7. A Little Noodle

7

A LITTLE NOODLE

It was stupid to be nervous, wasn’t it? After all, this was just dinner, nothing crazy.

Right. Like this planned dinner with Seth at the English Kitchen didn’t have “first date” written all over it.

Ruth hadn’t seemed too worried about me skipping dinner at her house to go out with her nephew — or cousin; I was still a little foggy as to their actual relationship. In fact, she’d seemed cheered by the prospect, as though she was already thinking of us as a couple. During the day, when I’d helped her by hanging up the wash in the backyard, shelled what felt like an entire mountain of peas, and stood by and acted as operating nurse, handing over carefully measured vanilla and sugar and anything else she requested as she baked what seemed like enough apple tarts to feed the entire town, she’d told me a few things about Seth.

He was the younger of two brothers — which I’d already guessed — and McAllister Mercantile had been in the family for going on three generations. Ruth didn’t seem to have any problem telling me how the clan had emigrated from Scotland some fifty years earlier, although obviously, she kept out any mention of the tiny little detail about them all being witches and warlocks. Because of her, I learned that Seth wasn’t married and had never even been engaged, unlike his older brother Charles.

“But she broke it off,” Ruth said, looking almost indignant, as if she couldn’t imagine how anyone would have the bad taste to turn down a chance at becoming a member of the McAllister clan. “Her family was always very strict. They decided that Charles wasn’t suitable, and the poor girl got sent off to stay with an aunt in Prescott. That was only six months ago, so of course Charles hasn’t been in any mood to start looking for a wife. I’m sure he will again soon enough, though — at twenty-five, it’s high time he got married and started a family.”

That was a little old for a warlock to be unattached, especially in light of the age in which he was living. I found myself feeling sorry for Charles, whom I had yet to meet, and wondered if Seth was being wary about settling down after seeing what had happened to his brother.

Then again, a cautious man probably wouldn’t have invited me out to dinner in such a public place.

I hadn’t asked a lot of questions — no need to, not when Ruth McAllister seemed just fine with volunteering all sorts of information about the family. Surface-level stuff, sure…she wasn’t loose-lipped enough to let slip anything too sensitive…but still, it seemed like the clan was doing just fine, and rather than feeling impinged upon because she’d taken in a nonpaying guest, she seemed happy that someone had shown up to fill a little of the gap left behind after the youngest of her children married and moved out to start her own life.

That meant I was armed with a lot more facts now than I’d been the day before, and yet I still couldn’t quite ignore the fluttery sensation in my stomach when someone knocked at the door.

I’d been sitting in the front room, pretending to read a copy of The Ladies Home Journal — something that probably would have brought a pretty penny if sold in a vintage shop in my own time — when Seth knocked on the door. At once, I set down the magazine and went to answer it. Ruth had already told me I could let him in when he came, since she and her husband always sat down to dinner at six-thirty and Seth would be arriving a little after that.

He’d clearly gone home and washed up, since his face was clean and shiny, hair slightly damp and combed back from his brow.

How could someone be so adorable and so drop-dead gorgeous at the same time?

“Evening,” he said, and I smiled.

“Evening. Did you want to come in?”

He sent a glance past me, presumably toward the dining room where Ruth and Timothy were sharing their meal, and shook his head. “No, that’s all right. We can just head down to the restaurant.”

Fine by me. Ruth had fed me a lunch much bigger than I usually ate, of cold chicken and fruit and a leftover roll from dinner the night before, but that had been almost seven hours ago, and I was ready to eat again.

For a second, I thought Seth might offer me his arm, because he made a hesitant movement before deciding maybe that was taking too many liberties after such a short acquaintance. To be honest, I had very little idea of what was acceptable and what wasn’t in the world of 1926, although I had a feeling that, while this wasn’t the Victorian age any longer, people were still a lot more reserved than their counterparts in the twenty-first century.

Instead, we headed out, with the two of us walking down the porch steps and then following the curve of the street as it wended its way toward Jerome’s main drag. Just like the night before, music and laughter drifted up toward us, letting me know that even on a Monday evening, the little mining town was still a pretty happening place. I’d gotten that impression from some of the bits of local history I’d read, but it was much different to witness all that activity in person.

I hadn’t gotten much of a chance to explore yet, thanks to being stuck at Ruth’s house all day, and I couldn’t stop myself from looking side to side, trying to take in all the sights and sounds. The buildings appeared to be almost the same as they were in the twenty-first century, less worn, of course, but everything was pretty much right where it was supposed to be.

There were far more restaurants and hotels and boarding houses than I’d expected, and a lot fewer shops. I supposed that made some sense; back in 1926, Jerome had been very much a working town, not the tourist attraction it had become. These people needed to sleep and places to eat and drink, and probably couldn’t have cared less about buying a copper bracelet or a piece of Navajo horsehair pottery.

The street layout was just the same as I remembered, and we turned down Jerome Avenue from Main Street so we could get to the English Kitchen. It seemed much smaller than its modern-day incarnation as Bobby D’s, mostly because the big patio/deck off the back where you could sit outside and eat barbecue and smell the luscious pecan wood smoke from the smokers they had going all day hadn’t yet made its appearance.

No, it was just a small stucco building that occupied the space right where Hull Avenue curved up the hill, not very prepossessing at all. When Seth opened the door for me, though, the interior wasn’t as changed as I’d thought, and still had the big oak bar to one side with the mirrors above and a row of booths directly opposite.

All of the booths but one were occupied. I reflected it was probably a good thing that we’d come here on a Monday evening and not some other night of the week, or we might have been waiting to sit down for quite a while. A pretty Asian girl gestured for us to take a seat at the booth, then pointed at the menu tacked on the wall near the bar.

Clearly, they didn’t want to waste paper on printing out their bill of fare.

It all seemed pretty basic — a lot of noodle dishes, chop suey. Not a single Szechuan item that I could see, but I told myself to go with the flow and not worry whether the offerings were what I might normally order.

“What’s your favorite dish here?” I asked Seth, who definitely looked more relaxed now that he was seated across from me in a booth and not walking by my side down Main Street.

“It’s all good,” he replied. “But you can’t go wrong with the chop suey. It’s my favorite thing on the menu.”

Since I knew it would be insufferably rude to point out that chop suey wasn’t even traditionally Chinese but rather a dish invented by Chinese immigrants after they came to America and started adapting their recipes to American tastes, I only nodded.

“Then that’s what I’ll have, too.”

He got up and went to the counter to place our orders, and then settled himself in the booth immediately afterward.

“They’ll bring us some tea in a minute.”

Fans worked away overhead, telling me they did exist in Jerome, at least in the commercial spaces. Even so, it was stuffier in the restaurant than I’d been expecting, despite the way all the windows stood open, and I hoped the hot tea and chop suey wouldn’t make me too warm.

But the dress I wore was lightweight, cool cotton, and even though I could have happily ripped off those damn hose and shoved them in the nearest trashcan, I was still a lot more comfortable than I would have been if I’d slipped back in time to the 1880s or something. My mother’s stories about having to wear a corset and bustle and complicated dresses that weighed upwards of ten pounds each were enough to make me very glad that I’d landed in 1926.

True, she’d gone to Flagstaff in the late autumn, when she didn’t need to worry about the heat, but still.

Sure enough, the same girl — the daughter of the restaurant’s owner? — brought us a little pot of blue willow ware filled with steaming tea, along with a pair of matching cups with no handles. She smiled at us and said our food would be out shortly…her English was very good, telling me she’d either lived in the U.S. for most of her life or had been born here…and then left us alone again.

Seth reached for the teapot and poured some of the fragrant, gently steaming liquid into each of our cups before setting it back down again. A smile played around his mouth, and he said, “So, did Aunt Ruth put you to work today?”

“Some,” I admitted. “I hung laundry on the clothesline and then helped her in the kitchen.” Since I knew that was something of a misrepresentation of what had really happened, I hurried to add, “This is, I measured things and mostly stayed out of the way. What I don’t know about baking would fill a book.”

He picked up his cup of tea and blew on it, then said, “Do you think that’s because you’ve forgotten, or just because you were never much of a baker to begin with?”

There wasn’t anything in his voice except simple curiosity, which led me to believe he didn’t care whether I was the reincarnation of Julia Child or whomever. The realization warmed me a little. I honestly hadn’t even known what I would have expected from a man of his period, except I supposed I thought they all pretty much expected their significant others to be good wives and mothers who could do everything from baking an apple pie to ensuring the house was tidy no matter how many kids they might have been looking after.

And then I wanted to shake my head at myself. Seth McAllister wasn’t my significant other, and I knew I’d already probably gone too far just by allowing myself to think about how handsome he was…or how kind and thoughtful. No, what my brain really needed to do was come up with a way to get me back to my own time, even if it had failed miserably at the task so far.

“I really don’t know,” I said in answer to his question. “That is, I remembered basic tasks like how to measure ingredients and separate egg whites, but putting them all together definitely wasn’t anything that felt familiar.”

That unfamiliarity extended to the huge cast-iron oven Ruth used to cook and bake, a monstrosity that appeared to be wood-fired and would have intimidated me at the best of times. At least she had running water — and a lovely apron-front sink that wasn’t too dissimilar from the big farmhouse-style version in the house where I’d grown up — but still, I thought even a Great British Baking Show champion might have been intimidated by trying to work with that hulking piece of metal.

“Well, I’m sure Ruth was glad of the help, even if you weren’t familiar with everything,” Seth told me, and I could only lift my shoulders.

“I hope so. Mostly, I tried to stay out of the way. But I figured I should do something to try to earn my keep.”

At those words, his slightly arched brows pulled together. “You really shouldn’t look at it that way,” he said. “We’re all happy to help you out. It has to be hard to be stranded in a strange place, away from everyone you know.”

I made a small sound of assent and sipped some tea from my cup. It was fragrant and mild, probably oolong, with little bits of leaf floating around in it. No teabags around the English Kitchen, that was for sure.

The weird thing was, this whole situation felt oddly dissonant, just because I did know Jerome pretty well, even if I wasn’t a native. I knew how the streets were laid out, recognized most of the buildings around me. And the ones I didn’t, I figured they were the structures that had either burned or fallen down or — in the case of the building that had once housed the Cuban Mary brothel, which had slid down Cleopatra Hill a few years before I was born — finally succumbed to gravity. Because of all the mining that had taken place here, the hillsides weren’t terribly stable, and lots of work had been expended over the years to shore up the buildings as best they could. Some simply couldn’t be saved and were left unoccupied until they finally collapsed.

At any rate, it wasn’t as if I’d been dropped in the middle of 1926 Paris or something. My surroundings were familiar enough; it was the people and the cars and the music and everything else that had utterly changed.

I couldn’t tell Seth any of this, obviously.

No, I could only smile and say, “Well, it would have been a lot harder if I hadn’t landed in McAllister territory.”

At those words, his brows drew together again, and I wanted to curse myself for my clumsiness. Most people probably would have thought the phrase utterly innocuous, but witch clans always referred to their lands as their “territory,” and by doing so, I’d made an obvious stumble despite my efforts to watch what I said.

I could almost see his brain working as he analyzed my statement, trying to see if it had any meaning beyond the innocent use of a phrase that wouldn’t be significant to anyone outside the witch world, telling himself that of course it had to be a coincidence. His own senses would have already reassured him that I couldn’t be a witch. Otherwise, he would have known I was more than an ordinary young woman the moment we met.

Of course, he could have no idea that I’d inherited a very special gift from my father, one he’d told me wasn’t uncommon in his clan but which appeared to be utterly unknown to the clans here in the Southwest.

But then Seth’s expression relaxed, and it seemed clear to me that he’d brushed the slight dissonance aside.

“Maybe,” he allowed. “Although I’d say most folks I’ve met are pretty friendly and ready to lend a helping hand to those who’re in a difficult situation through no fault of their own. Still,” he went on, clear blue eyes meeting mine, “I can’t say I’m sorry that you ended up here.”

Our gazes held for just a moment, and then he looked back down at his plate of chop suey. He might have been kicking himself for being so open, even if for only a few seconds, but I was glad he’d been so unguarded right then.

That brief instant had been enough to tell me this was a little more than just a friendly dinner, and a certain warmth kindled in the pit of my stomach, one that had very little to do with the food I was eating or the tea I’d just drunk.

No, this was the happy realization that the guy I thought I liked seemed to like me back.

Of course, reason kicked in a minute later, reminding me that the man who’d shared that soulful gaze with me across the table had lived and died decades before I was even born, and the absolute last thing I should be doing was thinking we had any kind of a future together.

I made myself look down at my meal as well, knowing it would be absolute madness to encourage him.

Even if I really did want to.

“You’ve all been very kind,” I said, forcing a lightness to my tone that I definitely didn’t feel. “I have to thank you all for that.”

As I’d hoped, the polite words might as well have been a bucket of cold water thrown on the conversation. Seth mumbled something like, “I’m glad to hear it,” and the two of us attended to our food for the next few minutes without saying anything else.

But then someone paused by our table, and I looked up to see a man who was probably a year or so older than Seth and very much like him in looks, with the same mid-brown hair and blue eyes. However, his features were subtly different, not quite as perfect from every angle, even though I supposed he was attractive enough.

“Is this Aunt Ruth’s guest?” the newcomer asked, and Seth put down his fork, looking resigned.

“Yes, this is Deborah Rowe,” he said, then glanced over at me. “Deborah, this is my older brother Charles.”

No wonder they looked so much alike. I put on a smile and said, “I’m very pleased to meet you, Charles.”

He inclined his head toward me. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Rowe. It seems like my brother is taking good care of you.”

Innocuous enough words, but there was an undercurrent of almost condescension to them that made my hackles go up. “Oh, he is,” I said calmly, knowing I should do my best to be polite. For all I knew, I was reading way more into his tone than necessary. I was probably just a little on edge from the raw moment Seth and I had shared a moment earlier. “I wanted to see more of the town,” I went on, “so Seth very kindly offered to take me to his favorite restaurant.”

This was a flat-out lie, of course, because it was Seth who’d invited me to dinner, not vice versa. In fact, I noticed the way his lips parted for a moment, as though he’d intended to say something, and then realized it was probably better not to contradict me in front of his brother.

Charles smiled thinly. “I’m afraid there isn’t much to see. We’re in quite a little corner of the world here in Jerome.”

Well, that was true enough, I supposed, but I still didn’t like his tone very much. “Oh, it may be small,” I replied, “but I think it’s fascinating.”

His gaze flicked to Seth, but my dinner companion only said, “Yes, Miss Rowe has seemed interested in just about everything she’s seen so far. It makes me think she must be from somewhere far away, although of course, none of us knows yet where that might be.”

“Yes, Mother told me a little about Miss Rowe’s amnesia.” Charles stopped there — maybe wondering if he should ask me directly about my condition? — but then he must have realized that interrupting our dinner for much longer wouldn’t be very polite, because he said, “I hope you’re feeling better soon. It was nice to meet you.”

A nod toward me, and then he headed over to the counter, where he picked up a brown paper bag of what I assumed must be a takeout order, then headed out the door.

This mystified me somewhat. Hadn’t Seth said something about his brother still living at home with their parents?

My gaze must have been questioning, as he said, “Sometimes Charles likes to fetch his own dinner. I suppose it makes him feel more independent, since he still shares the apartment over the mercantile with our parents.”

Well, that seemed to explain that. “Something that’s a lot easier in Jerome, considering you can walk pretty much anywhere you need to go.”

While I wouldn’t have said Seth seemed exactly tense, I still couldn’t help noticing the way he relaxed against the back of the booth as I spoke, as though my words had helped to dissipate a little of the tension that had arisen with the arrival of his brother. “True. I don’t think our mother is very happy about him fetching his own meals from time to time, but I suppose she’s trying to give him a little grace.”

“‘Grace’?” I echoed. As far as I’d been able to tell, Charles McAllister looked like an able-bodied man in his middle twenties. He didn’t seem like the sort of person who would require a lot of coddling.

For a split second, Seth appeared vaguely uncomfortable. But then he gave a hitch of his shoulders and said, “He was engaged, but his fiancée called it off. She’s living in Prescott now with her great-aunt.”

Right — Ruth had already told me a little about the situation. And although I supposed on the surface the story sounded innocent enough, I couldn’t help thinking there was probably more here than met the eye…or the ear. While I couldn’t help thinking Seth was the more handsome of the two brothers, I also couldn’t deny that Charles was good-looking enough, had a job, and stood to take over the family business once his father decided it was time to retire. On paper, that didn’t sound like the kind of situation a girl from the mid-1920s would usually walk away from.

Then again, I had only a tiny piece of the story. If they’d turned out to be incompatible, then good on her for recognizing she and Charles didn’t have a future and that she needed to walk away.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, since I didn’t know how else to respond.

Seth smiled — not, I believed, because he was at all amused by his brother’s situation, but because I’d responded with sympathy to the small revelation. “It was hard for him,” he replied. “I suppose it’s good that she’s far away, and so he doesn’t have to worry too much about their paths crossing, but still, he’d thought they had a future and even bought a small plot down on Juarez Street to build a house. Open land is hard to come by here in Jerome, and he probably paid more for it than he should have.”

Ouch. I supposed one could look rationally at the situation and say that Charles had done well to buy the land even if he now didn’t have a reason to build on it anytime soon, but still, it had to sting.

I made a sympathetic sound, and Seth added, “At any rate, that’s why my parents are being gentle with him right now. I know my mother keeps hoping he’ll meet someone who’ll take his mind off Mary, but we haven’t seen any signs of that happening yet.”

“How long ago did this all happen?”

“Just after the first of the year,” he said. “So, I think the wound is still too fresh for Charles to even consider moving on. But you know how parents can be.”

To be honest, I really didn’t, because both my mother and father had seemed to be all right with me not knowing what I wanted to do next with my life. Sure, my mother hadn’t been completely thrilled about me coming here to Jerome, but she appeared to have reassured herself that this was only a phase and that I’d go back to Flagstaff soon enough.

And with my older sister married and providing them with their first grandchild, my parents seemed perfectly fine with me not being involved with anyone. More than once, I’d heard my mother remark that she needed at least a three-year break before having to plan another wedding. Considering I hadn’t seen anyone seriously in the past year, I figured I definitely didn’t need to worry about that particular timeline.

Obviously, I couldn’t tell Seth any of that. In fact, I had to remind myself that I was still supposed to be suffering from amnesia and therefore couldn’t recall anything of my interactions with my parents.

“I suppose so,” I said, adding, “I can’t really remember.”

At once, his expression turned contrite. “I’m so sorry,” he replied at once. “That was insensitive of me, considering….”

The words trailed off, as though he’d also realized that remarking on my “condition” might create the wrong impression.

“It’s fine,” I said quickly. “No offense taken. But right now, I just don’t have much context for these sorts of situations.”

He was quiet for a moment, and I noted how his eyes scanned the restaurant around us. “Does any of this jog any memories?” he said. “Anything at all, like going out to eat in the place where you come from?”

Well, of course it jogged plenty, because I’d probably grown too fond of takeout from Bobby D’s and had eaten quite a few brisket plates and pulled pork sandwiches during my time in Jerome. Good thing I walked everywhere and the place was so hilly, or my hips might have regretted my choices of cuisine.

I couldn’t comment on that, however. Instead, I hunted around for an answer that wouldn’t give anything away but might also give him some hope, then said, “I don’t know about ‘memories,’ but something about it seems sort of familiar, as if I’ve probably eaten in a Chinese restaurant before. Unfortunately, that doesn’t narrow things down very much.”

“Maybe not,” he responded. “But still, it’s something. It might be a sign that your memories are starting to come back, if only in general impressions and not any particular details.”

About all I could do was nod. While I knew it wasn’t in my best interest to say that I was beginning to recall specifics, I thought it might not be too bad to admit to certain overall concepts and situations becoming familiar.

That couldn’t get me in too much trouble, right?

We were almost done with our meals then, so we moved the conversation to simpler topics, like the new restaurant opening near the top of Main Street and the construction of a new park with a fancy gazebo down in Clarkdale. And afterward, we headed out into a night where the moon, now a little more full than it had been the day before, was now well above the Mogollon Rim to the east and would have provided enough illumination even if there weren’t gas fixtures mounted to the exteriors of some of the buildings, obvious relics of an earlier era. As far as I could tell, Jerome was fully electrified, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t use some of the old gas lighting if it still worked.

The way back up to Ruth’s house was steep, and Seth silently offered his arm to help steady me. For a moment, I almost demurred, but then I realized the last thing I needed was to stumble and fall, maybe twist an ankle. Yes, I’d climbed this hill before, but not in unfamiliar heels.

It felt good to lean on him…probably too good. True, it was the sort of polite gesture he would have made to any female companion, but still, I liked the quiet, sturdy strength that seemed to emanate from him, the sensation of his muscled forearm beneath my fingers.

Even though he came from a time a hundred years before I was born, he still felt more real to me than anyone I’d ever met.

When we reached the walkway in front of Ruth and Timothy’s house, though, I lifted my hand — not too quickly, because I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t grateful for his help, but still fast enough that I hoped no one had seen the way I’d leaned on him all the way up here. No sign of Ruth peeking through the curtains, thank God, so I supposed it might not have mattered.

A flicker of something passed across Seth’s features, clear and fine-cut in the moonlight, but he didn’t protest. His tone was neutral enough as he said, “I hope the climb wasn’t too taxing for you. These hills can be difficult for newcomers in our town.”

“No, it was fine,” I said, then went on, “Thank you for your kind assistance. I suppose I’ll get used to it soon enough.”

Assuming I can’t get back to my own year any time in the near future, I added mentally. Since I’d failed miserably on that front so far, I wasn’t about to make any promises to myself I couldn’t keep.

And I couldn’t quite hold back the traitorous thought that if I could have more evenings like this one with Seth, then I wasn’t sure I minded being trapped in 1926 as much as I probably should have.

The corners of his eyes crinkled ever so slightly as he smiled. “I suppose you will.”

A pause then as we both looked at one another. In a different time and place, this might have been the moment when we shared a kiss, standing there alone on a moonlit street.

But this was the twenties, and I knew things were very different here. Maybe they were roaring somewhere else, and people were drinking moonshine in speakeasies and dancing the night away in beaded flapper dresses or smoking cigarettes in long ebony holders, but Jerome was very far away from the wild nightlife in New York or Chicago.

“Thank you for dinner,” I said, and Seth nodded.

“Oh, you’re welcome. Perhaps we can do this again later in the week? We could even drive down to Cottonwood and try something there.”

He was asking me out on another date. The logical thing to do would be to politely refuse and tell him I wasn’t sure that was such a good idea, considering my current situation.

I didn’t want to be logical, though. Not with the way he made me feel.

“Sounds wonderful,” I said.