The Palmer Pool

32 | In My Roots

I shut my mouth as we continued walking down the dusty road and tried to focus on something mildly tranquilizing, like the feeling of the droplets of sweat trailing down my skin beneath all the layers I was wearing or the clopping of hooves and squeaking of wagon wheels passing by us.  But instead I thought about how Paul scared me even more once I knew that he recognized me.

"There they go," Paul said.

A carriage with three women in it turned onto the road ahead of us. For some reason it surprised me to see Rose in a decoratively adorned hat and a long sleeved, high-necked blouse, looking like she belonged.  Did I expect to find her in her bathing suit?  Or in the lilac blouse and calf-length grey skirt she was wearing the first day I saw her?

"What if it's not actually her?" I wondered aloud.

I wanted so badly to find my grandma and get my life back that I didn't even want to consider that this missing woman who reappeared wasn't actually Rose. Liz lost her sister and had spent years trying to find her with no luck. What if Clara Bartlett was the first of many dead end paths to find Rose?

"That's up to you to figure out."

"What kind of 'business' do you have with the doctor, anyway?"

"I work in pharmaceutical sales."

The miraculous healing mineral baths and Paul's arrangement with Miss Yates began to make sense. 

"Oh.  Wow.  You're a time-travelling drug dealer. That's, like, brilliant.  But super messed up."

"Messed up? I'm helping people," he said, feigning offense. 

"But Liz was so concerned about changing things and altering the future.  That doesn't bother you?"

He scoffed.  "She only cares about her timeline. If you hadn't been dating someone in her family, she wouldn't have bothered you at all.  She works for me, you know.  You could, too."

I laughed nervously.  "You don't want me selling drugs for you.  Look at me, I'm a disaster."

He shrugged.  "You have to start somewhere.  And there are opportunities besides 'selling drugs' that I'll tell you more about sometime."

I didn't like how he made it sound like it wasn't my choice whether I'd be hearing about those opportunities.

The front lawn of the Elmwood sloped toward the river and ended at a boathouse and a long dock. The Evening Star, a long, white double decker ship with a side paddle wheel was stopped at the dock. The scene reminded me of the photo of a ship unloading in Mrs. Barry's scrapbook with the shadowy, blurred figures in the lawn. We passed some hotel guests playing a game of croquet and walked along the front of the veranda that stretched across the entire length of the hotel. Groups of women relaxed in white wicker rocking chairs, separate from the groups of men.

My voice wavered as I finally asked, "Can you explain what that was about? At the gas station?"

He cleared his throat and scratched his nose, delaying his response and raising my suspicion that he was fabricating a lie. "I had to get you out of there. There was...an urgent safety concern." He peered at me over his glasses frames, warning me with his eyes not to go any further.

But I whispered furiously, "So, being a highly skilled time traveler, you must have infinite knowledge of the past and knew that something horrible was going to happen at that gas station, so you got me out of there just so I could get nearly killed in a car crash? What was going to happen that would have been worse than that? An explosion? An active shooter? A serial killer abduction? And why leave my friend there to be a victim?"