“Jesus, Goldie!”
“Look, I know Markie Santina better than anyone, and I’m tellin’ ya, your family isnotin danger.”
“Give him the diaries,” Ellen ordered.
“You know he was unfaithful to me for eight months.”
“Guess you didn’t know him as well as you thought,” the older one retorted. “Give him the diaries.”
“I dedicated my life to that man.”
“Give him the diaries!”
“I was in a coma for eighteen days because of his screwin’ around.”
“Goldie—”
“When I was in my coma, I had what you might call an epiphany—a word and its meaning I wrote down in one of my dairies, incidentally. It was a spiritual awakenin’. It’s important that I make smart decisions from now on. Make amends for past transgressions.”
“What does that mean?” Ellen asked.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Look, I’m glad you’re gonna recover from your accident, and I’m glad you’ve had this epiphany, or whatever. But I’m keepin’ my distance from you, and I want Markie and his boys to keeptheirdistance from my kids.”
Goldie looked at her with a mixture of hurt and anger.
“First, you don’t wanna be around me because I’m livin’ with Markie, and now that I’m not, youstilldon’t wanna be around me?”
“You didn’t leave Markie; he left you,” Ellen reminded. “And you’re playin’ games with him by hangin’ onto somethin’ he wants.”
“Well, theyaremine,” Goldie defended. “He never showed any interest in them ever, until now.”
“When you’ve cut all ties to him, when you’ve made these ‘smart decisions’ you’re talkin’ about, when time has passed and I’m convinced Markie Santina’s out of your life for good, then reach out to me. But that won’t be while you’re livin’ in an apartment he’s payin’ for.”
“What do ya want me to do? Move back in with Mom?” Goldie asked.
“Mom won’t take ya. We’ve already discussed it.”
Ellen turned and started to walk away. “You wanna do what’s best for your family?” she called over her shoulder, “give Markie the diaries, get outta town, then get a job.”
Goldie watched her sister leave the physical therapy department, knowing she was in a catch-22. If she wanted to have a relationship with her sister, she’d have to cut all ties with Markie. But if she couldn’t move back in with her mom, those ties couldn’t be cut just yet. She’d have to try to build a new life based in an apartment that he was paying for. At least for the next six months. She briefly considered suing Markie for alimony under a common-law wife argument. But a good attorney would quickly eat up the fifty thousand dollars Markie had put in an account for her. She had no savings of her own because her boyfriend had always taken care of everything. Her shoulders slumped slightly as she returned to her room and waited for Dr. Zawicki to release her.
She spent the next several hours using the hospital’s WiFi and researching things on her phone. Sparkledove, Colorado, had its own website, and surprisingly, still looked much like it did back in 1942. The Victorian homes were still there, had been kept up, and were still a big tourist draw. So was the covered bridge. So was the look and charm of the stores on River Street. But the Old West plank sidewalks were gone, streetlights had been added, and the Sparkledove Arms was now a boutique hotel called the Silver Dollar, owned by Hilton.The Sparkledove Winghad been closed for decades, Clara’s Gifts was now a Starbucks, and a general store was still where Miller’s used to be, but it was no longer owned by the Miller family. The town’s population had grown from 1,002 in 1942 to its current size of 3,016. Three national hotel chains just off the highway, a fishing expedition company, and a one-hundred-unit townhouse complex for Denver commuters had a lot to do with it.
Goldie Googled everyone she could remember from her time-traveling journey. But there were problems, partly because she only knew the first names of many people like Josie, Dexter, Maddie, and Dean, and partly because over eighty years had passed. She didn’t find a thing on Sheriff Eli Johnson or the McCaw family, but she did find aDenver Postarticle about the trial of Charles and Peter Banyan. She learned that Charles, as well as an accomplice named Jack Tully, were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, while Peter was sentenced to twenty years. She also found an obituary for Father David Fitzsimmons, who, at the time of his death, was Monsignor David Fitzsimmons. He’d been dead for several years and passed away in a Denver area retirement home for Catholic priests. But this connection to her eighteen days in Sparkledove made her heart race. She thought about how good-natured he was, his photography skills, and the positive effect he would have on her life for years to come.
She was released from the hospital about 1:00 p.m. and took a cab to her new apartment on 53rd. The only memento she took from her stay was the plant her father had given her. Being back in Manhattan felt strange after her time in Colorado. As she rode, she noticed everything seemed dirtier than in the past: the litter on the streets, the snow plowed high into black mounds in parking lots, even the gray sky. The people on the street seemed different, too. Nobody smiled or made eye contact. She expected to be relieved once she was back in her own time. But she didn’t feel that way. She felt anxious. As if another shoe was about to drop. She recalled what Stu Frey had said to her: building a new life wasn’t going to be easy.
Her new apartment was in a three-story brick building that had been built in the 1950s and was once a soft drink factory. It was an 880-square-foot, two-bedroom with a couple of nice old brick walls, decent window views, new appliances and counters, and furnishings from Rent-A-Center. In the kitchen cabinets, she found dishes and glasses, canned soups, spaghetti, and mini ravioli. There was also bread, cookies, and other snacks. In the refrigerator, there was yogurt, wine, beer, bottled water, condiments, and sandwich meat, as well as frozen steaks, hamburger, and a pork roast in the freezer. A collection of cooking spices sat on a kitchen counter, as well as a checkbook, key fob, and directions to a parking garage a block away, where the car Markie had bought for her was waiting. Her clothes had been hung up in the closet, but there was still a lot of settling in to do. All of her artwork, photographs, albums, and ceramic masks were still in boxes, as were shoes, cosmetics, jewelry, underwear, and an extensive lingerie collection bought entirely for her by her ex.
Markie had done what he had promised, but it was a noticeable drop in lifestyle, and it would take time and effort for her to be comfortable in it. She opened the checkbook on the kitchen counter. The first entry was fifty grand, and an ATM card also sat inside. While she was looking at it, her cell phone rang. It was Markie. She switched the call to voicemail. Then, she went over to a box marked “LPs,” opened it up, and searched through the box looking for a particular album. Plucking outDark Side of the Moonby Pink Floyd, she opened the sleeve. In between the cardboard and the plastic liner that held the album, she pulled out a small key to a safety deposit box. Looking at the checkbook again, she made a decision.
By 2:30 p.m., she’d packed some clothes and had gone to the parking garage to get the car Markie had left for her. It was a Ford Fusion, a few years old but in good condition. After putting her bags in the trunk and hopping in behind the wheel, she paused, suddenly suspicious as a thought entered her mind. She popped the trunk again and thoroughly examined it. Then, she popped the hood and carefully looked under it, obviously searching for something. Finding nothing, she next felt under each of the wheel wells, and on the rear passenger side wheel well, she finally found what she was looking for. It was a small, magnetized tracking device.
Looking at it, she smiled to herself. “I know how you think, Markie Santina.”
She put the tracking device and her cell phone under one of the Fusion’s front tires and crushed both items as she pulled out of the garage.
