The Color of Forever (22 page)

“What was the lighthouse keeper’s name?” Bailey asked.

I wracked my brain, trying to remember. “Mr. Williams, I think.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the name of the keeper at that time. There were pictures at the museum, and I remember… It was another man. His name was…” She paused. “Harvey, I think.”

The name struck a chord in me. “
Harvey
.” I thought about that for a moment. “It sounds very familiar.” I continued to watch the fishing boat and listen to the hollow clang of a buoy’s bell somewhere in the distance. “I remember my parents from the dream. I was grieving for my mother who had died recently. She was sick for a long time, and then my father left to live somewhere else. And the woman my husband was in love with—I know it sounds crazy, but I still feel jealous, like it happened only yesterday. It’s all coming back to me, in little bits.” Again, I struggled to remember. “He was in love with her before he met me, but he ended their affair when he proposed to me, but then she tried to get him back after we were married. She followed him to London and they slept together over there. In his coach.”

“Oh, that sucks,” Bailey said. “But I can’t believe it—that Captain Fraser would do that. Everything we’ve read makes it seem like they were true soulmates, devoted to each other forever.”

I swallowed over a sick feeling of jealousy and heartbreak, then tried to remind myself that it wasn’t real. He wasn’t my husband. He had never cheated on
me
.

“What was he doing in London?” Bailey asked.

“Taking care of his shipping company, because his brother couldn’t manage it anymore. He was losing his vision or something.”

Bailey let out a deep breath and sat forward. “You keep saying ‘my parents’ and ‘my husband,’ as if you’re Evangeline. But it was just a dream. And in another century.”

I snapped out of my reverie. “I know. Of course, you’re right. It just felt so real.”

We both sat back in our chairs and listened to the waves roll gently onto the shore.

“Well,” Bailey said, tapping a finger on the armrest, “we know one thing. There was no lighthouse keeper named Mr. Williams, and there’s no record of Mrs. Fraser getting swept off the rocks that day.”

“Danforth!” I shouted, slapping the armrest with the palm of my hand. “That was the name of the woman Sebastian had an affair with. She was a singer who performed at our house.”

“Whose
house?”

I pointed my thumb over my shoulder. “The inn.”

She nodded her head, though she seemed a bit concerned about the things I was saying. “I see.”

Sitting forward in the chair, I felt as if there were other important details I had yet to uncover. Things that were hovering at the fringes of my memory.

“Would you mind going back to the museum with me?” I asked. “I want to look up some of this stuff.”

“Which stuff?” she asked.

I stood up and started walking back to the house. “All of it.”

o0o

The museum curator remembered us from our visit earlier in the week, and allowed us, with no questions asked, into the back room to delve into the Fraser House Collection a second time. We pulled on the white gloves like a couple of seasoned historians and waited at the work table for her to fetch the box.

I was shocked, however, when it wasn’t just one box she delivered. She brought out one box after another, each one full of documents and pictures—a whole lifetime of memories—all donated by Angela Carrington when she purchased the house in 2009. It was far more extensive, and completely different from the collection I had examined before.

There were dozens of letters exchanged between all five children and their parents, where they discussed things like social engagements, milestones concerning the grandchildren, holiday plans. There was some talk of politics from the youngest son, Henry, who evidently had a passion for current events.

I devoured every word, as if they were my own long-lost children and I hadn’t heard from them in years.

Everyone seemed perfectly content with every aspect of their lives. There were no letters of concern between Amelie and Nathan, worried for their father’s sanity. According to this version of history, their father had lived a long and happy life without need for a time machine to bring his wife back from the dead. He hadn’t spent his life inventing strange gadgets. To the contrary, Evangeline had been the one to insist upon a trip around the world, by steamship, shortly after the end of the First World War. The sundial had been their most treasured souvenir from that journey, though there was no mention of time machine anywhere. Perhaps they knew it would have made them sound crazy. Or maybe they didn’t want strangers coming around to use it recklessly.

There was a black-and-white photograph of the two of them standing next to it, holding hands. It was dated 1924. I stared at it for a long time, mesmerized and wishing I could remember more of Evangeline’s life beyond that final night at the lighthouse when I woke from the dream.

After more than an hour of focused, borderline-obsessive reading, I finally looked up. Bailey was asleep with her head on the table.

I glanced at the curator, who sat at her desk with her back to us, then poked Bailey lightly with my finger. “Hey,” I whispered.

She sat up groggily and stretched her arms over her head. “Are we all done?”

I set down the photograph. “I feel terrible for dragging you back here. You must be so bored.”

“No need to apologize,” she replied. “It’s just not as interesting for me the second time around.”

“Because you’ve read all this before.” I sighed, accepting that I was either completely bonkers with short-term memory loss, or I had in fact traveled back through time and changed the present-day world.

Which was it?

I turned to address the curator. “Can I ask you a question?”

She swiveled in her chair to face me. “Certainly.”

“I’m wondering if there was ever a woman named Mrs. Danforth who might have visited Cape Elizabeth in the 1880s. Is there any way we could search for that name in your records?”

I just wanted to know if I’d dreamed the whole darn thing.

“Of course,” she replied cheerfully. “Although we don’t have to do much searching. What would you like to know? I could probably tell you anything, because I wrote an article about her a few years back. She was a singer on the New York stage and married a wealthy older gentleman who owned a summer house here.”

I glanced at Bailey, whose lips parted with surprise.

“Well, that’s interesting,” I said. “Do you know if she might have been romantically involved with Captain Fraser at any point?”

And there were so many more questions I had. I felt suddenly as if time were rushing by too quickly. Soon, Bailey and I would be boarding a plane back to Seattle. Surely there weren’t enough hours in the day to learn all the answers I was seeking.

The curator inclined her head curiously. “Not that I know of. Why do you ask? Did you read something that would suggest it?” She began to roll herself closer in her chair. “I’ve read everything there is to know about Captain Fraser and his wife. There was never any mention of anything like that. There is a ‘thank you’ card in the collection, however, for a musical evening at the captain’s home. She provided the entertainment. But there is certainly no mention of any infidelities on her part, or Captain Fraser’s. That’s an interesting thought, though. They were about the same age, both very attractive and charismatic. And good heavens. Mr. Danforth sold his property quickly, well below market value. I always wondered why he was in such a hurry to leave Cape Elizabeth.”

Feeling a strange unbidden urge to protect Captain Fraser’s reputation—and that of his marriage—I waved a hand, dismissively. “Oh, don’t listen to me. I don’t even know why I’m asking that. There was nothing here to suggest it. I’m just dreaming. Obviously Captain Fraser was very much in love with his wife.”

She smiled warmly. “Oh, yes. Theirs is one of Cape Elizabeth’s most treasured marriages. They were together always. He absolutely worshipped the ground she walked on until the day he died. We wouldn’t want to turn
that
one upside down.”

“Good heavens,
no
,” Bailey replied, and I kicked her under the table for making fun of the curator’s old-fashioned romanticism.

I, on the other hand, was deeply moved and affected by her words—for it appeared that if, indeed, there had been an indiscretion between Mrs. Danforth and the captain, he had spent the rest of his life trying to win back Evangeline’s trust and love, and she
had
forgiven him in the end. It was obvious from the photographs and letters. She
did
love him.

I felt that love beating strongly in my own heart.

Yet I couldn’t help but wonder what had become of Mr. Williams.

“What about a lighthouse keeper named Mr. Williams?” Bailey asked—which had been the next question on the tip of my tongue. “We visited the Portland Head Light yesterday, but I don’t recall seeing that name. There was a large photograph of a man named Harvey who manned the light around that time.”

“That’s right,” the curator said. “Mr. Harvey was the keeper, but Mr. Williams was his nephew and the
assistant
lighthouse keeper. I believe there’s a photograph of Mr. Williams in one of the books at the Head Light Museum,” the curator added, “but there’s no mention of him in the displays.”

All at once, my blood began to race and my belly churned with nervous knots, because surely this proved that I knew things I shouldn’t have known.

Suddenly, more precise details from those final moments came hurtling back at me. It was no longer a vague recollection. I remembered every word of my conversation with Mr. Williams in the keeper’s cottage—how he had asked me to run away with him to New York and promised he would take care of me—and then the heated argument that occurred between him and my husband.

I had dashed onto the rocks to get away from them, and as the wave approached, my life had flashed before my eyes. I saw things and knew things I couldn’t possibly have known.

Good Lord.

Suddenly, the room was spinning.

I pulled off the gloves, bent forward in my chair and stuck my head between my knees.

“Are you okay?” Bailey asked, leaping from her chair to circle around the table. She knelt beside me and placed her hand on my back.

“Yes,” I said. “I just felt a bit dizzy, that’s all. I think I need some protein.”

“You didn’t eat much breakfast,” she commented.

Forming my lips into an O to breathe steadily in and out, I sat up again. The curator had gone to fetch me a glass of water. She moved the documents aside and set it down on the table in front of me.

“Thank you.” I picked it up and took a sip, then we thanked the curator for all her help. I asked if it would be all right for me to return another time, before I flew home, because I was certain I would have more questions. She said yes and walked us to the door.

A short while later, Bailey and I got into our rental car. She took the keys from me and started the engine, while I closed my eyes and tipped my head back.

“What’s going on?” she asked, as we pulled away from the curb. “You look gray, like you’re going to be sick.”

“I was pregnant,” I said, lifting my head, “on the rocks that day at the lighthouse.”

“
What?
”

I stopped, paused a moment to gather my thoughts into something a little more sensible and coherent, and began again. “What I mean to say is that
Evangeline
was pregnant on the day she was swept off the rocks, but she didn’t know it. No one did.”

“But she wasn’t swept off the rocks,” Bailey reminded me.

“I know that,” I replied, “because I went back in time, knew what was about to happen, and I saved myself. Or rather,
she
saved herself and got off the rocks before the wave hit. But just before that, she saw a life flash before her eyes, but it wasn’t her life. It was mine.”

Bailey’s eyebrows pulled together in a bewildered frown. “How do you know all this? From the dream? Or was there something you read just now?”

I shook my head. “It was the dream, if that’s what it was. I don’t know. But she sensed it, I guess, because I was in her head. And just before the wave hit the rocks, she realized she was carrying a son.”

“But how would she know that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. That part is still a mystery to me.”

“Only
that
part?” Bailey asked as she turned toward Portland Head Light so we could seek out the photograph of Mr. Williams.

o0o

“What do you think all this means?” Bailey asked as we pulled out of the parking lot after our visit to the Head Light Museum.

The attendant had been kind enough to direct us to a book in the gift shop which contained the photograph of Mr. Williams, who exactly matched my memory and the description I’d given Bailey. In the photograph, he was a young man, muscular and rugged-looking, posing with his uncle outside the front door of the little stone dwelling, which had later been replaced by the larger Victorian home that now stood in the same location. His arms were folded at his chest. He was not smiling.