The Best Gift

by Markham, Wendy

  Even now, he can’t tell her that he has these little episodes in which he’ll imagine himself as someone else, and it’s so real he can taste and smell and hear it all.

  In fact, sometimes it’s his own five senses that seem to trigger the false flashbacks in the first place. He’ll catch a sniff of something wafting in the air, like cigarette smoke or snow or roast chicken. . . .

  Or he’ll hear snatch of oldies music or a conversational turn of phrase, or even just a word, like fruitcake. . . .

  Earlier, the moment Clara said the word, he was reminded of an old lady lying in a snowy street, bleeding. But of course that had nothing to do with fruitcake, and he’s never witnessed anything like that scene in real life, thank God. He doesn’t know where the image came from, or why it was triggered by that particular word, or what any of it might mean. . . .

  Other than that you’re nuttier than a fruitcake yourself, bub.

  Drew has always privately laughed—or at least shrugged—off the vivid dreams and nightmares, the flashes of scenes that seem straight out of a vintage movie or someone else’s life.

  But it isn’t just about imagining himself as someone else.

  It’s about having his emotions kick into overdrive without warning and for no good reason.

  Like, the other day, he was watching TV—one of those Hallmark commercials where the world is all Currier and Ives, with music and sleigh bells and children on sleds and whirling white flakes coming down—and there was a passing shot of a red mitten lying in the snow.

  All at once, Drew was overwhelmed with a strange, intense, and entirely inexplicable sense of longing. Tears actually sprang to his eyes, and he was glad Clara had dozed off beside him on the couch because there he was, a grown man, crying over a mitten and a Hallmark commercial.

  And then there are the voices. The ones he hears in his head once in awhile.

  They don’t say anything specific, or, God forbid, tell him to do anything, as they do in all those news accounts of psychotic people who commit crimes.

  It’s more like he’s overhearing bits and pieces of conversations other people are having—sometimes, they’re talking around him, and sometimes, they’re talking directly to him. But not him, because he never has any idea what, or even whom, they’re talking about.

  Once, clear as day, he heard a female voice shriek, “Doris! Did you cut up my girdle to make a slingshot?”

  He doesn’t even know anyone named Doris. Clara once did—she had an elderly pal by that name back in New York. But it’s not as though Drew ever met her.

  The name Doris . . . girdles . . .

  Where on earth did that stuff even come from?

  And then, just recently, heading out into a rainy day, he suddenly heard male voice saying, “Don’t forget to wear your galoshes, son.”

  Galoshes? He had no idea what those even were, exactly, until he looked it up and found that they’re thin rubber shoes that slip over your regular shoes to protect them from inclement weather. They were popular in the days when men went around wearing suits and hats everywhere.

  The days of girdles and galoshes, rumble seats and swing music . . .

  Lately, these strange little incidents are striking Drew so often that he’s starting to wonder if maybe he really is . . .

  Well, bat-shit crazy.

  Like Aunt Stella.

  His father always reminds everyone that she wasn’t always an imaginary biker chick.

  “She used to be normal just like the rest of us,” he likes to say, and then he’ll make some joke about the rest of them not being all that normal, either.

  “What happened to her, Dad?” Drew and his sisters have all asked from time to time, and that’s when his mother always gave his father a warning look, and Dad changed the subject.

  When he was younger, Drew never gave Aunt Stella’s problems much thought.

  But now that strange things are happening to him with more and more frequency . . .

  Well, for all Drew knows, his aunt’s fateful slide off the deep end started with hallucinations just like his.

  Yes, and the next thing he knows, he’ll be wearing a crash helmet for no reason and Clara will have left him for someone else. Someone sane.

  “Drew?” Clara’s voice intrudes and he blinks, seeing both her and Jeff Tucker watching him as though they’re waiting for him to say something.

  “What?”

  “I said, do you feel okay? You keep asking about me, but now you’re the one who seems a little . . .”

  “I’m fine,” he says quickly. Why?”

  “You just had this look on your face like . . .”

  Like I was imagining myself as someone else—apparently Jed Landry, the movie hero—riding around in a rumble seat?

  Ha.

  He’s never told anyone, and he isn’t about to start now.

  “I’m fine,” he assures his wife, hoping that it’s true.

  Chapter Ten

  The Tuckers are long gone, Dickens is unwillingly back in his crate, and Drew has, after a couple of detours, resumed his vacuuming.

  In the living room, Clara picks through the scattered Christmas ornaments, hanging those that are undamaged on the upright-again tree.

  Miraculously, only a handful of fragile decorations were lost, and none had any particular sentimental value.

  Even more miraculously, her snow globe, while perched precariously close to the edge of the mantel, also made it through the earthquake in one piece.

  Clara pushed it all the way back against the wall, but she isn’t going to leave it there. No, she’s going to pack it away in bubble wrap and foam peanuts and whatever else she can find to cushion it from what lies ahead.

  The Big One.

  Every time she allows herself to think about it, she’s struck by icy foreboding—and a terrible sense of déjà vu.

  Clara hangs a striped porcelain candy cane on the tree, lost in thought.

  This is just like being back in 1941 and knowing not only that Pearl Harbor was going to be bombed any second, but that Jed Landry was going to enlist and go off to die in the war, and there was nothing she could do to stop any of it from happening.

  She bends to pluck a Swarovski ornament from the rug and turns it around and around, making sure the delicate piece is intact.

  Experience—and her old physics teacher Mr. Kershaw—taught her that you can’t change what’s already happened in the past. He told Clara it would violate the law of quantum mechanics that says that what you do in the present is an inevitable product of the past.

  But this isn’t the past—it’s the present.

  It’s only the past when she’s in the future.

  Fingers trembling, Clara carefully places the crystal star on a high branch.

  Really, she needs to talk to Mr. Kershaw right away. She hasn’t spoken to him since she left New York, but they did exchange Christmas cards and she knows just where to find him.

  But do I really want to hear what he’s going to say if I start asking questions about what is and isn’t scientifically possible?

  Yes. And even if she can’t save the rest of the world—or their town, or their house—she can at least make sure she and Drew are in a safe, distant place when the devastating 8.7 quake strikes. . . .

  When, exactly?

  Paolo said it hit on a sunny day, and that it happened “a few” days after the Christmas foreshock. How many is a few?

  Two days? Three?

  Why didn’t she pay more attention to the timing when she was watching the news in 2012?

  She was too horrified by Paolo’s account of the staggering losses in San Florentina, too pre-occupied with figuring out where Drew was, and their baby, too frightened that they, too, might have been casualties.

  But everything is all right again . . . for now. She’s back in the present, back in her life, with Drew in the next room and their baby on the way.

  She touches her stomach, unnerved by how flat it is again. She�
��d actually gotten used to her big belly in the short time she’d spent in the future. Now, you’d never know she was pregnant just to look at her.

  “Hey.”

  She looks up to see Drew in the doorway. “Oh . . . hey.”

  “You’re not having stomach pains, are you?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “But you’ve got to be hungry again, right?”

  Hungry?

  She hasn’t thought about it in a while, but suddenly, she’s ravenous.

  “I could definitely eat.”

  “So could I.” He holds out his hand.

  She takes it. “I’ll finish the tree later.”

  “It looks great. I can’t believe it fell over and the ornaments didn’t even shatter.”

  “A few did.”

  “But nothing precious.”

  “No, nothing precious,” she agrees.

  As they head to the kitchen, she glances over her shoulder to see the snow globe reassuringly intact on the mantel.

  The little angel has made it through a lot over the years, with only a broken wing tip to show for it.

  But the worst, Clara knows, is yet to come.

  Chapter Eleven

  Morning.

  Again.

  Clara opens her eyes and her gaze falls on a box of saltines sitting on the nightstand beside the alarm clock.

  For a moment, she stares at it, wondering why she finds the sight vaguely disturbing. Then the room beyond—and her thoughts—come into focus and she sits up quickly.

  Too quickly.

  Acrid bile chokes her throat and she gulps it back, sinking against the pillow again. Morning sickness.

  Too nauseous to move for fear of throwing up, she notes that the clock reads 6:11. Morning or evening? she wonders, disoriented. It’s impossible to tell from the murky light falling through the glass panes across from the bed, punctuated by the glow of an electric candle.

  A candle?

  She reaches out and pats the mattress beside her, searching for the warm weight of her husband. But the bed is empty. She can feel it even before she turns her head, battling nausea, and confirms the fact.

  Thoughts scrambled, she replays everything she can possibly recall of what happened . . . yesterday? Three years ago? When?

  Is she in the future or the present? Hell, for all she knows, she’s in the past, living various Christmas days over and over like a wayward anti-Scrooge.

  Only one way to find out what’s going on. She sits up again, gingerly this time.

  Okay, so far, so good. She swings her legs over the edge of the bed. A little queasy, but nothing she can’t—

  Oh, barf.

  She vaults from the bed toward the bathroom and makes it just in time.

  “Whoa . . . are you okay?”

  Kneeling on the floor, clinging miserably to the toilet bowl, Clara looks up to see Drew standing over her with shaving cream covering half his face.

  “Drew!” she gasps. “You’re here!”

  “So are you . . . and you know I love you, but you’ve got some . . .” He gestures at her face.

  Oh, ick.

  He helps her to her feet, grabs a washcloth, runs it under hot water, wrings it out, and gives it to her.

  She wipes her mouth, fighting the urge to throw herself into his arms.

  “What’s the date today?” she asks casually, drying her face on the towel he hands her.

  He raises an eyebrow. “Uh, the twenty-sixth?”

  “December twenty-sixth.” She says the month just to be sure, not wanting it to sound like a question.

  Drew nods slowly. “Day after Christmas.”

  “I know!”

  “For a second there, you sounded a little . . . confused.”

  “I guess that earthquake yesterday really scrambled my brains,” she tells him quickly—then wonders whether that was such a good idea. “Um . . . there was an earthquake yesterday, right?

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “There wasn’t an earthquake yesterday?”

  Now Drew looks really concerned. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m totally fine. I just wondered if maybe I dreamed it,” she tells him because, of course, there was an earthquake, and anyone in her right mind would remember it . . . even if it was just a foreshock.

  “You don’t look fine. Are you still queasy?”

  “No—yes—Hey, where are you going?” she asks as he heads toward the bedroom.

  “To get the crackers. I put them on the nightstand for you when I came up to bed last night, because it said in that pregnancy book that it might help the morning sickness if you eat something before you even get up. Didn’t you see them?”

  “Yes, I did, and that was sweet of you, but I don’t need crackers. I just need for us to be together. Come here. Can we do that? Can we just be together? Please?”

  “Sure we can.” He gives her a quick squeeze, then starts away again. “I’m just going to go down into town, like we said, and pick up the papers and see how much damage there is from the quake, and then—”

  “Noooo!” she wails, following him.

  Drew, obviously taken aback by her drama queen response, doesn’t seem to know what to say for a moment.

  When he turns to rest a soothing hand on her shoulder, his brown eyes are laced with concern. “What’s wrong?”

  “It could be dangerous. You shouldn’t go. Please don’t go down there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . I don’t want to be alone here.”

  “But last night you said you wanted to stay home this morning and rest. Did you forget?”

  “No, it’s . . .”

  She shakes her head, realizing she does remember that. She remembers yesterday: assessing the damage from the quake, and trying to put the house back together with Dickens underfoot, and the Tuckers stopping over . . .

  Yet she also remembers a different yesterday: a house filled with moving boxes, and an oversized Dickens, and no Drew . . .

  She remembers two yesterdays.

  She lived two yesterdays—only one hasn’t happened yet, and—

  “Clara?”

  “What? I mean, yes, I guess I did forget I said that,” she lies, sinking down on the edge of the bed.

  But that’s not why I’m upset.

  “Mommy brain,” Drew informs her with a knowing nod. “I read all about it. You know, you were right. That book is really interesting. Did you know that in a few weeks, the height of the fundus will be—”

  “I have no idea what a fundus even is,” Clara cuts in shrilly.

  Doesn’t he know the world as they know it is about to be shattered?

  Of course he doesn’t know. You’re the only one who knows, just like before, in 1941.

  “The fundus,” Drew says calmly, turning toward the closet, “is the top of the uterus and they measure it to—”

  “Drew . . . we need to get out of here!”

  Poised in the closet doorway, he turns back to look at her. “What?”

  “Please. Let’s just . . . let’s get on a plane. We’ll go to New York, or to Florida, or . . .”

  “Clara.”

  “Please. Please just listen to me. We have to go away for at least a few days, or a week.”

  “We will. We’re going to the Caribbean in Feb—”

  “No, now!”

  “Now? Today?”

  “It’s a Saturday,” she realizes. “What else do we have to do?”

  “Finish putting our house back together before I have to be at work at five o’clock Monday morning before the market opens in New York. And, anyway, even if we did want to get away, we can’t just pick up and go anymore. We have the dog now.”

  “He can come, too.”

  He shakes his head. “We just got him, he’s barely trained, and after the way he howled and kept us up last night, you really think he’d be good company on a road trip? Or a cross-country plane trip?”

  She shrugs mi
serably. “I just . . . I just really feel like we need to go somewhere. Anywhere.”

  “But why?”

  Tell him!

  Tell him the truth!

  He’s your husband. If anyone can possibly understand, he will.

  But then, she told Jed, in the end. And while he listened patiently, and didn’t laugh or call her crazy, he didn’t believe her, either. He thought she was delusional from her bump on the head.

  Jed was Jed, though. They might have been soul mates, but they had just met.

  Drew is Drew. They’re married; they’ve known each other for years.

  Still . . .

  When you get right down to it, Jed is Drew, and Drew is Jed and, anyway, no one in his right mind—even if he loves her—is going to believe that she’s been zipping back and forth through time.

  She sees that Drew is once again staring at her with concern—or is it mild alarm?

  He’s probably wondering how he got stuck with a wife who has barf breath and doesn’t even know what day it is. Who wouldn’t be?

  Then, all at once, his expression changes, as if the light has suddenly dawned.

  “I know what this is about.”

  “You . . . you do?”

  He nods and opens his arms. “Come here.”

  Folded in Drew’s reassuring embrace, Clara struggles to calm her frantic thoughts.

  “You’re freaking out about all the changes that are coming, aren’t you,” Drew tells her. “I read that it happens to everyone at some point during her pregnancy. It’s normal to feel trapped when you realize there’s no turning back. But this is what we’ve always wanted. You have to remember that, okay?”

  She pulls back bleakly and looks up at him, nodding.

  “And I’m going to be with you every step of the way. I promise.”

  You shouldn’t make promises you can’t be sure you’ll be able to keep, she wants to tell him. Some things are beyond your control.

  But she doesn’t dare say it. Not here and now. Not until she knows for sure whether there’s a chance she can change something that has yet to happen.

  Mr. Kershaw. I have to talk to him right away.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?” Drew asks Clara, hesitating in the doorway with his car keys in hand.