9

A week after Cort crossed over into my time, I was seeing my world through different eyes. Truth be told, it was my world itself that was different. I just didn't know it at first.

After a rocky start, Cort reached this level of acceptance about the different world he was in and he stopped being so shocked at new things. Instead, he became curious and excited at new wonders. But I also learned how to moderate the introduction of new things so that it wouldn't overwhelm him. This sense of adventure would serve him well in the coming time.

In some ways, he was a different person, more at ease with me yet more intense. And, still, he was the man I'd seen in the beginning. Sometimes, I would catch him studying me and it never failed to make me feel like I was drowning in him. He had this way of making me feel safe, even when I'd see the threads of danger that wove themselves into the fabric of him. As if what I saw was the danger he would present to others but never to me.

I never told him, couldn't figure out how to tell him, truly - that in the beginning, he'd have to rely on me to make the decisions. Instead, I just presented no options; I simply said, we'll do this or we'll now do that. And it's how we did it - he went along without understanding the implications. Truthfully? I know now, of course, what I didn't then. I was being selfish, absolutely selfish. I wouldn't let him help make decisions because I was resolute that he would come home with me.

By the time we left Carlson, we had a whole set of papers for Cort that established him as an official 'person' in our time. I didn't ask too many questions; all I needed to know was that they'd work. We'd have to figure out the rest as we went along.

The only reason we left Carlson on the fourth day was because I needed to get back to see my sister before I drove home to San Francisco. My editor was anxious for me to return as the deadlines for the magazine's next edition were looming and she could hear in my voice that I was excited by the story I was bringing home with me.

But, I knew I would make the time to stop in Denver to see how my sister was doing. One day, I begged my editor. Yes, I told her, it was that important to me. Inside of me was a person who was aware that it might be the last time I ever saw Leslie.

By the timetable my sister had given me before I left on the trip down to find Carlson, I knew she'd still be in the hospital in the initial stages of chemotherapy. Now retracing the route back to her home on the other side of this life-changing week of finding Cort, I drove almost 13 hours to reach her; we only stopped for meals and gasoline. On some kind of natural high, I jazzed the drive. Hours of night passed pretty quietly since most of that time we were surrounded by the barren New Mexico landscape. We charged into Denver about mid-morning. Drove up her driveway and I started shaking.

"Must be crashing," I mumbled, looking at Cort, who was still taking in the subdivision's neat lawns and rows of orderly homes.

He'd been mostly silent and wide-eyed ever since the tall buildings of the city had captured his amazed attention. I think he had hated the traffic downtown on the interstate. I know he was at first shocked and then later amused to point of tears at the curse words that flew from my mouth at the other drivers. "Just wait 'til San Francisco," I had mumbled.

Now, at last at my sister's home, and the weight of seeing her sad little family felt crushing. I sighed and leaned over to where I could rest my head on his shoulder. I hadn't told anyone about him yet. We had talked about that on the long drive and we never seemed to reach a better plan than to just say he was a friend. I'd tell my sister Leslie the truth later. Someday. Right just then, it seemed inappropriate given that she was embarking on what was more than likely a fruitless fight for her life.

I took a deep breath, enjoying a last few moments in the peace of Cort's arms. Closed my eyes and readied myself for going in that house to talk with my brother-in-law Dan, to find out how Leslie's treatments were going and then I could head for the hospital to see her.

"Someone's coming," Cort whispered to me as I leaned against him. My eyes looked out through the windshield at the munchkin heading my way. She was jumping up and down on the lawn and squealing 'Aunt Ginny' loud enough to be heard miles away.

"My niece Maggie. A bit hyper today, I see," I said with a surprised smirk as we watched the five-year-old's excited antics. "What can I say? She likes me."

"She's not the only one," he said and I giggled because he was so pleased at his smart remark.

The moment I got out of the car, Maggie was on me like white on rice. She jumped into my arms and started talking so fast I couldn't catch it all. She didn't slow down or take a breath until she caught a glimpse of Cort walking around the car toward us. Then she looked deep into my eyes, saying in her grave little voice, "Mommy's taking me to the Six Flags today. She said you'd come with us if you got here. Will the man come, too?"

Keeping my voice carefully neutral, I said, "Baby-cakes, let me just check in with your dad before we make any plans. Okay?"

She squiggled out of my arms and went charging back inside the house. I shrugged my shoulders at Cort. "She hasn't been like this in a while. It's nice to see her happy again but then, they say kids are pretty resilient."

Dan opened the door just as we got to the porch. His face was sporting a grin I hadn't seen him wear the last time I was there. "Gin. Damn, is Leslie going to be glad to see you made it this early."

He buried me in a bear hug and then seemed to realize someone was with me. "My friend Cort," I told him and watched them shake hands. "Which hospital is Leslie at? And did you know Maggie thinks she's going to the amusement park today? How is Leslie anyway?"

"Hospital? Why would I be in a hospital?"

My mouth dropped open at the sound of her voice. My eyes got wide at the sight of her. She looked... great. Like her old self. Not like the tired person I'd left about a week earlier. "Leslie? You're home? I thought you said they were doing this in-patient. Did the doctors change their minds?"

She and Dan traded confused looks before she said, "I don't have a clue as to what you're babbling about, Gin."

Deep swallow. Eyes at the floor, concentrating. Trying to think and trying not to give in to the comforting feeling I was getting at the gentle touch of the now-familiar mist. Maggie came into my view as she rushed in and grabbed around my knees. Smiling up at me.

"Aunt Ginny? Why are you crying?" her little voice asked me, her face suddenly turning serious.

Shaking my head and feeling the mist stroke me like a welcome friend. Eyes up at Leslie. "You're not sick? Leslie? You never were sick?"

"Not since I had the flu last winter. What the fuck's wrong with you, Ginny?" Leslie said, her voice riddled with concern.

The room seemed to shift suddenly. Feeling Cort touch me around my waist and turning to meet his eyes. The mist snaked in and around me. Somehow, I felt what was happening much more strongly than my rational mind could accept it.

And what I knew was that my sister had been dying of cancer a week earlier. Before I went to Redemption. Before Cort came into my life. Before his coming to be with me changed Redemption's history. Was it possible to believe that this had also changed my personal history?

"Something about you choosing to come to this time has altered things for me just as it did for Redemption. It's the only explanation," I told Cort.

He nodded at me and we exchanged puzzled smiles even as he drew me in against him for a warm hug that helped me regain my balance.

"Genoma? I'm waiting for an explanation," Leslie said. She sounded just like my mother; my mother always called me by my birth name when she was irritated with me.

"Leslie, you'll never believe what's happened to me since the last time I saw you," I told her as I drew myself away from Cort. "But right now? Can I just please hug you hard? Because you have no idea just how happy I am to see you looking so good."

It wasn't until Cort and Dan offered to take Maggie outside to play on her swing set that I had the space to tell Leslie what had happened. I'll start at the top, I told her, but then quickly leapt around in this jagged march toward the only explanation that was possible.

There was no one else in the world who would have believed what I told her that morning about Redemption, Cort and the gate across time. About Leslie's cancer and now her health. And, from nowhere, a thought exploded in my mind.

"Is Mom alive?" I asked her, leaping down from the kitchen counter where I'd been perched as she sat at her table sipping coffee while we talked. Grinning at her, excited and, oh sweet Jesus, so ready to hear her say, 'yes, of course, you idiot.'

Her eyes shut and she shook her head. Ah, so that part of my history hadn't changed. My parents were still dead. In the oddest way, it was almost like losing them again. It was a sharp pain until the mist crept around me again and gave me this feeling of comfort.

"Maybe Cort was right," I whispered in a voice filled to my throat with unshed tears. "Maybe God had a purpose after all. Maybe He wanted to prove to me that He was listening all this last month as I was yelling at the God I knew that He couldn't take you, too."

"Then why didn't he restore everyone, Gin? I mean, on the off chance I believe this is some message from God, why wouldn't He give us Mom and Dad back?"

My eyes caught movement outside the window and I stood for long moments watching Cort push my niece on her swing. "It wasn't until I knew you were dying that I lost faith in God. Maybe He wanted to give me my faith back."

I felt her arms reach around my waist and hug me. "I would have thought Mom would have been the hardest for you to lose."

"Losing her was ... We were so close and yet she never could understand the choices I made in life. Like leaving here and moving to California. She hated not knowing what was happening in my life," I told Leslie, somehow smiling at the memory of my mother.

"You two had such a strong bond, no matter how far away you were." My sister looked at me and I know she saw the changes in me. Away from her less that a week and I felt like I was a brand new me. "I wish I knew what to tell you. I wish I was as good as Mom at that. Remember how she always knew? The right words, the right touch? Remember how she used to tell us that it was because she would be our mother forever, and that even after she was dead and buried, she'd still be around to help us when we needed her?"

Like it was yesterday. And like she'd died that day. "I miss her so much. When will I stop missing her this much? When will it not feel like this?" I asked my sister.

We grabbed onto each other, a hug to help us both, to anchor us in the present so we'd stop being adrift in the past.

"Leslie? Can I tell you something about what's happened that's going to sound weird?" I whispered to her. I felt her chuckle against me.

"Weirder than you traveling through time to find a man?"

"Yeah. Maybe weirder than that even." At the sound of the seriousness in my voice, she stopped laughing. Hugged me a little tighter as encouragement. "When I was back there, in that other time? Mom ... I mean, I thought I heard her voice. Like she was talking to me. It was so weird. I think ... It was probably just too much sun. But, still ... It was such a powerful experience."

She pushed us apart and studied my face. "Mom was always worried that you'd never open yourself up again to a man. She used to tell me that the right man was out there for you and she was scared that you'd pass him by. Maybe she was there with you, maybe she was helping you find him."

I smiled at her. "We're really in some mood today, eh? Mom would kick our asses if she heard us talking this nonsense."

And, that was it for us. We got a case of the giggles that didn't stop for a long time. We finally stopped when we walked into her living room and I picked up the framed picture of my parents that was on her mantle.

"Look at them, Gin. They were always in love, weren't they?" Leslie said, coming to stand next to me. In the picture, it was such a typical pose for them; my mother's hand on my father's thigh and they were laughing together over something. "They were always touching."

"They were soul mates," I said. Looking up and our eyes met. "I never understood what Mom meant when she used to say that. But it's what I feel with Cort."

"There's something about the way you look at each other. It's nice to see. Tell me about him."

Blushing in front of her laser eyes. Leslie had always been able to read me in a way that was spooky. "He's the most unaffected man I've known. You should have seen him back there, walking around with a star on his chest, guns on his hips and this way of walking that ... Leslie, there's something so tender about him, like he's strong enough to show a weaker side. But there's something else there ... I'm really just beginning to explore him."

"He looks good. I mean, he's does those jeans some real justice," she said, nodding her head at where we could see him and Dan outside the window. "So how's the sex?"

We roared at each other. Such a typical Leslie question. I kept shaking my head at her, trying to recover my dignity. "That's none of your business, you witch. But I will say that I have no complaints."

"Yeah. You have the well-fucked look about you. Well, if you're staying here tonight, I'll have to put you in the room that's furthest from Maggie's bedroom. I don't want your niece being traumatized," she said in her smart-ass voice as she flounced away from my fist.

Our visit with Leslie and her little family showed me a side of Cort I'd never have thought possible. Watching him play with my niece was fascinating. She brought out a silliness that I would never have guessed he had in him.

Later that evening, when it was time for her to go to bed, Dan tried to wrestle her little hands from the grip they had on Cort's neck. Stoic and calm, Cort finally whispered in her ear and she dropped her hands from him, turned to her dad and let him carry her to her bedroom.

"What did you tell her?" I asked him. We were outside on the back deck, sitting together on the cedar swing and listening to the soft sounds of night falling down. All alone for the first time since we'd come to Denver.

When he didn't answer, I turned to find him watching me steadily. "I simply asked her to go with her father," he said quietly.

"You have a way with women of all ages, I guess," I teased him. "I can see I'll have to keep an eye on you."

"You know I love you, right?" he whispered to me, changing the mood on a dime. 

His lips brushed mine. I reached out and pulled his head down to me, latching on to his mouth and letting myself absorb the tenderness of the moment.

"Do you trust me?" he asked me, his head leaning atop mine as I sought to burrow into him. It just never seemed I could get close enough to him at times like that.

"Yes. I do trust you, Cort. Why?" His heart beat solid and steady. I could hear its echo thud against his chest; my ear resting there, finding the cadence soothing to my soul.

"I trust you as well, Ginny. Trust has always been a hard thing for me," he said.

The next evening would find us in another state and another state of mind. 

In the morning, we rose with the sun and were on the road in less than an hour. Drove all day and made it into Winnemucca, Nevada just as the evening's rose skies were darkening. The town's dusty main street invited us to get off of it.

"This is ... um ... interesting," Cort told me, his eyes taking in the assortment of characters we passed on the way in to the hotel I usually stayed at on this leg of the trip.

"Yeah, I agree. I've never really liked staying here but it just always seems to work out that this is where I stop for the night," I replied. "I always feel like eyes are watching me. I can never wait to lock myself up inside the hotel room."

"Well, you're with me now." Saying it like that was the answer to everything and every fear.

And, who knows? Maybe it was.

Inside the hotel room, he stood transfixed. "This is ... uh ... I don't know what to say."

I looked around him and tried to see this through his eyes. "I guess it looks like a bit like a high class bordello, huh?"

"You think?" he said, turning his head and giving me a strange look over his shoulder. "Is there something I should know, Ginny?"

My eyes scanned the walls with their lacy black patterns that shot through the red flocking of the wallpaper. They passed quickly over the cherry wood end tables and other furniture. They glanced over the lampshades, which were a delicate pattern that complimented the walls, and the thick curtains with their black-tasseled fringes. And then they came to rest on the deep ruby satin bedspread atop the bed.

"And here I was feeling out of place in this time," he said softly. I could hear the hint of a smile in his voice. "I appreciate the trouble you went to in getting this particular room."

"Padre? Are you telling me you're familiar with such rooms in your time?" I asked him, my eyes catching his. Pretending to be shocked. "Besides, all of the rooms in this hotel are like this, more or less. It's the theme."

"Really? Then why are you blushing, mi corazón?" He was advancing on me, his smile barely hidden, his eyebrows drawn up as his head tilted for him to get a good look at me.

"No, don't turn this around on me, Padre. You're the one who has some explaining to do." Giggling now and trying to evade his hands reaching for me. "Tell me how a chaste preacher comes to know what the inside of a fancy bordello looks like."

"Well, my sweet Ginny, I wasn't always a preacher," he said low and deep. "And I never said I was chaste before I met you."

The door met my back and I smiled into him as he reached me. My mouth was open to accept his kiss; our tongues seemed so thirsty to taste each other. It felt like it had been days since I'd been able to have at his skin.

A fleeting thought crossed my mind: I was besotted with him. It was the perfect description for the way he made me feel. Just the barest look from him fired up a craving inside me to have him in my arms. All he ever had to do was be near me and I felt this incredible pull.

"No man's ever made me feel the way you do," I whispered to him, the words out before I realized I'd said them out loud. Closing my eyes, afraid of this sensation that I had been lost until he'd found me.

He never uttered a word. Just gentle fingers talking for him. Only lips and tongue to spread his message across me.

I let him strip me, helping him when he let me, reveling in the feel of being in his power when he didn't. When he had me nude before him, he mumbled in my ear, "Mi corazón."

Saying it like it was the most profound statement. Like it would hurt him if he didn't let it out. Touching me with just his voice. Stroking me with only a sound. Invading me with simple sentiment.

Making me cry. Salty tears he rubbed away with his thumbs. Calming my quivering lips by covering them with his and applying a relentless, welcome pressure. His hands sliding over my body, indulging my skin with insistent caresses.

My fingers pulled at his buttons and he let me bare his chest. The sight of it. The feel. The way it flexed beneath my lightest touch. Too much. Between my mouth and my hands, there was never enough time to anoint it all.

I looked up into his eyes and felt the way the world seemed to be unresolved in whether or not it dared to go on just then. As if the moment should be that powerful to control how the earth tilted on its axis.

"Déjeme hacerle amor," he said in a rough whisper. But it wasn't so much a request as it was an edict.

His strong arms picked me up and his eyes never left mine as he carried me over to the large bed. One knee on the bed and he placed me atop the coolness of the bedspread. His mouth found mine, a gentle probe to keep me company while his body came to nestle next to me. Then holding me in his arms, his hands memorizing the feel of my body as if we had time as an ally that evening.

My sense of feeling seemed in overload that night. The cool satiny slickness of the bedspread contrasted with his warm, calloused hands. The texture of his skin against my chest was juxtaposed to the fabric of his jeans pressing between my legs as he held me captive inside the cocoon of his unbreakably possessive embrace. The bite of his nibbling teeth fought for control with the lick of his nubile tongue.

Punch drunk, over-sated, wallowing in the experience of him.

By the time his fingers glanced between my thighs, I felt like I was dripping in preparation for him. "I'm not going to make it," I whispered to him. His steady eyes considered me. "Watch out for me tonight, my love."

Nodding solemnly, a cool-burning fire inside his eyes, telling me, "Por siempre."

He rose slowly from the bed and in one smooth motion, shed the remaining clothes that covered his skin. I could have stared at him forever, standing there, his body rimmed in the warm red glow of the bedside lamp. One of his big hands clamped over his hard cock, pumping slowly as he looked down at me. Almost as if he were frozen there, waiting for some signal to take me. "Le deseo," he muttered, almost as if I wasn't there to hear him speak those words of desire.

"I'm always yours, Cort," I answered, kneeling up and moving over to the side of the bed where he moved smoothly to take hold of my body. The height of the bed put me more level with him; we were almost eye-to-eye. His mouth fit snuggly under my ear and he dove in to me there, sucking in, almost rough but sending a shock coursing directly through my gut to my clit.

Moving against him, now eager for consummation. But he didn't want to rush and I was tortured sweetly between what his mouth and his fingers were taking their time doing to me. By the time his hand was between my legs, pressing up into slickness that telegraphed my flowing desire, I was truly done in. One smooth flick and I was coming, burying my head into his neck and moaning out my release.

I stopped him when he began to lay me back onto the bed. "My love, can we ...?" Stopping to gauge his reaction, half-turning before I whispered what I wanted from him. Then feeling his chest against my back and he nearly lifted me from my knees so he could slide himself inside me. My breath left me as he let me settle down onto his cock.

His thumb assaulted my sweating clit, never giving it rest until I was shaking and crying out this panting gasp of shock even as he gobbled mouthfuls of my neck. By the time he prodded me forward and onto my hands, I was nothing so much as a woman seeking more. More him, more coming, more wetness, more hardness, more hands, more cock, more tongue, more penetration, more connection, more absolution, more ...

And then his hands were gripping my hips hard and he was pumping into me with true vigor and abandon. Losing himself in me the way I'd already lost myself in us. Calling out to me as if he needed me to help him find his way back. Finally unrepentant in the sheer exhilaration of the power of what we shared.

I was shaking so hard under him. Staying on my hands and knees through sheer willpower. The feel of his forehead on the small of my back was an experience I refused to give up one second of. But then he planted a slow, wet kiss there and put his arms around my waist to drag me down atop the bed with him. We spooned together and watched neon outside our window turn the night into a different world.

Dinner that evening was a rushed affair. Walking hand-in-hand to a diner that had seen one too many hard luck gambling story. Too into each other to even notice the other inhabitants of the too-bright restaurant.

Trying to prepare him for what the next day would bring. The beginning of our real lives together, I told him. He picked up my hand and promised me we had nothing to fear as long as we were together.

"Do you realize how much you've brought into my life?" he asked me, his face that serious look of absolute concentration that still brought me to my knees. "Whoever we can thank for helping us find each other across time, we owe more than either of us can ever repay."

This odd feeling came over me; not the mist this time, but mystical nonetheless. "It's truly something, isn't it? You've already given me back my sister by choosing to take this chance on me. But, I think you're giving me back my faith, as well. Something about you, isn't there? You've changed my life in so many ways. It's the first time in so long that I feel like I can imagine there might be a purpose to it all."

By the next morning, we were edgy to be heading over the mountains and down toward the sea. Charging into our future without reservations. I took it as an omen that the sun was glinting off the Golden Gate Bridge when it finally hove into view. Ever since I'd lived in San Francisco, I didn't really feel like I knew I was home until I glimpsed its gold tiers from atop the hill just above my apartment.

'Coming home.' Something about those words pricked at me when they flitted fully formed through my mind. And I wasn't sure if the mist had stayed behind in Denver; perhaps it knew it wouldn't be welcomed or needed in this land of mystic fog shrouds.

10

What is it about the first day of work after a good vacation? Okay, even after a bad vacation?

I slapped the blaring alarm off and groaned. Sleepy blue-green eyes swam before my face and a mop of brown hair swung close to my forehead.

"What the Hell was that?" his groggy voice asked me.

"The sound of doom," I wisecracked. "Baby, it's my alarm clock. I have to get up to get ready for work."

"Alarm clock?"

"Never mind. The longer you never have to live by its tyranny, the better for you."

And like the bat out of hell I can be on such days, I was off and into the grind that is my lot in work life. Blasting from the shower and blowing past his puzzled face. Getting back into the rhythm of never having anything to wear to work and he was more confused. Muttering about being late for work and he was lost.

"Am I coming with you?" he asked me as I was putting earrings on and already mentally in my office miles away.

It brought me up short. "I can't leave you here alone, can I?" But not so much a question as a musing to myself. "But I can't take you to work, either."

Oh, God, why hadn't I thought this far forward, I wondered. What would he do all day ... alone ... with nothing to do ... no one to talk to ... and when exactly would I ever be able to leave him alone in this strange city and even stranger time?

"Tell you what, Cort. Just for today? Why don't you get dressed and come into the office with me. I'll ... um ... well, I don't actually know what I'll do with you but at least you can ... Shit. That's not going to work. You'll be bored silly and I'm going to be in meetings about the next edition all day. Crap. I should have thought about this."

His finger under my chin brought my face up to his. Brief kiss that I forced into something longer, more passionate. His deep, so solid voice saying, "You go on. I'll be fine here. I'll just walk around and get to know this city of yours."

My eyes flew open. "No! Don't walk around by yourself, Cort. At least don't go further than a block or two. You might wander somewhere you ..." I got this mental image of him wandering into the Tenderloin. Then, snap, another image of him being offered crack. And a fleeting image of him trying to cross the street and getting flattened by on-rushing traffic.

"Ginny, mi amor, I'm a grown man. I can take care of myself for a few hours," he told me, holding himself in that quietly noble way of his.

I fished in my purse and pulled out all the bills I had. "Cort, honey, here's some money in case you want to buy something. Make sure you always carry some with you just in case something happens and ..." His face was getting this tough look on it. "Here, I'm going to write my address down on this piece of paper and I want you to carry it with you. If you get lost, just show it to someone and ask them to help you find it. And here, I'm putting down my cell phone number - someone will help you call me if you need me. Tonight, I promise, I'll show you how to use the phone and ... well ... this weekend, I'll start teaching you about some other things you'll need to know in the city."

It was my own fault. We'd been back in San Francisco early enough the day before that I could have at least taken a few hours to think about some basics he'd need to know when I wasn't with him. But, no. Not me. I had been too busy enjoying cooking dinner together and then having each other for dessert.

There was something about being back in the city, on my own turf, caught up in the different pace of life here ... it just made me jumpier and less practical when it came to him.

I was an hour late for work but still in time for the first story budget meeting. So, all things considered, people weren't too hard on me for being late. Besides, they were all chuffed over the article on Carlson.

"Love it, darling," my editor told me as she swept into the chair next to me for the early meeting. "I'll be damned if they're taking the cover away from us."

Hid a laugh. I was used to this Lizbeth Shillato, my esteemed and talented boss, was all talk when it came to battling the managing editor. But this time, he was on her side. Of course, he was also the one who'd been pushing for the Carlson story for the past four months.

The cover. What a jazz. What a blast.

I almost fell asleep with my eyes wide open during the meeting while they bandied about the tag line for the cover story. Daydreaming and I was out in the desert with Cort. Feeling his head in my lap. Loving his arm propped so casually around my waist. Remembering as if I was there the way his eyes saw into me.

"Genoma? Is that okay with you?" Lizbeth asked me, a distinct note of disapproval in her cultured voice that never would have dared to shout. "Are you sitting there picturing what the cover will look like with your by-line or are you actually with us this morning?"

"It's always so hard to make judgment calls on your own work," I said, thinking quickly, smiling around the table. "I trust the talent here to make the right decision. I'm pretty excited, that's all. It's been a while since I've had a cover."

Mollified, the group went on to the next section's lead and I was able to drift back into daydream mode. I called home the moment I walked back into my office. Speaking into the answering machine and asking Cort to just pick up the receiver. When I heard the click and a tentative 'Ginny?' in that voice, I thought I'd never live through the day without the chance to touch him.

"Hey there. How's your day been so far?" I asked him.

"I do not know if I'll get used to this. Where are you?"

"At work. But I want to be there with you. I just had to hear your voice. What have you been doing?"

"Reading."

"Really?" Picturing him, spread out atop the couch, one of my books in his hands. "God. I miss you, Cort. Here I was, worried about you and it's me who's having such a hard time today."

"Come back here, then. I'm waiting for you."

Making me groan so loud that three people stopped in the hall to find out what was wrong. I waved them out of my office and somehow found the will to get off the phone with him. Sweating so badly that I had to go to the bathroom and run cold water on the back of my neck.

Those first few days were pure torture. At work, my mind was on home and Cort. At home, my mind was empty and my body existed on his proximity. He was gradually weaning himself from me, taking longer and further walks of exploration during the days, trying to find his own confident rhythm of adaptation to my world while I worried for his safety.

But after awhile, the days ran together and I became too satisfied with my new lot in life. Morning love, work that passed in a blissful blur, evening homecoming sex and talk, weekends of mindless exploration with Cort.

He became so damned self-sufficient. I'd teach him something and he had some intuition that took him racing away from me. And he was making friends that I had never met. Every day, I'd come home and he'd had another adventure. I was like a parent trying to let her young child take his first steps and then blinking and wondering how her baby had become a man so quickly.

In the beginning weeks together, I never thought I'd survive the hours away from him. I was insanely jealous of all the people who got to see him while I was locked up in a steel tower a few miles away. We got to take three trips together for me to do out-of-town interviews and I found myself taking Lizbeth up on her long-standing offer to do more writing from home.

After a month, our routine was getting easier on me. But, it was wearing on Cort. He got strange about money - he was more and more unsettled every time I shoved money at him but he had to have it. I did get my bank to issue another credit card on my account so he could have some plastic, but he never used it. If he wouldn't use it the way I'd wanted him to, with ease and the knowledge that I loved the necessity of taking care of him, it at least made me feel a little better that he had it - just in case there was an emergency. I just figured he'd get used to it all in time so I didn't push him.

But, it was more than the money. It was the whole issue of belonging. He wanted something useful to do. He gradually told me less and less about his days. And at night, I'd come in full of excitement to see him while he was more and more reluctant to share with me what he was feeling.

One night, we were sitting on my balcony watching the sun set. It was when I had to really face that this was more than adjustment issues; this was genuine dissatisfaction with his lot in my life.

"This is heaven to me," I whispered to him as I snuggled against him. "You're so wonderful to come home to."

"Don't know that I share your view of heaven, Ginny," he muttered. 

Swallowing deeply and, with a flash, knowing we were about to have a conversation we should have had weeks ago. I sat up and looked at him. "Want to tell me about it?" I asked him.

Shaking his head, resolutely staring in my eyes as if he'd transmit some message to me.

"Baby, please? You're not happy and I need to ..." I tried, but stopped when I saw his face change.

"Stop it." He rose from the settee and walked back into my apartment.

I turned to the setting sun and blinked away the hurt. Reminding myself that he was the one of us in need of understanding and support. By the time I found him, he was pulling on his heavy jacket and obviously intent on going out just to get away from me. My hand soft on his cheek drew him up short. When he sighed and closed his eyes, I whispered to him, "Tell me what I've done wrong and I promise I'll fix it."

"For God's sake, Ginny. Can't you see that's the problem?"  The words came out through a clenched jaw. "I am not a child. I'm a man. I don't want you fixing my problems. I don't want you taking care of me like this."

"But ... You couldn't make it without ... Cort, I owe you this," I replied, moving to block him from walking out.

His eyes skewered me. "You do not owe me a thing, Ginny. Is that what this is? Is this all I'll ever be to you? This ... this is the future you see for us?"

"I owe you everything, baby. You gave up every single thing you knew and came with me only because you loved me enough to do it. I'd do anything for you and if by taking care of you, you mean that I'm supporting you, then, yes, I'll do that forever. And happily."

"But I won't be happy that way, Ginny." He shook his head, lowered his eyes and spoke to the floor. "I want to be the one taking care of you."

Hadn't I known this would happen? "I'm sorry."

Moving into his body and not the least upset when he backed away. Reaching for him and staying calm in the face of his continued rejection. Finding within me the resolve to keep trying.

"Cort? Sweetheart, I have been so selfish. Can you forgive me?" Swallowing deep as he stopped and met my eyes. "I should have been honest with you in the beginning. I knew, even then, that this would happen. That you'd have to rely on me this way and that you'd never accept it. But I couldn't be ... I couldn't find the way to take the chance that if I told you and you knew how hard it would be for you to fit in ... I'm sorry. I was wrong but I was scared you'd not come with me. I just wanted you that badly."

We stood there looking at each other. I watched him understand the weight of what I'd admitted. Not that I'd lied to him, but that I'd not given him the chance to face this future with a complete picture and decide if it was one he wanted for himself.

"Tomorrow, Ginny, I'm going to start deciding how ... This has got to stop, mi amor. Understand?" Stepping toward me, his big hands slowly circling my upper arms. His voice tough yet not truly angry. Resolute. Determined. "I will be the man in your life."

My hand on his chest, I could feel his heart beating, fast and hard. Betraying the depth of the emotion he wasn't sharing with me. "You are the man in my life, Cort."

"No. If I were ... You have no idea, do you? I love you for the complications and for the way you are never exactly what I expected to find in a woman. But, I wonder if you love me in spite of the way I've not measured up as a man."

Eyes locked to his. Knowing he saw the truth in mine. "You are the man in my life. The day I met you was the day I learned what a real man was. All this other stuff? What does it really mean? Here, Cort, in your heart is where I found the only man I would ever want in my life. What else really matters?"

"It matters to me more than you apparently can understand that I'm not doing the things a man should be doing for the woman he loves. I'm nothing here in this city. I have no purpose and I can give you nothing," he said.

What could I say? "Surely we can figure this out, Cort. I just ... I know it's been hard on you. But in this day and age, it's just not the same between men and women. The fact is that I have a good job and more than enough money to support us both. It doesn't make you less of a man. And, in time, I'm sure you'll find the role you want to play - whether it's a job or volunteering or whatever. I love you so much and I need you to be okay with this."

"I know you love me, Ginny. But I am more than just your lover. Just as you are more. And, mi amor, if we are to live with each other in this city, you have to let me find my way in this. I have to start feeling like the man I should be for you." He took my hand in his, kissed my fingers, tilted his head and considered me intently. A shifting light flared in his eyes and shimmered across his face. Whispering gruffly into my ear as he bent toward me, "Why is it that when we're this close, there is always a part of me reacting just to your body? How does knowing that make you feel?"

"Like a woman. Like your woman," I whispered back, my body trembling at the transformation in his emotions. My lips were already drawing a bead on the part of his neck I wanted to suck. "If you didn't half lose it for me when I'm near you, I'd die."

Without another word, he was shoving my clothes off, not even bothering with buttons. Every seam he ripped drove me. He propelled me roughly into the bedroom, pushing me in front of him with my clothes half off, half on. Then turning me to face him, his mouth was over mine, open and searching inside me with an urgent, demanding tongue. And then leaving me so abruptly that I was gasping at the absence of his mouth on mine. But by then his mouth was clamped over my neck. His hands on my ass and dragging me in to him, his hardness pressed up against my wetness.

"God. Oh. Cort," grunting out to him, my needs ramped up so high, responding like it was instinct to the almost mindless physical need he had to take me. This flitting realization rushing over me that we were both on emotional overload and that maybe ... just maybe one of us should have slowed this down, that one of us should have seen how easily this could turn on us. "Please fuck me. I need you so much. Please. You drive me crazy with wanting you."

"Fuck you? That's what you want?" His voice a deep, hoarse tone that vibrated into me, making me want him even more. When my reply was nothing more than another base entreaty, he picked me up and tossed me on the bed.

I bounced against his hard body coming in over me, pressing me down, his hand shoving between my legs, his mouth sucking my breast so hard it ached. The unexpectedly rough way he was treating me made me gush beneath his hand, causing me to cry out. But still ... oh God ... I still writhed beneath him, wanting nothing but the way he seemed to want to possess me.

I felt his big hands sweep behind me and grab my hips. That rush of a thrill lit up my heart's speed to be in this with him. He pulled me hard against him just as he smoothly pushed himself in to the hilt. Answering my cry, asking me, "This how you want it?"

"God, yes. Harder." Grabbing his face, forcing his mouth down tight to mine, my legs wrapping around his hips. Feeling him grinding into me so hard that it began to hurt. Losing my breath and working hard to pull out of the kiss. And just when I thought I'd have to cry out to stop him from how he was bucking into me, I started coming. Rough. Uneven. Sharp. Consuming.

He only slowed down when a whimper slipped out of me. His arms wrapped in tight across my back and he thrust in one last time. I felt him coming into me, his semen filling me. He laid there, sagging heavily into me, his arms gripping me tight.

"Don't ever let me do that to you again," he said quietly, this choking sound of deep sadness. I felt a tremble run through him.

"Cort. No, it's okay. You can ..." I was murmuring to him, my mouth giving him light kisses along his neck. He was looking down into my eyes, shaking his head. The haunted look back in his eyes and it made me ache for him. "Please hold me," saying it so softly to him, pleading with him and I watched as his eyes responded to my needs. "Please, baby. Do this for me. Say it's okay. Please."

We fell asleep wrapped up in each other. In the morning, I woke to find him watching me. "Te amo, mi corazón." His softest voice and his softest touch.

"I know, my love. I know." Closing my eyes as he entered me, so slowly and so carefully. Like he was seeking absolution for the night before. Asking for me to help him remember the side of him he most wanted to remember when he was with me. Holding on to him and choking down on any outward sign of lingering soreness from what we'd done the night before. Without even trying, his sweet attentions had me coming around him. I felt soft tears in my eyes when I heard the call of my name as he emptied himself into me.

That night when I got home, I found a new Cort waiting for me. Or, perhaps I found the old Cort. The one with a purpose. He'd found a job in a second hand bookstore that was about two blocks from my apartment house. Leo, the man who'd given him the job, was one of the many new friends he'd made. One of so many of his friends I heard about but never met because they were part of his hours when I'd be at work.

And I found myself irrationally annoyed at this. It took me days of chastising myself before I came to the realization that I was actually worried that if he wasn't totally dependent on me, then he might leave me. Man, I thought when I understood it, do you ever have some issues with loss.

Leo began taking Cort to church services with him. I'd drifted so far from organized religion in the last few years that I'd failed to establish any regular place of worship when I'd moved to San Francisco. I went with Cort every Sunday and felt like I should probably be pretty nervous about going to a house of the Lord when I was still struggling with doubting God and my own faith.

For Cort, finding this congregation was like finding the best reason to enjoy San Francisco. What days he wasn't working for Leo, he was working with the pastor. I loved the enthusiasm and zest for the city that it brought forth in Cort. But I was human enough to still throw a hissy fit when he came home one evening to tell me that he would be working two nights a week to help the church at a ministry for those who dwelled in the Tenderloin.

"Absolutely not," I breathed out. The Tenderloin might have been undergoing a slight gentrification, but it was still an unsavory and rough part of town. "I don't want you in that kind of danger."

"Mi corazón, I know you better than that. You'll never stand in the way of a calling I hear, will you?" His arm stroking my hip and his wide eyes searching for the woman he needed me to be in that moment.

"You're not ready, Cort. You have no idea the danger, the kind of people, the things that happen ... Please don't do this."

"Ginny. Think for a moment. If there's one thing I would think you would never have forgotten about me it's that I can handle myself in dangerous situations."

I knew I wasn't going to stop him and I wasn't going to change his mind. I resolved to be gracious about the fact that I disagreed with his choice. It was his choice, after all, not mine. I even went with him as often as I could but I was never comfortable.

Three weeks after he started this new ministry, I was at the apartment one night, alone and waiting for him to return. The normal hour for Leo to drop him off at the apartment came and went. I tried not to worry but another hour went by and I called the church's office. No answer, of course. When another hour passed, I drove to the building they were operating out of in the Tenderloin. 

Yellow tape across the sidewalk. Blue lights flashing in the street. Dark police uniforms in and out of the building. I could see it all from where I parked down the block.

At first, I ran toward the yellow tape. Then I felt like I was crawling. I had to know but I didn't want to know. Shoving my way through winos and derelicts gathered for the excitement. Grabbing the nearest cop and asking the questions I didn't want answered.

The only words that got through: shooting, one victim, white male, one of the volunteers, SF General. The only visuals that meant anything: large red stains on the floor visible through the storefront's plate glass window and the cop's concerned eyes as I tried to catch my breath.

I was walking into the emergency room within ten minutes. I was barely hanging on. I was waiting to have my loss confirmed. I was already hating God.

And then I saw him. Standing against the wall, down a hall lined with gurneys and dotted with medical people rushing back and forth.

His eyes were the first thing I saw when I came to. His neck was the first thing I reached for. The first thing that made me feel safe again was his embrace.

We held each other for a long time after he helped pick me up off the floor. I shook off the medic who wanted to check me out. All I wanted was to touch Cort and to make sure I wasn't dreaming. All he wanted to do was have me hold him and tell him it would be okay.

"Leo." One word from him, said in this tone of shattered disbelief, and I knew who the victim had been. "The doctor said he was going to make it. He's in surgery."

"What happened, Cort?" Knowing he needed to tell me, somehow sure that he needed my strength until he got his back.

"They said they wanted money. We told them ... Leo stepped in front of me - he thought they'd give him their guns. But one of them shot him and I ..." Wild eyes at me. Then they hardened and he frowned angrily into me. "I did what had to be done."

Pushing his hair back from his eyes and kissing him lightly on the cheek. "I have no doubts you did the right thing."

"I can't do this anymore, Ginny. I'm either going to be in this all the way or out of it."

"I don't understand, Cort."

"If I had been in Redemption, I would have stopped it before Leo was shot. I would have killed them before they had a chance to hurt anyone," he told me in this flint cold voice. "But here, I'm no good for anyone. I couldn't do a thing. I was helpless until after they shot him and I grabbed one of their guns from them and shot them before they could kill anyone else."

There were so many things I should have said; so many things I should have done for him. But I was at a loss. It was only later, after things got worse, that I came to realize all the ways I might have been able to be of real help to him in dealing with this.

Instead, for days, I simply tried to get him to be rational. Now, I think, I might understand that no one caught up in an irrational situation necessarily finds being rational is the best solution. Now, I'm sure, I can see how this turn of events devastated his ability to deal with all the uncertainty he had in his life then.

When Leo got out of the hospital a week later, instead of being a source of consolation to Cort, this was yet another thing for him to be concerned about. Cort worked days and evenings at the bookstore, keeping it open in Leo's absence. Each night, he didn't come home to me until after he'd gone to Leo's nearby apartment to check on him.

Within another week, Leo was back behind the counter, but Cort was still spending virtually every waking moment there in the shop. I came home early from work one Friday, hoping to surprise Cort by taking him on a getaway weekend up to Lake Tahoe. I knew where I'd find him so I walked down to the bookstore.

They didn't notice me come in. I found Cort and Leo in mid conversation, their voices serious.

Leo saying, "You already know what you need to do, Cort."

Cort nodding, replying, "But I'm not sure I can take another death on my conscience. Redemption is the only place I know to be the man I was. But I'm not sure that's who I can be anymore."

"You need to find out, don't you?" Leo asked him.

"About all I seem to really know, on this day, is that I won't find my answers in this city. My future is not here," Cort said, his voice so firm that it made me weak.

I backed quietly out of the shop, stepped into the alley next to it and leaned my forehead against the cement wall. "I need the mist," I whispered, but it didn't come to me. I was on my own and didn't have a clue.

He told me that night. He didn't want to be in San Francisco anymore. I cried when he told me but he told me anyway. "Come with me, Ginny," he asked me. "I can't stay here."

My vision wasn't clear but my heart was. "Running away isn't the answer, Cort. Remember what you told me in the desert that day? You said that every big change you ever made in your life was because you were running from something. I know it hasn't been easy for you, getting used to this time and this life. But running away from here and back to Redemption isn't the answer. Would you even want the life you had there?"

"I would if you were there with me," he whispered, getting onto his knees before me where I was sitting on the couch, reaching his strong arms around me and putting his mouth right at my ear. "Come back with me. Marry me. Let me be the father of your children. This city of yours is no place to raise children, is it? Let's go back to where we can be happy."

"We could be happy here," I replied. "We could be happy anywhere. But I won't go back with you to Redemption because I refuse to watch what that life there will do to you, Cort."

Like an unexpected shot of revelation, I think we both saw it. In walking into the future, it didn't appear we would be taking the same path. He didn't want to exist in my world and I didn't want to exist in the world he'd left behind. He didn't like this world of my present and I didn't like what would become of him in his world of the past.

That night, we held each other in bed and neither of us slept. In the morning, we were no closer to a resolution and I knew I was losing him. At work that day, I simply shut my door and cried until I was exhausted. I didn't go home that night; I couldn't see him and know the pain would only get worse. I called and told him I had to go out of town on an emergency assignment. Inside the hotel room I took for the night, I pulled from my briefcase my favorite picture of him. It was one that I'd taken one day when we'd picnicked at Stenson Beach.

It just fucking didn't seem possible to hurt that bad and believe I would ever recover.

The next evening, I came home from work to find him waiting for me. His mind made up, his bags packed. He was getting out. Leaving on a train early the next morning that would take him to Los Angeles. From there, he'd ride the Sunset Limited to Tucson. Carlson was meeting the train and would drive him to Redemption.

"It's not a perfect life, Ginny. But it's all I have to share with you. It's the only place I'll ever feel where I can offer you a life to share with me," he told me quietly. "At least in Redemption, I can take care of you and our family that we'll have. You saw me there. You know it, too, don't you? Being the law, it was something I was good at."

"I'll always love you, Cort. And I'll be here if you ever change your mind. But I can't go back and watch what doing that job does to you," I replied. "Ever since I've known you, I feel like if there's one thing I've seen, it's how seriously you take your religious convictions. But, when it gets tough, what you can't seem to resist is the lure of your skill with guns, your ease with taking life. In Redemption, you were torn between these two callings. You'll never be happy there."

They were words I'd rehearsed late into the night. They had sounded better when I'd said them alone in my hotel room.

They didn't seem to have the power to make him stay when I shared them with him that evening.

11

What was it that great American poet Carl Sandburg said about fog? That it comes in on little cat feet? Bullshit. Fog in San Francisco more often comes stomping in like an outraged elephant. Gray, mean, lumbering, fat and you don't want to mess with it.

I was so fucking tired of misty gray. Sitting in the window seat in my bedroom, I faced yet another day overcome with fog's miserable affect on my already bleak mood. My phone rang and I didn't even react. Answering machines are such wonderful technology, I thought. The bastard would have to make do without them back in Redemption.

Redemption. I cried. Again. Wallowing in my misery and missing Cort so hard and so complete that there was no other reality for me. Just missing him. I was unraveling without him.

I glanced up at the calendar on the wall. What was today? How long had he been gone from me?

The phone rang again and again I smugly enjoyed the knowledge that it was mornings like this that were the reason the answering machine had been made. I looked back down at the book that was wasting its time in my hands. Blinking and wondering why the letters were no longer crisp on the white pages. For some reason, I just couldn't get the letters to come into focus and it frustrated the hell out of me.

The book was heaved across the room before I even realized that the only person in the room who could have done that had to have been me. I wandered over to where it had landed. A part of me felt sorry for the poor book whose only offense had been being small enough for me to throw. But then I kicked it hard and watched it soar into my living room before it smacked down clumsily and noisily against my coffee table.

"That felt good," I said out loud. Went out into the living room and found the book sprawled out on the rug, probably terrified I was going to kick it again. This time, I took aim carefully. Years of watching the 49ers field goal kickers were put to good use as I managed a well-placed drop punt that sent the book flying smartly through the kitchen doorway.

"Goal!" I cried and rammed my hands up into the air to signal my success. I did a little victory shuffle I'd learned by watching our wide receiver Terrell Owens and then I danced into the kitchen to find the book so I could spike it in celebration of the goal.

But my eyes caught the light flickering on my answering machine, which hunkered down on my kitchen counter and hoped I didn't get pissed at it. Hmmm. Twenty messages. No way, I thought. Surely I would have heard 20 phone calls?

Pushing the button, I listened to 20 disembodied voices try to talk reason to me. My boss, four times, once each day, increasingly ticked off that I would no longer answer the phone and then her final message was to tell me I was fired. My sister, once, wondering if we'd already made plans for Christmas and wouldn't it be great to spend it in Denver this year. Leo, six times, wondering if I'd heard from Cort yet. Carlson, ten times, saying I needed to call him but not why. His last message ended with a threat: "I'll call every fifteen minutes until you finally pick up this damned phone."

"Hah. That'll happen," I laughed at his threat. And then jumped about a foot when the phone rang again. I was standing at the door to the balcony by the time he started talking into the machine. Ordering me to pick it up. Repeating his threat. Knowing I was there.

He was true to his word. Every 15 minutes. For two hours. The last three times, his message was the exact same, short and to the point: "Pick up this fucking phone."

Somewhere into the third hour, his message changed: "I need to talk to you about Cort. Something's happened."

I had the phone in my hand before he could even take another breath. "I'm here. Is he okay?"

"I knew that would get you, Ginny," he said in this tired voice. "He's fine. I think. He's back in Redemption. In the past, Ginny. What are you going to do about it?"

Laughing. Chuckling. Crying. "Nothing. It was his choice to break my heart. And there's nothing I can do about it."

"He loves you, Ginny. Whatever you guys fought about ..."

"We didn't fight. He just decided he didn't love me enough to stay here," I told him.

That's not really how I saw it, but it felt like such a soothing, aching way to look at it. We'd both made choices that were mutually exclusive - that was the complicated truth. He didn't want to hurt me anymore than I'd wanted to hurt him. It's just that that was the end result for both of us.

I asked Carlson to look after Cort. Knowing that it wasn't something he'd be able to do because, after all, what could a historian-preacher do to keep a gun-slinging town sheriff from harm?

When I was off the phone, I went looking for my football ... er ... my book. Picked it up and figured it had suffered enough abuse at my hands. After I tucked it safely back in its spot in my big bookshelf, I looked at my empty hands.

Empty. Just like my insides were. I was a shell of the woman I had been just a few weeks earlier. The futility of what I'd been doing for two weeks hit me and I sunk to the floor. My hands gripped the edge of one of the lower shelves and I leaned my forehead into the books.

What was I going to do? It wasn't getting any easier without him. It was getting worse. I'd lost my job and I was losing my mind. My eyes rested on the titles of the books before me.  Small smile at a vivid memory: I was standing in front of his bookcase and checking out his reading tastes.

My hands moved along the books on the shelf right in front of me. And suddenly they stopped. A warm tingle went through me as I pulled a slim volume out from where it had been misfiled. Out of place, not filed under the H's where it should have been.  Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Misfiled under the R's. No wonder I hadn't been able to find it.

My mother's book. The one she'd given me when I was 14 years old. The one I thought I'd lost. It had been there the whole time. Hiding in plain sight. I could have solved its disappearance with a little more inspiration and searching.

I let my hands glide covetously over the cover. Relishing, as I always did, the fact that my mother had once caressed this book with her hands. Feeling a connection to her so strong in that moment that it was like she was sitting next to me and had her arms around me. I closed my eyes and felt comforted. Recognized it for the same feeling the mist of my days out in the desert had so often given me.

Opening my eyes, smiling at her memory, I pulled up on the book's cover. Inside, on the facing page, I knew I'd find my mother's inscription. The message she'd penned to me all those years ago. I hadn't read it in so long. Looking at it after so damned many years, it was like I was reading it for the first time because I just plain didn't remember what she'd written to me.

It read: "My darling Ginny, I will be with you as you travel your path in life, and in this, you must always have faith. Your path will take you past many gardens. Never be afraid of opening a gate along the way. It may lead you to the past but it will still be your future. A gate across time swings both ways. Love is always worth any chance."

My hands shook and dropped the book. It lay there on the carpet. Open to my mother's words. Her promise. Her prophesy?

In my mind, I saw my mother the last time I'd seen her alive. She had made me tell her. I hadn't wanted to burden her that way. Life wasn't always what I might have wanted, I had told her, but I really couldn't complain with any degree of bitterness. Your life, she told me that last day, is for you to take hold of and live. Get out there and get stunk all over with the living of life. Keep searching until you find him.

Who? I'd asked her. Grinning at me and then winking at my father. The man whom you will love enough to follow anywhere and the man who will love you enough to never lead you astray, she had told me. It felt like she was with me again in that moment.

I turned and stared out into the fog outside my window. I'd been trying to get the mist to come back to me all these weeks. And there it was. It had been gathering there, outside, for weeks, growing heavier each day until the blind eyes of my soul could finally see it for what it truly was. And on this day it was so big, so bold that I'd thought it was just fog but now I saw it was really the mist in another form.

And in this single instant, I knew the secret of the mist. It had been my mother in the mist all along. With me, guiding me, trying so hard to help me find my way. Tell me what to do, I begged her. Go get him, she answered me.

It took me only an hour to pack and get the hell on the road. I would have flown, but the fog wasn't lifting and I had a wildness in me that needed to be moving. I drove all night and stopped on the edge of dawn in Winnemucca. I slept for a few hours in the same hotel we'd stayed at on the trip in.

I passed Denver because I didn't want to be delayed and I knew Leslie would want me to stay and talk it out with her. But I couldn't because I was existing on pure faith.

Faith that all my life had led me to him. That I'd been on a path and it led me to the gate to his garden. It might have been a gate across time, but it was the gate I was meant to enter after all.

And I also had faith that my mother had been with me. Inside me, deep in there where I had always wanted to believe in a higher power, I knew my mother was the reason I'd found Cort. She had guided me to him because she knew he was my soul mate.

In Colorado Springs, I slept for a few more hours. On the road again, I drug out through the desert and plowed into Carlson's compound late the next night. He wasn't there, but I had a good idea of where I'd find him. Sure enough, his truck was parked behind the church. In the night, I couldn't see a lot of detail in the town, but what I could see didn't look too much different than when I'd left it last.

First, I tossed my bag through the gate across time and then I jumped through next. From the doorway of the bell tower, I surveyed the interior of the church as candles licked away a few of the shadows.  No one was inside, though, so I left and went outside into the night of the past.

Voices. People. The soft hustle that was this settling down time for Redemption. The only real activity was by the saloon and the pulqueria. My eyes moved to take in the jail across from me. Yellow, wavering light flickered from the windows and I watched a shadow pass along the clear panes.

The door to the jail opened easily to admit me. He was just taking a seat behind his desk when I came in. His eyes took me in and I saw the impact that had on his body. He was out of his chair and walking hard toward me within a second of the realization that I was really standing there.

It felt something like being tackled. He never even paused, just kept walking when he reached me and only stopped because he walked me into the door. And all the while his arms gathered me to him and his mouth was drinking from mine. A full body hug, right up against the solid door. His tongue getting to know mine again, hungry for me.

He never said a word. But when he was finished kissing me there against the door, he picked me up, looked in my eyes and simply carried me through the door to his quarters and kept going until he reached his bedroom.

Putting me gently on the bed, he came to lie next to me. Both still fully clothed, we wrapped our arms around each other and held on.

I was the one to move, in the end. Rising up from him, I looked down at the man I was giving up everything for. I reached toward him with one hand. Pushing his hair out of his eyes, feeling it, testing it. Tracing my index finger down his jaw and around his lips. Then leaning over and planting soft kisses on his closed eyelids and his soft mouth.

When I touched his mouth, his lips responded. Tender, deep kiss. He let me unbutton his shirt and I opened it enough to rest my cheek against his chest.

"I've missed hearing your heart," I told him. "I haven't done very well without it."

"I've missed every single thing about you," he replied. "The specific way you smile when you feel the sun. How excited you get when you run into the ocean's waves. That soft look you get on your face after we make love. The sound of your voice when you tell me you'll be with me forever."

"I will be with you forever."

"See? That's the sound I mean," he whispered, his deep whiskey and honey voice sounding like I had found heaven.

My hands were suddenly restless. Unbuttoning his pants and reaching inside to find him hardening eagerly at my touch. "Will you think too much less of me, my love, if I admit I've missed this part of you as well?"

No words from him, but he turned me over so I was on my back and he was leaning over me. His mouth sucking gently along my neck and his hand spreading warmth along my breasts as he dipped under the hem of my cotton shirt. He groaned into my ear, soft but earnest, when my hand stroking his cock involuntarily tightened at the way he was exciting me.

And then he pressed his cheek against mine and I felt wetness. My hands flew up and cupped his face, drawing it back so I could look in his eyes. They were bright with unshed tears and the trails of those he'd set loose were evident along his tanned face. "Oh, baby, what's all this?" I cooed to him.

"I should never have left," he said, his voice clouded with sorrow. "You were right, mi corazón."

Wiping away his tears, smiling into him. "No tears. No regret. Not tonight. Tonight's just for us to be together once more. I want only to feel that you're happy to see me again."

Examining me, somber and intense. Finally nodding once and then claiming my lips as his right. "Le deseo," muttering it against my lips, saying it with a voice that knew it could have its own way with me if it was strong enough.

And then his hands were moving over me. Lifting my shirt from me as his mouth was already paying wet attention to the skin being uncovered. My bra took him the briefest moment to dispose of and his hands vied with his mouth to make sure they remembered what they had always liked about my breasts.

"I need you so much, Cort," I whispered, my voice choking, trying not to cry.

"Yes, mi corazón, tell me. Tell me," he muttered. "Tell me what you need from me."

Swallowing hard around the knot in my throat. "I need you to make love with me and help me remember who I am in your arms," I told him.

He gave me a lingering, tender, devastating kiss that seemed to last so long I got lost inside its wonders. And then we took forever to help each other shed our clothes. We relished the warmth of the opportunity to just touch and become reacquainted.

One touch that seemed warmer than the rest was his hand on my sex. It was firm on me, knowing my body, flawless in its control and its ability to light a blaze within me.

By the time he came over me, spreading my legs with his, settling toward me, his cock eager to enter me ... by then, I was already undone. He clasped my hands with his, our fingers entwined, and kissed me hard as he thrust into me.

Then whispering to me as he moved, delighting me with his rhythm, filling me with that familiar sensation that only he'd ever given me. Telling me, saying it in a hoarse voice, "This is heaven to me."

I called his name when I came, feeling the coming's grateful shockwave course through me and then being enthralled with the aftershocks that extended the wonder. He made me come again, pleading with me to let go once more, to give myself up to him again. Only then did he let himself go, cursing and growling my name with an all-consuming intensity.

Another soft, probing, claiming kiss for me after we were both breathing normally again. And then he spooned against me, his arms encircling me, his head right up against mine. The last thing I remember of the night were his soft, soft words: "Te amo."

When I woke in the morning, he was gone. Not in the bed, not in his quarters, not in the jail. I went in search of him, striding up the wood walkway that connected most of the buildings. Like seeing the town with new eyes, I was noticing new things. I knew why. The last time I'd been there, I knew I was leaving. This time, I knew I was staying.

At the hotel, I paused before deciding to enter and find Katie. Other than Cort, she was the only other person in Redemption that I had truly missed. She was in the hotel's kitchen and she shrieked when she saw me. It was a good feeling to have another friend there.

"I thought I'd never see you again," she told me. "Parson Carlisle told us you and Cort had left. And when the sheriff came back without you, he wouldn't tell me where you were. Just that you weren't coming back."

"I had a change of heart," I told her. "I found out I didn't want to live anywhere without Cort."

Her face lost her smile. "So you'll be going with him, then? Is that why you've come back?"

I frowned and shook my head. "I don't know what you mean. Where's he going?"

"Away. That's all he would say. He told me two days ago that coming back to Redemption had been a mistake and he was leaving for good. Today is the day he planned to leave."

Trying to make sense of this. I wondered where he'd decided he was going to and if he'd been planning to leave because he'd realized I was right that this was the wrong life for him. Maybe he was planning on going back to the religious life? To open another mission?

And, as I wandered away from the hotel, I had the scariest realization. What if I'd waited even another day and come back here only to find he'd moved on? What if I wouldn't have been able to find out where he was going? What if I had missed him?

When I reached the church, I popped inside and went to see if Carlson was there. I found him inside his office and he gave me a huge grin when he saw me. "I knew you'd come back," he told me. "I have something for you but I want you to promise me you won't open it for another week."

He rummaged around in the cabinet behind him and pulled out a wrapped parcel about the size of two shoeboxes. Pressing it into my hands, he made me repeat the promise. I shook the box playfully and said, "Hmm. A bit early for a Christmas present. Wonder what's in here?"

Shaking his head at me, he asked me about the article in my magazine. In everything that had happened, it had been the furthest thing from my mind. I was a bit embarrassed to admit to him that it was very likely on the stands already but that I hadn't brought him a copy. Told him about losing my job and that I'd decided to leave my life behind so I could come be with Cort in the only time and place in which he was interested in living.

Odd look on his face as he asked me, "Cort told you he was staying in Redemption?"

"Actually, we hadn't talked much ... um ... well, not about that. But Katie just told me that Cort has decided to move from here. I'm sure he was going to tell me. We just never had time," I said. "In fact, I've been looking for him. He was gone when I woke and I guess this'll be the first thing I ask him about when I see him."

"About leaving?"

I laughed. "Well, actually, about where we're going - together - since the man's not getting away from me that easily this time."

"Ah, I see. You know? That is a discussion you need to have right away. I understood he wanted to be leaving today. That's what he told me, anyway. I have a suspicion he's saying goodbye to the places he'll miss as much as the people. I saw him riding out about an hour ago. Check at the livery and see if they know where he rode off to."

At the livery, they told me where he'd headed and then they let me use a horse to go after him. It somehow seemed fitting that he'd be where he was. It only took me about fifteen minutes to wind my way to the cemetery. The one he'd taken me to, the one that had haunted him.

He saw me coming and was waiting at the edge of the cemetery when I reached it. Helping me off the horse, holding me to him, then letting me kiss him. Are you all right, I asked him. Better than I have a right to be, he answered.

It looked so different than when I'd seen it in modern times. It was a haphazard collection of headstones, crude wood crosses or markers, and one small, stone obelisk. I was never sure if it looked sadder in his time or mine.

"They tell me the sheriff's leaving town today," I told him, watching him as he took my hand and led me toward the shade of the saguaro cactus we'd shared before. "I was wondering if he was going to let me tag along."

Turning to smile at me over his shoulder, but not saying anything yet.

"Where are we going?" I asked him. "I mean, you do know that I'm coming with you, right? Wherever you go?"

"You have that much trust in me, Ginny? Even after everything?" Drawing me down into the shade with him. Bringing me to sit right up next to him. "You would really follow me anywhere?"

Smiling at him, feeling the grace of confidence. "One of the last things my mother ever told me was that the man I would love enough to follow anywhere would never lead me astray. I've come to realize that my mother has always been looking out for me and that I think I can trust her on this one."

He reached a hand for me, cupping my cheek, commanding my undivided attention. "I'm going back, Ginny. Back for you."

I just looked at him for a moment. Then frowned. "I don't understand."

"It took me a while but I know now that coming back here wasn't the answer. I've thought it through," he said, his voice soft, deep, sweet. "And I realized something neither of us did. There is another solution for us. It lies in your time. I was coming back to get you and I was going to convince you to leave San Francisco and come live near Carlson. In your time, but in my place. The best of both our worlds."

"Back through the gate?"

"Yes. This time, for good."

"You're sure?" Kneeling up to look deep in his eyes, my hands on his face forcing him to let me examine him. "You are sure."

"Carlson wants me to be his ranch's caretaker. He says it will give him the ability to spend as much time as he wants here. And he has property he's willing to sell us. We can build a home there, Ginny. It can be as simple a life as we want."

I considered this. It was not something I would have ever thought of, he was right about that. I wasn't quite sure how attractive the idea was to me. Living out in the desert? And then I looked at the man in front of me, the man touching my face, the man wanting to completely change his life so we could be happy together in the only place and time that seemed possible. "Okay. Let's do it."

"Just like that?"

"Yep. Just like that." I jumped up and held my hand out to him. "Let's do it. Now. Let's go start our life."

As he helped me on the horse, he said, "You do know you're going to marry me, right?"

Making me laugh. "Is that a proposal, preacher?"

Making him blush. "I'm sorry, mi corazón, I suppose that wasn't very romantic, was it?"

I leaned down to kiss him hard on the mouth. "Yes, preacher, I know I'm going to marry you. And I love you, too."

We left Redemption the next day, deciding we were in no rush now that we were together. We jumped through the gate across time one last time. Staying in Carlson's house, we settled into a new way of living. It seemed so easy. We both recognized how much better it fit on us. And we made plans for a wedding, a small one, with just my family and Carlson in attendance.

We'd been at Carlson's a week when I remembered the package. Cort was out in the barn, tending to the horses. I sat on the couch and ripped open the brown paper over the box. Opened the lid and peered inside.

A note. Four daguerreotypes. A will. Property titles. Letter to his attorney. Power of attorney. Two keys.

Here's what it all meant:

The note: It instructed us to live in the house, to take over the compound. But most importantly, to watch over the ghost town that was Redemption. He wanted to be sure someone would be there because he wanted to stop living between the two worlds. And he had chosen to live in the old world, at least for now.

The daguerreotypes: One was the shot of Cort and me. One was a shot of the town of Redemption in Cort's time. Two were of Carlson, one taken at the age I knew him and one taken when he looked many years older. And they made me understand that he wasn't planning to come back, that having seen the daguerreotype of himself at that old age, he must have felt his destiny was to be back in that time for the rest of his life. Almost like he'd sent ahead that picture to reveal his own fate to his younger self.

The will: Carlson's last will and testament. Sent to us for safekeeping in case he really didn't come back.

The titles: To the compound and its property. But also to the ghost town of Redemption. It made me smile to realize that Carlson's grandfather had owned the land there all along and had passed it down to him. Probably, I would think, because he knew Carlson would take care of it. And now Carlson was entrusting us to carry on that mission.

Letter to his attorney: Instructing him to draw up new legal documents granting title to Cort for the property.

Power of attorney: For both Cort and me, to make sure we could act for Carlson in his absence.

Two keys: One to his safe deposit box where he was storing the daguerreotypes, even the ones he hadn't published yet. One to his house, a symbolic gesture, like it was the key to our future.

I went to find Cort in the barn. At the entrance, I stood watching him work. His shirt off in the heat, his jeans soiled with honest labor. On his face, that look of concentration.

When he glanced up at me, in his eyes I saw peace and I knew we were home.