The Color of Forever (9 page)

She lowered her hand from her face. “But isn’t that the point? Trust me, I’ve done this. What matters is the future, not the past. Besides, I don’t want to be responsible for what might happen if you tried to do what I did.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too unpredictable. What if you could never get back
here
, to this life? Do you want to risk losing everything you know and love?”

“Every single second of every day is unpredictable,” I argued.

She turned to her husband, Chris, and regarded him imploringly, as if she hoped he would help her argue the point. He merely shrugged, leaving the decision up to her. And me, I suppose.

Sylvie turned in her chair to signal the waitress. “I’m sorry, we have to go. It’s almost 1:00.”

The waitress immediately crossed the pub with our bills and a wireless credit card machine.

“We’re in a bit of a rush,” Sylvie explained to her while Chris pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.

Bailey and I sat in silence, watching Sylvie and Chris pay their bill and rise from their chairs. “I’m sorry,” Sylvie said. “It was nice to meet you, but…” She paused. “You should go home, Katelyn. Just be happy with your life. Be grateful for what you have.” She gestured toward Bailey. “You have a wonderful friend here, and you’re a beautiful, intelligent woman. You survived a terrible biking accident, and if you go back, you might not be so lucky next time. It’s a second chance that you’ve been given. You should make the most of it by moving forward.”

That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. It’s why I came here.

Chris laid a hand on the small of Sylvie’s back and they walked out together. I continued to watch them while the bells jingled over the door and they moved onto the sidewalk. As they passed by the windows, walking quickly, he slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, and she rested her cheek on his shoulder.

Despite everything she had just said to me, as I witnessed the connection they shared, all I could feel was…
envy
.

I turned to Bailey. “She made a lot of sense just now, about focusing on the future, not the past, but… Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“We need to check out that sundial,” she said.

We both, simultaneously, waved the waitress over to take our credit cards.

A few minutes later, as we were walking back to the SUV, Bailey said, “Katelyn, I have to ask… You don’t really believe it do you? That the sundial could be an actual portal through time? Surely there’s another explanation for all of this.”

I handed the keys to her. “I have no idea, but that’s why I want to see it for myself.”

Chapter Seventeen

A heavy and humid summer breeze had picked up by the time we returned to the Fraser House Inn and parked the SUV on the gravel lot.

Feeling as if there wasn’t a moment to lose, I grabbed my purse off the floor and hopped out, pausing only briefly to scan the length of green sloping lawn that led down to the sundial, just before the shoreline. Two freshly painted Adirondack chairs—one red and one blue—stood empty beside it.

Everything seemed small in the distance, except for the ocean, of course. If a boat had been tossed up during a storm, I wondered if another rogue wave, sweeping in upon these rocks, might have swept the sea captain’s wife to her death. Despite the summer heat, I shivered at the thought.

“Ready?” I said to Bailey as she got out of the vehicle and shut the car door.

“Yes.”

Together, with the sun warm upon our shoulders, we strolled onto the stone path that meandered down to the water, and passed beneath a charming, white painted rose arbor with a butterfly flitting about.

We noticed Angela on the far side of the property wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and denim overalls. She was pruning a hedgerow with a giant pair of clippers. She waved at us and we waved back.

As we drew nearer to the sundial, I lifted my sunglasses to rest on top of my head. “It looks ancient,” I said, stopping in front of it.

Slowly, I circled the stone dial plate and ran my fingers over the Roman numerals carved into its surface.

“The stand is pretty elaborate,” Bailey commented.

I squatted down to inspect the column that stood upon a stone slab, and ran my open hand up and down the intricate designs. “I’ve never seen anything like it. This part looks Asian or Middle Eastern.”

Rising to my feet, I turned to look out at the sparkling blue sea, and spotted a sailboat in the distance. Shading my eyes, I watched the boat for a moment, then walked forward to the edge of the lawn and looked over the rugged shoreline below. The tide was out and the rocks were covered in seaweed and barnacles. I breathed in the salty scent of the pebbly beach, then turned back to consider the sundial again.

“Well,” I said, “we’re still here.”

Bailey pulled out her phone and swiped the screen. “And it’s still August, 2016.”

She pointed at a wooden deck on the far corner of the property with a few empty lounge chairs upon it. “Listen, do you hear that? I think those chairs are calling to us. Want to get into our bathing suits, grab a couple of drinks, and do some reading?”

I glanced at the deck. “That sounds good, but you go ahead and get changed without me. I’d like to talk to Angela first, to see if she knows anything about the sundial. I’ll meet you on the deck. Save me a chair.”

Bailey and I parted ways. She returned to the stone path while I started off in the opposite direction across the wide green lawn.

o0o

“A lot of guests ask me about that sundial because it’s so unique,” Angela said, as we began the short walk back to the house together. “My husband and I both wish we knew more. What we do know is that Captain Fraser was also an inventor late in life, and we found all sorts of fascinating Victorian contraptions in the attic when we bought the place. We donated everything to the local museum.”

“That’s interesting. Is there a display there? I’d love to take a look.”

“Yes, they have a cabinet dedicated solely to his inventions, and they also have a number of items stored in their archives.” Angela stopped, bent over and tugged a weed out of the grass, then we continued on.

“I heard that the captain lost his wife when they were still quite young,” I mentioned, “and that he wanted to build a time machine so that he could go back and prevent her death. Do you know anything about that?”

“Yes, of course. I was the one who discovered it in the letters his children wrote to each other, which we found in the attic. That’s her portrait hanging over the fireplace in your room. Sadly, the family destroyed most of his paperwork referencing his inventions and his travels during the last years of his life. They thought he was delusional in his old age.”

“I suppose I can understand that,” I replied, “but it’s a shame those were lost.”

“Indeed. When I think about how much we discard in our society today, not holding on to anything anymore, I wonder how much history we’re throwing away.”

We reached the stairs that led up to the enormous veranda, but Angela paused at the bottom. “I have to put these clippers in the carriage house, so you go on without me. If you need anything, my husband is just inside. Ring the bell at the front desk.”

“I will. Thank you.” I attempted to follow. “But wait…”

I wasn’t ready to let her go just yet. There was still so much I wanted to know, because Sylvie had been more than upfront about the sundial being a doorway to another time and dimension. Surely, if that were true, the homeowner would know something about it.

“Do you think it’s possible that the sundial has something to do with the time machine the captain was trying to build?” I asked, feeling ridiculous as soon as the words spilled across my lips. “It looks very ancient, as if it’s meant to be magical.”

She smiled at me and laid a hand on the top of her straw hat to keep it from flying off in a sudden gust off the water. “I’ve always thought so myself, but I’ve never heard any tales about it. We can always imagine.”

With that she walked around the side of the house toward the carriage house, swinging her hedge clippers at her side and humming a cheerful tune.

I watched her for a moment, then climbed the steps alone, pausing on the veranda to shade my eyes and look out at the sea. It sparkled like diamonds under the sun.

The sailboat was no longer visible. I wondered where it had gone. Perhaps the owner had sailed farther out to bask in the freedom of the open water and the sound of the ocean rushing past the hull. Or possibly back to one of the yacht clubs to finish out the day with a glass of wine and a bowl of seafood chowder.

How wonderful that sounded. Turning to go inside, I promised myself that one of these days, I would learn how to sail.

Chapter Eighteen

After spending the afternoon stretched out on the lounge chairs on the seafront deck—each of us immersed in a bestselling novel while listening to the waves on the rocky beach below—Bailey and I returned to our rooms to shower and dress for dinner. I was ready before she was, so I lay down on the bed to watch the
Portland Evening News
. When Bailey finally knocked on my door, she told me that Angela had recommended a few places to eat.

A short time later, we found ourselves seated at a cozy local restaurant called The Good Table.

Bailey ordered the lobster fettuccine and I devoured the rib-eye steak—delicious with horseradish crème fraiche, frizzled onions and a baked potato.

Afterward, we returned to the inn to take part in a card game in the library with Angela, her husband, and a few of the other guests, where we all drank Rusty Nails—equal parts cheap whiskey and Drambuie—and gambled with quarters.

There had been much animated talk about the weather forecast for the following day, which promised record-hot temperatures and high humidity. Bailey and I decided to head to Crescent Beach to lie on the sand all day, read our books, and frolic in the waves.

When we said goodnight to the other guests and retired to our rooms, I felt relaxed and slightly tipsy from the strong drinks, and laughed at myself as I tumbled, in my pajamas, onto the massive antique bed.

“You’re drunk,” I said to myself while gazing, blurry-eyed, at the portrait of Captain Fraser’s young bride above the fireplace. I imagined how passionately and deeply in love they must have been for him to spend his life trying to invent a time machine to bring her back. It only served to remind me, yet again, that I had never known that kind of love. All I’d ever experienced was heartbreak and betrayal—a sense of not being everything my husband truly wanted me to be, because Mark had desired another.

Even Chris, in that parallel life I remembered, hadn’t loved me the way I needed to be loved, and that’s why I had been unfaithful to him. I was always searching, longing for something more. It was as if I had known we weren’t meant for each other. That we were each meant for someone else.

Not that
that
was any excuse for my actions. Infidelity was a four letter word as far as I was concerned, and I despised myself for having given up on our marriage—even though my actions were completely fictitious. At least in this life.

In the next few moments, the bed began to spin.
Typical.

“Good luck getting up tomorrow,” I said to myself as I rolled onto my side. “You’ll be hungover and you’ll probably get sunstroke.”

I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep, but couldn’t stop thinking about the sundial. I suspected Sylvie had kept something from me, because she didn’t want me to go flying in and out of other dimensions and start messing around with her current reality.

Why would she want to chance it, when she was already married to the man of her dreams?

The last thing I wanted to do was destroy her life, or take anything away from her. But I couldn’t help but believe that I had been drawn to this place for a specific reason, and I had my own destiny to seek and fulfill.

I decided to rise early and drag Bailey to the local museum before we headed to the beach, because there was still so much I wanted to know about this house and its mysterious sundial.

Chapter Nineteen

It took tremendous discipline, but I rose extra early to get my CNN application sent off to New York before heading down to breakfast. I then dragged Bailey to the Cape Elizabeth Museum, where we spent the entire morning in the back room, seated at a large round table, wearing white cloth gloves as we handled precious documents. I was surprised when the museum curator trusted us with the entire Fraser Collection—which consisted of one box of letters and a number of interesting contraptions from the inn’s attic—but she remained seated nearby, working at her desk the entire time. She was also kind enough to answer any questions we had about the social history of Cape Elizabeth during the late-Victorian period.

We discovered that Captain Sebastian Fraser had inherited the house from his father, a sea captain himself, who had built it in 1840. Sebastian married his beloved, Evangeline, in 1878 when he was thirty-five years old and she was twenty-one. They had two children in the first two years of their marriage—a boy and a girl, who were unfortunately too young to remember anything about their mother after she died.