“Aye,” I said as I moved out of his embrace. My legs felt unsteady, so I took a seat on the cot as he pulled a Windsor chair away from the table and brought it to my bedside. He sat facing me, his elbows on his knees, and waited for me to speak.
The cabin had never felt so intimate as it did in this moment.Light from the single lantern barely reached us, and the stars outside the ship sparkled with brilliance.
“I fear you won’t believe what I have to say,” I told him, searching his face.
“You’ve given me no reason to doubt you before, lass.”
Perhaps it was the fear of never finding my mother, or the pain in knowing she was no longer here. Whatever it was, I was not worried about what Marcus would think. His concern for me prompted me to share the deepest pain with him. “My mother came to Nassau with her husband, but then she took up with another man before returning to South Carolina to leave me with Grandfather. She lived as a pirate for five years, before her second husband was hanged. Shortly after, she died in her sleep on her twenty-first birthday.” It was still hard to believe, and my voice choked with emotion.
Marcus leaned forward and took my hand into his. “I’m sorry, Caroline.”
His hand was so much bigger than mine, so coarse from pulling ropes, moving cargo, and brandishing his sword. Yet it was achingly tender and soothing. He’d not only become my protector, but also my confidant and my source of strength. Other men in his position might have taken advantage of me, but he had only shown me kindness. Had God provided a protector in my foolish, headstrong pursuit? I had not thought to thank God, but I did now.
Perhaps He did hear my prayers, even ones I had been afraid to whisper.
“What will you do?” he asked as he ran his thumb against my skin, turning it to fire, making it hard to concentrate.
I swallowed and said, “There is more to the story.”
“There usually is,” he said with an affectionate smile.
“This is the part I’m not sure you’ll believe.” I gently pulled my hand away, needing to focus as I told him the rest. I’d only ever tried to tell Nanny and Mother the truth. Would Marcus look at me the way they had? I wasn’t sure I could bear it. But I needed to tell someone.
If Anne hadn’t been brave—or foolish—enough to tell Mary, I would never know that she might be alive in 1927.
Marcus sat back and waited.
I had to stand to tell him this part, to give myself space. I paced to the other side of the cabin and decided to dive in without preamble. “I have two lives. This one and another in 1927. When I go to sleep here, my consciousness travels to my other body in 1927. There, my name is Caroline Baldwin. I’m the same age, I look the same, and I have all the same memories and thoughts. When I go to sleep there, I wake up back here, and no time has passed while I’m away.”
A slight frown tilted his eyebrows, but he didn’t speak.
“My mother, Anne Reed, had the same ability. She told me in her letter, and then Mary confirmed it for me today. Anne lived here until she was twenty-one, but she was also alive in Texas in 1913 at the time.” I felt like I was rambling, but I needed to get it all out. “I believe that Anne’s mother, my grandmother, was killed as a witch in Salem in 1692. And I’m afraid she placed a curse on us. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I need to find Anne to know if it’s true. And, if it is, how to be rid of the curse.”
Silence filled the room until I felt like it would suffocate me. I slowly walked back to my cot and took a seat, facing Marcus.
“I told you it was unbelievable.” My voice was quiet, but I had come this far. I would tell him the rest. “The worst part is that Mary told me my mother’s name in 1913 was Annie Barker, and the only Annie Barker I’ve ever heard of is a notorious criminal, wanted in several states for theft, bootlegging, and kidnapping.” Saying the words out loud made them feel real. Horrible.
His frown deepened, and my disappointment became so keen, it felt like a physical twist in my gut. I looked down at my hands, feeling the weight of Nanny’s displeasure and Mother and Father’s punishment all over again.
“Your claims seem impossible,” he said as he took my hands into his again and I looked up at him. “But your eyes speak the truth. And if I’ve learned anything, ’tis that the eyes cannot lie.”
The weight began to lift as breath escaped my mouth in a quiet exhale.
Marcus believed me. He looked into my soul, and he recognized the truth. No one, not even those I knew and loved the most in the world, had looked beyond the impossible. Something profound shifted within me, and I felt a connection to Marcus that I’d never felt with anyone.
He understood me.
“I don’t know how or why, but ’tis true,” I said, swallowing my emotions. “And I hate it. I want to be like everyone else and only live in one place.”
“And which one would you choose?”
There was more to his simple question—it was in the way his voice dipped with the need to know my response.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
He studied me, not with disbelief but curiosity. “This is a fantastical story.”
I nodded.
