by Linda Bleser
Diane’s eyes widened. “I have a husband? Is he handsome?” She was humoring me again, but at least she was listening. Whether or not she believed me was less important than getting it off my chest.
“Handsome and charming and witty.”
“Oooh, I’m a lucky girl.”
“Yes, you are. He worships the ground you walk on.”
For just a moment the laughter left her eyes. She frowned. “Don’t tease me, Jenna. It’s not nice.”
“It’s true,” I said. “He’s out there. You just haven’t met him because circumstances kept you here instead. In my world, the two of you married six years ago. June 23rd to be exact.” I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath, praying she’d believe me. “One simple choice changes everything. But see, I don’t think it’s too late. I think that destiny plays a hand in our lives, too. Maybe if we miss one opportunity to meet our soul mate, another opportunity comes along later.”
That made me think of Bob. Was he my soul mate? Had we just missed finding each other like Diane and her husband? Or was it just wishful thinking on my part?
“I was supposed to be in your wedding,” I said. “But Cassie was sick, and I bailed at the last minute, leaving you in the lurch. I probably could have done things differently. Maybe I was jealous. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Diane reached across the table and gripped my hand. “I don’t think I’m the one you owe an apology to, since it wasn’t my wedding you missed.”
She was right. Ironic that only my best friend in this reality could tell me how much I needed to make it up to my best friend in the one I’d left behind. I would, too, if I only got the chance.
“So, if I accept your hypothetical premise,” Diane said, “then the question is … why? What’s the reason you’re here instead of there?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” I avoided any mention of Maya. So far Diane had been polite in listening to my rambling story, but throwing in a guardian angel could tip the scales. Better to keep that little tidbit to myself.
“I think I’m here to learn something. You know, I always wondered what my life would have been like if my mother hadn’t died. Now I’m finding out, but it’s not the fairy tale I’d imagined it would be. My life isn’t perfect.”
“Whose is?” She reached out and gripped my hand, holding it steadily in her own. “Look, I don’t know if you’re telling the truth or having a temporary break with reality. But the Jenna I know doesn’t just roll over and give up. She’s a fighter, and if she wants something bad enough, she’ll find a way to get it.”
“I’m not the Jenna you know,” I replied. “That Jenna was fun-loving and carefree. She had a normal childhood and the freedom to follow her dreams. She didn’t let you down on the most important day of your life. She’s not resentful and bitter and lonely.”
“And tipsy.”
I had to laugh. “Yeah, that too.”
“Should we order another round?”
“Only if you let me pay for the taxi ride home. We can come back for your car tomorrow.”
“It’s a deal.”
*
I wasn’t sure if we were just lucky to get a singing taxi driver or if he got a contact high off the fumes coming from our pores. Either way, we laughed all the way home. I had no idea whether or not Diane believed a word I said, but it felt good to be able to talk to someone, and for that I was grateful. Simply talking out loud made me start to see connections forming. The connections were still fuzzy, but maybe they’d become clearer with time.
We dropped Diane off first. When we arrived at my house, I gave the taxi driver a generous tip and made my way carefully up the path with one hand digging in my purse for the door key. It wasn’t necessary, however. Parker threw open the door and glared at me.
“Hi,” I said.
“Did you forget about our appointment?”
“Oops.” I edged past him, trying hard not to stumble. It was no surprise I had forgotten about my meeting with Parker. Up until a few days ago, he didn’t even exist.
“Typical,” he said to my back. “If it’s not important to Jenna, then Jenna can’t be bothered.”
“If it’s not important to Jenna, then Jenna can’t be bothered,” I mimicked sarcastically.
“Very funny. You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I had a few drinks with Diane. So shoot me. I had a rough day. I got told off by Dad’s new wife.” I snorted. “She wants me to leave him alone.”
Parker caught my arm when I stumbled. “When will you learn it’s hopeless?” he said. “You can’t force him to love you.”
I blinked back tears. “But he’s our father. Doesn’t that count for something?”
Parker shook his head. “He’s your father. Not mine.”
“What?” His words were like a shock of cold water rushing over my drunken haze. And yet somehow this new knowledge didn’t surprise me.
Choices.
I unclipped from my blouse the pin Parker had given me and studied the branches. I touched a fingertip to the branch that cradled Parker’s birthstone and followed it back to the fork in the trunk. It was starting to make some kind of foggy sense, but I couldn’t grasp the concept completely. I clutched the pin tightly in my hand, struggling to think clearly. My stomach rolled and the room spun around me.
“Are you all right?”
I brought a hand to my mouth, fighting a wave of nausea. “Bathroom,” I murmured. I turned and stumbled on my way to wash up, grasping the doorknob to keep myself from falling.
I closed the door behind me and took a deep breath. But it wasn’t the bathroom I found myself in. “No,” I whimpered, looking around at the circular room. “Not yet. I’m just starting to understand.”
But it was too late. The room began to spin. I knew what was coming, and as much as I wanted to see Cassie and get back to my real life, I hated the thought of losing the mother I’d just started to know and the friend I’d just found again—a friend who might be the only person willing to believe me.
I’d always been so good at leaving, turning my back on lovers and friends as if they didn’t matter. It was important to leave first, leave whole, before I could be shattered by loss. Leaving was what I did best.
But not this time. I wasn’t ready to leave. I hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.
Again.
I tried to fight it, even as I felt my consciousness stretch outward, felt invisible arms reaching out to touch infinity. In that brief moment before the world faded to black, all the secrets of the universe seemed just within my grasp. All knowing, all seeing, all understanding. I knew something … everything. And then the knowing was gone, leaving nothing but endless night in its wake.
10
I came awake slowly, as if drifting upward from a dream. Before I’d even opened my eyes, I could sense that everything had changed. The events of the last few days already felt unreal, almost dreamlike. I wanted to close my eyes and slip back into the dream to see where it would take me. I’d just reconnected with my best friend, found the mother I was meant to know, and discovered a big brother who cared enough about my feelings to buy me something he knew I wanted even though we butted heads at every opportunity.
Then there was Bob. My chest tightened, mourning the loss of a new romance that hadn’t had the chance to blossom. We’d had a lovely conversation, ripe with the promise of many more to come. Couldn’t I just enjoy it for a little while before being thrown into a new unknown?
My head spun, as if I’d had too much to drink. But wait. Wasn’t that part of the dream as well? I tried to stand, but the room spun around me. I clenched my fists, then cried out as a sharp pain stabbed my palm. I opened my hand, surprised to find the tree-shaped jewelry Parker had given me as a birthday gift. Even in my confused state, I knew it wasn’t possible to take items from within a dream, no matter how real it felt. Then what? Before I could answer my own question, the door opened.
“Oh, Jen, are you okay?”
I reached up and rubbed a lump on the back of my head, wincing at the pain. “Yeah, I just …” I stopped and stared. “Bob?”
He knelt down and brushed a finger over my temple. “You’re bleeding. What happened?”
“I, um … I fell.” What was Bob doing here? Was I back at the beginning? Was Cassie in the other room waiting for me to make an offer on the house? I glanced at the pin again, trying to piece it all together.
Bob followed my gaze to the pin in my hand. “Where did you get that?”
“Parker gave it to me.”
“Parker?”
“My brother.” Too late I realized my mistake.
“You don’t have a brother,” Bob said, brushing his fingertips over the growing lump on my head. His brow creased in worry lines. “You must have really hit your head hard.”
I nodded. The pain went deeper than a superficial wound. The mother I was getting to know was gone. I’d just found her, and I’d lost her already. You’d think that having already spent the last twenty years mourning would take some of the edge off, but letting go of the fantasy brought a different kind of pain. Instead of a loss of innocence, this was a loss of possibilities.
I wanted to ask about Cassie, but I was afraid to say anything. Bob reached under my arms and helped me to my feet. I stumbled against him, and he wrapped his arms around me. I rested my head against his shoulder for a moment, trying to regain my equilibrium, and breathed in his scent. If yesterday wasn’t real, then why was his scent so intimately familiar? Surely this was even more evidence that our time together wasn’t simply a dream but some form of alternate reality. So where was I now?
I looked around for something familiar to latch onto, but it was an ordinary bathroom, with nothing to distinguish it from any other. When I wobbled in Bob’s arms, he scooped me up and carried me to the bedroom. I collapsed against his chest, feeling so right, as if he’d carried me like this a thousand times before.
The bedroom felt more personal. Little touches here and there seemed familiar—not as if I’d been here before, but familiar in the sense that if I’d designed the perfect romantic getaway, it would look exactly like this room. The walls were a soft sea blue, and cloud-like curtains billowed on a gentle breeze from the open window. Everything felt inviting, from the plump love seat tucked into a corner to the delicate pillowcases trimmed in eyelet lace that adorned the bed.
And there was Bob, handsome and gallant. If not every woman’s dream, he was definitely mine.
Mine.
A feeling of possessiveness washed over me. I wanted Bob. I wanted to share his hopes, his dreams, his life. And now it looked as though I was. Or was it all wishful thinking on my part? A fantasy I’d created in a fevered dream.
Bob set me gently on the bed, where I sank onto a soft down comforter. I felt weightless and pampered, transported from one dream into another. But if this was a dream, I never wanted to wake up.
I turned my head to the side and snuggled into the pillows. That’s when I caught sight of the framed photo on the bedside table—a dashing groom in a dark tuxedo and his glowing bride in ivory lace. It was a wedding photo of Bob … and me!
My skin grew cold, and I felt the blood rush from my head. I took a deep breath, trying desperately to hold on, but it was useless. For the second time in less than an hour, a black nothingness rushed over me, washing everything else away.
*
I heard hushed voices. “Mild concussion. We’ll keep her overnight for observation …” I kept my eyes closed, trying to gather my thoughts. I knew it wasn’t a concussion, but shock, that had brought me here. Obviously I’d slipped into another alternate reality. But how? And why? And what about Parker’s pin? Was that proof that both realities were real?
Now that I thought about it, when I’d awakened in the secret room the first time, I still held the poem I’d taken from my mother’s grave, along with Cassie’s statue of Dorothy. I’d left them both behind. But the pin was still here. Perhaps anything I held or wore stayed with me from one reality to the next.
Either way, the best I could do was to go with it until I could figure things out. But how could I pretend an intimate history with someone I’d just met? There was no way I could fool a man I’d been married to for … how long? He’d know things about me that I didn’t even know myself. There was no possible way I could pull this off.
Then it came to me. If the doctors said I was probably suffering from a concussion, all I had to do was pretend to have a little temporary amnesia while I interrogated Bob for information about this new world I’d dropped into. It would be easy enough to act confused. Everyone would blame it on a head injury, giving me the freedom to find what I needed.
And I knew right where to start. If this Jenna was anything like the last two, there’d be journals somewhere. Once I found them, I’d have a better understanding of my place here. More importantly, I needed to know everything about Bob—how we met, how long we dated, when we fell in love, where he proposed, our first kiss, and the first time we made love. Oh. Maybe I’d better think about that later.
I heard footsteps coming closer, then felt movement by my bed. I knew Bob was there watching me. He reached over and closed his hand around mine. My eyelids fluttered open, and I nearly gasped at the tenderness in his eyes. I had never imagined a man would ever look at me that way.
“Hey there,” he said with a worried smile. “You gave me a scare.”
“I’m sorry.”
He brushed his fingers over my knuckles. “How do you feel?”
“Groggy.” At least I could be honest about that. I reached up and touched his glasses. “Have you ever thought about getting contacts?”
He chuckled. “No, I thought about it, but you said you liked sleeping with both Clark Kent and Superman.”
I smiled. Yeah, that sounded just like me.
He turned my hand in his and frowned. “Where’s your wedding band?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” That, too, was the truth. “Maybe I left it on the sink when I was washing my hands?” I suppose that shouldn’t have come out as a question, but Bob didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t remember a lot of things,” I said.
“That’s okay. I think that’s normal with head injuries. I’m sure it’s only temporary.”
“What if it’s not?” I murmured. “Will you help me remember?”
“Of course I will. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“I want to know everything,” I said. “Everything about us.”
“Lucky for you, that’s my favorite story.” Bob leaned forward, resting his elbows on the side of the bed. “It all started when my best friend fell in love. At first I was a little jealous because my buddy was suddenly too busy to party. All he cared about was this new girl he had met at college. It was Diane this and Diane that …”
My eyes widened. Could it be the same Diane?
“I’m not ashamed to admit I was jealous. But then I met Diane, and she was just as wonderful as he’d told me she was, and they were perfect for each other. How could I be jealous when my best friend had found his soul mate?”
“You believe in soul mates?”
He smiled tenderly. “I do now.”
My heart skittered, then resumed its normal beat.
“So guess who was best man at their wedding?”
It was all starting to come together. “That would be you, right?”
“That’s right. And guess who just happened to be the bride’s maid of honor?”
“That would be me?”
He leaned forward and kissed the tip of my nose. “Right again. It was love at first sight. Well, it was for me. You had other things on your mind.”
I thought back to that night. In my world, I hadn’t gone to Diane’s wedding because Cassie was sick and I didn’t want to leave her alone. One little change and my life had gone in an entirely different direction. I’d stayed home that
day and hadn’t met the love of my life. “Cassie was sick.”
He looked away. I didn’t have the advantage of knowing Bob all those years, but it was obvious to me that he was hiding something. “That’s right,” he said. “Cassie was sick, and you were worried about having left her. But it wasn’t your fault.” He frowned and stared at me, as if he’d given me this lecture a thousand times before. “She was old enough to fend for herself for a few hours.”
“What wasn’t my fault?” I tried to sit up. “What happened to Cassie?” Was she hurt? Dead? What had I done? I knew I shouldn’t have left her alone that night. Even if it meant never meeting Bob, never getting married and having the life I’d always dreamed of. Not at my sister’s expense.
“What happened?” My voice trembled.
Bob gripped my shoulders. “Calm down,” he said. “Cassie is all right. Let’s talk about something else right now, okay? Don’t you want to know how I proposed?”
“No. I need to see Cassie.”
“I’ll bring her here tomorrow, and you can see for yourself that she’s fine, okay? You need to get a good night’s rest, and when you wake up everything will be back to normal.”
I doubted that. Waking up lately was more of a crap shoot than anything else. I had no idea what was normal anymore. I just knew I had to see Cassie with my own eyes to be sure she was okay.
“Please, Bob. I can’t stand not knowing.”
He sighed. I could see the moment he gave in to my demands. “Okay, but promise me that you’ll try to get some rest afterward?”
I nodded.
“Okay, like I said, it was the day of Diane’s wedding. You didn’t want to leave Cassie alone, but she convinced you she’d be fine.”
Yes, so far that was exactly how I remembered, except in my memory I hadn’t been convinced. I’d stayed home with Cassie. Perhaps I’d simply used Cassie as an excuse to avoid having to pretend to be happy for a few hours.
“So you did the right thing by your friend, even though your instincts were telling you to stay home with your sister.” Bob leaned back in his chair. “But Cassie was young and stubborn. When her friends called later that day, she decided she felt good enough to go out and party with them.”