by Liz Fenton
“There are a lot of people who think because the sun disappears and the sky becomes ominous, that they are a bad sign, but they are actually quite magical. Sometimes things aren’t always as they seem, Gabriela,” he added pointedly. “But I think you already know that.” Suddenly, Gabriela pictured her grandmother’s face. Was he referring to her abuela?
Gabriela remembered how her grandmother would bring out her crystals and tell Gabriela stories about her childhood in Argentina, where they used the elements of the earth to heal their wounds—both the ones they could see and the ones they kept buried inside their souls. Gabriela’s mother would walk by and roll her eyes, telling her mom in Spanish to stop filling Gabriela’s head with nonsense. But her abuela would grab Gabriela’s small hand with her own and whisper, “Recuerde siempre, las cosas no siempre son lo que parecen.”
Remember, things are not always as they seem.
Claire jumped in. “So what does this eclipse and the supposed power that comes along with it have to do with us?”
“I’m aware you’re all here celebrating your fiftieth birthday. Although I must say, none of you look a day over forty-two, forty-three, tops.”
“Gee, thanks.” Claire shook her head. “So is that it? You want to use this gift to save us from getting older? That doesn’t take magic. Just a good plastic surgeon.”
“No. Aging is the most natural and beautiful thing in the world,” Blair said as Claire stared at a framed picture of his barely legal wife posing on the cover of Las Vegas magazine. “This isn’t about your age, now. It’s about the year you all turned forty.” Blair paused, and the women looked at each other as if to ask what he could possibly know about that year.
“What about it?” Gabriela spoke first.
“What if I could send you back there? To 2005?”
“Are you really suggesting you have the ability to make us time travel?” Claire folded her arms across her chest, trying to ignore the nagging feeling in her stomach.
Blaire nodded.
“If you really had that power, wouldn’t that be what your show was about?” Gabriela asked, trying to steady her pounding heart as she and the other women gave him their best poker faces, none of them wanting to reveal that he was spot-on, that if they could go back in time, it would probably be to that year, when they’d each made choices that altered the course of their lives. Choices that had been weighing heavily on them ever since.
“It’s not that simple. I can only use this gift each time a solar eclipse appears, every 177 days. But if you’re not interested in this opportunity, we can agree to end this conversation right now and I’ll suggest a hip new nightclub where you can spend the rest of the evening. There are a lot of really cute young guys there too.” Blair gave them a knowing look as he walked to the door and started to open it.
Gabriela thought back to the bellhop. Could it be possible Blair was referring to him? What else did he know about them? Gabriela considered the baby she never had. Jessie’s mind flashed to her one-night stand and the end of her marriage. Claire thought of her mother and clutched the edge of the soft leather couch in an attempt to squeeze the thought away, focusing instead on her daughter, Emily. 2005 had been the year when Claire had really started to lose her—when their relationship had begun to unravel like a loose thread on a sweater.
“Wait,” Jessie finally said, standing up quickly. “I would go back in a heartbeat.” She thought of Grant. She wouldn’t be able to take back what she did, but maybe she could convince him to stay?
Blair released his hand from the doorknob. “Okay. We have one taker. Claire?”
“No way,” Claire scoffed, and looked at Gabriela for support, surprised when she wouldn’t meet her gaze.
Gabriela thought about Colin. There had been so much gut-wrenching pain after he said he didn’t want children. It had taken her so long to get over it. And even with ten years of experiences, maybe she somehow would be able to come up with the right words to convince him to have a baby the second time around.
“Why not, Claire?” Jessie frowned. “If we have a chance to make better choices, how could it hurt?”
Claire chose her words carefully. “Do I wish I had made some different decisions? Sure. And there are things I regret.” Claire paused, meeting Gabriela’s knowing look. Many things. “But, honestly, my life is finally where I want it to be. I’m getting married. Emily and I are in a good place. Why would I go back?”
“How about for me?” Jessie chewed on her lower lip.
“And me.” Gabriela surprised herself. She hadn’t meant to say what she’d been thinking. Or had she?
“You guys really want this?” Claire felt a pinch in her gut as they both nodded vigorously.
“What about your mom? Don’t you want to see her?” Gabriela asked Claire gently. Claire felt her chest constrict. She was sure Gabriela would do anything for the chance to see her own mother again.
Memories piled on top of each other in Claire’s mind. But with each thought, she felt only pain. She couldn’t go through that again.
“Claire.” Jessie said her name softly. “If you aren’t sure, then stay. Gab and I will go.”
“Actually, it doesn’t work that way,” Blair interjected. “If you don’t all agree, then none of you can go.”
“Why?” Jessie asked.
“This is a journey that must be taken, and completed, together,” Blair offered, then added quickly, “And if you do all make the choice to go back, you’ll have exactly one year—until midnight on Claire’s forty-first birthday.”
“And then what?” Gabriela asked.
“You’ll have to decide if you want to stay and live the new life you’ve created.”
“And what if one of us wants to stay but the others don’t?” Jessie asked, already knowing the answer.
“You all have to choose to stay or I’ll see you right back here again—in June 2015.”
“Please, Claire,” Jessie pleaded. “Think about the things we could change not just in our lives but in the world. Imagine all the disasters we can prevent.”
“I have to stop you there,” Blair said gently. “Unfortunately, that won’t be possible. You won’t have the power to make major changes to the course of history. Just your own.” He glanced at Claire. “And of course, the people closest to you. Your choices will impact their lives too.”
“Oh,” Jessie said, frowning at Claire.
“And one more thing,” Blair said.
“There’s more?” Claire rolled her eyes.
“You can’t use this ability to time travel for easy money.”
“So I shouldn’t run out and buy a ton of Apple stock?”
Blair shook his head. “Nope. And no lotteries or betting on sporting events either.”
“Well that’s no fun!”
“That’s not the point anyway. Right, Claire?” Jessie said.
Claire sighed. She always had such a hard time saying no, especially to Jessie. But there had to be a limit of things she was willing to do for other people’s happiness.
Blair’s eyes bored into hers. “You are right, there is a limit. But maybe you need to go back to realize what that is.”
Claire felt an electric current run down her arms and out through her fingertips. How had he known what she’d been thinking?
“So there’s only one way to find out if this is real. Say yes,” Blair said.
Gabriela took a deep breath. “I’ll go.”
“Me too,” Jessie said, forcing the negative what-ifs from her mind, deciding to focus on the positive one. What if she could convince Grant to forgive her?
Claire looked at her friends. She had to admit her resolve was falling away, now that Blair answered the question she hadn’t even asked out loud. She focused on her engagement ring. There was a chance she wouldn’t meet Jared again. But she had no way of knowing that for sure. She might not repair her relationship with Emily this time. But what if she handled it differently, so that it never broke apart in the f
irst place? And there was her mom. What if Claire could change her fate? And at the end of the year, she could be the holdout, the one who made them come back here. She looked at Jessie, who’d been her very best friend for three decades. She’d seen the remorse about what she had done with Peter eat her alive for years. And she knew that Gabriela, despite her career success, carried regret around with her like an extra limb. So she decided to do what she did best. Sacrifice. “Okay. I’ll do it for you guys. Isn’t that what friends are for?” she heard herself say, and squeezed Jessie’s and Gabriele’s hands tight.
CHAPTER SIX
* * *
June 2005
“Jessie?”
Jessie heard her name but it sounded muffled and distant.
“Jessie?” the soft voice asked again.
Jessie’s head was pounding, like someone was drilling a jackhammer into her skull. She reached up to touch her temples, but her arms were like two deadweights at her sides. She must have had too much to drink last night. Blair Wainright’s dark eyes suddenly materialized in her mind and she forced the image away. Had he drugged them? Maybe he’d given them roofies, or what was that other one? Special K? Where were Gabriela and Claire? Were they okay?
“Can you hear me?” The voice seemed closer now and was more persistent, firmer.
Jessie nodded, or at least she thought she was moving her head up and down. Then there was the weight of a hand on her wrist and something cold against her chest. And her eyelids were being pried open, a searing yellow light blinding her. “What are you doing?” Jessie’s voice was hoarse and her mouth incredibly dry.
“I’m checking your vitals,” a blurry figure responded.
“Gabriela? Claire?” Jessie asked the out-of-focus shape.
“No, my name is Cindy. I’m on the third rotation—morning shift. We met yesterday, but I don’t expect you to remember. You were pretty out of it.”
Jessie thought hard. Yesterday? Yesterday she’d been flying to Vegas to meet her friends. They’d had champagne, a lot of it. Then they’d been at the Blair Wainright show. And then after, they were . . . “Was I drugged?”
“Well, yes, that’s what you said you wanted?” The voice responded as if it was the most normal thing in the world to request.
I asked Blair Wainright to drug me? Jessie tried to remember what happened after they’d all squeezed hands, but she couldn’t.
“Where are Gabriela and Claire?”
“Oh, your friends? They were here last night, but they left,” Cindy said, and as Jessie squinted at her, the lines of her face becoming more clear—it was heartshaped and her cheeks were covered with freckles. Who was this woman?
“Can you sit up?”
“Left? Where did they go?” Jessie tried to force her body into an upright position, but her muscles felt atrophied. How long had she been out? She closed her eyes then opened them again.
“I have no idea. Home maybe?”
Why would Gabriela and Claire leave her in Vegas? Jessie heard the sound of a motor and her bed began to move as items in the room started to take shape. She saw a poster with the numbers one to ten and a pain scale, then a dry erase board with several names listed—then balloons, and flowers, lots of flowers. She felt a pinch as she moved and saw a bag with fluid and followed it to an IV taped to the back of her hand. “I’m in the hospital?” Jessie’s voice was shaking.
“I’m going to call the doctor,” Cindy, presumably a nurse, said as she pressed a button. Her hair was pulled back with a clip and part of her bleached blond hair was sprouting out of the top of it. She was wearing light blue scrubs with tiny pink and yellow flowers on them that made Jessie feel dizzy if she stared at them too closely.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand why I’m here.” Jessie felt her adrenaline start pumping. Blair Wainright had drugged them and then, had he . . . “Did something bad happen to me?” Jessie stammered.
Cindy poured water into a small plastic cup and held it out to Jessie, eyeing her skeptically. “You really don’t know why you’re here?” she asked as she pressed two pills into Jessie’s palm. “Take these.”
“What are they?”
“Just some Tylenol. We don’t want your fever to return,” Cindy said, frowning at her. “Jenny, the nurse who was with you on the night shift, said it spiked at one hundred and three, but”—Cindy flipped through some papers on a clipboard—“according to your chart, it seemed to break a few hours ago, thank goodness!” She laughed nervously.
“I don’t remember that,” Jessie said softly as a tear began to fall out of the corner of her eye, unable to mask the panicked feeling that was quickly consuming her. Why couldn’t she remember anything and why had Gabriela and Claire left her? “I need my iPhone please—it has a polka-dot case and a screensaver of my twin daughters in the stands at a UCLA football game. And where is my purse? It had my wallet and my iPad in it.”
Cindy gave her a quizzical look. “I’m not sure what you mean by an eye phone, but if you want to make a call, there’s a phone right next to you on the table. And as for eye pads, I can get you a cloth to remove your mascara.”
Jessie laughed. “Okay, is this some kind of joke? I said iPad not eye pads? You know, the tablet? Apple?”
Cindy bit her lower lip and thought for a moment. “Why don’t you wait for the doctor and we’ll get this all sorted out,” she offered, and watched Jessie finally swallow the pills. She would have done anything to make the pounding behind her temples stop. “I want him to take a quick look at you.”
“Jess? I didn’t realize you were awake,” Grant said as he walked into the room, placing a soft kiss on her lips. “Did I hear you talking about Steve Jobs?”
“What are you doing here?” Jessie asked, ignoring his question. “Oh God, you’re still on my emergency contact list . . .” Jessie trailed off as another tear escaped from her eye, rolling over the side of her nose. Mortified that her ex-husband had to come bail her out, she wanted to crawl under the covers and disappear, suddenly sickened by her inability to move forward, at her naïveté last night. Tomorrow she was going to start therapy. Claire had a psychologist she swore by—she’d get her number. She was going to get over Grant finally.
“You doing okay?” Grant perched on the edge of the bed as he widened his eyes at the nurse and Jessie felt something familiar about the moment, as if she were experiencing déjà vu. “The girls want to see you, but I told them to wait with my mom.”
“They didn’t need to come home from college for this!”
Grant squinted at her as if he didn’t understand what she’d just said.
“I’ve called the doctor,” Cindy interrupted. “Your wife seems surprised she’s in the hospital. Keeps asking for her friends, Claire and—” The nurse stopped as if she was searching for the name.
“Gabriela,” Jessie and Grant said together.
“She’s asked for some things too. Tablets and eye pads?” Cindy continued as if Jessie wasn’t in the room.
“Ex-wife,” Jessie said, embarrassed by the nurse’s mistake. It had been a decade. And now he was marrying someone else. Janet would claim that title now. For years, it had been Jessie and Grant, Grant and Jessie. Now it would be Grant and Janet. She knew those words would never slip off her tongue easily, no matter how many therapy sessions she endured. The worst part? Jessie had a feeling Janet would never make the same mistakes she did—that she’d hold on to him tightly. If Grant didn’t want to have sex with her, she’d sit him down and work it out, not let it fester like a tumor.
“I’m sorry, did you divorce me in your sleep or something?” Grant pressed his lips together, unsure whether to smile or frown. And as Jessie stared at him, she realized he had his hair—all of it. It was dark brown and full and slightly long around the ears, not gone. He wasn’t bald. And he was also softer around the middle—the way he used to be. As she eyed the fabric of his golf shirt stretching over his belly, it triggered a memory—she remembered the way it felt to wra
p her arms around Grant’s doughy stomach, the way it cushioned her own imperfections. She had friends who complained about their husbands’ bodies—why couldn’t they go to the gym or play basketball? Jessie would always stay silent, bobbing her head up and down to support them, not ever revealing that she secretly loved Grant’s imperfect physique.
As Jessie watched Grant, his khaki slacks wrinkled as if he’d slept in them, her hand flew to her mouth in realization. She lifted up the bedsheet and felt her belly, slightly deflated, but not as hard, just as another nurse pushed a bassinet into the room with a baby in it. It was wearing a little white long-sleeve T-shirt and diaper and had a blue-and-pink-striped hat on its head. On the side of the glass, a sticker read Hi, my name is Baby Lucas: 8 pounds, 10 ounces. Born 6-02-05. “Oh my God!” Jessie marveled at the sight of her one-day-old son.
“Jess?”
“I’m okay, just obviously a little out of it . . .”
“You started running a fever as soon as we got you into the room after the delivery. You were talking in your sleep the whole time.”
“What was I saying?” Jessie eyed Lucas as the nurse picked him up, aching to hold him.
“Oh, mostly gibberish, but you did keep calling out for someone named Blair?” Grant let out a strange laugh and she couldn’t tell if he thought it was funny or not. “You’re not cheating on me, are you?” he added, his smile still resting on his lips.
Jessie felt the color drain from her face as she searched Grant’s for more information. Did he know more than he’d let on last time? Was this his way of testing the waters? Satisfying that nagging feeling he’d been having all along? Or was she simply overthinking things because she really had been unfaithful? She’d wanted to come back here so badly, but she hadn’t thought through how heavy the burden of her secrets would feel again.
“I am most definitely not cheating on you with someone named Blair!” Jessie said. “I was obviously delirious from the fever,” she added before he could respond, pulling him in as closely as her IV would allow, digging her head into the cushion of his chest that she had missed so much, wondering why she ever thought she could replace him. As the nurse placed Lucas against her breast and she buried her nose in his neck, she thought of Blair Wainright again. For whatever reason, he had given her another chance. And she was determined to get it right this time.
