“The blanket’s still here,” Jamie said, breaking their silence. Tommy didn’t question her on how she knew that. He wasn’t questioning anything about this experience. Tommy was caught in a timeless place, though he didn’t really know that yet.
He got the blanket and spread it out. As soon as they sat down, he reached over and kissed her and they found each other again. She reached for him and pulled him to her. He pressed against her as he caressed her all over her body. As they had when they were teenagers, they undressed each other as quickly as possible, and then Tommy was inside of her again, pulling her hips closer and closer, moving with her. She wrapped her legs around him as he thrust slowly, then faster. Jamie moaned as Tommy went deep inside of her. He cried out as he had when they were teenagers. “I love you, Tommy,” she said.
Chapter Fourteen
That day on the bus with Jamie had changed Tommy’s life. They had always been friends and usually sat together on the bus ride home from school, but that day he had screwed up his courage and asked Jamie if she wanted to see his garden. She did. It was their first “date,” followed by their first kiss.
They had both dated other people before that day, but they were still virgins. Tommy had always been glad about that. Because Jamie was the only person he ever wanted, the only one he wanted to spend his life with. The day they first made love in the overhang was the best day of his life, even better than their wedding day years later. Because he learned that day what it was to truly give yourself, body and soul, to someone you loved. And he loved Jamie Walters.
Tommy blamed himself for the end of their marriage. He had started talking to Jamie about her attending college. It had started nagging at him that Jamie graduated as valedictorian of their class and ended up working in a garden and canning vegetables. He had started to believe that Jamie would become dissatisfied with that life, that she needed something to expand her mind, her very smart mind. He had never known anyone smarter than her. If he had known at the time that his pushing her to go to college would actually bring about the end of their marriage, he never would have done it.
Jamie protested at first when he brought college up. She was happy. She didn’t want anything to change. But gradually, she started talking about it as a possibility. She did Internet research.
“If I go, I only want to go to Vanderbilt,” she had said. “It’s the best school around here.”
Tommy encouraged her to apply and she was re-invited by Vanderbilt to accept their scholarships, the same ones they had offered when she graduated high school but didn’t accept because she married Tommy instead and moved into the cottage. The scholarships would cover everything—her tuition, her books, her room and board.
“I could stay in the dorm and come home on the weekends,” Jamie said. “It’s not that far.” That sounded reasonable to Tommy. If only he had known then how far it really was. It was a lifetime away
And that’s exactly how it worked out at first. Jamie moved into the dorm and came home every weekend. Then there was the first weekend she didn’t come home because she had to write a paper. Those weekends became more and more frequent. Jamie’s emails had become rare and short. She often didn’t answer when he called her phone. She sometimes didn’t call him back.
Tommy remembered that Jamie had told him she didn’t know how her going to college might change things. She had said that before they got married. He should have listened to her, because it did change things.
He asked her to stop, to come back home again. But it was too late.
Jamie came home for the holidays in the middle of her second year at Vanderbilt. She had seemed distant, though she did make love with Tommy. But when the holiday was over, she told Tommy that they were over. She wanted to take advantage of the scholarships—they wouldn’t come along again—and she wanted to go to medical school. She couldn’t maintain a marriage at the same time.
Tommy begged her to reconsider, but Jamie was unflinching. She hugged him when she left; she waved at him from her car window as she drove off. He never saw her again.
The following week, Tommy received the divorce papers in the mail. Jamie wasn’t asking for anything of his. She wanted a clean and simple break. The thing that hurt him the most—that would keep him awake at night for months to come—was that Jamie took her maiden name back in the divorce.
Tommy signed the papers and Jamie was Jamie Walters again.
Grandpa and Granny got him through that terrible time. They had been kind and gentle with him. He lay in bed in the cottage he used to share with Jamie for a solid week. Granny brought him food and left it on the counter in the kitchen. She looked in on him, but didn’t intrude.
After the week in bed was over, Tommy got up and resumed his life on the farm. He was used to Jamie not being around since she had gone to college, and now he would get used to the fact that she was never coming home again. He didn’t think he would ever be able to love anyone ever again, but he had to get on with his life. He had a farm to look after.
Over the years, his best friend Ben and his wife, Sandra, tried to set Tommy up. He always refused, until one day, five years after his divorce, he decided to accept. He met Ben and Sandra and his date for the night, Charlotte, at the Japanese steak house that had recently opened in Baker. Tommy felt awkward trying to make conversation with Charlotte. The chefs came to their table and chopped and cooked their food right in front of them, so that was a welcome distraction. But by the end of the evening, Charlotte had given up on him. He didn’t blame her. Charlotte seemed like a nice person, but she could never measure up to Jamie. Jamie with her tan skin and straight glossy hair and her loving brown eyes.
Jamie was in medical school by the time he went on that date. He knew that because he had run into Jamie’s mother at the grocery store. He had told Mrs. Walters that he was happy for Jamie and to please give her his best, but he didn’t mean it. Not in the depths of his soul. He had wanted to ask Mrs. Walters if Jamie was seeing someone, or maybe even remarried, but he didn’t really want to know the answer to that. Mrs. Walters had touched Tommy on the arm before she walked away from him that day. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out between you two,” she said. Tommy was very sorry about that, too.
Ben called Tommy the day after the fiasco date.
“I love you, man,” Ben said. “But you’re going to have to do better than that if you intend to start dating.”
“I’m sorry,” Tommy said. “I know I screwed it up. But I can’t love anyone but Jamie.”
“You don’t have to love them,” Ben said. “You just have to like them enough to keep you from being a recluse. You’ve been alone too long, man. Jamie’s been gone a long time and she’s not coming back.”
Tommy had gone through a period of anger and resentment after that. Anger at Jamie for leaving him when she had to know that Tommy was her only love. How could she do that to him? They had dreams together. They were going to have children together. She had left Tommy and Grandpa and Granny all at the same time. How could she have done that to him? To them? Granny had cried about it. That hurt him, to see his Granny crying in the kitchen about Jamie. Hurt him deeply. It was Jamie’s fault.
Tommy started going to the overhang at the end of the day during that time. He drank bourbon straight from the bottle and stared out at the lake through the willow branches. The drunker he got, the harder he cried. He called out loud to Jamie. “Come back to me!”
After a few months of being eaten up with anger and rage, Tommy finally accepted that he had pushed Jamie away. He didn’t intend for her to be gone forever, but he had made it impossible for her to not go to college. He had been so insistent about it, all so he could feel better about himself. That he had not denied her a college education. He had failed to realize that Jamie was happy with her life. She would have remained happy, he had no doubt about that now.
So, Tommy had to live with it. He had orchestrated the end of his marriage. He alone had done that, and now he had to lie in
his own bed. A bed that did not include the forever love of his life, Jamie.
But Ben had been wrong when he said Jamie was never coming back.
Chapter Fifteen
Jamie and Tommy lay on the blanket. His hand covered hers. “I’ve never stopped loving you, sugar,” he said.
“I’ve never stopped loving you, either,” she said.
“I know we haven’t seen each other for a long time,” Tommy said. “But it seems like time hasn’t passed. Here, I feel as close to you as ever.”
“In a way, time hasn’t passed,” she said.
Tommy got up on his elbow and looked down at Jamie. She leaned up and kissed him. They fell back together on the blanket.
“This is going to seem crazy,” Tommy said.
“Nothing seems crazy to me anymore,” she said.
“But I want to ask you to marry me again,” he said.
“I’ve never not been married to you,” she said. “My answer is a thousand times yes.”
Jamie looked up at the ceiling of the overhang, which she now realized was a cave and made of rock. She wondered where the writing was.
“Tommy, I’ve got to tell you something. You’re going to think I’m insane and might take back your marriage proposal when I’m finished.”
“No way,” he said nuzzling her neck. “No way.”
“Do you remember graduation?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Because I wasn’t at graduation, remember?”
Jamie only remembered Tommy not being there in her first timeline, when Tommy had been killed. She didn’t know this timeline, had not lived it in the conscious mind she was bringing to all of her strange timelines. She could not even imagine how she could have ever left Tommy, divorced him. But in some timeline, this one, she had done that.
“Refresh my memory,” she said.
“I was on the way to pick you up when I had that accident,” he said.
“Right,” she said. So, Tommy had had the accident, but he had not been killed.
“I always thought you might have had that accident because you were trying to call me to tell me you were running late.”
“No,” he said. “Why’d you think that? You know why I had the accident.”
“I can’t remember now,” she said.
“Because that wasp got in the truck. I was driving with the windows open listening to Metallica on the radio. I wasn’t paying attention. A wasp got in the truck and stung me on the neck. I ran into the barrier.”
So, that was it! A wasp. Jamie had tortured herself about why Tommy had that accident. Now, after a life of guilt and misery and several timelines later, she had the answer. A wasp. In her original timeline, the one she had lived for so long, the wasp sting had caused Tommy to run right through the barrier and off the cliff. In this timeline, he had managed to put on his brakes before breaking all the way through the barrier.
Jamie was going to have to try to explain things to Tommy in a way he could understand. She prayed he would understand.
“Remember those science fiction books you used to read in high school?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“And some of them were about time travel?”
He nodded. “Those were my favorite,” he said.
“You used to talk to me about those books all the time. ‘Imagine if you went back in time and met yourself when you were little? What would you tell yourself?’ you used to say. Or ‘imagine if you could go back in time and change something, like your grandparent dying or your pet or something. Imagine how it would change the future.’”
“I loved those books,” Tommy said. “They really made me think about what time is and wonder if time travel is even possible.”
“It is possible,” Jamie said. “I’ve been living it.”
“What do you mean?” Tommy asked. Jamie detected the slightest note of alarm in Tommy’s voice. She was going to have to go very carefully.
“Please just hear me out all the way,” Jamie said. “I know you’ll have questions, but let me say everything I have to say to you.”
“Okay,” he said. He took her hand and she held on tightly.
“I grew up a few acres over from you,”
“I know,” he said.
“I went to school around here. I knew you all my life. We started dating each other and fell in love. We decided to get married and run an organic farm and garden.”
“Right,” Tommy said.
“And then on graduation day, you were late picking me up. I called you over and over on your cell phone, but you didn’t answer. I was going to be late and my parents were already gone to the school, so I took my mother’s car and went to graduation.”
“I know that,” Tommy said.
“That’s when your story and my story go in different directions,” Jamie said.
“I gave my speech that day, and afterward, I found out that you had been killed.”
“What?” Tommy said. “I wasn’t killed. Shook up, but not killed.”
That’s when Jamie knew that she had never left Tommy in the timeline where she had returned to him. She had not abandoned him after she got back to him and saved him from his death. She knew she would never have done that. But she had abandoned him in another timeline, this timeline, and that didn’t make her feel good.
“I know in your history—your timeline—you weren’t killed. But in my timeline, you were. Just listen to me, Tommy. Please listen. Keep your mind open like when you read those books.”
“Okay,” Tommy said, but he sounded doubtful.
“I’m not crazy,” she said. “This is real. It’s been happening to me and I can’t stop it.”
“I was devastated, of course,” Jamie continued. “I had my wedding dress all ready for us to get married. I had planned a life with you. I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t function after you were killed.”
Tommy had stopped interjecting his comments. He still held tightly to her hand, and Jamie was encouraged by that.
“After about a year, I finally realized I was going to have to do something with my life. I couldn’t hang around with my parents and Bobby forever. So, I went to Vanderbilt. And I never went home again.”
“Never?” Tommy asked.
“Never. I couldn’t go back to the place we had been in love. I couldn’t drive on the road where you had been killed. I tried to put it all away in a corner in my mind, safe and secret, where I didn’t have to deal with it.”
“I finished medical school and did an internship in California and then a residency at UAB. I worked in an emergency room in Atlanta. Then I took a position at a clinic in the hills of Tennessee, where people needed my help the most.”
Tommy was silent.
“So I started working at the clinic and made friends with Stacie and Nate,” she continued, hoping Tommy was still keeping an open mind.
“Who are they?” Tommy asked.
“Stacie is the nurse practitioner and Nate is the doctor in charge of the clinic. He’s been there a long time.”
“We started hanging out together a lot and one thing led to another with me and Nate.”
She felt Tommy stiffen slightly beside her. But she had to tell him.
“You had been dead for a dozen years by that time. I had been beating myself up thinking it was my fault you had died because you were coming to get me for graduation. It was the first happiness I had felt in all that time.”
Jamie squeezed Tommy’s hand and he squeezed back. She put her face to his cheek and kissed him. He put his other arm on her arm. Jamie wasn’t losing him yet with her bizarre story. Not yet.
“We got engaged. He got me a sapphire ring. And then my mother called me and told me Dad had had a heart attack.”
“I went home for the first time in twelve years. When I got there and saw that my parents had made a shrine to their house and the last time I was in it, I felt horrible. My absence in their life had caused them so much pain and grief. I vowe
d then that I would be the best daughter they could ever ask for.”
“You were always a good daughter,” Tommy said.
“Not after you were killed,” she said. “I abandoned them.”
“That’s hard to imagine,” he said.
“I know, Tommy. All of this is hard to imagine. But I need you to hear me.”
“Okay,” Tommy said quietly.
“I ran into your mother at the grocery store and she was a broken woman,” Jamie said. “She had lost so many loved ones—you, your grandfather, and your father. Your brother and sister had left for college and your mother was alone. It was terrible, Tommy.”
“I stayed with my parents for a few days, taking care of my father. And then one day, I came to the overhang. I just needed to see it again. And I crawled inside and found the blanket, still in the plastic bag under the big rock. I spread it out and fell asleep on it.”
“I guess that’s how you knew it was still here,” Tommy said.
“Yes,” she said. “So, I fell asleep, and when I woke up, my hair was long again and got caught in the willow branches. My hair had been like it is now when I fell asleep.”
“I didn’t know what was going on. I ran back home and my mother was younger. Bobby was playing a video game and my father had not had a heart attack. I was so confused. My mother was starting to worry about me because of the things I was saying. I was terrified, Tommy. Absolutely terrified. I thought I must be in a dream.”
“Then I found out it was the day before graduation. I could change what happened. So, I called you and begged you not to pick me up for graduation. I told you something bad would happen if you did and you believed me. I need you to believe what I’m telling you now, Tommy.”
Tommy didn’t say anything. Jamie sat up and looked at him. “This is me, Tommy,” she said looking into his eyes. “Me. I’m telling you the truth no matter how hard it is for you to believe.”
Come Down In Time (A Time Travel Romance) Page 14