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you did it for the reward."
    Jessica frowned up at
him as she accepted the cup and saucer. “How do you know about
pathologists and bullet fragments?”
    He stared at her a
moment, then shrugged.
    “Ah, I get it,” Jessica
said, pointing a finger and smiling. “You’re from the future, too,
aren’t you? That makes perfect sense.”
    He nodded. “I was
wondering how long it would take you to figure that out.”
    Relief poured through
her. She wasn’t alone here, nor was she completely delusional.
    “When did you get
here?” she asked.
    “Almost ten years
ago.”
    Her relief went sour.
“Ten years? Didn’t you want to go home?”
    “Yes, I did. I had a
successful law practice back in the twenty-first century.”
    “Then what kept you
here?”
    He poured himself a cup
of tea and sat down. "Jessica, I don’t know how to tell you this,
but there's no way back."
    She shifted uneasily on
the sofa cushion. "There has to be."
    "There isn't. Believe
me, I’ve tried."
    A slow panic began to
mushroom inside her. "Well, you didn't try hard enough. We managed
to get here. We'll manage to get back."
    There was no way she
was staying here in this smelly old cow town. Especially with the
sheriff thinking she was a killer.
    "I've looked
everywhere," Mr. Maxwell said. "I don't know how to do it."
    “But how did you get
here?”
    “I had a car accident,”
he replied.
    “Was there rain and
lightning?”
    “Yes, but—”
    "The same thing
happened to me,” she told him, “so there has to be a
connection."
    He considered it for a
moment, while he raised the teacup to his lips and took a careful
sip. "Perhaps,” he said at last, “but you can't just buy a ticket
home. I don't know how to do it from this end. We don’t have cars
here."
    She couldn’t just give
up. How could she accept never seeing her family again, or her dog,
George? And what about her fitness column? She had deadlines.
    Jessica stood up to
pour herself another cup of tea. She took one step forward, but her
stiletto heel caught in the petticoat beneath her skirt. She
stumbled and nearly fell into the teacart. These long skirts would
take some getting used to, she thought with frustration as she
steadied the tray. In fact, everything here would take some getting
used to.
    Mr. Maxwell regarded
her with sympathy. "You should get that hemmed and buy more
practical footwear. Those shoes will attract far too much
attention. There's a tailor not far from here. I could lend you
some money until your reward arrives...if you'd like."
    She managed a
melancholy smile. "Thank you, Mr. Maxwell. I’d appreciate it."
    "Call me Angus. I just
wish I could do more for you."
    "Maybe you can,” she
said. “Maybe we could work together to find a way out of here. Will
you try to remember what happened to you when you came here?"
    "I suppose. I could
search the house for the things I was wearing. That might help, but
don’t get your hopes up. You may have to accept that you’ll never
get back."
    Jessica sat down with
her teacup, glanced out the window at the outhouse in the yard, and
shook her head at him. “No, Mr. Maxwell, I could never accept that
– because I’m not the sort of woman who can go long without indoor
plumbing.”
    * * *
    Jessica spent the
morning with the tailor who hemmed her dress, then she went
straight to Wright's Store and purchased a new pair of more
sensible shoes. Afterwards, when she stepped outside with her red
pumps packed in a box, the heat, mixed with the stench of cow dung,
stifled her mood beyond comprehension. All she could think of was
what Angus had said:
There's no way back
.
    There had to be, she
thought, as she walked past the saloon. She couldn't live the rest
of her life without seeing her family again. She might as well have
died in that accident. Or her entire family might as well have
died. Lord, she didn't need this kind of pain again. None of them
did. Not after losing Gregory last year.
    Just then, a towering
brute stepped