OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)

Ch. 17: Clementine Drowns and Lillabit Surfaces (Lillabit)

"Help?" The sheer joy that flooded me might also have been hormone-fueled, but I'd gladly take it. Jacob had been listening!

"He said you ain't nappin' and might want a companion."

Thud. Okay, so maybe my husband had been listening, but he hadn't understood. He was my time-repellent. He was the one who anchored me in 1878. "What does he think Amos is, chopped liver?"

"How's about you lie back and tell ol' Benj what's keepin' you from your rest? Used to be, you settled into the chuck wagon of an afternoon, comfy as a cat in sunshine."

Riiight. I did not lie back. I sat up, scootched backward, and leaned against the cart's wheel--with Lulu unharnessed, it wouldn't go anywhere. "Schmidty and I aren't exactly on the best of terms."

Amos, rubbing Lulu's coat with handfuls of dry grass, said, "You could nap right here in the shade, Mrs. Garrison. Mr. Cooper and me, we just give you some room. This mule won't have no trouble catchin' the chuck wagon later on."

Lulu even brayed her approval of the plan, shoving her head in the air and pulling her lips back from her teeth in a way that always made me laugh.

"Well don't that sound like a treat?" Benj knew why I should nap. He didn't know that I feared vanishing from their world forever.

I shook my head, and he tested, "Long, warm day."

"I don't want to nap!"

Both men leaned perceptibly away from me. Even Lulu retreated a heavy hoofed step. Stupid hormones. Stupid paranoia. Stupid afternoon sleepiness, muddling everything.

"I'm sorry." I heard my voice get thick, but didn't know what to do about it. "I didn't mean.... I just... I'm fine, okay? Jacob's allowed to tell me what to do, within reason, but not you guys."

Benj arched his brows at the first part of that, clearly surprised by my Victorian ways, but didn't comment on it right off. Instead, he said, "You do look tuckered out some."

Tuckered out? From him, the king of flattery, that probably meant I looked like the walking dead.

I blinked back tired, frustrated tears. Benj Cooper was calling me an ugly hag.

He leaned forward over his knee, put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "Mrs. Garrison--"

"Oh, call me Lillabit." I let my head fall back against the wheel rim. "What's it matter?"

"It matters if you say it matters. Somethin' is frettin' you, and I been led to believe it concerns your... future?"

Of course! God, I was so stupid. And maybe Jacob understood just enough, after all.

Benj had escorted me to Julesburg, had spent several days with the castaways. He'd conversed with Mitch and Ted when they, with limited success, tried to explain how time slipping worked. Either Benj fully accepted that we were from another time, or he was an even better poker player than I would have guessed.

I'd had someone I could have talked to, all along!

If only he hadn't punched my husband, maybe I would have thought of that sooner.

"You remember my friends in Colorado?" I prompted, and a mischievous smile played at his lips.

"Some more vividly than others." Right. Him and Maddie.

"They, um...." How much to say in front of Amos? "They had some interesting theories about the, uh, passage of time, don't you think?"

In this, we spoke the same language. "That they did. I ain't seen no cause to disbelieve them theories, nor yer own reminiscences."