Part 7

          Work is extra exhausting over the next few days.  It appears the local school district has just sent out the class supply lists for September to every kid in town.  And, as usual, despite our constant offers to help out, none of the teachers contacted us ahead of time to ask if we could order in, say, a few dozen sixteen-count boxes of washable Crayola crayons.  (My favorite is when they list our store as a suggestion for parents to purchase the supplies from - when we've never seen the teacher in here, and don't normally stock the three-and-a-half inch binders in red like they decree every ten-year-old must have.)  I spend the majority of my day running back and forth across the store, between the entrance and registers, and the shelves of office supplies, helping parents find very specific items while surrounded by swarms of whiny children.
          Don't get me wrong - kids are awesome.  But they are not fun to be around when they're doing something they don't find interesting.  Because then they start to try to make things interesting around them.  Which means pulling their sister's hair so she screams, or writing with Sharpies on the display, or running up and down the aisles perilously close to little old ladies.  I'm sure they find this totally entertaining, but many of the shifts I work, I'm the oldest employee (we hire a lot of college kids and a few high schoolers, especially during the summer).  Which means I'm basically in charge.  And, since we all share cleaning and straightening-up duties, I'm the one who gets stuck picking up all the random stuff small children have decided to use as anti-sibling missles.
          So, with that nonsense going on several days in a row, I've done little more than eat and sleep in my off-hours.  Which means my many unfinished drawings have been staring at me with extra guilt-inducing strength with each passing day.  I have a later shift today, so after packing a dinner to take with me, I set an alarm on my phone and curl up with a drawing.

          Thallium poisoning, by the way, will cause hair loss in prolonged low doses - among its other uses, it was marketed as a depiliatory for awhile.  But in higher doses, it will kill you before that takes affect.  Some forms are water-soluble, colorless, tasteless.  So, it's entirely possible some was--- God it's such an awful thing to even think!  But it's possible Calvin was poisoned.  And if he'd always been a sickly kid - coughing up blood is, after all, a classic indication of tuberculosis - no-one would have questioned it.  But why on earth would anyone... how could anyone, kill a helpless child?
          But they wouldn't be the first, nor the last, to have done so.  Just because I can't comprehend something, doesn't mean someone else isn't capable of it.
          Was the key connected in any way, I wonder, or was the brick just a convenient place for hiding several otherwise unrelated secrets?  I left it where it was for now, since I don't have any clear use for it, and... well, to be honest I freaked myself out a little with the radioactive thing.  And to be really honest... I'm still a little worried about the consequences of bringing the letter back with me.  Nothing's felt right since then.  And it's nothing so large that I can be sure, and it's nothing directly connected with it, I mean it's not like I've gotten a rash on the hand that held it or anything.  But I rarely get sick - and no-one around me had been sick, or is sick now.  And that ominous, foreboding feeling has come back over me several times since then.  The unsatisfying phone call with Jeremy, and, far more than that, the implications of this disturbing little bottle hidden beneath Cora's bench.
          Sighing, I set aside the sketch of Jacob I'd been working on.  His smile is so bright beneath the perfect little cherub curls, and I just can't right now.  I reach for my travel sketchbook, and slip out Meres' letter again.  I'd rather keep it somewhere safer, but, ridiculous as it is, I've made sure it will be with me when (when! no longer "if"? can't believe I'm taking this for granted now) I visit the Mason place again.  Will it count to leave it on the grounds somewhere, or does it only work if I put it back in the place and time I took it from?
          Argh, why should it make any difference at all?? I'm sure I've brought back all kinds of dust and pollen and probably germs...though the paper is much bigger.  I took a tile from the creekbed, and have picked a few flowers...though those were all in my own time.  Damn it.  How on earth can a single sheet of paper make any difference, when I, a whole entire person, have been bouncing in and out of their time without, apparently, any ill effect?
          Or is it me that's cursed, and I'm only just now really noticing it?
          I jump half a mile as my alarm goes off.  I don't think I've ever been more grateful it's time to go to work, I'd nearly convinced myself that a cold and a couple of bad days are a curse!  I should really get out more.  I should swing by the library again this week, maybe ask Mary when the next historical society meeting is, and see if there's anything new I can pick up about the town, or maybe the Mason descendents.  Rosemary!  I haven't called her yet, either.  I grab a sheet of paper and scrawl a reminder to myself, which I stick to the fridge door.  It's a wonder I manage to ever finish anything I start, this scatter-brained-artist thing gets a bit extreme.

          "Hey, did you ever get over to Gallery West?"
          "Mmm."
          "They're doing that photography show, there are lots of really old ones there.  My mom made me go with her yesterday, it looked like something you'd like."
          I jerk my head up from the register, where I'd been focusing on trying to reverse-engineer and fix a new hire's mis-entered transaction.  (It's amazing how many times one person can ring up an item, cancel it, ring it up, discount it, ring it up, cancel it...)  "Wait, say that again?  Where?"
          "Gallery West, it's over on West Main, next to The Tea Leaf?  I think it's running for another couple days, but this weekend another show's going in, one of my friends has a couple paintings in it."
          "Oh my God, I totally forgot!  Someone told me about it, and it totally slipped my mind.  I know right where the gallery is.  I can't believe I'd forgotten, thank you for reminding me!"
          Chelsea grins, shaking her head at...well, probably both my enthusiasm and my forgetfulness.  "Sure!  Like I said, lots of old pictures, made me think of you."
          I have to laugh at this.  "Right, thanks.  Were there some reprints for sale, too?"
          "I think so?  I didn't really look, but there was a table with a bunch of postcards and stuff on it, so probably."
          I still kind of have the urge to put up a big glossy 8x10" of that photo of Meres on my wall, like a teen idol pin-up poster.  That would be a fun one to explain to anyone stopping by.

          The next day after work, instead of going home I head toward the center of town.  I should grab some tea after stopping by the gallery, I haven't been over this way in awhile.  It feels like I spent half my weekends here while I was in college - it seemed like someone I knew had some pieces in nearly every show, and for just about every visiting artist that set up for a few days, I'd have a professor who wanted us to go and write a paper on it.  Which, looking back, was great, I got exposed to so many different styles and techniques and approaches that way.  Of course, at the time, it felt like such a huge hassle, to have to go alllll the way off-campus, and alllll the way downtown, and sometimes it was raining or snowing or something.  Such trials and tribulations.
          My iPod, with its usual freakish aptitude, starts playing a song by a band from my college - some guys my ex-boyfriend had classes with, I think, we saw them play at a couple of festivals and things.  "So much time has passed, at last my eyes have noticed something different..."  Nothing unusual musically or anything, but good solid college-rock, I really like it - and I suddenly remember the music video they'd made for the song, some shots were done in the bar across the street from me right now, others along the creek running under the bridge ahead.   For the millionth time in my life, I wish I were more outgoing - they seemed like a nice bunch of guys, but I don't think I ever really talked to them, apart from a few quick words after a concert once.
          But I've always felt more comfortable locked in my own little world, letting myself slip away from the world right around me, and into other places, times, spaces... ha!  No wonder I'm time-travelling into a beautiful garden now. Good lord.
          I wonder what music Evelyn listened to?  There was a phonograph in Celestine's sitting room, so recorded music would've been available by Evelyn's day, if at a lower quality level than I'm accustomed to.  I'm sure there wasn't the steady stream of bands and concerts coming through town in those days, but there would've been socials and dances and things I'm sure.  I don't actually know what was big in the 1890s... after the Civil War, but before the Jazz Age.  I'll have to have Mary dig me up a music history book sometime.  (Obviously, I could just Google it - but Mary always finds such interesting twists on what I'm looking for, like the book with the flower meanings.  What a windfall that dense little book was!)
          And there was the music room, too, that's right!  I haven't seen it in Evelyn's time yet, I can't remember if there was a date on the photo I saw of it at town hall.  I'm sure she would've played piano in any case, that was a pretty standard part of a girl's education.  I have to giggle at the thought of her, aged ten or so and mischevious (like the day I saw her in the tower library), weasling her way out of her lessons one way or another.