Edwina's Second Chance Ch. 02

"A clothing store," he smiled, as they came to a stop in a curious sort of driveway behind a line of other vehicles.

"Where are we now?" she asked, and Tommy slowly began to see that he'd been correct in his assumption. This woman had no clue or idea of anything going on around her because she'd never seen it before. It was going to make things a lot harder for her in many ways – and he still didn't know how this was possible.

He pointed as he slid the truck forward a few feet, "That place there is a coffeeshop. Rather than take you in there and have you feel even more strangely as the people in it stare at you over the way that you're dressed, we're going to make our purchases right here in the truck. People today are all about convenience. Some of the degree of that makes even me shake my head, but that's the way it is. I usually get out and walk inside to buy my coffee."

Edwina sat astounded when he pulled up to a large box and a voice began to speak with him very loudly out of it. There wasn't the room inside of it for any person to be in there. He placed his order and then they moved ahead. She asked him about it and he laughed a little after thinking about it and it took a little explanation.

When they got to the window, Edwina had more to stare over as she watched the transaction. He set their cups into round holes between them and explained that it was what they were for. Then they pulled off to a vacant place to stop and he turned to her to explain that he'd bought her a very hot beverage and he opened the lid for her, "Sip this very carefully, Edwina. I bought you a large cup of coffee and it's hot enough to burn you. The cup is made of cardboard –another kind of paper, so be very careful."

He showed her how to drink it and she tried some, almost scalding her lip, but when she hurriedly set it back in the place before she burned her hand, she said that it was good and that she quite liked it.

He nodded, but got to a point that had come to him the minute before. "The money that you showed me, I think that there might have been ten or eleven pennies' worth there, all told, am I right?"

She thought about it and nodded, "I guess, why?"

"I just want to show you something about money,' he said, "As far as you seem to know, it's one hundred and fifty-eight years ago. The money had a certain value then. I might imagine that you could buy a loaf of bread for a half-penny or maybe a penny, right?"

She nodded, "For a penny, I could by a large loaf of very good bread, but I always made my own,"

He nodded, "I thought so. But in the system here, one hundred pennies makes a dollar. We measure the worth of things in dollars. The cups of coffee that I bought for us cost about a dollar and a half each. It's called inflation. The prices slowly rise because the worth of the money slowly lessens. Judging by your expression, you must think that I've just spent a fortune on little more than something to drink, but I assure you that it was little to me, and thought I'm not a rich man; this cost was nothing to me.

This truck that we're in cost well over twenty thousand dollars; closer to thirty, actually. One can't buy a house around here for much less than two hundred thousand dollars currently. I doubt that it's even possible in this area."

"Tommy," Edwina said very quietly, "Tommy, I do not know what to say at all of this. This," she waved her hand and struck the glass of the closed window, "This is Briarvale? Tommy, I went to Briarvale not two years ago and it looked nothing like what I see around me. I do not understand."

He nodded, "I don't either. I had a thought that given what I knew to have happened, then maybe you might be the manifestation of a spirit – the ghost of Edwina Gibbons. But Edwina, while I don't particularly believe in ghosts, I think that I can understand, given the things that I've read about them by other people.

Ghosts – if they exist – exist where they lived, and wander in only a small area. I've read of ghosts who appear where they died, and in buildings where the floor was raised a little in renovations. Those ghosts look very short, since they are still walking on the original floor. They don't know or understand what happened since.

Buy you're here and – lean forward just a little, if you wouldn't mind."

She leaned and Tommy saw the way that she seat reacted to her shifting weight. He felt the damp warmth on the material from her sweat-soaked clothing. "Alright, please sit back again.

All that I know is that you can't be a ghost, Edwina. You interact with me – that is, we can converse with each other. If you were to unfasten your seat belt, and I started my truck, we'd hear a warning buzzer that your seat there is occupied, but the belt is not fastened around you. If you were a ghost, you'd have no weight and the truck wouldn't notice, so no alarm would sound."

He sighed then, "but I already know that you are no ghost. I can say that as a certainty." He pointed to the dark plastic lid of her coffee cup. "See that shiny spot? That's where the end of your nose touched the plastic lid. It's shiny because you're a living person. We all have oils in our skin as often as we might wash them away.

It leaves us with a problem. Either you are a woman who suffers from delusions of living in a time long ago – and I've seen enough to think that it's not the case, just from observing the way that you've clearly never seen the things that you've seen in the last hour – or you are Edwina Gibbons, back from somewhere and in the same place where you once lived."

Edwina looked a little frightened then, "Then, ... Bruster really is dead? And, ... if I am to believe you, then my home is no longer mine, but it is yours now?

He nodded a little both times. "It gets worse. To live in the present age, you might say, everything is about an identity. Governments back in your day had no way to keep track of people, other than written documents. You saw me buy these beverages, but you did not see me use any money – and yet the value of the coffee was purchased by me just the same. Things today are done lightning-fast, and the world seems a much smaller place.

To get to England – if you wished to go there in 1856, it would take you a couple of weeks just to get to a port so that you could board a ship and then sail for a couple more weeks to reach England.

Today, Edwina, anyone with sufficient money in any form could be standing in front of the gates of Queen Elizabeth's palace being turned away by the guards by tomorrow afternoon. "

He looked away while he let that sink in for a moment.

"You see that thin white line up there in the sky? That's caused by the water vapor in the engines of an aircraft very high up, over five miles above us. It burns fuel; something like this truck does, and doing that releases water vapor, which freezes instantly into tiny ice crystals in the cold air up there. They hang up there in a long line for a while. You could be on that aircraft and flying almost anywhere on Earth in a matter of hours.

There's a police station here at the other end of town. Today, the constables are both male and female because women are more equal today than they were in your time."

"Can women vote here?" she asked and he nodded.

"Yes. Women today are the equals of men in most places on earth, even more than equal in some ways. But that wasn't my point. If you want me to, we'll drive right over to that police station and after asking me all sorts of questions which will try my patience in many ways, they'll start in on you, wanting to find out how you came to be here when you plainly cannot have just risen from wherever you were for a century and a half.

Somewhere, they'd have to believe, there would have to be a record of your birth, and you can't be nearly two hundred years old and be living. I have a ton of paper which proves who I am, where I was born and when, where I've worked, where I've lived, and live now, how much I paid for the property I own.

I could take you to that women's shelter. It's a place for abused women to run to for safety. Things like you said to me about Armbruster still happen, though a lot more rarely that they once did. Things like that are against some very strict laws today. They'd take care of you well, and they'd get the police involved because they'd have to."

He turned to her with a soft smirk, "These things are what have been breaking my tiny male mind for the last little while, since I can't understand it either."

His expression changed into something a bit more serious then. "But I'll take you there if you say that you want to go, right now, if that's what you'd want. I guess that after tons of questioning, they'd eventually see that no matter what; you're here and alive, though I doubt that they'd believe that you're the same Edwina Gibbons. Sometime after that, they'd see that you have no clue about any of this either, and they'd have to get you set up as a person with an identity, so that you could begin living your life."

"That does not sound terribly attractive to me as a choice, Tommy," she said, "You are the only person that I know here, quite plainly. Must I do this now?"

He shook his head, "Soon. You ought to do it soon, Edwina, but I don't think a day or two would make much difference. I have a thought, but you'd have to agree with it.

I was thinking that I could just drive us to my home and we could have dinner together. As I said, I live alone with my dog. The house is large, as you might recall, and before we spilt up, my ex-wife moved into another room for a couple of weeks. She left a few of her clothes and things there when she left, and you look to be about the same size as close as I can tell, anyway.

I guess that I should have cleaned it all out a long time ago, but the whole thing was a lot of pain for me. I just go in there to dust now and then. You might find something more comfortable to wear and you could stay the night, so that we can try to think of the best way to do all of this. I can offer you a clean bed and you won't have to think of how you'll get food. You do eat food, don't you?"

"I never thought that it would ever be anything that I'd ever have to wonder about, Tommy," she said, "but I am a little hungry, and I think that I would like to see the house and farm again. But you're sure that Bruster is gone? He's really dead?"

He nodded, "That's about the only thing that I'm sure of. There is only one Bruster in that house and he's my dog. I got his name from an old song. I never thought of your asshole husband when I named him. If I'd have known then what I know now, he'd have a different name, for damned sure."

"I'm not sure that I understand why," she said.

Tommy fought it, but he found himself blushing a little, "I'm not what you might call a lady's man by any means. I knew some girls back when I was just a kid and I had a few girlfriends in my time. But then I met Mandy and things changed for me."

He sighed as he reached for his coffee, "I've never understood about a couple of things in the way that people are sometimes. For me, it was hard enough to find someone to spend my life with."

He looked out at the sky again, "Why some men have to be the way that they are is beyond me. If you love somebody, then know your good fortune. If it comes apart, then it comes apart. That's what happened to me and Mandy, but I never had the thought to hit her over anything."

He took a sip then and she watched his eyebrows rise at a thought in his mind, "Then again, I never had the thought that if I did it right and put everything into loving my woman, that she'd ever tell me that she wanted to leave me and not ever really tell me why, either."

He turned then, "So I guess the choice is yours, Edwina. We can go to see the, uh, constables, or the nice ladies at the shelter who will likely stare daggers at me wondering what I did to you," he chuckled for a moment, "Or I can just take us to that house where we can try to think of the best thing for you to do. It's early on a Friday evening and most of the services that you'd need to access are closed for the weekend, other than the police and the shelter.

I can take Monday off from work and get you in contact with whoever you decide on then. I can offer you some company between a man and his dog, clean clothing, and a way to wash the sweat of the day off, and a few meals. Bruster and I won't mind."

He chuckled after a second, "Hell, he'd be thrilled."

Edwina thought about it and then her next questions threw him.

"Were you ever a sailor, and are you now a gentleman, Tommy?"

He almost spilled his coffee as he choked for a moment. When he had it together, he looked at her quizzically, "A sailor?"

She pointed to the tattoos on his arm and he felt her fingertip touch the side of his neck for an instant, "Where I am from – or the time of it, perhaps, no man wore things such as these on his skin but sailors perhaps, or ruffians. What I have seen on you are fair wonders to me in a way, but it makes me wonder. Whence did you get them and why?"

He shrugged, "Many people have them now, women as well. I think I understand your question, though. When I was a kid, the only ones who had them might not have been people who you might have wanted to know. I got these over time because I liked them, and I'd have to say that it wasn't really for anyone other than myself. My wife didn't much care.

As far as being a gentleman, well I know how to be polite in company and I even know which hand holds the fork when I eat, if that's what you mean."

Edwina found herself smiling a little, "Well then, let's have a few days at a house that I hope does not affect me too much to be in. It was a prison to me for a while, but before that, it was the most important place in the world to me for all of my life."

Tommy nodded and started the truck.