Now and Forever (53 page)

"I don't know how to stack wood," said the Negro boy called Derek.

"'Tis a simple enough task," he said.

The boy frowned. "D'ya think there are any spiders in the wood?"

"I cannot say with certainty but the wood is freshly cut. I do not believe spiders have found it yet."

"Okay," said Derek. "Then I'll do it."

"Good decision," said Andrew, biting back a smile. He did not hold a great deal of affection for spiders either,

but he felt naught but affection for Derek. His black skin mattered not at all.

But Derek is still a boy,
a voice inside him spoke.
How will you feel when he is a man and vying with you for a place in the world?

He though of his reaction to Shannon's friend Karen. Had he responded solely to her race and gender or had there been something else at work, a sense that in this world he might not measure up to their standards of success? The idea was one he did not wish to pursue.

The children set to work with speed if not enthusiasm. The boys were dressed in a most peculiar fashion - baggy pants rolled up to mid-calf, shoes the size of rowboats with laces untied, strange caps with the bill worn in back. The girl wore short pants in a bright green color and a half-sleeved shirt that was many sizes too large for her small body.

They looked strange to his eyes yet in many ways little had changed in two hundred years. Children still reacted to a strong leader and to discipline.

"Is this right?" Derek called out. He was lugging a good-sized log to the stack already begun near the back door.

"'Tis most right," Andrew said, climbing the ladder.

"You talk funny," said Charlie, holding the ladder. "Are you English?"

"I was born in Boston." He could not remember being as comfortable in the company of adults as these children seemed to be. To speak so freely to a man old enough to be your father - he could not imagine doing so as a child.

"They talk strange in Boston."

He reached down for a handful of nails. "They talk strange in New Jersey."

"Nah," said Charlie. "We talk normal."

"'Tis a matter of perspective."

Angela squinted up at him. "What's that?"

"Perspective is how you look at things."

Across the yard the Negro boy struggled to lift a second log.

"Take a smaller one," Andrew called out. "Better two trips than to overtax yourself."

Derek nodded then did as Andrew suggested and Andrew found himself sharply reminded of his son. David had been much like that boy, eager for direction. Eager for guidance.

Eager for approval.

Aye, there is the rub.
There had been so little time for them to spend together - six short years - and most of those six years Andrew had squandered in the pursuit of his career. Ofttimes weeks would pass when he did not see his son, weeks in which the boy changed in ways Andrew could but wonder at when he returned home.

His eyes swam with tears. He blinked rapidly and willed them stop. He had done the impossible and traveled through time to a world two hundred years in the future, but he had never found the way to tell his son that he'd loved him and been proud of him.

"'Tis a fine job you're doing," he said to the children. "All of you."

"Thanks," said the one holding the ladder, "but now the gutter's crooked. You gotta do it over again."

Andrew looked then looked again. "You are right."

"Yeah," said Derek, grinning. "I figured you'd wanna know."

"'Tis always better to know," he said, using the back of the hammer to remove the nails.

"Not everything," said the boy. "My mom says what you don't know can't hurt you."

"In that your mother is wrong," Andrew said with conviction, thinking of a little boy who lived on only in his heart.

It was what a man didn't know that had the power to hurt most deeply.

Chapter Fifteen

Dakota rounded up the kids and took them back to the shelters a little before five o'clock. Shannon had always marveled at her friend's ability to relate to children without talking down to them, a particularly tricky proposition when you were dealing with children from families torn apart by abuse. Before the night was over Dakota would have not only determined their reading levels, but she would have won their hearts as well.

Shannon wandered about the house for a while. She flipped on the news, watched a bit of it, then turned off the television. She couldn't concentrate on a magazine, didn't feel like listening to music. Actually she found it impossible to do anything but think about the book she had hidden in the library. How could she think of anything else with the battle raging between her heart and her conscience?

She sank down on the bottom step in the foyer and rested her head in her hands. The vision of him, shirtless in the fierce sunshine, burned against her eyelids.
Is this what you want for him, Shannon? Is he going to spend the rest of his days fixing loose gutters and splitting firewood?

He'd only been there a handful of days, she reasoned with herself. She couldn't expect him to leap into a new life with career and future intact. Those things took time, even under more normal circumstances. Granted, he couldn't return to practicing law but there had to be something he could do, something important and fulfilling. Something that would keep him by her side forever.

There's nothing wrong with manual labor. Some people would say it's more honorable than practicing law.

But there was a limit to how many repairs he could do on her house. She had a brief, ridiculous vision of herself as Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, but instead of unraveling a tapestry each night, she broke windows and pulled down gutters - all so Andrew would have work to do the next morning.

You're a rich woman. You could start a business and make Andrew the C.E.O. He'd have a job and self-respect and--

"You idiot," she muttered, dragging her hands through her tangled hair. Who was she kidding? He was a proud man. A situation like that would be a sure recipe for disaster somewhere down the line.

He had no identification. The only driver's license he was likely to ever have belonged to Emilie Crosse and, according to Andrew, she was alive and well and living in 1776. Any records pertaining to his existence were centuries old.

Think, Shannon. There has to be a solution.
She'd created a new life for herself, albeit with a little help from the Feds. She'd overcome the horror of her marriage and found a way for other women to benefit from her experience. Surely she could find a place in her world for an extraordinary man like Andrew McVie.

But whatever she found, whether it was a position as a C.E.O. or day work as a laborer - was there anything in her world that could compare to being a hero in the world he'd left behind?

 
"Dakota's wrong," she said, rising to her feet. Hadn't his friends Emilie and Zane told him that there was no further mention of Andrew McVie in history books after the summer of 1776? What Dakota had found was a mistake...or maybe a coincidence.

For all Shannon knew someone had appropriated the name Andrew McVie and performed one lone act of heroism that managed to get itself reported in one lone history book. Big deal. It didn't prove anything.

The only thing she knew with certainty was that Andrew McVie was in her world and part of her life and she intended to do everything in her power to keep him there.

 
#

Shannon went outside around six p.m.

"I'm going to fire up the barbecue and grill up juicy, politically incorrect steak," she called up to Andrew. "Do you like yours rare, medium, or well?"

"'Tis still daylight," he said, wiping his arm across his forehead. "I will continue to work until dark."

"Those eaves can wait another day," she said lightly, watching him replace a board.

"They cannot," said Andrew. The pounding of the hammer provided a counterpoint to his words.

"Is something wrong, Andrew?"

"A strange question." He pounded in another nail. "'Tis nothing wrong."

"You don't seem like yourself."
Is that your guilty conscience speaking, Shannon?

"Nightfall approaches," he said, "and I have much to do."

"If you change your mind, all I have to do is toss another steak on the grill."

But he didn't change his mind. Not that she really thought he would. The set of his jaw told her that more clearly than any words he could have spoken.

Something had changed, she thought later on as she ate her steak on the patio and watched him work. For the past two days he had shadowed her movements, been part and parcel of her every waking moment.
 
And now everything was different and she couldn't say why. It wasn't as if he knew about the book Dakota found for that was still safely hidden in the library, far away from curious eyes.

She speared a lettuce leaf from her salad plate and considered him. There was a barrier between them now, a sense of separateness that hadn't been there before.

She sat straight up in her chair, fork poised halfway to her mouth. She no longer heard his voice within her heart. That was the difference. The almost mystical connection between them that had swept away her sense of caution had been replaced by the sense that this interlude was only temporary.

Damn Dakota and her psychic nonsense. She pushed her plate away and sat staring out toward the pool. If Dakota's fortune telling skills were half as good as she claimed, the woman would be picking Lotto numbers, not working three jobs and wearing thrift shop clothing.

Great. Now she was turning into a bitch as well as a liar.

She loved Dakota dearly and knew there was nothing phony or self-serving about her other-worldly talents. Shannon had seen too many of her friend's predictions come true to consign her to a 900 number on late night TV.

But Dakota couldn't be right this time. Shannon was willing to fight the gods to keep this one chance at happiness from slipping through her fingers. Fate had brought Andrew to her and she wasn't about to let fate take him away.

 
#

Andrew ceased work at dusk. He collected the hand tools scattered about the ground and made to carry them into the garage when Shannon appeared in the gathering darkness. She wore white pants that left her legs bare and a yellow bodice that revealed her midriff to his eyes. Her feet were bare and even in the blue light of dusk he could see the pale pink color of her painted toe nails gleaming up at him.

He caught the scent of her perfumed skin on the soft night air and a fierce hunger came to life deep inside his body.

"You must be hungry," she said, following him into the garage.
 

"Aye," he said. "The smell of beef on the fire has that effect."

"There's salad and corn ready now." She watched him as he placed the hand tools in the receptacle. "The steak'll be ready by the time you're finished."

He looked at her sharply. "You are a rich woman," he said. "How is it you do your own chores?"

"I don't always," she said. "Mildred usually cooks for me. Didn't I tell you about Mildred and Karl?"

"Aye," he said, "still I cannot imagine another woman of your wealth performing menial chores for a stranger."

Her sigh floated toward him and he wished he could reach out and capture it and hold it close to his heart. "I enjoy cooking, Andrew. Especially when there's somebody around to appreciate it."

They turned to leave the garage when Shannon stopped abruptly.

"Sweet Jesus," he said.

"The balloon." Her voice was little more than a whisper. "What on earth--?"

The covering he had placed over the balloon and basket had slipped off, revealing a most disturbing sight. The silk fabric of the balloon was faded almost white while the basket appeared to be disintegrating before his very eyes. They looked as if they had traveled through the centuries and scarcely survived the journey.