Page 53 of Stolen Time

However, while I didn’t know much about the history of dining out in America, I could guess that cuisines from other countries probably weren’t too common in the western states, despite the Chinese food I’d eaten on my first date with Seth. If I ever got home, then I could stuff myself silly with curry or shawarma or pad thai.

In the meantime, the roast chicken plate seemed the best choice if I wanted to avoid anything too heavy.

Seth and I looked up from our menus at almost the same time, and a smile flickered around the edges of his mouth.

“What did you decide on?” he asked.

“The chicken,” I replied.

“Their steaks are very good,” he said, and for a second, I could only stare at him blankly.

Then I realized he was probably trying to hint that I didn’t need to settle for chicken if I was only doing so because I was worried about the cost of the meal. Obviously, he would never come right out and say such a thing aloud.

“I’m sure they are,” I said easily. “But I’ve been eating a lot of heavy food lately. Chicken just sounds better to me tonight.”

At once, he appeared to relax. “Oh, I can understand that, especially with how warm it’s been the past few days.”

I smiled at him in response, and the waiter came over and took our orders. While we were waiting for our food, we chatted about the weather and about his work, how they were planning to start blasting a new open pit for the mine, and how I needed to prepare myself because it could get very loud.

“We do our best to make the pits not too visible from town,” Seth went on. “But there’s not much we can do about the noise.”

Probably not. In my time, you could still see the terraced remnants of the pits as you were driving up toward Jerome from Clarkdale, but once you were in the little settlement itself, youbarely could tell they were there. Yet another thing that hadn’t changed as much as I’d thought it might.

“Thanks for the warning,” I said. “And I suppose it will get dustier, too.”

“Much,” he replied with a grin. “I’m sure you’ll hear Ruth complaining about it — and I have a feeling she’ll put you on dusting duty.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” I said. “I like being able to help.”

While my own family had never subscribed to the “idle hands are the devil’s plaything” mindset, I and my sister and brother still had our fair share of chores to do around the house. My father had been born in the mid-1800s, after all, and even though he’d adapted to modern life remarkably well, he was a little more strict than some of my friends’ parents, and expected his children to do their part to keep the household going, even if the work mostly consisted of emptying the filter on our robot vacuum/mopper rather than getting down on our hands and knees to scrub the floor.

“I like that,” Seth said, his gaze now admiring. “You’re always willing to pitch in. Ruth says you’ve been a big help.”

About all I could do was shrug — well, that, and hope the lighting inside the restaurant was sufficiently dim so he wouldn’t notice the way I blushed. “I’m glad,” I said. “I don’t want to be a burden on her, not after she and Timothy have been so kind about giving me a place to stay.”

Seth looked as though he was about to respond, but the waiter came back with our plates of food, and we had to pause the conversation so we could thank him and get started on our meals. Once again, the lack of any wine to accompany those dishes stood out immediately to me. It just felt weird to eat at a fancy place like this and be drinking only water. Our waiter had offered tea, but unlike a lot of my college friends, I didn’t care todrink caffeinated stuff late in the day unless I wanted to be up all night.

But eventually Seth and I resumed our discussion, not about anything earth-shattering, just more little tidbits about Jerome and the McAllister family.

“And I got a new cousin,” he went on as he reached for a roll from the basket the waiter had brought over. “Little Ruby. She came a bit early, but she’s healthy and happy, so everyone’s excited about that.”

Somehow, I managed to stop myself from startling at that piece of news. I supposed the McAllisters might have had more than one Ruby among their ranks, but some quick mental math told me that no, this had to be the same Ruby who’d beenprimafor years and years, hanging on way past the time when she would have preferred to leave this life and join her late husband, all so she could wait until Angela was ready to take over as head of the clan.

I couldn’t say anything about that, though…just as I’d known I couldn’t warn Seth about how the Great Depression was looming over them all, and that in a few more years, a lot of this bustling prosperity would be gone forever. The McAllisters had weathered the storm all right, just because witch clans had resources that regular people didn’t, but still, that didn’t mean they weren’t in for some rough times, watching as the mine closed and all the people associated with it left, looking for opportunities elsewhere. In the end, Jerome had dwindled to a point where only a hundred or so McAllisters remained, with the rest of them moving to Payson or Prescott or even Wickenburg in an attempt to diversify their holdings and work in places where they could still earn a decent living.

All that had turned around starting in the late 1960s and moving on into the twenty-first century, but it had been touch-and-go there for a while.

“Ruby’s a pretty name,” I said as I reached for my glass of water. “Is it one you use a lot in your family?”

“Not really,” Seth replied. “To be honest, I don’t know where my cousin Miriam got the name from. I suppose she just thought it was pretty, too.”

That made sense — my mother had chosen my name because she’d heard it on a TV show and liked it, and my father had agreed — so I supposed there wasn’t as much difference in choosing baby names between then and now as I might have thought.

Still, it was extremely weird to think of Ruby McAllister, who’d always sounded to me like a somewhat terrifying old woman, as a tiny baby lying in her crib.

At least I knew she had a long, long life ahead of her, with a man she loved and two healthy sons who grew to adulthood and were prominent members of the clan. Maybe she’d been a little sad that she never had a daughter, someone who could carry on her direct line asprima,but according to everything Angela had said about her great-aunt, Ruby had never spoken a word about any regrets over having sons rather than daughters.

Seth and I chatted a little more, and then we were finished with our meals and he quietly handed two dollar bills over to the waiter. I’d been in 1926 long enough to begin to get used to how inexpensive everything was, but it still boggled my mind that we could effectively have a steak dinner at a four-star restaurant for only a couple of bucks.

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