Page 61 of My Heart Will Find You

Etta remembered Henry talking about Sophie’s stage fright, but she also remembered that he said she sang in church. “Make us proud,” Etta said when they were at the door. “Start off with ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee.’”

“How do you know that one?” Sally asked. “It’s from my people.”

“Trust me on this, that song will last through the centuries.”

Pat and Alice went into the church to sit down, but Etta stayed outside. When Sally’s beautiful voice began, people on the street stopped and listened.

Etta thought about a world where music was a rarity. She waved her arms for them to come inside and listen, and they did. Within twenty minutes, there was only standing room.

Bert the lawyer came up the steps and stopped by her. “Cornelia and I... I think we’re a match. I—” He waved his hand. He couldn’t explain. “Thank you.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot.”

“You should. The gossip is rampant. Matchmaking, saving legs, cooking sublimely. People are beginning to say you’re an angel.”

“If only my husband thought that,” Etta muttered.

“Max? But he can’t take his eyes off you.”

“Maybe that means something different in 1870, but in my day—” She cut off. She’d said too much.

“You met him last year?”

“No. This is—” She looked at him. “What is today’s date?”

“The thirtieth of April 1871.”

“Seventy-one?” she said. “Oh no. It can’t be. That’s... I have to go.” She hurried down the steps. Her father had told her that the third of May 1871 was when Wyatt Earp escaped jail.

Wyatt Earp. The man no one except her remembered. Wasthiswhy she was having this very long dream? Was this thing real enough that she was to change something in the past? Not love matches or even saving a cowboy’s life, but to put Wyatt Earp back into the twenty-first century’s log of stories and movies? Was the man that important?

She stopped walking, the mud and manure of the street sucking at her shoes.

How do I do this?she thought. Through Max, of course. But he was angry at her for interfering in the lives of people. She’d done it again this morning. Maybe Sally wasn’t supposed to sing in a church.

Etta stepped back when a man on a horse nearly ran over her. No doubt Max had had enough of her manipulations. She’d have to do this on her own.

Thanks to her father’s obsession with the marshal, she did know details of the escape. It didn’t happen in Garrett. It wasn’t even in Kansas.

The question was: How would she get to him? By train, of course. Visions of trains in Old West movies came to her: cows on the tracks, derailings, attacks by men with guns. In movies, there were endless ways for delay. However, she did get to Garrett by herself. She came from... She didn’t know where she was supposed to have come from. That she didn’t remember didn’t matter. The point was that she could do it! She just wished she could rememberhowshe did it.

Did they have sleeping cars? What about food? Where did she get cash? She’d have to get someone to tell her what to do. But who? Alice? She barely ever left her house. Sally? Freddy? One of the cowboys? If only Henry would appear in her dream. He’d know how to do everything.

Etta was thinking so hard that when Max grabbed her about the waist and pulled her out the way of a heavily loaded buckboard, she wasn’t concerned. Maybe getting run over would solve her problem. She was failing at her quest. Max was so close she could smell his breath.

“You’ve been drinking beer.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Were you at the local, uh... Where Freddy works?”

“Yes.”

“Without me?”

“I didn’t spend the night, if that’s what you mean.” It was, but she wasn’t going to say that.

“Why are you standing in the street?”

She needed courage to tell him what she had to do next. “I could use a beer. Or a few shots of tequila.”

“You can’t go to the Red Dog. It’s not for—Oh hell. Come on, I’ll take you.”

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