he might not have been led to make such high-risk investments in advanced technology, which had paid off so handsomely.

Retelling the story to Cara, Blake admitted to a great deal of trepidation as 1997 had drawn to a close, realizing that he had worked nearly twenty years toward a series of events that might have been only a figment of his imagination. More than once he had feared he might have been delusional about the time-travel.

“My only regret is that Andrew has been a helpless victim in all of this.”

“Andrew will be all right,” she assured him, sharing the vision she’d seen earlier. “Aunt Gaby said it was as much Andrew’s destiny as it was yours and mine.”

“Gabriella, huh? Is she a ghost or an angel or what?”

“She is as real as you and me.”

He gently guided her to her feet and brought her in front of him, positioning her between his thighs. He gazed at her with a bewildered smile. “That is no answer at all.”

“Reality is what you believe it to be.” She unbuttoned her shirt and peeled it off, then unfastened the front of her lace bra and let it drop to the floor.

His eyes darkened as he dipped his head to the hollow between her breasts. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back. Her fingers combed through the silver-streaked hair at his temples.

“Make love to me, Blake. Share your memories with me.”