Olivia and Kit rode in silence as she made notes. How could she prevent these coming catastrophes? She knew that as she was now, if she went to the authorities and reported rape, incest, abuse, she wouldn’t be believed. Her youth and inexperience would be against her.
Besides, she thought with a grimace, it was the times. In the 1970s if a woman accused a man of rape, she was put on trial. She had led him on, entrapped him. If she’d worn a low-cut blouse years before, she was considered a slut and the man was innocent. Olivia wanted to scream that every item in every store was packaged attractively but if you stole it, you were prosecuted. Why were women considered less than a stick of deodorant?
Kit reached across the seat, took her hand, and squeezed it. “If you want to talk, I’m here.”
“Thank you.” She pulled her hand away as she looked at the next house. The Nelsons, a lovely family. When little Lisa was fourteen years old, she would slit her wrists and die before she was found. In the school locker room, some girls had stolen her clothes, then let the boys in. Lisa didn’t think she could live with the shame. How did Olivia stop something that wouldn’t happen for years?
For the next three days, Olivia lived in a haze of trying to prevent the horrors that she knew would happen. She called people—using the annoying rotary dial phone—and wrote letters—with a typewriter, no less. Using every lie she could imagine, she said she had a dream, a premonition, she saw something, someone told her something. Whatever she could think of to warn people, she said it.
She was aware of the people around her at Tattwell, but only vaguely. Kit seemed to be taking care of them. He allowed the youngest pair to bother her twice a day to ask for more about what Letty was calling The Story of the Girl Wizard. She wanted to hear how smart Hermione was, and Ace wanted her to tell how brave Harry Potter was.
Uncle Freddy made them laugh when he said he wanted to be Voldemort, the personification of evil.
After only minutes, Kit ushered them all out and let Olivia get back to her phone and typewriter.
“But even if I do this, will it all be forgotten at the end of three weeks?” she said aloud, her head in her hands.
It was on the afternoon of the fourth day that she fell back in her chair and was ready to admit defeat. When she was an older woman, people listened to her, but when she was barely out of her teens, they dismissed her. She was hung up on, yelled at, called a liar. Three people reported her to the police. The sheriff called and cautioned her. He said that what people did in the privacy of their own homes was their business.
“It’s going to take forty years to show people that that’s not true,” she said.
“Then, Livie, you call me back in forty years and I’ll listen to what you have to say. Until then, leave the residents of Summer Hill alone.” The sheriff hung up.
In the end, Olivia ran away. She’d had days of trying to prevent disasters, tragedies, accidents, and crimes, but she didn’t seem to have made any progress.
She ran through the kitchen and out the back door. No one was about, but she didn’t wonder where they were. All she could see were the visions in her mind. Funerals, mothers crying, fathers in a rage, people in handcuffs, neglected children, abused children.
She often told people of the peacefulness of their dear little town, of the almost-nonexistent crime. But over the years many things had happened. When she looked back over that long expanse, there was time between the bad. Years would go by and nothing bad would happen. But now she saw it all. A lifetime of preventable misery was screaming through her mind.
But she couldn’t do anything about it!
The feeling of helplessness was sucking the energy out of her.
She ran through the garden and stopped at the big magnolia tree. Why had she been sent back in time if she had no power to change anything? Forget the big horrors, the wars and bombings. She couldn’t even prevent the suicide of a girl who was going to be bullied at school.
Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the old tree. Last year she’d ridden in a little red truck with her friend Casey past this tree. Olivia had told how Alan had lied and cheated, and how he’d taken away the business that Olivia had built. Casey was the wife of Tate who was going to be the son of five-year-old Letty. Olivia had talked to people who didn’t yet exist!
When she opened her eyes, Kit was standing there, a garden hoe over his shoulder. As always, he had on next to nothing.
But she didn’t feel lust for his beautiful body. What she felt was anger. All of this was his fault. Her life with Alan was because Kit had left her alone and pregnant. She had come back in time with the idea of having a life with Christopher Montgomery. But she wasn’t pregnant, so there was no need to have to spend her life with him. She was utterly and totally free!
She knew that what she was feeling, all her anger and frustration, was on her face.
When Kit first saw her standing there, he smiled, but one look at her glower and he put on what Olivia called his “diplomat face.” It was a mask he hid behind so no one would know what he was thinking—but Olivia did. Today the mask covered his extreme disapproval.
“Let me know when my Olivia is back.” It was the voice he’d someday use with trumped-up dignitaries who he wanted to put in their place.
Olivia broke. Like a glass vial full of some nasty, smoky, green poison, she snapped.
She didn’t say a word, just ran at him with all her force.
Surprised, Kit tossed the hoe to the side and caught her just as her head hit his torso.
He grunted as she nearly knocked the breath out of him.
“It’s all your fault!” Yelling, she began hitting him with her fists on his bare chest. “You did it all! You left me when I was carrying your baby. You—”
He grabbed her shoulders to hold her out to look at her. “Are you—?”
She swung her right arm with all her might and hit him in the jaw. When she saw blood on his lip, she was pleased. She’d certainly shed enough blood for him! “This morning I found out that I’m not, but I was back in 1970. And I was alone! You saw me at the theater in New York, but you said nothing. I had to go away to Florida to have our baby. Estelle raised her. When our daughter finally met us, it was horrible.”
Olivia stepped back from him and put her hands over her face. “She hated us. Our daughter had a good life—Estelle and Henry were good to her—but she couldn’t bear the sight of us. Of you and me. She didn’t know she was adopted until late, and she didn’t understand why we had given her up. Why we didn’t want her.”
Olivia began to cry. “I told you I loved you but you left. I thought you were scared. You told no one where you were going, not even your father.”
She looked up at Kit and saw that his face was white under his tan and his lip was bloody. “Oh, go away. How can you understand what I’m going through? You’re just...” Her mouth hardened. “You’re just a worthless boy.”
Kit’s jaw muscle was working, but he gave no other sign that he was reacting to her words. “As you wish,” he said, then gave a bit of a bow. He put his shoulders back in that way that meant he wasn’t going to talk about the subject anymore, then he started walking away from her.
Olivia picked up a round rock from the ground. It looked like one of the stones the children had collected from the creek. Unlike when she was with Elise, her throwing arm was in good shape. She pulled back like a pitcher and let go. The rock hit him hard on his perfectly toned rear end. “I hope Gaddafi finds out who you are and shoots you.” She turned away toward the house.
Kit caught her before she had gone two feet. He grabbed her shoulders, put his nose to hers, and glared. “What do you know?”
She twisted out of his grip. “I tell you I was pregnant and gave our child up for adoption and that means nothing to you? But the mention of a Middle East dictator gets your attention? Go to hell!” She started back to the house.
Kit stepped in front of her. “Cut out the melodrama and tell me what you know and who told you.”
She moved around him.