Page 9 of Timeless

Eventually, she had five surnames that would work, and she probably wouldn’t need all of them. She paired them with the bride, groom, and the woman whom she’d decided to make the best friend of the bride andnota relative, for obvious reasons, and she stood back to say them out loud to herself. She had to know how they would all sound when spoken. It was true that there would be author readings and an audiobook, but this was more for her than for either of those purposes.

“Harriet,” she said softly to herself.

It felt right to have the maid of honor’s name be Harriet. Abby didn’t understand why, but she liked how it rolled off her tongue. It actually made her smile.

“Deborah,” she said next.

She didn’t like that name as much for the bride, but for some reason, she didn’t want to change it, either. She’d neverbeen a big fan of her own name but had no real reason not to be. Abigail was just a pretty standard name around these parts, and she’d had three other Abbys in her school class alone. She’d been Abby B. to help them know when people were talking to her. Deborah seemed pretty standard, too, and she knew she’d keep it, but there was something about it that felt pushed on her, which she couldn’t explain. It was as if someone had named her after someone else and hadn’t allowed her to have any nicknames.

“Your name is Deborah. Not Deb or Debbie. Why do you insist on making everything in this life, even your own name, so difficult?”she said to herself as one of her future characters.

And that was it. She understood part of the story now. So, Abby sat down at her desk, opened her laptop, and instead of outlining the book, she began with chapter one.

CHAPTER 5

1935

She’d been named after a cow, her father’s favorite cow on the farm when he’d been growing up. Debbie had survived the famine, the dust storms, the disease that had taken so many of the farm’s animals just when they’d needed them the most, the– Well, everything that could’ve hit a struggling farm. She’d been the last cow standing, and once her grandfather had found a bull to mate her with, Debbie had given them a calf. Things had gotten a bit better for her father and the family farm then, and when he’d later met and married her mother, and she’d had their only child, he’d chosen her name. It was Deborah. Her mom had told her once that that was the only way she’d agreed to let the man name her child after a cow. Debbie had been the cow. Sometimes, they’d called her Deb, too, so their daughter would be Deborah andonlyDeborah. He’d never be allowed to call her Deb or Debbie, and as Deborah grew up, she’d been forbidden from doing the same thing.

“Why do you insist on making everything in this life, even your own name, so difficult? Your name is Deborah, not Deb or Debbie.” Her mother sighed. “Today, when you commit yourself to your husband, the preacher isn’t going to ask you if you, Deb or Debbie, want to make him your husband. He’s going to ask if you, Deborah Mary Wilson, want to make John David Stevens your husband.”

She’d always felt more like a Deb than Deborah or even Debbie and had asked her friends to call her Deb. Her family, though, she knew not to bother asking at all. Her mother had a long reach and wouldn’t permit it, but her friends from school would call her by the name she preferred whenever they were alone.

“Mama, I like Deb.”

“I know you do. But you know I’m not about to allow that preacher to call you that in church when you’re standing up before God and making your commitment to John,” she said as she continued to fuss over the hand-me-down wedding dress.

It had first belonged to Deborah’s grandmother. She’d made it herself with her own mother’s help. Then, Deborah’s mother had worn it, too, making no tweaks to the dress at all outside of bringing in the waist slightly because she’d been a bit smaller. Now, for Deborah, she’d had to make several tweaks to it because where her grandmother and mother had been pretty small-chested, Deborah had larger breasts. She also had more curves, which her mom blamed on spoiling her too much with food that she didn’t always have as a young girl.

Deborah didn’t see a problem with being a little larger than some of the girls around town. She’d seen a few pictures, and the women in those were about her size, if not a little bigger, and they were Hollywood stars. Deborah didn’t wish that she could be one of them, but shedidwish that her parents permitted her to do her writing, which they’d told her she’d need to stop once she was married because soon after that, she’d be welcoming children, and the rest of her days would be spent taking care of them and her husband.

“You’d have no time for that, anyway,” her mother had said when she’d asked if she could submit something to their local newspaper. “Better to just stop it now. I’m surprised John David even lets you do it still. Probably just waiting until you’re actually his wife to tell you to stop.”

Deb stared at herself in the old floor-length mirror, which had been a gift from her grandmother to her mother upon her wedding. She wondered if her mother would give it to her today as well, the start of yet another tradition that would now be Deb’s responsibility to maintain. The others included marrying a good man, whom she didn’t love, to help save the farm, having his children, and preferably, sons, to keep the farm in the family, being a good wife, just like hermother had been, cooking and cleaning while rearing children at the same time, and eventually, sitting on the front porch of the farmhouse, watching her grandchildren play for the few minutes a day that they got to be children before they had to help on the farm, too.

Everything in her mother’s life had been in service of her parents, her husband, and this farm. Deb’s life had been in service of her parents, the farm, and now, her husband. She would become a wife today, which meant that tonight, their wedding night, she would have to do something with John David that she never wanted to do with him or any other man. She’d have to share herself, something that was supposed to be reserved for a loving marriage, according to God. Of course, God, apparently, demanded that marriage also be between a man and a woman, which meant that she’d never have what she really wanted, whom she really loved.

“Mother, my dress is fine,” Deb said.

“This is your wedding day; you need to be perfect. And the church is always hot. I don’t want you to look like some wilted flower up there.” She pulled and tugged at Deb’s hair, which Deb had always wanted to cut shorter, but that was simply out of the question.

Her mother had put it into a braid for her and wrapped it up in the back, but there were some flyaways that needed tending to, so she licked her hand and used her spit to tame some of them down before she finally stood back and took a look at Deborah, who felt horribly awkward in this dress.

“Well, that’s the best I can do. We’ve got to get to the church now. The preacher will be mad if we’re late.”

“Can I have a minute to myself, Mama?” she asked.

“What do you need that for?”

“Mama, I’m about to be married.”

“So?”

“So, that means that tonight…”

Her mother nodded and said, “You’re worried about your wedding night?”

“Yes,” she replied.