AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Beneath the blanket, folded into perfect squares and tucked right down into the bottom of the box, were two tiny, flannel baby gowns. They were the same colour as the blanket, but she figured they had probably started off as white. The same picture from the blanket—the teddy bear, block, and ball—had been embroidered onto the front of each gown. Perfect stitches, in red, brown, blue, and yellow. So small. Tears sprang into her eyes as she held the gowns up in front of her. Had these been made for a baby who never arrived?Just like the babies I desperately wanted, but couldn’t carry, she thought bitterly. Her heart clenched in sympathy for the woman who had painstakingly created these tiny garments, the love she’d put into each stitch, only to lose the child before the gowns could be worn. C? What did C stand for?
Folding the gowns back up carefully, she returned them to the box, followed by the blanket that Jason had already folded up for her. Then she reached for the book. It was time to find out if it had the answers she’d been seeking.
She patted the ground beside her. “Sit down,” she invited, although it came out sounding more like an order. This moment was huge for her; she wanted to share it with the man she loved.The man she loved.The words went round and round in her head. It had never occurred to her that she loved him. She had once; and now she knew, she did again.
“I love you.” She whispered the words; the very same words he’d said to her earlier that morning.
“I love you too,” he whispered back, sitting down next to her, so close their hips, thighs, knees touched. Joined together.
It was a journal. That’s what it looked like at first glance, anyway. An old, much-loved, tattered journal, the pages discoloured with age. Many of the pages were stuck together. Damp had perhaps affected it once, leaving much of the writing smudged, unreadable. The pages that could be read were filled with perfectly formed letters in a sloped, copperplate script, the hand of an educated person.
She turned to the first entry.
13 November 1886
This journal belongs to Catherine Ryan nee Craig.
Today is the first day of the rest of my life.
I have come up here to my new home, a little stone hut with a thatched tussock roof, near the boundary of Ryan’s Peak Station, to the east of the main divide. My husband Benjamin Ryan and his brother Jack have been farming here for nearly twenty years.
Finding work here in the new country as a single woman has been much harder than I had been led to believe it would be, back home in England. The full page advertisements in the paper promised adventure, opportunities. There are plenty of both, for men. But not for women.
Answering Benjamin’s advertisement in the paper has been a blessing. Ben is a good man, kind and caring. He has promised to look after me and treat me well and I believe he will do so.
Catherine let go of the page in shock. She felt all the colour drain from her face. She couldn’t breathe; her heart pounded frantically, her lungs burned, but still, she couldn’t draw breath. This was impossible. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be happening. Could it?
“No.” The word was no more than a squeak on her lips. “No.” More forcefully this time, and she shook her head. Her hands trembled. “No.”
“What is it?” Jason leaned forward, trying to see.
The journal had closed once she’d let it go, but she didn’t try to stop him from opening it. From seeing. Maybe he could make sense of this, because she certainly couldn’t.
Catherine Craig. 1886. CatherineCraig. 1886.The surname. The date. Catherine. It couldn’t be. Could it?
The dates worked out: if she remembered correctly, Catherine Craig—the Catherine Craig from her family tree, the one who had disappeared—had been born in 1860. She’d left England in 1884.
Wonder what happened to Catherine?She remembered the words Emma had scrawled up the side of the paper in her trademark pink glitter ink.
This happened!she wanted to scream.This happened. She moved to New Zealand. She fell in love. She had a baby.That was what she figured, anyway. She tried to send the information to Emma telepathically, via ESP, the way they’d used to do when they were kids. It hadn’t often worked, but they’d been so close growing up that sometimes it seemed like they really could read each other’s thoughts.
“Catherine Craig,” she whispered. She still couldn’t believe it. Her tongue twisted on the words; it took far too much effort to spit them out. “My ancestor. Kind of. On the family tree. The missing link.”
She didn’t dare risk a look up at Jason. He would think she was bonkers.
“Really?” Jason looked closer, ran his finger in a line under the name. “Let me see.” He was silent for a minute, just staring at the page. “Do you think it is?”
It was a question, but he wasn’t doubting her; he was excited at the possibility. Excited for her. Excited that she might finally get to solve the mystery of the dreams that had plagued her for years.
She nodded. “Yeah, I think it is. The dates work. And the dreams… It all adds up too much to be just a coincidence.”
“Keep reading.”
The next few pages were stuck together with ink bleeding through both sides. She didn’t want to damage the fragile paper so she didn’t try to separate them. There were plenty of other entries to read.
4 June 1887
This is my first winter here on Ryan’s Peak Station and it is bitterly cold. We have left behind our hut in the mountains and are staying down on the flats in the shearers quarters but it is a makeshift building not designed to withstand the elements like our solid little stone hut. I am told work is to begin on the new shearers quarters next year, once the new woolshed is finished.
