Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3) (32 page)

“You enjoyed my
caresses,
mia bella
, I know you did.”

“No, please, keep
talking,” Ella said, dropping to one knee and groping under the bed with her
free hand. “I’m sure I have one more round under here somewhere.”

“All right, please,
no more!” Lawrence held up a hand as he watched her scoop up the small caliber
cartridge, blow dust off it and insert it into the derringer. “I apologize! I
don’t know what came over me.”

“I think I can
help you out there,” Ella said, standing and wagging the gun in his direction. “You
saw a helpless woman and took advantage of the situation.”

“I admit it. I’m
a cad.”

“That is the
least
of what you are. Now, the jewels
that you stole from me. I’ll take them back now or I will relieve you of your
own family jewels—one at a time.”

“I had no
intention of stealing your—”

“Okay, just stop.
Jewels
now
or start speaking
soprano.”

Lawrence reached into
his coat pocket and pulled out the small velvet bag. He spilled out the jewels
onto the bedcover, then scooped them back in the bag and handed it to Ella.

“I’d say
thank you
but it’s against my policy to say
thanks for getting my own stuff back.”

“I’m truly
repentant.”

“I
knew
there was something missing from
this little meeting, and that’s it. You just don’t seem repentant to me. I’m
sure that’s my fault. I fear I’m going to have to ask Rowan to take over after all.”

“Surely your
husband will understand my desperate desire to be with you?

“Yeah, I’m not so
sure you want to lead with that when you’re talking to him, but you go with
what works for you.”

“I must say, even
if it results in my death, I’m not sorry to know how you look naked, or what
you taste like.”

“See, now that’s
exactly the kind of thing that’s going to get you killed, Lawrence. It’s
because
Rowan knows you know all that
that he’s going to want to stuff you in a cannon and distribute you like
buckshot to the remainder of the southern colonies. And I do not want my
husband to be hung for your murder. Do you see where I’m going here?”

“I have a chance
to redeem myself.

“I wouldn’t go
that far, but you can make amends.”

“I can tell him that
you fought like a she-cat the whole time you were naked in my arms.”

“Really? You
think this is a joke? He’s a frigging US Marshal. He fought in frigging Iraq.
How many people have
you
killed with
your bare hands?”

“I can tell him I
deserve to die and will, in fact, do so by my own hand unless he thinks it
unnecessary.”

Ella paused. “Okay.
I think that’s probably your best approach. Don’t be surprised if he still
breaks your nose, though.”

“Is this goodbye?

“Unless you’d
like another little zing to remember me by?”

“Goodbye, Ella.”

“Goodbye, Lawrence.”

As she walked out
the door, she shot him again just for the hell of it.

***

Waiting another
four weeks in 1825 proved to be nearly as difficult as anything else Ella had
done in the last month. Eager to see her baby again—and Halima—she
convinced Rowan that a month was plenty of time and that she’d be fine. After
all, hadn’t she already spent nearly ten days in 1825?

The morning that
they decided to go back was a hot one for early December and the skies were
clear and cloudless.

“I wonder if 1925
will have the same weather?” Ella asked as she tried to hide behind Rowan’s
bulk where they stood on the street corner. Men’s fashions were not
exceptionally different from generation to generation, Ella noted, but if she
was afraid of being institutionalized because she kept forgetting her hat she
was all the more wary going out in public in a dress cut to her calf with nary
a bustle to be had.

“I don’t think it
works like that,” Rowan said, his arm around her protectively. “You about
ready?”

“I’m so excited
at the thought of seeing little Tater again, I could scream,” she said,
nestling into his arms. “Let’s do it.”

“You got the
ring?”

“Never without
it. You?”

Rowan flicked open
the lighter and gave her a grin. “Let’s go home, babe.”

As it happened,
it would be another three weeks before Ella saw her child. When she and Rowan
“woke up” in 1925 Key West, Ella was completely blind. Assuring Rowan that it
was almost surely temporary (she hoped), Ella allowed him to lead her to the
new Flagler Hotel on Duval Street, where the two collapsed in relief and
emotional exhaustion.

The next morning,
they took the Overland Railway to Miami, where Ella called Halima to tell her
they were coming home and, true to form, Halima behaved as if she’d never
doubted it.

“Our young man
has been repeatedly and insistently asking for both of you,” Halima said. “And
the strangest thing happened after you left. Two letters arrived for you from
Casablanca.”

“Did you open
them?”

“I admit I took
the liberty.”

“And?”

“They are from
Effendi
Rowan! It is most strange
indeed.”

“Rowan!” Ella
turned to where Rowan was sitting drinking a spiked lemonade on the terrace of
the Royal Palm Hotel overlooking Miami beach. There was a three-day wait for
their flight to Cape Town. “Jan’s letters arrived!”

Rowan gaped at
her. “The letters came?”

Ella nodded.
“Yes. Halima said two of them. Identical in every way.”

“I’ll be damned.”
Rowan shook his head. “I told him to send three in hopes that one would make it
through. Ella, this means Sully didn’t kill him after all.”

“What, Halima?”
Ella returned to the call. “Yes, read it to me.” She listened for a moment and
then turned back to Rowan, tears sparking in her eyes.

“What is it?”
Rowan asked eagerly, standing by her now, his hand ready to take the phone.

“There’s an
addendum on both the letters. It says,
PS
— My friend, if this is really you reading this, I am alive and once more
headed to South Africa to make my fortune. I hope you find your Ella. Best
regards, Jan Aldegonda.”

“I’ll be damned,”
Rowan repeated and looked out over the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.
 

 
Three days later they flew to Cape Town,
and from there on to Cairo.

***

One month after
their return, when life had finally gotten back to normal both with Ella’s
eyesight and Rowan’s job, Ella went upstairs to her bedroom after putting Tater
down. Rowan’s 1825 insistence not withstanding, life had been so busy upon
their return that intimate moments had not been as frequent as they’d both
assumed they would be.

Tonight, after a wonderful
dinner out, Ella was well rested and Rowan was opening a bottle of wine in the
downstairs salon. She marveled that they had been able to stand to spend even
an afternoon away from each other after all that had happened, but life
intervened and schedules soon made mockery of best intentions.

“You coming,
babe?” Rowan called up to her softly, obviously hoping not to wake the baby.

Ella pulled open
her lingerie drawer and touched the silk negligee she’d bought that day for
tonight. A quick glance in the mirror over the dresser made her realize her
hair was growing back. She smiled at herself and her fingers touched the shape
of her US passport that she kept in the drawer. She glanced at it. This was not
her 1922 passport, but the one Rowan had brought with him from 2010 when he had
hopes of her being able to use it to return with him.

Those hopes were
dashed when Tater was born. But she and Rowan had been talking lately about
going back to see his folks, and her father and stepmother. Just as soon as
Tater could handle the trip forward in time. She idly opened the passport and a
small photo fell out onto the floor. Frowning, she scooped it up and looked at
it. It was a photo of her and an older woman. They were both smiling. In fact,
in the picture, Ella had her arm around the woman.

Who in the world…?

She turned the
photo over to read the inscription on the back.

When Rowan heard
Ella scream, he nearly dropped the wine glass he was pouring. Ella screaming
after spending thirty minutes trying to get the little guy to finally go down
had to be either a cobra under the dresser or worse. Grabbing a fireplace
poker, Rowan vaulted up the stairs but no more sounds came from their bedroom.

He burst into the
room and saw Ella kneeling on the floor, a negligee in her lap and her passport
in her hand.

“Ella?”

She looked at him
as if she didn’t know him, tears streaming from her eyes.

He dropped the
poker and knelt by her. “Babe, what’s happened?” He could hear the slow growing
cry of their son waking up.

She shakily
handed him the photo she was holding and he looked at it in confusion. It was a
picture of Ella, obviously taken sometime before they left for Cairo, with an
older woman. An aunt, or something?

“Read the back,”
she whispered, her hand covering her mouth.

He flipped it
over and read:
Me and Mom, Mother’s Day
2012.

He looked at her.
“Oh. My. God,” he said. “Is this…?”

“My mother,” Ella
said, her hand trembling as she wiped her eyes. “My mother is alive, Rowan.
She’s
alive
.”

Rowan looked at
the photo again. Once he knew it was her, it was obvious. They looked so much alike.
“This means Sully…he must not have joined the Nazi party after all. So he
wasn’t hung at Nuremberg?”

Ella shook her
head in wonder. “And my mother did not join the CIA and she did not try to kill
herself.”

“God, what I
wouldn’t do for just five minutes with an Internet connection.”

“She’s alive,
Rowan. I have a mother in 2013”

He pulled her
into his arms, the sounds of their son’s cries fading as he started to fall
asleep again.

“We’ll go back,”
he said. “Tater can handle it. We’ll go home.”

Epilogue

In the months
before their scheduled trip back to their own time, Ella was amazed to discover
that she was beginning to remember her mother. At first the images came to her
as if wisps of dreams or wishes disguised as memories. More and more though,
the pictures came into her head, one on top of the other as the weeks went by,
until she could remember a past she never lived. Memories of her mother,
laughing and free, showing her how to bake, walking with her to school,
scolding or kissing her as Ella grew.

She’d had a
mother. A loving mother who loved her still. How she knew this, after a
lifetime of never feeling it, was to Ella like waking up one morning knowing
how to speak Swahili. She didn’t know how she knew, she just did.

Even the
anxieties of Tater’s first trip into time travel and saying goodbye to Halima,
very likely forever, couldn’t mitigate the excitement and wonder that Ella felt
about going home and meeting the woman whose dark shadow she had sat in, cold
and forgotten, most of her childhood.

Saying goodbye to
Halima was the worst.

“I’ll never
forget you, Halima,” Ella said, the day they planned to leave. The two women
sat closely together on the divan in the parlor. Plans had been made for Halima
to continue to live in the townhouse and to be paid a small annuity for the
rest of her life.

“And I you, dear
one,” Halima said, her brown eyes warm and melting with unshed tears. After
everything they’d been through, Ella didn’t think she could ever remember a
time when she’d seen Halima weep.

They sat, alone
and unspeaking, soaking up the brief pleasure of each other’s presence for as
long as they could until Rowan, Tater squirming in his arms, came to the door.

“It’s time,” he
said softly.

Ella pulled Halima
into a fierce hug, her own tears stinging her eyes. “I’ll never forget you, Halima,”
she repeated. “You were my first mother. You’ll always be my first.”

When Ella walked
away from Halima and the townhouse where she and Rowan had been so happy for
the last four years, she was assaulted with a razor-sharp moment of panic.

Were they right
to leave? Would life in 2014 work for them?

And then she
remembered there was a woman eighty-nine years in the future who was mourning
her—as only a mother could. Ella couldn’t even imagine what it must feel
like to lose a child. To wave goodbye to a dear son or daughter and then never
to see them again.

In the end, the
passage back was the easiest one of them all. Because they’d waited nearly
eight months to go, neither Ella nor Rowan felt any ill effects from the
travel. And little Tater, after initially crying at the feeling of headache and
nausea that the process always prompted, had already forgotten the experience.
Ella wasn’t sure when Tater would be too old to travel in tandem with her and
Rowan—or even if he’d inherited the gift to do so alone. Only time would
tell.

Ella held the
three-year-old’s hand while Rowan purchased three one-way tickets to Atlanta,
Georgia at Cairo International Airport. She looked at her surroundings with one
hand covering her mouth in amazement. The fast-food kiosks, the clothing, the
frenetic pace of people’s speech and movement. It was going to take awhile to
get used to how fast—and loud—everything was in 2014.

She waited until
they landed in Atlanta before calling her parents, and even then she didn’t
have the nerve to do it herself. It had been two years since that Mother’s Day
photo was taken. What if her mother had died in the meantime? Or they’d moved?
In Ella’s pre-Key West timeline, her widowed father married Susie ten years
after Ella’s mother’s death. After raising Ella in Atlanta, the two then moved
to Tampa.

She wasn’t sure
how she was so sure, but she just knew her parents were still in Atlanta. She
sat in one of the airport seats at Hartsfield holding her sleepy toddler while
Rowan used one of the public phones in baggage claim, but she was so nervous it
was all she could do to sit still.

“What did they
say?” she asked, getting up and running to Rowan when he returned from the baggage
claim area.

“Well,” Rowan
said, scratching his head. “They were pretty blown away, I have to tell you.
We’re like raised from the dead as far as their concerned. Honestly, there was
a lot of crying and not a whole lot of talking.”

Ella stared at
him. “They?”

Rowan took the
baby out of her arms and pulled her into a hug. “I talked to your Mom, babe,”
he said. “She’s alive and she’s screaming she’s so excited to see you again.”
He jostled the baby, who put his head down on his father’s shoulder as if to
nap. “I didn’t even get far enough to tell ‘em about this little guy. Come on,
let’s get a taxi.”

He had talked to her. He had talked to my mother.
Ella felt her legs stiffen as if she’d
forgotten how to walk. Rowan turned when he realized she wasn’t with him.

“El? You okay?”

“What did she
say, Rowan?” she said, her eyes filling with tears once more. “I can’t believe
you talked to her. How did she sound?”

“Well, she
sounded Southern, which kinda surprised me since she was born in Germany, but I
guess she’s been over here long enough to pick it up.”

“That’s not what
I mean!”

Rowan took her by
the hand and tugged her along after him. “Come on, let’s talk and walk. She
sounded hysterical because I think they thought they’d never see us again, you
know? But
good
hysterical, if that
makes sense. She sounds very sweet, El. But let’s go and you’ll see for
yourself.”

Ella stumbled
along behind him, the maze and frenetic energy of the crowd in the
international concourse of the Atlanta airport bustling around her like demented
ants on a sugar cube.

“Wait! Did
you…did you call your own folks?”

“I did,” he said,
pulling her onto the down escalator that led to ground transport. “My mother
cried but my Dad was cool. Yeah, then he cried. I told him we were heading to
your folks’ place and he and Mom are going to meet us there. They just couldn’t
wait.”

“Of course,” Ella
said. “And what are we telling everyone? That we were doing missionary work? Is
that believable?”

“It is if you
don’t curse very much.”

“Oh, very funny.”

“And it would
help if Tater doesn’t curse very much.”

Her parents still
lived in the brick traditional that Ella had grown up in. Quickly supplanting
her old memories of living in that house with Susie, her stepmother, were
images of gardening with her mother, riding her bike with both her parents down
the tree-lined lane, and walking to the little elementary school two blocks
over, her hand snugly in the hand of the tall auburn-haired beauty who laughed
like bells on the wind and spoke with a delicate German accent.

When they
arrived, the front door swung open before Ella could even shut the taxi door
behind her. Her mother appeared in the opening. The minute Ella saw her, tall
and willowy, one hand to her mouth as if she would burst into tears, she knew
she had always known her.

“Mama!” she
called, glancing quickly at Rowan who held the baby.

“Go on,” he
urged.

She ran to the
front door, stopping just short of reaching her and stumbled, her eyes clouded
with tears. Her mother gathered her into her arms, moaning her joy into Ella’s
hair and rocking her from side-to-side. “
Mein
liebling
,” she whispered. “My precious, precious girl.”

Ella smelled her
mother’s perfume and images of sunny fall days in the Georgia mountains,
sipping cocoa at Christmas and splashing in the surf on family vacations came
back to her as intensely and perfectly as if they’d just happened.

“Oh, Mama,” she
said, her throat aching with the need to sob. “I’ve missed you so much.”

When Rowan’s
parents arrived, the emotional reunion was replayed again. Rowan’s mother wept
and clung to him and wouldn’t allow little Tater—or James, as she
insisted on calling him—out of her lap. Rowan’s father kept clapping his
hand on Rowan’s shoulder, as if trying to convince himself Rowan was real and
not an apparition.

Ella’s own
father, after a very blubbery greeting, spent most of the rest of the visit
making and serving barbecue, baked beans, corn bread, angel rolls, Brunswick
stew and gallons of sugar-sweet tea. One thing Ella knew about her dad was that
food was love. Watching him in the kitchen, sniffling and unable to take his
eyes off her or his new little grandson, she knew tonight’s meal would be well
salted.

When they put the
baby down for the night and Rowan’s parents left after extracting promises for
Rowan and the baby to come to them the following day, Ella’s father and Rowan
sat down in front of the television set. Although she knew Rowan hadn’t missed
it much in the last four years, she understood his fascination with it after
such a long time without it. She reminded herself to tease him about it later.

She and her
mother went to the screened-in porch with two cups of peppermint tea. Because Ella
had been so focused on seeing her mother for the first time, she hadn’t spared
much time for the many startling examples of the fact they were really back. It
amazed her how quickly everything could be done. Her father’s feast, the piping
hot cups of tea—in any flavor Ella could wish for. She drank her tea and
listened to the sounds of the night birds in her mother’s garden, as she had
done all her childhood long.

How can something feel so familiar and yet so foreign?
The furniture was rearranged
differently, the art on the walls were not the same. For a moment, Ella found
herself thinking of the stepmother she’d shared twelve Christmases with.
Although she’d never been particularly close to Susie, the woman had been a
part of Ella’s life and had, in her way, loved Ella.
Where is Susie now, I wonder?

“We thought we’d
lost you, Ella.”

Ella looked at
her mother. Her face was lined and tan from years spent gardening under the
Georgia sun, but her eyes were clear and blue and youthful. Ella didn’t think
she would ever get her fill of looking at her.

 
“I know,” she said. “Communication was
impossible and I hated for you not to know what happened to us. That was the
worst part of the whole experience.”

“I’m still a
little confused about what the experience was.”

The minute her
mother spoke the words Ella was surprised she hadn’t thought of it before:
Did her mother know about traveling through
time too?

“Well, I’ll
explain what I know of it another time, if that’s okay.”

Her mother took
her hand. “All that matters is that you’re back,” she said, her eyes gleaming
with love and joy. “And you’re staying?”

Ella nodded.
“That’s the plan.”

“Thank you,
mein Gott
. And you’ve brought me a
grandson. Little Tater is absolutely gorgeous, Ella. You know he is the
spitting image of my father.”

Ella spilled her
tea on her slacks and placed the cup down.

“Do…do I really know
much about him?” she asked, watching her mother in the half-gloom of the porch,
lit only by a small lamp.

“Oh, I’m sure
I’ve told you stories about Grandpa Rudy,” her mother said, smiling. “He was
such a character.”

“Did I ever meet
him?”

“Yes, of course,
darling. Or rather, he met you. He and your grandmother flew all the way from
Bonn just to see you when you were born. Which was amazing in itself since your
grandfather hated to travel.”

“Really?”

“My father loved
children, but you were clearly something special to him. Until this very day
when God gave you back to me, I considered it one of the singular graces of my
life that he was able to hold you—his only grandchild—in his arms
before he died.”

“When did he
die?”

“A few months
after returning to Germany with my mother. He had a coronary playing stickball
with some children in the street. Can you imagine? Stickball at his age. He was
such a rascal. I’m sorry you didn’t know him. There were those who said my
father could be a difficult man—and I understand he was ruthless in
business, and perhaps not consistently honest—but he always had a smile
on his face and he told the most marvelous stories.”

“I’ll bet.”

“It’s funny that
we got to talking about him,” her mother said, pushing a folded square of
tissue paper across the patio table to Ella. “I had four years of wishing I’d
given this to you before you left and I don’t want to wait a minute longer.”

“What is it?”
Ella said, picking up the little tissue packet. When she opened the flap, a gold
necklace fell into her lap.

“It’s a family
heirloom,” her mother said, smiling at Ella. “My father gave it to my mother,
who gave it to me. It’s time you had it.”