Yellowstone Heart Song Read online

  “You have been,” Daniel nodded. “If you are carrying my child, I will take you to the city. I will not let you have a baby here in the wilderness.”

  Aimee saw the serious look in his eyes. She knew he was thinking about his mother.

  “Daniel,” she rested her hands on his chest. “First of all, you can relax. I’m not pregnant, I swear.” The convenience of modern contraceptives. Her preferred choice of birth control was depo provera injections. She found this form easier to manage, and it had the added convenience of no monthly flows. She hated going backpacking and being on her period.

  “And second,” she continued, “I thought you were over your hang-up about the dangers of the wilderness to me. You said yourself I’ve proven myself to you. And I am healthy as a horse.”

  “Then why have you not had your woman’s time?” he prodded. “I have shared your bed for many weeks, and it’s something I would have noticed.”

  “I can’t explain that to you right now. Maybe some other time.” She sadly lowered her gaze. What else could she say?

  “It’s alright, Aimee,” Daniel said softly, cradling the side of her face in one hand, stroking her cheek with his thumb. “I don’t care if you are unable to conceive children. I love you no matter what.”

  Aimee smiled softly at him. Well, maybe that was a convenient way to end this topic.

  “I love you, too, Daniel,” she leaned up to kiss him. Why couldn’t I have met you 200 years from now?

  Daniel took her hand and they continued walking.

  “My father will be back any day now.” He squeezed her hand. “I will explain to him that you’re my wife.”

  Aimee’s face went somber. Her body stiffened. She knew her time here was coming to an end, but hearing Daniel confirm it made it more real.

  “He will accept you,” he added quickly.

  She kept quiet and chewed on her lower lip. I already know your father. And when he returns, my world will end.

  “I also plan to start building our own cabin before winter sets in. Next summer I will take you to St. Louis, and we can get married in the white man’s way if you wish.”

  Aimee swallowed hard. I’m not going to be here come winter, much less next summer! Her mind screamed.

  “Daniel,” she stopped and turned to him once more. “I want you to know that no matter what happens in the future, I will always love you. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. Please don’t ever forget that.” Tears threatened to spill down her face.

  “Aimee, what’s wrong? You talk in riddles. Do you have the power to look into the future?” he said light heartedly. “Because if you do, could you tell me if it’s going to be a good trapping season this winter?”

  He was trying so hard to cheer her up, she had to smile. She took a deep breath, then put her hands to her forehead, and pretended to concentrate hard. “It’s going to be the best trapping season you’ve ever had. The beavers are going to line up outside your door.”

  He hugged her to him tightly. Just then, a streak of lightning illuminated the sky.

  “There’s going to be a big storm tonight. We’d better get back to the cabin.”

  *****

  The next morning the ground outside had turned to mud. Afternoon thunderstorms were a common occurrence, but the rain last night was unrelenting. Daniel decided it would be best if he went out alone that morning to check on some of his traps.

  “I’ll be back soon.” He kissed her on the forehead as he turned to leave. Aimee threw her arms around his neck and held him tight.

  “I love you,” she said passionately.

  He lifted her off the ground and pulled her to him. Aimee clung to him as if she never wanted to let go. Daniel had to pry her off him. He gave her a quizzical look before kissing her.

  “You are my heart song,” he whispered as he set her apart from him. “I won’t be gone long.”

  Aimee paced the cabin restlessly, unable to concentrate on any tasks. The storm had played havoc with her nerves. By mid-morning, she decided to go for a walk to try and calm herself. She had done a lot of thinking over the last few weeks. Lying awake in the night, listening to the storm, she had finally come to a firm decision. Nothing she had ever experienced in life came close to what she felt when she was with Daniel. How could she possibly give that – him – up to go back to a life she didn’t particularly enjoy. Here, in this time and in this place, with this man, she felt completely alive. It’s where she was meant to be. She did not want to go back to her own time. She had nothing to go back to. She would miss her best friend, Jana, and triple chocolate fudge ice cream. But in her heart she knew that her life was here with Daniel.

  Aimee opened the cabin door to head out, only to stammer back in surprise and shock. In the doorway stood Zachariah Osborne.

  “Miss Donovan!” he exclaimed. “It is so good to see you. I am so relieved to find you safe and sound. I must say, I’ve been worried that I made the right decision in sending you here.”

  “Zach,” she said with a half-smile, recovering from her surprise. The day she’d been dreading had arrived. She moved aside and let him enter.

  He looked her up and down. “You look well,” he remarked. “Maybe a bit thinner than when I last saw you,” he added. “How’s that son of mine been treating you? I hope he wasn’t too gruff with you. I probably didn’t tell you enough about Daniel to prepare you, but I hope he took good care of you.”

  “Yes, very well.” She looked at the man. His grizzled hair must have been a dark blond or brown at some point. He was of a more than average stature - tall and broad shouldered – much like Daniel. His face was wrinkled from a lifetime spent outdoors in the sun. His skin tone was lighter than his son’s. She figured Daniel must have gotten his olive complexion and black hair from his French mother.

  “He doesn’t know anything, I hope? You were able to keep the secret?”

  “He doesn’t know anything,” she confirmed. “It’s been hard because my appearance here is something I couldn’t quite explain, and he’s wondering about it, but to his credit he hasn’t been pushy to find out.”

  “Well good, I want to keep it that way.” Zach smiled. “Go gather your belongings, and I’ll send you home now, before he comes back.”

  Zach pulled something from the leather pouch around his neck. She recognized the knarled, shriveled-up ugly snake head with the beady red eyes – the object she had scoffed and laughed at three months ago when he’d first shown it to her. It was the device that made time travel possible. How such a thing was even possible, she couldn’t even begin to comprehend, and she knew it was something that could probably never be explained. All she could do was accept it.

  “How will you explain my sudden disappearance?” she asked, keeping a wary eye on the snakehead. She knew that all she had to do was touch the right eye of the snake, and she would be transported back to her own time.

  “Won’t have to,” Zach waved a hand. “I’m leaving here as soon as I send you back, and won’t show up again for another day or two. That way there’s no connection between us.”

  “Zach,” she began slowly, tentatively. “I have something to tell you.”

  “What is it? Come on girl, we don’t have much time.”

  “I don’t want to go back to my time,” she blurted out.

  “What?” Zach boomed in disbelief. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I love Daniel, and I love it here. I don’t want to leave him, or this time and place.”

  “You can’t stay here, Miss Donovan,” Zach said firmly, a sober look on his face. “I’ve told you before that this is no permanent place for a woman. And I know for a fact that Daniel would wholeheartedly agree with me. You two may have . . . ahhh . . . developed a certain fondness for each other.” He rubbed his chin as if considering this possibility. “But Daniel would not want you to stay here. I was happy to make your wish come true to experience the wilderness for a while, but now you need to get back to
your own time.”

  “Please, Zach. I’ve proven I can survive here. Daniel and I love each other.” Her voice sounded desperate.

  “I . . . I can’t,” Zach hesitated for a moment. “I can’t put my boy through the same pain I went through when I lost his mother.”

  “I’m not like your wife!” Her voice went shrill out of desperation. “Don’t you see that if you send me back, you will be hurting your son?”

  Zach seemed to consider this. “Daniel swore he would never bring a woman to live here. He knows better. I’m sorry my son may have used you, Miss Donovan.”

  “He didn’t use me! Ask him yourself,” she pleaded, tears of frustration streaming down her face.

  “I can’t ask him without him finding out about the time travel device. I’m not passing this thing on to him when I die. It ends here with me.”

  “Why won’t you be honest with him? Why can’t he know about this?”

  “He doesn’t need to know about it now, at this point in his life. I wanted to tell him over the years, but it was never the right time. Now he may not ever forgive me if I tell him.” Zach looked almost panicked.

  “What are you afraid of?” Aimee pressed.

  “How is he going to react if I tell him he was born in the year 1985? He believes he is part of these mountains, that his mother died here, giving birth to him. He won’t accept it.”

  “He is part of these mountains. Telling him the circumstances of his birth won’t change that. He’s stronger than you give him credit ,” she argued. “He deserves to know the truth.”

  “Daniel has been happy here all his life. Why would I want to shatter his world now?”

  “You may have already done that,” she said. “By sending me here. He has questions, and I couldn’t give him any answers. If I suddenly disappear again, how will he react to that? Have you even thought about that?”

  “I never imagined there would be feelings between the two of you,” Zach conceded. “He was in love with a white girl once. He hasn’t told me much, but he came back from Philadelphia abruptly, and swore off all white women. So you see, I never thought much about you and him.”

  “Please, Zach,” she pleaded desperately. “You can’t do this. It’s my choice to want to stay here.”

  Zach quickly scanned the cabin for her things. Gathering up what he could find, he stuffed it in her backpack.

  “It’s time.” He thrust the pack in her arms. “I made my mistake with Marie by bringing her here. I will not have you on my conscience, as well. I promised you three months in the wilderness. I gave you that. Now you need to return to the safety of your own time. We stick to our original agreement.” He held the snake out to her. “Touch the right eye.”

  Aimee wanted to turn and run out of the cabin. Before she had a chance to react, he grabbed her arm. “I’m sorry you’re not making this easy.” Holding her arm firmly, Zach touched his own finger to the snake’s right eye. Instantly, the world went black.

  Chapter 19

  Aimee slowly opened her eyes. The loud noise of cars and machinery penetrated her consciousness, making her head throb and ears ring. She coughed when she inhaled the foul smell of engine exhaust. Raising herself up, she realized she was in a parking garage. The echoing sounds of screeching tires, engines rumbling, and blasting car horns all around her was deafening. She held a hand to the side of her head and sat up, the concrete beneath her hard and cold. The foul smell burned her throat and lungs, and her eyes stung. She looked around to see her backpack at her feet. A piece of paper protruded from the opening. She took it and read the simple words. This is for the best. I hope you understand.

  She crumpled up the paper and threw it in frustration.

  “No!” she yelled, her voice reverberating off the walls in the parking structure. Tears streamed down her face. “No, no, noo . . . oh God. Daniel!” The distant sound of a jackhammer resonated like gunshots through her breaking heart.

  A man in blue scrubs ran to her.

  “Miss, are you ok?” he asked, looking down at her sitting on the dirty concrete floor. “Aimee?” His eyes widened in recognition.

  She raised her head and recognized him as one of the ward nurses at the hospital.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, kneeling down to inspect her more closely. Concern filled his eyes.

  “Where are we?” she asked, getting to her feet and fighting off the dizziness.

  “The parking garage at the hospital,” he answered, a perplexed frown on his face. His eyebrows narrowed. “Can I do something for you, call someone?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I just need to get home,” she whispered.

  “Do you need a lift?”

  “Yeah . . . yeah, that would be great,” she answered vaguely. After three months, she didn’t expect to find her car here anymore. “Thanks, Eric.”

  “Sure, don’t mention it.” He kept giving her odd sideways looks.

  She robotically followed him to his car, gave him quick directions to her condo in Yorba Linda, and then simply stared unseeing out the window in a daze for the entire twenty minute ride home. The sounds of everyday modern life seemed foreign to her. The hurried pace of throngs of cars on the freeway and roads left her feeling exhausted. Life shouldn’t move at such speeds.

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Eric called to her once more as he pulled into a parking spot in the condominium complex. She opened the passenger door of his blue sedan and got out wordlessly.

  “I’ll be fine. Thanks for bringing me home. Please don’t tell anyone you saw me.” She fought hard to keep her voice sounding normal.

  Eric gave her one more confused look, and simply nodded before backing his car out of the parking space.

  Aimee took a deep breath, and walked up the narrow cement walkway to her condo that she shared with Jana. The summer annuals they had planted a few weeks before she had left were in full bloom, looking as nice as the day they went into the ground. She vaguely thought this was rather odd. After three months in the summer heat, it was usually time to replace them again.

  She felt under the fake landscape rock just outside the front door for the spare key she and Jana always kept there. She had no idea what to expect as she turned the key in the lock.

  Everything appeared the same as she remembered. Solemnly, she walked into the bright living room. The beige carpet had recently been vacuumed, and the pillows on the plush off-white sectional couch were fluffed up invitingly. Several copies of Backpacker magazine were laid out on the glass-covered coffee table. The air conditioner hummed to life.

  Aimee dropped her backpack by the door and listlessly sank onto the couch. She pushed her worn and dirty hiking boots off her feet, and tucked her legs up under her. Grabbing one of the pillows, she hugged it tightly to her chest and began to sob. Her gaze drifted to the Thomas Moran painting of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone that hung over the gas fireplace mantle. She stared at it until her vision blurred. Tears pooled in her eyes. They spilled onto her cheek and flowed freely down her face. She kept calling Daniel’s name.

  She woke with a start when she heard the loud clicking noise of a door opening and closing. It took a few seconds for reality to set in as the events of the day flooded back into her mind. A new wave of grief rocked her. She blinked her tear-swollen eyes and looked up to see Jana standing there, open-mouthed.

  “Ohmygod, Aimee!” Jana screeched, and ran over to sit beside her on the couch, pulling her into a bear hug. “Where have you been? We’ve been so worried.”

  Aimee’s body remained limp in her friend’s fierce embrace. Jana drew away and stared. Her eyes widened and swept over her, taking in her appearance with a concerned look on her face.

  “What day is it?” Aimee’s face was blank, her eyes unfocused.

  “It’s Monday,” Jana said in confusion. “Where have you been the last two weeks? Brad filed a missing person’s report and everything. We thought you’d been kidnapped or something.”
r />   “Two weeks?” Aimee whispered absently.

  “What happened to you? You look like hell.” Jana remarked. Her hands flew to her face. “Oh my God! You were kidnapped, weren’t you?”

  Aimee shook her head in slow motion. “I . . . I just had to get away for a while.”

  Jana paused. “Without a word to anyone? No notice at work and nothing? What were you thinking?” She wore an uneasy smile. “Aimee, what is going on? You look like someone died.”

  She didn’t respond. Her gritty eyes stayed unfocused on her friend.

  “What happened to your hair? It looks longer. And your face is all tanned, and you’ve lost weight. Where were you?” Jana prodded.

  “Yellowstone.” Aimee’s voice cracked. “I went to Yellowstone.”

  “But we were going to leave on our trip this week. Couldn’t you have waited?”

  “I need to get back,” she said suddenly, and stared blankly at Jana through swollen, gritty eyes.

  Jana shook her head, her eyebrows drawn together. “Get back where?”

  “Yellowstone. I need to get back.”

  “If you still want to go, I haven’t cancelled out plane tickets yet,” Jana said hesitantly. “The flight is tomorrow morning, remember?”

  “Daniel’s waiting for me. He’s got to be worried where I am,” Aimee said as if talking to herself.

  Jana picked up one of Aimee’s limp hands and squeezed it. “Who is Daniel?”

  “My husband . . . Daniel’s my husband, and I need to get back to him.” The tears started flowing again.

  Jana stared dumbfounded. “Are you going into shock? I think we need to get you to the hospital.” She bolted from the couch. “Let me call Brad, he’ll be so glad to find you safe.”

  “No!” Aimee sprang up from her seat to stop Jana from reaching the phone. “I don’t want to see him. Please . . . ” she pleaded.

  Jana looked at her hard. “Ok, I won’t call him . . . yet. But, Aimee, you’re scaring me. This is not like you.”

  “You’re right. I don’t belong here. My life is with Daniel.”