Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) by Sarah Woodbury

unbearable. And yet,
she’d had to bear it. Anna wanted to be as strong as her mother,
but she didn’t know that she could be.
    Anna looked to the front of the truck where
Mom had found a seat between Art and Callum. Anna was in the back
with Cassie, who’d given Anna her gloves, but Anna’s hands still
weren’t warm, and she tucked them between her thighs. Art started
the truck and drove away from the store—in total silence. After the
initial rush of joy at being reunited, none of them knew what to
say to each other. Anna certainly didn’t.
    Cassie and Anna hadn’t spent as much time
together as Anna would have liked. Callum was the Earl of
Shrewsbury and David’s advisor, which meant that he traveled a lot.
Because Cassie was married to Callum, she traveled with him. It had
been more than two years since David had returned to the Middle
Ages without them, and Anna was a little worried that Cassie might
have become a different person.
    But then Cassie glanced at Anna, her eyes
bright, and Anna knew it was going to be okay. “How have you been?”
the two women said together.
    Everyone laughed, and the tension
evaporated. Anna rested her head back against the seat.
    “ Tell us how you got here,”
Cassie said.
    Art drove down a long, straight road while
Mom related the events of the afternoon so far.
    Cassie squeezed Anna’s hand. “You must have
been terrified!”
    “ I was,” Anna said. “Even
so, I’m sorry Marty died. If he’d been able to hold on to me, he
would have come with us.”
    “ You’re a very nice person,
Anna,” Mom said. “I would never have wished him dead, but I’m still
too angry at him to mourn him.”
    “ From your description of
what he did to you, Meg,” Callum said, “he’d become a better man in
Scotland than he’d ever been before.”
    “ Maybe he’s not dead,”
Cassie said.
    “ He fell from the top of a
tower at Rhuddlan,” Mom said. “I can’t see anyone surviving the
fall.”
    “ And then there was that
scream he let out,” Anna said. “Do you think one of the archers got
him, Mom?”
    Mom shrugged, but she turned in her seat and
caught Anna’s eye. Yeah, she thought so too.
    “ Happy Thanksgiving,”
Cassie said, deadpan.
    Mom turned back to face the front. “Is that
what brought you two to Oregon?”
    “ We’ve come every year
since we came back to this world,” Cassie said. “Given what’s going
on with our jobs, it seemed especially important to be here this
year.”
    “ Your jobs?” Mom said.
“David is going to want to know all about what happened after he
left.”
    “ Good things happened at
first,” Callum said. “If you’d arrived a year ago, you would have
found a very different situation from what faced you and
Llywelyn—and David too. Unfortunately, with recent budget
cuts—
    “— my job ends December
1 st ,”
Cassie put in.
    “— we’ve been trying to come
up with a way to still be here for you when you needed us even if
we’ve been sacked,” Callum finished.
    Anna leaned forward. “What
exactly are you talking about? What do budget cuts have to do with
our traveling ?”
    Callum shifted in his seat so he could look
at Mom and Anna at the same time and gave a two minute summary of
what had happened to him and Cassie after David returned to the
medieval world.
    “ You wouldn’t believe what
it took to bring me to life again, legally speaking. It was only
all resolved—” Cassie glanced at Callum, “—what, nine months
ago?”
    Callum nodded.
    Art hadn’t said a word the whole drive, but
he spoke now. “Now that your friends are here, if you disappear
again, I won’t let anyone declare you dead.”
    Cassie froze, and Anna took a moment to
absorb that comment. It meant that Callum and Cassie might want to
return to the Middle Ages with them when they went.
    “ Thank you, Grandfather,”
Cassie said softly. Callum’s arm had been lying along the top edge
of the front seat behind Mom’s head, and he moved his hand