Weathering the Storms Box Set

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3We managed to get a flight rather easily and arrived back in New York long before lunchtime. “Shush, Wilbur!” My Frenchie was still barking a good two minutes after I’d entered the house. That was unusual. “Come here. I missed you, too.”

But he cowered when I went to pet him. That was even weirder.

“Easy, boy.” I threw my duffle bag into a far corner and got down on the floor at his level. That seemed to calm him some. “You okay, my sweet Wilbur?”

Wilbur was mostly white, which sometimes looked pink because of his short fur. He resembled a little piggy so much, especially as a tiny puppy, the name Wilbur, after the character in Charlotte’s Web, was the first and last I’d considered.

“Has he been on edge all weekend?” I asked my sister, Shelby.

“No,” she told me. “He’s been fine. Why are you home so early?” She was in Rip’s arms. They kissed.

“You didn’t miss me?” he asked her.

“I was just starting to,” she told him. “And now you’re home. How was the reenactment?”

“A big, fat waste of time,” Rip answered, offering my sister one more kiss before setting her loose. “We didn’t even get to do it.”

“I did,” I said.

Rip had slept away most of the two-and-a-half-hour flight. I’d dozed off once or twice myself, only to wake up disappointed to discover I was still on a plane and not somewhere with Jefferson. I didn’t mention any more about my alleged spiritual adventure to Rip on the drive from the airport to my house. I was relatively certain he would have labeled me completely nuts—again. I wasn’t so sure I wasn’t.

“Another group was doing something downriver from where we were supposed to reenact our part of the battle,” I explained. “I ended up floating down the mighty Tennessee on a homemade pontoon we turned into a part of a bridge. What sucked was trekking all the way back to my original location. The trip downriver was a whole lot shorter.”

“Well, I’m glad one of you got to play,” Shelby said. “You ready to go, Bun?”

She called Rip “Bun” all the time, as in “Honey Bunny.” It used to gross me out, but the older I got, the sweeter it sounded.

“I guess.”

“Thanks for watching Wilbur.” He started barking again when I stood. “I wonder what’s wrong with him.”

“Maybe he’ll settle when we go,” Rip said. “Catch you later, Bro-ford. Thanks for tagging along.”

“Anytime. Or never again. I’m good either way.”

Though my sister and brother-in-law exited smiling, my dog was still in a mood.

“What, pupster? What?” I kicked off my shoes and dropped my zip-front hoodie at the door, set my phone down on the coffee table, and then crossed to the kitchen to grab Wilbur a chewy snack to settle him down. The amber bottle in the same cupboard caught my eye. I hadn’t taken one of the pills in months. My anxiety was bearable, and the nightmares were far less frequent. I hadn’t had a flashback hallucination in over a year, unless that was the only explanation for what I’d experienced in Tennessee.

I closed the cupboard when Wilbur nudged my bare shin. He’d followed me, naturally, and sat there, quiet as a mouse. “Oh, we’re quiet for snack-a-lackins, eh?” I got down on the floor again and nuzzled into his warm, soft cheeks. “Who’s my wittle fuzzy wuzzy boy? You just missed Daddy, huh?”

Finally, puppy dog kisses.

My house was smaller than the one Jefferson Eaves haunted. It had only five rooms, all with white walls, and was mostly furnished with pieces from the store where I worked, bookcases, tables, and a bedframe and dresser I’d had to put together with an Allen wrench. Still, there was no place like home.

Wilbur stayed in the kitchen with his rawhide chew as I checked my plants for moisture. My sister had stayed on top of things. Then, again, I was gone less than twenty-four hours, I realized, as I settled onto the couch—the davenport—to make a big decision. “Remote or joystick?”

I was well into Motorcycle Madness on the Xbox when Wilbur came back into the room. He settled on the beige cushion beside me and was soon snoring away.

“Good boy.” I kissed him.

My video game distraction quickly lost its appeal. Truthfully, it hadn’t worked at all. I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened in Tennessee the night before. Picking up my phone, I first decided to ask Siri if Florence Nightingale was American.

“Oh.”

Had someone programmed Siri to call people names, she might have said, “She was British, but was born in Italy. During the Crimean war, she trained other nurses and bettered conditions for the soldiers. Crimean War, not the American Civil War, you fool.” Fortunately, Siri was nicer than my ex.

“Well, I was close. Not. f**k! The diary.”

It hit me just that suddenly and made me shoot up from the couch and bolt to the door. I was there in three steps, a combination of hurry and a small floor plan. After unzipping my bag, I fished through a lot of wool and clean socks and underwear, more than I’d have needed even if the reenactment weekend had lasted as long as was planned. Finally, in the pocket of my Union coat, there it was—Jefferson’s journal.

“Oh my God! I stole it. Daddy’s going to prison.” I began to pace. “Walking off with something of this value is probably grand larceny, right? What do I do? What do I do?”

Would Siri know?

“Nobody saw me take it,” I said.

Patrick had seen me upstairs where the book was kept, though. He knew my name, where I lived, my cellphone number and email address. The FBI, CIA, DHS, NSA, or POTUS himself were going to be pounding on my door any minute.

Were those sirens I heard in the distance?

A quick peek out the window revealed the yard was clear. No cops had shown up yet.

“What do I do? What do I do?”

I wondered if I could mail it back. Anonymously, of course. That might work.

“I’m in big trouble here, Jefferson. You got any advice?”

As long as the stolen diary was in my possession, I decided to open it, to check out the last entry, the one describing our pontoon adventure. What I found was a blank page.

“How? I know there was something there before.”

I laughed ruefully. Then, I asked Siri if ruefully meant what I thought it did.

Yup. “In a way that expresses regret or sorrow, especially in an ironic humorous manner,” she’d told me. That frigging summed it up. I was a felon and a nut job, stealing diaries and making s**t up in my head that wasn’t there.

“Well, at the very least, losing my mind could work toward an insanity plea. So can talking to inanimate objects, like diaries.” I walked back over to the couch and lobbed the stupid thing at the empty cushion.

“Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof!”

My heart nearly stopped when Wilbur went crazy. Had he heard a knock? Were the Feds on my doorstep?

“What, Wilbur?” He never carried on like this, not even when someone came to the door for real. Wilbur loved trick-or-treaters. I’d already bought a ton of candy for the 2018 Halloween season, several bags to eat and several to give out. My neighborhood had a lot of kids. The screeching witch wreath went up on the front door October 1, a skeleton with flashing eyes was on the mailbox, and I’d placed a ceramic jack-o-lantern with a battery-operated candle in all eight front windows weeks earlier.

Maybe the wreath was going off prematurely, its motion sensor responding to shadows from blowing leaves outside as they dropped from the maples and the oak tree off to one side or fluttered in the breeze. I hadn’t heard the witch’s cackle, but sometimes I got so used to things like that—the grandfather clock, the furnace or AC kicking on and off, my singing Santa at Christmas, the UPS truck—I barely paid attention anymore.

“Nobody’s here, buddy,” I told Wilbur.

He wouldn’t stop, though. Up on his feet, he stood stock still, staring right at me, like a pointer, barking, trying to tell me something.

“I don’t know what to do for you. This?” I asked.

Wilbur barked even harder when I picked up the diary and showed it to him.

“Yeah. You’re disappointed in me. I get it. Stealing it was wrong, but I didn’t mean to. I swear. One minute I was telling myself not to forget to put it back on the shelf, and the next, well, you guessed it, I forgot. It’s Uncle Rip’s fault. It is. ‘Hurry up, Goose.’ If he said it once, he said it a hundred times. ‘I got us a flight. Hurry up.’”

My ramblings were only making Wilbur more upset.

“Okay, okay.” I walked over to my bedroom door, opened it, and tossed the diary onto the bed. It hit the floor. I sucked at horseshoes. “All gone.”

Wilbur was immediately quiet. After turning three times in a circle, he settled back onto two of three cushions, putting his head on his front paws to nap.

“Better.”

Now that Wilbur was calm, I headed for the bathroom. My thought process worked best in the shower. Wrapped in a towel once done, feeling fresh, clean, and confident, I snuck into the bedroom. I’d formulated a plan while washing my hair. I would slip the diary into a manila envelope, several of which I had in my desk, get the address for the museum online, take the train down to the city first thing the next day, and mail my parcel from a box on the street. That way, it couldn’t be traced back to me. I hoped.

“Sound good to you, Jefferson?” I picked up the journal, crawled up the bed from the bottom, then flipped over onto my back to put my head on the pillow. The fact I’d lost my towel partway didn’t matter, since I was alone.

“So, what else is new?” I asked no one.

Starting at the back, I went to the approximate page the recount of the Cracker Line bridge building scene had been on.

“Am I nuts, or was there writing here that isn’t here anymore?”

As I flipped through all the pages again, start to finish, those written on and those that remained blank, I wondered if those two things were mutually exclusive. Either way, Jefferson’s description of our journey down the Tennessee River and all it entailed was gone.

“Nothing.” I fanned the bound paper between its two covers, feeling their breeze, inhaling the musty scent of history. “Wait.” Now there was something. I couldn’t tell what in passing, so I slowly went through again, until I came upon what I had seen.

Where am I? Not where I wish to be.

That was new, and it was written in place of the last thing Jefferson may or may not have inscribed.

“Where are you? I don’t know.” I spoke to the page. “Still in Tennessee? Heaven? Alive? Has anyone ever lived to be over 170 years old? I don’t think so.”

I grabbed my tablet from the nightstand and Googled it, because I didn’t want to ask Siri two stupid questions in a row.

Has anyone lived to be a 170? I typed.

Some woman in France, the site claimed, had made it to 122. Then there was Methuselah, who died at age 949. “Are you headed for that kind of longevity, Jefferson?”

I’m here.

The two words had appeared on the page as I’d glanced away. I was sure of it. “Holy f**k!” I reared back, ready to chuck the diary across the room. I couldn’t do it, though. After looking around, for what I wasn’t sure—people, spirits, Rod Serling—I cleared my throat. “You’re where?” I asked cautiously.

I’m here.

Okay, apparently, I could do it. The diary went flying by my will, not something paranormal.

“Ohhh. What’s happening here?”

My heart raced. I was trembling. Every nerve in my body was tingling. Every hair, from the top of my head to the few strands on my toes, stood on end. Unless I was losing my damned mind, the response had come as I’d stared. One letter at a time, I’m here had materialized, like some feat of magic or other worldly phenomenon.

“Calm down. Calm down. Calm the f**k down!” I put my hand on my chest. I pressed hard there, to stop the organ that gave me life from exploding past my ribcage and through the flesh and hair. “Sorry, Jefferson,” I said, attempting to collect myself. “I want to pick you up, but to be honest, I’m scared shitless.”