Tempest In Time by Eugenia Riley

Author:Eugenia Riley
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2014-01-20T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-three

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“Oh, dear,” Melissa said.

Jeff had just dropped her off from their date, and she stood staring into the newel button. She spotted Missy glaring at her formidably and spouting words Melissa could not hear - though their import was quite clear.

During the past few days, she had spotted Missy’s angry countenance several times, the visions reminding Melissa that she was living a life that did not really belong to her.

Now, the images faded and Melissa shuddered.

Heavens, Missy had looked so unhappy. Melissa knew in her heart that she needed to tell Jeff the truth, to see if somehow, they might release poor Missy from her purgatory.

But that might mean that she would need to go back to the year 1852, and she didn’t want to go. Still, Melissa’s sense of altruism demanded that she do something to help her cousin. And, looking beyond the question of Missy’s fate, was she being fair to Jeff to go on seeing him, to keep nurturing a love that time might snatch away?

Dear Jeff. The two of them had continued to spend every free moment together out at his family’s summer house. They had sat in the gazebo together, holding hands, kissing and staring into each others’ eyes. They had read poetry together, gotten to know each other better, and had fallen more deeply in love.

Was that love doomed? How Melissa wished she knew.

***

The next afternoon, Melissa sat with Jeff in the gazebo behind his parents’ summer house. She wore a new spring outfit - a lacy, long-sleeved blouse, a calf-length, flower-printed skirt, and a pair of soft leather boots. While Melissa was still too frightened to go “into town” and confront the massive steel-girded skyscrapers of Memphis proper, recently, with the encouragement of her mother and girlfriends, she had begun to visit the amazing “shopping malls” of suburban Memphis. With help from the others, she had set a new style for herself, buying dresses, blouses and skirts with delicate, feminine lines. While she had refused to have her hair “permed” as Lisa had wanted, she now styled her blond tresses down and fashionably curled. She had even started wearing light make-up. When she had asked Jeff if he approved of the changes, he had grinned and informed her that anything she wanted to do was fine with him, that she would look gorgeous wearing an old gunny sack.

Now, she feasted her eyes on him, looking so handsome in his sky-blue knitted shirt and tan slacks, with the sunshine of the perfect spring day gleaming in his thick hair. He sat with a stack of leather-bound books in his lap. He had been reading her love poems all afternoon.

How she adored him. But would her blissful existence with him soon be shattered?

He glanced up, noting the anxious look in her eyes. “What is it, darling?”

Melissa got up and walked over to stare out at the Mississippi. She watched a barge float down the gleaming river, and inhaled the scent of wet earth that laced the air.

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