Magical Weddings (90 page)

“Not that I’m aware of,” I said, smiling at Molly’s hopeful voice. “What does Darius say?”

“He just wants me to be happy, and I want him to be happy, so he’s fine. It’s not like he has family to invite either. Well, except Cynthia and Laura, and they don’t know they’re related anyway.”

Cynthia and Laura, two widowed senior ladies, were Darius’s great-great-nieces, though they did not know it. Neither Molly nor Darius thought it wise to try and explain that he had somehow traveled through time from 1880. Since they had moved to Florida with the proceeds from the sale of their lovely Victorian house to Molly, the point was moot anyway.

“Do you, Darius Blake Ferguson, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife? To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?” The minister gazed benevolently upon the couple.

“I do,” Darius said in his deep voice. The love shining from his face almost brought tears to my eyes, and I didn’t consider myself a particularly emotional person.

Maybe that was my problem. Maybe that was why Brad had left me. I didn’t think he’d found someone else so much as he had just fallen out of love with me. If he had met someone, I didn’t know about it, and that was just as well.

“I don’t know what to say, honey,” Brad had said one night shortly after I returned to Seattle from visiting Molly in Iowa. “I love you, you know I do, but I’m just not in love with you anymore.”

To his credit, his eyes had been moist. I had no doubt he had once loved me, or thought he did, and I could see that he felt awful about what he was saying.

But I was too practical, too much my father’s daughter. A retired math professor, my father was a sensible and logical man, his only whimsy the woman he had married, my artist mother.

At least I had once been practical. Now, watching Molly swear undying love for Darius, I wondered what had happened to my realistic, no-nonsense self.

Time traveling. That’s what had happened. I had seen Darius and Molly disappear before my eyes, with Molly reappearing five days later to tell me she had traveled back to 1880. I believed her, and it had explained every odd thing I had noticed about the particularly old-fashioned man she was now marrying.

I don’t know if I would have told Brad about Molly and Darius. I suspected not, but I never got the chance. With a sad face, he had moved out of our apartment and out of my life.

I had cried—in a practical way. Wasn’t that what one did at the end of an engagement, of a planned future? Now, tears formed in my eyes as I watched Darius slip a ring onto Molly’s left hand.

The breeze caught my dark ponytail and whipped it across my face. I pushed my hair from my face and cleared my throat. Perhaps it was the wind that irritated my eyes and made them tear up.

Molly didn’t know about Brad leaving me, and I had no intention of ruining her happy moment. She would have been so unhappy for me, and I thought she deserved happiness. She and Darius had been through a lot over the past month.

“You may kiss the bride,” the minister said with a toothy grin. I looked away when they kissed.

A tombstone caught my eye, and I stared at it for a moment. The sun seemed to shine more brightly upon it than the surrounding stones, and I wondered if that was an illusion of the particular type of rock used in the headstone.

I looked up at the sun, but a cloud passed in front of it at that moment. I looked down at the marker again. Still, it stood out among its fellow stones.

I almost fell over as Molly flung herself at me.

“We did it!” she squealed. “We’re married!” She hugged me tightly and jumped up and down.

“Congratulations, you two!” I said breathlessly. “I’m so happy for you!”

“Thank you,” Darius said with a beaming smile. He turned to thank the minister, who watched them with a matching smile.

“I can’t believe it,” Molly whispered as she linked her arm in mine. “Nothing went wrong. We’re really married! I’m so happy!”

“You deserve to be happy, Molly. Both of you do. Goodness knows, you’ve worked for it!” I bit my lip. Now was not the time to remind Molly of all that had gone wrong and could have gone wrong in their courtship—least of which was that Darius was not in fact a ghost after all, as Molly had once believed. That would have been my first conclusion too had I met a man from another century in a cemetery.

Marriage to a ghost had a whole set of problems that Darius and Molly would not now have to face—children, immortality for only one, even the act of physical love. My face reddened, and I shook my head.

Molly didn’t see. Her eyes were on Darius.

“Yes, we did, didn’t we? But everything is all right now.”

The minister said good-bye and headed for his car parked near the front gate of the cemetery.

Darius wrapped his arm around Molly, kissed her cheek and turned to me.

“Shall we go home?” he asked. Turquoise eyes sparkled as he grinned.

Knowing this moment would come, I had brainstormed what I might do. Return to the house with them...on their honeymoon night? Drive down to Council Bluffs and check into a hotel for a few days? Sleep in my rental car?

“Listen, you two,” I began. “I think I’m going to drive down to Council Bluffs and get a room for a few nights. You know, give you all some space.” My cheeks flamed.

Molly blinked and started to protest.

“Nonsense,” Darius said, his smile disappearing. “Of course, you must do no such thing. You will stay with us.”

It had not been my intent to take the smiles from their faces, but that is just what I had done. So, I lied.

“I already made plans to stay with Debi,” I said. “Debi is an old school friend. I visited her when we first came here.” I directed my explanation to Darius. I really had no intention of staying with Debi. One visit with her the previous month had been enough to show me that we now had different values. She had married a very conservative man and had adopted many of his dogmatic views.

Debi had attended college with me in Seattle, and we had either been very liberal or very young. I still didn’t know which. For all that I had a good sound practical streak in me, thanks to my father, I had grown up in one of the most broadminded cities in the United States. So, no Debi for me.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were going to see Debi,” Molly said. “Are you sure, Sara?”

“Absolutely sure! I’ll see you two in a few days,” I said. I ignored the emptiness that now welled up inside me, attributing it to the emotion of the wedding and a normal sense of loss at the end of a relationship. Nothing to worry myself about—it was just something to live through.

“You’re not leaving now, are you?” Molly asked.

“Yes. I put an overnight bag in the car, and I’ll head out when I get back to the house.”

“You are most welcome to stay, Sara,” Darius said. And he could say that. Although technically Molly owned the house, it was Darius who had built it.

“I know. Thank you, Darius. I’ll be back in a few days.”

“Let us return to the house,” he said. He offered us his arms. Molly slipped her hand under his arm, but I laced my hands behind me.

“You two go ahead. I think I’m going to hang around here for a while, study the tombstones. It’s so peaceful here.”

Molly’s eyebrows shot up. She was the cemetery lover, not I. She was the one who had wanted to come to Iowa to go cemetery hopping in search of ancestors. I had only accompanied her. I knew she was surprised, and frankly, so was I. But something was compelling me to stay. I wanted to take a closer look at the tombstone that had caught my eye.

“No, really.” I laughed at her doubtful expression. “I saw a headstone that I want to check out. I’ll be back in a few minutes, and I’ll toot my horn before I leave the house.”

Molly blushed.

“You can come in, you know.”

“Sure,” I said with a knowing grin. Even Darius’s cheeks bronzed. “Go ahead now! Shoo!”

Molly’s lips lifted in a responding smile, and she turned to walk with Darius back to the house, just a half mile from the cemetery. I watched them walk away—Molly so tiny in white satin and Darius tall in a black suit, the pair resembling the topper on a wedding cake. In some ways, I was sad they weren’t on their way to a boisterous reception of family and friends, but I knew that wouldn’t work. They were happiest together and had eyes only for each other.

I watched them disappear from view, and I turned around to look for the tombstone I had seen earlier. I located it almost immediately. The sunlight caught the white marble stone as if highlighting it for me to find.

I walked over to it and studied the inscription.

Jonas Ramsey. Born 1855, died 1881, aged 26 years, 4 mos, 3 days. Rest in peace.

That was it. No beloved father, husband, son, relative inscription of any sort. Jonas had been born, died way too young, and someone wished for him to rest in peace. There was no other information to tell me about Jonas, and for some strange reason, I wanted to know more.

I lifted the hem of my flowery suitable-for-weddings sleeveless, knee-length summer dress and knelt down in front of the stone. Laying my palm flat on its surface, I felt not cold marble but a warm smooth texture, as if someone had baked and hardened silk.

As I marveled at the feel of the stone, a tingling began in my hand, and I saw it growing translucent. I tried to pull my hand away, but couldn’t. It seemed to be stuck there. I felt no pain, but the tingling spread up my arm and throughout my body.

Instinctively, I planted my other hand on the stone to push myself away. I had seen this before. Darius and Molly had vanished by a similar sort of evaporation.

“No!” I screamed. “No!” A myriad of colors exploded in front of my eyes, and I felt as if I were falling off some sort of precipice! I screamed again, but could only whisper.

“Molly! Darius!” I wanted to shout.

Blackness descended.

****

I opened my eyes and pushed myself up on my arms. I was sprawled out on the grass, my skirt far too high above my knees. I pulled my dress down and looked around. Where was the stone? Where were the long rows of tombstones that had once graced the cemetery?

The wind blew through the trees, small oak saplings that bore little resemblance to the massive trees in the cemetery. I rose to stand for a better view of the cemetery, but it no longer resembled such. Long feather grass drifted lazily in the wind around only a few tombstones.

I hardly needed a knock over the head to tell me that I had traveled back in time, but to when? I ran over to the nearest tombstones as if they could tell me. The first one I reached startled me, making the knot in my stomach hurt even more than it already did.

Molly Hamilton

28 years 2 mos 4 dys

Born 1 April 1851 Died 5 June 1879

Beloved Daughter

Across the Winds of Time

You Will Always Live On

It was moments before I realized that wasn’t my sister’s tombstone. Molly had tried to explain that she and this Molly were the same person, that Molly had died but had somehow been reborn in my sister, but I couldn’t grasp the concept, and frankly, I didn’t think Molly could either. Nevertheless, here it was. My sister told me that Darius had this tombstone erected when he traveled back in time, but I hadn’t seen it for myself.

I knew that Darius had traveled back to 1880, so it must have been 1880 or later. No matter what the year though, I had to find a way back. I could not be stuck in 1880 without running water, electricity, computers and cars. Did they have running water?

I whirled around, looking for Jonas Ramsey’s tombstone. The meadow was disorienting in the absence of rows of tombstones or the massive oak tree under which the iron bench had been placed and under which Molly and Darius married. I didn’t know which way to turn. A quick check of the other markers revealed that Jonas was not among them.

However I had traveled in time, Jonas Ramsey’s tombstone had been the catalyst. No bolt of lightening had hit me. No beam of sunshine had transported me to 1880. But if I couldn’t find Jonas’s tombstone, how could I return to my own time?

The dread I had been keeping at bay threatened to engulf me in terror, and I fought against it. I had to think.

I turned in the direction of where Darius’s house had stood. Was it still there? The trees, still in their infancy, did not block the view, and I could see part of a gleaming Victorian house in the distance.

“Yes!” I muttered. “It’s there. Maybe Darius is there!”

I ran toward the entrance to the cemetery. No iron gate marked it as it did in the future. I hurried along a rutted and narrow dirt road that had never been graded. I reached the entrance to the house and stopped.

The house gleamed brightly, appearing to have been freshly painted in a coat of light gray with white trim. I ran up the entrance and onto the porch to knock on the door.

No one answered immediately, and I knocked again impatiently. I had no idea who would answer the door or what I would say when they did open the door, but I would face that when it happened.

My knocks went unanswered, and I did that thing no one wanted anyone to do. I moved over to the window and peeked in. The house looked the same and yet different. For one, it was devoid of not only Molly’s modern couches but any furniture at all.

I knew Darius’s house had burnt down in 1880 and he had rebuilt it when he traveled to the past. Could this be the rebuilt house? Could Darius already have returned to the future? Was I truly alone in the nineteenth century?

I turned away and stared out at the garden. The massive hedges, which separated the house from the road in the future, were now nothing more than small bushes. The tall oak trees gracing the garden in the twenty-first century were now in their infancy, just as they were in the cemetery.

I lowered myself to the porch step, rested my elbows on my knees and dropped my face into my hands. Staring at my grass-stained blue flats, I wondered what I was going to do.