“Yes,” I tell her. “I’m fine. Just cold.”
“Well, I imagine you are,” she tells me. “Marina!” she calls over her shoulder, before turning back to me. “You look almost my daughter’s age and size. We can borrow some of her dry clothing while we heat you up.”
Marina?
As in . . .
My grandmother appears behind the woman, only it can’t be my grandmother because this girl is around my age, and . . . she looks like every picture I’ve ever seen of Gran from when she was young.
Maybe I do have frostbite. Of the brain.
“Hello,” Gran says to me with her young mouth and twenty-two-year-old skin. “Are you okay? Where in the world did you come from?”
She rushes to her mother’s side. My great-grandmother? The woman in the photo over the mantel. The serious photo.
“I’m Marina,” young Gran tells me, as she pulls off my coat. She eyes it oddly, shaking it. “What’s your name?”
“Piper,” I tell them, and I feel a bit faint.
“What are you doing up here?” she asks. “Who are you with?”
Both women and the group of men wait for my answer, and with the facts being what they are, rather unbelievable, I choose not to share them.
In short, I lie. There’s no other way.
“I don’t know,” I tell them. Lying about it isn’t too hard, because I’m absolutely confused. Did I hit my head? Am I confused? Am I dreaming? “I can’t remember.”
Their heads all snap back in unison, their eyes wide.
“You mentioned a man,” Dale reminds me. “Someone named Dan. Do you remember him?”
“I thought I did,” I tell them. “When I first opened my eyes, I remembered him. But now everything feels cloudy.” I have to lie because the truth no longer makes sense. What seems to be happening can’t possibly be real, yet when I pinch my hand to make sure, I feel the pain. I stare around in confusion, and a group of equally confused faces stare back.
“I think she might need a doctor,” Dale says. “We should send word into town.”
“It’s getting dark now,” the woman says. My great-grandmother. With that in mind, I know her name is Sophie. “We’ll have to check tomorrow.”
“I’m fine,” I announce. “Maybe I’m just dreaming. Am I?”
“I’ll go in the morning,” Dale says, turning toward the kitchen. I know, because this is my house. But not my house. And Dale is Eberdale. A family name. He’s my great-grandfather.
“I think you should lie down,” Sophie tells me, and I’ve never heard a better idea. She and Gran escort me upstairs. As we turn the corner, I wonder which room they’ll put me in. They walk right past my actual bedroom and choose the one next to it. A much smaller room than mine.
But they don’t know I know that.
I sit on the bed, and Sophie bends to unlace my boots. “These are intricate,” she says, as she both unties and un-Velcros them. She eyes the Velcro with interest, as though she’s never seen it before.
I automatically reach for my phone, so I can google when Velcro was invented.
But my phone isn’t in my pocket. Just my grandfather’s compass.
“What year is this?” I ask politely as Marina, my grandmother, lifts my legs onto the bed.
She and Sophie stare at me in concern.
“Nineteen forty-four,” Marina says slowly.
“So World War II is still going on,” I say as I settle into the pillows. This room has rose wallpaper now, and I’m not a fan. Oh, and I’m in 1944. My head spins a bit, just like my compass had spun earlier.
“Yes, the war is still going,” Sophie says. “We don’t know when it will end.”
I do.
May 8, 1945.
But obviously I don’t announce that.
That would ruin the dream. And this must be a dream. This can’t actually be happening.
“I have a very vivid imagination, and I miss my grandmother very much,” I murmur. Yes, that’s what this is.
“Pardon?” Sophie asks.
I swallow. “I said, I think I’ll surely feel better if I rest for a while.”
“You’re probably right,” Sophie agrees. She pulls a blanket over me. “You rest, and I’ll check in on you later.”
“Thank you so much,” I tell her. She smiles.
“It’s my pleasure. I don’t get female guests here, so it’ll be nice to chat. When you’re feeling better, of course.”
She and Marina slip out, and I lie completely still.
Maybe I’m having a very lucid dream, and I’m actually still in the snowbank. Maybe I’m dead. Is this heaven? I pull out the compass and look at it. The hands are frozen now, broken. No matter which way I aim it, they stay the same. I lay it on the nightstand and stand up.
I feel like I’m in an episode of Supernatural or The Twilight Zone as I creep to the door and open it just a crack, peering out.
They’re gone now.
I tiptoe quietly down the hall, trying to get my bearings.
I look into my actual bedroom, and now it’s someone else’s. A man’s.
I examine the walls and am startled to find the magnolia wallpaper that I’d helped strip from the walls when I was a kid. Only, it’s not faded now.
There are knickknacks and photographs that I don’t recognize.
I creep back down the hall and linger near the railing overlooking the great room below. Voices drift up.
“Can’t imagine what an unchaperoned girl is doing up here,” a man says.
“She thinks she lives here,” Dale says. “She knows the name of the lodge.”
“She’s probably from town,” Sophie says.
“But how did she get up here? She should know never to hike during this time of year,” Marina says.
“Well, it don’t rightly matter,” another man says. “She’s here now. As soon as possible, we need to send word down to the town doc and let them know that we’ve got a girl here, in case anyone is missing her.”
“What if we can’t?” Marina asks. “It’s supposed to get bad today. You know as well as I do that any day now, it’ll be too snowy to get to town until the big thaw.”
“Don’t borrow trouble,” Sophie answers. “If it’s clear enough in the morning, we’ll send someone to town. Albert, could you go?”
“Of course,” a man answers.
Someone claps her hands, then Marina speaks. “I can’t believe it. Finally! Another girl!”
I can hear them walking, so I bound back down to the bedroom they’d left me in. I quietly slip back into bed.
I stare at the rose-patterned wall as I try to wrap my head around this.
“Mama, that elk stew smells delicious,” Marina says from downstairs.
“It always goes over well with the boarders,” Sophie answers. I sniff the air, and sure enough, something does smell amazing. My stomach growls in reaction. I haven’t eaten since Ellen’s sausage this morning.
Ellen.
Home.
My belly clenches. What must they be thinking? Dan, Ellen, Shelly. Do they think I’m dead?
“I can make the cornbread, if you want,” Marina tells Sophie. Their voices get farther away. It feels like my hold on reality fades with them. I know that whatever this is shouldn’t be happening, yet here I am, in my house but not my house.