He smiled and shrugged. "This is all gettin' too tangled up fer me."
"Me too," Addie said with a defeated sigh. Tiredly she stood up. "But thank you. You've given me something to think about. Oh, and… please don't tell anyone what we were talking about. Especially not Ben."
"No, Miss Adeline," he said with a grave smile. Troubled, she turned and walked toward the corral. I don't believe anything he said was right. I know I don't belong in this time. I was born in I9I0. Adeline Warner was born first,' not me. Unless. .. unless I really am Adeline Warner.
Impossible. She shrank from the idea. It was crazy. But everything that had happened to her was crazy. Suddenly her heart was pounding roughly, pounding so hard her chest hurt.
She couldn't be Adeline Warner. What about Addie Peck? What about her life with Leah and the years she'd spent living in the house on the edge of Sunrise? Shivering, she thought about the two hours during the afternoon when Adeline Warner had disappeared.
"What happened that afternoon?" she whispered. "What happened to her? Where did she go?"
Frightening thoughts flew through her mind. Maybe she went to the future. Maybe she lived twenty years in the space of that two hours and then came back here. Maybe Addie Peck had just been a misplaced Adeline Warner.
"No," she gasped, and leaned against the gatepost of the corral, her head spinning. "I don't have Adeline's memories. I have my own. I'm not her. I don't want to be her. Oh, God, why am I in her place?"
Addie wanted to cry, but no tears came to her eyes. She was dry and numb. She remembered the peaceful, orderly life she had led with Leah as her companion. It had been difficult and lonely, but she'd always been secure in the knowledge that each new day would be the same as the one before. Why had that been taken away from her? Why was she here in the place of a girl who'd been wild and temperamental, selfish and spoiled? That's not me, she thought desperately. I'm not Adeline.
A cold feeling swept over her, and she swayed against the wooden post. A picture emerged behind her eyes. It was an image of Sunrise, the sides of the unpaved main street lined with wagons and oldfashioned contraptions pulled by tough-bodied horses. Everything was slightly askew, like in a dream, but the details were startlingly clear. She could feel the wooden boards of the sidewalk under her feet, smell the dust stirred up by wagon wheels.
As she walked down the street, it seemed as if a stranger had taken over her body and was walking in her shoes. The town drunk, Charlie Kendricks, careened against the side of a storefront and paused to watch her pass by. She saw her hands flick her skirts to the side in a contemptuous gesture, as if she would be soiled by walking near him.
A breeze blew a trendril of hair across her face, and she stopped to pin it back, looking at her reflection in a small store window. Then the image of her face disappeared, although she could still see the street and buildings beyond. Startled, she raised her hand to the pane of glass, but it wasn't reflected back at her. Suddenly the brightness of the sun struck off the window, blinding her. Covering her eyes, she gave a cry of pain, but she couldn't hear her own voice. Heat surrounded her, burning with the intensity of a thousand suns, and she felt her body shriveling, dissolving, hurtling down into an endless well of time and space. She heard the sigh of an old woman's last breath… and a baby's cry.
Addie opened her eyes, and the vision disappeared. Breath-ing through flared nostrils, she tried to gather her wits, and clung to the gatepost for support. That was what had happened to Adeline Warner the day she disappeared.
"That was what happened to me," she whispered. "It was me."
Adeline Warner and Addie Peck were one and the same. One woman, two different lifetimes. She'd been born twice, once in I860 and once in I9I0… both lives were combined in her, and she remembered parts of each.
Terrified, Addie pushed herself away from the corral and began to run. It didn't matter that there was nowhere to run to. She had to find a place to hide, long enough to be away from everyone and think. She couldn't go back into the house. She couldn't face anyone.
"Addie?"
The soft inquiry stopped her in her tracks. She looked at the bunkhouse steps where Ben sat with a guitar resting across his knees, slender steel strings trailing from the neck of it. He set the guitar to the side and stood up, his eyes narrowed. "Addie, what's wrong?" She couldn't move, just stared mutely as he walked over to her. "What happened?"
"N-nothing-"
"Did Diaz say something to upset you?"
"No. Please don't touch me. Don't." She quivered as his hands closed over her arms, his thumbs fitting in the hollows of her inner elbows. The touch of his hands was warm. He peered into her pale face and slid his arm around her shoulders, urging her toward the house.
"Come with me. I'll take you back."
"No," Addie said, trying to pull away from him.
"Okay… okay. Don't get all worked up. Come here." He pulled her to one of the sheds next to the corral, hidden from view, and turned her to face him. The outline of his shoulders was crisp against the night sky. He was strong enough to do anything he wished, strong enough to kill. But his hands were gentle as they clasped her arms. She knew he could feel her trembling. "We're going to talk, Addie."
"I… I can't."
"What did Diaz say to you? Just tell me. I'll take care of it. "
"No, don't talk to him," she managed to say. "Don't."
"I will if you don't tell me what's wrong."
She shook her head helplessly. "Everything's wrong, especially me. Everything's wrong." Unconsciously she gripped his forearms, her face tinted white in the early-evening light. "Ben, I'm different than before, aren't I? Don't you see a difference? You said I'd changed since that afternoon. You said it yourself."
A frown inserted itself between his slanting brows. "You mean the afternoon when Cade and I couldn't find you in town?"
"Yes. I've been different since then. Like another woman."
"Not that different."
"Yes, I am," she insisted, her nails digging into his forearms. Ben didn't seem to notice the pain of it as he stared down at her. "You said even my face was different.”
"So I did," he said lightly. "Yes, I've noticed a few changes in you." A teasing note entered his voice. "Welcome ones."
"I know things I didn't know before. And I can't ride as well as I used to. I'm not that Adeline Warner anymore."
"Why is it so important to be different from the way you were before? I wouldn't disclaim everything about the old Adeline if I were you." His cool, sensible manner made her feel a little better. She envied his control, his lack of fear. How wonderful it would be to look at the world as he did and believe that everything was rational and in perfect order. "There were a few things about you I'd come to admire."
"How am I different?"
"There are thing about you I didn't notice before, I guess." Ben paused and let go of her arms, bracing them on the wall behind her, forming a circle that enclosed her securely. "You're softer, somehow. You have more compassion. And you have the sweetest smile I've… " Their eyes met in the darkness, and Addie felt every bone in her body dissolve. Weakly she leaned back against the wall, her breath shortening. "You've always seemed pretty callous for a woman," Ben continued. "On the outside as innocent as a baby, on the inside as hard-hearted and cash minded as any painted cat in Abilene-"