I almost told him. Horror choked me while tears streamed down my face. Had I been saved because I chickened out at the last minute?
How close had I been to my own death the entire time I was here?
"Miss Josie? Are you awake?" Nell's voice was strangely flat. She tapped on my door.
Oh, god, what do I do?
I didn't answer. Nell tried the door and finding it locked, walked away, the floorboards creaking beneath her steps. I released a breath.
Then heard the door to the dressing room open.
Fumbling with the lock, I whipped open the door to the hallway and sprinted. My heart slammed into my chest and filled my ears as I flew down the stairs and wrenched the front door open.
"Josie!" Nell called, much closer than I expected. The old woman was fast.
I bolted into the wind and rain towards the only safe place I could think of: the barn. Tugging the heavy wooden door open, I snatched a saddle and bridle off their pegs and went to the stall of the horse I usually rode just as Nell pounded on the front door. I ducked down inside the horse's stall.
"Josie! I just want to take you to see your father!" she cried, the soft bump of the wooden door closing behind her.
The woman's lost it.
Her memories were on the other Josies. She hadn't flipped back, as if the woman who cared for me and the one who wanted to kill me were two different people with two different sets of memories.
My phone vibrated. I tensed, hoping the sound was swallowed by the rain on the rooftop. Easing away from the side of the stall, I pulled it out.
The name of the original governess assigned to Josie was Catherine, an Englishwoman. Nellie Bitters was the name of the first woman I sent back to try to find Taylor. I try to screen travelers for any physical or mental weaknesses that might make time travel less than ordeal, but there's always a chance someone … unfit makes it and can't handle the change.
I wanted so much to smack Carter.
Until that moment, I had never thought twice about how accommodating Nell was. John had an excuse; he was senile and so guilty, he wanted to believe he hadn't done what he did and probably ignored anything that seemed different about me. But Nell … she'd walked me through every part of this world, answered questions that should've made her suspicious, and even recognized the phone.
It was more than guilt about real-Josie in her case, more than love for John that drove her into madness. It was Carter who pushed her over the edge by sending her back.