Chapter Seven: Hemlock and Old Lace

"The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree...
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I rued."

Robert Frost


Enos put the spoon into his empty bowl and reached for Daisy's.

"You didn't eat much," he said.

She tried to smile, but it got no further than pursed lips. Tears she felt he wouldn't understand were held stubbornly behind her eyes. Every instinct told her to tell him goodnight, leave, then run as fast she could away from there. It was 11:46 pm. She should have listened to her instincts.

But she didn't. Her only answer was to hand him the bowl.

When Mrs. Oxford let her into his room, she'd had every intention of telling Enos the predicament she was in, even if she had to retell him jer tale of woe day after day after day. She couldn't do it alone anymore. Aunt Lavinia had let her get this far without putting up a roadblock to stop her. She must want them to figure this out together. Had he come home at a decent hour, she'd have done it, even if him knowing only gave her a few hours of rest from carrying the knowledge alone. But it was 11:47 now. Thirteen minutes until midnight. Then, she would find herself waking in her bed at the farm without ever knowing how she got back there. Not enough time.

The library had all manner of books on the subject. Time travel had always fascinated Enos. She hadn't paid much attention to time before, thinking she had plenty of it. Of late, she'd thought of little else. Boy howdy, did she have time aplenty now! And it was taking her on a slow train to nowhere. Waiting for those last grains of sand to trickle into the bottom half of the hourglass until the end of day seventy-five, all she wanted now was was for it to give her more of this same-damn day. Now, she would have to try again if Aunt Lavinia would let her. One failure seemed all she was allowed.

While putting the dishes in the tiny sink, Enos was close enough to touch. She nearly reached out but pulled back. She should leave but seemed to be glued to the chair, overwhelming loneliness keeping her in a place that this new dynamic between them made all the lonelier.

Silence is the deadliest form of heartbreak. It creeps into the soul and slowly devours it. However, the termination of silence in his room that night was like a knife thrust into Daisy's heart.

"I have to tell you something," Enos said, still turned away from her.

She didn't respond right away, contemplating whether or not she should say the same to him. How could she explain in a few minutes the nightmare she'd been living for more than two months of their wedding day? She held it in.

"You can tell me anything, Enos."

"I wonder," he said softly, then took a deep breath. "Remember I told you, b'fore all this happened – the bank bein' robbed, us talkin' about gettin' married…I've been talkin' to Turk a lot."

"I remember."

"He's been tryin' to get me to come back to Los Angeles."

"You didn't say anything about that."

"That's 'cause I didn't take it real serious b'fore."

"But now you are?"

He nodded his head but still wouldn't turn to face her.

"Lieutenant Broggi talked to the LAPD Academy director. They're holdin' me a spot open for the next session."

He waited for a response, but all he found when he finally turned around was the vacuum of an empty room and a door left open.