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Heavy snowflakes had begun to fall, swirling faster and faster past the windows of the Landry home.
Although the people of Port Haven were no strangers to merciless winter weather, this particular season had been unusually intense, colder and stormier than most years. By late February 2026, everyone was exhausted, both mentally and physically.
Both Kat and Alice were fortunate - each could do her respective work from home whenever inclement weather struck. Decades earlier, the area had been notorious for losing power during storms. However, Colton had installed a generator just before his death. Although he couldn’t have known how dependent the world would become upon computers and technological gadgets in subsequent years, it had proven to be a wise decision. As long as his family had a stockpile of wood for heat, they would also be able to stay connected to the outside world for as long as it took to get back to normal.
Jacob remained the least bothered by power outages of any sort. While he had learned to use the internet with surprising speed and skill, he still didn’t use it anywhere near as often as most of his 21st-century family or friends. As Jacob’s approving mother dubbed it, he was a judicious techie. (Typically, Del followed this with a pointed look at either Kat or Alice - whoever was closest - and who in turn would make a point of pretending not to see or understand.)
“You’d feel differently about it, though, if it meant you could communicate with everyone you wanted at any time,” Kat had asked him softly.
Del was busy in the kitchen making dinner, with Alice chattering about her day as she helped prepare a salad. The siblings would only have another few moments of privacy in the living room before they would be called to join the rest of the family.
“Yeah,” Jacob said without hesitation, knowing immediately what his sister meant.
“It feels crazy, trying to imagine all the other people right here in this house,” Kat continued. “Maybe they’re going through a snowstorm of their own right now. Or maybe it’s still summer, that weird one where they were all freezing and hungry. I don’t know, I still can’t really figure out how time works between us and them.”
“I suppose it’s like Elliot was saying,” Jacob interjected. “That there’s really no such thing as time. It’s just a human concept we invented to try to organize and make sense of our lives.”
“Or, that there is in fact time, but it all happens simultaneously, past, present and future,” replied Kat musingly. “Which…ultimately means that it doesn’t actually exist? Eh, I don’t know. It all makes my head hurt if I think too much about it.”
Jacob snorted. “That’s for sure,” he stated.
Both grew quiet. They could hear Alice pulling out the plates, glasses and silverware - a guaranteed sign that this private discussion would be over momentarily..
“I wish we could somehow get messages from them without having to go through the pond,” Jacob finally said. “It would be such a relief just to know how everyone’s doing.”
“Or to be able to have them come here if things weren’t going well there,” Kat added.
Her brother nodded. “People in this time think they don’t have big houses or a lot of things, but they do. Trust me, they do. I don’t want to be ‘that guy’ but most anyone I grew up knowing in the other Port Haven would think we were crazy rich here.”
Helpless to do much else, Kat placed her palm upon the fireplace. Feeling the rough stones caused her to remember the day she and Susanna had stood before it together, trying to take comfort in the fact that it was one of the few unchanging connections between their worlds.
“Our hands will touch through time,” Kat recalled Susanna saying.
It was February 1817, and the winter had been a long one. It wasn’t that it had been too intense - after the long freezing months of the Year Without Summer, most everyone including Susanna felt as though they were ready for anything.
Still, winter was always rather difficult in a farming community. Travel was often arduous, if not impossible, when the dirt roads and forest paths grew muddy, then frozen solid with thick ice glazing knee-high snow mounds. As many hours as the residents of Port Haven usually spent outdoors during the warm months, working their fields and visiting with one another, there were many long weeks during which each family mostly blockaded themselves within the walls of their warm homes, only stepping out briefly to care for their animals. If the weather was too severe, church services were cancelled, as many families had to travel far to reach town. While Susanna couldn’t say that she minded the loss of endless sermons - she had never cared much for organized religion, and sitting in a tiny church packed close among the townspeople who had turned on her so brutally that awful day - she did miss having a reason to go into Port Haven proper on Sundays.
After Cyrus had been so horrifically injured in the fire at the Landrys’, he had remained bedridden, weak and miserable, for months. Susanna had kept her promise, downplaying the severity of his injuries to outsiders, while running the Goodwin household - and finances - as she saw fit. She had sent workers and supplies to Elijah, ensuring the house would be rebuilt solidly within just a few weeks. But Cyrus hadn’t been able to recover. Despite several renowned doctors coming from as far as New York, it soon became evident that his injuries were simply too severe.
After the funeral, Susanna decided to accept Elijah’s offer to join his family in their home. It didn’t make sense for her to be alone, he had stated, practical as always, and she was essentially part of their clan anyways. With Jacob gone, there was plenty of room for her, and goodness knew, Elijah, William and Little Jacob desperately needed a woman to help with the cooking and household management. Susanna was more than happy to do so.
Now they were in their second day of being snowed in - and from the looks of things as well as past experience, it would undoubtedly be another two or three more days before the blizzard would abate and they could fully dig themselves out.
Susanna didn’t really mind. After the events of the previous year, she was loath to encounter most people from the community. Time was said to heal all wounds, but Susanna had her doubts in this case. How did one get past their so-called friends and neighbors wanting to hang you for a witch? All in all, Susanna considered herself a forgiving person. Hadn’t she always helped any Port Havenites in medical need, even when she knew they whispered behind her back? She truly believed she had been given a special gift and so she was always generous in sharing it. But being accosted by angry villagers while walking home from the Landrys, manhandled and bound with coarse rope that left painful burns upon her wrists for weeks afterward? That was simply beyond anything she could ever look past, much less forgive or forget. How could Susanna possibly ever look at those people - many of them her neighbors since infancy - and smile or chat about ordinary topics? She would never be able to erase the image of what they had done on that unimaginable day. And the ones who hadn’t actually taken an active role? They hadn’t done a thing to stop the horror, which made them just as complicit in Susanna’s mind.
Heavy snowflakes had begun to fall, swirling faster and faster past the windows of the Landry home. Susanna prayed it was not the start of yet another blizzard, although inwardly she felt her prayers were futile. Of course it was another blizzard; wasn’t it always? Just thinking about it made Susann weary, both mentally and physically.
For the umpteenth time, her thoughts took her to Kat and Jacob. Where were they? Of course, Susanna knew intellectually they were right there, in the same house she was. But it wasn’t the same house at all, really. There would be modern inventions, some of which Kat had tried to tell her about but Susanna could scarcely imagine. And the house and farmland itself - once a person left the property and went to Port Haven proper, what would they find? Once again, Kat had tried to tell her a bit, but Susanna had trouble visualizing it. While Susanna greatly wanted to envision this future world in which women could live the lives of their own choosing - a world that gave Susanna genuine hope for forthcoming generations - she found that she really couldn’t. Truly, it was no different than listening to a fairy tale.
Were they also in the midst of a blizzard? How earnestly Susanna wished she could know!
She also wished, as desperately as she had wished for anything in her life, that she could join them. Being snowbound wouldn’t be nearly as bad if she had her dear Katherine to keep her company! Of course, Susanna was content with Elijah, William and Little Jacob - she knew she was blessed to have them in her life. But almost from the moment they’d met, Susanna recognized her relationship with Kat as unique and deeply special. Katherine was the dearest friend she’d ever had. Until she had entered Susanna’s life, Susanna hadn’t even known a bond like theirs was possible.
And yet…here they were, separated by centuries. It was almost inconceivable to imagine.
As her pacing took her past the fireplace, Susanna suddenly recalled the moment she and Kat had stood before it together, trying to take comfort in the fact that it was one of the few unchanging connections between their worlds.
“Our hands will touch through time,” Susanna recalled telling Katherine.
She placed her hand upon the hearth, feeling the rough stones.
For now, it would have to suffice.