The Palmer Pool

31 | The Summer Swells

When I awoke, it was dark and I was suffocating. I sat up, clawed my way out from under a scratchy blanket and into the light and air. I was in the back of a carriage, parked under a tree near a grey farmhouse. I jumped out of the carriage and started running toward the empty dirt road, feeling rested and free, breathing shallow, terrified breaths.

"Vanessa!" a man shouted from behind me. "Vanessa, stop!"

The man who had abducted me twice stopped running when I turned around to face him. He wasn't wearing his coat or hat anymore, and his acorn colored hair was plastered to his head with sweat.

"Are you Paul?" I demanded, with my hands on my compressed ribs.

"Yes. And Elizabeth sent you, correct? Vanessa?"

"That's right. Not sure if I want your help, though."

He laughed and pressed the crook of his arm to his forehead, blotting away beads of sweat with his white shirt.

"Okay. See how far you get without me. You're not walking away from a resort hotel with the supposed daughter of the richest man in the Midwest on your own."

I scowled. He was probably right.

"Why did you agree to help me?"

"I could use your help, too. You're new to this, so you have a lot of potential."

I scoffed.  "No way. I'm finding Rose, bringing her back to her life and never, ever doing this again."

"We'll see." He raised his eyebrows expectantly. "I take it you've burned off the lag then?"

"The lag?"

"It's like jet-lag, don't you think? Except much worse, of course. You seem to handle it well, actually. I'll get my coat and hat and we'll go to town."

We walked down the dusty road that ran along the LaSalle and although I initially balked at having to walk, I realized we weren't actually that far out of town. Once I got my bearings, I recognized the house where the carriage was left as my dentist's office, which in my time was across from a car dealership, its parking lot a sea of glaring pick up truck hoods. Paul said that the farm belonged to his family for generations and it was a place he was always welcome to come and go as he pleased, without being asked many questions.

"You could go there, too, if you find yourself needing a place to stay when you're traveling. Elizabeth has occasionally. Knock on the door and say, 'It looks like rain, and I could use a place to take cover for awhile.'"

Not a chance, I thought. My skin prickled every time Paul looked in my direction. Did he even know that bruise was from me? Was I unrecognizable in my late 1800s costume? I hoped so.

"How are we going to find her?"

"We can check the two big resorts, but we could use more information first. There's a woman at a shop in town who might be helpful."

We passed the cemetery I visited the evening before, which was much smaller now, and strayed from the road to take a shortcut toward the Elmwood through a grove of towering, ancient trees. I tried to play it cool when I first saw people who actually belonged in 1886, even though on the inside I was flipping out. A family picnicking in the grass, a boy in a straw boater hat playing a cup-in-ball game, three middle aged women out for a stroll, fanning their faces in the August heat.

The trees thinned and revealed a row of cottages, one of which would eventually become Mrs. Barry's home. Once we passed the cottages and saw the full span of the Elmwood, I stopped and stared. It was bigger than anything that existed in Palmer over a hundred years later. Beyond the horses and carriages in the curved driveway rose a wide staircase to a center entrance on the second floor. Near the south end of the hotel was the bathhouse, a tan brick building with a pump tower at one end, ornate masonry and tall, thin windows. Just past the bathhouse a few cows grazed in a fenced area.