Chapter Twenty-One
The next morning Kathy woke to a silent house. It had that feeling of people in it, but they were far away. She got up, dressed, and went outside. It wasn’t full light yet, but she liked the early morning. The grass was damp with dew and it felt good on her sandaled feet.
Young Pete was raking a patch of lawn and she waved at him. He stopped and smiled at her in a way that would have made her blush if she hadn’t been so pleased. With as much time as she spent with Ray, she nearly forgot how good it was to feel desirable and womanly.
She went past the yawning vacancy of Camden Hall and through the rose-covered wall to River House. For a moment she stood looking out at the stream with the curved bridge and the pretty island. She was sure most people would think how they’d love to live in a place like this, but all Kathy saw was maintenance. The ten acres she and Ray owned in Connecticut were as beautiful as this. A treat for the eyes. One of Ray’s clients said it was “Serenity personified.”
She’d trade every perfect flower that took so much of her time for an apartment in New York. She’d happily exchange birdsong for the scream of an ambulance siren.
The front door of the house was unlocked and she went in. On the floor was a small box, neatly wrapped in brown paper. The label had the names of all three women on it, but no return address. It must be from Ray, Kathy thought. Only he knew that the women were there. Or maybe Young Pete had left it, Kathy thought with a smile.
She picked up the box, set it on a table by the front door, then began cleaning up from last night. Olivia’s story of her past had made Kathy think about her own life. Ray had said she should stay here so she could have a vacation. “Enjoy yourself. Go shopping.” He seemed to think that shopping cured every woman’s problems. But right now, the last thing she wanted was a new blouse. What she really and truly wanted was a new life.
She turned on the dishwasher, then walked through the house. There were art objects from around the world, beautiful things, but as she looked at them, she thought of Olivia’s story. Regret, Olivia had said. She regretted so very much.
“So do I,” Kathy said aloud.
“So do you what?” Elise’s voice startled Kathy.
“Nothing important.”
Behind her was Olivia and she was holding the box. “What’s this?”
“I found it on the floor. I guess it’s from Ray. A thank-you gift.” I taught him to say thanks, Kathy thought but didn’t say.
“I think we should open it.” Olivia began removing the paper. Inside was a note from Dr. Hightower.
This is real. Please try it.
Then her signature.
Olivia set the box on the table. It was filled with what looked to be cotton quilt batting and buried inside were three business cards. On the back, their names were handwritten in old fashioned copperplate.
Futures, Inc.
Have you ever wanted to rewrite your past?
Madame Zoya can help
333 Everlasting Street
At the bottom had been handwritten “now off Farm Road 77.”
Olivia and Elise sat down at the big kitchen table, and Kathy opened the refrigerator to pull out a dozen oranges. There was a tall manual juicer clamped to the counter. She cut the oranges in half, pulled the handle down, and filled glasses with fresh juice.
“Lovely fantasy, isn’t it? To rewrite the past.” Elise was smiling at the absurdity of it.
“I agree.” Kathy put full glasses of orange juice on the table. “But it is a great thought, isn’t it? So where would you go back to?”
They were ignoring Olivia as she sat there staring at the card. Her eyes were fixed, unmoving, unblinking. No one needed to ask her what she’d change. She wouldn’t go to Richmond on that day.
“I’d go to my wedding,” Elise said.
Kathy cracked some eggs and was whipping them about in a bowl. “I’d think you’d want to go back and say no when your husband proposed.”
“That wouldn’t work,” Elise said. “If I said no in private, my parents and Kent’s would drive me so crazy that I’d eventually say yes just to make them shut up. I’d have to say no in a big, huge, public way. I’d throw my skirt over my arm and run out of the church.”
“Then what?” Kathy asked.
“I have no idea. I’d like to be rescued by a gorgeous man riding a big black horse, but since that wouldn’t happen, I don’t know.”
“How about a driver and a long black limo?” Kathy began scrambling eggs. “Have him drive you to the airport, then fly somewhere. If you planned it beforehand, you could have a suitcase packed and in the trunk. You could change clothes in the back of the car.”
“I like that,” Elise said. “Except that I have nowhere to go.”
“Maine.” Olivia was at last coming out of her trance. She put the card down on the table. “Kit has lots of single male relatives in Maine. You could take your pick. I’m sure they’d compete to see who could win you.”
“That sounds great!” Elise was laughing. “I’ll elope with one of them and return home married to some guy who is so rich he’d please even my parents.”
“What about Alejandro?”
“I didn’t realize it at the time but he started working there just a week before my wedding. But even if I went back, nothing would have changed. We still live in different worlds. I don’t know how they could be merged.”
“What about you?” Olivia asked Kathy, who was putting a bowl of scrambled eggs and a plate of whole wheat toast on the table. “Would you go back to get your Andy?”
As Kathy sat down, she was frowning in concentration. “What would I change?” She looked up. “Does it have to be about a man?”
“No!” the two women said in unison.
“Hmmm,” Kathy said. “If I went back in time—knowing what I do now, that is—the first thing I’d do is make a place for myself in my father’s advertising firm. A lot of the ideas that Ray presented were mine. The second thing I’d do is stay away from Ray. You know something? I hate living in Connecticut. I hate the big house Ray and I own. I even hate my gorgeous garden. Keeping it all going takes masses of my time—not to mention how much it all costs.”
She took a bite of egg. “I’d go back to those two weeks when Ray got caught in a blizzard in Chicago. Before we were married. Married or not, I’d never be able to do anything with him around. Dad was crazy for those two weeks that Ray was gone. He had clients coming in from Hong Kong and...” She shrugged.
“How did it get resolved?” Olivia asked.
Kathy shrugged. “Like always. Ray came back from Chicago with a great campaign and everyone was happy. My fantasy is that I would be the one to win the hearts of the clients.” Her chin came up. “And after that I’d demand that my father give me a real job, something other than playing a social hostess to him and Ray. I’d like to have a real salary and an office with my name on the door—and an apartment on the Upper West Side. Something cute with a terrace.”
She sighed. “But I’ll never get that. Ray is just like Kent. He believes he needs the Connecticut house to entertain clients.” She looked down at her plate.
“Ray wants to divorce you,” Olivia said softly. “That’s why he’s been going to Dr. Hightower.”
Kathy’s eyes widened for a moment, then she buried her face in her hands and began to cry loudly.
Instantly, Elise and Olivia were beside her, hugging and patting.
“I’m so sorry,” Olivia said. “I shouldn’t have told you. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”
Kathy got up, her pretty face covered in tears, and went to the refrigerator. She withdrew a cold bottle of champagne, untwisted the bale, and the cork popped out. She poured it into the glasses of orange juice and held hers up. “A toast! At this moment I am the happiest woman on this planet.”
Elise and Olivia were too stunned to speak. They managed to pick up their glasses but all they did was stare.
Kathy drank deeply, then poured more champagne into her juice. “Ray would never leave without someone waiting for him. Tell me it’s Rita. Please, I hope it is. They’re so perfect for each other. And if he marries her and they produce kids maybe Carl’s mother will forgive him about her son.” She looked at them. “If he told you about Rita, did he tell you about Carl too? Of course he did. Just so you know, Carl was a thug. Not the saint Ray wants to believe he was.”
Elise and Olivia were still holding their glasses in silence.
“Drink up, girls! We have a lot to celebrate.”
They took sips but their eyes showed their shock.
Olivia began to recover. “How do you know about Carl?”
“I’ve always known about him,” Kathy said. “Ray and Dad met when Ray invaded a lunch Dad was having with a client. Afterward, Dad said Ray was either the best salesman he’d ever met or a lying thief. He told me to find out which. My report said that Ray was both of them. Dad said he was perfect for the advertising world and hired him.”
Wide-eyed, Elise and Olivia sat down at the table and began to eat. “Ray said you hired his secretaries,” Olivia said.
“Yes, I did.” There was pride in Kathy’s voice. “Both my father and Ray dump clients’ social lives onto me. If some guy who owns half of Iowa comes to New York and wants Dad’s agency to advertise whatever it is he sells, I am delegated to show the wife around. Whatever she wants to do, I’m told to fulfill her wishes. One wife wanted me to hire a Magic Mike–type dancer to visit her in her hotel room. She seemed to think I’d know how to arrange that. ‘You live in New York, don’t you?’ she said.”
Kathy took a breath. “Anyway, I’d had enough of all of it. I was married to Ray but I didn’t feel like his wife. We were to the point where he’d pat me on the shoulder and say, ‘Good job.’ Like I was one of his colleagues. I wanted out. But you’ve met Ray. It was just like with Dolores. It had to be Ray’s decision to end it. I knew that the only way he was going to let me go—I mean really and truly release me—was if he had someone else.”
“So you set out to find her,” Olivia said.
“When Ray’s original secretary retired, I coaxed him into letting me find someone to replace her. I treated it like a beauty pageant. I don’t know Ray’s sexual preference except that he doesn’t like big, healthy, curvy women like me, so I went for a variety.”
Smiling broadly, Kathy took a drink of her mimosa. “I found a Scandinavian blonde who had the men in the office running into glass doors. But Ray never looked at her. Next came a cute little Latin girl who married another guy in the office. Then there was a buxom redhead.”
Kathy laughed. “I nearly drove my husband crazy for over two years. Every time a girl learned how to run his office, I’d make up an excuse to get her another job.”
“And you were trying to find a wife for your husband.” Elise sounded as though she couldn’t quite believe it.
“Yes. Ray may wear a suit to the office, and he can sit down to dinner with men who play polo, but scratch the surface and he’s the guy from the streets of Brooklyn.”
“And that’s where Rita is from,” Olivia said.
“Oh yes! She was a godsend. The answer to all my prayers. I was to the point where I thought I was going to have to ask Ray for a divorce.”
“And if you did, he’d dig in his heels and say no,” Olivia said. “He had to make the decision and no one else. If you asked, out of principle he’d wage a war—and everyone would lose. You, your father, Ray, the company, your clients.”
“I think you understand my husband completely—and so did Carl’s mother. When Rita needed a job, she sent her to me, not to Ray. I think she figured that after years with him, I probably knew him pretty well. I had Rita come to the house for lunch and right away I saw that she was reserved enough for him in public, but underneath, she still had that street flair. I thought they’d make a perfect couple. I hired her to work for Ray.” Kathy grinned. “I am very proud of myself!”
“What about Dr. Hightower?” Olivia asked.
“That was another gift out of the blue. Totally unexpected,” Kathy said. “When Ray told me he was going to see a therapist, I think he expected me to talk him out of it, to say that nothing could be wrong with a great guy like him. But I didn’t. I was hoping with all my might that he was trying to get up the courage to ask me for a divorce. The man has the strange belief that my entire life is him. It almost is, but not by choice!” Kathy poured herself more champagne, minus the orange juice.
Olivia picked up the card and looked at it. “Now that you have what you want, you probably wouldn’t want to change anything.”
“You can get your New York apartment and maybe you can make your father listen to you,” Elise said.
Kathy thought about that for a moment. “I think that in this case it’s like a prisoner who’s released after being found innocent. All his life he would have people saying, ‘Weren’t you in jail? What was it like?’ In the advertising world, I will always be known as ‘Ray’s first wife.’ The one he dumped. As it is, women ask me what it’s like being married to him. They sense that he’s only half a step away from being some street gangster and it excites them.”
“But not you,” Elise said.
Kathy rolled her eyes. “When we got married, he was barely civilized. I taught him table manners, gave him ballroom dancing lessons. You know what he got me for our first anniversary? A handbag with a lizard on it. A real lizard that had once been alive. He said his mother had always wanted one of those bags.”
Olivia was the first to laugh.
“He gave me so many weird gifts that a condition I put on his secretary was that she had to do whatever was necessary to keep him from buying me anything. And I opened an account at Chanel.”
Olivia was laughing harder. “He told me that Elise was all Chanel and Cartier.”
“And who do you think taught him that?” Kathy drained her glass and leaned forward. “This thing—” she nodded at the card “—is a scam. Whoever it is will want lots of money, but I say let’s go anyway. I haven’t had so much fun in years. Just thinking about rewriting my past and not marrying Ray Hanran is making me feel like dancing.”
“Me too!” Elise said. “Imagining running down the aisle in my wedding dress—away from Kent—is a great fantasy.”
“No dancing for me,” Olivia said. “It’s making me feel like driving—not that it’ll do any good. There is no Everlasting Street anywhere in Summer Hill and there’s nothing on FM 77 but a few old houses. One of them was abandoned years ago.”
“I vote for anything that might help me with my current situation. Or at least give me some hope of a solution.” Elise stood up.
“I second that,” Kathy said.
“Put everything in the sink and let’s get in Kathy’s car,” Olivia said. “Mine might be recognized. Anyone have some big sunglasses and some scarves?”
“Prada and Hermès do for you two?” Kathy asked.
“No dead lizards?” Elise said. “Darn!”
They laughed.
* * *
Olivia drove, Kathy beside her, and Elise got in the back. Olivia was glad the two of them were chatting, bonding. They each had body hang-ups. Kathy obsessed about her weight, and eyed every morsel of food as though weighing it for calories and nutrition.
Whenever Kathy moved, Elise looked at her, assessing every curve. She seemed to be wondering whether being more voluptuous would help her capture love.
Olivia had to fight the urge to lecture both of them. It wasn’t their body types that won or lost a man. It was him. The man. The women had chosen wrong—and Olivia was an expert on that. The things Kit liked about her were what Alan had abhorred. Olivia’s competence, her ability to get a job done, had made Alan feel useless, had taken away his essential feeling of being a man.
It was after Kit returned to her life that she thought about the differences in personalities.
Kit didn’t know it, but she’d asked his son about his mother.
Rowan’s usually serious face softened. “Mom is lovely. She’s related to Italian nobility and she’s quite beautiful. She’s well educated, well traveled, and can talk to anyone about anything.”
“Oh.” Olivia’s eyes showed her disappointment. How could she compete with “Italian nobility”? And she had never been out of the US.
“What Mother couldn’t do was deal with Dad’s peripatetic life. He’d get a call from some government and we were to be gone in twenty-four hours. He expected Mother to organize the move and to take care of everything. But she couldn’t do it. She was used to being taken care of, not the other way around.”
Olivia’s eyes brightened at his words. Moving, organizing, managing people were all things she could do. And more importantly, she would have loved it.
Rowan’s handsome face hardened. “Dad wanted Mother to be something she wasn’t, and when she couldn’t be that person, he got angry.”
Olivia had just nodded. She’d understood well. But understanding didn’t take away the pain.
She drove past Mr. Ellis’s farm. Long ago it had been sold to a developer and a few little houses had been built, with many more planned. If she could go back in time, she’d buy the land with the rocks where she and Kit had sat and talked. Someone told her that the new owner was going to blast them out of the ground. Boring houses needed boring, flat tracts of land to be built on.
Just as there was no Everlasting Street in Summer Hill, Olivia was sure that no one on earth could rewrite the past—if that’s what that silly card even meant.
Kathy and Elise were now discussing the design details of Phillip Lim handbags and enthusiastically agreeing that he was someone to watch.
Olivia couldn’t help smiling, happy that they were finding a common ground—and glad that for a moment they’d forgotten the bad of their lives. What concerned her was that the young women were so traumatized by what the men had done to them that they’d never recover. They were both beautiful women. Different but quite lovely. But years of being put down and found to be lacking had made them feel less than they were. How could big, lusty Ray not want to pounce on Kathy? As for Kent, he was just plain stupid.
When Olivia got to FM 77, she slowed and turned right. She knew what was down the road. There were three old farmhouses set quite far apart. The first two were inhabited by older couples, and for lack of money, the houses had been allowed to deteriorate. Last year Josh Hartman had been paid by the church to repair the roofs. She knew he had put in many more hours than he was paid for.
At the end of the road was the third house and no one had lived in it for over twenty years. It was set way back from the gravel road and had once been owned by an old man with six dogs. He’d left the house to his son, but no one could find him so the house had sat vacant.
Olivia drove down the road slowly and at each driveway she had an impulse to turn around. This was ridiculous! Why were they here? To give money to some charlatan? To be ripped off because... Because they had hope? Is that what they were trying for?
By the time she neared the end of the road, she was driving so slowly the car was barely crawling. She could hear every piece of gravel under the tires.
Kathy turned in her seat and looked out the windshield. “Are you okay?”
“I’m feeling silly. Why are we doing this?” Olivia asked.
“Why not? Getting out of the house, thinking about something positive instead of the rotten things men have done to us has to be good.”
Olivia smiled. “I like your attitude.”
“Look!” Elise leaned between the seats and pointed.
There was a brand-new green-and-white sign that said, EVERLASTING STREET. Olivia couldn’t help giving a snort of laughter. “This is a driveway.”
“Magic comes in many forms,” Kathy said.
Olivia turned into the driveway that was now called a street. There were big old trees shading the way, and it wasn’t until she got to the end that she saw the house.
What had once been a derelict, decaying old place had been completely rebuilt. Big windows had been added and the front section built out to form a tall bay window. The old porch enclosed the entire side of the house.
“Looks like some work has been done,” Elise said. “Think it was magic?”
“Unless I miss my guess, it was Josh Hartman. He can design as well as build. I can assure you that the original house never looked this good!” Olivia turned the engine off and sat for a moment looking at the pretty house. It was a nice size, not sprawling, but not a cottage either. She was a bit annoyed that no one had told her this had been done. Stacy, their designer, was Josh’s sister, so she should have mentioned that her brother was—
“You okay?” Kathy asked.
“Sure.” Olivia tried to brush away the feeling of having been left out. “Let’s do it.”
Elise got out of the car and the others followed her.
It was very quiet around the house. Birds chirped; the wind rustled the leaves. To the right, a tall wooden fence had been put up, with an arch over the gate. Olivia went to it and glanced inside. It was a large vegetable and herb garden. Right now, it was new and raw, but give it a couple of years and it would be glorious.
“For witch’s brew?” Kathy asked, lightening Olivia’s sense of foreboding. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
Before Olivia could reply, Elise started running. “Come on, you two. Let’s go.”
“She’s really unhappy in her life, isn’t she?” Kathy said softly.
Olivia sighed. “I don’t want to think about what’s in store for her. This hiatus won’t last long. When she’s found, her parents will... I don’t know what they’re going to try to do. She needs a job and...” Trailing off, she looked at Kathy. “Whatever gives that child even a minute of hope, I’m all for it.”
As soon as they reached the front door, it was opened by a pretty young woman. She was medium height, with lots of unruly brown hair, and she was quite thin. She had on a loose green T-shirt and black cotton trousers.
“Hello.” Her smile showed even, white teeth. “You are... No, don’t tell me. Olivia, Kathy, and you’re Elise. Did I get it right?”
If Dr. Hightower had told her they’d be coming, it wouldn’t have been difficult to guess who was who.
Olivia was standing in the back. She’d always been an observer of people. When she was acting, she liked to think how to play the character. Unless she missed her guess, this young woman was very nervous. Her bravado was forced, as though she was trying to cover some insecurity.
“You’re Madame Zoya?” Elise’s tone told of her disappointment.
“No, I’m not.” She said it with a fierceness that smacked of defiance. “That’s my aunt. I’m Arrieta Day. I...” She paused and took a deep breath. “I’m taking my aunt’s place.”
They were still standing in the doorway and the young woman kept glancing at Olivia with an expression she couldn’t quite fathom. It was almost as though she wanted Olivia’s approval—or her permission. But permission for what?
There was an awkward moment of silence, then Arrieta stepped back. “Please come in. I made raisin cookies and the kettle is on and...and...” She didn’t seem to know what else to say.
They entered a large foyer with a staircase before them. To the right was a small dining room with an antique pine table. To the left was what looked to be a little library with double doors that were standing open. As for the rest of the house, it was all closed doors.
Arrieta motioned for them to go into the library. At the far end was a tall bay window with a cushioned seat. The other walls had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that were mostly empty. The only furniture was a maple desk and four lattice-back chairs. It all felt barren, as though no one had yet moved in.
The women sat down while Arrieta stood behind the desk. “I guess you want to know how this works.”
Elise nodded while Kathy and Olivia just stared at her.
“I can send you back in time.” Arrieta’s voice sounded almost like an apology. “You choose when and you stay for three weeks. Then you come back here. Anyone want cookies?”
“Time travel?” Kathy said. “I just thought this was a...a reading. But time travel? I don’t think—”
“I’m in,” Elise said. “When do we begin? How much do we pay? Will you take a rain check since I have no money?”
“Neither do I,” Arrieta said, then looked a bit panicked. “I mean... I guess that would be okay. I hadn’t thought about that. I may need to call my aunt and ask. Oh, and it’s a hundred dollars per person.”
Kathy was looking at the hope on Elise’s face. She wasn’t going to put logic into this and take that look away. “I’ll pay for everyone. So how many times do we have to come back to you before we do the time travel?”
“None.” Arrieta’s expression showed that she knew Kathy didn’t believe any of it. “I make you some tea, you drink it, then you go back in time. All in one visit.”
“What kind of tea?” Kathy’s voice was suspicious.
“It’s not drugs, if that’s what you think. It’s herbs that help you relax.” Arrieta looked around as though searching for an escape route.
Olivia spoke up. “This isn’t possible.” They all looked at her.
“The Butterfly Effect?” When they said nothing, she went on. “You change one thing in the past, no matter how small, and it will all be different.”
“You can only change what affects you,” Arrieta said. They waited for her to go on, but she didn’t.
“But I want to go back to three weeks before 9/11,” Olivia said. “I want to warn people. Or before Pearl Harbor. Or—”
“No.” Arrieta sat down behind the desk. “We’ve had people try that. One man spent his whole three weeks in jail. When he tried to warn people, he was arrested for disturbing the peace. People thought he was going to set off bombs. Another man went back so he could get a second chance at being a good father. But you know what he did?”
No one answered.
“He plagiarized songs. He had a good memory for lyrics, so he wrote them down and put his name on them. Made his kids memorize them.”
“So when he came back to the present he’d be rich and famous,” Kathy said.
“Exactly,” Arrieta answered.
“But I take it that it didn’t work,” Olivia said.
“When he got back he was exactly where he was when he left. All memory of the songs he’d stolen was gone. His ex-wife still hated him and his children had no use for him. It was a very sad case.” She took a breath. “And writers are the worst. My aunt says she’ll never send another writer back. They love to steal plots. One man rewrote Guardians of the Galaxy from memory and sent it to his agent.”
The women waited to hear the results. Arrieta raised one shoulder. “The agent loved it but later, he thought the author was crazy for saying that he wrote the book before it was put on the screen. The agent dropped him.”
“So we need to keep our noses to our own business,” Olivia said. “Is there a way to know when we step over the line?”
Arrieta shrugged. “Only what is supposed to happen will.” She stood up. “I’ll let you think about when you want to go back to.” With that, she nearly ran from the room.
Kathy stood up. “This is a joke.” Olivia and Elise stayed seated. “You two don’t actually believe this, do you?”
“I would like to go back to the morning of my wedding,” Elise said softly. “Before that day I could stand it all. I had an absolute belief that after I married Kent everything would change. I thought our parents would start being pleased by me. Kent and I would have babies and talk about where we wanted to go on vacation. Ordinary, normal things. But they didn’t happen.” Her voice was growing louder. “After I got married, everything got worse. People were even less pleased with me than before. And Kent had no interest in me at all. He—”
Olivia put her hand on Elise’s arm.
“Sorry.” Elise looked at Kathy, her eyes pleading. “I don’t care if all I do is fall asleep and dream. I’d rather have hope than just wait for them to come and get me.”
Olivia got up and went to the few books that were in the many feet of empty shelves. There were some on growing herbs and a dozen about serving tea. How to run a tearoom, what to serve, recipe books. She turned to the two women. “I’m going to find out more about this.” She went into the big foyer and looked at the closed doors. The lady or the tiger? she thought. Which door should she choose?
The clatter of silverware being dropped made her go to the door on the right. It opened into a beautiful kitchen. “Hello.” As soft as Olivia’s voice was, Arrieta was still so startled that she nearly dropped a teacup. “Here, let me do that. You sit down.” She nodded at the table in the adjoining breakfast nook.
“I think I’m supposed to serve you,” Arrieta said, but she sat down anyway.
“How many times have you done this?” Olivia asked.
Arrieta’s expression answered her.
“Oh, I see. Your first time.” Olivia put loose tea in the flowered pot. “Tell me about yourself.”
“I’m also supposed to ask the questions.”
“I’m sure that’s right, but there are extenuating circumstances, aren’t there?”
“I guess.” Arrieta still looked like she wanted to run away.
“Did your aunt dump this job on you?”
“Yes!” Arrieta said. “I hate destiny! It sounds romantic, but it’s not. It means I have no free choice but that I have to do something. But that’s not fair, is it? A person could have a great singing voice, but she doesn’t have to sing, does she?”
“And you don’t want to charge people for hope, then give them nothing,” Olivia said.
“Oh no, that’s not it at all. I can sing. I mean I can send people back in time, but I’m not very good with people socially.”
“Then why do you want to open a tea shop?” Olivia said quickly.
For a second Arrieta’s eyes widened, then she laughed. “Aunt Primrose told me you were good at figuring out people. I have to earn a living and I like to bake and garden. With a couple of good employees, I think I can make it work.”
“And meeting people will help with your destiny,” Olivia said. “I can’t imagine that what you say you can do is possible.”
“It is. We just have to be careful who we tell about it. Dr. Hightower has referred a lot of people to my aunts—and now me.”
“I’m curious. Was Ray or Kathy the original target for this...opportunity?”
“Kathy,” Arrieta said. “It was never Ray. Dr. Hightower thought you should hear him tell how he treats his wife because Kathy might not say anything. She’s good at keeping things to herself. But Ray is fine—thanks to his wife taking such good care of him. She’s the one who has the problems.”
“How did you get her here?”
Arrieta shrugged. “My aunts know lots of people so some calls were made and voilà! Ray leaves the country and Kathy goes to Dr. Hightower’s house. It all worked out.” Olivia didn’t have to ask about Elise.
“Dr. Hightower wants to retire.” Arrieta said this with an intense look at Olivia. “Rescuing Elise was Jeanne’s final straw. She can’t take any more and we need someone to fill her role—someone who will send the right people our way.”
“I think you’ll need a very special person who believes in... What do you call this? Time travel?” Olivia’s tone told how ridiculous she thought it all was.
Arrieta looked at her nails. “If you returned to 1970, you could go back to school while Mr. Montgomery was in the Middle East. By now you’d be a qualified therapist.”
Olivia was too stunned by that statement to speak.
“I told Aunt Primrose that you’d never agree to this.”
“You’re making it sound like you planned for me to come into the kitchen so I could hear about this.”
“Cale said you would.”
“Cale? Kit’s cousin? The writer? I hardly know her.”
“She’s friends with Ellie Abbot, who my aunt sent back. Cale said you were insatiably curious and the most capable woman she’s ever met.”
“Oh,” Olivia said. “I had no idea. That’s a wonderful compliment.”
“Of course none of it would start until now.”
“What does that mean?”
“You can go back to 1970, marry Mr. Montgomery, and begin to study to be a psychologist. When he comes back from his secret mission, you and your family can live all over the world, then—zap!—you return here and use your certification to help us. The aunts and me, that is. You’ll help find people who need us.”
It was all too fanciful for Olivia to comprehend. She just sat there blinking.
“I guess I should tell you about the memory. When you get back here, after your, uh, journey, you can choose to remember or not. My guess is that Elise won’t want to remember what her family did to her. Kathy will need to remember that big, lusty Ray is a no-no. And you’ll want to know everything about both your marriages because you like a full mind. Actually, you need to remember all about your late husband and your dreadful daughter-in-law—I met her—so you can help other people.”
Olivia was trying to digest this. “Will Elise remember us?”
“Only the hate will be removed from her memory. Not the love.”
“Can I tell Kit?”
“If you wish. Your life is your own.”
“If...if I did...uh, return to the past, could I tell him I’m from the future?”
“You can, but it’ll be like that man with the songs. You can tell him about computers and cell phones and 9/11, everything. But at the end of three weeks it will all disappear. You’ll return here to this house and you’ll be this age. You will have gone through the years together but neither of you will have known the future.”
“I was trained for the stage, so how will I remember that I need to study to become a psychologist?”
Arrieta smiled. “That’s exactly what I asked my aunts. They said that if you’d really and truly liked being an actress you would have continued to be one.”
At that, Olivia gave a bit of a smile. She’d never admitted to anyone but Kit that she’d loved the first week she’d been on Broadway, but doing it over and over, night after night, had bored her.
“My aunt Primrose said that if you’d had Mr. Montgomery and been happy you would have gone back to school. And she believes you would have studied psychology.”
“I did take a few courses in college and I loved them, but the stage seemed to be calling me.” She looked at Arrieta for a few moments. “The man with the songs wasn’t the only time it didn’t produce good, was it?”
“No. Sometimes there are disasters.” Arrieta leaned forward. “Sometimes people are so joyous to be young again that they’re reckless and get themselves maimed, or even killed. They say they want to experience a different side of life so they run off with dreadful people. When they get back to the present, they nearly always choose to stay with the life they had before. Especially if they died in the second visit.”
“I would think so!” Olivia paused. “But even with all the bad, when they returned, it would release that feeling of regret. It’s something that haunts me every day. I recently had a new one put onto me. I thought I was a good mother to my stepson, but I found out that he thinks I only cared about money. It’s made me worry that I wouldn’t be a good mother to anyone.”
“Your stepson is a greedy little bastard,” Arrieta said vehemently. “Sorry, but this is a small town. When Josh was doing the renovations, your stepson came here. He and his wife are planning to add an entertainment wing onto their big house. They said that Mr. Montgomery was going to pay for it.”
It took Olivia some moments to fully understand what she was hearing. After all the protests that Kevin and Hildy had made about her marriage to Kit, they were actually planning to benefit with his family’s wealth. That was more than Olivia could take. “All right, I’ll try it—but only if you tell me how you do it.”
Arrieta shrugged. “Actually, it’s up to the people. I just have to think hard, and if they really and truly want to go, then it happens. I have no idea how. It’s just something some of the women in my family can do. We—” She clamped her mouth shut, not saying any more, then she got up and put the teapot on a tray. “Are you ready to go back in time?”
“I think I am,” Olivia said, and they left the kitchen.
When they were in the empty little library, Arrieta put the tea tray on the desk and handed each woman a cup. While they drank, she explained about memory.
Elise said, “I don’t want to remember what my parents and Kent did to me!” Arrieta and Olivia exchanged looks. It’s what they’d predicted she would say.
When they finished their tea, Arrieta took the empty cups and put them on the tray.
After a moment’s thought, she moved her chair from behind the desk and sat down in front of the three women. “Shall we get started? All you have to do is tell me when you want to go back to, then close your eyes and think really hard about that time. I’ll do the rest.”
Instantly, Elise nestled her hands in her lap, then closed her eyes. Her whole body seemed to relax.
Arrieta looked away from Elise. “She’s already there. She wanted to get out of this world so very much. But if you two don’t want to go...”
“Sorry,” Olivia said. Elise was smiling. She looked like she was sleeping—and like she was very, very happy. Whatever she was dreaming of, she was enjoying it. Olivia looked back at Arrieta. Whether what she was proposing was true or not, Olivia would like to again feel as happy as Elise looked. “I want to go back to exactly three weeks before they came to get Kit. I want every second I can get to change a lot of things with many people. I want—” She didn’t say any more because she felt herself drifting off, floating. Kit, Kit, Kit, she thought. With a smile, she imagined Uncle Freddy and Mr. Gates, the children, her parents, and... She felt too good to do any more thinking. She just gave herself over to the feeling of being weightless, of not having a sad thought or feeling. She drifted. It felt like all the unhappiness of her life was being taken out of her mind, being removed from where it seemed to have settled down into her bones. She was smiling as she hadn’t done since... Since the day Kit left.
Arrieta looked at Kathy. “What do you want to do?”
“Be as happy as those two look. Do I click my heels?”
“To stop talking would make a start,” Arrieta snapped. “Sorry. I’m new at this. I’m not used to dealing with sarcasm and doubt and all the other bad things that go with this job that I never wanted in the first place.”
Kathy was looking at her with wide eyes. “When Ray went to Chicago,” she said softly, then closed her eyes. She was so skeptical about everything that it took minutes before she began to feel a release from what her life had become.
“Kathy!” she heard her father order. “Get us some coffee.”
“Get it yourself,” she heard herself say, and that made her smile. No one had ever talked to her father like that. Kathy began to smile so broadly that it was about to take over her entire body. The sheer size of the smile seemed to turn her inside out. She had no body, just an enormous, life-changing smile.
Arrieta looked at the three women, glad that they were where they should be, then got up and went into the kitchen to call her aunt Primrose. Everything was going well. So far, anyway.