Jingle All the Way

by Fern Michaels

  Tammy’s life had been far shittier than Laura’s. She’d gotten herself married to a big lunkhead who was cute and stupid in high school and turned out to be just plain stupid after his football muscle turned to couch-potato fat. But he didn’t hit her and he didn’t cheat on her and Tammy would sigh and say, “The kids love him at least.”

  Her hair unnaturally blond and longer than it should be, Tammy attracted all kinds of attention from all kinds of men—something she enjoyed. But as far as Laura knew, her friend had never cheated on her lunkhead, and Laura had the sneaking suspicion that despite all her complaining about her husband, Tammy just might love him a bit more than she was letting on. Either that or she truly was the most miserable person on earth.

  The two would meet every Wednesday for a lunch that used to last until dinner and sometimes beyond that. They were good at complaining, and the more drinks they poured down their throats, the bigger the complaints got. The good thing about Tammy was that she never got too serious, because the last thing Laura had needed was someone psychoanalyzing her. Tammy made her laugh, made her forget about a life she’d thought had royally sucked.

  Laura pulled into the nearly vacant parking lot of Ryan’s Pub and parked next to Tammy’s silver Honda minivan, feeling extremely nervous at the thought of seeing her friend again after all these years. The last time Laura had seen Tammy, she’d had a red minivan. “My life has become a series of minivans,” she’d said once. Tammy was definitely good with the one-liners. They’d joked once that Laura was going to write down all Tammy’s one-liners and create a bestseller.

  It was going to be weird and wonderful seeing Tammy again. Of course, this woman wouldn’t know what Laura had done. This Tammy was still her friend, her confidante. They’d never called an official end to their friendship, but after a while, Laura couldn’t stand to keep in touch with anyone who knew her, never mind someone who knew her as well as Tammy had.

  She walked into the pub, her eyes adjusting to the immediate gloom of the place to spot Tammy in their usual booth by the back wall. Laura didn’t want to make an ass of herself, but the minute she saw Tammy’s smiling face, her ridiculous bleach-blond hair, and her trademark long red fingernails, she started to cry.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” Tammy said, standing up, concern and worry marring her pretty face.

  Laura laughed, waved her friend off, and wiped the tears away. “I’m just . . .” She stopped and wondered whether or not she should tell Tammy exactly what was happening to her. “I’m fine. Just tired. Brian and I had a fight this week. It’s okay now, but it’s been a tough week. I’ll tell you all about it after we eat.”

  “No gloom and doom allowed through those doors,” Tammy said with a nod toward the entrance. “You know the rules, girly girl.” Tammy lifted her martini in a toast and took a sip. “On second thought, a little gloom and doom feels about right. We should just leave ’em. Just take off and have a good ol’ time somewhere warm and never come back. I swear, Laura, sometimes I think if I have to spend another minute with that man, I’ll just die. Or kill him. Which do you think would be better, death or death row?”

  Laura laughed. “I suppose it depends on what your concept of heaven is.”

  “Or hell.”

  Tammy looked miserable, and Laura really tried to feel sorry for her, but she found, to her amazement, her well had run dry. This girlfriend was talking to the wrong woman if she thought she was going to get any sympathy. So she had a big lunk for a husband, so he wasn’t the smartest or most exciting guy in the world, he loved her. He was alive.

  “I have something to tell you.” Laura almost groaned aloud, for she hadn’t realized she was going to talk about her fantastic journey until she opened her mouth.

  Tammy’s eyes widened, and she leaned forward to receive what she thought was going to be some juicy gossip. The bartender came over with her usual, a scotch on the rocks, but Laura waved him away. “I want to be stone cold sober for this.”

  “What? What? You’re leaving him. You are.”

  “No,” Laura said with a small amount of dismay. “I’m going to work harder than I ever had in my life to make that man love me again. I blew it, Tammy. I ruined everything in my life, and I’m not going to do it again.”

  “What are you talking about?” she said, waving a hand at her and rolling her eyes. “That man’s lucky to have you. Look at you, just as skinny and pretty as the day you two met.”

  Laura’s eyes nearly crossed in disbelief. She’d forgotten that Tammy was about as deep as a puddle on a hot day. It had been one of the things she’d loved about her. Laura took a deep breath. “What I’m about to tell you is unbelievable. I don’t mean that it’s cool or crazy. Well, it is crazy. I mean it’s completely unbelievable,” she said, annunciating each syllable of the word.

  Tammy looked as if she was going to kill her if she didn’t spit it out in a second.

  “I’m not me. I am me, but . . . Shit. I’ve come back to me, to this time.” Laura squeezed her eyes shut. This was way more difficult to explain than she’d thought it would be. She opened her eyes and looked directly at her friend, willing her to believe. “Three days ago I was this old lady dying at West Valley Med Center, and now I’m back here, back with Brian and the kids.”

  The confusion on Tammy’s face was almost comical. “West Valley Med isn’t even open yet.”

  “I know it’s unbelievable. Let me tell you my life story, and then maybe you’ll get what I’m trying to say. In a few days, Brian is going to hand me divorce papers, and I’m going to lose it, go over the deep end. And if I remember correctly, you help me along the way, not that I blame you. I know this because I already lived it. Anyway, next year in May, Brian gets killed in a car accident and it’s my fault. I was supposed to pick Zack up from some school thing, and I was here with you getting wasted and cursing Brian for leaving me. After that, things really went south and I ended up losing the kids. They ended up in foster care. Mary’s a prostitute, Zack’s in prison, Justin’s in the army last I heard. And I’m close to living on the street, but I have this heart attack, and I end up back here.”

  Tammy pulled back, skepticism unmistakable in her contact-blue eyes. “Are you talking about a dream or something? A premonition?”

  “No. This all really happened, and now I’m back. Like Back to the Future without the charm.”

  Tammy pushed away, shaking her head. “You’re right. It’s unbelievable. I don’t understand why you’re saying all these things.” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you on something?”

  Laura reached over the table and pulled Tammy closer. “I’m not on anything. I’m saying these things because they’re true. Look at me, Tam,” she said, shaking her friend’s arms. “I’m telling the truth.”

  Tammy stared at Laura as if she really could see into her heart at the truth of what she was saying. Then she shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense. If you’re back in your body, where’s the original you.”

  “Here. She, I mean I, didn’t go anywhere. I’m me but with all these horrible memories.”

  Tammy closed her eyes and smiled, sagging with relief. “You had a bad dream.”

  “No. I had a life, which I completely screwed up, and now I’m back here to fix it.”

  “Laura, that’s impossible. Things like that don’t happen. They don’t. If things like that happened, why can’t I be transported back to high school where I was dumb enough to fall in love with Ron so I could go out with Mark Rushton instead?”

  Laura shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe if you screw up your life the way I did, you will.”

  Tammy rolled her eyes. “It was a dream.”

  “It wasn’t. Tammy, I promise you I’m not insane. I did not dream all those horrible things; they really happened. There was this old lady in the bed next to me, and she asked me if I would go back if I could. She kept asking me that. And here I am. I destroyed every person I loved most in this world, and I’m not going to do it again,”
she said fiercely.

  Tammy looked closely at her friend’s face. “You really believe this, don’t you?”

  “With all my heart. And don’t for a second think I don’t know I sound crazy. I don’t know if I would have believed you if you’d come to me with this kind of story. But I had to tell someone. I had to. Do you have any idea what it was like to see Brian alive again? And my kids? God, to have Mary be little and giving me hugs and telling me she loves me.” She swallowed away the burning in her throat.

  “Either this is really happening or you had the most fucked up dream I’ve ever heard of.”

  “I wish it had been a dream. Then I wouldn’t feel so rotten.”

  Tammy gave Laura a weak smile. “So what do you have to do? I mean, did you get any instructions or anything?”

  Laura laughed. “Yeah, God spelled it all out for me at the pearly gates.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what the hell I’m really doing here. All I know is that in eight days, Brian’s going to hand me those divorce papers. I can’t let that happen. He doesn’t love me anymore, so I don’t know if I can stop it all from happening again.”

  “Do you love him?”

  Laura pulled her lips in. “I love him,” she said with a big dose of uncertainty. “I love the memory of him. And of course I feel incredibly guilty. But I’m not in love with him. I hardly know him anymore. I haven’t seen him in twenty years. He was dead.”

  Tammy put a hand over her mouth in horror. “This is too weird,” she said. “I’m actually starting to believe you. I hope that doesn’t make me crazy, too.”

  “Naw. Just a good friend. And maybe just drunk enough.”

  Tammy laughed. Then she put on a truly horrified expression. “Does this mean you’re not drinking anymore?”

  “I think so. For a while. To be honest, I don’t even want to. I’ve been having these really weird cravings for chocolate milk and kid cereal.”

  Tammy shuddered. “Yuck.”

  “Yeah, I know. I swear, if Chuck hadn’t taken that drink away, I wouldn’t have touched it. And I wouldn’t have wanted to.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Laura shook her head. “Maybe it was all part of the deal.”

  “You’re not going to get all religious on me and put a fish on the back of your car, are you?” Tammy asked sternly.

  “No. But I was thinking about starting up a cult. Want to join?”

  Tammy took a big sip of her drink. “What if it’s not permanent? What if you wake up tomorrow and you’re an old hag again?”

  “I didn’t say I was an old hag.”

  Tammy grinned. “Laura, what if it’s only for a couple of days?”

  She shrugged, pressing down the sense of panic she felt. “I got to see my kids again. And Brian. And you. I haven’t seen you in years, you know. That’s why I started to cry. If I wake up tomorrow in that hospital, I’ll still think I was so completely lucky.” Even as she said it, she didn’t believe it. If she woke up tomorrow in that hospital, she’d want to die.

  “Promise to look me up.” A thought suddenly struck Tammy. “Am I still alive? Oh, God, am I still married to Ron?”

  Laura laughed. She’d forgotten how much fun Tammy had been. “I don’t know. We lost touch after Brian died. I really don’t know where you are. But if I go back, I’ll find you. Promise.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Brian looked at the clock. Four-thirty. On a normal day, he wouldn’t even be thinking of going home. But Wednesdays were never normal. Wednesdays Laura went to “lunch” with Tammy and sometimes didn’t come home until well after he’d been home. If he was honest, he was glad to beat Laura home because he was the one who drove Jennifer, their baby-sitter, home.

  He let the thought in, that nasty bit of hope that had flared despite his best efforts to keep it at bay: maybe things would be different now. Laura sure as hell was acting differently. As far as he could tell, she’d gone three days without drinking a drop, and she was acting . . . strangely. Something had happened, jarred her, ripped her out of whatever dark place she’d been in for the past two years.

  He looked at the clock again, squeezing his fist until it hurt before grabbing up the phone. “Hey, Mac, I’m heading out now. I’m going to bring some work home. Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He stuffed his briefcase with papers he knew in his heart he wouldn’t look at until the next morning and headed out the door.

  When he walked in his own door twenty minutes later he knew instantly that something had happened. Something bad. It was obvious that his kids had been crying, and Laura sat on the couch clutching Mary to her, tears streaming down her face.

  “What happened?” he asked, trying to tamp down the anger, the fear that clutched at him.

  “Mary almost got died,” Justin said.

  “Killed. Mary almost got killed,” Zack corrected.

  “What happened?” he asked, all control nearly gone.

  Laura looked up at him, and the despair in her eyes nearly floored him. “She wanted a book from the bookcase, so she climbed up to get it, and the bookcase fell on top of her. She didn’t even get hurt,” she said, her voice filled with pain and disbelief.

  Brian rushed over to Mary and lifted her into his arms. The little girl buried her head against his shoulder.

  “I was downstairs in the kitchen. The kids were upstairs playing. I heard a huge crash, and then Justin started screaming that something horrible had happened to Mary. I could tell from his voice. And then I ran up and all I saw was the bookcase and her little pink sweater under it. I didn’t hear anything. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t moving. And, God, Brian, I thought she was . . .”

  “She thought she was dead,” Zack supplied, filled with his importance of relaying the story.

  “I wanted my Pooh book,” Mary said, lifting her head off his shoulder.

  “It was horrible. She wasn’t moving and she wasn’t crying. Why wouldn’t she cry?” Laura said, her voice, her entire body, shaking. “This didn’t happen the first time. I would have remembered this. This didn’t happen. I don’t understand.”

  “What are you talking about?” Brian demanded.

  But Laura just kept shaking her head, tears streaming down her face.

  Laura felt as if she were tottering on the edge of a high cliff with nothing but blackness below her. Mary had not climbed a bookcase and nearly died the first time around. She knew she hadn’t. The only difference between now and then was that this time she’d been home. This time she’d done the right thing, and Mary had almost died. All those years ago, she would have still been at the bar with Tammy, and Jennifer would have been with the kids. Maybe Jennifer had been playing a game with Mary, or maybe she’d given her too much juice and she’d been on the potty instead of climbing up that bookcase. Whatever happened all those years ago hadn’t happened this time. That told Laura two things: she could change the future, and it might not be as wonderful as she wanted it to be.

  What if Mary had died? What if a miracle hadn’t happened and she was sitting on this couch gazing up at Brian begging him to forgive her for not being there to catch that bookcase before it crushed their baby?

  “I was making supper,” she said softly, staring blindly in front of her. “Mexican casserole.”

  “She’s okay,” Brian said, and his tone drew her eyes up to his. She saw no blame, no condemnation, only gratitude that Mary was okay.

  And then the words screamed in her head so loudly she winced. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” she said aloud.

  “No. It wasn’t,” he said softly. “I never thought it was.”

  And Laura wondered if he realized she wasn’t talking about Mary at all.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  December 18

  Every once in a while, Brian would take out the papers he’d had his divorce lawyer draw up and read them, words that would dissolve a marriage. Cold, factual, unemotional word
s that would end something that once had been wonderful and he’d thought was now over.

  They’d been young when they’d married, though at the time neither thought so. They were ready to take on the world, to have babies, to be a family. They’d been so truly happy for so long, the couple other couples pointed to with envy. Brian and Laura, they always seemed to have such fun together. At parties, he preferred his wife’s company, and she his. They weren’t clingy or overtly public with their love, but they always had fun. They felt lucky to have found each other.

  He missed that. He missed her. It wasn’t only the physical part of their marriage, which had virtually ended two years before, but the emotional part as well. He hadn’t heard Laura laugh in so long—at least not with him.

  It was two o’clock in the morning, and he was sitting up in bed in their guest room, divorce papers on his lap. For the first time in a very long time he wished he was sleeping with his wife. That thought pissed him off and was making him crazy. The thing was that he missed her, and unless he was a sucker for the Christmas spirit, the woman he’d seen tonight was the woman he’d married.

  It wasn’t my fault.

  No kidding. He’d been telling Laura that for two years, and every time she’d say, “I know it wasn’t.” Tonight, for the first time, she said it, and he was pretty sure she’d believed it. Those first weeks after they lost the baby had been hellish. They’d walked around in a daze, too wrapped up in their own misery to help each other. Gradually, things got better for Brian. He’d never forget that little baby girl, the unfathomable sadness he’d felt when she died. But with each week that passed, he got a little better, came back to himself a little bit more. Laura couldn’t. Nothing helped, not therapy or antidepressants or his love. He’d lost his wife that day, and it killed him to watch her self-destruct. But when it started affecting the kids, that’s when his concern and love started turning. That’s when he began to lose his patience. That’s when his love started to die as well.