Free Time After Time by Antoinette Stockenberg

face to face with Netta, who was clearly at the end of her
patience with everyone.
    "You'll do no such thing,
child. You're working for peanuts as it is." She turned to the men
and said, "I'm the one who didn't put Bradley in his crib; you can
blame me. And what's the fuss, anyway? Those rugs have been in the
family for a hundred and fifty years. You think no one's ever
messed on them before? This isn't a museum. It's a home — or at
least it would be, if everyone would start acting like a family,"
she said, sweeping them up in a look of withering
contempt.
    That was when it hit Liz.
Caroline Stonebridge is the old man's love-child, she realized
belatedly, remembering how he'd beamed every time Caroline came
into view. And that meant she was Jack's half-sister. And Jack doesn't like it one damned
bit.
    And she couldn't care
less.
    "Go home, dear," said
Netta. She jerked her head in the direction of the two men behind
her and murmured, "Save yourself while you can."
    Suddenly Liz was
completely exhausted. The climax, after a week of feverish
anticipation, was so completely crushing that she thought she'd
never coordinate an event again. And yet the very next day she had
to do a Mexican birthday for a mob of seventh-graders at a Taco
Bell. Was life
everlasting, then?
    She tried to put on a good
face. "Good-bye," she said briskly to the men. "Thank you, Netta.
I'll come back for my things tomorrow."
    She brushed past them all
and was promptly accosted in the hall by a reproachful Caroline.
"You gave everybody cake from the ear," the child said, apparently
oblivious to what was going on. "I wanted the ear."
    Liz stared at the child in
amazement, then led her to the cake, which sat on the tea cart,
still in the hall. "You want an ear?" she said. "Fine."
    She took up a knife and
lopped off the intact ear with a stroke that would've made Van Gogh
cringe, then slapped the eight-inch circle on a plate. "Here. Have
an ear."
    Then she turned and
marched toward the heavy paired doors at the end of the softly lit
hall. She was approaching the massive grandfather clock that graced
the near entry when her head began to fill with the sound — the
angelic, heavenly sound — of the chime-note that she'd heard at the
locksmith's.
    It's the grandfather
clock, tolling the hour, she thought,
catching her breath.
    And then, whether it was
the thick fog, or the lateness of the hour, or the state of her
exhaustion — she saw a shadowy, vapory, and yet oddly clear figure
of a dark-haired man, well- built, wearing buttoned trousers and a
loose flowing shirt with ominously dark spatters on it. The
apparition was leaning, with arms folded, against the grandfather
clock.
    Watching her.
    Stifling a cry, Liz
stopped dead in her tracks. Before she could make up her mind what
to do, the hallucination passed, although the sound — the single
transcendental chime-note — did not. Liz took a deep breath and
hurried past the clock. The chime-sound followed her as she fled
through the fog to her van, parked off to one side of the mansion's
graveled drive. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably as she
struggled to fit the key in the ignition.
    I have to get away from
here, she thought distractedly. Away from him ... it ... them. Oh, God. I have to get away.

Chapter 5
     
    Victoria was in
stitches.
    "This gives whole new
meaning to the term party pooper, she said, grinning, as she and Liz dunked
doughnuts in Liz's kitchen the next morning.
    So far Liz had told
Victoria only about the party — nothing more. "I don't see what's
so funny," she snapped. "My long-awaited debut turned out to be my
unexpected swan song."
    "You should've let me stay
on and help," said Victoria.
    "How could I? I wasn't
getting enough to pay either one of us. Not to mention, the son of
a gun is stiffing me."
    "Oh, he'll pay what he
owes, surely," said Victoria, still smiling. "Although you should know, of
everyone, that you're supposed to collect the balance before the
event."
    Liz eyed