Wildwood Creek (18 page)

“I can still help you. . . .” Stewart took a quick step forward, blocking my path. Suddenly, I felt bad about leaving him there. He’d become so involved in the project through the research and now he was just . . . out. “I found materials pertaining to Bonnie Rose . . . I think. I have them on order. You know I have access to private collections all over the planet—letters, old newspapers, census reports. Unpublished accounts. I have even secured a reproduction copy of Jane Eyre for you via eBay. Leather bound. Published only a dozen years or so before Bonnie Rose’s time period. It would have been the reading of the day, and Jane’s story may well be much like Bonnie Rose’s. Brontë’s work does not shy away from the brutal realities of life in the era.”

There was no way I could hang around and look at whatever Stewart had found, and the fact that he’d now bought something on eBay made me feel that much more guilty. “I’d love to see it, Stewart, but I can’t stay. If I’m not back soon, I’m dead. I wasn’t even supposed to stop by here at all. I’m sorry you went to so much trouble for me. Can you save the eBay receipt? I want to pay you back.”

Brushing hair out of his face, he rushed on, “I could bring things to you there . . . as they come in.” He looked away, his lashes shielding his eyes, his cheeks flushing, the color turning fiery red and extending down his neck.

His crestfallen look sent a wave of guilt splashing my way. “Thanks, Stewart, but it’s not possible. It’s high security
out there, remember? The only way in is through a locked gate . . . unless you want to swim across the lake. The copy of Jane Eyre might get through to me if you sent it via the village post office—if the cover isn’t too modern, that is—but they won’t let the rest of the things through. They’re not appropriate to the period.”

“I could scan and email things to you as I find them.” Dropping his backpack, he squatted over it, his knees poking upward like cricket legs in his black skinny jeans. “Here. Write down your email address on this paper. I’ll keep in touch that way. You can include the appropriate postal address, too.”

My guilt swelled even further. He was so invested in this. “I have to leave my phone in the lockup at the security trailer when I get there. I won’t have any way to check email once go-live starts.” Unconsciously, I laid a hand on my back pocket, where my iPhone lay cuddled close to my body. If I got caught trying to smuggle it into the set, I would be fired and escorted off the premises. Aside from that, Kim would kill me. Her phone was still sitting in the apartment, since I’d completely refused to even consider sneaking it in for her.

If I took Kim’s phone with me now and turned it in at the security trailer, then kept mine with my contraband, no one would ever know. . . .

Before I’d even processed the thought, I was giving Stewart my email address along with the address for the village post office. “You know what . . . send me anything you find in the next few days, and I’ll try to sneak off and check email a few times until the battery dies. But don’t go to a lot of trouble for me, okay?”

“I will be in touch.” Squatting over his backpack again, he carefully replaced the pencil, then began meticulously folding the paper, taking pains to get it perfectly straight each time.

I didn’t wait for him to finish but grabbed Kim’s phone
from the apartment, locked up, and said good-bye before heading for the hills with my iPhone transferred hastily to the little sack of luxuries I intended to strap under my bulky skirt, underskirt, petticoats, and chemise after Stacy helped me get dressed. One of the few advantages of nineteenth-century clothing—you could hide a small pony under there. If Yankee Doodle had been a woman, it would’ve looked like he was walking into town.

———

Even so, later that afternoon as I left the modern age behind in the back of the production trailer, I felt like a drug smuggler hauling in a load of cocaine. My heart leapt up when Tova surprised me on the front steps. The Wal-Mart sack strapped to my leg emitted a plastic rustle and slipped a bit. I made an effort not to look guilty, but I was.

“Everything you asked for from the Berman is in the back of the truck, and the thumb drive is on your desk.” I laid a hand over my skirt, holding the Wal-Mart sack still. “I’m headed down the hill to catch the last of safety class. I went ahead and changed clothes, in case the photographers are down there today. I think Mr. Singh said at yesterday’s meeting that they’d be photographing the training now that everyone’s in costume.”

“I would imagine he’s down there . . . amusing himself in his village,” Tova muttered. I hadn’t yet figured out what Rav and Tova’s relationship was exactly, but it played out on a daily basis like some sort of strange war of the roses. According to Randy, they’d had a
thing
going on for years. I wondered if they still did, or if he wished they did, or if she wished they did, or if they both got some sort of warped satisfaction from the tango between them. Love, hate. Push, pull. Power play. Resistance and surrender.

I wanted no part of it—as a pawn or anything else. If Rav
Singh had brought me into the cast of this project as a way of pulling Tova’s strings, the smartest thing I could do was to steer clear. Not that I had a tender spot for Tova, especially after watching her torture Stacy the past couple of weeks, but having grown up with Lloyd as a stepfather, I had an intense dislike for compulsively controlling men. My mother couldn’t drive to the store without Lloyd checking how many miles she’d put on the car.

“Stacy can see to the boxes.” Tova assessed my costume with narrowed eyes, then she stepped away. “Actually, speaking of photographers, they just called up here from the village, looking for you. Something about media interviews that will be ongoing the next two days, and Rav wants to make certain you take part. As it turns out, the mother of one of your little
pretend
schoolchildren is, herself, a blogger.
The Frontier Woman
, I believe it’s called. Perhaps you’ve heard of her? I hadn’t.” She had the look the evil queen gives the Magic Mirror when it selects Snow White as the
fairest of them all
.

“Oh,” I muttered. I’d heard of
The Frontier Woman
blog. It was written by a former congressional staffer who had fallen in love, married, and moved to a ten-thousand-acre ranch along the shores of Moses Lake. Before we left Austin, Stewart had discovered the blog, and Kim had started reading it as part of her Wildwood research. Occasionally she shared bits of it with me. It was fun reading, but it gave me a healthy appreciation for what can happen to a city girl in the wild country. “I thought we were supposed to be in a media blackout until the end of the summer.”

Tova’s lip curled, flashing shiny white, dimensionally perfect teeth. “As did I. But Rav can never resist a pretty face.” She shooed me toward the steps with an impatient backhand, her gold fingernails glinting in the sun. “Run along
now, Allison—or I guess I should say
Bonnie Rose
—before you get yourself in trouble.”

I didn’t wait for another invitation to leave. I was out of there, holding a wad of skirts, petticoats, and Wal-Mart sack. Most unladylike. The reenactment specialist had taught us that skirts hitched over ankle height in any circumstance were considered a sexual invitation—the measure of a loose woman. Right now I didn’t care, as long as I made it to my quarters with my smuggled goods intact.

Once Tova was out of sight, I stopped to reposition my hidden package, then hurried over the ridge and down the other side to the village. Unfortunately, when I reached the schoolhouse, it was full of children. The historical specialist was teaching them more about 1861 school, while also delving into, judging from the blackboard, the safe handling of lanterns and other open-flame gear. In the front corner, Wren Godley sat by herself, looking bored and sour, as usual.

“Good afternoon, Miss Rose!” The kids broke into chorus as I tried to slip down the side aisle to my apartment door without disturbing their session. Why my quarters didn’t have a rear exit like the empty room next to mine, I had no idea. I’d asked to switch, but I’d been unceremoniously turned down.

Since I’d interrupted the kids already, I stopped and offered a lopsided curtsy. “Good morning, adorable children.”

Several of my favorites giggled.

The Wal-Mart sack crinkled as I straightened up. Alone in the front row, Wren offered a suspicious frown, her blue eyes narrowing above a starscape of freckles.

“Carry on,” I joked and swirled my free hand in the air while sidestepping toward my doorway. The trainer chuckled and shook her head. She’d already figured out how completely unsuited I was to the life of a schoolmarm, being only slightly more mature than the kids myself.

Safely in my room, I peered in both camera holes to make sure they weren’t in live test at the moment, then I looked for places to hide my stash. Places Wren wouldn’t find when she was in the quarters with me.

My smuggled toiletries fit perfectly into a tin that was for storing flour. I rolled up the sneakers in the T-shirt and capris, then tucked them under my quilt between the mattress and the footboard. Plumped up, the feathers settled in around the forbidden items, hiding them nicely.

The iPhone was another matter. It required a safe, snug, dry spot where no one, but no one, would discover it. Being caught with a few contraband toiletries and clothes was one thing—I wouldn’t be the first cast member to be forced to publicly surrender forbidden items to what security lovingly called
the confession box
—but being found with a cell phone was quite another matter. That was a security breach of epic proportions.

I finally settled for turning it off and tucking it underneath a small corner cabinet that held my very modest collection of dishes and foodstuffs. There was a shelf-like gap between the skirting and the slides of the bottom drawer. It seemed almost built for an iPhone, and even with the pink case, the thing was incredibly well hidden.

No one would ever find it there.

I tried to content myself with the idea that I wasn’t just doing this for
me
, I was also doing it for Stewart and for Bonnie Rose. Stewart was so determined to dig up these last bits of information; it seemed wrong to leave him with no place to send them. But more important than that was the conversation I’d had with Rav Singh. The suppositions he’d made about Bonnie Rose seemed so sensationalized, so unfair. I couldn’t shake them from the corners of my mind, and I wanted to disprove them, if I could.

The rationalization cycled in my head, struggling to become truth. It sounded so noble, so justified. Unfortunately, a guilty conscience rumbled louder than I’d ever anticipated it would. All evening it niggled me, and throughout the night I rolled around, listening to coyotes party on the bluff and worrying about what would happen if I got caught with the phone.

It was the first thing on my mind when I dragged myself out of bed in the morning, exhausted and sore. I was cheating.
Cheating.
That wasn’t me. I was the kind of person who did the right thing.

By the time I’d washed my face in the basin and struggled my way into my Bonnie Rose clothes, I was drenched in nervous sweat. Even the toothpaste I’d been so certain I
had
to have left a bad taste in my mouth today. If I couldn’t give up shampoo, Aquafresh, and communication with the outside world, how could I possibly survive this summer?

Kim doesn’t even want to be here anyway, now that she’s in love. Maybe we should just . . . leave. Go home.

And then what?

Move back to Phoenix? Become a clerk in Lloyd’s office? Go for the paralegal degree I didn’t want? Give up on everything I really cared about? Prove that I really was as much of a loser as Mom and Lloyd thought I was?

Letting out a cleansing breath, I flopped down on the bed, hoops and all, and lay there liked a giant, tipped-over bowling pin. I was supposed to do
The
Frontier Woman
interview after breakfast and then gather for cast and crew photos. They’d probably all take one look at me and know I was a cheater-cheater-pumpkin-eater.

I let my eyes fall closed, tried to think.
Calm down. Calm down. You’re making too big a deal of all this.

The air drifting through the cheesecloth screen felt like
heaven, and I knew my mind was slowly succumbing, but I couldn’t help myself. An Irish proverb from the Wall of Wisdom in Moses Lake floated through the last of my consciousness.

A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything.

Maybe . . . just a little catnap. I’d get up again in a few minutes. . . .

———

When I woke, I had no idea how long I’d been there. The nap did help a little. It calmed the panic, and I felt ready again. Confident. Determined. There was no way I was running back home with my tail between my legs. If the real Bonnie Rose could survive here, so could I.

This was the last day we’d be provided food via the grub trailer that had been set up at the end of the street. When go-live started tomorrow, we’d be on our own to manage supplies, cooking, and food preservation. If the trailer was still serving breakfast, I should hustle down there and grab something, then go find Mallory Everson and knock out my
Frontier Woman
interview. After the cast photos at noon, I’d figure out what to do about the phone and . . .

Something caught my eye, bisecting the thought as I passed the window on my way to the water pitcher. I stopped to look out the glass above the cloth screen. There was . . . a guy coming up the path from the creek . . . wearing modern clothes and carrying . . . a black duffel bag? A member of the security team, maybe? They’d been chasing paparazzi and curious locals away for almost three weeks now. It’s not every day an antique town and its citizenry rise out of the backwoods. Word gets around about a thing like that, despite all efforts to keep it quiet. The security guys had their hands full.

I imagined the man outside pointing at my window with
a stern look, saying, “Allie Kirkland, come with me. You’ve been found guilty of breeching the laws of Wildwood.”