Forever

by Lewis, Linda Cassidy

  Tom rubbed his eyes. He must have dozed off waiting for Annie to show. He glanced around the truck in all directions. The parking lot was empty. He checked his phone to make sure he hadn’t accidentally put it on mute. No. And no missed calls or text messages from her. He’d waited for over an hour. His father’s book lay on the passenger seat. Apparently, Annie had decided against this meeting.

  That was good. It made it easier for him to move on. Move back, to be precise. Back to reality.

  *

  It was a minor miracle Annie made it home without getting a speeding ticket or causing an accident. During the drive, she passed through phases of anger, then acceptance followed by despondence that turned to hope—all of them accompanied by tears. By the time she walked through her front door, she’d settled on anger. She was angry with herself, Tom, God, men in general, life itself. Hate, with a good dose of self-pity boiled up within her, and that made her angrier. Self-pity frightened her. It felt like drowning.

  Annie screamed every curse word she’d ever heard—and a few she made up in the heat of the moment. Her anger vented, she sank to the middle of the living room floor. It was then she saw Kate standing in the doorway from the kitchen, her face red as she tried to stifle her amusement. She failed, and after a few seconds, Annie joined in, laughing until fresh tears rolled down her cheeks.

  When the laughter subsided, Kate sat on the floor beside Annie. “What was that all about?”

  With a sigh, Annie tipped her head back and studied the ceiling for a moment. “I’m having hallucinations, and I’m in love with a married man.”

  “Well, first of all,” Kate said, “I don’t think you’re having hallucinations, and secondly, I don’t believe you had a choice in who you’ve fallen in love with.”

  With a groan, Annie collapsed forward and rested her head on her knees. “I don’t need support for my fantasies, Kate.”

  “What you need is to understand why you’re having these visions. After my last customer today, I let Sherry do my nails, and I told her what’s been happening to you. She thinks you should see a psychic.”

  Annie sat upright, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “No, I’m not. Just listen. You weren’t hallucinating. You said Tom saw the same things, and from what you read online it sounds like you were seeing scenes from a past life, right?” Kate didn’t wait for a reply. “So, maybe a psychic could tell you more about that past life.”

  “I really don’t think I want to know more about it.” Annie stood, and started for the kitchen. “I just want to forget it.”

  Kate followed her. “No, you don’t. Things like this happen for a reason. Don’t you want to know why Tom’s in your life?”

  Annie stopped in front of the stove and lifted the pot lids to check what Kate was cooking for supper. It appeared to be normal food with no tofu or sprouts in sight, though Kate could be sneaky. She smiled and took her sister’s hand.

  “Thank you for trying to help, Kate. And yes, I do wonder why Tom’s been brought into my life, especially since he’s married. It’s like fate is torturing me. But I think it’s best to drop this all now, before it gets any more complicated than it already is.”

  “You mean you’ll take your little broken heart to bed for a month?”

  Annie gasped from the sting of that remark. “How could you say that to me?”

  Sweeping past Kate, she stormed to her room, slammed the door, and fell across the bed. Fearing she might never stop if she allowed herself to cry, she lay silently on her back, drawing circles with her fingertips on the plum satin duvet.

  Kate’s words flamed in her ears. When Gary admitted he was sleeping around and she’d better accept it if she knew what was good for her, she’d done exactly what Kate accused her of doing. It had taken his death to shock her back to life. Today, after she left Tom at the park, she was so hurt she almost stopped at the theater to quit her job. She’d been that close to withdrawing again.

  “But I didn’t quit,” she said to the ceiling, “and I’m not going to run from life again either.” She was a new person now, a stronger person. Really.

  When she and Gary met, she was nineteen, he twenty-three. He was charm personified. His heart-breaker smile, ice blue eyes, and blond hair stole a beat from the heart of every woman who saw him. When Gary chose her, she became the envy of all her friends.

  But he was like the girl in the nursery rhyme—very good when he was good, but when he was bad, he was horrid. And toward the end of their marriage, he was horrid a lot.

  By then, she’d grown used to his sweetness turning to neglect and deceit and then cycling back, but eventually his horrid side won out. She had the scars to prove it. The visible ones were caused when she “provoked” him by asking something like where a big chunk of his pay had gone, or why an empty condom wrapper was under the car seat. Some of her hidden scars were caused by lying about how she’d gotten the visible scars. Lying even to herself in the beginning. But the deepest scar was from the erosion of her self-esteem. When she lost the job she loved—the one thing in her life she thought Gary couldn’t spoil—that erosion reached down to the bone.

  Then he told her their marriage meant nothing to him and she sank into a blackness that nearly crushed her. She’d lain in this very room wishing she were dead. God, Karma, fate, or whatever you want to call it intervened. The exact moment she came back to life was still clear as crystal in her memory. Kate walked in and told her Gary had been electrocuted. His death freed her, but her sister saved her life. When Kate moved back in with her, Annie’s spirit revived. She still struggled. She’d spent seven years in hell, and it had left its mark, but she took one step at a time toward a new life. The job at the Cineplex being the first.

  Surprisingly, even though the work itself was no challenge, she’d thrived in the neon-accessorized, carpet-hushed, dreamlike quality of the theater lobby. Yet the moment Tom stepped up to the ticket booth she realized she’d been waiting for him. When they met at the Coach House, it took all the will she had to keep from telling him they were destined to be together. Logic fought against that; but her spirit believed it.

  No. She would not run away this time.

  She returned to the kitchen and hugged Kate. “I love you. I know I’ve worried you, and I’m sorry about that.”

  “Oh, Annie.” Kate gave her a parting squeeze. “I just think it’s time you got something you deserve, something good.”

  They filled their plates, and sat down opposite each other as they had through the years at a dozen different kitchen tables.

  “So, you think I should see a psychic?”

  “Don’t you? I mean, hasn’t it even occurred to you? Sherry says she knows one who’s really good. She’s been to her several times, and she always tells Sherry things that come true. Don’t roll your eyes at me. You’ve watched that woman on TV, and you always say you wonder what she could tell you.”

  Though Annie hated to admit it, the idea of talking to a psychic had begun to excite her. “Well, I certainly couldn’t afford to see her. Anyway, she lives out in California.”

  “But this woman lives right here, and Sherry says her rates are reasonable. I’ll go with you if you’re nervous about it.”

  It was probably a waste of time and money, then again, what if this psychic could tell her how to make Tom understand why they were sharing these visions. “All right. Ask Sherry for the phone number, and I’ll call to make an appointment.”

  Kate jumped up from the table and grabbed her purse and the cordless phone from the kitchen counter. “I’ve got her number right here. Call her now.”

  11

  June 12-13

  Tom could still feel himself running as he forced his eyes open at the sound of Julie’s laughter. He rose on his elbows. She stood at the end of the bed. “Waz zo fuhy?” He swallowed and tried again, “What’s so funny?”

  “What were you dreaming?” she asked. “You were kicking like Max does when he dreams he’s cha
sing a rabbit or something.”

  “I was the rabbit.” He’d had another nightmare of being chased through the woods, only now he knew it was Jacob, not him, being chased. Don’t think of Jacob.

  Julie took a pair of jeans from his closet and put them in the flight bag open on her side of the bed. As he watched, she added one of his polo shirts and then crossed to his chest of drawers. His initial fear—that she was kicking him out—made no sense in light of her laughter.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting ready to do what we said we should have done last Saturday.”

  He closed his eyes, thinking back. Last Saturday he’d proposed a quiet night out with her, and look what happened. Patricia and Eddie had happened. And then Annie. Don’t think of Annie.

  “Tom?” His eyes flew open.

  Julie stood beside the bed. With a look, she asked if he’d fallen back to sleep sitting up or, possibly, lost his mind.

  “The lake!” It had come to him a second before he said it.

  “Yes, Old Man, the lake.” She laughed again.

  “Just us?”

  “Lindsay’s coming out tomorrow, but it’s only the two of us today.”

  “And tonight?”

  “Why? What do you have in mind?”

  “Frog gigging?”

  “Is that what they’re calling it nowadays? Get up, sleepyhead. Shower and dress.”

  He did as he was told.

  When he came down to the kitchen, both Julie and Lindsay were in the kitchen. He was surprised to find his daughter awake and washing dishes. “You’re up early. What time do you have to be at work?”

  “I don’t work today.”

  “Then why aren’t you coming to the lake with us?”

  Lindsay turned from the sink and looked at him, then Julie, and back at him. “Are you really that dense, Dad?”

  “Oh.” What else could he say, Thank you for staying out of the way so your mother and I can have hot damn sex with wild abandon?

  Julie, biting her lips to squelch another laugh, handed him a travel mug of coffee and one of her legendary breakfast burritos, evidently made and wrapped in foil to keep warm while he was still in dreamland.

  “The truck is packed,” she said, reaching into his pocket for his keys. “I’ll drive while you eat.”

  He stopped breathing, resuming only when he remembered the napkin with Annie’s phone number written on it was no longer stuffed behind the driver’s side visor. Julie opened the door out to the garage, and he took a step toward it before turning toward Lindsay. His morning routine was so disrupted he’d almost forgotten the dog.

  “Where’s Max?”

  “I let him outside,” she said. “I’m taking care of him today and I’ll bring him with me in the morning. Now, go.”

  As the truck pulled away from the house, it occurred to Tom he didn’t give Julie enough credit for her organization skills. She’d thought of everything. It felt odd to sit in the passenger seat of his truck, but he took a deep breath and relaxed into it. He vowed to enjoy every minute of this weekend.

  Knowing he was better off not paying too close attention to Julie’s driving, he ate his breakfast while he kept his head turned toward the passenger window. As they drove west, the flat landscape morphed from suburban housing with mandatory retail centers to cornfields with pockets of woodland in-between. Those remnants of the primeval forest that once covered most of the state left him unmoved, but an hour later, when Julie turned off the highway onto the two-lane road that led straight through the deep woods surrounding Buckeye Lake and their cabin, he broke out in a sweat. His pulse and respiration sped up. With his body engulfed in a classic fight or flight response, Tom pawed at the passenger door, searching for the switch to lower the window.

  “Tom? Is it your heart?” Julie lowered the window using the switch on her side and pulled the truck to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

  She screamed when Tom launched himself from the truck in a half jump, half fall. Now steady on his feet, he turned back toward her, meaning to assure her, but his vision was fuzzy, the edges blacked out. He could see only the shape of her, scrabbling to get on her knees and climb over the console toward him. He wanted to tell her he wasn’t having a heart attack, but he feared that might be a lie. He fell forward over the seat, leaning into her arms.

  She held him tightly, smoothing his hair, and whispering, “I’ve got you, Tom. I’ve got you.” She let go with one hand and reached into the back seat for her purse. “I’ll call 911. It’s going to be all right.”

  “Stop.” Tom pulled away from her.

  It was over.

  As quickly as if someone had turned a dial—down from eleven, heh-heh—his heartbeat slowed, his vision cleared. He took two deep and easy breaths. He pushed himself upright and looked down at his feet. Then, with a sheepish grin, he looked at Julie.

  “I’m standing in a mud puddle up to my ankles.”

  The laugh Julie gave him was weak in humor but strong in relief. Then she smacked his arm. He had just enough time to see her eyes well up before she threw herself into his arms. After the emotion storm played out, she smacked him again.

  “You scared the hell out of me, Tom.”

  “It wasn’t a picnic on my end either, babe.”

  She backed up, twisting her legs out from under her, to sit in the driver’s seat. “What was that? A panic attack? Are you having panic attacks, now?”

  “I guess so. Something like that.” He turned and sat sideways on the seat with his back to her and his legs hanging out the door. “But no. I’ve never had one before.”

  Tom surveyed the damage to his shoes and then stepped back down into the mud and walked to the back of the truck where he pulled them and his socks off. The bottom two inches of his jeans were wet, but no mud clung to them, so he turned a double cuff. He tossed the shoes and socks into the truck bed and walked along the edge of the pavement to open the driver’s side door.

  “Scoot over,” he said, “unless you expect me to walk barefoot back through that mud.”

  She refused. “Stand back. I’ll pull onto the road.” He opened his mouth to argue, but she cut him off. “You just had an adrenaline rush, and you’re probably going to crash any minute.”

  “So did you.” But even as he said that, he could feel fatigue dragging on him. He backed away from the truck. After she cleared the mud, he climbed back into the passenger’s seat.

  “Besides,” she said as though there had been no pause, “how do we know it won’t happen again?”

  He reached for Julie’s hand and leaned over to kiss her cheek. Then he slumped back in his seat. “Get this wagon rolling, woman.”

  It was the sight of these woods. He knew that, now. The panic he’d felt echoed his nightmares. Were these Jacob’s woods or just ones so similar they’d caused his subconscious to react? No, that didn’t really matter. What mattered was that the line between past and present, reality and dream had thinned. Had maybe disappeared altogether for a few minutes.

  What was he going to do about that?

  *

  Nothing had ever frightened Julie more than watching Tom in the throes of panic. Terror—she knew the true definition of that word now—put everything into perspective. She’d been right not to let him drive the rest of the way to the cabin. Before she’d driven another quarter mile, he was out cold in the passenger’s seat, head lolling.

  She’d planned this getaway on impulse during the drive home last night. Only Lindsay knew where they would be this weekend and Julie had made her promise not to tell anyone. By anyone, Julie meant Patricia, and Lindsay knew that. She and Tom both needed this weekend. He was stressed—an understatement that seemed now. And though for the last two days she’d been free of pain and spotting, she was emotionally exhausted.

  This morning, she’d sacrificed a couple of hours of sleep to make it hard for Tom to decline her invitation, which she’d purposely not presented as one. She hadn’t asked;
she’d ordered. If he hadn’t woken himself with that dream, she would have been completely ready to leave when he opened his eyes. It hadn’t mattered anyway. Her fear that he would refuse to go, offering one excuse or another, had been unfounded. Maybe, hopefully, he felt the need for this time away as much as she did. And the cabin was the perfect place for them to get back in touch.

  She pulled up to it now. Leaving Tom asleep, she unlocked the cabin and went through every room, opening windows to let in fresh air. She flashed back to the smaller cabin that had stood on this plot. The one her parents had bought the summer before she started kindergarten. Smaller, much more rustic than this one, and used far less often, the damp, musty, closed-up smell never quite left it. But this cabin, the one Tom had designed and helped build a year ago, never smelled that way. It was a beautiful, modern, home with a woodsy veneer. Much larger than her parents’ cabin, it had three bedrooms plus loft space, an open porch at the front and a screened one facing the lake with an open deck off that. Equipped with central heating and cooling, it served them year round. Still, her first task on each visit was to open the windows, even if only for a couple of minutes.

  When she stepped back outside, Tom was lifting the big cooler from the truck bed. Their suitcase already sat on the open porch. She passed it and went to him.

  “This doesn’t feel like there’s much in it,” he said, setting the cooler on the ground to dislodge a pebble from the sole of his bare foot. “I don’t suppose you packed another pair of my shoes.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t count on you jumping into mud. I’m sure you have something in the closet here.”

  He set his sneakers on the back bumper. “I’ll hose these off later. Hey, where are the fifty grocery bags you usually bring with us? Are we fasting this weekend?”