The Best Gift

by Markham, Wendy

  I could call her . . . but what would I say?

  And what if she tells me something I don’t want to hear?

  I’m not ready for that.

  She scrolls through the rest of the numbers, searching for calls from Drew’s office or his cell phone—even knowing it’s been disconnected.

  Nothing.

  There’s a chance that one of the unfamiliar numbers could be his.

  She randomly dials one that appears several times.

  “You have reached the law offices of Fitzgerald and Walters. Please leave a message and we will return your call on the next business day.”

  Clara hangs up quickly, unsettled. Why would lawyers be calling here? And more than once?

  The only time she and Drew ever used an attorney was for their real estate closing. . . .

  Wait a minute—they’re obviously in the process of moving again. That must be why Fitzgerald and Walters has been in touch so frequently.

  But people use lawyers to handle other matters, too.

  Divorces.

  Wills.

  Stop that! Don’t be ridiculous!

  She hurriedly leaves the phone behind, wandering through the house in search of more encouraging clues.

  In the dining room, she randomly chooses a box on the dining room floor and rips open the tape. Inside, there’s a mound of crumpled newspaper that obviously protects fragile contents.

  She unwraps a yellow plate. Another plate. Another.

  The bold, Mexican-style pottery look is unfamiliar. Her taste, it seems, has changed over the past few years. She always favored more delicate designs, softer colors, vintage styles—even before she dropped in on the 1940s.

  Shoving the box of plates aside, she wonders whether she should open another. But the dining room is full of housewares, unlikely to yield anything of interest.

  In the living room, she realizes that she’s physically and emotionally exhausted. She plops down on the couch and leans her head back, absorbing the silence.

  Any second now, she tells herself, the front door is going to open and Drew is going to walk through it.

  Just wait. You’ll see.

  She does wait.

  And wait.

  And wait, until the silence threatens to smother her last hope.

  But she refuses to let that happen, clinging fiercely to a shred of optimism, reminding herself that the man she loves already found his way back to her once before despite impossible odds.

  They’ve already breached the great chasm of war and illness and time and even death itself.

  There’s no way he’s lost to her now.

  They were meant to be together.

  Maybe he’s not here yet, but he’s coming.

  I honestly believe that, with all my heart.

  Hearing a jingling of dog tags, Clara looks up to see Dickens.

  “Well, look who’s up. Did you have a nice nap?”

  In lieu of a reply, the dog lunges at the couch and snags a throw pillow in his teeth.

  “Hey! What are you doing, you crazy dog?” Clara manages to wrestle it away from him, only to have him make a grab for the television remote on the cushion beside her.

  “That is not a snack!” Clara rescues the television remote before he can swipe it.

  Impulsively, she aims it at the large flat-screen TV across the room. With any luck, it hasn’t been disconnected yet for the move.

  She just needs a connection to the world beyond her doorstep; some sense that she hasn’t stepped into some postapocalyptic scenario where she’s the last person alive on earth.

  The news footage that greets her as the television screen comes into focus is anything but reassuring.

  As the camera pans a rubble-strewn landscape, a female reporter is in the midst of a terse voice-over. “. . . and total devastation where the quake’s epicenter was located, about twenty miles northwest of the Bay area.”

  Clara stares.

  San Florentina is about twenty miles northwest of the Bay area . . . but there’s nothing remotely recognizable about the images on screen.

  “At 8.7 on the Richter scale, the massive quake was preceded by a series of what would later prove to be strong foreshocks beginning on Christmas morning, 2009, causing widespread damage throughout the region.”

  Foreshock? That violent shaking was a freaking foreshock?

  “No way,” Clara tells Dickens, shaking her head.

  The television camera shifts to a man-on-the-street interview.

  A reporter holds a microphone toward a man standing against the backdrop of a construction site. Clara leans forward, recognizing him. His face is gaunt and more wrinkled, and his jet-black hair has gone gray, but she’s positive that’s Paolo Martino. Since she’s been pregnant she’s become quite a regular at Scoops, his ice-cream shop on Main Street. The good-natured proprietor always gives her extra whipped cream and two cherries—one for good luck, as he always likes to say.

  “You know, living here, we were always bracing ourselves for the Big One. Then, with all the damage on Christmas Day, I guess we just thought that was it. But that was nothing compared to what was coming a few days later. It was such a beautiful, sunny day, everything was fine, and then—boom.”

  Paolo’s ominous words resonate with Clara, and her thoughts whirl back to the terrifying quake she experienced. That was nothing? Dear God.

  “I lost everything—my home, my business, my car,” Paolo somberly tells the reporter. “But I’m one of the lucky ones. All of that could be replaced. A lot of people I know here, they lost . . . you know. A lot worse. I’m alive, and I have my family.”

  Dread creeps over Clara as Paolo pauses to bow his head, wipe at his eyes.

  “I understand that like many people in San Florentina, you’ve spent the last three years recovering from injuries you suffered in the quake,” the reporter goes on, “and now you’re finally rebuilding your home and business.”

  “That’s right. We’ll be open in time for spring.” Paolo’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

  The camera cuts back to the newsroom, where the anchors are seated before a graphic that reads three years later: remembering the big one.

  “We’ll be coming to you live throughout the day as we cover ceremonies throughout the Bay area to commemorate the catastrophic quake of 2009. And now, we turn to brighter things: the weather forecast. Today’s heavy coastal fog will continue into tomorrow as—”

  Clara changes the station abruptly.

  She doesn’t care about the weather forecast. She needs more information about what, exactly, went on around here three years ago. It’s as if her entire life as she knew it was swallowed by the notorious San Andreas Fault.

  But she’s not going to let herself think the worst—that something happened to Drew in that earthquake. No, because she saw him right afterward and he was fine. And anyway, he’s obviously around, because she’s pregnant now, three years later.

  What if it isn’t his baby?

  The thought of that is unimaginable. Laughable, almost. She can’t possibly fathom any circumstances where she would be living here, in their house, and carrying another man’s child.

  But you’re moving out.

  So? People move all the time.

  And anyway, the bottom line is that if Drew weren’t out there somewhere, she would sense it. . . .

  Wouldn’t you?

  Of course.

  She would know, in her heart, if he were never coming home.

  Then again . . .

  Would you?

  She spent all that time with Jed in 1941 knowing all along that he was going to go off and get himself killed in the war. She’s certain she’d have felt it even if she hadn’t known it for a fact; that she would have sensed, in her heart, that his days—their days—were numbered. With Jed, there was such an aura of urgency, an acute awareness that they didn’t have forever.

  Ah, but you were wrong about that, weren’t you?

  An
d this is different.

  This is the future.

  If Drew were no longer alive, she’d feel it. It’s that simple. There would be an emptiness in her heart, instead of hope.

  After channel surfing past several commercials, a home shopping program, a travel documentary, and A Christmas Story, she lands on CNN.

  For a moment, seeing the familiar backdrop of rubble and devastation, she believes she’s found what she’s looking for.

  But this coverage has nothing to do with earthquakes.

  It’s all about a horrific foreign war, one that hasn’t even begun to flare up in the present—or rather, the past. And then there’s a report on a promising medical breakthrough, and a recent assassination, and peace talks in the Middle East that appear to be much farther along these days. . . .

  Good news, bad news.

  But no old news about a California earthquake.

  Weary, Clara closes her eyes.

  Maybe this is all just a really bad dream.

  Chapter Nine

  Drew is in the front hall, vacuuming broken glass, when Dickens races in from the next room, barking at the front door.

  “No, careful, puppy, you’re going to get hurt.” Drew frowns and turns off the shop vac, then scoops the dog into his arms.

  More barking.

  “Shhh, you’re going to wake Clara.” He peeks into the living room to see his wife still sitting on the couch, sound asleep.

  The puppy squirms as Drew carries him into the kitchen. “Sorry, fella, but it’s just for a little while,” he tells Dickens, wrestling him into his crate.

  Returning to the front hall, he’s about to turn on the shop vac again when he hears a pounding at the front door, and realizes somebody’s there. No wonder the dog was barking.

  Drew hurries to answer the knock, wondering who’s here, and hoping whoever it is will have some information about the quake. Both the TV and Internet are down and the phone lines are jammed.

  He kicks aside a shard of broken glass and opens the door to see his neighbor, Jeff Tucker, and his daughter Amelia, a chubby strawberry blonde with glasses, braces, and an abundance of freckles.

  “Everybody all right here?” Jeff asks. He’s wearing what Clara likes to call the local uniform: a Columbia fleece jacket, jeans, boots, and a baseball cap. Oakland A’s. Drew is a San Francisco Giants fan himself.

  “We’re fine,” he tells Jeff. “Just some damage around the house. How about you?”

  “Same thing. That was a pretty good shake.”

  “Is the puppy okay?” Amelia asks anxiously, looking past Drew’s shoulder into the house, where the barking goes on at full volume. “He sounds upset.”

  “Oh, he’s fine. Just loud.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t like hearing all those sirens.”

  “Maybe,” Drew agrees, noticing that the far-off sirens continue to wail ominously. “Or maybe he’s just hungry or something.”

  “Well, I don’t see how he could be,” Amanda pipes up, “because this morning at our house, he ate—”

  “She’s been real worried about the dog,” Jeff interrupts his daughter. “Got pretty attached to him since you dropped him by yesterday.”

  “My mom said it was a good thing he wasn’t staying, though.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Did she, now?” Drew asks, wondering whether Nancy Tucker happens to have a mink coat.

  “Yes, because you’ll never believe what he—”

  “Amelia,” Jeff says quickly, “no need to get into all that.”

  Uh-oh is right.

  “All what?” Drew asks reluctantly.

  “Nothing,” Jeff assures him, “it was fine. We were glad to keep him for you. Amelia and her brothers had a great time playing with him, and he was no trouble at all.”

  “Except when he—”

  Seeing the warning glance Jeff shoots his daughter, Drew asks himself whether he honestly wants to know what kind of trouble Dickens caused during his brief stay at the neighbors’ house.

  Not really, he decides guiltily. Not with everything else that’s gone on today.

  “Well . . . thanks again for keeping him,” he tells Jeff, adding, to Amelia, “And you can come over and visit him anytime you want.”

  “I can? Thanks! I think a puppy would be the best present ever,” she adds wistfully. “Was your wife surprised?”

  “Very. Want to come in and say hello to her and Dickens? That’s what we named him.”

  “Oh, that’s so cute!” Amelia looks at her father. “Can I go see him, Dad?”

  “Only for a minute.”

  “So any idea how strong the quake was or where it was centered?” Drew asks Jeff.

  “Not a clue, but my guess is a good four or five, and pretty close by.”

  “I figured the same thing. Oh, leave your shoes on,” Drew tells Amelia, seeing that she’s about to remove her sneakers. “There’s still some broken glass on the floor. I’m trying to get it all, but . . .”

  “Are you sure? They’re totally muddy.”

  “Positive,” he tells her, and he can tell she’s thinking she’d never get away with that at home.

  Drew has only met Nancy Tucker a couple of times, but that was enough to realize she’s a meticulous housekeeper. Maybe that’s why, according to her daughter, she wasn’t exactly disappointed when he picked up the dog this morning. Maybe Dickens got mud on her floor.

  Or worse.

  As Amelia dashes off toward the kitchen, Jeff tells Drew, “We really just wanted to make sure you were okay over here. Phones are jammed up or I would’ve called.”

  “I know, I can’t even get a call out on my cell,” Drew replies, closing the door behind them. “Can I make you a cup of coffee, or—”

  “No, really, we’ve got to get back home pretty quickly. Nancy’s got her hands full with the boys, and she’s probably cursing me out right about now.” He rolls his eyes.

  “Well, I’m glad you came by. We’re feeling pretty cut off from the rest of the world. Well, I am, anyway.”

  “Where’s Clara?”

  “She’s actually taking a nap. She—”

  “Is it okay if I got him out of the crate?” Amelia interrupts from the kitchen doorway, and Drew looks up to see her holding the puppy like a doll. Or a baby.

  Maybe Amelia can babysit for our child someday, Drew finds himself thinking, and then . . .

  Wow.

  We’re going to have a baby.

  Every time the realization strikes him anew, butterflies launch in his stomach.

  “Amelia! What would make you let him out of his crate” Jeff scolds.

  “No, it’s okay,” Drew assures them. “He doesn’t like it in there very much.”

  “I know. When my mom—”

  “Amelia, go put him back where you found him,” her father cuts her off.

  “I will. In two seconds. He wanted to see me, didn’t you, Dickens,” Amelia adds in a cheerful and affectionate falsetto.

  Dickens yelps happily.

  “Drew!” Clara calls from the next room, and he bolts.

  She’s sitting straight up, rubbing her eyes, looking utterly bewildered.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Drew asks, crossing over to the couch.

  “I just . . . was I sleeping?”

  “Yep.”

  “Merry Christmas, Clara,” Jeff comments behind them, and Jeff sees Drew stepping around this morning’s discarded wrapping paper and stacks of gifts that now mix with items displaced from the quake.

  Clara looks up in surprise. “Oh, I didn’t even see you there. Hi, Jed.”

  “It’s Jeff,” their neighbor corrects her.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Clara is saying. “I meant Jeff, not Jed.”

  Jed . . .

  Drew experiences a flash of—well, it would be considered a memory if it had actually happened to him, but he’s quite certain he’s never ridden in the rumble seat of an old-fashioned car.

  Yet for an instant, he sees
himself doing just that. Well, he doesn’t see himself doing it, per se.

  It’s more as if he’s inside someone else’s head, looking out at the car and a couple of unfamiliar boys in the front seat and a blur of someone waving from the sidewalk.

  He hears a blast of an ah-ooh-gah car horn, and a female voice calling, “Hi, Jed!” and he turns to look, and he notes that he’s driving down what looks like an old-fashioned Main Street USA, but for some reason it feels incredibly familiar.

  No, wait, it’s . . .

  It is familiar—but not because he’s ever been there. He’s pretty sure the street his brain just conjured up is the small town set that was used for last year’s blockbuster The Glenhaven Park Dozen. Clara was filming the movie when they met, before she was diagnosed with cancer and had to drop out of the cast.

  And the name Jed—that’s familiar, too. Jed was the hero’s name in the movie, based on a group of real-life small-town soldiers who died together in the war.

  The films’ director, Denton Wilkens, invited Clara to the Hollywood premiere of The Glenhaven Park Dozen. Drew accompanied her, a heady experience—and not just because of the red carpet and flashbulbs and frenzied female fans screaming for Clara’s friend Mike, who was starring in the film.

  When they sat in the darkened theater and the celluloid world took over, Drew found himself utterly lost in another era—and an extraordinary sense of déjà vu.

  Of course it made sense that Drew would identify with Michael Marshall’s character, Jed Landry, considering that he was the on-screen love interest of Violet, whom Clara had originally been cast to play.

  Besides, Denton Wilkens is famous for making hauntingly realistic period films with meticulous attention to detail. Plenty of people get lost in his films.

  But for Drew, it all seemed so . . . real.

  “How did you like it?” he remembers Clara asking anxiously as they exited the theater.

  “It was amazing. I felt like I was living it,” he admitted, and for a moment, judging by a fleeting expression in her eyes, he felt almost as if she knew that there was more to it than that.

  But their relationship was new and vulnerable, and he wasn’t about to tell her that he was haunted by bizarre dreams—even when he was awake.