Page 105 of The Long Road Back to Yesterday

He remained silent for a moment.

“At last, I returned to the stone, took Sam's basket, and started home carrying it with my own. I remember walking through the dark and thinking that in the morning I would have to face his mother and tell her the lie we had prepared.”

Jim raised his eyes.

“That is the last thing I remember from December.”

Elizabeth did not move.

“My next memory is daylight. One moment I was walking through a winter night carrying two baskets. The next I was on the road outside Bakewell with the sun overhead and nothing in my hands.”

They all stared at him.

“I thought I had fallen or struck my head. Then I saw the flowers. They were growing beside the road. There were buds in the hedges and fresh growth in the fields. The air was warm.”

“It was no longer December,” Mr. Darcy said.

“No.”

Jim looked directly at Elizabeth.

“It was April sixth.”

Elizabeth caught her breath and, her voice breaking, said, “The date upon the receipt.”

Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks as the full meaning of it struck her.

“The very day.”

The room had become utterly quiet.

“I continued into Bakewell and found Sam at the shop where he and his father had purchased the barley seed. His father was there, speaking with the clerk, and Sam was standing beside him.”

Georgiana's hand closed around Elizabeth's.

“He was alive, Mr. Fletcher?”

“Alive and looking as bewildered as I felt. When he saw me, he went as pale as death. He pulled me aside where his father could not hear us.”

Jim stared at the wall opposite.

“Sam remembered sitting at Arbor Low in December and watching the sun go down. The next thing he knew, he was standing in the shop beside his father on April sixth. He still had the receipt in his pocket, along with our letter.”

“And he remembered everything that had happened between April and December?” Elizabeth asked.

“Everything. Just as I did.”

Jim looked toward the fire.

“Sam had returned to the day he wanted. I had not gone anywhere with him, but December was gone for me as well. My family believed it was April. Everyone in Bakewell believed it. No one remembered the months Sam and I remembered living through.”

“No one remembered the farm being lost in a wager,” Mr. Darcy said.

“As far as we ever knew.”

Jim rose and crossed to a small wooden chest. He opened it and moved aside a pipe and a pouch of tobacco before lifting several papers and keepsakes from within.

“Sam showed me the letter that day.”