ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME

by McQuestion, Rosary

  “Your mother was a very wise woman,” I said looking him in the eye and nodding in agreement.

  He picked up the wastepaper basket to the side of the credenza behind my desk and dumped its contents into his trash bag. He motioned with an upward nod toward my desk. “That Chinese take-out ready for the trash?”

  “Oh, yes. Almost forgot about that.” I grabbed the food container and dumped it into his trash bag.

  “Well, you take care now and try to remember to bring your pace down a couple of notches,” he said with a wink. His caramel eyes showed specs of gold, his skin mildly lined beneath his silver hair.

  “I’ll try.”

  “I hope so,” he said and moseyed out the door.

  I sifted through papers and file folders, organizing them in neat piles on my desk, while thinking about the book that was lying on the floor in the study the night before. In the novel, the woman told the young man her son and his wife and daughter died in a tragic accident, and her husband had died a few years later. The young man was dealing with his own problems, but recognized that the woman, despite the pain of losing the people she loved, was brave and unwilling to be beaten down by what had happened. She told him she learned from her sorrow.

  I rested my head in my hands and closed my eyes picturing the day I told Matt I was pregnant. I told him to hold out his hand and close his eyes and that I had a present for him. He asked what it was and I took his hand and placed it on my belly. He opened his eyes and had the most incredible look of wonder, joy, and love, and lifted me off my feet and swung me around.

  Was Matt now trying to tell me I needed to be strong despite the pain of my son never having known his father and me not knowing exactly what had happened the day he died? Aside from knowing fairytale dreams can get shattered when you least expect, was I supposed to learn something else?

  The thought tumbled over in my mind and landed like a thud.

  “Aubrey?”

  My eyes snapped open. Melanie Hatcher, the firm’s paralegal, stood at my desk with a file folder in hand. The woman had exceptional talent for uncovering more hidden facts than the CIA and had helped crack some difficult cases for the law firm. You’d think she graduated from the Lieutenant Columbo School of Detectives, as opposed to Duke University where she graduated with honors.

  She was brilliant, yet was incapable of understanding that reputable cosmetic surgeons don’t market their clinics with clip out coupons, hence her chipmunk cheeks and trout lips. Nevertheless, she was very pretty and at forty-four, you’d never guess she was a day over thirty with a honey brown head of ringlets and under thick dark lashes, her expressive blue eyes smiled even before she’d speak.

  “You okay to go over the Jenkins case with me?”

  As I focused on the stiffness of her face, the movement of her lips resembling the Clutch Cargo cartoon characters of the sixties, I sighed with relief.

  “Yes, of course,” I said, thankful for the opportunity to have my mind distracted by something that didn’t relate to some type of parallel universe.

  Seven

  It was nine-thirty when I got home that evening. As I drove my SUV up the cobblestone patterned driveway, it struck me that in all the years I’d lived in the house I’d never really examined its exterior in detail. The coach lamps on either side of the arched front porch threw a yellow wash of light across the stucco walls, which had me thinking about the memories Matt and I made living there. We gutted the interior and gave it the warmth of a French country cottage.

  I thought about the novel I’d found on the floor alongside my desk and the words I’d read on the dog-eared page. The house the woman loved brought her comfort just like the old Tudor brought comfort to my life. My house was a place filled with love, happiness, and precious memories of Matt and the joyous memories I’d made with our son.

  Suddenly, something clicked in my head. I pulled my vehicle into the garage and rushed into the kitchen. I dropped my purse and briefcase on the granite countertop, and stood still, not moving a muscle, just listening. Slowly, I began to move, running my hand over the cocoa glazed cream-colored cabinets, the cold granite surface on the large center island, and even the smooth chestnut floors. My eyes followed the furnishing into the other rooms of the house. Creams and French blues and yellows and toile, checks and stripes, and high ceilings with thick rough beams.

  I felt possessed as I stepped into the family room filled with antiques and touched each one. I laid a hand on the massive stone fireplace feeling the coolness of the stone on my palm, while staring at the reclaimed giant rustic beams overhead. I darted toward the dining room with its patina chandelier and linen shades, a French white built-in china cabinet, rich cherry dining table, blue stripe fabric chairs, and rooster centerpiece. Bolting into the study, filled with a kaleidoscope of photographs, books, treasured pieces of art from our honeymoon and trip to France and places we traveled, I touched items, while cradling a photograph of Matt to my chest. It was all there. This was the home we made our own and filled it with love.

  The week before, thinking a new start would help fix some things in my life, I’d contemplated selling the house and moving downtown to be closer to work. Was reading that latest passage from the book a coincidence? Or was Matt directly telling me I didn’t have to sell the house and give up the memories we made in order to make a new start?

  I clattered up the stairs to the master bedroom. The answer was somewhere in the house, perhaps in the cherry wood furnishings or the blue toile upholstered headboard that Matt used to lean back on while reading, as I lay my head in his lap staring up at him. The antique cabinet filled with a perfume bottle collection, a gift from my grandmother, caught my eye. The answer to what happened the day Matt died was in the very core of the house he gutted and refurbished with his own two hands. I just had to find the trigger that would jog my memory of what happened on Block Island.

  * * * *

  After a long, hot shower, I slipped into a short cotton nightgown and padded downstairs to the kitchen where I poured myself a glass of wine. While locating my lighter on the top of the refrigerator, Buster sauntered into the kitchen and meowed loudly.

  If you don’t feed me soon I’ll waste away before your very eyes, his expression warned pitifully, as he circled my feet and butted his head against my legs at every revolution. After pouring some kibbles into a bowl and setting it on the floor, I rooted through the freezer and found the pack of cigarettes I’d hidden behind a frozen turkey.

  I slid open the French doors to the patio off the kitchen, and stepped outside onto the deck facing the lake. The loud chirping of the cicadas and low croaking of bullfrogs hiding in the tall beach grass made the night come alive.

  Over the dark rippling water, a sliver of moon shared the skies with a million twinkling stars. The wine glass clinked as I placed it on the glass-top wrought-iron patio table. I plugged in the tiny white lights that Nicholas and I had strung around the handrail of the deck the Christmas before. I sat down at the table, not realizing that the humidity had left a film of moisture on the chair cushion, making my nightgown stick to the back of my thighs.

  I tapped a cigarette out from the pack and lit it. Between alternate sips of wine and long drags of my cigarette, I never took my eyes off the star swept skies. I thought about Matt and his belief that souls are comprised of individual energy pockets of thoughts, feelings, and experiences. He used to think long and hard about what happens when people die and whether part of the soul stays on earth and the other part perhaps goes to heaven, or hell or purgatory. He’d theorize the possibility of a dying person taking their last breath and transporting a portion of their spirit into a living person nearest to them at the time of their death. He’d have a remote expression on his face and say, “Guess I’d have to die to find out if that’s possible.”

  It’d always make me feel gloomy so he’d try to lighten things up. “Hey babe, I’m not going anywhere. But, you know the old saying about the eyes being the wi
ndows of the soul? Well, if I die first you’d best be looking for me, or I’d have to come find you.”

  The red-hot ember on my cigarette glowed as I took a deep inhale and considered the vastness of the universe and all that was still a mystery to mankind. The truth was that not a single living person knows what happens after death.

  I was exhausted as I flicked my cigarette butt over the porch rail and retreated into the house. I walked through the kitchen and turned off the lights, then stopped left of the stairway, in the foyer and pushed open the double French doors to the study. A melancholy vastness filled the room like an old black and white photograph. I paused, hoping to hear something out of the ordinary. A tingling sensation began to rise in my body but stopped, as if holding its breath and like a ghostly apparition, the feeling vanished.

  I walked in and dragged my fingertips over the leather-top antique Georgian desk, a gift Matt surprised me with after I had passed the Bar. The wine inside me infused a dreamy relaxed sensation throughout my body, numbing my senses and turning my eyes into slits. Sleepiness finally seized me. I gave in and went to bed.

  * * * *

  That night, I fell asleep dreaming about the trip Matt and I took to Paris to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary. The day was bright and extremely hot. Hand in hand we strolled through LeBois, a well-known park among the Parisians. Wanting relief from the sweltering heat, we walked into a small supermarket and dashed toward the coolers at the back of the store. We tried to feign interest in frozen chickens, while the cool, refreshing mist escaped from the open freezer and chilled our bodies.

  In my dream, I turned toward Matt and for the first time, noticed he had a peg-like prosthesis attached to the stump of his right leg, like Black Beard. He was wearing a red jogging suit caked with hunks of dirt. His body looked broken. One arm dangled at his side like a sausage hanging from a string in a butcher shop window.

  Somehow, we were transported back outside into the terrible heat, and we were arguing. I wanted to go back in the store and he wanted to leave. I couldn’t figure out why we’d be arguing about something so stupid, when I saw a distorted reflection of myself in Matt’s sunglasses. My face looked as though I was in a wind tunnel and my ears were pointy--like an elf’s ears, when all around me, flowers began to fall from the sky.

  My body twirled fast like a ballerina on ice skates. With outstretched arms I caught bunches of tulips, roses, and large white lilies, when a sense of foreboding ensued. The light around me grew dark, and a low-lying fog rose like steam from the pavement beneath my feet. I stopped spinning and looked at the flowers I held in my arms. They withered up like strings of dried fruit, dark and hard.

  I turned to reach for Matt, but he was gone. A thick vapor of fog surrounded me. I felt as if the cold clammy hand of some weird creature was going to reach out to grab hold of my ankle, when I heard Matt call for me. For some reason I felt as if I were in the plumbing department at Home Depot when the blare of a foghorn startled me. A beacon light flashed just as I heard a thunderous roar of crashing waves. Definitely not Home Depot.

  In the distance, a curious light mooched toward me through the fog and slowly began to take shape. “Thank God, I never thought I’d find you again,” I said as I raced toward Matt.

  The closer I got the better I could see that he had two good legs, no sausage arm, and he had that clean just-showered look. Breathless, I stopped a few feet from him and gazed at the man standing before me.

  He wasn’t Matt; he didn’t look anything like him. Matt was only two inches taller than I was and his hair was light. The man who stood before me was very tall with dark hair. He removed his sunglasses and stared directly into my eyes. Although his eyes were blue and I didn’t recognize him, I somehow knew he was Matt.

  The ground began to vibrate under my feet like the warning rumble of an earthquake. As the filmy layer of fog dissipated, my heart exploded with fear when I realized I was at Block Island standing on Mohegan Bluffs, one hundred and fifty feet above the crashing surf below.

  Standing on the edge of the bluff Matt began to lose his balance. I hollered his name, but he told me to stay back and not come any closer. I watched as the earth beneath his feet began to crumble.

  “No! Take my hand,” I screamed, and inched my way toward him when I noticed my hand was gnarled and twisted like a tiny juniper tree, not able to hold on to anything. I felt the weight of the world bear down on me with all its might.

  “Aubrey, promise you won’t stop looking for me!” he shouted as the earth gave way, and he was gone.

  I awoke and found myself sitting up in bed with my hands planted firmly on cold, unsympathetic sheets. My nightgown was drenched, my heart racing, while in my head I heard Matt’s voice. “Remember the eyes are the windows to the soul.”

  Eight

  I bolted from the elevator and passed by the front desk, barely giving a thought to the latest receptionist sent over by the temp agency. A person with a disembodied voice that gave me a chipper “Good morning” greeting.

  Last night’s dream left me with the strangest feeling. I’d had similar dreams, but this dream was different.

  I entered my office and tossed my briefcase on the desk. An annoying sound similar to a dryer buzzer came from the fluorescent light overhead. I looked up at it and made a mental note to call Mr. Davis.

  I was running late to meet up with Fendworth. As I made my way to his office to talk to him about a new case, I was hopeful that after all these years I might have some kind of breakthrough. Whatever the dream meant it had to be something big. I just needed to decipher its meaning. But I felt good about it, like my subconscious had taken a big leap that was going to shed light on why I’d always thought Matt’s death was my fault.

  As I approached Fendworth’s office, from down the hall I could see him seated in his ice blue Scandinavian leather chair with his cell phone to his ear. His corner office had large, airy windows overlooking Providence City Hall and the Biltmore Hotel. His minimalist-designed, glass-walled office, with glass and chrome desk, and tall crystal sculptures looked a bit like a suite at Jukkasjärvi, Sweden’s famed Ice Hotel.

  He suddenly shot to his feet, snatched up what looked like a package of Oreo cookies off his desk, and stuffed them into a drawer in the credenza behind his desk. His mouth rotated like a Cuisinart blender. He kept chewing and swallowing, and more chewing and swallowing, while pressing the palm of his hand flat against his chest, as if it would help expand the pathway of his throat.

  Lightheadedness came over me, while the sound of a woman’s voice faded in and out of my head like a cell phone with a warbled connection. I stopped to look behind me, but no one was there, when I realized I must be picking up someone’s thoughts. Like a strong signal picked up from a phone tower I immediately heard, “Water weight gain, my ass! I know he’s cheating on his diet. I could just kill that man!”

  I knew that voice. It was Fendworth’s wife. Could hearing people’s thoughts classify me as an accessory to murder? If I wasn’t already insane, I thought surely I would be if the chattering in my head continued.

  The hall behind me was empty, until Mrs. Fendworth bounded from around the corner. I’d heard that getting her upset was like uncorking a bottle of hissy fit. She was dressed in a crystal-studded, flowered micro mini dress and iridescent shoes that looked as if someone had poured gasoline over them. Her wardrobe always gave the impression she was barely out of her teens, which in fact she was. At twenty-two, she was nearly half Fendworth’s age.

  She kept her eyes riveted to the floor as her trim little hips sashayed toward me at a fast clip. Her flaming red hair pulled into a high, tight, “I Dream of Jeannie” ponytail bounced like a pogo stick. In her hand, she carried a gallon size zip-lock bag filled with carrots and celery sticks. Hence, the frenzied look on Fendworth’s face to inhale all incriminating evidence of despicable carbs.

  Her eyes shot up from the floor to look straight at me. “Hey Cory, how’s it going?” s
he said curtly, as she breezed past me. Before I even had a chance to respond, I looked over my shoulder to see her storm into Fendworth’s office and close the door behind her.

  I decided to take a detour to the break room. My nickname of Cory had surfaced the year before at our annual Christmas party, at which she became a little too tipsy. The entire evening, she kept calling me Cory, mainly because it was the only part of my name she didn’t slur into oblivion.

  The break room was empty when I walked in. Bagels and three different cream cheese spreads in small plastic tubs sat on the counter, while the robust aroma of freshly brewed coffee drifted in the air. I opened the cupboard door and pushed aside various logo mugs of several shapes and sizes to find my personal “Best Mom” mug from Nicholas that I’d kept hidden way in the back.

  I poured a steamy cup of coffee. I grabbed the carton of hazelnut creamer off the counter, when a sudden kink in my neck caused my arm to jerk. The creamer splashed up and speckled the front of my suit jacket. Great!

  I quickly seized the spool of paper towel off the counter and ripped off a square. Scrubbing the area where the creamer splashed on my jacket, I noticed the paper towel had shredded, leaving fine white particles woven into the black fabric. Dammit! I scraped my fingernail over the tiny shreds, like a dog scratching an itch, but the paper wouldn’t come out. Heat pooled in my head and I gave up.

  As soon as I walked back into my office, I received a call concerning a case I’d been working on. It was for an emergency child custody hearing, which meant I needed to drop everything and run over to the courthouse ASAP.

  “Oh Aubreeeey,” Laura sang as she strolled into my office. I looked up at her, just as Fendworth sprinted past my office with his wife hot on his heels.

  Laura wore the infamous cat-that-swallowed-the-canary look on her face. I tossed three file folders into my briefcase, and snapped it shut.