Mittman, Stephanie (40 page)

His
eyebrows came down with a question.
What's wrong?

She
shook her head.
Nothing.

He
looked at her more closely, and she tore her eyes away. This wasn't the time to
discuss what would become of her after Sloan recovered his son. He'd had every
opportunity over the last several hours to let her know he wanted to marry her.
He'd filled his father in on all their exploits, taking pleasure in reassuring
him he was still a fully functional male, capable of upholding what was
apparently a Westin tradition. But he hadn't mentioned anything beyond the
morning, beyond grabbing what was his, and everything else be damned.

Harlin's
horse emerged by the creek, Ben strapped to his back in a sling. They were
alone, Harlin whistling, Ben cooing, the horse stepping high. Near the river's
edge, Harlin halted the stallion and swung his leg over the saddle.

"How
far you think you can piss, Horace?" he said, one foot holding all his
weight in the stirrup while he fiddled with his buttons. "Think you can
piss clear across the creek?"

Only
Sloan was watching through a small crack in the rocks. His father and Mary
Grace were a few feet away, their horses steady, thanks to Ben's hands on both
mares' reins. Listening to Harlin, Mary Grace had to stifle a smile, while Ben
looked decidedly uncomfortable.

Harlin
slipped the baby's strap off his back, hung it from the saddle horn, and made
ready to get down and demonstrate his great pissing ability. "Your Uncle
Harlin can piss farther than both your other uncles. Maybe combined."

Sloan
backed up slightly and leaned toward Mary Grace's ear. She nodded, passing the
word on to Ben. Then Sloan peered through the crack again.

"Now!"
He kicked the horse's flanks hard and the three took off at a gallop toward
Harlin's horse and the baby. Before Mary Grace could even digest the new plan,
Sloan had jumped from the horse he was riding. Despite his stiff leg, he landed
in Harlin's saddle, the baby swinging dangerously by his knee. He steadied
Little Ben with his left hand and rode toward Harlin. In his raised hand, Sloan
held the horse's reins and his rifle. Mary Grace winced when it came crashing
down on Harlin's skull. Sloan grabbed the baby up against his chest and took
off at a full gallop.

She
rode for her life behind him. Sloan's father slapped the horse Sloan had been
on. It joined the pack of them, and four horses thundered down the creek bed
leaving Harlin Tate unconscious, his manhood still in his hand.

There
was precious little time before Mason and Wilson might show up, guns blazing,
to reclaim their nephew. But a few moments were all they needed. Sloan's rope
hung neatly in place, and Mary Grace leaped off her horse and ran to it. Sloan
had managed during the dawn to get the rope up over the rocky ledge. Once they
were up on top, they'd be almost impossible to reach. She would be the first
one up, then Ben with his namesake, and finally Sloan.

"Give
me Little Ben," she pleaded, but Sloan refused.

"We
need someone up there to hand him to. You can't climb the rocks with him on
you. It's too dangerous. For both of you." He knew how to handle her all
right, even in a crisis. Just tell her it was better for Little Ben, and she
did as she was told.

She
slipped into the ring of rope and tightened it
around her waist.
"OK," she shouted, and Sloan tied the other end to Climber's saddle.
As the horse moved away, Mary Grace rose in the air. She held tight to the rope
with her hands, keeping herself upright. Falling through the air was
horrifying, but not as frightening as being suspended there, moving farther and
farther from the ground.

"Keep
going," she heard Sloan's father shout, and the ledge was nearly in reach.

Her
legs dangled beneath her and her fingers clawed at the air, hoping to reach the
rocky surface just inches away.

"A
little more," she yelled down. "Sloan?"

"Sweet
Mary!" he screamed. "No-o-o!"

And
then she heard nothing at all. Not Sloan, nor Ben, nor Little Ben. Only
silence. She hung there, her eyes closed, waiting for the sound of guns.
Nothing. Stillness. One hand swung into the rock, brushed against it, and was
scraped.

"Sloan?"
She looked down at the rocks beneath her, dry in the afternoon sun. There was
no sign of the river, just a dried-up riverbed. "Sloan!" she
screamed. Her foot hooked into an indentation, and her empty hand grabbed the
stump of a small tree. There was no rope to hold on to anymore.

A
plane passed overhead, drowning out the sound of her scream.

"Just
hold on," a man was
saying, his hand firmly wrapped around her
wrist. "I won't let you fall."

"Sloan,"
she said, trying to make the man understand. "I have to help Sloan and
Ben."

"Everyone's
fine," the soothing voice told her. To someone else he said, "Get her
right arm. OK, on three. One. Two. Three."

She
was hauled onto the rocky surface like a dead fish, laid out flat on her
stomach. She lifted her head. About twenty feet away from her stood her Ford
Mustang. "Where am I?"

"Lady,
the question is where have you been? We've been searching this canyon for days
without a trace of you. How the hell did you wind up here?"

Mary
Grace sat up and tried to figure out where she was. Tears welled up. Oak Creek
Canyon. They were sitting on the Bridge to Somewhere Else.

"The
year. What year is it?" She grabbed at the state trooper with a bloody
hand.

"Jeez,"
he said looking at her hand. "Can you bend it?"

"The
year," she screamed again. "What year is it?" How long had he
said they'd looked for her? Days? But she'd been gone weeks. Weeks in the year
1894. "What day? What's the goddamn date?"

The
troopers exchanged looks. The one holding on to her pulled the lower lids of
her eyes down like a doctor would. She couldn't imagine what he was looking
for.

"I
think we better get her to the medical center, Harold. She's pretty cut up
and..." He looked at her as if he didn't want to upset her with the fact
that she was crazy.

Through
gritted teeth she asked him again. "Today's date. What is it?"

"April
the tenth, I think. The tenth, right Harold?"

Mary
Grace looked up at Harold. He was just a silhouette against the sun. He didn't
contradict his partner.

"But
I left on the third," she said. Seven days. She shook her head in
confusion. Was she looking for it to make sense? Well, what difference did it
make? She was going right back. Wrenching her arm away from the trooper, she
made a move for the edge, only to be hauled back.

"Whoa!
Careful there," the trooper warned. "You want to fall down again? You
might not be so lucky the next time." He inched them back toward the
highway, Mary Grace's bottom skimming the rocks, the trooper crouching beside
her.

What
was she doing? Her stomach lurched and her head spun. Seven days? In another
century? It must have been a dream. She must have been like Dorothy in
Munchkinland. Certainly she could have banged her
head,
must
have banged
her head when she fell. She could have landed on a ledge and been
unconscious....

They
were helping her to their jeep, and she went along limply. Every muscle in her
body ached. She felt beaten and bruised. Her jeans were torn at the knees, her
shirtsleeve was separating from the shoulder. The skin she could see peeking
through was caked with dried blood.

With
a trooper on either side of her, they half dragged, half carried her to their
jeep and put her in the backseat. One of the troopers went around to the other
side and climbed in next to her, encouraging her to lean against him.
"You're safe now. That must have been some hell out there in the canyons.
How did you miss all the people looking for you?"

She
thought about the Tates. "I didn't want to be found. Not until I got Ben
back."

"The
Weaver kid? Hey, they found him in Sedona. Not ten miles from here. You'd a
probably found him yourself if you hadn't taken that fall. It was all over the
news. They used the map from your car to find him."

Benjamin
Weaver. That was why she'd come to Sedona in the first place. Everything else
must have been just a dream. It must have been. Because if it was the present,
and of course it was, then Sloan and the baby were already dead. Long gone even
if they lived to ripe old ages. And a hundred years away from her, in any
event. "It's 1994, right?"

"Yeah,"
the trooper assured her. "Maybe you'd better just rest." He shifted
his weight under her and patted her hand. "Step on it, Harold. She don't
look so good to me."

They
radioed ahead, and by the time they pulled into the hospital's emergency room,
a crowd of photographers had gathered. Mary Grace had no statement to
make, and
several nurses whisked her quickly into a little curtained cubicle.

One
began unbuttoning her blouse, another stood by with a chart asking her
questions. Name, age, address, Blue Cross, Blue Shield? She wasn't sure how
many she answered. The light in the little room was blinding, the noise beyond
the curtain deafening.

When
the nurse who had unbuttoned her blouse tried to remove it, Mary Grace grabbed
at the edges and hugged it to her body.

"It's
freezing in here," she said. "Isn't it?" she asked when the
nurse seemed surprised by her complaint.

"Honey,
after all that time in the desert I'd think seventy-five degrees would feel
pretty damn good." She reached for a thermometer while she complained
about energy-saving regulations. "Slip this under your tongue, honey.
Maybe you got a fever."

Then
she pulled once again at the ragged blouse, and Mary Grace felt herself let go
of it and allowed the nurse to help her into a blue hospital gown. With a nurse
on either side, she was half lifted, half assisted onto the high gurney and was
assured a doctor would see her soon. Then she was left alone.

To
shield her eyes from the light, she threw one arm across her face and tried to
find a comfortable position in which to lie still. It felt as though she were
still lying on a bed of rocks. Everything hurt—her back, her shoulders, her
hand.

"Do
you want to report any crime?" a voice asked, startling her. Mary Grace
put her arm down and looked at the pretty young nurse by her side. Her badge
said she was N. Rivera, R.N. A gentle hand rubbed Mary Grace's arm.

Kidnapping,
attempted rape, murder, horse stealing— the list went on and on. You couldn't
call a nightmare a crime. "No."

"The
doctor will be in to see you in a minute," Miss Rivera said. "Let's
just get you out of the rest of your things, if you're sure there isn't
anything you need to tell me."

So
they'd left her jeans on for evidence, if they needed any. Within her there
might just be evidence all right, but what would it prove? Did DNA change in a
hundred years? If it had happened, was the proof of Sloan's lovemaking still
there?

"Miss
O'Reilly?" The nurse was watching her closely. She could be a medical
wonder, like that E.T. character of Steven Spielberg's. And like him she was
beginning to feel like an alien, trapped in a time and place in which she
didn't belong.

"Would
you like to tell me what happened?" the nurse said. Her voice was
soothing, almost conspiratorial. As if it could be their secret. "If you
like, I can ask Dr. Leeman to wait."

"No,"
Mary Grace said, her voice barely audible. "There's nothing to tell. I'd
like to use the bathroom, though."

"But..."
the nurse began hesitantly.

"I
wasn't raped," Mary Grace said. "I wasn't attacked. I just want to go
to the bathroom and then go home. Please."

The
nurse shrugged and then gestured toward the curtain. "But hurry. Dr.
Leeman isn't going to like this."

The
bathroom was a modern wonder, all stainless steel and automatic. There were no
handles on the sink, no flusher on the toilet. What had she done for the past
four days?

She
lowered her jeans, and a small antique gun clattered on the ceramic floor. She
picked it up as though she had never seen it before, turning it over and over
in her hands before clutching it to her breast.
I was there. I
was there,
and Sloan Westin loved me.
She'd forgotten all about the derringer. She
stared at the hundred-year-old gun and wondered if anyone would believe her if
she told them where she'd gotten it. She had trouble believing it herself.
Giving up the dream was painful. Giving up the reality was unbearable. She slid
down the wall to the cold tile floor and cried. She cried for Sloan, and Ben,
and she cried for herself.

Eventually,
she pried off her boots and slipped the gun into the left one, then emerged
from the bathroom in the hospital gown Miss Rivera had given her, carrying her
belongings. It seemed to her as if everyone was moving quickly around her and
she was caught in some slow-motion mode. She dragged her feet back to her
little curtained area and carefully placed her clothing on the chair beside her
bed. A litany chanted over and over in her head.
I
want my family. I
want to go home.