Beneath a Beating Heart Read online

  She climbed in and pulled her door shut. Numerous thoughts congealed together as she started the engine. Whether she wanted to believe Lou or his father, or his grandfather were related to Rance wasn’t the point. The truth was. She wanted to know the truth. Rance deserved to know the truth. That had to be why her and his times had merged. It wasn’t for her like or judge. Just find a way to help him. Everything happens for a reason, and that had to be why she was here.

  Holding that thought first and foremost, she steered her car around. As Nate had been, Lou was practically attached to her back bumper. He’d arrived before dark for a reason. The house scared him. Maybe he had seen Rance before. The ghost that is. Or maybe he’d heard him tonight, when Rance had told her to get the mirror back.

  She considered all those possibilities, and more as she drove past the gate and onto the highway. And purposefully refused to think about how fun the day had been. Although it had been probably the best day of her life so far.

  Entering town, she considered stopping to see Buzz, just to gather a bit more information, but drove straight to the motel. Lou would be there within an hour, just like he’d said which didn’t leave her much time. Certainly not enough to visit Buzz, he liked to chat, and not enough time to use the internet in fifteen-minute increments, either.

  In her motel room, she pulled her phone from her purse and plopped down on the bed.

  Vivi Anne answered on the second ring. “My computer’s up and running, and on my lap. I have a full glass of wine beside me and the phone on speaker.”

  Liz laughed. “How’d you know—never mind. I need a birth date.”

  “Name.”

  “Robert Dixon. Cody, Wyoming. My guess is nineteen-o-two.” She dug in the bag to pull out the spiral notebook she’d used out at Rance’s house and flipped it open to a new page.

  As she reached back into the bag for her pen, the lid on the box opened. She hadn’t forgotten about it but hadn’t planned on opening it until after talking to Vivi Anne. Perhaps because she didn’t want to share what was inside. Even though she didn’t know.

  “They didn’t have birth certificates then,” Vivi Anne said, “but all births had to be registered at the nearest courthouse.”

  She pulled out the pen and set it down. Still holding the phone to her ear, knowing Vivi Anne was making small talk while typing, she used her other hand to carefully ease the box out of the bag without spilling the contents.

  The top was flipped all the way open, and her breath snagged in her lungs. It held pictures. The brown sepia type ones. Of Rance and Beth’s wedding. She glanced at a couple of the pictures, but when she picked up one that was just of Beth, her hands trembled so hard she dropped the photo, and the phone.

  Picking up the photo, she glanced from it to the mirror over the dresser at the end of the bed, and back to the picture. “Holy Hannah,” she whispered.

  It was a moment before a sound entered her head. A squawk came from her phone, and she picked it up. “I’ll call you back.” Clicking off, she tossed aside the phone and shot off the bed. In the bathroom, with the florescent light flickering overhead, she held the picture next to her face and stared into the mirror. Though grainy, the picture held an uncanny resemblance. Too uncanny of a resemblance.

  “No wonder he thinks I’m Beth. I would too.”

  It was amazing. She’d never seen a picture of someone who looked like her, or one that she looked like. Whichever way, this was unbelievable and remarkable at the same time.

  How could that be? It’s said everyone has a twin, but this…this is crazy. And it had to be more than a coincidence.

  Didn’t it?

  Her phone rang. She considered answering it. Vivi Anne would wonder why she’d cut the call short.

  Other questions bounced around, things Vivi Anne may have answers to, or opinions, but suddenly she wanted to hold off asking them. The more disconnected she could make herself, the better off she’d be. She’d been telling herself that for years. To stay disconnected. To not care. Why? She’d never questioned herself before, but suddenly it was there.

  Glancing at the picture again, she backed away from the mirror. “This is crazy. Crazy as in bat-shit crazy. Looney bin time.” She took a deep breath and held it to a count of three before letting it out. “Okay. No. I’m not losing it. This is all—Oh shit. It’s crazy.”

  Looking at the picture again, she huffed out air. “I just need to keep it together. Stay sane.”

  Glancing back at the picture, she rubbed a hand against her forehead.

  Sane? In that case, she was toast.

  Toast.

  She believed a ghost, or a specter from another century, had kissed her. The desires that had sprung into life at his house had done something to her. During the drive to town, she’d started to feel guilty, almost as if accepting Lou’s invitation to dinner made her feel as if she was cheating on Rance. If that didn’t make her as fruity as huckleberry pie, nothing ever would.

  Other than believing she looked just like his wife.

  The jangle of her phone made her jump so fast the picture fell from her hand. Scrambling, she caught it before it landed in the toilet. Dropping onto the floor, she leaned her head against the wall.

  Pictures didn’t lie, did they?

  Suddenly, everything she’d known about herself felt as if it was twisted into a knot. She needed help. Serious help.

  She jumped to her feet and exited the bathroom to snatch her phone off the bed. Swiping the green button, she said, “You aren’t going to believe this.”

  “What?” Vivi Anne asked. “Before you answer, are you okay? I was ready to call the police. You sounded scared.”

  “Shocked.” Drawing in another deep breath, she repeated, “I sounded shocked. I was shocked.”

  “By what?”

  “A picture of Rance’s wife. Beth. You aren’t going to believe this, but I look just like her. Or she looks just like me.” Liz closed her eyes briefly, in preparation. She wasn’t sure what she was preparing for, other than Vivi Anne’s answer.

  “I got that date for you,” Vivi Anne said. “It’s April, nineteen-o-two.”

  “I just told you I look like a dead person, and you give me a date?”

  “Yes, of Robert Dixon’s birth,” Vivi Anne replied. “It was filed on April fifteenth, but that doesn’t mean that’s the exact date of his birth, but it does mean his mother would have gotten pregnant around July of nineteen-o-one.”

  Still trying to get her mind to go in one direction, which it apparently didn’t want to; Liz plopped down on the bed and pressed a hand to her forehead. “How do you know that?”

  “Reverse due date calculator. There’s an app for everything on the internet.”

  “So any day now,” Liz muttered to herself. Any day now Rance would get Cindy pregnant. The idea of him getting anyone pregnant, no matter what century, was disturbing. Massively. To the point her stomach felt as if she’d eaten at the wrong place. Bile was burning the back of her throat. She grabbed one of her water bottles.

  “You still there?” Vivi Anne asked.

  “Yes.” She took another long gulp. Trying to make sense of so many things at once was impossible. “Some rather strange things happened today.”

  “The picture?”

  “Yes.” Picking up the picture, she stared at the uncanny likeness. “Other things too. The stove in Rance’s kitchen. The one I told you about that is identical to the one in the store, well, sometimes today it looked new, other times it looked old. Still in good shape, like it had been taken care of, but used. Definitely used. And the mirror. It looked well-used, too.”

  “You know what that means, don’t you?” Vivi Anne asked.

  Refusing to take a gander, she answered, “No.”

  “It means something’s changed.”

  “Nothing’s changed,” she disagreed.

  “Because it hasn’t happened yet,” Vivi Anne interrupted. “But you’ve planted a seed, and it’s grow
ing. The pendulum is swinging back and forth.”

  Her stomach clenched. She knew what seed she’d planted. “Rance and Cindy get married and raise Robert rather than giving him to the Dixon’s.”

  “That could be it. We won’t know until the deed is done, but that’s the logical one.”

  It didn’t sound logical. Or rather she didn’t want it to. She wanted the illogical, but that was also the impossible.

  “All time is connected,” Vivi Anne said. “One little event puts a series of reactions into place.”

  “I know all about the domino theory,” she said. There was also the chaos theory—where one random act set pandemonium in order. That was exactly how this all felt, and it was so confusing, and unbelievable.

  “Some things aren’t for us to understand,” Vivi Anne said quietly, as if reading her mind and trying to calm her down.

  “I know that, too,” Liz said. “I’m just not as accepting as you are. Not as open minded.” There was more to it than that, but Vivi Anne would never admit to it. Years ago, Vivi Anne had a vision of the crash her husband Otto had died in prior to it happening and claimed that had been the catalyst that led her to ‘listen’ more intuitively. Liz believed people experienced premonitions, and doubted few became psychic afterward, but Vivi Anne was different. Liz had felt a connection from the first time she’d set foot in Here for Now, and after knowing the other woman for several months, she considered Vivi Anne the best friend she’d ever had. The one and only person she’d ever felt a connection with.

  Up until she’d met Rance.

  “You could be more open-minded,” Vivi Anne said. “If you wanted to be.”

  If it helped Rance, she was willing try anything. Because despite all else, in the core of her being, he was the only thing that seemed to matter. Even if that meant convincing him to have sex with another woman, she’d do it. The idea was painful, and sickening, yet there really wasn’t a choice. “How? How do I become more open-minded?” Before I go insane.

  “Start by asking yourself why the idea is so hard for you to believe,” Vivi Anne said. “When you have that answer, ask yourself why again. And again. And again. Until you get to the very heart of the matter.”

  Flustered because she wanted a tangible answer, Liz asked, “How will that help?”

  “Because that’s where the answer lies—”

  A bleep interrupted Vivi Anne’s answer. Pulling the phone from her ear, Liz glared the battery icon flashing.

  Putting the phone back to the side of her face she heard Vivi Anne say, “…beneath your heart. You just have to find it.”

  “Exactly what am I suppose to ask myself? And how will that help? That doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “It will. The answer to the future is always in the past.”

  “I don’t have a past and—” Before she’d completed the sentence, the phone went dead. She hadn’t plugged it in last night, so was surprised the battery had lasted as long as it had. Her thoughts drifted to Rance, and how he’d had a hard time understanding how cell phones worked. He didn’t have a phone, but said he’d seen them, even used one, however, talking to someone without seeing them had been too strange for him.

  He should be in her shoes.

  Actually, he sort of was.

  Smiling at her own wit, or the craziness going on, she crossed the room to where her suitcase sat on a little metal stand. He’d had the same reaction to other things, and they’d laughed together over his comments. It had been such a fun, wonderful day. She’d never met anyone like him. He was so easy to like. And that made it easy to want to help him. He didn’t deserve to be alone, lonely, waiting for Beth to return, for the next sixty some years.

  That was easy to believe—him waiting for Beth—so why didn’t she want it to happen? Why didn’t she want him to be Robert’s father? He could be happy then, couldn’t he? Truly happy and he did deserve that. His happiness was what she wanted.

  Lost in thought, she unzipped the outer pocket on the top of her suitcase and dug for her phone’s charging cord. As she pulled it out, something fell onto the floor. After checking the detachable plug-in was still attached to the cord, she bent down to look beneath the stand to see what had fallen out. A warmth filled her chest at the shimmering gold band lying on the carpet. “I’ll be.” She picked up the ring. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  Briefly, she thought about the last time she’d seen the ring. It had been her mother’s wedding ring. That’s what Gladys had said when giving it to on her thirteenth birthday. Gladys had said she’d waited until Liz was old enough to appreciate it, and not lose it. Which was the exact reason why she’d never asked Gladys if she’d left it behind when she’d moved from their house to her apartment. She hadn’t wanted Gladys to know she had indeed lost the ring.

  Frowning, she glanced at the suitcase. She’d received that suitcase, an entire set of luggage, as a graduation gift from Gladys and Norman. She’d used the other cases a few times over the years, but never this one, and couldn’t remember ever putting anything, especially this ring, in the outside pocket. She must have though. Years ago. Maybe the day she moved out.

  She held the ring up to the light and twirled it between her fingers. It was a simple gold band, with no markings other than the stamp claiming it was 22ct gold. Hoping that little mark had meant more, she’d taken it to a jeweler when she’d been sixteen, only to be told nothing more than it was old and worth about two-hundred dollars.

  She’d stopped wearing it then. Two-hundred dollars had seemed like a lot, and she hadn’t wanted to lose it. Although she’d learned nothing more about her parents from the ring, having something that valuable had scared her, and she’d asked Gladys to keep it in her jewelry box. Gladys must have given it back to her the day she’d moved out.

  That had been the same day Norman had tried to give her the trunk.

  Her stomach clenched at the same time the room started to spin. The bed seemed a mile away rather than a few steps, and by the time she made it to the edge, her legs were stiff from forcing them to move and sweat beaded her temples. She sat and tucked her head between her legs, to stop her head from spinning.

  Slowly, gradually, her equilibrium returned, but an odd intensity lingered. Her mouth had gone dry and she reached behind her for the bottle of water she’d left on the bed. A long drink eased the burning in her throat, and several deep breaths made her feel more normal.

  It was ridiculous. How the mere thought of an old trunk was enough to bring on a panic attack, but it did, and seeing it was worse. Norman had felt so bad the day he’d tried to give it to her.

  That had been last time she’d seen the trunk. Had no idea what happened to it after Norman and Gladys both died last year, him from a heart attack, her from cancer a few months later.

  She’d been moving out of the Walker’s home and into her own place following graduation. The one-bedroom apartment she still lived in. Norman had carried the trunk down from the attic, and upon seeing it sitting next to the stairway she’d grown light-headed by the force of panic that had gripped her.

  That had happened once before, when she’d been ten and heard a couple of women in church talking about how she’d been draped over a trunk in the river when the rescuers had arrived at the scene of the accident that had killed her parents. She’d asked Gladys about it that day, and Gladys had confirmed that was true and told her the trunk was in the attic. They’d gone up there together, and upon seeing the trunk in the corner, a cold darkness had surrounded her and sent her heart into a raging panic. Intense pain had stolen her breath away so fast and hard she’d collapsed on the floor in the attic. Gladys had rushed her downstairs, and they’d never spoken of the trunk again, until the day Norman had carried it downstairs.

  That day, before the pain had overtaken her, she’d bolted out the door. Norman had found her in her car, crying, and apologized, said he hadn’t known how she’d reacted to the trunk before. He’d just thought she’d like to have it.
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  She’d told him she didn’t want it.

  She still didn’t. Many nights she’d dreamt about that trunk and had woken up in a complete panic, calmed only by the fact it was nowhere near her.

  Like now.

  Glancing at the ring in her hand, she wondered why it never made her feel that. In fact, it was about as opposite as could be. The way the ring glistened in the light made her smile.

  Liz slid the ring on her left ring finger. It fit better now than when Gladys had given it to her and would most likely be safer on her finger than in her suitcase. She still didn’t own a jewelry box. There was no reason. She had no jewelry. Had never even had her ears pierced.

  She picked up her the phone, grabbed the charger off the floor, and carried them into the small bathroom, and the only available outlet. After connecting the phone, she pressed the power button and waited for it to power up in order to check the time, absently twirling the ring on her finger as she waited.

  She didn’t remember it feeling this nice. Comfortable—comforting actually. Glancing up, she shook her head at her own image in the mirror. “You are losing it. Rings don’t feel nice nor are they comforting. They are rings. Period. Just like stupid old trunks are just stupid old trunks.”

  Her phone dinged, and she picked it up. Making sure the plug was firmly in the outlet, she clicked the text message icon.

  Vivi Anne. What a surprise.

  —What else happened today?—

  Liz considered a reply before typing:

  —Lou asked me out to dinner.—

  —A date?—

  —No. He’s going to tell me about his family.—

  —Going out to dinner is a date.—

  Frowning, she responded:

  —I don’t date. No desire to. But I do want to know about his family.—

  —Lou is a man. You are a woman. That’s a date. Dates are fun! You need some fun in your life. Don’t think. Just enjoy it!—

  She considered not responding, but her fingers were already clicking at the keys.

  —Stop. I’m not here to find my long-lost love. I don’t believe in it, so your abilities are not needed in that sense.—