SAN JUAN ISLAND, WASHINGTON TERRITORY 1873

Sprawled facedown on a hard-packed dirt floor, Jackson Rafferty regained consciousness slowly. For a moment he felt like a man coming out of a deep, contented sleep. Then reality hit. He'd had another blackout.

Ice-cold dread washed over him in waves. His teeth began to chatter. At his sides, his hands scraped through the dirt and formed shaking fists. A vague, amorphous fear hovered at the back of his mind, gaining momentum with every beat of his heart. It coalesced into a single, terrifying thought; the same thought he always had upon waking, the same fear.

No, he thought desperately. Not my children. I wouldn't hurt my children....

Liar. The word pounded through his brain. A small, terrified moan slipped from his lips. Every morning the first thing he did was check on his children to make sure he hadn't inadvertantly hurt them in the night. It was irrational, he knew. A legacy from the horrible nightmare of his past. Now, supposedly, he was cured. Yet still, he had the terrifying blackouts. Still he awoke afraid. Oh, God ...

Shaking, he got to his hands and knees. At the movement, his head spun, nausea yanked his empty stomach.

He sat back on his heels, waiting for the familiar quea-siness to pass. Gradually his vision cleared. Behind him, a lantern rested on the workbench, sputtering pale golden light into the night. In its glow, he saw the shadowy outline of two stalls. The comforting smells of musty wood, dust, and fresh hay filtered to his nostrils.

The barn. He was in his own barn.

All at once he remembered coming here. His gaze shot to the workbench, where a cradle lay, half-finished and forgotten. A saw and hammer lay on the floor where he'd dropped them.

He'd been reaching for the can of nails when the storm hit. The last thing he remembered was the sudden volley of rain, pounding the roof like gunfire.

Gunfire.

Memories catapulted him back in time. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to remember, not to feel.

As always, he had no control; his efforts were a feeble, useless waste of time. The visions clawed at him, sucked him once again into a depression so deep and dark and consuming, he couldn't imagine finding his way out. Dear God, he couldn't live like this anymore....

Breathing hard, trembling, Jack forced his watery legs to a stand, and staggered to the workbench. It was there, waiting for him, gleaming dully in the lamplight. His Remington army revolver.

Taking a deep, calming breath, he curled his work-calloused fingers around the pistol's grip. The cool metal handle warmed at his touch, felt comforting and familiar.

"So easy." The words slipped past his lips before he knew he was going to say them. It would be so easy. One shot and the misery would end. His family would be safe.

He lifted the gun. It seemed to grow heavier, uncomfortably so. The muscles in his forearm tightened in response.

Cold metal kissed his temple like an old friend.

He pressed slightly. The muzzle squeezed against his flesh; he knew from experience it would leave a small, circular indentation in his skin. His hold on the grip tightened, his trigger finger slipped into place.

It's now or never.

Sweat beaded Jack's forehead and crawled along his scalp. Warm rivulets slid into his eyes and blurred his vision. His finger vibrated against the cold steel trigger.

Do it. Do it, damn you....

He deserved to die. His wife had told him so a thousand times. God knew he wanted it, deserved it, ached for it. Everyone wanted him to do it.

They'd be better off without him. Amarylis had made sure he understood that. Savannah and Katie were too young yet to fully understand his failure, but soon. Soon ...

And now there would be another baby, another innocent life. The baby deserved better than to have Jack as his father. ...

"Daddy!"

Through a fog of self-loathing and fear, Jack heard his daughter's voice. Instinctively he yanked the gun from his temple and threw it down. It clattered against the wall and skidded along the workbench. His palm immediately felt cold and damp and empty.

Maybe next time. But even as he thought the words, he knew they were another lie. He didn't have the strength of character to commit suicide.

And why should he? he thought dully. He'd been a coward for a very long time.

The barn door banged open and a gust of wind whooshed inside. "Daddy, are you there?"

"Yeah, Savannah, I'm here." He turned to look at his twelve-year-old daughter. She stood silhouetted in the open door, her hands knotted nervously in her long woolen skirt.

She started to take a step toward him, then stopped. Uncertainty tugged at one corner of her mouth.

His own daughter was afraid of him. Jack felt a rush of self-hatred so strong, it made him want to smash his fist into something. But years of practice kept him perfectly still. Not a hint of emotion crossed his face or crept into his narrowed eyes. "What is it, Savannah?"

She chewed nervously on her lower lip. "Mama said to come quick. Her time's come."

"Now? But she's not due until? Shit!" He pushed past Savannah and ran into the cold, dark night. Rain pummeled his face and blurred his vision as he ran toward the house.

Christ, while he'd been putting a gun to his head, his wife had been preparing to give birth to his child.

What the hell kind of man was he?

"God forgive me," he murmured.

But, of course, he had no hope of that.

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON. 1993

Tess Gregory paced nervously from one end of her small office to the other, her hands twined in a cold, bloodless ball. The silence that she'd long ago learned to accept seemed suddenly oppressive, suffocating. For the fifth time in as many minutes, she glanced down at the Mickey Mouse watch on her wrist.

Twelve o'clock. She let out her breath in an anxious sigh. The results should have been back by now. Certainly if her latest experiment had been successful?

No. She refused to think negatively even for a moment.

She knew better than most the value of positive thinking. Wearing a rut in the utilitarian gray carpet and worrying herself sick wouldn't do a bit of good. The lab would get back to her in their own sweet time, and until then, she simply had to relax. To believe.

Tess squeezed her eyes shut. It was an old childhood trick to calm her ragged nerves, one she'd often used as the doctors poked and prodded and asked questions she could no longer hear. She blacked out the physical world and focused on the one special noise that was captured forever in her memory: laughter. As always, it came to her quickly, lifting her spirits and easing the gnawing anxiety from her stomach.

She pried her fingers apart and shoved her hands into her lab coat's deep pockets. Taking a deep breath to calm her racing nerves, she tilted her chin and sailed past the cushioned beige walls of her cubicle.

In the employee dining room, lunch hour was in full swing. Dozens of white-coated people were clustered around the long, rectangular table. Heaps of Styrofoam food and drink containers littered the wood-grain veneer tabletop. The mingled aromas of microwaved leftovers, old coffee, and hospital disinfectants hung heavily in the air.

They were all talking animatedly to one another, mouths and hands moving at the speed of light. It was like an old Charlie Chaplin movie: the only thing missing from the vibrant scene was sound.

Tess moved restlessly past the bank of vending machines and went to the room's only window. Hugging herself against the slight chill that seeped through the thin glass, she stared outside.

It was an ordinary spring day: wet and gray. The kind of day that encouraged Seattleites to seek travel packages on Maui. Ash-hued, moisture-thick clouds hung above the city, obscuring the rooftops and casting the streets in shadow. Rain pattered cement sidewalks and plunked in overfull, leaf-clogged gutters. Puddles shone on the pavement like haphazardly thrown silver coins.

A good day for miracles.

The thought came before she could control it. She knew she shouldn't even think it?thinking was the first step to hoping, and hoping was the first step to disappointment. But no matter how often or how loudly she told herself not to hope, she'd never been able to follow her own advice.

Maybe today was her mantra, her lifeline. It was the

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same hope she had every morning as she stood at the corner of Third and Virginia, waiting for the bus that would whisk her here, to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The hope never died, even after countless failures. In fact, with each defeat, it grew stronger.

She rested her forehead against the pane, suppressing a quick shudder as the icy window chilled her skin. The answer was right under her nose; she could feel it. All she had to do was find the right key. If these tests didn't give her the answers she needed, she'd try again. And again and again and again.

That's what Tess loved about life and science?anything and everything was possible if a person truly believed.

And Tess had always believed.

The yellow light on the wall above her head blipped on and off. It was the beeper system the hospital had devised to reach Tess and other hearing-impaired employees anywhere in the building.

Excitement brought her head up. Her heartbeat accelerated. Unable to keep a grin off her face, she hurried back to her office.

Dr. Weinstein was already there, holding a manila folder of test results.

She skidded to a halt. Her heart and hopes and prayers were in her eyes as she looked up at him. Her breath caught as she waited for the results.

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

Her knees went weak with disappointment. She sank unsteadily into the tufted vinyl chair behind her desk.

Dr. Weinstein squeezed her shoulder and tossed the file on the desk. She cast him a weary sideways glance and forced a smile. "Maybe next time," she said quietly, thankful for once that she couldn't hear her own voice. She was sick and tired of saying the same thing. Over and over and over.

Tess shoved the papers in her briefcase and followed Dr. Weinstein out of her office. She needed to walk, be alone for a while. Regroup.

Shrugging into her Eddie Bauer raincoat, she hurried down the stairs and went outside. The cold dampness of a late Seattle afternoon hit her full in the face. Rain pattered the thick Gortex of her hood; she felt each drop as a vibration of remembered sound.

She turned her face skyward. Cool water splattered her cheeks and nose and closed eyelids. The icy feel of it refreshed her, reminded her with unexpected force that she was alive. With life there was always hope, and with hope, anything was possible.

Tightening her grip on the briefcase, she started down the hill toward the bus stop, moving cautiously down the rain-slicked sidewalk. Beside her, buses and cars and taxis zipped through the gray drizzle. She could feel the vibrations of the moving vehicles as a gentle humming beneath her feet. The cherished sound-memories of honking horns and blaring sirens echoed through her fertile imagination, reminding her of the days, long ago and before spinal meningitis, when the ordinary noises of life had not been withheld from her.

She was just about to step in a tire-sized mud puddle when she caught herself. She wrenched sideways at the last minute and lurched toward the curb.

After that, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. A messenger-service bicycle slammed into her back and sent her careening into the street. She stumbled on the slick pavement and skidded out of control. Her briefcase flew out of her hand and sailed through the air. It hit the pavement hard and snapped open. Papers scattered and stuck to the bumpy asphalt. Rain riveted them in place.

The acrid stench of burning rubber filled the air. She froze. Heart hammering in her chest, she spun around and saw the bus heading right for her. A scream locked in her throat and issued past her lips as a low, terrified moan. She didn't even have time to pray.

Tess drifted gently on a tide of warm water, wrapped in layers of smooth black velvet. The world around her was soothingly dark. She washed closer and closer to the shore, and knew she should reach out and grab hold, but she was tired. So tired . ..

"Tess, wake up, honey. I've got a schedule to meet." A woman's harsh, gravelly voice pierced the blackness.

Tess edged reluctantly toward consciousness. Her eyelids fluttered, tried futilely to open.

"I think she's awake," came a man's deep, rich voice.

"Really?" The woman's voice again. "Tess? Are you awake?"

She could hear! Tess snap

ped to a sit and glanced wildly around.

There was nothing to see. Nothing?and no one? except a seemingly endless expanse of star-studded night sky. Tiny, eye-splittingly bright lights vibrated and blinked like the Milky Way.

She started to panic. Her heart pounded painfully in her chest, turning every breath into a burning spurt of fire.

Calm down, Tess. Get a grip.

Cautiously she eased back and found that she was sitting in one of those Art Linkletter chairs. She drew a deep, shaking breath and let it out slowly. Her white-knuckled fingers eased their clawlike grip off the cushy armrests. An easy chair. What was so weird about that?

Nothing, she told herself. Nothing at all.

Then she noticed that her feet were dangling in the air.

She gasped. There was no floor beneath her, no walls around her. She was sitting in a black chair in the middle

JO

of a black void with a thousand stars twinkling all around her. Alone.

She was dreaming, she realized suddenly. Dreaming she was sitting in a chair in the middle of space, dreaming she could hear, dreaming? "Tess?"

There it was again, that scratchy boilermaker-and-tobacco-fed voice, coming at Tess from the nothingness around her. Surely if she were going to dream a voice, it wouldn't sound like that. "Y-Yes?" she said, for lack of something better. "I'm Carol. Your guide. Do you have any questions before we begin?"

Tess started to say, "Begin what?" then changed her mind to the more obvious question. "Where am I?"

There was a long pause before the voice said cautiously, "You don't remember?" "Remember what?" "The ... bus."

Tess stopped breathing. Memory hurled her back onto that rain-slicked Seattle street. She remembered the acrid, stinking smell of burning rubber, the driver's horrified expression through the dirty windshield. Sounds she couldn't possibly have heard battered her with hurricane force: squealing brakes, a honking horn, her own strangled sound of terror.

She'd been hit by the bus. She glanced around. Maybe this wasn't a dream after all. Maybe it was ... the other side. "Am I dead?" There was a sigh of relief. "Yep." Tess shivered and hugged herself. "Oh." "Now that that's settled, let's get on with it," Carol said matter-of-factly. "This here's the theater of second chances. Your life on earth?the first one?it was sort of ..." Carol's scratchy voice trailed off.

"Fine."

"Yes, precisely. But 'fine' isn't good enough. God, in His infinite wisdom, makes sure everyone gets one happy life before they move on. So, hon, you get another chance."

"I don't understand."

"It's simple. Your first life was so-so. Now you get to choose another. I studied your history very closely, and I think I know the problem. Your childhood in the foster care system left something to be desired. What you need is someone special and a family of your own. I've chosen a dozen suitable candidates. Each one needs you as much as you need him. All you have to do is push the button when one of them strikes your fancy."

Tess smiled wryly. "Sort of a 'Dating Game' for the dead? What's next?'Bowling for Celestial Dollars'?"

"Hey, that's good! But?oh, shh. The show is starting. Just push the button when it feels right. I'll do the rest."

A single red button appeared on the chair's stark black arm. Pale red light throbbed against the dark fabric. "It's a dream, right?" Tess said to the voice. "I'm sedated now and in surgery. Am I right?"

"Shh. Watch."

The stars sprayed out in front of Tess slowly melded together, becoming a huge white rectangle wreathed in jet black nothingness. A screen.

She leaned forward. Even though she knew it was a dream, she couldn't help feeling a quick rush of suspense. Her fingers curled nervously around the tufted armrest.

A dot of color appeared in the exact center of the white screen. It started small, no larger than a nickel. For a heartbeat it quivered, silent and alone. Then whaml it exploded into a full-color picture of a man in a gray flannel suit waving for a cab.

He was an attractive man. Young. Obviously affluent.

Tess settled deeper in her chair. Her finger moved toward the button, but she didn't push. Instead, she studied him with the critical, detail-sensitive eyes of a woman used to relying on sight for her impressions of the world. The man was clutching an Italian leather briefcase as if it contained the plans for a nuclear bomb. Or, more likely, a summer house in the Hamptons. His hair was precisely combed, maybe even moussed. There were no laugh lines around his eyes. No earring marred his conservative image. His tie was a regimental blue stripe, his shirt plain white.

Her finger eased off the button.

The scene switched to a snowy hillside. A man in faded blue jeans and knee-length duster was shoving hay into a long wooden feeding bin. Breath billowed in white clouds from his mouth. Behind him was a whitewashed, porched farmhouse that looked a hundred years old.

Tess let the cowboy pass. Someone else could ride the range.

Next came a man playing volleyball on the beach. His body was well muscled, browned to tanning bed perfection. Pale blond hair clung to his sweaty face as he spiked the winning shot. Several women on the sidelines cheered loudly, and he gave each of them a playboy wink. Tess winced. Yuck.

The stud was replaced by a knight in shining armor. Literally. He moved woodenly, clanging with every step across the stone floor, muttering words in a language Tess couldn't understand. The scene looked exactly like a production of Macbeth she'd once seen at a theater for the deaf in Boston.

Tess's finger didn't go anywhere near the button. Egotistical actors weren't for her. She had no desire to be the wind beneath his wings. Men and lives merged into one another, became a hyp-

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notic blur of color and questions and possibilities. Still Tess sat there, her finger hovering over the red button that would supposedly grant her another life. She didn't believe a word of it, of course, but somehow she couldn't hit the button?even to play along. Especially not with the kind of men who kept showing up. (Currently there was a man in a space suit hovering in front of her.)

The spaceman melted away. Slowly the color onscreen softened. A man appeared, standing alone and in the shadows. He was standing beside an old wooden crib, staring down at a baby wrapped in a bundle of woolen blankets. His big shoulders were hunched, his fingers were curled tightly around the crib's top rail. The quiet strains of his breathing reached her ears, filling her senses like long-sought-after music.

Tess felt his quiet desperation like a noose around her neck.

He moved forward, and the shadows fell away, revealing a once handsome and now haggard face framed by jet black hair badly in need of a trim. He stared down at the child. One finger at a time, as if each motion were fraught with danger, he lifted his hand and reached toward the baby's cheek. Halfway there, he froze. His fingers trembled. Tears glistened in the corners of his eyes, and he yanked his hand back.

God, how he loves that child.

Then he was gone.

Tess slammed her palm down on the button.

"He's the one?" Carol's voice sounded soft and deceptively close.

Tess nodded slowly, shaken and confused by the intensity of the emotions she'd felt. As someone who'd spent a lifetime isolated and alone, watching, she knew little of stormy passions and wrenching heartache. And yet, when she'd looked into his eyes, she'd seen pain, real pain, and something more. Some dark, aching emotion that ripped past her natural optimism and frightened her.

There had been something about him, something in his defeated gaze that cut like a knife blade through her heart. She'd learned long ago to read people's eyes and see beyond their words, yet never had she glimpsed a soul in such agony.

"I don't know," she murmured. "I felt such ... pain."

"I understand, hon. You've always been a healer at heart. Good luck. You'll need it with that one."

There was a wisp of rose-colored light, a scent of smoke, and then nothing. Tess knew without question that she was alone again.

"What now?" she asked of no one in particular, and flopped back in her chair.

Except there was no chair. No chair, no floor, no walls. There was only an immense sky of midnight black spack-led with stars so bright, they hurt the eyes.

Tess whizzed by the moon and kept falling.

Pain. Immense, incalculable pain.

Tess lay perfectly still. She tried to breathe and found that even that simple action hurt. Every square inch of her body felt battered and broken. Even her breasts ached.

Why? Why did she feel like this?

She'd been hit by a bus.

The memory came at her like a hard right punch, catching her square in the gut. Her breath expelled in a sharp rush. Her lungs burned at the effort. No wonder she hurt. She was lucky to be alive.

Or was she?

Am I dead?

She remembered uttering that small, quiet question, remembered the endless star-spangled night sky and Carol's barroom voice. Yep.

Just as she'd thought. It had all been a dream. Or a painkiller-induced hallucination. Or one of those near-death experiences inquiring minds loved so much.

She moved a fraction of an inch and immediately regretted it. Red-hot pain twisted her midsection, brought a surge of nausea so strong, she thought she'd vomit. All thoughts of life after death vanished.

She felt as if she'd been hit by a bus.

It had all been a dream. There was no second chance for Tess; no family to join or ability to hear. No man standing by a crib, reaching out.

She was surprised by the sharp regret that flashed through her. She'd really wanted that second chance at life. At love. No one in this life would have missed her.

Disappointed, she closed her eyes and sank back into the darkness of oblivion.

She was dreaming she could hear. "... blood loss ... don't know ... not good ..." Tess clawed her way to consciousness. The pain was still there, gnawing with dull teeth at her midsection, but it was more manageable now. She said a quick prayer to the God of anesthesia and coaxed her eyes open.

She was in a huge bed, looking up at the floor. She frowned in concentration, willing her tired eyes to do their job, and h

er equally tired brain to function. Blinking, she tried again.

It wasn't a floor. It was a ceiling built of oak boards. "Dead? Don't know . . . possible."

Tess gasped. She'd heard that! She struggled up to her elbows. The effort left her shaking and winded and in inconceivable pain. Her head pounded. She found a stationary lump of black and focused on it.

The lump became a shadow, the shadow became an old man. Sparse gray hair studded his pointed, balding head. Thin wire-rimmed glasses perched precariously on his beaklike nose. Rheumy eyes stared into her own.

"Mrs. Rafferty? Axe you okay?"

Tess glanced around for Mrs. Rafferty.

He scooted his stool closer. The wooden legs made a squeaking, scraping sound. He laid a skeletal, blue-veined hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. "Welcome back."

This was no dream. She could really hear.

"Whaas?" Tess tried to speak, but her throat felt as if she'd been screaming for hours. She signed her question instead: What's wrong with me?

The man glanced over his shoulder at the shadows in the room's corner. "It's like she's trying to say something. ..." He leaned closer and peered into her eyes. "I'm Doc Hayes. Do you recollect me?"

She shook her head no.

He frowned and pushed to his feet.

Even in the midst of her pain, she marveled at the slow, tired shuffling of the doctor's footsteps. After so many years of silent nothingness, the common, everyday sound of his bootheels scuffing across the floor was indescribably wonderful.

He melted into the shadows by the door. "I don't know, Jack. It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen. I was pretty sure she was dead. This ain't the sort o' thing one sees ever' day. She might be sort o' ... different for a while. Who knows? Appears her memory's shot to hell."

"What can we do for her?" It was another male voice, softer and richer. The warm, brandy-soft sound of it sent a tingle slithering down Tess's spine.

"I don't know," the doc answered. "But if she gets a fever or takes a turn for the worse, send someone for me."

The shadows moved. The door creaked open, then clicked shut. She was alone.

Confusion swirled about her like a thick, gray fog, drawing her into the mists. Tiredly she glanced around her hospital room, but the shadows were so thick, she couldn't make out much beyond her own bed. Yet something about the darkened room felt weird. Apprehension tingled along the back of her neck. She'd been in enough hospitals to recognize one, even in the dark. Where was the familiar antiseptic smell and muted buzz of fluorescent lighting? And docs hadn't made house calls since Welby.

Minutes ticked by, quietly, without the marching tick of a clock to herald their passing. She stared up at the strange ceiling, feeling the warmth and light from the lamp beside her bed. The acrid scent of a burning wick teased her nostrils.

So strange, she thought. Everything was so damned strange.

Before she could figure out why, she was asleep again.

Tess tried to force her eyes open, but the painful throbbing behind them made it impossible. She tossed uncomfortably.

Something cool touched her forehead. It felt unbelievably good. A soft sigh of relief slipped past her parched lips.

After a few moments she was able to open her eyes. The first thing she saw was that weird floor/ceiling again.

"Oh, crap," she mumbled. She thought for sure she'd waken to the comfortingly familiar sight of white acoustical tile and long tubes of fluorescent lighting.

The cool, damp rag on her forehead vanished. A flesh-tone smear wobbled in front of her eyes. She blinked, tried to focus. Gradually the blur coalesced into a man's face that seemed both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

He shoved a too long lock of black hair out of his eyes and bent closer. Tired, bloodshot eyes peered questioningly into her own. Stubbly, dark hair accentuated the hollowness in his cheeks and the hard, masculine line of his jaw. Tess frowned. A wisp of memory winged through her head, and she tried desperately to chase it down. Somewhere she'd seen this face before.

It came to her in a flash. He looked sort of like a young Sam Elliot ... on a very bad day.

But why did the man look so utterly exhausted, as if he'd sat vigil by her bed for endless hours? There was no one who cared about her so much.

An intern, she realized suddenly. He had to be the intern assigned to her case. She'd seen that ragged, haggard look before?it was a surgical intern on the tail end of a three-day round.

"Amarylis?"

"No, thanks, I don't drink." The moment the words were out of her mouth, she realized that something was wrong with her voice. It sounded ... southern. / doan draank.

"What?"

A headache jackhammered across her head. She squeezed two fingers against her temples. "Forget the liquor. What I need is an Excedrin the size of Baltimore, and a look at my charts."

"Charts?"

It took a supreme effort to remain civil. "Just tell the doc in charge of my case that I'm conscious and I'd like to consult about my condition. Okay?"

"H-He's not here."

One eyebrow cocked upward. "Golf day at the club?"

"Golf?"

Tess clamped her dry lips together and didn't say a thing. It was best that way.

He offered her a tense smile. "Do you want to see the baby?"

Tess frowned. She thought he'd said "baby."

She was about to suggest he get some sleep when a question crept cautiously into her consciousness. What if Carol hadn't been a dream? What if?

She chewed nervously on her lower lip and stared up at him. "Baby?"

"You ... don't remember?"

She winced. The last time someone had asked her that question, Tess had forgotten getting run over by a bus. That kind of memory lapse did nothing to inspire confidence. Cautiously she said, "No."

"Yesterday you had a baby. Our son."

She started shaking, and all of a sudden remembered where she'd seen this man. He wasn't an intern. He was the man she'd chosen in the theater of second chances.

"Oh my God ..." She clamped a hand over her mouth.

It had been real. Real.

The bus had killed her. She'd died in Seattle and been reborn in the body of a woman who'd died in childbirth. Questions and concerns and hopes and fears tumbled one after another in her mind. What did one do at a time like this? Laugh, cry, scream?what?

One thing at a time, Tess. Only one.

She took a deep breath and offered him a tenuous smile. "I?I need some time here. To think. How about getting me that aspirin?" At his utterly blank stare, she added, "Acetaminophen is fine, too. Whatever you have. That and a glass of ice water would be great."

"Aceta?what?"

"Tylenol."

He shook his head. "I don't understand, Amarylis. What are you asking for?"

Tess shoved her hand through the bunched-up sheets in search of the nurses' button. Except there was no button; no button, no metal railing, no utilitarian food tray. There was only a splintery, old-fashioned wooden bed.

The woman had given birth at home?

Tess shivered. No wonder the poor woman had died.

She glanced around the room for a bottle of something?anything?that would take the edge off her migraine. Sunlight spilled through a small, thick-paned window and splashed across a dull, planked floor. Blue

gingham curtains hung listlessly on either side of the small window, their hand-hemmed edges bleached from too many days in the sun. No flowers peeked through the glass or brightened the sill. Against the far wall, standing alone and unadorned with photos or knick-knacks, was an oaken washstand with a tilted mirror. A white crockery ewer and basin sat dead center on a wrinkled white scrap of lace.

A prickly-hot feeling crawled through Tess. Reluctantly she shot a look sideways, and immediately winced. The bedside table was a fruit crate turned

on its side, and the lamp was a small, triangular glass jar with a wick sticking out of the narrow top. Tucked beside the crate was a pink porcelain chamber pot.

Horror rounded her eyes. She thought of the cowboy and the knight in shining armor, and shook her head in denial.

No, Carol wouldn 't do that to me....

"What is it?" the man asked anxiously. "Should I call Doc Hayes?"

"Where am I?"

"At home ... on San Juan Island."

Tess felt a tiny stirring of relief. At least she was still in Washington; she could get home from here.

But her location wasn't really the issue, and she knew it. She took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut. It took every scrap of courage she possessed to ask the next question: "What year is it?"

There was a heartbeat's pause before he said quietly, "It's 1873."

"Oh, no." She covered her mouth with her hand. "Oh, shit ..."

Eighteen seventy-three.

No television, telephone, electricity. And that was just for starters. How was she supposed to live without showers, razors, tampons?

"No way." She curled her hands into fists and screamed at the top of her lungs. "CAROL!!!"