May Time Never Take You (May You Never Series)

A New Morning, A New World

Shock took over at some point, where one minute I was with Clark in the kitchen. In the next, I was in a bedroom and realized I blacked out the events that led me to that moment.

I stared at paled and peeling papered walls, felt the lumpy mattress below me, and breathed in a mustiness of the bedroom. It must have been some sort of guest room for the household, as the furniture was minimal, and room itself was tiny, with a dusty wash basin atop a single small side table. There was a pitcher inside it, empty. I'd explored it a few times, getting up from the bed as quietly as possible to look over the space. It was hard to stay quiet. The whole room creaked when I tiptoed anywhere and I was sure within the house that it would echo.

I hadn't slept at all.

I went back and forth in thought from Clark was crazy, to I was back in time so often, that I knew what I needed to do, and feared the answer. I needed him to take me to town, so I could check out other people and get a sense of where I was. 

However, the more I thought of it, the more I considered the latter. 

Clark had gotten up early, gone down stairs, did some things in the kitchen and then headed out still before the sun came up. What he did, I wasn't sure. Farm things? Were there cows? I hadn't heard any but a rooster started up just before the sun cracked over the trees. 

He came back into the house several times. Clark climbed the steps to the second floor, where I was. He'd stop just outside the door, wait, and then down the steps again. Sometimes back to the kitchen, sometimes outside.

Chicken that I was, I stayed in bed, tucked the blanket up to my chin. Perhaps because I was tired from being up all night, I didn't have the courage to face him in the daylight and ask this one favor. The shock of everything had settled into me so that leaving this small sanctuary for the moment was too much.

I was like that when I heard the downstairs door open again. Thinking it was Clark, I remained still.

However, a voice drifted up. Female. A little scratchy around the vocal cords, like she had a sore throat or maybe it was her normal voice. 

"I was just coming to check on how you were doing," she said.

"I'm doing fine," Clark said in return. They shifted, one of them walking ahead to where I could remember the kitchen was, right below me. "Really," he continued. "You don't have to stay."

"Nonsense," she said. "It's been a month. People are starting to wonder about you. I've come to talk to you about the future."

"A month isn't that long," he said in a deeper voice.

I slithered to the edge of the bed to hear what was going on better, letting my head hover a little lower, closer to the floor.

"People will notice you're not marrying your fiance," she said. 

"She's gone," he said. 

There was a silence and I joined it, nearly holding my breath for the entirety of it.

"Gone?" the woman asked.

"She didn't want to be a farmer's wife, she said, after I'd told her I wanted to return here and try my hand at working the land."

There was a loud sigh. "Gracious, did she think she above her station? Wasn't her grandfather a farmer?"

"It doesn't matter," he said and he moved to somewhere, the table I thought, because there was noise like a chair being moved and him sitting in it. "She was done with me before I came for the funeral. I just didn't want to talk about it."