A Way (The Voyagers Book 1)

by Tara Lutz

  She met Ger in a coffee shop on the other side of the country, when she was on her road trip to find herself, and not doing a very good job of it. Jessie had taken a few days out of her poorly planned road trip and found a hotel where she didn’t have to park in front of the room door. It had a spa, a gift shop and a few chain restaurants. Even though her overpriced shelter gave her no reason to, she decided to explore the mountain town it was situated in. She read on the internet that the least touristy of the coffee shops was just across the road and up a bit and took her laptop, to attempt to do some writing and enjoy a few lattes.

  Jessie settled into a welcoming cushioned chair, near the faux fireplace, when a stunning, if not a bit worse for wear girl, plopped down across from her, sloshing her coffee over the side of her mug, muttering “shit” and glancing around to see if anyone had heard or seen her clumsiness.

  Jessie caught her eye, stifled a laugh, and went back to staring at her computer, willing the words to come. All work and no play makes Jessie a lost girl. Those are not the words she was looking for. Wait, when was the last time I checked Farmville?

  “After a few more of these I will be able to function like a normal person again, hopefully,” the coffee splashed girl in front of her said.

  Jessie looked up again and gave her a knowing smile. She was also hopeless without coffee in the morning, not to mention wine in the evening.

  “I’m Geraldine, by the way. Unfortunate, I know, but it was my great-grandmother’s name or something and she was a feminist or wanted to vote, I don’t know. Anyway I go by Ger and really should find out the story of why I was stuck with the name of a Disney villain. I’ve been told it so many times, but I’m not really a good listener, but you, you seem like a listener.” Jessie didn’t think the girl needed anymore coffee, she seemed more than enough awake for the two of them. “So, are you from here? I’m just here on a ski trip, not that I ski, but who could pass up a trip with a guy and his buddies when they promised to stay at a resort with a spa and Pizza Delight?”

  “That’s where I’m staying.” Still staring at her computer, Jessie got a word in. She was enjoying not having to explain what she was doing there yet. “I got here last night and decided to stay a few days while I figure out where to head next.” Coffee-splash observed her, her head slightly tilted to the left.

  “You don’t know where you’re going? I like that.” Her new companion took interest in the direction the conversation was going, moved to the chair to the right of Jessie, and leaned forward to urge her to continue. Her bright blue eyes glimmered with excitement, like she was about to help solve a mystery. Jessie couldn’t help but notice that the jittery girl’s eyes were almost the same shade as her own, right down to the gold flecks that swam in them.

  “I just decided I needed a change, packed up my car, and drove north.” Jessie said, finally looking up and engaging fully in the conversation, like a normal person did before social media became more important.

  “I don’t know where I want to live. I’ve narrowed it down to five. All, equally reviewed, okay, safe places for single, lost girls to live.” Jessie tried to smile, but putting her decision into words, to this stranger, made her shake from the inside out. What was I thinking? Single, lost girl, could I be more pathetic?

  Ger reached over and touched her arm and a feeling of - I’ve been here before, this exact same place, at this exact same time, with this exact same person- crawled up Jessie’s arm and settled in her head. Even the blue patterned turtleneck Ger was wearing seemed familiar, like she had pulled it over her head before and it gave her the comfort of home. She suddenly knew, this would not be the last time she would sit in a coffee shop with this girl. It might not have even been the first.

  Three weeks later, Jessie moved into Ger’s apartment in a city that was a twelve hour drive from the place where they had first met. She sold her car to afford first and last month’s rent for the tiny one bedroom she was now able to call home. For the first time since Jessie drove away from all that was comfortable, she breathed a sigh of something that resembled relief.

  The first night Ger came to visit her, new to her place, Jessie opened the door to find her holding an orange calico, perturbed cat –‘ he just jumped into my arms, I can’t explain it, but you need the company’

  Jessie took the cat from her, looked into his green-golden eyes and knew she should call him Sam.

  CHAPTER 6

  A song about shaking things up, sang by one of those girls that looked like every other girl singing about shaking things up, came on the radio, shaking her loose from her memories. Jessie took stock of her surroundings and grabbed her phone to track her progress on the GPS. About the same time as she realized she was just outside a town, which was just outside Duke Island, she felt her stomach grab itself and remembered that she hadn’t eaten yet that day.

  A sign welcomed her to Madison – didn’t every county have a town called Madison – and three buildings into main street she noticed a fifties style diner on her left.

  “Perfect,” she said to the girl that was now singing about trouble.

  Jessie pulled into a diagonal parking spot in front of the diner and surveyed the area. She noticed a pharmacy, not much further down the street, where she could pick up a few toiletries and something to rinse from her mouth the burger she intended to have for lunch. Climbing out of the car, an unidentifiable sensation hit her so hard that it almost knocked her off her feet. The smell of food wafting from the diner, the sound of a bell ringing from a church in the distance, and a sweet candy floss scent carried on the wind, all made her vision swirl. For a split second, not only did the diner have a façade from the past, the whole town did. The cars parked in the spots around her, the sale advertisements in the window of the pharmacy, even the clothes on the couple that were walking into the tavern across the street. It all seemed so familiar.

  A dog tied up outside the restaurant barked. Jessie blinked, her vision cleared, and she was back in the street she had drove up minutes before. She tried to mentally tick off every reasonable explanation she could muster for what had just happened to her. The sun temporarily blinded me, the light was playing tricks, I’m tired, my blood sugar is low, I need medication.

  She approached the entrance of the diner, called Allie’s, and leaned down to pat the now quiet dog. When she did, his tag shifted revealing his name: Duke. Cute, Jessie thought, that’s the name of my dog. It wasn’t until she was seated in the red pleather booth, looking at the menu that was waiting for her on the table, she remembered she never had a dog. Jessie had no idea where the thought, the thought that she was so sure of, had come from.

  ********

  While she waited for her burger, extra pickles, and fries, gravy on the side, from the perfectly clad in her fifties waitress uniform server, Jessie scanned the town she had taken the pit stop in. Across the street, a few doors down, was Anderson’s pharmacy, with a five and dime to its right and a vacant space to its left. Further down the street were the obligatory small town stores: an independent woman’s clothing store, a coffee shop, a photo studio and a bar disguised as a restaurant.

  There were a surprising amount of people wandering in and out of the stores. They seemed to be out of place in the sleepy looking village. Of course, she nodded to herself, this must be a good destination for long weekenders. It’s not too far out of the city, with all the convenience the visitors needed; not a Walmart or Cosco in sight.

  Taking in the details of the main street in Madison, she couldn’t shake the feeling of complete recognition she had first experienced when she stepped out of the car. She had been here before, but when? Her memory wasn’t the best but she was pretty positive she hadn’t travelled here, by accident or planned, in the short time since she moved to the city. Everything, from the vintage Coke sign that was hanging above her booth, to the day dimmed street lights, resembled a place she had spent not just a few minutes in, but somewhere she had lived. She searched her memory f
or places she visited on family trips during her childhood. There must be hundreds of small towns like this dotting the countryside. It was silly to think she hadn’t passed through at least one of them during her lifetime. Jessie pictured herself as a small child, peering with curiosity from the back seat window of her parent’s station wagon, begging them to stop at an ice cream shop, like the one that she passed entering Madison. They must have appeased her one of those time, and possibly decided to stay for a couple of days, enjoying the quaintness and lack of hustle and bustle.

  Her lunch arrived and she turned her attention to tackling a burger that was bigger than her appetite. Memories, that she wasn’t entirely sure were real, floated through her head as she took her first bite; unformed words on the tip of her tongue.

  She thanked the friendly server and started dipping her, hot to the touch fries, into the thick gravy. Her phone vibrated against her hip. Without putting down the burger in her left hand, she pulled the cell out of her jeans with her right. This time when the ID read unknown she didn’t even raise an eyebrow.

  See you soon.

  Yes, Jessie thought, and the first thing I am going to do is get your phone number.

  Refocusing on her small feast, her eyes caught a flyer stuck in the napkin holder on her table advertising fireworks for the upcoming holiday. Was that the excitement this bar stranger had in store for her? The thought of how insane this was, she was, screamed at the top of its lungs. This was not normal. She had met, less than briefly, some guy the night before and had received strange texts she wasn’t even sure were from him. Now she was driving hours to the middle of nowhere, to an address she had never been, purposely not telling anyone where she was going. Yep, she was definitely bonkers, but at least, popping the last bite of the tasty burger in her mouth, she wasn’t hungry anymore.

  With her phone still on the table, she picked it up and sent a text to Ger, asking her to feed Sam. She would be back Monday, if not sooner, her spare key was sitting on the trim above her door. It didn’t take long for Ger to respond and Jessie, even knowing she could be slightly self-involved, still found it strange that there were no questions asked. No, where are you? Who are you with? What does he look like? Then she recalled how the two of them met, Ger on an overnight trip with some random charmer and Jessie driving to nowhere. At least she was somewhat confident that if she wasn’t back sometime within the next week an alarm would go off in her friend’s head, maybe, but for now, Jessie was completely on her own; how she liked it.

  “Would you like anything else, hun?” the attentive brunette asked.

  Jessie noticed her perfectly manicured fingers, bubble gum pink polish; cute. Cleavage, that would even make Ger jealous, burst over the top of her green t-shirt that had the words ‘Allie’s Diner’ stenciled in white, just below her left shoulder. The words looked strained, the t-shirt a few sizes too small, matching the snug white jean skirt of the uniform. Interesting choice. Jessie would’ve had that skirt covered in ketchup, gravy, wine- she looked around, do they serve wine here?- and whatever else she could drip on it before she even started her shift. She looked down at her lap and was surprised to see it condiment free, only a few crumbs to brush off. She mentally high fived herself.

  “I think I’m good,” Jessie, looking up at her, smiled. “That was delicious.”

  The waitress, server, who knows what’s politically correct these days, name tag Mandy, returned her smile, instructed her to head to the cash when she was ready, and collected her empty plate from the table. Jessie squeezed her cell back into her pocket, checked to make sure she wasn’t inadvertently leaving anything behind, and shimmied out of the booth thinking, there is no way to be graceful sliding out of a booth and I wish Allison was here when I panic ten minutes from now thinking I lost my phone.

  Approaching the counter, Jessie noticed a picture hanging just off to the side of the register. It was black and white and appeared to be a mother and her small child on a beach, walking away from the camera, holding hands. Staring at the picture her eyes filled with tears, a strange sadness gripped her heart. Just before tears spilled from beneath her eyelids, Mandy cleared her throat and asked if she was ready to pay.

  Without turning away from the picture, Jessie asked, in a voice barely above a whisper, “This picture, who are they? “It’s”….she wanted to say haunting, terrifying, so very sad…”beautiful.”

  “Oh that.” Mandy said, snapping gum that Jessie just noticed she was chewing. “That’s just a memorial picture for a girl that worked here years ago. She and her sister were killed in a crash, up the highway, just out of town. The owner, Miss Allie, and she were real close. So close that when Miss Allie died, it was in her will that her son, who she left this place to, had to always keep it the exact same way. Just like how it was when they worked here together. Crazy huh? A little change never hurt anybody.” Mandy waited for Jessie to respond and after another minute she turned away from the picture.

  “Do you know their names?” Jessie asked, with more composure, and brushed her hands over her eyes to dry them.

  “Nah. There are so many different stories about that picture and the will. It’s kinda an urban legend around here. Some people say it was just a story made up by Miss Allie. They don’t believe there ever was an accident that killed two sisters. Even the people that lived here when it supposedly happened don’t remember anything about it. You wanna know what I think?”

  Mandy glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was listening and leaned across the counter, closer to Jessie. “I think Miss Allie was just a mean old lady that wanted to keep controlling the diner after she passed.” She straightened back up and took the lunch bill from Jessie’s outstretched hand.

  Jessie pulled out another twenty and, like the cabbie, told Mandy to keep the change. Leaving the diner, the bell above the door chiming her exit, she reached down and patted Duke again. Good boy. In the time it took her to eat lunch, the sun had erased the lingering clouds from the sky and its warmth embraced her like a hug. A soft breeze hit her face and the feeling of despair she experienced seeing the diner picture left her. She crossed the street to the pharmacy.

  She returned to the blue rental after making a quick detour to the clothing store, a few doors down from the pharmacy, to pick up a hoodie and a change of clothes. She chose a pair of mint green tights, forgetting she was wearing pink shoes, and a black tank top with the town name splashed across the front. Not much of selection but the tank top would serve as double duty for something comfortable to sleep in. The spur of the moment trip left her without a brush to tame her hair, that was at the mercy of the humid air. The dilemma was quickly remedied by a fifteen minute shopping spree at Anderson’s pharmacy. While she had been store hopping a text had been delivered to her phone. This one had a number attached to it that told her to send a reply when she arrived at the front gate of the address on her GPS.

  Jessie started the car to travel to her final destination, I love those movies but it is probably not the best analogy to use. Backing out of the parking space, she sorted through the events that had unfolded in the last 24 hours. She had always been impulsive, and more than a little bit irresponsible, when it came to making decisions, but this was something even that part of her couldn’t explain away. The only other time she could think of that she had been so reckless, it had ended in near disaster and from that moment on she promised to think things through before she acted. She knew she was breaking the oath she had made to herself all those years ago, but every bone in her body, every thought in her mind told her that this was something she needed to explore.

  That was it!

  This wasn’t the first time the number 1875 had appeared in her life, directing her to the unknown. Years earlier, the summer before she entered high school, she and her brother, Owen, had been biking along the back roads near an island cottage her parents had rented for a few weeks one summer. Owen kept begging, in his eight year old voice, to go home and Jessie kept insisting
that Luke Skywalker would never whine and cry. It wasn’t like they had lost R2D2 on their half hour bike ride. They crossed a causeway, she thought she had gotten them lost, when they came across a tree with the initials D + J 1875 carved into it. Jessie dropped her bike and shook off her little brother who was now grabbing the sleeve of her Goonies shirt. She walked towards it to get a closer look. Running her hand over the carving, she noticed beside the tree, a path leading into the woods. Without thinking, something that was already starting to become a trend that would follow her into her adult life, Jessie decided to take the trail, her little brother following.

  “Jessieeee, I’m telling mom!”

  “Shut up or I’m telling Princess Leia,” she snapped. Then kept the next comment to herself. Who invented little brothers anyway?

  She knew it was getting close to dark, but this path was calling her. “Follow me,” it said, “the answers are in here.”

  But there were no answers, only her imagination that led to her brother falling into an abandoned well and Jessie ending up back at the cabin: knees scraped, nose running, sobbing, panicking. Owen was fine, not even a bruise. They left the island the next day. Her parents never talked about it again. She recalled thinking cutting their vacation short was a bit extreme, but she still had nightmares where Owen fell into the well, his cries or her own waking her up.

  Jessie never got over the guilt she felt for almost losing her brother, but she also never forgot that carving on the old maple tree. In that moment she had felt that the number meant something. The déjà vu she experienced when she had touched the scarred bark was almost paralyzing. It happened to be the same feeling she felt in the cab the night before and standing beside her car in Madison. It was in that instant of reminiscing she also recalled the initials that accompanied the number, the number that happened to be same as the address she was headed towards. D + J. Dex and Jessie. She shifted the car into drive and headed out the opposite end of town.