Page 61 of Stolen Time
But I didn’t want to think about that too much, because then I’d also start to think about how much I missed them, missed seeing my mother’s silly texts about what color she was thinking of painting the spare bedroom, or the memes my brother would send whenever he came across something he thought would make me laugh. Or how my father would leave books all over the house because my mother had tried and failed years ago to get him to read on a tablet.
The way my sister Jessica had given me all the pieces from her wardrobe that I’d loved the most after she started college and wanted to completely change her image. Maybe that gift had been a little self-serving, since it kept her from having to drag all that stuff to the local charity drop-off, but seventeen-year-old me had been ecstatic.
By that point, the road had really started to climb, and that meant the engine was laboring harder to get us up the steep incline and around those hairpin curves. I decided it was probably better to let our conversation languish until we reached our destination and didn’t have to be shouting over the noiseof the motor, so I instead watched the scenery as it passed, reflecting on how much it looked like what I’d see from the highway in my own time. Sure, the road signs were different, and the asphalt and the markings on it weren’t quite the same, but the scrubby junipers and dry grass, the occasional spiky agave plant that leaned precariously off a cliff edge — those didn’t seem to have changed a bit over the intervening hundred-plus years.
Seth slowed down as we came to the picnic area so he could turn off onto one of the gravel-paved parking spaces. I reached up to push a few windblown strands of hair back into my cloche hat, glad we were going to be outdoors the whole time so I wouldn’t have to take it off and reveal whatever wreckage might lie underneath.
He took the big hamper of food and the folded blanket that had been concealed underneath, while I grabbed the basket of tarts Ruth had given me. The two of us made our way over to the same flat piece of ground where we’d had our picnic the week before, and he set down the hamper so he could spread out the blanket.
With all that managed, we went ahead and seated ourselves, and he started pulling out all kinds of goodies — yummy little meat pies, more of his mother’s amazing fried chicken, potato salad, a bowl of cut-up fruit, some cornbread muffins and darling little bitty jars of butter and honey.
“Do you really expect me to eat all this?” I asked with a grin. “I mean, I’ll do my best, but — ”
He only chuckled. “I told my mother she might be overdoing things, but she didn’t want to hear it. I think she might still be a little giddy from the news about Charles’s engagement.”
I supposed I could understand that. While witch clans tended to be fairly egalitarian — some more than others, since I’d heard a few horror stories about how things were run in the Wilcoxclan before Connor came along, way before I was even born — still, to have a son become the consort of theprima-in-waiting was no small thing. Seth’s immediate family had gained a little more standing in their clan, even if no one might want to admit such a thing out loud.
“When I’m giddy, I go shopping rather than cook,” I commented, and Seth only lifted his shoulders.
“I have to admit that shopping sounds like more fun,” he said. “But then, I’m not my mother.”
No, he wasn’t. He was definitely all man — not macho beefcake man, but someone who could be strong and gentle at the same time, who ticked a whole hell of a lot of boxes I hadn’t even realized I wanted on my checklist for the perfect partner.
Well, except for the part where he wasn’t even from my own time, but considering all his other sterling qualities, I was just fine with putting that small detail aside, especially since it didn’t seem as if I had much chance of getting back to the twenty-first century and needed to make my peace with staying here.
For a moment or two, we were both quiet as we loaded up our plates. Seth poured some water from a bottle he’d brought along with the food. The sun melted behind Mingus, casting the picnic area in shadow, even though everything in the valley below was still bright and golden except the line of dark cottonwoods that marked the path of the Verde River as it wound through the landscape.
Despite the loss of sunlight, the air was still warm enough, and probably would be for a while, considering how long the days were right now with the solstice only a few weeks off. I wondered how the McAllisters of this time celebrated the year’s longest day, whether they gathered in their robes on the promontory just east of downtown as they did in the twenty-first century, or whether they had to perform their observances insecret, surrounded as they were by people who had no idea they were witches at all.
Even if I stayed here that long, I knew I wouldn’t get to see what they were doing, not when they thought I was an ordinary civilian.
“I was wrong,” I said, and Seth blinked at me, a little startled. Smiling a little at his confusion, I added, “I thought your mother’s fried chicken was the best thing I’ve ever eaten, but these meat pies just might have it beat.”
An amused light flickered in his eyes. “I’ll let her know,” he replied. “She used to make them for me all the time when I first started at the mine — needed to make sure I was getting the proper nourishment during a hard day’s work.” Something of the cheeriness in his expression faded as he added, “I suppose she won’t need to worry about that so much now that I’m working at the store instead.”
It seemed obvious to me that he wasn’t as thrilled about being back at McAllister Mercantile as he would have liked me — or anyone else — to believe. On the surface, you would have thought that working at the shop would be a lot less physically taxing than being at the mine all day, but I had a feeling that wasn’t the whole story. Working for United Verde, he’d been able to be his own person, not just an extension of the family business. Things had changed, though, and he was probably trying to find his way to a new normal.
“Oh, I’m sure she’d make them for you if you asked,” I said, trying to keep my tone light.
He nodded and looked a little more cheerful. “Probably. Then again, she made so many for this picnic that I’ll probably be eating them for days anyway.”
I couldn’t help laughing at that mental image, and the tense moment seemed to fade away, replaced by his remembrances of Thanksgiving feasts past, and all the wonderful things hismother made on a regular basis. Hearing this, I couldn’t help wondering if his particular branch of the McAllisters was connected to Rachel in some way. Stepping back her duties at the store hadn’t meant she planned to cut back on her cooking at the same time, and I’d often been the beneficiary of one of her too-large pots of chili or soup, or an extra pan of lasagna because she’d just gotten “carried away” in the kitchen and needed someone else to help her finish it.
Problem was, I hadn’t made a huge study of McAllister genealogy, so I had no real idea who in 1926 was connected to whom. All right, I knew that Ruby had just been born, and that meant her mother must have been Angela’s great-great-aunt, but beyond that, it was pretty much a muddle.
The important thing, I supposed, was that I wasn’t related to any of them, and therefore my relationship with Seth wasn’t a problem…well, besides the part where he’d come from an entirely different time than mine.
Eventually, we were both so full we couldn’t eat another bite, and we put the leftovers away in the hamper and the basket, then set them on the back seat of his convertible. By then, dusk had truly fallen, and, despite being from Flagstaff and generally comfortable with wandering around in the woods, I was glad I had Seth there with me. Somehow, this forest felt much deeper and darker than what I was used to, most likely because civilization seemed a lot farther away in 1926 than it did in my own time.
“Look,” he said, and pointed eastward through a break in the trees. “The moon’s just coming up.”
So it was. Huge and yellow, it had begun to push its way upward from the plateau to the east. Not high enough yet to cast any real light, and yet something about it still caught my breath, made me stand there in wonder.
Seth’s hand stole into mine. “I’m glad we could watch this together,” he murmured.
I was glad, too. Or at least, the warmth that went through me as we stood there, fingers entwined, probably had just as much to do with his presence as the magical scene before us.
He shifted, and I did as well, and suddenly, we weren’t gazing at the moon anymore. No, our gazes locked for what felt like an endless moment, until at last his head lowered to mine and I tilted my face to him, mouths growing closer, closer….