Home in Time for Christmas Read online

  “What do we do now?” Mona finally asked bleakly. “Oh, this is terrible, just terrible. We haven’t helped Jake, and we don’t know what we’ve done to poor Mark.”

  “And it’s Christmas Eve,” Keith said worriedly.

  “You believe that we need the sunrise, Mona?” Jake asked. “Is that what my sister wrote in her journal?”

  “I can show you the page,” Mona said. She shook her head. “Imagine, that book of hers has been up in that attic all these years. So much information, and still…no ending. Oh, dear.”

  “This is crazy. All crazy,” Melody murmured.

  “Crazy?” Jake came over to her and hunkered down by her chair, taking her hands. “And you’re so indignant when someone suggests that you shouldn’t follow a dream.”

  “This isn’t a dream anymore, Jake. It’s a nightmare,” she told him.

  “Instead of whining and tossing about disparaging remarks, how about helping?” he suggested.

  “I am not a scientist, nor do I know anything about potions,” she reminded him.

  “But you can read,” he said with a smile.

  “Yes, I can read.”

  “I can’t quite decipher all of the old lettering,” Mona said.

  Jake lifted a brow to Melody and helped her to her feet. “Your mother said that you’d studied a lot of the old funerary art in school and that you could probably read my sister’s writing easily. I can’t even figure out all of her script,” he said.

  “You know that I didn’t want you to leave,” she said, alarmed at the huskiness in her tone.

  “But you do want Mark back in this world where he belongs, right?” Jake asked.

  Guilt surged through her. “Yes,” she said simply. She walked over to the book. Serena’s thoughts on the war and the world in which she lived were certainly fascinating, but Melody skimmed quickly to the part of the book that had to do with what Serena had called the “black doorway” and how certain potions and events could be combined to open the door—and close it.

  She shook her head after a moment, aware that they were all watching her anxiously.

  “Sunrise—and sunset,” she said. “According to this, both times of the day lay open the possibilities of taking a person through time and space, or through different dimensions, or alternate worlds.” She couldn’t believe that she had said it aloud, explained it aloud.

  Except that she had seen Mark disappear. After he had told Jake that he’d been a good friend to him, after he had proven himself, trying to make sure that nothing bad happened to Jake.

  It wasn’t that she had suddenly discovered that she was wrong, that she was in love with Mark. It was just wrong. He didn’t deserve whatever had happened to him. At heart, he was a good man. And she understood as well—what Jake was feeling for Serena. He loved her; she had grown up with him, and so, they were brother and sister. And he feared for her.

  As she feared for Mark.

  “So, sunset, Mona,” George said. “Sunset, we set up, and try again.”

  “Try again? How will Mark be able to take a potion and stand in the right place at the right time?” Melody demanded.

  They were quiet around her.

  Then Jake said, “I’ll have to go back. And when I’m back, I’ll get Mark set up to return here. It’s fairly simple. And my sister will—hopefully, oh, God, hope-fully!—be there. To help him, and guide him. Maybe I’ll wind up back at the right time, and so will Mark.”

  “At the right time? What are you talking about?” Melody demanded. “This is simple? There’s a doorway. A doorway, a black hole, something that is there, in time and space. You’re calling that simple?”

  “Maybe,” Keith said.

  “And maybe not,” Mona told her with a sigh.

  “But can we take a chance and send Jake back in time?” Keith asked her.

  “Do you see Mark anywhere?” George asked.

  Silence followed.

  “So, what are you all saying?” Melody asked.

  “We try again at sunset,” Jake said.

  “I have more potion,” Mona said. “I mixed a fairly large batch. Then, of course, who knows? Maybe we only need your father’s machines. Maybe the ‘black hole’ or the ‘black door’ opens of its own accord upon occasion, and maybe it can be manipulated. After all, Jake was being hanged in New York, and he fell through time onto a roadway far north up into Gloucester.”

  She looked terribly depressed.

  “It’s all right, Mom.” To her own surprise, Melody came to stand behind her mother and hug her shoulders. “It’s all right. We will be able to fix everything. Everything will work out.”

  Mona nodded. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said. “And…and make breakfast.”

  “No, dear, we’ll go out to breakfast,” George said.

  “No, dear, you will stay with me. And the kids will get out of here. We’ll stay here—just in case time decides to spit Mark out in the backyard,” Mona said.

  “Mrs. Tarleton,” Jake said. “This is my dilemma, it has been from the start. You must go out, and I will remain behind, watching.”

  “No,” Mona said. “George and I will stay. And you children will get out of here because you are driving me right out of my mind.”

  Mark Hathaway lay on his back.

  On something hard. A floor. A rug on a floor, he realized. And there was warmth, coming from somewhere. The light was muted, but…

  Wincing, he sat up. He was back in the parlor of the Tarleton house, but it looked different. It was dim—there were no lights on and the morning were just beginning to creep through the drapes.

  Different drapes.

  Different furniture.

  He blinked furiously. For a moment, he thought he was still caught in a wretched hangover from last night’s Wicked Wiccan Willy.

  Then he began to wonder just what mushroom Mona had put in that potion he had swallowed.

  But as he blinked furiously, thinking that he must have taken something very, very wild, he was startled by a sudden cry and he swung around.

  The fireplace was just where it was supposed to be, of course.

  But the mantel was different. And a fire burned in the hearth.

  A giant cooking pot simmered with something in it over the fire.

  Cooking pot?

  Or witches’ brew?

  Immaterial at the moment. Because the woman who had let out the cry was standing next to the pot, staring at him.

  “Jake!” she cried out, her voice a trembling sob.

  She started to rush to his side.

  “Jake? I’m not Jake,” Mark protested. He struggled to his feet and met the woman’s gaze.

  She stopped dead.

  And he stared.

  She was beautiful. Stunningly beautiful. Her eyes were the blue of the sky on a perfect spring day. Her hair was the color of a raven’s wing.

  “Dear God!” she breathed. “You’re not Jake. But—oh, my God. You must be some relation! Someone I didn’t know…and, oh, God, dear God! Where is my brother? What happened to him?” She stared at him, his eyes searching his out with desperation.

  Then, she jumped back. She took in the length of him, the clean-cut Armani coat and his Kenneth Cole boots. His hair cut, and everything about him.

  “Where are you from? Who are you? Speak to me!” She backed away from him farther, and before he knew it, she had the fire poker in her hands. “Speak and speak quickly, and if you’re part of the British army, sir, you had best explain, and you had best know that my brother lives somewhere, or your own life will be considerably shortened!”

  “Hey, hey—please, wait! I’m not British, I swear it, although, to be honest, I have a lot of British friends. Wait, wait, wait, sorry, wrong thing to say at the moment,” Mark gasped out. “Your brother is fine, though I met him last night for the first time. We were at a party. In Gloucester…hey, wait. Where are we now?”

  “Gloucester. Gloucester, Massachusetts,” the woman said.<
br />
  “What—what year is it?”

  “You jest,” she accused him.

  “Oh, I so wish that I did!” Mark told her. “Please…no, no, no, wait. I have it now. I did take a hallucinatory drug. It was last night. Then again, maybe they were trying to play a trick on me. They gave me more this morning. I’m being…it’s a practical joke. Okay, I’ve got it. You work with Jake Mallory, you’re an historian somewhere, or whatever they call it now—historical interpreter. And you all are just trying to make me think I’m crazy.”

  She stared at him blankly. All that she seemed to take from his entire exposition was the fact that he really knew Jake Mallory.

  She stepped closer, the fire poker tightly in her hands. “I want my brother back here. Now. What have you done with him?”

  “Nothing. Nothing—I swear, I haven’t done a thing with your brother!” Mark told her. He swallowed. Oddly enough, in his confusion and fear, he became aware that whatever was cooking in the pot did not smell like any strange potion.

  It held a wonderful aroma. Like a stew flavored to perfection.

  It was morning. Who cooked stew in the morning?

  “What is the year?” he asked again.

  “You seriously don’t know?” she asked. “Please?”

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  “I’m Mark. My name is Mark Hathaway.”

  “And where are you from?”

  “Gloucester, Massachusetts. Originally. I’ve been working in New York the last few years. My family—my immediate family has passed away, I’m afraid. I came to see—to see friends living back in my hometown. Last night, I went to a party. It was a Wiccan party. I drank—”

  “A Wiccan party? Near Christmas? Oh, you are a dastardly liar!” she cried.

  Dastardly?

  She wasn’t that big. Surely—and with no harm done the woman—he could wrest the fire poker from her. Then he could step outside, and see exactly what was going on. Why in God’s name had Melody never been able to see that her parents were certifiably crazy?

  “I’m telling you, I came to see my friends, but they were out. The neighbors told me where they were, and so I went to the party. Thank God I took a cab, because the drinks were killer. I’m telling you the absolute truth. This morning, they were playing around with some black hole or something of the like. They’re—they’re a little on the odd side. The dad is a scientist, an inventor—he came up with a real great broom or mop or something of the like, and I guess he thinks he’s Edison or something.” She stared at him blankly and he continued. “The mom is…well, I don’t know what she is. A hippie, I guess. New Age, in a way. A Catholic New Age. Like a Catholic Wiccan. If you can be such a thing. Anyway, she made this potion thing and…”

  His voice trailed away. She had stepped back.

  “What?”

  “Go on. Go on with your story.”

  Mark shook his head. If this was a prank being played on him, the girl was wasting her time on small stuff. Her expression was one of pure amazement and question. “Oh, come on, please,” he said. “Is this a prank? Why are you dressed that way?”

  “This is my customary house apparel,” she said, her tone aggravated. “And believe me, I am in no disposition for pranks of any kind.”

  “Right. Right!” He ignored the poker and turned around, striding to the door. He threw it open.

  Snow covered the ground.

  Snow and more snow.

  And that was all that he could see. There was no house across the street.

  There was a picket fence around a side yard, and a furry horse was nuzzling through the snow.

  He closed the door.

  Hallucinogenic!

  Had to be, oh, God, had to be.

  “Get in here! You’re letting the heat out.”

  Mark turned to face her. He shook his head. He blinked. He slapped himself.

  He still stood exactly where he had been, facing the beautiful girl.

  “What year is it? Please, just tell me that. What time is it, what year is it?”

  “Seventeen seventy-six. It’s Christmas Eve, Seventeen seventy-six.”

  “What on earth are we going to do? This is enough to make you crazy,” Melody said.

  She stood on the porch steps with Keith and Jake.

  They had been thrown out of the house.

  “Get in the car,” Keith said.

  “What? Why? Where are we going?” Melody demanded.

  “Just get in,” Keith said.

  Jake shrugged and started to agree. He followed Keith.

  “Jake!” Melody said. “What are you doing? He won’t tell us his plan?”

  “Well, he’s getting in the car, and I don’t have a plan, so I thought I should get in, as well,” Jake said. He was quiet and thoughtful, and had been for the last hour.

  In contrast, Melody felt as if she were a mouse in a field of traps.

  And Keith…

  “Melody?” Jake asked, turning back.

  She threw up her hands. “You two are too much. And Mom! We don’t know where Mark is. We don’t know what will happen. And we have to wait for sunset on Christmas Eve to even try a crazy stunt to find Mark. And if we find Mark, then Jake is lost somewhere in time, and we’ll never know if—”

  “Melody!” Jake interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Chill!” Keith said.

  She hadn’t paid any attention to the direction in which Keith had headed when they’d left the house. Now, biting her lip and trying to remain silent, she realized that they were heading away from town.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded.

  “You’ll see,” Keith said, and turned up the radio.

  Bing Crosby was singing “White Christmas.”

  “Beautiful,” Jake murmured.

  A few minutes later, they turned off the road, and Melody knew where they were going. Her father had an old hunting lodge back on property in the woods.

  He’d never hunted anything.

  It had just been a place where he went with his old cronies now and then. And where they had all gone sometimes, just to be away. It was two rooms. Made of wood, with a bedroom, and an all-purpose room. The refrigerator was small and hadn’t worked in years. The plumbing was iffy.

  “Get out,” Keith said to Melody, pulling to a stop.

  “What?” she asked incredulously.

  “Get out. You’re driving everyone crazy,” Keith said.

  “You can’t throw me out at this old lodge!” Melody said. “It’s freezing. There’s no heat. There’s no—there’s nothing out here.”

  “Actually, there is,” Keith said. “Mom and Dad have been using the place now and then for a getaway. There’s a new little refrigerator, and they have one of those automatic fireplaces in there now. You just turn it on. So—get out.”

  “Keith!”

  Jake got out of the car.

  “Hey, I didn’t mean that you had to get out. I mean, she’s driving you as crazy as me, right?” Keith asked.

  “I’m not leaving your sister alone in the woods,” Jake said.

  Keith shrugged. He turned to Melody, next to him in the front passenger’s seat. “Get out,” he said quietly. “It’s going to work out all right. I know it. We’ll find Mark, and we’ll get Jake back where he needs to be. But you’re never going to be in love with Mark, and you are in love with Jake.”

  “I can’t be in love with him,” she whispered. “I barely know him.”

  “Get to know him then. I’ll be back at three. We can’t miss the sunset, and God knows, it will come early tonight, we’ve got to be back at the house, ready. Melody, this is your last chance. Spend some time with him. I’ll see you at three.”

  She saw the gentle mischief in her brother’s eyes—and also the love he bore for her.

  She smiled, kissed his cheek and hopped out of the car.

  She stared at the house, aware that Jake was by her.

  She spun back around to
stop Keith before he could drive away.

  “Keys!” she told him, but he was already tossing them to her.

  She walked to the house, Jake behind her, as the car drove away. She opened the door, shivering. “We’ll build a fire,” Jake said.

  “We don’t need to; we just have to turn one on,” she told him. And, walking to the stone-enclosed fireplace, she flicked the switch. A fire leaped to life.

  “Incredible. Quite incredible. I will miss all these things,” Jake said, staring at the flames. Then he looked at her. “More than anything, I will miss you,” he said softly.

  “Will you really?” she asked him. “I didn’t believe a word you said—not really—until this morning. I haven’t been at all charitable. Okay, frankly, I suppose I have been something of a bitch. And I don’t begin to understand what it is that you could be seeing in me….”

  Her voice trailed away. He had taken a step toward her, and he was smiling. “You took me home. From what I’ve seen of your world, most people would have driven away. Or dropped me at the nearest facility for the insane. You brought me home, and you wanted to make things right. Home is a special place, and you have made me feel special in yours.”

  She thought that he was going to take her into his arms, but he didn’t. He walked past her, taking a framed picture from the mantel.

  She had all but forgotten the picture. It was a charcoal sketch. She had done it when she was about seventeen; it had once been part of her portfolio.

  It was a sketch of her parents. Her mother was reading a book, and her father was a foot away at the end of the sofa.

  But, somehow, she had caught her father’s expression perfectly as he looked at her mother. And her mother had just looked up to see, and give him the same smile of absolute love and affection in return.

  Actually, at the time, she hadn’t known how good it was.

  “This is yours,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s very, very good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You should never stop with your art,” he told her.

  “No…never,” she said. “Mark—he never understood. I want the same things as most human beings—in anytime in history and beyond. We all want to be loved. Need to be loved, perhaps. I just like the world we live in, where we’re allowed to love and be loved and have children and still pursue our interests. I mean, I don’t want my children raised by strangers, either, but—” She broke off and suddenly turned away from him, hurrying over to the kitchen area. She hoped that she still had what had always been “Melody’s drawer.”