Page 63 of Borrowed Time

The outside of the envelope only said “Miss Prewitt,” but I recognized Jeremiah’s heavy black handwriting right away. Seth lifted an eyebrow and I nodded, letting him know we could discuss the note once we were both safely upstairs.

By that point, we’d pretty much settled on his hotel room as our base of operations, so we went there directly after making sure there was no one in the upstairs hallway to watch us go in together. Once he’d closed the door, Seth said, “Jeremiah?”

I nodded, even as I ran a fingernail under the flap of the envelope to open it so I could remove the note inside.

Just a few words.

Friday is my nephew Clay’s birthday, and Mrs. Barton will be over at my brother Samuel’s house helping with preparations. Her chocolate cake is Clay’s favorite. Because of this, we should have an uninterrupted several hours before I will be needed to attend the party. Please be at the house at one o’clock that afternoon.

No signature…not that I needed one. And also no request that I should contact him if we couldn’t make it to his house on Friday afternoon. Instead, he’d made this sound pretty much like a command performance.

Which was fine by me. After my conversation with Seth earlier today, I was even more anxious to get back home. I could guilt myself however I wanted over his choice to come to the future with me rather than go back to live in 1926, but he’d made his decision clear, and I wouldn’t argue with it, not when I knew it was the one I’d secretly been hoping for.

Even if I would never have asked him directly to do such a thing for me.

And now that we knew what we needed to do, I just wanted to get my talent properly wrangled so we could go on with our lives.

“One o’clock Friday at Jeremiah’s house,” I told Seth, who’d been hovering nearby but was being polite enough not to look over my shoulder.

“I wish it were tomorrow,” he said, and I lifted my shoulders.

“Me, too, but that’s when Mrs. Barton is going to be out of the house. I guess it’s Samuel’s son’s birthday, and she’s helping with the cake.”

Seth’s mouth twisted a little. “I have to hope the boy takes after his mother and not his father.”

I hoped so, too, although a few of my mother’s comments on the subject of Clay Wilcox had indicated he was definitely a handful. However, she’d also been quick to say he was just a lively kid and not actually bad.

Since she’d worked with him on a daily basis for several weeks while I’d never even laid eyes on the boy, I’d have to take her word for it.

“Whatever he’s like, I assume he’ll be preoccupied on Friday…and that means his parents should be, too,” I said. “It sounds as though Jeremiah will be going to the party right after our session, so I think we’ll be able to get back to the hotel without anyone noticing.”

Seth only nodded. Although he hadn’t come out and said it directly, I could tell he was worried that my time-travel giftmight slip again and that I wouldn’t be able to hit the target I was aiming for.

While I admired his discretion, I couldn’t be too upset with him over those fears, not when the same ones were currently plaguing my brain. I knew Jeremiah had picked that time because Mrs. Barton would be out of the house and we would be able to work without interruption — well, at least until Jacob came home a little after three, unless he was also going over to his cousin’s house — but it didn’t feel as if we had much margin for error.

This could be tricky.

Jeremiah had sounded as though he was pretty much telling us when and where to be, so I didn’t much see the point in sending back a reply. It was possible he’d decided it was better to keep the back-and-forth to a minimum, which I couldn’t really argue with.

Since Seth was still watching me, expression worried, I summoned a smile and said, “It’s going to be fine. Honestly, the hardest part will probably be trying to figure out what to do with ourselves while we’re waiting to go to Jeremiah’s on Friday.”

And it was a decent chunk of time — the rest of this afternoon and all day tomorrow, not to mention Friday morning. Not for the first time, I reflected that my mother had had an easier time of it, just because she’d had a real job while she was here in 1884 Flagstaff, and that meant most of her days had been occupied…along with a chunk of her weekends, if her comments about the amount of homework she’d had to grade hadn’t been blown out of proportion.

Well, we’d figure out something. If we had to wander all over downtown and talk to each and every merchant in our pretend quest to get more information about the missing “Eliza,” so be it. Honestly, we probably should have been doing more of that, except after we’d exhausted all the people who’d had any sort ofmeaningful interactions with my mother, there hadn’t seemed to be much point.

And of course, Seth and I could also steal away to Lockett Meadow as long as the weather held. While we were there, I truly felt as if we’d hidden ourselves in a special sanctuary no one else knew about. At least not yet — my father was very interested in local history, so I thought I remembered that the area hadn’t even been mapped until 1889, years after we’d been standing there. As long as the snow stayed away, we could always go back to the meadow to give ourselves some much-needed privacy. It had been chilly, but my wool cloak helped a lot to keep me from freezing, as did all my various layers of clothing. I had no idea how women had survived in these sorts of dresses before the advent of air conditioning, but in November, my heavy bustle gowns were more of a blessing than a curse.

“We could always talk to more people,” Seth said, his suggestion echoing what had passed through my head just a moment earlier. “We know it’s a waste of time, but at least it’ll keep up appearances.”

“And that’s what this is all about, I suppose,” I replied, and valiantly fought back a sigh. “We might as well do that to use up the afternoon, and we’ll figure out tomorrow, tomorrow.”

He looked much more cheerful than our circumstances warranted, but I knew he was doing whatever he could to keep my spirits up. “That sounds like a good enough plan.”

I went over to him and looped my arms through his. “Then let’s get going. Who knows? We might actually turn up something useful.”

Maybe the slightest twist of his mouth, one which told me he wasn’t so sure about that, but he didn’t contradict me. No, we headed out of the room and down the stairs, and swept out the front door of the hotel as if we had the most important business in the world to conduct.

Fake it ’til you make it,I thought with an inner smile.

---