Until I Die Again [On The Way To Heaven] (Soul Change Novel)

by Tina Wainscott

  “Are you hungry?” His voice startled her.

  “How did you know I was awake?”

  “I just knew. I’m starved.”

  “Me, too. We could eat some of those M&M’s in the tub.”

  “Nah. Let’s grab a bite at BooNooNoos.”

  She rolled over and yawned. “If I have the energy to drag myself to the closet.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they sat at a table next to a trellis crawling with purple bougainvillea. The waiter came over and greeted them.

  “Lobster pizza, please,” Jamie said.

  Hallie looked at him. “Lobster pizza?” She tried to imagine such a thing.

  “Save room for dessert,” the waiter told them. “We have chocolate cake covered with M&M’s, an M&M sundae, or M&M cookies.”

  She felt her cheeks warm. When the waiter left, she nudged Jamie.

  He reached over and grabbed a bowl sitting on the table, holding it out for her. “Want an M&M?”

  She glanced into the bowl. “I don’t see any green ones in there.”

  He looked. “Hmm, you’re right. I wonder what happened to them.”

  “Do you mean to tell me…”

  “How do you think I got all those green ones? I had an emergency shipment of M&M’s flown to the island yesterday and spent all day sorting out the green ones. Now we have thousands of red, orange and brown ones left, so I gave them to the chef and told him to be creative.”

  She was laughing so hard, she thought her stomach might explode. “Jamie, you’re crazy!”

  He took her hand and placed it against his lips. “You’ve made me a fool for love again. I hope you accept the consequences.”

  Her smile faded, and she met his eyes. Did that mean he loved her? Her heart jumped around inside, and the touch of his lips against her palm made her toes curl.

  “Here are your drinks,” the waiter said, breaking into their moment before she’d mustered the guts to tell Jamie she loved him. “Two Hallie’s Comets. Mrs. D, you have a phone call. You can take it up by the waiter’s station.”

  She glanced at Jamie, then back at the waiter. “Are you sure it’s for me?”

  “He said Hallie Parker, but I assumed it was you. You’re the only Hallie around.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe it’s Velvet’s—I mean, my mother’s boyfriend.”

  “I hope everything’s all right.”

  She walked to the phone and picked it up.

  “Hello?” She waited. “This is Hallie.”

  The silence made her quiver and feel cold even as a warm breeze floated by. She hung up, then confirmed with the waiter that she had the right phone. Jamie watched her with concern as she walked back to the table.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There wasn’t anybody there. Well, there was someone there, but they—he didn’t say anything.” Her heart tightened as she remembered Mick’s warning about giving her marriage another try.

  “Hallie, what’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  She clenched the arms of her wicker chair. Should she tell him about Mick’s threat? Surely he wouldn’t come all the way out there to bother them. It was probably a bad connection.

  She brightened. “I was just trying to figure out who it might be.”

  Jamie’s voice remained normal, with a forced lightness. “It wouldn’t be Alan, would it?”

  She looked him in the eye. “I told you, I don’t know anyone named Alan.”

  “Just checking.”

  She tried to act normal and relaxed throughout dinner, but that cold nagging feeling continued to hold her in its grip. Her gaze kept drifting to the shadows beyond the lights, and she hoped that it was only an irrational fear, nothing else.

  The sun brightened her outlook the next morning, chasing away the shadows.

  “When I see you out here with George,” Jamie said as he moved up behind her pool-side chair, “I can’t help but imagine you’re out here with our baby.”

  George chattered as he swung from one outstretched finger to another. She reached up and pulled Jamie’s head down to nuzzle his cheek.

  “He’s a bit of a preemie, don’t you think? And those eyes—he must take after your side of the family.”

  George’s vivid brown eyes, so human-like, darted from Hallie’s face to Jamie’s. His tiny hands reached up to scratch his tufted ears.

  Jamie crouched down at her side, his hands resting on the arm of her chair. The sunlight lit the blond hairs on his legs to golden, and her gaze trailed up past his white shorts, broad, bare chest to a face far more serious than her quip warranted. He reached up and stroked her cheek.

  “Do you think we’ll have more to our family than the lizard and George?”

  She leaned into his hand, closing her eyes at the warmth of it against her cheek.

  “Are you asking me if we’ll ever have a baby?”

  “Not now, not in the nearish future. Just sometime.”

  She leaned over and touched her lips to his, letting them linger for a few seconds. When she opened her eyes, she found him looking at her.

  “I would love to have your baby, Jamie.”

  Curiosity filled his blue eyes. “God, how you’ve changed. It’s like I’m married to another woman.”

  She felt a twang in her heart. How she would love to tell him the truth. Yet, despite his words, what would he really think if he knew she was another woman? Maybe she would try somehow. She trailed a finger across the smooth-shaven skin of his chin, realizing he was testing her with the question.

  “What would I have said before, if you’d asked me that?”

  “You would have whined about getting fat and stretch marks, and you weren’t ready to even discuss the possibility.”

  “Guess that’s changed, too.” She pulled him close. “Do you have to leave just yet?”

  “I wish I didn’t. Miguel’s waiting for me. Remember, we promised Ruby we’d go over to Contigua and do some patchwork on her mother’s house.”

  “Oh, right.” Only once had Hallie been to the small village on the other side of the island, population three hundred. “You’ll be home before dark?”

  “Absolutely.” He punctuated his promise with a kiss and touched the top of George’s head. “Keep her company, buddy.”

  Jamie had only been gone five minutes when the phone rang. She hesitantly walked to the bedroom and answered it. Silence. She placed the phone carefully back in the cradle, holding back her anxiety and anger. It probably wasn’t anything at all, but why did the calls cause her hands to get clammy?

  That night the dreams came again. In her trembling hand she held a crumbled newspaper. She could only read the word, “Missing—”

  Her heart pounded as the bridge neared, and she knew what would happen if she crossed it. She knew, yet she couldn’t stop. The black semi appeared like a menace in the rear-view mirror, then beside her, pushing her off the bridge.

  Her hand slapped over her mouth as she lurched up in bed, staring with bulging eyes into the darkness. She gasped for breath, pressing her hand against her heart to still it before its pounding woke Jamie.

  Who was missing? Everyone in her life had been present. Then, like so many other times, she reached down beside the bed for her Sheltie.

  Her eyes flew open. This time there was something down there. Her fingers touched fur. She jerked her hand back, staring at the dark nothingness on the floor. Something moved down there! She reached over and turned on the light, hoping the feeling of fur was still part of her dream.

  She blinked, slowly reaching down to see if what she saw was real. The fuzzy Sheltie pup watched her with dazed eyes, blinking. He sat nestled in a basket topped with a big blue ribbon.

  “Jamie.” She turned to see him lying on his side, his head propped up by his hand. He was smiling with anticipation. “Oh, Jamie.”

  She scooped up the ball of brown, white and black fuzz and set him on the bed. Her eyes watered, and she rubbed them before turning to
Jamie.

  “His name is Phoenix,” he said.

  “How did you get this puppy here? And when?”

  “Well, let’s just say I have connections. And I lied about going to Contigua. I was waiting for Phoenix’s plane.”

  “But how…why?”

  “Every time you have one of those nightmares, you reach down for the floor and call for Phoenix. I wanted to give you something to touch next time.”

  She hugged him fiercely, nearly squashing the pup between them. “But how did you know I would have one of my nightmares tonight?”

  His eyes grew serious. “Hallie, I know you have one just about every night. You try to hide them from me, though I can’t imagine why.”

  She hid her eyes, looking down at the pup on her lap as she stroked his soft fur. His ears folded down at the tips, and his pointy cold nose made her jump when it touched her arm.

  “I don’t want to bother you.”

  Jamie sat up, turning her so that she faced him. “Bother me? Do you think that I wouldn’t stay up all night just to be there when you woke from a nightmare? Don’t you know that I’d jump right inside your head and fight your bridge monsters myself if I could?”

  He pulled her close, so different than the way Alan jerked her toward him in his dreams. The tears flowed, but she wasn’t sure why. Happiness? For a life lost? For a past that wouldn’t let go? Maybe for all three.

  “Come on, George, don’t be pissy about this,” Hallie pleaded into a tall breadfruit tree in the backyard the next evening. “You’re not being usurped, I promise.”

  George refused to come down, chattering in shrill tones. Phoenix was still a little shy, standing close to Hallie’s feet as he looked up into the dark place among the branches where the awful noise originated.

  She gave up on George and walked back to the lanai. Jamie was swimming laps in the pool. The pool lights were the only ones on in the house, giving everything nearby an eerie glow that shimmered with the waves. She sat and dangled her legs in the water, watching Jamie’s firm bare buttocks skim just under the water’s surface. Like a shark, he glided underwater toward her and tickled her feet. With a flick of his head, he sent wet locks back off his face.

  “Mm mm mm,” she said with a smile. “I sure do enjoy watching you swim, Buns DiBarto.”

  His blue eyes widened. “How did you know about that?”

  “What, your moon shot back in college? Oh, I have my connections.”

  “Tell me where you heard about that,” he said, threatening to tickle her feet again.

  She squirmed when his fingers grazed the bottom of her foot. “Okay, I give up! I had lunch with Dave once, and he told me. I wanted to know more about you, about my chances for getting you back.” Among other things, of course.

  His grin faded. “You really wanted this to work, didn’t you?”

  “More than anything. You said you had reasons to leave, just as you had reasons to stay. What were the reasons you stayed with…me?”

  Something flickered behind his eyes for a moment, and his lips turned up in a crooked smile. “It’s silly.”

  “I won’t think it’s silly.”

  “Well, it’s probably ludicrous. It’s…” He looked at her intently for a moment. “When I met you, I had a feeling, a strong, hit-you-in-the-gut feeling, that you were the woman I was put here on earth to protect and love. I stayed because that feeling never went away.”

  Her heart seized up. She was that woman he was put here to protect and love. She, Chris. She, Chris. Drops of water slid down his cheek and nose. Her eyes were locked to his, held by a spell of the heart.

  “Do you love me, Jamie?”

  He pulled her down into the pool to face him. Pressing his forehead up against hers, he closed his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered. Then he opened his eyes, and she fell into their depths. “I love you, Hallie, with everything that is me.”

  “I love you too, Jamie. I think I have always loved you somewhere deep inside me. Now that love is everywhere.”

  His hands encircled her face, and he kissed her, becoming more arduous. He reached behind her neck and untied the string of her bikini. And then she heard the noise. The crack! of someone stepping on a twig.

  “What was that?” she asked, catching her breath.

  He shrugged, then pulled her close again, continuing his exploratory kiss.

  She squeezed his arm. “I heard something.”

  “We live in a jungle. We’re far away from the rest of the resort, so we tend to get a few wild animals out here. You, of all people shouldn’t be afraid of a few animals.”

  She searched the black curtain that surrounded them, cloaking everything but the immediate proximity. Phoenix stared into the direction the sound had come from, his ears perked and responsive.

  “See, even the pup heard it.”

  The blood drained from her face, and she scrambled for the edge of the pool to pull herself up. Jamie followed, wrapping a towel around himself. Her heart lurched when she saw him walking toward the darkness, in the direction of the breadfruit tree. George shrieked from a short distance away.

  “Where are you going?”

  He turned, giving her a slightly exasperated look. “I’m checking the noise out. The only times I see that expression on your face is when you wake up from those nightmares.”

  He continued walking across the deck.

  She swallowed hard. “There have been more phone calls. Two yesterday, after you left. Three more today. Let’s just go inside and lock the doors.”

  He shook his head. “And have you staring at the windows all night? Uh-uh. Go on inside, I’ll be right back.”

  With her heart in her throat, she watched him disappear into the darkness. Fear paralyzed her, kept her from taking her eyes off the area he’d walked off into. She should have told him about Mick’s threat. She shouldn’t have let him go.

  CHAPTER 15

  Movement at the far corner of the lanai made Hallie reel around, her heart thumping against her ribs. She nearly fainted from relief when Jamie strode toward her, towel still intact.

  “Jamie, I’m sorry I made you go out there.”

  “You didn’t make me do anything. I told you I was here to protect and love you.”

  He continued to stare out at the darkness for a moment. His light expression of earlier was gone.

  “What is it?”

  He shrugged. “Not sure. Probably nothing, bird noises and scurrying animals. What concerns me is that they only make those sounds when they’re disturbed. It could be a panther or bobcat.”

  Even his solid arms wrapped around her couldn’t bring on the security of sleep that night. Her eyes were wide as she stared at the ceiling, listening for any sound at all. The doors were closed and locked, the curtains pulled shut.

  Even when sleep did claim her, nightmares held her in their grip. Now it was Mick who clutched her in front of the body shop Alan owned. Mick who drove the semi that pushed her off the bridge. Jamie drove her car and held her hand as they plunged to their death. She woke with a scream as the rocky ravine closed in.

  “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.” Jamie soothed her, and she clung to him.

  He’s alive, I’m alive.

  She shivered, even in his warm embrace. “You were dying with me,” she said on a gasp. “You were in the car this time.”

  “I’m fine.” He smoothed hair from her face. “It was only a nightmare.”

  “It’s not only a nightmare. There’s something I haven’t told you.” He didn’t stiffen this time, a good sign. “It’s Mick.” She rushed on before he could even begin to think she was confessing feelings about the creep. “He threatened you, Jamie. He said he’d hurt you if I stayed with you. I should have told you earlier, but I thought it was just a threat, nothing more. But now, with the spooky phone calls, the sound we heard, maybe he’s here. Booked under another name, or even living in the forest.” A tremor shook her body at the thought.

  His arms tightened
around her. “I’d forgotten all about that scum. He wouldn’t come here, not after all this time. What would he do, kidnap you? Take you where? I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”

  He didn’t know about the gem, why Mick might be angry enough to come after her. She squeezed her eyes shut and lost herself in his words and warmth.

  “Good morning, Maven County Public Library. This is Clarisse, can I help you?”

  Hallie clutched the receiver so tight, her damp fingers threatened to pinch it right out of her grip. She could picture Clarisse at the large desk up front, long brown hair and a pencil behind her ear,

  “I hope so. I understand a good friend of mine, Chris Copestakes, was killed in a car accident about two months ago.”

  “Aw, yeah. It was a real tragedy. Did you go to the funeral? There were a thousand people there, and—”

  “Actually,” Hallie interrupted, not wanting to hear the details. “I’m from out of the country. We were, um, pen pals. I wondered if you could do me a big favor and send me a photocopy of the newspaper. I’d like to read the article, and the newspaper doesn’t have articles on the website.”

  “I know, they’re so totally in the dark ages. Would you like the obituary, too? It was really nice.”

  Hallie choked back a sob. “Yeah, sure. Let me give you the address here, and a credit card for the copies and postage.”

  She’d found a couple of online articles in the larger newspapers from the surrounding cities, but very little detail.

  Then she called someone from Hallie’s old life.

  “You want me to what?” Joya screeched over the line.

  “Just call Mick’s house for the next few days at all kinds of odd hours and see if he’s there. I’m probably paranoid, but I want to find out.”

  “All that paradise and sex is getting to you, darling. God, how I envy you!”

  Hallie smiled for the first time since Jamie left that morning. “Joya, the sex is paradise.”

  Joya groaned on the other end. “How did you do it? Find a life so wonderful, a fantastic husband, everything?”

  “I guess you could say that I finally saw the Light.”