Page 3 of Hadley

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Terrified to move or even to look that far beyond her nose, Colby sat on the little bridge that had been on her farm longer than she’d been alive. It, like a lot of things that she was noticing on the farm, was new. Not all used up like they’d been when she’d gotten up that morning and had gone into town to see the Mannings. Things were just too…well, off for her to think beyond the fact that she had to be dead, and her afterlife was showing her something off-putting. Colby snorted to herself. Off-putting? Things were downright screwed up, she thought.

She watched the goings on of the family she had thought were long gone. It was about all she could do not to get up and start asking them why they were here. To ask them if she was dead too, Colby thought that someone would surely have her committed. If she was indeed alive right now. Her family. She’d even gotten a glimpse of her own mamma and daddy while sitting here. It was, for lack of a better statement, scaring the pickles right out of her.

They’d all been gone, as a matter of fact, and she was having a hard time—Twice now, her sisters, dead these long years, came to sit with her to tell her about the upcoming wedding. And twice, she’d said not a word but listened to them go on about this and that and what was going to happen. It wasn’t until a man, a shadow of one she could see, sat down too that she could finally open her mouth without screaming. Knowing what to say to him was something that she’d not thought of until just then. She asked him if he was Cooper Manning from the future.

“Something like that. Hello Colby. I came to explain a few things to you. What I know happened anyway. Are you well?” She glared at him, and when he laughed, like a loon, she turned away from him so that he’d not see her smiling. The durn man. “Things will be different now. I’m sure you have a great many questions for me. I have a few for you as well.”

“You darn tootin’ I have some questions. One of them being, did you do this to me, Mr. Manning? If you did, it would have been a good thing to have warned an old body about the changes coming along.” He just smiled at her, a very endearing smile at that, but she wasn’t in the mood for him charming her at the moment. “I thought me to be dreaming, as I had before at the hotel when there were so many of my kin around. I thought that it was a nice send-off for me to be feeling when I’d died. But I’m thinking, and I don’t like it any better than thinking that I’m dead but that you did this to me. One of my sisters came here a bit ago and shared with me her brew. I tasted it. I don’t know, but I’d think, not knowing all the ends and outs of being dead, that I’d not be able to taste a durn thing. Why would you do this to this old woman?”

“I didn’t.” She snorted at him, something that she’d stopped doing right after her husband was— She looked at him sharply. “I can see what you’re thinking, young Colby, but again, I had nothing to do with what has happened.”

“Then who would do this to me? And what for?” He told her what he was thinking. “So that I could have a child? That’s not a nice…have you looked at me? I’m an old woman here, Mr. Manning. I got me so many wrinkles that I’m like that mountain group out west where the water comes tumbling down faster than a car nowadays. I’m near about a century old. Who would want to lay with me? Nary a man I know. Even my Abe, he’d be hard-pressed to want to have relations with me if’n he was around.”

“Have you looked in the mirror, Colby?” Cooper put out his hand, and there was a lovely, almost too beautiful mirror in his palm. “You should have a look at your beauty. I’m thinking that you could have any man lay with you, as you put it, and they’d die a happier man. But as I said, I didn’t do this to you. I believe it was Winnie. Actually, I know that it was her. She only told me after she’d taken it upon herself to right the wrong she’d been told about.”

“The dragon protector?” He nodded. “Where are you? I know you’re not here, but a shadow of the man that I met the other day…I did meet you the other day, didn’t I? Not that it matters, I guess, but you’re not sitting here talking with me. Another reason for me to think that I’m either dead or I’m off my rocker.”

“You’re neither. And no, I’m not in this time frame with you.” She stared at him. Picking up the mirror when nothing more seemed to be coming from him, she stared at the reflection staring back at her. “You’re about nineteen, I’m thinking. I don’t know for sure how old you were, but I know it’s your wedding day today. That Abe, your Abe, is having a long conversation with your daddy about the proper way to woo a young bride. Your sisters are right now gathering up some of the flowers that you tend in the summer for herbs and spices around the farm for your bouquet.” She put the mirror down on her lap so she couldn’t look at the young woman there. Colby could hardly remember that face, the one that hardened the day that she’d wed and become a widow all on the same afternoon.

“Why would she make me relive that day, you think? My life, it was never the same after that. I miss my Abe daily.” Cooper said that Winne had a purpose. “To hurt me? That doesn’t sound all that—you know, I’m not even a dragon. What right does she have to make me hurt like I did that day, this day?”

“There is a purpose.” He stretched out, and she could see that he was much taller than she’d thought before. When she’d been sitting back the other day, she’d not noticed. “If you’d allow me to, Colby, I’ll explain everything that I know to you. As I said, Winnie had done this when she figured out that Abe had been murdered the day that you wed. We’d not been aware of it until you told me you were the last of your line. I’m so profoundly sorry for that.”

“Weren’t nobody’s fault but the man that killed him.” Cooper pointed to the field beyond where they were sitting. It was her Abe. As handsome and as alive as she thought she was right now. “We’re to marry again. To repeat the things that happened that day, I’m thinking. It hurts my heart to think that somebody that is supposed to be protecting your kind would do that to me, Cooper.” She only called him that when he’d begged for her to. There was just too much going on for her to fuss at him about something so little as his name.

“Be wedded, yes. His dying, no. Not when he did before. Abe will die. I’m sorry for that, but not on your wedding day.” She asked why it was important for her to have a child when they were to get the land if she didn’t. “I know you must be sick of me saying this, but there is a purpose for this. One that I can only explain a part of. Children will be born of you and Abe. They will be there for your comfort and his when he dies. Abe is and will be a good partner for you and your family. For mine as well. The dreams you saw the day we met last, it needs to be set to right. It shouldn’t have happened the way that it had. Not just for you and yours but mine as well. You will bare your daughter, the first born Wiffle of your body, and she will be able to go on and have more daughters. Sons too, but the first born will be a daughter that will carry on the Wiffle gene.”

“The snow white hair.” She’d not asked, but he nodded all the same. “And this will help you, how, Mr. Manning? You’ll not be able to get the land if’n I have children. I’m powerfully worried for that. I don’t want the city to have it. Not at all. I’m also thinking that a bit of white hair from me won’t make all that much difference to you and your family in the long run. Unless there is more to it than the family.”

“I don’t know. Beyond that, you should never have been widowed at such a young age. The man that killed your mate, your husband, he should well have been unable to kill anyone. Once Winnie was told of what happened, she did some research on it and said that she had to right a wrong done to you.” Colby watched as her husband danced with her mom. Someone else that she had missed seeing over her lifetime. “They’ll all be here for you for only a little bit of time, I’m afraid. Once this right is taken care of, Winnie told me, things will progress to the time where you and I were meeting in the future.”

“I’ll not enjoy my children or those of their children then.” She turned to look at Cooper when he said nothing. “‘Tis unfair if you ask me. Will I have any memories of this day? Will I know both versions of my life until then?”

“I wish I knew the answer to that. I’m sorry, Colby.” She nodded, then looked again at her husband-to-be as Cooper spoke. “There have been arrangements made that you and your family will have money from today on as well. That was another thing she’d found when doing her research, you were without funds when they should have been there for you. As we promised your family decades and decades ago.”

“We made due. Being alone with my grief, I did do a bit more with my craft. My quilts, they kept me not only warm in the colder months but sold for a good coin as well.” She thought about the ones that she’d buried her kin with. The way that she’d had to sell even the ones from her bed when the taxes came due at the end of her first life. “I should go and talk to my family. The ones that had gone on—” She looked at Cooper again. “Will I still live a long life? Be able to talk to my nephew and help him along?”

“I don’t know.” She nodded, and when he laughed, she smiled at him. “You’ve more questions than I have answers to. I should have known that you’d not ask me about money or contracts. You’d ask me after your family instead of the things that would have been important to me.”

“My family, as well as I’m sure that yours, is to you important to me. Money? Well, it’s nice to have when you can get it, but it won’t make or break me. I’ve seen enough to know that things go around and around until they’re at the beginning again.” He said that he had as well. She stood up, and so did he. “I’m going to go and get myself wed then. I don’t know what this future will hold for me, but there are things that could happen, having a child or two that makes me want to get on with it. Living and raising my family with my Abe, it’s something that I’ve long since stopped hoping for. That bullet that took his life, it took my hopes and dreams too. My livelihood too. I want to see it all, Cooper. Live a life with my Abe.”

She started away when she got no more information from the large dragon. As she made her way across the field toward her home, she looked at the things that she’d forgotten about in her golden years. Memories that she knew would keep her warm at night in the future.

Seeing her mamma and daddy sitting on the front porch of the home she’d come to live in alone years later did her heart good. Colby hugged them extra tight when she caught up with them. Her sisters, too, with their husbands. Milly, her older sister fat with her first child, smiled like she always did. Colby tried not to think of her passing years later, with only her by her side, as her children hadn’t made it to her side in time. Not wanting to dwell on those thoughts, she looked around again.

There was plenty of food to go around. It was forever that way she knew when the family gathered together. Her mammy would have gone all out, taking things from the cellar to feed them all. It was the very one she had used the day before seeing Cooper, she remembered. Colby ate of the pies that she’d forgotten about. The fresh fried chicken that her grandmammy had fired up special for today. Sampled the rich milk that her daddy would have brought to her momma this morning for their breakfast.

The marrying part, where she became the wife of Abe, was over before she could think about it. And when he kissed her, holding her in his arms, it took her several minutes to realize that he was indeed going to be there for her for a bit and a while. No one popped out of the woods, firing into the crowd of family like the man had done before. Upset that there had been no liquor for him because it had all been used up for her being wed. Killing her husband of three minutes like he had so long ago.

When Abe came to find her later in the evening, holding her hand, she saw the beautiful wedding band on her finger. It wasn’t stained with berries that she’d put up later. The knicks and wounds to the gold band weren’t there yet for her to mourn over. It was thicker, too, not worn down with age and work. Even the long scar that was on her finger there was gone.

When she’d been working in the fields early in her life alone, she had nearly lost her finger when it had gotten caught up in the plow she’d been using. It had taken her a month to be able to use her hand again, and the use of her finger had never been right again. Memories like those, she thought, would serve her well when she had another chance like Cooper was giving her to do again.

That evening, when all the family had gathered for the fire that had been burning nearly all day, she and Abe snuck off to the house that her parents had lived in. And her momma’s family before them. So far back that Colby would have had to get out the big Bible to remember their names.

Running her hand over the large dragon scale that had been put on the bed for the two of them, she remembered giving it to Cooper when she’d thought of herself as the last of her line. Now, this night, she’d be with her husband for the first time. The only man she knew she’d ever love.

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