The Five Lives of John and Jillian

by Greg Krehbiel

  She spent a few minutes poking around on John’s computer again, but had to give it up to make her appointment at the Starbucks.

  Sean was already waiting for her, and she felt a little odd sitting there in a public place, talking about her husband with a man in clerical garb. She felt it would have been more appropriate to meet in the rectory.

  It turned out that Sean knew a lot more about dreams than he let on, although he emphasized that he’d studied the topic while he’d been a Wiccan, and that now, as a Christian, he wasn’t sure how much stock he put in what he had learned.

  “Things aren’t wrong just because they’re pagan,” Jillian said.

  “Oh no,” Sean said with a bit of a laugh. “I don’t mean that. What I mean is it’s a mixed bag. I learned a lot as a pagan, but looking back on it now, I think some of it was fairly silly. I don’t want to be a fundamentalist and throw it all out the window, but ... I’m still sorting it all through.”

  “So why would somebody who’s never remembered his dreams before suddenly start?” Jillian asked. “And start talking in his sleep.”

  Sean took a long sip of his coffee. He drank it from a mug and took it with sugar and two tablespoons of butter, which surprised Jillian and, at first, disgusted her, but she gave it a sip and said it wasn’t too bad. “As good as an energy drink, and better for you,” Sean had said. But now it was making a mess of his bushy mustache. Jillian handed him a napkin with a trace of a laugh, then looked away and smiled.

  “It could be several things,” Sean said after he’d wiped the froth from his mouth. “It could be something as simple as a change in sleep habits. We tend not to sleep as soundly as we age. Or it could be that he’s troubled by something. It might even be something he’s not aware of. Is he on any medications?”

  Jillian shook her head, then blurted out “What can I do?” Sean could see the frightened look in her eyes. He reached across the table and took her hand.

  “It’s not clear to me that you have to do anything. He’s not in any danger. They’re just dreams.”

  Jillian hung her head and shook a gentle no. “It seems that way, but it bothers me, and I can’t explain why. Call it intuition if you like. Or paranoia. But I can’t shake the feeling that something bad is going on.”

  “Well, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll try not to worry about it.”

  “But he’s calling out the name of his high school girlfriend,” she said, in an angrier tone than she intended. “And he confessed to me that she’s still interested in him. And she works right across the street from his office. How am I supposed to ignore that?”

  “Ask him directly,” Sean said. “Tonight at dinner, tell him that he’s been calling out her name in his sleep, and ask him why.”

  “And then what?”

  “That will depend on what he says.”

  Jillian nodded. “Okay, I’ll do it. Can we meet again tomorrow?”

  “Yes, but only if you promise me one thing,” Sean said. “Whatever he says, try your best to think of it in the most charitable light. Things are rarely as bad as fear makes them. Once you start getting suspicious, it’s like a downward spiral, and it only gets worse.”

  “What if it is worse?” she said with tears forming in her eyes.

  “Then we’ll deal with that when we get there,” he said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “Every day has enough troubles. There’s no need to invent them.”

  * * *

  Jillian spent a non-productive afternoon trying a new design for a bay window treatment and was glad when she could give it up and start on dinner. She looked through the fridge and decided to give John a call to see what he fancied. It was time for him to be wrapping up and getting ready for the trip home.

  “I’m glad you called,” he said. “I’ll be a half hour late. I just need to finish up one thing before I can leave.”

  “Okay, but you will be home,” she said.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “If I have extra time I think I can make that quick lasagna recipe you like.”

  “That would be great,” he said. “I’ll pick up a bottle of wine.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you at six thirty”

  The fact that John was coming home at about the normal time eased her mind, and as she worked on dinner she felt her cares melting away, as if the normal routine of domestic life made all her concerns seem somewhat fantastical. They were just dreams, after all.

  John usually arrived at five after six, but if he took the next train he arrived at six forty. At six ten everything seemed to be right on time, so Jillian thought about cutting some flowers for the table, but just as she was about to open the back door the phone rang.

  “Oh, hi, Jillian, it’s GS,” said a perky female voice. “Remember me? Gayle?”

  * * *

  An hour later John pulled out his cell phone in the hallway bathroom and fumbled it so badly he almost dropped it in the toilet. He might as well have come home to a hornet’s nest. He could deal with an angry wife, but he was afraid she was finding out, and that would be a disaster. With shaking fingers he sent a text message and waited for the reply, which came in a few seconds.

  “She can’t know. Anything. It’s absolutely essential.”

  “Things are falling apart here,” John replied. “Gayle called and Jillian is really mad.”

  John flushed the toilet and turned on the faucet to keep up the ruse.

  “I’m sure it’s hard, but everything depends on keeping her in the dark. You can’t say a thing. Just leave the house. Right now. No explanation. Not another word. Just leave.”

  John sat on the toilet seat and shook his head sadly. He steeled himself, then walked out of the bathroom and straight out the front door as Jillian watched.

  * * *

  “Sean, it’s Jillian.”

  “Hi Jillian. What’s the matter? You sound awful.”

  “John ran out of the house tonight. He ... just left, without a word.”

  “Did you fight?” Sean asked.

  “Gayle called. I mentioned her, right? She was his girlfriend in high school, and .... Sean, I can’t do this over the phone. Can I meet you somewhere?”

  “Are you sure you should be driving? I could come over there,” he offered.

  “I .... No, that won’t do. There’s a bar a couple blocks from here. I don’t remember the name, but it has a bright orange sign out front. I can drive that far.”

  “I’ve seen that place. Okay. I’ll meet you there in about fifteen minutes. But you be safe, okay?”

  “Thanks, Sean.”

  Jillian hung up the phone and then sat down at the kitchen table and cried for 20 minutes. She was late to the bar, but Sean was waiting.

  * * *

  “Did I get you in trouble?” Gayle asked when John met her later that evening at a hotel lobby a few miles away. “I just wanted to bring the pipe over. I didn’t think it was a secret.”

  “You got me in a lot of trouble, but ... it’s not your problem. I’m sorry to put you in the middle of this. So you were able to find it?”

  She laughed.

  “I had to dig through boxes in my parent’s attic, but it was still there, wrapped in one of your old t-shirts.” She handed him the shirt and he unwrapped it. “What in the world do you want it for? You’re not smoking again, are you?”

  He shook his head.

  “It would be hard to explain, Gayle. And honestly I’m not sure I understand it well enough. But if I figure it all out, we can all sit down and have a laugh over it. If Jillian doesn’t leave me first.”

  Gayle looked at him with obvious concern.

  “Is it really that bad? Why, John? You guys are such a great couple.”

  John shook his head and looked down at the floor.

  “What about the other thing?” he asked.

  “That was even harder to find,” she said. “It was in another box in the attic. But it’s pretty old by now. It can’t be any good.”


  She handed him a small leather pouch.

  “It’ll do,” he said, opening the pouch and smelling the dry tobacco inside. It would burn too hot, but he could deal with that.

  “You’re quite the man of mystery these days,” she said. “I can’t imagine what you need that old thing for.”

  “Honestly, neither can I,” John admitted. “But … well, that’s all I can say for now.”

  Gayle looked around and noticed a couple empty bar stools in the hotel restaurant.

  “Buy me a drink?” she asked.

  * * *

  A few hours later John was sitting alone on a bench in the dark outside the hotel. He’d mixed the old tobacco Gayle brought him with the strongest blend he could find, plus a couple drops of whiskey to moisten it a bit. The old pipe seemed glad to be back in service. His grandfather was never much for fancy things, but he had splurged on a nice, expensive pipe.

  John was carrying on some kind of conversation, as if he was talking on a Bluetooth headset. But his phone was back in his hotel room, and he didn’t own a headset.

  “That road?” he asked, finding it hard to speak with his pipe between his teeth. “Why would she be on that road, at that time of the morning?”

  He listened, but he clearly wasn’t getting the answer he needed.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter,” he eventually said. “You’re sure that’s the time and place?”

  He listened again, and almost seemed to be watching someone pacing the sidewalk in front of the bench.

  “Okay. So I need to be off the road, on the west side. And you’ll be there?”

  There was another reply, and he didn’t seem to like it.

  “Alright. I’ve trusted you this far. We’ll see it through.”

  * * *

  There were days when John was away on business. There were times when he had to leave early, before she woke up. Spending a morning on her own wasn’t all that unusual. And sometimes it was a nice change of pace.

  But Jillian had never felt as alone as she felt this morning, making coffee for one, wondering where her husband could be, and why he had left.

  She struggled with whether she had over-reacted to Gayle’s call. John simply wasn’t the type to cheat, and there was nothing in the call that implied otherwise. As Sean had pointed out the night before, she did call the home phone. If there was something sneaky going on, she would have called his cell.

  Then again, John had been muttering her name in his dreams at night. Clearly something was happening, and he was being so secretive about it.

  She found her mind turning to Sean again and again. He had been so supportive. So understanding.

  It was clear he liked her. She could tell that much. But he kept his distance and didn’t try to intrude. He was there as a friend. As a comfort. As a support.

  And right now she needed that support so badly she couldn’t think of anything else.

  She glanced at the clock. It was only ten after six, but Sean told her he was an early riser. Before she could think any more about it she slipped on her shoes, grabbed a jacket and her keys and headed out the door.

  The internal struggle was almost too much to bear, even for the short drive in the light, morning traffic. She didn’t know what she was trying to do. She wanted Sean to hold her. To comfort her. To understand her.

  Another part of her mind told her that no matter what happened on the other end of this trip, she was being unfaithful. Emotionally unfaithful at the very least. She didn’t have any solid reason to doubt John, and going to visit another man was completely out of bounds.

  She turned down the road to Sean’s house, but when she was still several blocks away she pulled to the side and stopped. This wasn’t right. She was mad at John. She was suspicious and angry and confused, but she had to give him another try, and she had to try to make it work.

  Jillian turned the car around and started going the other way, back home, wending her way through the side roads and then back south on 197.

  It wasn’t every day you saw an 18 wheeler on Rt. 197 in Bowie, but they came through from time to time, so Jillian didn’t think much as she saw the big rig headed north. Her mind was on other things and she hardly noticed that it was veering out of its lane.

  She thought she might like some music, so she took her eyes off the road and reached for her iPod. Just then the tractor-trailer swerved across the yellow line.

  At the last moment she looked up and straight into the cab of the tractor. She should have turned. She should have braked. But what she saw was so disorienting that she didn’t do anything at all.

  The woman driving the tractor-trailer looked exactly like her. Somehow Jillian knew — deep in her soul — that she was driving that rig. She was looking at herself, and whatever was going to happen was meant to happen.

  But then she saw the look on her own face — or the copy, or whatever it was. It was maniacal. Demonic. Murderous. But even at that she couldn’t rouse herself to action. She knew that she was about to kill herself, but some voice in the back of her mind said, “you deserve it.”

  As the two vehicles closed the short distance at deadly speed, she noticed another face in the cab, as if it had just arrived, as if someone had fallen into the cab by magic.

  It was an old, grey-bearded man, with an elaborate old pipe in his mouth. The other Jillian saw him, gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles and slammed on the gas pedal, but the old man was pulling on the wheel with all his might. The truck swerved a little, but not enough to avoid a collision.

  There was a loud noise, a flash, an air-bag in her face, and then Jillian knew no more.

  * * *

  She came back to herself to a riot of sounds and activity. There was a siren, horns and road noises. Someone was calling out medical data in an official, urgent voice. Blood pressure. Pulse. A description of injuries.

  A moment later she realized she was in an ambulance, and John was at her side, holding her hand. He had an unlit pipe in his teeth, and he was smiling at her.

  “It’s all over,” he said. “I can tell you everything now. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. I love you.”

  * * *

  Later that day Jillian opened her eyes to see a wall-mounted television, a white board with her name, and a nurse’s name, and John’s cell phone number. She felt a dull ache in most of her body, but the sensation that caught her attention was in her right hand. She looked down and saw John’s hand in hers. He was in a chair at the edge of her bed, but his head was lying on the cover, and he was asleep.

  Jillian gently moved her leg and woke him up. He smiled at her.

  “You’re awake. How do you feel?”

  “Achy,” she said. “Confused.”

  John nodded.

  “And guilty. And afraid,” she added.

  “There’s no need to be afraid,” John said, and she knew it was true. His eyes were as clear as she’d ever seen them. There was no hint of deception or guile on his face. Whatever had been wrong these past weeks, it was over now.

  She lay back down on her pillow and started to cry.

  “I’ll tell you the whole story,” he said. “I’m not sure you’ll believe it, but I’ll tell it to you.”

  “No, John,” she said between sobs. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

  He squeezed her hand even tighter.

  “I know exactly what you’ve done, and I know why. And I know which direction you were headed on that road. I promise you, everything is going to be fine.”

  He let her cry for several minutes, and when she finally settled down it was as if the world had gone silent, and there was nothing but the two of them, alone in that room.

  “You were going to die today,” he said.

  “I know,” she replied in a strange voice. “And at my own hands.”

  “So you saw her?” John asked.

  “Her? It was me.”

  “Yes,” John said. “It was you, in a manner of speaking.”


  “What does it all mean?” she asked.

  “I still don’t really know,” he said. “I’ve kept some things from you, and I’m sorry about that, but the old man kept things from me too. He only let me know what I had to know.”

  “Old man?” she asked.

  “There’s some weird family connection,” John said. “He contacted me a few months ago.”

  “That hand-written letter?”

  “That was part of it,” he said. “He’d been trying to reach me, and it was as if each attempt brought him in a little closer.”

  “He said he owed me a debt,” John continued. “It took a long time before I could trust him, but … eventually it was clear that he knew things. Weird things. Uncanny things. And he told me that you were in danger.”

  “The car accident?”

  “Yes. He knew it was going to happen, and he was going to help me to prevent it. But it would only work if you knew nothing about it. You see, he knew you’d be on that road at that time, and so did the other you — the one who wanted to kill you.”

  “Other me?” Jillian said in alarm, sitting up in the bed. “What does that mean?”

  “He told me that there are other universes, like this one, and that one of the Jillians in one of those other universes is a sorceress. She gained her power by killing her doubles. I know it sounds crazy,” he said, apologetically. “But he proved himself to me in so many ways that I couldn’t afford to doubt him. He said we only had one chance to save you.”

  “And if I found out about it …”

  “Right. If you knew, that might have changed your behavior, and then … who knows? You might not have been on that road at that time, and then she’d make another attempt some other time.”

  “But John, you don’t understand,” she said. “I was on that road because I was angry with you, because you were hiding things from me. Because you had left me ….”

  She started to sob again.

  “I am so sorry about that,” he said. “Walking out of the house that night was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But if I’d explained ….”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “The reason we were fighting — the reason I doubted you — the reason I was on that road ….”