The Sapphire Brooch Katherine Logan (best beach reads TXT) 📖

my name? I don’t. I only care about Jack. Nothing else. Not my name, not my medical practice, not my savings or my retirement. Nothing.” She licked dry lips and took a gulp of water. “This is my fault. If I had returned home instead of chasing after General Ramseur at the Battle of Cedar Creek, none of this would have happened. I had to see if my twenty-first-century medical knowledge could save him. Because of my ego,” she said, thumping her chest, “Braham spent the rest of his life riddled with guilt and Jack was executed.”

Elliott pushed away from the table and propped his leg across his opposite knee. Meredith appeared very interested in the lipstick on the edge of her coffee mug, and David stared at his notes, flipping a pen back and forth across the page. Charlotte watched them, wondering what they were thinking…or better yet, what they had not told her.

The charged silence passed when David eventually cleared his throat and focused on Elliott for a moment. “Jack has to be exonerated. We have to find the culprit who framed him, expose the man, and have the charges against Jack dismissed. The Mallory name might still be stained, but not as badly as it would be if Jack disappeared. I don’t advise whisking him away unless it’s the last resort.”

“I agree,” Elliott said. “But what about Charlotte? Jack’s execution altered her family history. Once Jack is exonerated, he’ll come back with his history intact, no alteration, but it will be different from hers. They’ll no longer have a shared history.”

Charlotte shook her head vehemently. “What nonsense. No more shared history? Really? I don’t buy it.”

Meredith tucked her arm in the crook of Charlotte’s elbow, and gently bumped shoulders, showing solidarity. “Give us an example, Elliott.”

Elliott and David exchanged glances, then David said, “I’ll take the question.” He opened a folder and leaned forward confidentially. “This is only a hypothetical, because we have no way of knowing what Jack is really talking about. Okay? Are ye with me?”

Charlotte nodded, but worrisome thoughts were darting in her head like hornets around their nest, mobilizing to attack a threat.

“Based on Jack’s letter, we know he believes there is a homeplace and a family cemetery.” David slid an old photograph across the table. “Look at this.”

“What is this?” Meredith asked.

“A picture of Mallory Plantation taken shortly after it was destroyed by fire in 1865. What do ye see in the background?”

Meredith and Charlotte squinted at the picture. “A cemetery,” they said in unison.

“Look at this picture,” David said.

“It’s The Lane Winery in Richmond,” Charlotte said.

“What do ye see in the background?” David asked.

She and Meredith squinted again. “An old cemetery.”

“What else to do ye see?”

“Besides the vineyards, an old willow oak.” Charlotte glanced at the Mallory Plantation photograph again. “The tree is smaller, but it seems to be the same tree.”

David produced two more pictures. One from the Richmond Historical Society, and the other from a Richmond architectural firm. “Here is a picture of an 1835 painting of Mallory Plantation, and the other is an architectural rendition of what the mansion would look like today if it had survived intact.” He spread the four pictures out on the table.

“Now, let’s pretend Mallory Plantation survived the Civil War and generations of Mallorys have resided there, including ye and Jack. Maybe ye or Jack or both still resided there when he went back in time to find his journal. Are ye still with me?”

“Sort of,” Charlotte said, scrunching her brow while she studied the architectural rendition of the mansion.

“When Jack was executed,” David continued, “the mansion lost the protection ye earned from General Sherman. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, after the fire the Mallorys didn’t have the funds to rebuild the mansion, so the property was sold. We know it had four different owners before it was purchased by The Lane Winery.

“After the property was sold, we know the Mallorys moved to Richmond, where yer six-times-great-grandfather practiced medicine until his death in 1885. His children and his children’s children grew up in Richmond like yer parents.”

“Everything you’ve said is true,” Charlotte said.

“But it’s not what Jack is saying in his letter. He wants to be buried at the homeplace. The next time ye see Jack, he might be looking forward to returning to the mansion, sitting on the back porch looking out over the river, and drinking a bottle of good California wine.”

A sinking, twisting feeling wrapped around Charlotte’s heart. “But there’s no mansion.”

“Under David’s hypothetical construct, there will be one until Jack is executed,” Elliott said.

“I’m still not sure I buy any of this.”

“Look at it this way. There is a memorial to Abraham Lincoln in Washington, DC. Ye know it, and I know it. Now, say ye go back in time and Braham stops the assassination. Lincoln continues his term of office and then retires to Illinois.”

“Okay,” Charlotte said. “So…”

“When ye come back to the twenty-first century, the Lincoln Memorial will no longer exist. Ye’ll remember it was once there because it was yer memory when ye went back in time. But if Braham changes history, Lincoln will lose his immortality, and the memorial will never be built. And ye and Jack will be the only people who will ever know it was once there.”

Charlotte slumped in her seat, put her head in her hands for a moment, then slowly straightened. “I see the problem now.” She glanced from Elliott to David. “There’s no way to fix this, is there?”

“This is only a hypothetical,” Elliott said. “It’s possible nothing of any significance will happen.”

“You’re a betting man, though. What does your gut tell you?” she asked.

There was silence, long enough to fill several heartbeats, long enough to fill tomorrow.

Elliott propped his ankle on his opposite knee and jiggled his foot, sighing. “I hate to say this, but I’ll bet when ye and Jack return, ye’ll have significantly different memories, life-changing memories.”

When Charlotte replied, her voice was soft, and she was