Page 55 of The Spinster & the Sock

“Too…cold?” I blink a few times, trying to understand what she’s saying. I’m assuming we’re staying in her time, but that almost sounds like…

“Yes, too cold.” She nods towards the massive hole I just hacked into the ice, and I sag with a relief I’ve never experienced before in my entire life. I really would stay in 1813 for this woman—in a heartbeat with no regrets—but I’ve daydreamed before of what it would be like. Mom would—will—love her, Pops too. Sure, there will be some culture shock, but she’ll thrive in a time that isn’t full of people calling her a spinster at twenty-six for not wanting to marry some old geezer who needs an heir.

“You mean it? If this works…Jo, I don’t know if it’s a door. I don’t know if this will work, and I damn sure don’t know if it could work again after that.” I stand, pulling her to her feet as I do.

“Then the door is closed and I still mean it.”

God, I love this woman.

Jo hugs my almanac to her chest with one hand and holds tight to me with the other as we step up to the icy portal.

“Don’t let go?” Jo asks, staring down into the frigid pond.

“Not if my life depended on it.”

We steal one last glance at each other, take a breath, and jump.

I know as soon as my head goes under that it worked. The water isn’t cold, it’s warm, and a violent feeling of vertigo comes over me. I squeeze Jo’s hand even harder. I don’t want to hurt her, but I cannot lose her.

It’s working.

Oh, fuck. It’s working. In the six months that I’ve been trying to get home, I never considered how it would work. Now that it is, I realize I may have just doomed us both. Unless we pop up in the same place I fell in, at the same time I went in, there will be no ship. We’ll be stranded in the middle of the Bering Sea with no shore in sight.

I fight my instincts and open my eyes, searching for that familiar light when the water stills. I can’t see a thing. It’s not dark, not really, but the water is so murky I can barely see my hand in front of my face. Jo’s hand squeezes mine, and I quickly squeeze back, not sure who is reassuring who. I stretch out, turning my head for any sign of the surface, and it takes everything in me not to gasp when my heels hit the bottom of whatever body of water we’re in. I angle myself and place my feet flat on the soft earth, prepared to push with all the strength I have to propel us to the surface, however far that may be.

I’m not sure who is more surprised when my head breaks into open air before my knees are even completely straight: me, or the real-life alligator I’m staring down like fucking Ace Ventura.

Jo breaches a second later, and as soon as she does, I let go of her hand. Her protest dies before it fully starts when, I assume, she spots our new friend. It’s really comical how still all three of us are right now.

Until we’re not.

The gator twitches, and I channel every single minute I spent watching The Crocodile Hunter as a kid. I wrap my hands around the gator’s mouth—noting right away that it’s a smallish gator that I pray is alone—and shout for Jo to get out of the water. Bitch-ass reptile chooses this time to initiate the roll sequence, and we both go spinning in a water, air, water, air limb-flopping dance.

My feet scrape the sandy bottom, and I fight to stand again, succeeding just long enough to see my crazy wife swing a massive stick.

“I’m the only one allowed to bite my husband!” she cackles maniacally.

When the contact reverberates through my wrists, I take a chance, letting go and scrambling to the shore.

“What! The fuck! Was that?!” Jo screeches while I gasp for air next to her and we both watch the offending reptile disappear into the swamp—because of course, since we didn’t travel to the middle of the sea, we would surface in a swamp.

“Jo, was that gator wearing your bonnet?” I ask, far beyond perplexed.

“It took some time to find a stick I could wield! At least I was trying to help…” Jo pouts.

I chuff at that and sling my arm around her shoulders, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“You ain’t ‘posed to catchum that way,” a voice calls out from behind us. We spin to see a man leaning over the steering wheel of a UTV. I hadn’t even heard him pull up. “Guess it ain’t my job t’tell you folks how it’s done though. Chère got a nice swing in, I seen that.”

I start laughing, the gut-wrenching kind that makes you wheeze, because holy shit. We’re back, at least in a time modern enough for vehicles, and instead of drowning in the Bering, we’re ankle-deep in the Bayou.

“You good, brah?” the man asks, clearly concerned.

“Yeah, yep, I’m good, totally fine. Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a phone I can borrow, would you?”

According to Larry, we were in a cellular dead zone. We had to drive ten minutes into town before he had enough service for me to make a call. Bless my poor wife’s soul, she didn’t pass out, but she did throw up the second the side-by-side parked outside of a little diner named The Croc Pot.

Now Jo is sitting in a back corner booth, sipping water and staring at everything like it’s a threat, and I’m holding Larry’s phone with shaky hands.