Time Will Tell

Time Will Tell - Part 25

Libby opened her eyes. Pride stood in the spot where she’d left him, calmly eating grass. She jumped up to retrieve her cell phone and noted the time and day. It seemed like a lifetime away, rather than mere minutes.

Her wedding ring glinted in the sun, drawing her eye. She held out her hand, lovingly tracing the edges of the ring with her forefinger as a stabbing pain pierced her soul. How would she ever survive without Colin—without all the people she’d come to love in the nineteenth century?

Tears blurred her vision as she mounted Pride and urged the stallion to the one spot she’d be near her love in this century. At the gate of the peaceful cemetery, she quickly dismounted and scrutinized the stones, beneath which lay generations of Thorpe remains. She found the one she sought and collapsed in a new round of tears after reading the epitaph.

Here lies Colin Thorpe

Husband to Elizabeth

Whom he loved

All the days of his life

Clutching the grass covering Colin’s grave, she sobbed, feeling the loss all over again.

Emotionally spent, she rose to pick up Pride’s reins. In a fluid move, she mounted the stallion, but her shoulders drooped on the slow ride back to the two oaks. Moving in a grief-filled haze, she tied Pride in the same spot. She needed more time to collect herself before taking over her duties here in the future. The kids she was supposed to teach to ride this afternoon would have to wait.

She didn’t know how long she sat under the trees, staring out at the landscape and seeing nothing with tear-glazed eyes. A squirrel running up one of the massive trunks drew her focus. She watched him for a moment, then looked around. Everything appeared so different. Somehow, this didn’t feel like home anymore. A sad smile formed. This was home, but her home was no longer where her heart was. She felt displaced. Like she didn’t belong in her own time and era. A semblance of a laugh rolled up. What a stupid thought. Of course she belonged here.

She then remembered Giselle’s words when Libby had asked her about leaving Paris and moving to Shelbyville, Kentucky, a town completely opposite of the larger foreign city.

Soon the new place becomes home. “I’d be sad to leave here,” she’d said. “But if I did, I’d know that wherever I went, I would eventually feel at home.”

When had 1874 become home to her and why hadn’t she realized the fact before she left the past? It dawned on her just then that she’d most likely always had the choice to leave. Nothing had changed. She couldn’t get to the future during those earlier attempts because she’d never wanted to leave the past badly enough. She’d prolonged her visit intentionally.

Bev’s words during their picnic under these same trees came back to her.

Of course you’ll be able to come home. Just wish it like before.

Yes, Libby had never lost the ability to get home. Just like Bev had said.

Too bad she couldn’t go home now.

Suddenly, her posture straightened. Wiping her eyes, she wondered. Could she? If 1874 was now home to her, would wishing herself back work? Excitement surged through her at the thought. Yet, if she could, was that something she should even attempt when nothing had changed?

Or…had it?

Her love for Colin eclipsed all else, but was returning to him—to all that 1874 had to offer, or not in this case—something she could live with? Wouldn’t do to return just to change her mind and then have to endure another departure, something she felt neither of them could survive.