Letters in Time, Reiss Susan [read me a book TXT] 📗

A splintered lightning fork streaked across the sky. I felt awe. The fork split and stabbed the earth. My muscles tensed. Close, that strike was close. The flash drilled through my eyes to my brain, blinding me. Thunder rattled the window and thudded against my chest. Driven back from the window, I wanted to run. Instead, I inched my way across the floor in the dark. The last thing I needed was to trip over something. My leg, mangled in the accident months earlier, was much better, even close to normal most days, but I wouldn’t tolerate even a stubbed toe. Besides, there was nothing to worry about. The Mid-Atlantic area of the United States was never hit by tornados. Except for the one that screamed across Southern Maryland almost twenty years earlier, causing more than a million dollars in damage. Or the whatever-it-was that skipped through a wooded area bordering a luxury area known as Kenwood outside of D.C. It cut off trees at an even height of about eight feet. One expert called it a tornado and had to walk back that designation. The damage, they said, was caused by straight line winds. Of course, it wouldn’t harm the beloved Japanese cherry trees that lined the streets of Kenwood. Mother Nature must have known who lived there. But those were instances on the western shore. This was the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. It wouldn’t happen here. It was a phrase I’d heard the locals say many times.

The storm struck again, lighting the room in eeriness. Thunder pounded my little house. There was nowhere to hide except… Lightning cracked again. Forget caution. I sprinted across the room, launched myself into bed, and pulled the covers over my head.

Emma, I lectured myself, stop being foolish. You’re safe here in the Cottage that has weathered storms for more than a hundred years?

I was shaking, actually shaking. I’ll never get to sleep with all this racket. I’ll never get to sleep. I’ll never…

Rays of sunlight warmed my face. I had fallen asleep and now it was morning. Slowly, I remembered what had happened in the night.

The thunderstorm.

The lightning strike.

The cabin!

I threw off the covers and scrambled into a pair of sweats and sweatshirt. Slow down. Slow down, I reminded myself as I walked down the stairs. It hadn’t been that long since my release from rehabilitation to heal my body after the car accident that almost took my life.

Safely on the main floor, I slipped into my rubber moccasins, went out the front door, and skidded to a stop. For all the noise and fireworks of the night before, Mother Nature had created a breathtaking morning. The tall pines sparkled in the sunlight as they swayed gently, sending out puffs of pine scent through the air. The birds greeted me with a lively symphony of song. Not just one bird, but a forest full of those who had not yet flown south for the winter. There were Blue Jay squawks and Chickadee chirps plus the voices of those who came for the winter, robin trills, crow caws, and the Canada goose honks. And over it all was the cloudless sky dome of an achingly gorgeous blue. But it was the air that impressed me the most. Scrubbed clean by the storm, the air must have been as Mother Nature intended it to be in the beginning.

I took in a deep breath and scurried down the path toward the cabin. Scurried wasn’t the right word. The thick mud and puddles made it slow-going, giving my brain plenty of time to concoct all kinds of possibilities of what I was about to see. The wind had pulled off the roof. The cabin was a burned-out shell destroyed by the lightning strike. Or…

I rounded the bend in the path and saw the cabin nestled in the cove of crepe myrtle and wild grasses, safe. It stood strong and untouched, just the way TJ had built it. With a deep sigh of relief, I retrieved the key from its hidey place and opened the door.

From the outside, the little cabin of wood planks had literally weathered the storm. On the inside, a maelstrom had struck. I only had eyes for the old plantation desk, Daniel’s desk. Thankfully, it seemed to be untouched, but the sheets of white paper we’d left on its flat writing surface were strewn everywhere as if someone had thrown an almighty temper tantrum. It was exactly what I’d hope never to see.

When I inherited the Cottage from Uncle Jack, I’d discovered the desk used by the plantation manager of Waterwood, the land surrounding the Cottage. When I had the antique moved into the den from the garage where it had been buried under a blue tarp, an extraordinary experience had begun. Daniel had left letters addressed to Emma on the plantation desk. Why was this unusual? His letters were dated 1862 and this was the 21st century. Daniel wasn’t writing to me really. He wanted to contact his true love, Emma. In a moment of silliness or boredom, I’d responded. And our correspondence had begun. His desperation and loneliness had made me want to help reunite them. I figured anything was possible since I was corresponding with a ghost.

My friend TJ repaired this cabin to shelter the desk. I put a miniature portrait Emma had painted of Daniel next to a stack of paper and we closed the door. We assumed that the only way we’d know if we succeeded was if Daniel never left