The Color of Heaven - 09 - The Color of Time

by Julianne MacLean

  Maybe she was right.

  My therapist suggested something else—that I didn’t want to love again because I would feel as if I were betraying Ethan’s memory, and I felt guilty enough as it was for what happened. I blamed myself for his death, for if I hadn’t pushed him so hard to see inside his home and for him to stand up to his father, they might not have argued so heatedly that night.

  Or if I’d listened to my parents and stayed home to scoop ice cream in Montana, things might have turned out differently. Maybe I would have met another boy and forgotten about Ethan in time, and he would still be alive today.

  But we can’t change the past. Imagining what might have been is a pointless exercise. That much, I knew. Rationally, at least.

  Emotionally, it was another issue altogether, for as I sat on the rocks with the salty sea breeze whisking past my cheeks and blowing my hair back, I knew that no amount of self-discipline or rational thinking could keep me from dreaming about all the things that might have been. The life we could have had if he hadn’t died that night.

  * * *

  Right. Clearly, I was no better than a drug addict or an alcoholic—for I was hooked on something that was very bad for me. My substance of choice was heartbreak.

  That night, it was impossible to resist. I turned on my laptop again and did more research on lucid dreaming and astral projection, then I slipped into bed and stared at the palms of my hands for at least twenty minutes, hoping to enter a dream state where I could go back in time, again, to that last summer—but this time, I would control what happened. At least in my dream. I wanted to be with Ethan again, to erase what occurred the night he died.

  I wanted to taste Ethan’s lips on mine. I wanted everything to feel real and wonderful—just like it had that first morning when I woke up in this house and ventured downstairs to find Gram and Grampy cooking breakfast for me in the kitchen.

  But on some level I knew this wasn’t the route to healing. That I was prolonging the torture.

  I promised myself this would be the last time. Tomorrow I would start fresh and focus on something else. I would take on some sort of project—maybe clean out Gram’s gutters or paint her veranda.

  Committing to that promise, I lay down on my side with my head on the pillow, and summoned up memories of Ethan’s kiss…the sound of his voice…the clean scent of his hair…

  Eventually, my eyes grew heavy. I fought to keep them open, but in my struggle, it felt as if I floated up off the bed, out of the room, down the stairs. I could see all I passed as I whooshed through the front door. Out I went.

  I flew to the coast, over the dark water, then I swung back around to the wide green lawn in front of Ethan’s summer mansion and landed gently on the grass beside the sundial.

  Although I was in some sort of spirit form in my dream, I reached out, lay my hands on the dial plate, and felt a shock sizzle through me as I gripped it tightly…

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Maine

  Summer, 1999

  “Slow down, you’re driving too fast,” Ethan said to me as we rounded a bend in the road on the way out to Cape Elizabeth.

  “I can’t help it.” I took my foot off the gas pedal and hit the brakes hard, just to knock him around a bit in the passenger seat. “I’m annoyed.”

  He placed a hand on the dashboard to brace himself while the radio cut in and out. A streetlamp flickered on and off as we zoomed beneath it.

  “I don’t know what the big deal is,” he said. “You’ve been wanting to see the inside of the house for ages, and now I’m taking you there. I don’t know why you’re mad.”

  Was this a dream? Or was I awake, as I had been on the rocky beach that day with the salty sea breeze on my cheeks? Remembering?

  Knowing exactly what the future held for us that night, I took my eyes off the road for a moment and turned to look at Ethan in the pink glow of the setting sun.

  “Let’s not go to your house,” I said. “Let’s go to the Lobster Shack instead and get some french fries. I’m starving.”

  “There’s food at the house,” Ethan said.

  “Yeah, but I’m in the mood for fries,” I replied. “Really, I gotta have ’em.”

  Ethan’s eyebrows pulled together in confusion. “What’s going on? You’ve been after me for a year to show you the house. Now you want to go and get french fries?”

  “It’s nuts, right?” I replied with a dazzling smile, as if I had a secret I couldn’t wait to share with him. I felt so happy! “But I just decided that I can wait to see your house. It’s not going anywhere. Besides, what if your parents come home? Your dad would have a fit if he found me there. I’d rather meet them another way, when we can prepare them for it—later, when you have more freedom. They’ll have to accept your decisions eventually, right?”

  “They won’t come home,” Ethan assured me. “They’re on their way to the airport right now. The jet’s there, waiting for them. Dad was talking to the pilot on the phone an hour ago.”

  I gently touched the brake to slow down at another sharp bend in the road. “I have a funny feeling about it, that’s all,” I said, keeping what I knew of the future to myself. “Let’s do it another time.”

  Ethan stared at me curiously for a moment, then took his hand off the dash. “All right. If that’s what you want to do.”

  “It is,” I replied. I took hold of his hand and squeezed it, feeling confident that I had done it. I had changed the course of our futures, for the better.

  If only this was real.

  If only it wasn’t just a dream.

  An Unexpected Fork in the Road

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Foster Mansion

  August 6, 2015

  I sat up in the darkness and pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead, which was pounding like the dickens. I felt disoriented, not sure where I was or even what day it was. Was it morning yet? Did I have to go to work? I glanced at the red numbers on the digital alarm clock next to the bed and saw that it was 4:30 a.m.

  No wonder I felt groggy. It was practically the middle of the night and I was still half asleep. I’d gone to bed too late. Lord knows, I should never have opened that bottle of wine at 11:00. What was I thinking? I was thirty-three years old. I should know better by now.

  A strange feeling tingled my fingertips as I lay there blinking up at the ceiling. I shook my head to try and rouse myself. Suddenly the darkness in the room unsettled me. I felt blind. I needed to see. Rolling to my side, I reached over to switch on the lamp.

  The lightbulb buzzed and flickered. I frowned as I looked around. Everything felt strangely foreign, as if I were waking up in a B&B that belonged to someone else, but that was silly because this was my own bedroom and I was in my own home—my summer mansion by the sea, which Ethan’s mother had left to us in her will.

  Tossing the covers aside, I slid out of bed and touched my feet to the floor.

  I definitely needed to take something for this headache, so I rose from bed and shuffled out into the corridor, then padded down the main staircase to the kitchen on the ground floor.

  When I switched on the lights, there was a buzzing sound again and everything flickered.

  I wondered if there was a problem with the wiring. This was an old house after all—a money pit, to be honest, and I certainly wasn’t rolling around in disposable cash. If I had any sense, I would call a real estate agent and put this place on the market.

  But who was I kidding? I was a hopeless case when it came to letting go of things. I had been living there for over a decade. This was all I had left of him.

  It was not until that moment, as I moved toward the cabinet by the fridge where I kept all my medicines and first aid items that I remembered the dream I’d just had.

  A rush of grief moved through me and I stopped in my tracks. I felt dizzy all of a sudden and had to sit down on one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

  Good Lord, I’d dreamed about Ethan…about the summer w
e first met, and the summer after that.

  It all came flooding back to me—all the strange disconnected elements of the dream, the thrill of seeing him in the hospital that first day when he came to check on Jenn after she was hit by the car. The panic I’d felt when I learned I was pregnant after returning home to Montana. Not being able to see him for most of the year while he was at Yale. That had been torture.

  Then I remembered how the dream had taken a bizarre turn and morphed into a frightening nightmare—where I walked into this very house to find Ethan lying dead on the floor in the front parlor, in a pool of blood. In the dream, his father had pushed him.

  Thank God it was just a dream.

  Yet, something about it felt so real…

  Rising to my feet, I ran into the front parlor to inspect the white marble fireplace—in particular, the corner where Ethan had hit his head. Why in the world would I dream something like that? What did it mean? I felt a sudden overpowering urge to pick up the phone and call Ethan, to make sure he was okay, but it was the middle of the night. We were no longer together. He’d think I was insane.

  Feeling half panicked, half in a daze, I returned to the kitchen and withdrew the basket of pills and ointments from the top shelf of the cupboard. I quickly rifled through the boxes of anti-histamines and Band-Aids, found the Tylenol, and filled a glass with water at the sink. My hands were shaking. I stared at my palms.

  After swallowing two pills, I turned off the lights in the kitchen and climbed back up the stairs with the glass of water in hand.

  Maybe I should think about selling this place, I thought miserably as I slid back under the covers. There were simply too many ghosts here.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “That’s really weird,” my best friend and co-worker, Cassie, said to me as she moved behind the bar, slid the cash tray into the register drawer and pushed it closed. “Although maybe it’s not. I’m sure lots of women dream about their ex-husbands dying in some sort of freak accident. And his father, too. Wasn’t he a real piece of work?”

  “He wasn’t the warmest of men,” I replied as I lifted one last upturned chair off a tabletop and set it down on the plank wood floor, then straightened the red and white tablecloth.

  Though Cassie and I had only known each other for a few years since I started working at the pub—it felt as if we’d known each other forever because our connection had been instantaneous.

  Looking around the pub to make sure everything was in order, I moved to the door and flipped the sign to “Open.”

  It was only 11:00 a.m., but the lunch crowd would soon trickle in.

  “It was probably one of those stress dreams,” Cassie suggested as she slid the drawer closed on the antique register. Then she turned to the mirror behind all the bottles of booze and swept her curly red hair back into a ponytail.

  “Why do you think I’d be stressed?” I asked innocently.

  She faced me again and raised an eyebrow. “You know what I mean.”

  Sadly, I did. She was referring to my turbulent love life, currently revolving around the man I’d been dating for the past five months.

  Although “dating” was an understated word for whatever we were. Our relationship had begun with an intensity that knocked the breath out of both of us. We’d met here in the pub when he came in with a couple of friends to enjoy a few beers on a Friday afternoon. I’d waited on them at the booth in the back corner and sparks had flown instantly while we flirted.

  Derek was handsome and fit and he made a good living as a contractor, running his own business here in Portland. The only downside was that he was married. Separated, actually, but not yet divorced. He’d only been separated for a few months when we first met, though I’d been divorced from Ethan for a number of years.

  Derek had just moved into a tidy, modern one-bedroom apartment in one of the newer developments, while his wife, Addison, continued to live in their family home in the suburbs with their two children, aged twelve and fourteen.

  Derek still went over there all the time to visit. It seemed like there was always something he had to take care of—a plumbing issue in the kitchen or some rotting boards on the deck.

  It was also an excuse for him to spend time with his children, so I couldn’t fault him for that because I admired men who were good fathers. It’s part of why I found him so attractive. But it never sat well with me when I knew he was visiting there for hours on end and I didn’t know what was happening with his wife—an attractive, successful C.P.A. with long, shiny, jet-black hair. Addison wore skirts and heels to work and carried a briefcase.

  I think her level of education, and the fact that she was a professional, intimidated me a little, because I’d never gone to college. I’d always planned to—and maybe I still would—but Ethan and I had married young. I had been nineteen, barely out of high school when we defied his parents, snuck off to city hall one afternoon and tied the knot.

  The only way we’d been able to manage those first few years was for me to work full-time and support us while he finished his degree. Because his father cut us off.

  The reason I was in possession of the mansion now was because—not long after his parents’ private jet went down over the Atlantic—we found out that his mother had penned a private will of her own. This house was always deeded in her name and she had left it to Ethan, against his father’s wishes.

  Ethan then gave it to me in the divorce settlement, in exchange for me supporting us for all those years, I suppose.

  But that was a lifetime ago, and I was trying not to dwell on the past. So, back to Derek…

  I hadn’t actually met Derek’s wife. I had only seen pictures of her on Derek’s Facebook page, but I knew she was aware of my existence and my relationship with her husband.

  Scratch that.

  She was aware of my relationship with her soon-to-be ex-husband.

  Derek had told me she was uptight about him introducing new girlfriends to their children, however. She didn’t want to confuse or upset them with a revolving door of new “lady friends” every week. I wasn’t even supposed to post anything on his Facebook page because the kids were online constantly with their mobile phones.

  Lately I’d been pushing Derek to talk to Addison, to try and convince her to lighten up with the rules and allow me to meet his children, but Derek was firm on the issue and insisted that they weren’t ready for that.

  So that’s what Cassie had meant by the “stress dream” comment. She knew I was frustrated.

  “Maybe the dream about Ethan dying meant something else entirely,” I said. “Maybe it means I’m finally letting go of that part of my life.”

  “I should hope so,” she replied. “It’s been seven years.”

  The bells over the door jangled as it opened. Three women walked in and took seats at the table in the alcove at the front window.

  “How are you ladies doing today?” I asked as I approached and handed each of them a menu. While they looked it over, I went to the kitchen to let Malcolm and Gabe know that we had customers, then I carried three glasses of water on a tray to the table.

  I had just finished unloading the drinks when the front door opened again and who should walk in, briefcase in hand, but Addison Murphy.

  Derek’s wife.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Addison stood on the welcome mat in her skinny black skirt, red pumps, white blouse and tailored blazer. She removed her sunglasses and looked around as if she were an interior decorator, there to gut the place.

  “Can I help you?” Cassie asked from behind the bar.

  I was behind Addison, standing in the alcove in the front window. Not that I was trying to hide from her or anything, but I wasn’t in any hurry to show myself either. At least not until I knew why she was there.

  Cassie obviously had no idea that this was Derek’s wife, who I’d spoken about more than once over a glass of wine after closing. I’d shown Cassie pictures of Addison on Facebook, but she ob
viously hadn’t made the connection.

  Making no move to acknowledge Addison or say hello, I simply walked past her to deliver the lunch orders to Malcolm, out back.

  Unfortunately for me, it became obvious that Addison hadn’t come in for lunch or a beer. She called my name, just as I was about to push through the swinging doors to the kitchen.

  “Excuse me, are you Sylvie Nichols?” she asked.

  Oh, crap. I stopped, took a breath and let it out—because somehow I knew this wasn’t going to be pretty.

  I turned. “Yes, that’s me. You must be Addison.” I slid the round tray under my arm, wiped my palm on my thigh to dry it off, strode forward and held out my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, finally.”

  She stared down at my hand as if it were something sticky—and a terrible inconvenience to lift her own—then reluctantly, she shook mine.

  “Uh huh,” she murmured in a cool tone while her brown eyes roamed over my face. “I figured it was time.”

  “Great,” I replied, hoping she was there to consider offering a green light for Derek to introduce me to his children. It made sense, in my opinion, because I could turn out to be their stepmother someday. Wouldn’t it be best to ease them into it?

  “I just have to deliver these orders to the kitchen,” I said. “Would you like to have a seat at one of the tables or at the bar?”

  She shook her head. “No, I won’t be staying.”

  “Oh…. Well…just give me a second…”

  A rush of nervous butterflies invaded my belly as I passed on the orders to Malcolm, out back. Before I returned, I hurried into the staff washroom to check my hair and make sure my mascara wasn’t flaking under my eyes. I looked all right, so I prepared myself for whatever she wanted to ask me.