by Jackie Braun
“Devin! My God! What is it? What’s wrong?”
She opened her eyes, blinked as he switched on the lamp.
“I’m still here,” she whispered as she glanced around in amazement.
She wasn’t in her tiny apartment. She was in the one she shared with Gregory. Her husband. In 1945.
“Of course you’re still here. Where else would you be?” he asked.
The time had come, she knew, to explain everything.
“I have something to tell you,” she began slowly.
“Let me get you a glass of water first.”
He was gone less than a minute, hardly enough time for her to plan out what she was going to say. When she’d finally fallen asleep the evening before, she really had believed that would be the end of it. A dream was, after all, the only plausible explanation. Now, it was time for the implausible. She could only imagine how he was going to react.
He returned with the water, which she drank gratefully. Her mouth was dry, her throat hoarse from screaming his name.
“Better?” he asked. Reaching over, he stroked the hair back from her face.
She nodded. His obvious concern made her throat ache more. After he’d heard what she was about to say, would his concern shift from her physical to her mental well-being?
“What I have to tell you, well, it’s not going to seem possible,” she began.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you may think I’m crazy.” She forced a laugh.
Meanwhile, he frowned. “Does…does it have anything to do with the watch?”
Devin glanced to where it was on the bureau. The word “timepiece” took on a new meaning.
“In a way, I suppose it does. It was in the pocket of the overcoat. I’m not sure how it got there. I don’t remember the watch from the sale. But when I tried on the coat at the shop, I put my hands in the pockets and my right hand brushed against it. I pulled it out to see what it was and…and…here I am.”
He was still frowning. “In our apartment, you mean?”
Devin swallowed. “In 1945.”
He touched her forehead with the back of his hand, no doubt checking for a fever. Great. It was just as she’d feared. He thought she was delusional.
“I don’t blame you for thinking I’m crazy. I spent the past day convinced that this was all a dream. That was the only explanation that made any sense to me.”
“A dream?” His eyes narrowed.
“Yes. I’ve had them since college. Dreams of you, although I didn’t know your name until today, well, yesterday. I would see you in a crowd and even though I would try my damnedest to reach you, I never could get to you before I woke up. But this time…this time I did reach you, only it’s not a dream.…You’re not a dream.” She touched his face. His skin was warm and prickled with stubble along the line of his jaw. With no small amount of wonder she added, “You’re real, Gregory.”
He put his hand over hers and squeezed it gently before drawing it away from his face. The patience in his voice when he spoke broke Devin’s heart.
“I think I should call a doctor. The past several hours have been, well, very stressful. And the heat hasn’t helped. You fainted earlier.”
“I know it sounds too incredible to be true, but you have to believe me. Please say you believe me.”
“Devin—“
She interrupted him and rushed ahead, desperate to make him accept the seemingly impossible. “I don’t understand how it happened myself. I have some memories of our life together, and more and more of them are starting to come back. I remember how we met and our first date. I remember our wedding day, and how you carried me over the threshold afterward. I remember seeing you off at the train station. After that, I don’t recall much.”
She rubbed her temple in frustration.
“You had amnesia?” He looked almost hopeful, probably because that would explain her erratic behavior, both now and while he was overseas.
She almost wished she could tell him that was the issue. No doubt it would be more palatable than the truth. But she had to be honest.
“No. I don’t have amnesia, but I think I was…I know I was…” She swallowed. “Reincarnated.”
His eyes widened and he spoke slowly. “As in you lived in another lifetime.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I lived in another lifetime. I lived here. With you.” When he just continued staring at her, Devin rushed ahead. “There were signs all along, even before the dreams. I mean, I’ve always loved the 1940s. So much so that I opened a vintage clothing store that sells garments mainly from that…this era. I thought it was just the clothes and maybe the decorum of the times that drew me. But it was you. You drew me, Gregory.”
Skepticism. His expression was rife with it as well as concern, frustration, sadness. All because he thought she’d lost her mind. Desperate to convince him, she pressed on.
“My business is in the same building as Sal’s repair shop. I was drawn to the place when I was looking for a location.”
“Devin, honey, there was no other shop there.”
“Now, yes. I know. I’m not hallucinating,” she hastened to assure him. But even she knew how crazy she sounded when she added, “In my time, it’s Yesterday’s Closet. The shop I own.”
“You own a business.”
“Yes, and Emily works there with me.”
“Your sister, whom I’ve never met. I…I didn’t see her there today.”
“Of course, you didn’t. It’s Sal’s Timepiece Repair here and Emily is, well, she’s in 2014.”
From the way he was eyeing her, Devin could tell she wasn’t clearing up anything.
“Please don’t look at me like that,” she whispered, utterly disheartened. “I promise I’m not crazy.”
He kissed her cheek. “Of course, you’re not crazy. You’re just…confused.”
“That’s just a polite way of calling me crazy,” she told him on a laugh that was also part sob. Her eyes began to sting with tears. “What can I say to convince you?”
“Devin—”
Before he could finish, she snapped her fingers. “I know!”
“What?”
“The cubby hole.”
“The what?”
“The cubby hole in the desk.” When his expression remained baffled, she said, “Maybe you don’t know about it yet.”
Hopping up from the bed, she hurried to the other room. Gregory joined her as she was feeling around on the back of the desk for the secret compartment the woman at the sale had mentioned. “It’s here somewhere.”
“What is? What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for…” She grinned in triumph as her fingers connected with a slightly raised panel. “This!”
When the cubby popped open, he gaped at her. “How did you know that was there?”
“You left a letter for me in it. I didn’t know it was for me when I first read it. Like the woman who was in charge of the sale, I thought it was a coincidence that the letter was addressed to a woman named Devin.” He was still gaping at her. “I sound like I’m babbling.”
“What did this letter say?”
“Does that mean you believe me?” she asked hopefully.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I…I don’t know what to believe,” he replied honestly.
That was fair enough, she supposed. At least he was keeping an open mind and no longer talking about calling a doctor. “In the letter, you asked me to come back to you. You…you said that you would love me forever.”
Tears pricked her eyes again. She blinked them away.
“I never wrote a letter like that, Devin. I didn’t know the compartment was here, either. So, I never put anything in it.”
But something was inside of it now. As she pulled it out, she insisted, “Don’t you see, that’s because I came back! The other time, well, I didn’t.
“You left me.”
“No!” Her reply was automatic. It also was wrong. It wasn
’t a memory, but she was certain that when Gregory returned from war she hadn’t been here. “Oh, my God!”
She gripped the edge of the desk to steady herself.
“What is it?”
“Something happened to me in the other…the other…well, before.”
“Something happened to you,” he repeated slowly.
This time, the skepticism she heard in his tone was like a dagger to her heart. She grabbed his hand, determined to make him see.
“Yes. It’s starting to make sense now. The mail here was piled up. You mentioned that Dan told you he hadn’t seen me in months.” Her heart was pounding, dread pooling in her stomach the way it always did when she had the dream. Had that been her subconscious trying to tell her something?
Her gaze went to the paper in her hand. It was the telegram. “I received this from the Department of War.”
She held it out to him. She didn’t need to read it. She knew exactly what it said:
Dear Mrs. Prescott, we regret to inform you that your husband, Gregory Prescott, was killed in action aboard the USS Bunker Hill on May 11, 1945.
* * *
“You thought I was dead?”
“Sal claimed that I wanted to sell him the watch. That would have been after I received this.”
“You said you weren’t planning to sell it.” Accusation crept into Gregory’s tone.
“And I wouldn’t have if I had only been grief-stricken and despondent. But I needed the money for…for…”
She sank to her knees, feeling woozy once again.
“Devin!”
The baby.
She had been pregnant with Gregory’s child, and even though she didn’t know how, she suddenly knew that she and the child had both died before learning that Gregory was very much alive.
Chapter Twelve
Devin was talking utter nonsense. Time travel? Reincarnation? A vintage clothing shop in 2014. A sister named Emily whom he’d never met and now wasn’t sure even existed. The scariest part was that he wanted to believe her.
She was so sincere. Appeared so devastated. And then there was the telegram. At the very least, it helped to explain her very fragile emotional state. He could only imagine what she had gone through upon receiving it.
He was on his knees beside her as she sat huddled on the floor, her arms wrapped around her middle as if she were in physical pain. Her face was damp with tears.
“Surely this got straightened out,” he said quietly. “They must have sent another telegram or someone from the military to explain the mistake.”
“Not before…” She wrapped her arms tighter about her middle and rocked back and forth. “I never got word, Gregory.”
The stack of correspondence Dan had given him was piled on the desktop. He got up and shuffled through it, coming to a letter from the Department of War that was dated three weeks after the telegram. He forced his thumb under the flap and tore it open.
Dear Mrs. Prescott,
We have tried unsuccessfully to reach you again either by telegram or in person to inform you of our error. Your husband, Captain Gregory Prescott, survived the attack on the USS Bunker Hill. We hope that you are aware of this by now, and we again offer our sincerest apologies for the anguish our error caused.
“Oh, darling. You thought I was dead. All this time, you thought I was dead.” He gathered her close as she started to sob in earnest. “It’s all right. It’s all right. I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere.”
She pulled back slowly. “What if I do? Something kept us apart before. What if…what if it does again?”
“Nothing can,” he insisted.
And he would see to it. These delusions she was suffering, he would not allow them to stand in their way. Surely with time and therapy, Devin would be able to move beyond the trauma the telegram had caused. In the meantime, he would humor her.
* * *
It wasn’t until the third week with Gregory that Devin didn’t awake each morning in a panic. She was here and she didn’t appear to be going anywhere. Their life as newlyweds was wonderful, but two things marred her happiness and haunted her peace.
First, what had happened or what would happen to Emily? Devin hadn’t believed in time travel any more than she’d believed in reincarnation, but if she was in 1945, then what did that mean for Emily in 2014?
It troubled Devin to think of her sister alone. But even worse was the thought that by Devin being here, Emily might never be born. By returning to 1945, had Devin altered the space-time continuum—or whatever brand of cosmic juju was responsible for this switch—to the point that her sister’s very existence was threatened?
In addition to that concern, Devin was desperate to know what had happened to her 1945 counterpart and the baby she had been carrying while Gregory was overseas.
She would have been in her third trimester now. Quite obviously, she wasn’t. But while the memory of her pregnancy had returned, she still could not account for the disappearance that had caused Gregory to write the letter that he’d tucked into the desk.
As for Gregory, he seemed eager not only to put the past behind him, but also to put aside all mention of Devin’s life in the future. The few times she had attempted to bring it up after that first night, he’d quickly changed the subject. She supposed she should be grateful that he hadn’t carted her off to Bellevue. Still, it bothered her that he wasn’t willing to discuss what had happened since Devin couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t happen again. What if just as suddenly as she’d found herself in 1945, she found herself back in 2014? Would he once again assume that she’d left him?
* * *
Late one night, as he slept soundly in their bed, Devin decided to hedge her bets with a letter.
She crept to the other room, closing the door before switching on the lamp. In the top drawer of the desk, she found the same stationery on which he had written his note to her. Picking up a fountain pen, she began:
My Dearest Gregory,
Our love brought me back here. It called to me through the years and beckoned me to return. I won’t pretend to understand what magic made that happen, but I am grateful for it. But now I find myself in a quandary. My sister needs me. I’m all she has. Just as your love called me here, her love might call me back. So, I am writing this note so that you will know, should I ever leave it is not because I stopped loving you. Rather, fate wouldn’t allow me to stay. In the letter you left for me in the desk’s secret compartment, you asked me to come back. I did. If you find this and I’m gone, I beg you, come to me.
I will love you forever, Devin
She sealed the letter in an envelope and tucked it in the cubby hole. Afterward, she tiptoed down the hall and, though it was a long shot, she slipped the watch into the pocket of his overcoat.
Chapter Thirteen
“Would you care to dance?” Gregory stood and held out a hand.
They were at Hoffman’s, celebrating their one year anniversary. Just over five months had passed since she’d found herself in Times Square. While they’d gone out to dinner several times, this was the first time they’d gone dancing, too.
A long time ago, Devin’s grandfather had taught her how to do a simple box step. She’d been about seven, and had stood in her stocking feet on the tops of his buffed wingtips as he’d moved around the living room to the old-fashioned song playing on an equally old-fashioned record player. Emily, a toddler at the time, had laughed and clapped and cried, “Me next, Papa! Me next!”
“I’m a little rusty,” she told Gregory now.
“It will come back,” he promised.
“Like riding a bike?”
He grinned. “Were you good at riding a bike?”
“Better than I am at dancing.” She slid her hand into his and let him guide her though the tables to the dance floor.
The lights were low. Smoke hung in the air. Four other couples were making use of the space, gliding effortlessly to the orchestra’s up-tempo beat.
&
nbsp; Where her footwork was indeed rusty and verged on incompetent, Gregory knew what he was doing. The hand he had placed on the small of her back exerted just enough pressure to make it clear where he wanted her to go next. She was only too happy to follow his lead.
“Dance lessons?” she asked.
“My grandmother insisted.”
“God bless her,” Devin said under her breath as they executed a turn.
“I see it’s coming back to you.”
“Only because you’re so good at this,” she admitted.
But he was right. It was coming back. Nearly all of the blanks of her past life with him had. Except for that very last day. Her memory of what had happened on that day remained stubbornly blank.
Part of her was glad. After all, she had died that day. Both she and their unborn baby. It was only the how that eluded her.
Forcing away the unpleasantness, she asked Gregory, “Do you remember the first time we danced?”
The image was as clear as a snapshot in her mind. The two of them were together on a crowded dance floor, moving in unison to the music in much the same way they were right now, albeit with a few inches of space between their bodies.
“I tried to hold you a little too close,” he murmured.
She chuckled. “Yes, you did. And I called you fresh.”
“Yes, but when I asked you to dance a second time, you agreed.”
“How could I resist? We’d only just started to date, but I’d already fallen in love with you.”
He spun her away before bringing her back. Bobbing his eyebrows meaningfully, he asked, “Are you ready to call it a night, Mrs. Prescott?”
She grinned back at him and bobbed her own brows. “No, but I am ready to leave.”
They took a cab back to their apartment, using the excuse of cold weather to snuggle together in the back seat. Dan was gone for the day, but the night doorman greeted them both as they walked across the lobby to the staircase.
“Have a good night,” the young man said.
“We intend to,” Devin said, although her comment was said in a whisper intended only for her husband’s ears.
* * *
Devin was smiling when she woke up. Mere months earlier, she couldn’t have imagined herself here–not only in 1945, but happily married to a wonderful man who loved her every bit as much as she loved him. Memories of the previous night brought a sigh to her lips. A sigh that morphed into a scream the second she opened her eyes.
