When I awoke, it was dark and I was suffocating. I sat up, clawed my way out from under a scratchy blanket and into the light and air. I was in the back of a carriage, parked under a tree near a grey farmhouse. I jumped out of the carriage and started running toward the empty dirt road, feeling rested and free, breathing shallow, terrified breaths.

"Vanessa!" a man shouted from behind me. "Vanessa, stop!"

The man who had abducted me twice stopped running when I turned around to face him. He wasn't wearing his coat or hat anymore, and his acorn colored hair was plastered to his head with sweat.

"Are you Paul?" I demanded, with my hands on my compressed ribs.

"Yes. And Elizabeth sent you, correct? Vanessa?"

"That's right. Not sure if I want your help, though."

He laughed and pressed the crook of his arm to his forehead, blotting away beads of sweat with his white shirt.

"Okay. See how far you get without me. You're not walking away from a resort hotel with the supposed daughter of the richest man in the Midwest on your own."

I scowled. He was probably right.

"Why did you agree to help me?"

"I could use your help, too. You're new to this, so you have a lot of potential."

I scoffed.  "No way. I'm finding Rose, bringing her back to her life and never, ever doing this again."

"We'll see." He raised his eyebrows expectantly. "I take it you've burned off the lag then?"

"The lag?"

"It's like jet-lag, don't you think? Except much worse, of course. You seem to handle it well, actually. I'll get my coat and hat and we'll go to town."

We walked down the dusty road that ran along the LaSalle and although I initially balked at having to walk, I realized we weren't actually that far out of town. Once I got my bearings, I recognized the house where the carriage was left as my dentist's office, which in my time was across from a car dealership, its parking lot a sea of glaring pick up truck hoods. Paul said that the farm belonged to his family for generations and it was a place he was always welcome to come and go as he pleased, without being asked many questions.

"You could go there, too, if you find yourself needing a place to stay when you're traveling. Elizabeth has occasionally. Knock on the door and say, 'It looks like rain, and I could use a place to take cover for awhile.'"

Not a chance, I thought. My skin prickled every time Paul looked in my direction. Did he even know that bruise was from me? Was I unrecognizable in my late 1800s costume? I hoped so.

"How are we going to find her?"

"We can check the two big resorts, but we could use more information first. There's a woman at a shop in town who might be helpful."

We passed the cemetery I visited the evening before, which was much smaller now, and strayed from the road to take a shortcut toward the Elmwood through a grove of towering, ancient trees. I tried to play it cool when I first saw people who actually belonged in 1886, even though on the inside I was flipping out. A family picnicking in the grass, a boy in a straw boater hat playing a cup-in-ball game, three middle aged women out for a stroll, fanning their faces in the August heat.

The trees thinned and revealed a row of cottages, one of which would eventually become Mrs. Barry's home. Once we passed the cottages and saw the full span of the Elmwood, I stopped and stared. It was bigger than anything that existed in Palmer over a hundred years later. Beyond the horses and carriages in the curved driveway rose a wide staircase to a center entrance on the second floor. Near the south end of the hotel was the bathhouse, a tan brick building with a pump tower at one end, ornate masonry and tall, thin windows. Just past the bathhouse a few cows grazed in a fenced area.

"Come along," Paul said, "you'll get a chance to see more later."

We stepped over the rails leading to the train station and the view was clear all the way to a factory with two tall smoke stacks. The salt plant was in the right place, on the south side of the LaSalle where it met the big river. Barrels were piled up outside a long building with "Palmer Salt Works" painted in white lettering on the side facing the road.

On the bridge crossing the LaSalle, a horse and carriage clattered past us and revealed a huge ship towering over the water and a cluster of wood buildings where the docks of the marina would be in the future. The entire hull of the ship was exposed; round and striated like the belly of a whale, resting on a platform made of dozens of logs. It was similar to a modern lake freighter, with a white pilothouse at the bow and a stack rising above the cabins at the curved stern. It looked entirely out of place alongside the small, winding river. A small crowd was gathering on both reedy banks of the river to admire the ship.

"The Osgood shipyard," Paul said. "They've been working on that one for nearly a year."

On the other side of the bridge, Main Street widened into a busy commercial boulevard. It was still a dirt road, but it was lined with businesses and horses tied to hitching posts. On the corner was a grocery store with a huge, drooping fabric awning, where a man in a white apron stacked watermelons behind a row of baskets of fruits and vegetables on a raised boardwalk where the sidewalk would have been. There was a bakery and a drug store and a bicycle shop with bikes lined up outside in front of the windows.

Beyond Main Street there were rows of simple clapboard houses and the recognizable steeple of the Congregational Church rising above them. I longed to press my palm against the bricks of the church, imagining that I'd feel its pull like an anchor; it was the first solid thing I'd seen so far that remained the same in every year I'd ever lived. On the corner where the rivers converged there were coal piles and passengers disembarking a ferry on foot, filing onto a long rickety dock.

A young man with dark hair who looked like my brother, but with a waxed mustache, tipped his straw boater when he caught me staring as he swung up into his carriage and I felt sick. People in old photographs had always seemed so creepy to me. But beyond the weird facial hair and differences in fashion, and when their faces weren't fixed and expressionless, they were surprisingly normal looking, which I found even more unsettling for some reason.

Paul slowed in front of a small shop with a scalloped fabric awning that read "CIGARS * TEA * TOBACCO."

"Wait out here," he directed.

I followed him, giving a horse drinking from a public water trough a wide berth as I passed. I stepped ahead of Paul and blocked his way to the door.

"No way. I'm not standing out here by myself," I angrily whispered, as my eyes darted between the people passing by.

He smirked. "They're just people, Vanessa."

"They're terrifying. I'm going with you."

He reached around me for the doorknob and said, "You don't know me, got it?"

"Can I have some money?" He looked so irritated that I actually smiled. "I might want a souvenir." He dug a dime out of his pocket and pressed it into my palm. He opened the door for me with a polite nod, I stepped inside and my eyes adjusted to the dimly lit store. The shop was uncluttered; dark wood shelves neatly stocked with tins lined the walls all the way to the ceiling, with a display of teapots and decorative wood cigar boxes in the center of the room.

"Mr. Warren! Good morning," a young woman greeted Paul from behind a long glass case.

"Good morning, Miss Yates." Paul strode confidently to the case displaying shining cigar cutters and began drumming his fingertips on the glass.

I checked out the elaborately decorated tins of pipe tobacco and chewing tobacco as I eavesdropped, then quickly moved on to the canisters of tea to make my browsing seem more believable.

"Are you passing through in a hurry again today, Mr. Warren?" she asked wryly.

The drumming stopped.

"Yes, unfortunately so. I have a stop in Port Huron yet today. Two of the R & Ds, please."

"The launch of the Bethesda is at noon. Surely you'll stay long enough to watch?"

"Is it? That would be something to see. So what's this I hear of J.C. Bartlett's daughter staying at the Elmwood?"

"Oh, she's actually visiting her father's cousin, Mrs. Weber, the Senator's wife, at their home. But I understand taking the waters at the Elmwood is aiding her recovery."

"She is recovering, then? That's good news."

She leaned over the countertop and spoke quietly, "As much as one could in her situation, I suppose. Lord only knows what the poor child has been through, washed up onshore, her hair cut clear off and...improperly clothed. It's probably for the best that she doesn't remember a thing."

My eyes flickered up from the teapots. Paul was shaking his head and Miss Yates was watching me.

"I'm sorry, Miss. I didn't see you there. How can I help?"

I hesitantly shuffled to the counter and took a pack of gum from a cardboard display box.

"Just this Tutti Frutti please," I said, reading from the box. Paul fixed his surprisingly unaffected gaze on me as I pushed the coin he gave me across the glass. "For my dyspepsia," I added.

"Yes, Miss," she responded, as she handed back my change with a pitying expression.

When I reached the door, I couldn't push it open. I would have rather died right there than ask for help at that point, so I stared out the window until Paul came to open the door for me. I stepped back into the daylight and turned to watch the door close with Paul inside.

I moved to the side of the building so I couldn't be seen from inside the store and waited. He came out a few minutes later and quickly walked down the road without me.

"Dyspepsia is indigestion," he said when I caught up to him.

"Yeah, I kind of thought that after I said it."

"Follow my directions from now on, please," he scolded without looking at me.

"Sorry.  So what were you doing in there?"

"Miss Yates and I have an arrangement."

"Ooh la la."

He rolled his eyes. "She said Mrs. Weber, Clara and her nurse ride to the Elmwood each day in the early afternoon for Clara's hydrotherapy regimen, which is the only time Clara is seen outside Hillcrest, the Weber's home. But Miss Yates thinks they may make an exception for the ship launch today, on the way to the hotel."

"Hydrotherapy regimen? At the mineral baths?"

"They claim it cures just about everything. In Clara's case; melancholia, profound weakness and fatigue." He lowered his voice as we approached the crowd gathering near the bridge, anticipating the boat launch.

"Rose," I said firmly. "In Rose's case. Clara has to actually be Rose. Weakness and fatigue? It makes sense."

"Because you want it to."

I searched the crowd for Rose, and wondered if my great-great grandparents were out there somewhere, too. What did it mean that they had worked on ships? Was my great-great grandfather a crewmember out on the Great Lakes or was he a carpenter who helped build this ship? I wished I knew.

Paul checked his pocket watch. There was a distant shout and the ground trembled. The ship slid down the ramps and crashed sideways into the river, creating a massive wave that arced over the murky water and crashed onto and flooded the opposite bank. The wave retreated and the ship bobbed, making more huge waves that slapped into each other and sprayed water into the air and then the crowd erupted.

Beside me, Paul slow-clapped, snapping me out of the moment.

"You don't think you could get used to this?" he asked with a knowing smirk.

"Okay. What now?" I asked breathlessly, ignoring his question.

"Miss Yates also informed me that Mr. Bartlett himself is supposed to arrive on the last train today to take Clara home. So we have to get her now."

"Here?" I couldn't imagine sneaking her away in broad daylight with so many people around.

"In the bathhouse." We started toward the bridge. "Dr. Brown is the physician at the Elmwood. His office is in the bathhouse. I have some business with him anyway, so you'll find Clara and she should be alone." He rubbed his face as he thought. "Actually, the nurse might be there. Tell the nurse Dr. Brown wants to speak with her. Then if you're sure it's your Rose and not Clara, you'll get her out of there and find me."

"What if I can't do it on my own? I still can't do things. I couldn't push open the door of that shop."

"You didn't even try," he said sharply. He stopped and looked me in the eye with a hard stare and I shrunk back. "You tackled me, drove a truck off the road, ripped my shirt and gave me this," he pulled his collar aside to reveal the bruise on his neck. "Stop telling yourself you're powerless."