4

Everyone has them, don't they? Those times in life when you feel everything within you change. When you know your life has just been altered in an irrevocable, major, defining way. Sometimes ... it can even be a good thing.

We had both felt it. The change in us. The way what had happened had meant more than one night of passion in each other's arms. Yet, oddly, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to reconcile the warring emotions I was feeling. Comfort for having found him across time. Pain because I knew I would have to leave him and return to my own time.

He slept next to me, holding on to me, keeping me close to his heart. I turned my head and watched his bare chest rise and fall beneath my hand. Under my palm, I felt the simple wooden cross that he wore around his neck suspended from a long burnished chain. His face was turned toward me and the moonlight was just bright enough to allow me to see the way a peaceful sleep rested soft upon his brow and jaw.

Turning into him, I reached across his broad chest and hugged into his body. This would be my first ... and only night with him. Perhaps that's why it had affected us so.

He stirred in his dreams, a hand cupping my head, drawing it up to rest on his shoulder. I didn't want to sleep. I wanted to wrest every moment from every minute and make it last forever. So I was awake when he murmured in his slumber, his mouth so close to my ear. But even that close, I couldn't make out his words. He became so agitated, shifting around, his voice sounding like he was pleading with someone. And, then, finally, an anguished, "No! Don't!" burst from his mouth as his eyes snapped open.

Sweating again. Were those tears in his eyes? When he focused on me, he drew me in tighter to his chest and I wrapped my arms around him, trying to find words of comfort. No, he didn't want to tell me about the dream. No, it didn't mean a thing, just a passing nightmare of no consequence. I didn't believe him, not for a second. But I didn't pry; I wouldn't be with him long enough for it to matter. Still, there was something I could do for him, and when he asked it of me, I cannot explain the way it felt to have become someone he would turn to in an unsettled moment.

"Help me remember where I am," he whispered to me. I felt his fingers under my chin and he pulled my face to his, gracing my lips with a solid kiss. "Help me remember who I am in your arms."

A feeling of such power swept over me, because in that moment, I knew I could take care of him and help him forget, even if only for a short while, whatever haunted him.

Pulling his hands off me, kissing his fingers and palms in turn. Watching as his eyes half-closed in anticipation. Climbing up, kissing his arms, his shoulders. Holding his hands in mine and taking pleasure in how his body wanted to move but was working hard to stay still as my mouth captured his lips before diving into the softness of his throat and then beginning an exploration of his chest. Sucking, licking, taking so much time that he was almost arching into me by the time I got to his stomach. Dipping my tongue into his belly button and hearing a nervous giggle from him. Trailing a wet path to his side and sucking hard, until he moaned.

Releasing his hands only because there was another part of him I wanted to hold more. Stroking him, caressing his sac, then kneading his ass as he shifted his hips in the hopes I would take him more quickly than I had planned. Sucking kisses up his shaft, pressing my tongue hard around his tip and then scooping his pre-cum from him. Tasting him, wanting more. Sliding my mouth smoothly, slowly down his cock, hearing his huge sigh that seemed to come from his gut.

At first, my mouth and tongue sought to maintain a slow pace, seeking to make this last for him. But his sounds of pleasure were wringing the wetness from me and driving me toward an ever-faster pace. Without a deliberate thought, I found myself rubbing my own hot, wet sex on his leg, grinding in a rhythm he caught. My mind struggled to focus only on him and when he felt me stop moving against him, I felt him shove his leg against me hard and begin to rub diligently.

I groaned and knew he'd felt the vibrations as rough chords plucking at his self-control. "I can't ... ah, God, Ginny ... Come to me. I don't know if I can hold on ..." he croaked out to me.

On the next upstroke, I reluctantly pulled my lips from around him, looked up at his face. His glazed eyes peered down at me, his sweet mouth was open and he licked his lips as he raised his hands to me, beckoning me there. I shook my head at him, smiled, and kept my eyes locked to his as I very deliberately retook him. When his eyes slid shut and his head arched back into his pillow, I closed my own eyes and picked up my pace. His hands snaked into my hair, twisting within the strands, impatient in their movements. When he came, he bucked off the bed and shoved me down against him. I swallowed greedily, feeling his growl as well as hearing it.

When I was done, I laid my head down on one of his thighs and rested. It took forever to feel him calm, to hear his breathing revert to a state of relaxation. I thought he was asleep; and quickly, I was so lost within myself again. Regretting that emotions had been stirred between us, even though there was no way I would have done anything differently. Just one chance, no matter how impossible, to be with a man like this ... hadn't it been worth it?

It was destiny, wasn't it? Why did it have to be my destiny to have to leave him? A few soft tears dropped from my face onto his leg and he shifted against me.

"Come let me hold you, Ginny," he whispered. "Tell me what's wrong."

I crawled up to his chest, kissed his lips and snuggled within his arms. "Nothing's wrong. It just overwhelmed me. I feel things with you that I shouldn't."

His fingers played with a strand of my hair. His lips pressed a slow kiss into my forehead. "What shouldn't you be feeling with me?"

"It's just that ... I have to leave tomorrow and yet I would give so much to stay with you."

"Then stay. It's what I want."

"I don't belong in this time, Cort," I breathed up to him. "I have to try to go back."

He tucked in his chin, bent toward me and grabbed my lips with his. Dark, deep kiss that I welcomed. Feeling good pressed in tight to him. He drew his lips away from mine, whispering to me, "You belong here with me. Maybe this is where you've always belonged."

"God, Cort. If you only knew how hard I've searched for you. But whatever brought me here, it was an accident. A mistake. And I know, inside me, that I can't stay. You were meant to live out your life here and I was meant to live mine in my own time."

"You speak of God, but you don't believe that He has a higher plan? That this might be His hand setting us on this path?" His eyes took on a new light. His face was decorated with a new smile. "Something has brought us together, whether it was across great distances or great time. I have to believe there is a purpose in that."

"I want to believe. But I don't. I don't believe life works that way," I told him. "I'm too practical for that. And I'm not too sure about God anymore."

That was when he told me of the years he'd devoted to a ministry serving God. How it had been a penance as much as service and that, ultimately, a radical change in his life had convinced him he had other talents God meant to exploit. And so, he'd never gone back into the ministry, but he'd maintained a rock solid belief in the Bible's teachings and tenets.

We were both awake as the first edge of the sun peeked above the horizon. He insisted that I go back to the hotel, return to my room as if nothing had passed between us. A matter of propriety, he pronounced.

"Don't leave today. Stay one more night," Cort said as I left him. "Give me one more day to convince you to stay with me. Besides, Ginny, it worries me that there is no guarantee you'll be returning to your own time when you leave."

Inside my bare room, I settled into the bed and stared with new eyes at the ceiling. In my hands, I gripped the Hawthorne book he'd let me take. Wrestling my mind from worrying over the coming separation, I opened the book and tried to read. But the words jumbled up and I found my mind swept away into what was awaiting me when I returned home. When Katie knocked at my door, I came awake with a startled realization of where I was.

After I washed up, I put my jeans and shirt back on, silently thanking Katie yet again for having washed them for me. When I left the room, my eyes swept over it, memorizing it. It was the only reason I saw the book. I picked it up from the floor where it had fallen and closed my eyes. It would be the one thing I would take with me from this time. It would be the only remembrance of him I'd have. There was no way I could leave it behind.

I left the hotel swiftly, not wanting to see Katie because I wanted to leave without goodbyes. Looking neither left nor right, I strode purposefully to the church. Inside, I paused at the door to the tower.

This is the right thing to do, I told myself. You cannot stay forever and the longer you delay leaving, the harder it will be to do the right thing.

A hand touched my shoulder and I turned to find the preacher. "You're not leaving? Not so soon?"

He led me to a pew and listened to my reasoning. He nodded when I told him why I had to go back. That taking a chance that a leap through the gate across time might take me to another place and time than the one I was meant to be in - that this was just a chance I'd have to take, a necessary risk if I was ever to have a hope of going home.

And even though he tried to convince me that coming to Redemption on that date might have been a calling from a higher power, I resisted his arguments with ease. Finally, he told me he needed to show me something. He brought me to a large room behind the altar. I looked around; books were stacked about randomly on tables. On one large table in the center of the room, I saw maps and what appeared to be surveyors' plats. My fingers swept over one that seemed to hold familiar shapes of roads. Arizona? It seemed so similar to the big state map I'd referenced during my fruitless drive to find the reclusive Mr. Carlson.

Suddenly, the preacher plopped a big book down in front of me. As it landed with a thud, it ruffled the maps underneath.

"Page 72." His voice was harder than I'd ever heard it. "Open it. Tell me what you see."

The cover read "Outlaws and Lawmen of the Old West: The Illustrated History." It was a book I was already familiar with and my mind seemed to rebel at seeing it there before me. My reclusive author, Mr. Carlson, had made quite an astounding ripple with this book when it was published three years earlier. It was the first of three scholarly yet engaging books that had made so many people in my time become fascinated with the old West. The pages of this book held tales of less-than-famous lawmen and outlaws. The stories had demystified the time even as their poignant tales of simple lives had captivated my imagination. In the prologue of his book, Carlson had written that he had stumbled across a collection of daguerreotypes, the pre-curser to modern photographs, that someone had saved over all those years and that in researching them, he'd learned that many of them were of men either upholding the law or disregarding it for personal gain. And so he'd delved into these ordinary men and told their often extraordinary tales.

Something came over me, a dread ... a sense of foreboding. "This can't be right. How could you have a book that was published in my time? What is going on? Who are you?"

"To the people of Redemption, I've been accepted as Parson Carlisle. You know me as Peter Carlson. In reality, I'm both."

But, that, of course, wasn't the truth. The truth was he was Peter Carlson, a man from my time who adored the old West and had made it his life's work to study it and to catalogue it. In this too calm voice, he told me how he came by this devotion because he had first come to the ghost town of Redemption when he was 12 years old. His grandfather was a prospector, an old coot more at home roaming the desolate hills of south Arizona than anywhere else. When he first brought his grandson to this town, he fired up the young boy's head with tales of cowboys, bandits and pioneers. Returning several times to wander the town's deserted buildings, Peter had found the gate across time when he was 14. He had been playing, swinging on the rope and trying to get the bell to ring; when he lost his grip and fell, he'd left one time and entered another.

"I think I was just young enough that it never scared me, it only fascinated me in this romantic way. I only made a few trips though, in the beginning, because I wasn't sure how long I could stay without getting trapped," he told me.

Listening to him talk, his voice sounding so reasonable. Was he really asking me to believe this was simple and normal? What was normal about a grown man who got a Masters in history and made his mark by publishing books of remarkable authenticity about this time period - and he was asking me to believe that this was all due to the fact that he was coming back to this time to study it first hand?

"I found those images in our time period, Ginny. But only because I knew where to look. I knew where they'd be hidden. And ever since I found them, I understood I had a mission back in this time period. That mission was to take the images and keep them safe so people in our time would not forget those people who created our future," he told me.

I rifled the pages of his book and noted the images flashing before me. 

Where cameras in my time captured images as negatives on film, cameras in this time period fixed the images as positives on polished silver plates. The pictures were stunning in their detail; the type of fine detail that modern negatives seem unable to capture. So delicate and easily damaged, daguerreotypes that survived to my modern time had been typically housed in protective cases under glass.

The book's images were later daguerreotypes, taken when the process was popularized in the U.S. after 1860. They had been become easier to accomplish because both the chemical process and the cameras improved to the point where exposures were shortened from 30 minutes to only ten seconds. This made the growing trade of portraiture more profitable, and portable. Traveling daguerreotypists visited towns throughout the U.S. beginning in the mid 1860s and continuing until about the turn of the century, when new photographic processes gradually phased out daguerreotypes.

I flipped back through the pages until I got to the page he had indicated. My eyes perceived but my mind didn't get it. I picked the book up and looked harder at the image that I knew he wanted me to see. Looking to him for explanation, he smiled and said, "You see? You were meant to be here, in this time."

Numb, feeling that strange weak sensation in my knees, I reached out and found a chair to settle into before I dropped on my ass. There on the page in front of me was a story about and a picture of Cort. In the picture, I could tell he was posed in front of the jail. He was standing with his thumbs hooked in the front of his holster, his star's edges so crisp, his face solemn. It seemed I could count his hairs, the detail was so fine. My fingers traced the edges of him and then came to pause on the truly remarkable part of the picture.

Me. I was there with him. Standing at his side, on the step above him and leaning against the post that supported the wooden overhang of the jail. My hand on his shoulder. Dressed in the jeans and shirt I was wearing that day. A look on my face that I knew was sadness.

I'd read this book when it first came out; how could I have never seen myself in this image? Was the connection I felt to Cort a subliminal memory of the story Carlson wrote of him in this book? Was that why I had felt such ease with him? An instant understanding?

"This isn't possible. How can there be a picture of us? This never happened." 

Carlson tapped the table lightly. "Think about that. Did it never happen or has it not yet happened? Obviously, it will happen. Sometime in the future. And that means you have to stick around until it does. Otherwise, who knows what affect it will have on the future."

I looked hard at him. "When did you find out about me? Did you notice the picture the first day I arrived? Or only today?" I asked him.

"No. I knew about you before. It's why I invited you here to see me," he told me. "You were so persistent, you kept writing to me. I looked you up on the Internet, found your picture and I recognized you immediately. I've obviously had Cort's picture for years in our time and I kept waiting for the woman with him to show up in his time. I knew she was out there, that she would come eventually. But, when it was you, then I knew I had to set it in motion."

"But I only found this place because I was lost."

"You were meant to find it that way. It's how my grandfather found it. Don't you see? Something drew you here. And when you came, I simply helped you take the final step."

He'd done the final step on purpose. Ringing the bell to lure me to the tower and stringing fishing line where it would trip me as I went to the landing's edge to investigate the swinging rope.

"And now? You think, what? That I'll stay? Even though ... I can't stay here. Surely you understand?"

"No one's expecting you for a few days, are they? You were planning to be with me during that time. What could it hurt to stay here until then? Just to see what will happen. At least let me take the picture; I must have taken it today because you're dressed in the clothes you have on now. Then I'll help you return and I'll help you get back to Tucson."

I looked away from him. In the madness, he wanted to make sense? 

"So, it was you all along? You took all the pictures in the book?" I asked him. He nodded slowly, then told me how he traveled Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado in search of the subjects in the daguerreotypes. He'd started hiding the pictures inside this very office. That way, he said, when he went into the office in our time, he would be able to find every photo he'd take over the course of his time in Redemption. He had even seen the pictures he'd yet to take.

"I don't want to know any more," I told him softly, my eyes finding his. Worried that some daguerreotype he was meant to take years from now might reveal something about Cort's fate. "I don't want to know my future ... or Cort's, either."

Standing up, wobbling on unsteady feet, I made for the door.

"Wait at least long enough for me to get my equipment out, Ginny. Just the photo. That's all I ask of you. Stay just long enough for me to take the picture," he was saying to my back, his voice having this pleading whine in it.

In the main area of the church, I felt a coolness wash over me. I had never been one to believe in the spiritual, the magical, the mystical. But something was happening around me, to me, with me ... and I felt it again. The eerie sense of impending opportunity. Like there was a mist floating into me and tapping at my subconscious, telling me to pay attention. My eyes slid up from the floor and they caught Cort's dark outline in the church's doorway.

"You're leaving." He said it soft, plain. It was the absence of feeling in his voice that made me wake up.

My feet moved as surely as if I'd been commanding them. When my body reached his, my hands touched his chest. "Not just yet. But soon. Soon," I told him.

His mouth captured mine just as I felt his arms circle me, gripping me to his chest and I melded myself into the contours of his body. "I was afraid you'd left me already," he finally told me, his voice now deep with an emotion I couldn't quite identify.

"I want to spend the last hours I have here alone with you." Feeling almost desperate for just a little more of him. Wondering where my will to leave had gone.

He closed his eyes and a soft sigh escaped his mouth. "Just promise me we'll have more than a few hours together. Please, Ginny."

So sincere. So decent. So ravishingly disarming and intoxicating. I was awash in desire for him, and in that second, I would have given a lot if I could have just stayed with him forever. One more night, I asked myself, what could it hurt?

We both startled when we heard noise inside the church with us. Turning, I saw Carlson coming toward us, carrying a huge bellowed camera planted securely atop a massive wooden tripod. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths as he explained to Cort that he wanted a photo of us to capture the day.

There was the source of the sadness on my face in that image. It was the final task I had to fulfill to free me to leave him. The one thing Carlson had known I had to do in this time to keep the future intact.

After the image was captured for posterity, I followed Cort inside the jail. No one was the wiser that we disappeared soon after into his rooms. No one, that is, except the men who came several hours later, looking for the prisoner Cort was holding inside the jail waiting for the circuit court judge to appear in another week.

When we slipped inside his rooms, we had only one ambition. Intent on each other, focused on the only time we knew we'd share, wanting to make it count. I wanted to make it something to get me through the coming months. A memory I could cherish in dark hours.

I was undressing him before the door separating us from the jail closed. The first thing off was the holster; he took it from me and placed it atop a small table near his door. My hands smoothed over his chest, over the vest, feeling the muscles beneath flex in response. He inflamed my passion with each sigh, each shaking breath he drug in, each time he uttered some half-formed word. I'd never been with a man so consumed with touch, so aroused with the way I was demanding his body.

His shirt off and I stepped back to look at him. Tan skin that stretched over a frame that seemed built just for my view of a perfect male body. His face cast in this serious look, full of want and consumed with desire. His sharp eyes taking in my every breath as if he was reading my mind. He reached for me but I just smiled at him and slipped my jeans down my hips, wiggling leisurely until they dropped to the floor. Stepping out of them, kicking them away. Hooking my fingers around my panties and sliding them off. Slowly, so slowly ... because his eyes were that half-hooded way again and his breathing was so uneven ... unbuttoning my shirt, letting his hands open its edges to bare my body to his view. Then stepping out of his reach to let the shirt glide off my arms and to the floor. Lowering my head and watching him through downcast eyes as I took so much time to remove my bra. Trying to keep from staring at the hardness that was straining to be set free from his pants.

I stepped closer to him, reached for one of his hands and placed it gently on a breast. Closed my eyes at the feel of his rough hand caressing me there. My head lolled sideways as I absorbed the sensation of his touch.

When his tongue swept over the nipple even as his other hand drifted tenderly over my other breast, I arched into him and moaned in heartfelt appreciation. After he'd devoted himself to both breasts, I nudged his arms apart so I could step closer. I traced his upper body with my hands first, and then with my mouth. Nuzzling into the soft down low on his abdomen, I finally let my fingers undo the buttons of his pants and then my hands were tugging them down over his thighs, to his knees and leaving them puddled around his boots.

"I think I have the advantage now, my love," I whispered huskily at him even as I was going to my knees before him. "You'll fall if you move so I'd suggest you simply lean back against the door and enjoy."

"Oh, God," he groaned out, his low voice striking some unknown chord deep within me. 

I knew just what he meant. I felt the same way. Before me was a work of God and, for the first time in so long, I admitted that perhaps God wasn't such a bastard after all.

My lips brushed against his erection, feeling it jump at the slight touch. Then my mouth took each of the now rock-hard contents of his sac in turn, and I felt his hands touch my head, nervous in the way they seemed to flit around. I stroked him, listening with my entire body for the signs of what he'd like best. He seemed to sag into the door when my tongue finally meandered its way up his shaft.

His pre-cum was inviting droplets that my tongue lapped up slowly, rhythmically; his hips ever-so-lightly undulated in matching time. I glanced up at his face. His eyes were open but he was staring, unfocused, somewhere in the distance. When my mouth closed over just the tip, I watched as his eyes slid shut. I hummed against him and he grimaced as a guttural whimper stole from him.

"Your mouth ..." he muttered. I glanced back up at him and he was watching me. "Please."

I sucked in and let my mouth take him in, inch by inch, devouring his length until it knocked against the back of my throat. My hand stroked the part of him I couldn't swallow; my mouth moved up and down ... slowly, surely ... easing my tongue around him as I rose higher. I knew it must have been killing him, the pace I was setting. But it was an exquisite torture for a man as sensual as he.

Without warning, I felt his hands. One came over where I held his hard cock; the other tilted my chin up. Together, his hands slowly moved my mouth from where it had held him captive.

"Come to me," he commanded, in a hard voice that was soaked in sexual power.

I rose to my feet and stood before him. He had left his hand on my chin; it seemed he barely touched me there and yet he tugged my mouth so easily up to his after he gave me that moment I needed just to catch my breath. His other hand caressed my hair, following its trail down over my neck and along my upper spine. I shivered uncontrollably as his fingers barely touched my skin in their travel down my back.

His tongue invaded my mouth, searching for mine, wrestling for dominance, pulling me in deeper. My fingers slid up his chest, tweaking his nipples hard. I was rewarded when he groaned into my mouth and then moved both his hands quickly to my ass. Pulling me up off my feet and grinding me roughly into his rock hard cock's length. His mouth left mine and he looked into my eyes.

Something in that look was new to me. It was him, but it was another man. It was a man who'd never be tamed. Not by life, not by circumstances. A man who'd faced his demons and knew what he was capable of. There was a danger in those eyes that lit a fire inside me.

"Fuck me like this. Right here." I was breathing so heavy, caught up in him, willing him to take charge. I slid my arms around his strong neck and pulled myself up, feeling how close the head of his cock was to my wet center.

His hands slid me up the final inches and then he maneuvered my body so that when he pulled me down, he was able to drive himself deep inside me. I found myself seeking the solace of his arms as the power of his body seemed to overwhelm me. He helped me wrap my legs securely around him even while he never slowed in thrusting into me. Trying to capture my mouth with his but every thrust seemed to rattle me so much that I kept mumbling, entreating him ... for what, I had no idea.

I felt myself slip hard over that edge, squeezing my arms around his neck and burying my head into his shoulder, my mouth nipping his skin as my insides exploded. Then feeling tears of release and wanting to stay hidden there even while I was still contracting blissfully around his shaft.

"Shh. I've got you, my heart, mi corazón," he told me in a voice so warm it made me cry more. I clung to him and he held on to me.

Gripping me tightly to him, he sunk down to his knees and then lowered me to the floor; his hard cock still throbbed inside me, making me quiver around it. His face swam above me through watery focus. His mouth kissed me along my jaw and cheek, finally ending up pressed along my temple. Waiting on me. Letting this pass.

"Sorry," I muttered into his neck.

He pulled away from me and peered down at me, his hands moving my sweat-soaked hair away from my tear-stained face. The smile he gave me ... it was the one that already had the ability to make my stomach do these flutters. I smiled back at him as his thumbs smoothed the tears from beneath my eyes. He shifted and I gasped to feel how he grazed against my sensitive clit. Watching me so carefully, like he wanted to see how each movement affected me. Beginning to thrust into me again and, in no time, I was breathless at the feel of him inside me and against me.

I turned my head, breaking the hold his eyes had on me, my mouth clamping onto his strong arm and sucking as I arched up into him and bucked hard in greeting to his driving hips. Feeling his lips, sweet sensations lighting me afire as they traveled down my neck.

"OhmyGod." A new mantra for me; the most I could say was that it was heartfelt and conveyed the urgency of what I was feeling with him. And coming ... selfish in how I let myself be swept totally under the waves until I loved the way he drowned me.

My name. He called it out, hoarse voice that reached right into me. Calling me. Coming into me, his voice choking my name out in his final deep, powerful thrusts.

Not moving. Not able to think coherent thoughts. Words might have loved to be coming gracefully from my lips, telling him ... making sure he knew ... but those words waited, jamming up inside me because all I could do was kiss the side of his face then rub my cheek against his.

He moved. It was only enough to kick his boots and pants off, but his cock slid from me and I whined against him. Then giggled at just how very greedy I was being with him. We exchanged satiated smiles and then he rolled to his back, his arms gathering me in against his side, bringing my leg up over his groin.

We lay together. Warm and sticky. Close and ... yet ... never close enough. I dozed in the softness of the day's filtered light that bounced around inside that small room. I dozed in his arms because I was safe there. I dozed next to him and knew it would never - ever - be this right with another man.

They came after I'd been asleep for a while. I woke to find Cort's fingers against my lips and his body sliding away from me. I woke to a feeling of danger and yet trusting in his ability to protect me. I woke unaware that death was again stalking someone I cared for and, if I'd known, I don't think I could have let him leave me there.

His lips against my ear told me to stay there. My eyes watched him pull his pants and shirt on; then watched as his hands buckled his holster into place.

It was only then that I heard the noises he'd been aware of long before me. Outside the window, I heard stamping hooves of horses belonging to impatient men who were waiting. And then, angry voices came charging across the distance even as angry fists were pounding at the jail's exterior entry door. I knew then that men were trying to get into the jail. I knew then that Cort was in danger.

But he had already slipped silently away from me, closing the interior door that separated his rooms from the jail. I stared at the white washed door that was now between us and waited.

5

Reality. Harsh as the cutting glitter of sunlight stabbing cleanly through desert air. Merciless as cactus spines attacking tender flesh. Unstoppable as death's intrusion into life.

I dressed quickly as I regained my wits. Leaning into the door that led from Cort's rooms into the jail. Barely breathing in my attempts to hear through the heavy door. Trying to understand what was happening inside the jail. Finally, an angry male voice snuck into my ear, which was pressed against the white-washed wood. Indistinct words. Clear malice.

My fingers closed in over the door handle and I turned it slowly, willing it to not make a sound. Then pulling the door gently open, staring at the hinges and ordering them to not creak. My bare feet crept out into the jail as I took precious long seconds to close the door silently behind me.

I was hidden from their view, around a corner at the rear of the central area. Peeking around, glancing swiftly to take in the scene. Four men faced off. Cort leaning against his big desk, arms loosely at his sides, chin down as he listened to a man rant at him. The ranting man and his two companions were people I'd never seen before.

They were dressed mostly in browns. Their long dusters seemed odd and out of place; at first, I put that down to simply being authentic garb I was unused to seeing. Only later did I learn that these long coats were worn by men such as this when they traveled long trails through the desert. Only later did I learn these three men had ridden hard from a large and prosperous mining operation. They'd raced over so many miles of dusty trails just to reach Redemption before their brother was turned over to a judge for trial.

"Self defense?" Cort softly asked the ranter when he finally ran out of words. "That's certainly a possible explanation. But your brother will have to make that case to a judge, not to me. I enforce the law here; I don't make it and I don't pass judgment."

The three brothers passed a look among themselves. The one nearest the door glanced outside; looking out the window as if checking on their horses. The ranter looked at the ground and then turned hard eyes to Cort.

"Turn our brother over to us, Sheriff. We'll bring him back for any trial," he said. His voice was smooth but held a cutting edge that made me believe he wasn't used to being refused.

Cort's head shook side to side slowly, his chin still low. I could only see Cort from the side but could tell his eyes were glued to that ranting brother. I wondered briefly what those eyes looked like, what message they were giving out.

The third brother hadn't moved a muscle during the entire time I watched them. His eyes had locked to Cort's body, his legs were in a wide stance; his body seemed at ease but his hands were tense as they gripped his holster's front belt section.

I never saw anything but a flicker, it seemed. But even as I studied that brother, his hands flicked swiftly to the handles of his guns and he was drawing them ... but he never got them completely out of their holsters before he fell. I jumped back and hit the door, startled beyond all belief at the sound of gunfire. Later when I replayed this time in my mind, I knew I must have heard the gunshot before the brother fell. It had all happened so swiftly, though, that in real time, I couldn't keep up with the sequence of sudden, vicious violence.

Another shot; it sounded like a cannon in the close quarters. Cort's quiet voice followed: "Don't." A scant instant later ... a third shot. It boomed and I felt its echo slam into my chest. I put a hand to my chest in wonder.

My entire body shook as I forced myself to look around that corner again. Not knowing what to expect. Unsure who might be left standing in there. Three bodies on the ground. Only one man upright.

"Cort," I breathed out to him. In his hands, he held his guns so loose they seemed ready to slip from him. It took a moment for my eyes to shake away from those guns; the sight of them and the way he held them was a reality check. He turned to face me and his eyes held horror in them. I rounded the corner and moved toward him but he shoved his guns in their holsters then held his hands up to me. Stopping me in my tracks. All I wanted was to go to him, to hold him, to understand that look on his face and in his eyes.

"Go back inside," he said quietly, commanding me in a rough voice. "Do it, Ginny. Now. I don't want you involved in this."

In that moment, I knew obeying him was the only option. As I turned, I heard footsteps pounding down the wooden walkways and loud voices coming from the street outside. I closed the door behind me, leaned back against it and wished I knew what I could do to help. Wished I knew enough about this strange world to know what would happen now for Cort.

Surely, since he was the 'law' in this town, what he'd just done was not only necessary but expected of him? Why that look of horror? He'd gunned three men down in a matter of seconds but they were every bit as intent on killing him as rescuing their brother from his jail.

Guns. He used them, he had to use them in his job. How to reconcile this part of him with the part he had shared with me? I wondered where a man who'd once devoted his life to peaceful work for a gentle Lord went inside himself to rationalize his new life in which the willingness and ability to kill was a vital component.

And, of all things, I'd ignored the violence his guns were capable of. Shame on me. After what another man's gun had robbed me of.

I paced inside his sitting room and fretted about what might have been happening inside the jail. When an hour had passed and he hadn't come back to his rooms, my restlessness grew to a level I couldn't control. I opened the door that led from his rooms to the outside world. Not caring who might have seen me leaving his rooms, I almost burst from the rear of the building. In front of me, the desert stretched without mercy until I could no longer see it for the hills that surrounded this town.

Why I chose to walk off, to simply stride into the desert's dust as if I knew where I was going ... I'd never know. But I did it; something seemed to lure me out there. And only when I felt my mind able to reclaim the wildness of my heart did I slow my pace. The sun's harsh edges sliced into me, making me sweat and leaving me lightheaded.

The only reason I ever stopped was because I reached a rocky outcropping that was in my path, like it had erupted out of the sullen earth. I climbed up and at the top was a broad, even altar of rock that invited me to stretch out. On my back, knowing you don't do things like this in the open desert, but feeling the need to do it anyway. To give myself up to that mystical, unseen mist that again surrounded me heavily, supporting me, guiding me. I lay there on that sun-warmed rock, arms outstretched, eyes closed, mind opening, heart seeking.

I drifted on a tide of crystal reality. Riding along where it took me. Thinking of death. Wondering why it was walking with me; a companion over the past year. My mother. My father. And, soon, my sister. And, almost, Cort? Had he cheated death even with me so close by? Had he come so close to it only because I now loved him?

Love? My mind struggled against my heart. It wasn't love, my mind said. But, what was my heart's answer? And then, like it was on the edge of the mist, I heard this sound. My mother's voice. Clear as the desert air. Saying my name.

My eyes snapped open and the sun blinded me. I sat up on the rock and shut my eyes until they could adjust. When I finally stood, my hand cupped over my eyes and I looked back the way I'd come. The town was still there; somehow its dark shapes were reassuring. I turned, making a circle, looking for the source of my mother's voice. Still hearing its drifting echo within the safety of the unseen mist that surrounded me. But there was nothing out there in the desert with me.

When I was again facing Redemption, I noticed a trail of high dust in the distance and realized a rider was coming my way. I watched as the figure came close enough that I knew it was Cort. I waited until he reached me, our eyes meeting as he dismounted and came to me. He stood at the base of the rocks and studied me. I stood atop the rocks and studied him.

"I'm sorry you witnessed that part of me," he said, his voice low and deep; he sounded shaken and I still saw traces of horror in those eyes. "I hate that the part of me that seems so at ease in killing has touched what we have together."

"You're the Sheriff. Don't you have to use force to keep peace? From what I've read of this time, I should have expected that you had to kill outlaws like that," I said hesitatingly, trying to understand, trying not to pass judgment on what was normal behavior in this time period. Was he horrified to have simply done his duty? Was this the inner battle that haunted him?

He climbed up to where I stood and sat along the rock's edge. When he held his hand up to me, I went to sit by him. His solemn eyes looked deep into mine. "There was a time that I was no better than the worst outlaw. It was a time I have spent my life trying to make up for. In that earlier time, taking life meant little to the gang I rode with. It took too long for me to refuse to take part in it. And when I did, my actions caused the death of innocent people, Ginny."

I picked up his hand and held it in mine, running my thumb over the palm and feeling it tremble in my grip. "That was your past. How long will you pay for it?"

He pulled his hand from mine and cupped my cheek, willing my eyes to meet his. "I will pay for it forever, mi corazón. Even wearing a badge doesn't make taking another person's life easy or simple."

"Your only choice was to let them kill you. If you had done that, you would have been killing a large part of everyone who loves you," I told him. "A lot of me would have died with you."

His eyes dropped from mine but his smile devastated me. "I wish I could say I made a deliberate choice. It was instinct."

And, there, left right out in the open. Hanging between us. My declaration of love... too subtle, perhaps not clear? His smile had said otherwise, that he had heard me. I'll be wise to leave this alone, I whispered inside a brain struggling because it had given my heart the power to speak unwise words.

"Ready to go back?" he asked me.

I looked up to find troubled blue-green eyes on me. Nodding at him, leaning in to press a soft kiss on his lips. Feeling the rush again inside me as his arms gathered me in to him and he parted my lips with his tongue. When he broke the kiss, he held me to him, his mouth pressed into the skin of my cheek. I felt his breath whisper across my neck a fraction of a second before his lips moved. His tender words: "I don't want to lose you."

Swallowing deep. My mouth at his ear. My rough words: "Believe me, Cort, I wouldn't leave you if I had a choice."

Just before he mounted his horse, he asked me why I'd wandered into the desert. Don't know, I'd shrugged, something was calling me out there. I looked over my shoulder at the rock and wondered what had happened up there to me.

"How did you know where I'd gone?" I asked him.

"Something told me where to look and I found your tracks," he replied. Then he swung so easily up into his saddle, held an arm out to me and pulled me up behind him. I loved the necessity of hanging on tightly to his body and laid my cheek against his strong back.

We didn't speak the entire trip back into town. By the time we got there, darkness was chasing us. Dinner was only possible because Katie had been kind enough to bring enough food for us and his prisoner; I never really wondered how she knew I was there with Cort.

We were nervous with each other over that meal. Barely talking, certainly having trouble looking at each other. As I was clearing the table, he touched my hand. I swallowed and finally met his eyes. "You're disappointed with me, aren't you?" he asked me.

Shaking my head. Brief smile in his direction. "Never."

"Then why can't you even look at me anymore?"

My eyes locked to his. "I don't want to be falling this hard for you. And when I look at you, all I can see is that it's going to hurt pretty badly to leave."

He tugged on my hand and drew me into his lap. His lips rested against my neck, soft as the silence that surrounded us. It took so long before I finally found myself wrapping my arms around his neck and resting my head upon his shoulder. "If you were to stay here with me, could you stay knowing how easily I have taken up the way of the gun?"

"There are things about ... about the way of life here that would be hard for me to adjust to. One of them would certainly be the way people seem so at ease settling things with a gun."

His arms gathered me in a little tighter as he shifted in the chair. "In your time, guns are ... ?"

"Oh, Lord, we have guns. Certainly too many," I laughed ruefully. "But we don't carry them around on our hips. Only law enforcement officers still do. Personally, I would like nothing more than to see guns obliterated from the earth."

"Then I would guess you don't much like what you witnessed today."  He cleared his throat as he moved me off his lap, then he rose and walked into the sitting room. Standing there, so still. Then looking back at me over his shoulder; inside, I shook at the look that had moved in over him. A darkness that I wondered if I'd ever get the chance to understand. In this quiet voice, he said, "It's been so long since I've let myself care about a woman. Do you have any idea what it's like for me, now that I have, to know that you're leaving after what you saw me do today?"

I walked to where he was and moved my arms around him, feeling his chest under my hands and lying my forehead into the top of his back. His hands covered mine. "Cort, you do believe me that I'm leaving you not because I want to but because I have to? It has nothing to do with how I feel about being here; it has everything to do with an obligation I have in my time. What happened today, it scared me because you were in danger. And I saw your face after, my love.  You did what you had to."

"Perhaps," he whispered harshly, taking one of my hands and drawing it to his mouth where he slowly kissed it.

Outside, night had clamped in hard; he left to make his rounds. Unsettled, I wandered inside his space for a while before I finally settled into his bed to wait for his return. While he was gone, I spent my time reading "The Scarlet Letter."

I woke to find him spooning in behind me, his hips coming in against my rear, his arm coming under my breasts. I turned my head to find his lips and groaned when I could feel him begin to harden.

"Do you still want me?" he whispered, his voice sounding reluctant to believe it.

"Always, Cort. I will always want you." I ran my fingers along his strong jaw, feeling the tickle of short, neat stubble. As he bent his head to kiss my shoulder, my hand stroked his hair, enjoying the way it felt soft, thick and unexpected.

I felt one of his hands coast down my side, over my hip, round my rear and then glide surely over my thigh, pulling my top leg back over his hip, opening me to him when that hand slipped down to the juncture point. Already wet in anticipation, making him chuckle when he found the slickness there. He was kissing the side of my neck, setting untold numbers of nerves on fire. And he was also exploring me below, his fingers nimble in their search for what would make me sigh and moan.

"Ginny, I can't wait ... Please ... I need ..." he was muttering to me between nips along my shoulder.

My hand sought his hardness, stroking him as I brought it closer to the part of me that was simply aching for it. I spread the drops I found at his tip over him just before I rubbed him against my own wetness. Placed him right at my opening and then used two fingers to push him gently inside me. He let out his breath in a stuttering pant then circled my waist with his arms, holding me in place as he thrust up into me.

My hands were uncertain what to do. One was clutching the bedclothes, the other was trying to find purchase on his body. It finally reached his lower back and pressed in there even as I arched my back, finding a better angle to accept his thrusts inside me.

His mouth was right next to my ear. Alternating between heavy breathing, grunts and my name. And, somehow, at the end, it became just hard grunting as he turned me mostly onto my stomach and began a series of deep thrusts that made me erupt into a massive orgasm even as one of his hands slipped down and rubbed against my clit. The effect of these twin movements kept me coming longer than seemed possible.

Screaming his name into the mattress, trying to stop before I lost myself but ... too late. By the time I found my way back, he was well into shooting his fluid into me, his body over mine and in total command. I had never stood a chance.

Long minutes passed. I lay under him and welcomed the feeling of possession. He must have realized I could barely breathe, however, because he suddenly rolled off me and gently turned me onto my back. Rising up on his elbow, peering at me in the moonlit room. His fingers traced my lips just before he bent to give me a slow, deep kiss. When his head rose from mine, I spent time just memorizing the way his hair swept over his sweaty brow.

"Tell me about the source of the sadness you try to hide from me," he said.

Our eyes locked. I was open before him. "Life hasn't been good to me of late. It's something I'm not used to. Up until a year ago, I'd lived a pretty charmed life. It never prepared me for losing so much of what made my life happy."

"God never gives you more than you can handle, Ginny," he said. Like he believed it firmly. "There is always a reason He places obstacles in your path."

"Or maybe there is no God and bad things happen for absolutely no reason," I told him in this hard voice. He took my bitter edge away with a simple smile of understanding and I felt myself wondering about where that came from.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" he asked as he bent to nuzzle at my throat.

"My mother ... she was killed about a year ago. Shot during a robbery at a store. She had just gone in to buy some milk. Random act of violence, they called it." Quiet voice coming easily from my mouth and loud heart pounding in my chest. "My father ... he never recovered from it. He died of a heart attack about three months later and I swear it was because he just never could stop grieving over losing her. She was ... she was what made him love life. And then, a month ago, my sister found out she has cancer. Liver. Not much hope she'll live out another six months. It's why I was in Colorado. We go camping every year. We did, anyway. Our family. It was a tradition and we were determined to keep it. She even delayed chemotherapy until after the trip so she could go with me and my two brothers."

He nodded at me. "Death ... You question its hold over you and those you love? And this must be why you told me you weren't sure about God anymore."

"See, the thing is, what master plan could there be in all that? What God needed to take most of my family from me in one year? What divine purpose does it serve?" I told him in a bitter voice. Surprised I was putting this into words; these dark questions I'd never done more than run from over the past month. "So, no, I'm not too sure anymore that there is a God. Surely not the one I was taught about when I was growing up. That God would never do something like this."

"Perhaps that God sent you here to me to give you another person to love," he said, his voice low and his face so serious.

I shook my head at him. "There's just this thing about finding you that is making me question all over again. I thought about this today, out in the desert. Am I recovering my faith in a higher power or coming to grips with the randomness of a life that proves there is no God? Because how could any God place this choice before me - to have found you and not want to leave but to know I must go back to be with my sister in this time she most needs me? To be forced to choose between you and her? Placing someone before me I cannot have because I have a competing obligation to another person. That doesn't sound very loving of God, does it?"

He closed his eyes for a second and when he looked back out at me, he said, "Questioning God's motives is natural. Faith is understanding you may never know but believing anyway."

"Then I've lost my faith, because I need to know why."

His arms came around me and he pulled me to him. We lay snug together for so long. With my ear pressed to his broad chest, I listened to his heart beating, steady and sure. There was such strength in him; and yet he was so at ease showing me tenderness and caring. And there was such steadfast serenity about him and yet he had such skill with killing and violence.

I hadn't even realized I'd fallen asleep in his arms until we heard a fist pounding at the back door, the one that led to his rooms. He left me in the bed as he went to answer his door. I heard low voices and then he was standing in the bedroom's doorway. Get dressed, he told me softly, the preacher was there to see me.

He brought me a pitcher of water, a bowl, soap and a towel. I was able to get clean and presentable. I used his brush to get my hair in order.

By the time I made it out into his sitting room, he was pouring Carlson coffee. Silently, Cort handed me a mug of the steaming, dark liquid. His eyes lingered on mine before he found a way to smile at me.

"I need you to come to the church with me," Carlson said to me, turning so Cort wouldn't see the look he passed me. Trying to will me to go with him, no questions asked in front of Cort. I followed him out the door, turning just before I left to smile back at Cort.

Carlson put a hand on my arm and began dragging me toward the church. "Hold on, hold on. What's up?" I was asking as I tried to keep up with his rapid pace.

"You have to leave. Now. Something's happened and I think it's because you've stayed longer than you should have. I think you should have left after the picture," he told me, his voice betraying the agitation coursing through him.

Inside the church, I pulled to a stop. "What do you mean 'something's happened'?" I asked him, feeling a sense of foreboding sweeping into me, that new feeling of misty forces at work. "What exactly?"

That morning, he'd been back to our time in the ghost town of Redemption. And when he got there, he found changes. It had never happened before, he told me. Every other time he'd returned, everything had been as it was when he'd left it. But, this time, rather than finding the town looking as if it had been carefully preserved, it was now quite different.

"It's like all the other ghost towns you find. Furniture's gone or smashed up. Hardly anything's left inside the buildings. And the buildings... They're in pretty bad shape," he told me.

I stared at him in disbelief as he pushed me toward the bell tower's door. "How can that be? What could have caused it?"

"I don't know, but I believe your presence has altered something. And I suspect that for every moment you delay returning, you're making things worse. Something you've done or said has changed this town's future," he said, his words coming out in a race with time. "You need to go before there's nothing left for us to return to."

At the door, I held on to the frame and resisted his attempts to pull me up the steps. "No. Wait. I need ... Surely there's time for me to tell Cort? I can't just leave without ... Don't ask me to leave him like this."

"You have to go. Now. I'll tell him once you're gone. Then I'll come back so I can help you get back to Tucson. Wait for me on the other side, Ginny. But, whatever you do, you must go."

I let him drag me up the steps, my heart lurching in my chest at the reality of this. I felt tears stinging the back of my eyes and blinked them away. "I tried to tell you, Carlson. Yesterday, remember? I told you I should leave before it was too hard."

"Okay, so you were right. Now go."

At the standing, I took one deep breath and looked hard at him. "I'll be waiting for you. Tell Cort ... tell him not to forget me." Tell him I love him, I whispered inside my head.

I stepped off and felt myself drop. In less time than seemed possible, I was rolling to a stop on the floor of the bell tower. The landing was so much easier since I was in control of what I was doing. I turned around and stared up into the tower above me. The rope, the bell and the roof of the tower were gone.

Inside the church, no more pews. Only heavy layers of red-brown dust. I raced outside. The only thing that really looked the same was my SUV. It was where I'd left it; covered in light dust. The town ... the buildings that had once seemed old and weathered, but solid and permanent now looked beaten and dilapidated. Buildings that were mostly wood had fared the worst. My eyes settled on the jail in front of me.

Like someone had whispered to me, a thought flashed into me.

"The book," I said out loud. "I don't even have the book Cort gave me."

And, for some reason, this seemed so cruel. I looked at my empty hands and absorbed the impact of knowing I had nothing tangible to help me remember him in the coming years. I raised my head and looked at the jail again. It was the last place I'd held the book. I'd had it with me when I left the church and was holding it in the picture Carlson had taken.

Rushing back into the church, I bent and wrote Carlson a message in the dusty floor. "Gone to the jail," I wrote, not wanting him to wonder where I was when he came back to this time. Then I turned on my heels and ran across the street, entering the jail through the gaping hole that had once held a wooden door.

My eyes swept the interior. No keys hanging from a peg. No wanted posters on the wall; instead, there were a few crumpled scraps littering the floorboards. No desk. A smashed up chair. Nothing was as it should have been. The door to his rooms was still there but its hinges were so rusted that it took all my strength to shove the heavy door open. Inside, splintered remnants of furniture. The built-in bookshelf's shelves were sagging or missing. The covers and spines of a few old books were forlornly shattered on the floor nearby. Their pages must have largely scattered long ago; there were only a few printed pages crumpled and browning in one corner of the room.

I picked up each book. The one I sought wasn't there and, even though my rational part knew just how remote that possibility had been, there was still this part of me that had been desperate to find it. I suddenly felt so empty. Sinking to my haunches; and my hands pressed instinctively to my chest. So hard to let go of the feeling of him. Only minutes ago, I'd been standing in this room with him, but it had been 130 years earlier in reality. Dragging in deep breaths as I willed myself to move beyond the choking knowledge that, yet again, God had robbed me of someone I loved.

I would never see Cort again and the immensity of that seemed totally centered in losing a book he'd once owned. That eerie mist circled me again, invading me, caressing me. I shook my head and rebelled against its power to nudge its way into my mind.

Footsteps coming into the jail behind me. Approaching where I hovered just above the floor fighting the mist. Didn't turn around, knowing Carlson was now in the room with me. Not wanting him to see my face; sure it would reveal how devastated I felt.

"I'll meet you outside. Give me a few minutes, okay?" I asked him gruffly. 

"I'll give you forever, Ginny," I heard a deep voice reply.

I twirled around and found myself looking up into blue-green eyes inside a tanned face framed by chestnut hair. The words caught in my throat: "Oh, Cort."

6

Destiny can be our choice. Can't it? Do we not have the power, almost the obligation to choose our own destiny? He'd chosen his by following me across time.

It took maybe a breath and I was rushing into his arms, trying not to laugh even as I almost cried in joy. I kept touching him, his face, his chest, his hair, his mouth. Trying to convince my poor mind that it was true. That he was there with me.

He finally had to grab my hands and hold them still, kissing each palm slowly. Then he bent to possess my lips, locking me within his arms. I was perhaps the most eager prisoner to have ever stood inside that jail building. When he released my lips, I laid my head against his broad chest and we clung to each other.

In answer to my rushed questions, he told me something had seemed so wrong with Carlson that he couldn't stop himself from going to the church to see what was going on. Finding Carlson coming out of the tower, he'd known instantly, he said, that I'd gone. Even Carlson's warnings that he might cause irreparable harm to whatever timeline should have evolved from his life didn't stop Cort. He'd run back to the jail, quickly packed a bag with clothes and other possessions he wanted to bring along. Without even a pause to think it fully through, he'd walked back across the street, into the church, up the tower and ... jumped.

"Lord, but I cannot imagine the courage to purposely jump through the gate, knowing what would happen," I said in wonder. "How could you have that much faith in your decision?"

"I have enough faith for both of us," he told me, in that soft way he has. "Maybe God never meant for you to stay in my time. He must have meant for you to find me so that I'd follow you here, where you need me with you. That is what my faith tells me."

I forced myself to smile in response. His faith would have to be enough. I had none of my own to contribute. And then it dawned on me. "Are you telling me that you're staying? Here? With me? In this time?"

"I told you I didn't want to lose you. This was an easy choice for me once I realized you'd left Redemption." Deep breath in. "Do you want me to stay?"

"Fuck, yes!" I almost shouted at him, giggling that he'd even wonder. It was the first time I saw a real laugh light up his body. "I cannot believe you're here. It's the first good thing to happen to me in so long and ..."

Stepping away from him as I caught his eyes looking around. I watched as the sight of this room impacted him. He walked around, disappeared down the hall and then slowly came back to where I stood. The solemn cast of his face concerned me.

"You've left everything you know behind. Hell, you've left everyone you love behind. Maybe this was a rash decision and I would understand if you want to go back," I told him. Holding my breath at how I was giving him permission to leave but knowing I'd always wonder if I didn't.

"There's no one back there that I love," he replied. "I have no more family. There are friends I feel affection for, people I will miss. But the only person I love is here."

It about knocked me over. "This is how it feels then."

He raised his eyebrows in question and reached a hand out to cup my cheek. "How what feels?"

"To find your soul mate and to know it without question," I said.

New footsteps stomped toward us. We turned to find Carlson in the doorway, a deep scowl blotting his face. "What have you done?" he grated out to Cort. "Do you know the damage you're doing by being here? You can't stay. There's no telling the changes you'll put into play if you simply disappear from Redemption."

The mist tapped into me again and I had a clear vision. "You're assuming that the way you and I found Redemption was the way it was supposed to look in this time, Carlson. Maybe what we've done is put things right."

They both stared at me. Carlson's head shook hard. "No. It was perfect the way it was. Like time had stopped and ..."

His eyes opened wide and I smiled at him. "Exactly. It was too perfect. It was unlike any other ghost town you've ever seen, wasn't it? Now it looks like it should. Like a town that was slowly abandoned by the people who lived there. Like a place that was passed by when those people moved on for a better life in other cities and towns. The years haven't been kind to it, but isn't that the way it should be?"

"Surely, you're not saying you believe ... that all of this ... that somehow bringing this man across time was the way history was supposed to happen?" Carlson asked me.

That was exactly what I believed. History was put right the moment we fell in love. What other explanation could there be?