David, this is the first of many messages to come from me. I hope you like the house and DJ likes his room and the fort. There’s even a little girl next door for him to play with. She’s about six years older than he is, so she will be nice help for you to keep him out of trouble while you work. I want you to know this is the place where it will all happen for you. If you haven’t checked yet, go look in the basement. I made that place just for you. Know that I have always loved you and always will.
Forever,
Layla
The card crumpled in my fist as I made my way to the basement door. I’d not been down there yet. I undid the latch and flipped on the lights. Michael called out behind me, asking where I was going, but when I didn’t answer he followed behind me. I reached the bottom of the stairs and flipped another light switch. The darkness gave way to the most up-to-date laboratory that I’d ever seen.
“Whoa…” Michael stopped beside me. “This is like a geek’s man cave.” He took the card from my hand. “Who sent the card?” Before I could stop him he read it. “Okay, this is just creepy.”
I turned to my friend and grinned. “I think it’s time I fill you in on the whole truth about Layla and me.”
When I finished, Michael just stared at me. I’d kind of gotten lost in the story. I hadn’t even heard DJ and Lauren Kate creep down the stairs to the lab.
“So Layla was from the future?” Michael asked, his forehead scrunching as he tried to make sense of it all.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Who sent her back in time?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you’re going to make a time machine, to go back and get her?”
“Something like that. Not really a machine, more like a process that involves biochemical changes, and a governor to control it so you don’t end up somewhere random. There are some other aspects involved so you can direct what longitude and latitude you arrive at so one doesn’t just go back in time to this exact spot. The theories behind it are based on the studies of Doctors Green and Volkoff and their papers on…”
“Okay, stop talking unless you can translate it to English.”
I stepped over to the kids and bent down to talk to Lauren Kate. “So you heard all that?”
She nodded up and down.
“Does it all sound crazy?” I pictured her running back next door, hiding from us from that point on.
“I think it sounds heroic. Like something a handsome prince would want to do for his princess.” Her dark eyes stared at me like she was mesmerized.
I stood. “Let’s just go out for dinner right now and maybe pick up some groceries for breakfast. The kitchen is empty.” I turned my attention to the messy little girl. “Would you like to go with us? If so, run home, and change, and you are welcome to go.”
“I can’t—dinner is already cooked, but thanks anyway.” She grinned at me before running up the stairs.
We headed out to dinner and shopping. Once I got DJ to bed, and Michael was in his room strumming his guitar, I took the card and the flowers down to the laboratory. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there on one of the counters was an iPod. I picked it up and looked at the music selection. I placed it in the iPod speaker and pushed play on the unplugged version of Layla by Eric Clapton. I sat on one of the raised chairs and looked at the card. The iPod shuffled to Clapton’s Tears in Heaven. I put my face down on the counter and let the tears flow. This was my new normal, until I found a way back to Layla.
Chapter 21
DJ AND THE LITTLE GIRL next door became inseparable, which helped me a lot. Layla called it perfectly. It allowed me time to work in my lab. She had also left me so well set up financially, with my own lab, I’d contacted the college and turned down the job. My research and single parenting was as much as I could juggle, and I didn’t always juggle them well as it was.
I was in my lab when DJ called down to me that he was hungry and wanted a sandwich.
“I’ll be right up,” I said that as a Popsicle stick appeared in front of me on the counter. I picked it up and examined it all over as the realization lit up my face. “Yes!”
I raced over to the box where I kept the Popsicle sticks that I had been using all week in my experiments that so far had failed. Today would be different and the stick appearing was proof.
The plan each day had been to send the stick back about two hours in time. I pulled out my notebook and started writing out my planned procedure. I looked at the chemical compounds I’d been using all week and made a slight adjustment in my calculations.
I mixed up the new solution and dropped a Popsicle stick in to soak, hoping this latest batch of solution would reorder the molecules to ride the wave. One set of ions was set to gage how far back it went, triggered by the additional waves sent off by my computer program. I grabbed the stick, examined it, and noted the time of its arrival, writing it all down in my journal.
I put it under the microscopic lens to get a better look. “It’s going to work.” Joy filled my heart and spread to my appendages, causing every part of me to tingle. I was on my way to seeing Layla again. This was the first step.
I ran over to the solution coming out of the mixer. I dropped the Popsicle stick into a beaker before covering it with solution.
I waited until the stick had absorbed the solution for about half an hour, and then added the solution that would allow the computer program to guide how far the stick rode the wave. I entered the data into the computer, using the formula already in the computer, and pressed send. The stick was gone.
I jumped up and howled, “Yes! I did it.” The stool fell over behind me as I leaped about the room shouting, “I did it! I did it!”
Suddenly I remembered DJ and his sandwich, and I looked at the clock. It was four o’clock in the evening. He’d asked for a sandwich just before noon. My heart sank as I realized my victory had come with an epic failure as a dad. I ran up the stairs, taking three at a time. “DJ, I’m sorry, son. Where are you? I’ll make you a sandwich now. Did you find you a snack or something?” I hated the thought that he’d been hungry for four or five hours. I looked in the living room, but he wasn’t there. I raced up the stairs to his room, but it was empty too.
I raced down the stairs and out into the yard. First I tried the fort, but he wasn’t there. I looked over to the rundown house next door. I’d never really noticed how rundown the house Lauren Kate lived in was. I strode over, hoping that’s where DJ had gone, and knocked on their door. Lauren Kate answered, smiling when she saw me. She turned and called over her shoulder, “DJ, your dad’s here.”
Thank goodness. I allowed myself to sigh and relax a little as DJ came to the door.
“DJ, I don’t mind you coming to play with Lauren Kate, but you need to tell me.”
“I did. First, I asked for a sandwich, and you never came to make it. Then Lauren Kate knocked on the door asking me to come play, and I told her I was hungry so she came in and made me a sandwich. Then she invited me to come over here to play, so I called down to you that I was coming over here.”
I felt sick. I was messing this whole parenting thing up. Once the Popsicle stick appeared, I had become oblivious to everything else. I knelt down to his level, wrapped my arms around him, and pulled him in. Right now, he was all I had left. “I’m sorry I lost track of time and wasn’t paying attention.”
“Lauren Kate, who’s at the door?” a scratchy voice called out.
Lauren Kate pushed a strand of stringy non-descript brown hair behind her ear as she grinned at me. “It’s DJ’s dad—Mr. Foster.”
“Well, don’t be rude. Invite him in.”
“Would you like to come in?” Lauren Kate motioned for me to enter. I really wasn’t looking to get to know the neighbors better, but since they’d fed and taken care of my kid all afternoon I thought I should.
A frail old woman in a housedress made her way into the living room. Tubes were in her nose, and she pulled an oxygen tank with her. “Come in and
have a seat.”
I took a seat on the couch wrapped by floral sofa covers. When I sat, I nearly sank to the floor. I scooted to the edge, trying to not fall into the couch. “Thank you for letting DJ come over and play.”
Lauren Kate grinned at me, the way she always did. She seemed to be a sweet child, but a bit unkempt for a girl about to enter her teens. But she saved my butt with DJ that day, so I smiled at her in gratitude.
“And thank you for making lunch for DJ.”
“Oh, he’s a sweetheart. I feel like he’s my little brother.”
Her grandmother made her way to Lauren Kate and placed a hand on her shoulder. “She’s the mother hen around here since my heart surgery. I can’t stand for long or do much for her anymore, but she never complains. She won’t let me even know if she’s sick or hurt and tries to take care of it all herself.”
“Yeah, Dad, Lauren Kate is making dinner. Can we stay and eat?”
I shook my head. “Son, we can’t invite ourselves over to dinner–that’s rude.” I looked up at them. “I’m sorry.”
“No, stay. We have plenty.”
“I helped peel the potatoes for the stew,” DJ chimed in.
“If you’re sure?”
We had dinner with them, and I realized that the family right next door to me struggled financially. The stew only had a little meat and was mostly potatoes. They had food right now because the grandmother’s disability check had just come in. I also found out the faucets on their bathtub had broken, and they didn’t have the money to have them fixed. No wonder the girl was always smudged. She had to wash up in a sink.
“I have an idea,” I announced. “Until summer is over, what if I offered Lauren Kate a job as DJ’s companion? I get too consumed at times, and he needs supervision. I’d be happy to pay you a fair wage.” I smiled at the young lady, realizing what a gem she was. She didn’t make a fuss to her grandmother about any of it, like most spoiled preteens would.
“But I’d do it for free,” Lauren Kate answered, her brows furrowing.
“I know, but I’d feel better if I paid you.”
She looked to her grandmother. “Can I?”
“I guess so.”
I smiled. “Good.”
DJ and I were headed across the yard to our house when I saw the florist truck drive up.
Lauren Kate yelled from her porch, “Ooh, flowers.”
DJ turned back and yelled, “They’re from my mom. She sends them from heaven to us.”
I sighed as I pulled DJ into the house and tried again to explain to him why we shouldn’t share so much about our story.
I chose not to open the note on the flowers just yet. I wasn’t ready. I walked DJ up the stairs first and gave him his bath. I sat by the tub after washing his hair, and helped him draw on the tub with crayon soap. “I’m really sorry I didn’t come make you a sandwich today when you asked.”
Layla’s dark eyes looked up at me from his sweet face. “It’s okay. I know you’re trying to go get mom for us.”
I patted his head, grabbed a towel, and wrapped him up. After his teeth were brushed, I helped him with his pajamas and sat with him in his bed.
“Which comic book do you want me to read to you tonight?”
“Superman.”
I grabbed the stack of comic books, found a Superman one, and tossed the others back onto the nightstand. I was about to start reading when DJ interrupted.
“Lauren Kate likes my comic books. At first she didn’t think she would, because she thought she only liked fairy tales, but then she said, when reading the comic books to me, they are really the same. Only one is more for boys, and the other is more for girls.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know how Superman is always having to rescue Lois Lane? And Spiderman is always rescuing MJ because the bad guys know if they go after the hero’s girl, it will hurt the superhero who the bad guy can’t really hurt. And then Spiderman or Superman shows up and rescues his girl. She said in fairy tales, the prince always shows up to fight for the princess. She said it’s like the same story got scattered all over the world and gets retold over and over, but in different ways. It’s like we all hear that the hero will always rescue his bride and for some reason we all need to know it. So the messages keep being sent.”
I tucked DJ close to me and considered it. “That’s a pretty interesting take on things.”
“She thinks there are these messages like that sent from heaven. She thinks you and I get them and put them in our notebooks.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t tell her all about our notebooks.”
“Why not? You told Michael… and Lauren Kate was there.”
“Michael’s been my friend for a long time, and I sort of didn’t notice Lauren Kate was standing there.”
“She likes you.”
“Who does?”
“Lauren Kate. She draws pictures of you and hangs them on her wall.”
Ah, so that was why she grinned like that at me. “Well, you need to tell her I’m taken already. I only have eyes for your mom.”
“She knows. She said when she grows up, she wants to be like mom. When she can afford nice clothes and can make herself look nice.”
“It’s getting late. We need to read this comic book.” I held my boy close and read the comic book to him. After I tucked him in and closed the door, I crept down the stairs and took the card off the flowers. I grabbed one of the photos of Layla off the wall and headed down to my lab. There I turned on "Black" by Pearl Jam on my iPod, sank down on the floor by the wall, and read the card. Then I picked up the picture and stared at her. We didn’t have enough time together. She knew all along, and she never let on. Why? Sorrow mixed with anger. It still hadn’t faded.
Lauren Kate kept DJ busy all summer. They didn’t know it was me who had a plumber come repair their bathroom nor who the grocery gift cards came from in the mail each week.
*
THE WEEKEND BEFORE SCHOOL, DJ and I made a trip back to Chesnee to see my parents. Mom wanted to take him back-to-school shopping and have a family dinner before his school schedule kept us home for a while. When we got home Sunday afternoon, the first thing DJ did was race across the yard to Lauren Kate’s house to show her the new Spiderman shirt he wore. He knocked on the door, but no one answered.
I shrugged at him as he trudged back. “Maybe they went somewhere.”
“But Lauren Kate’s grandma doesn’t drive so she’s always home. Someone from the church picks them up for church, and then takes Lauren Kate to do the grocery shopping each week.”
“Maybe someone from their church took them somewhere.”
His head hung low as we walked up our steps. “Maybe.” But the next day, Lauren Kate’s house was still empty, and I didn’t know anyone to ask about them.
A few days later a letter arrived in the mail for DJ from Lauren. He read it to me. Lauren Kate had gone to stay with her Aunt Connie in Greenwood, South Carolina. She told him to write her and that she would write to him as often as she could. She made a point to tell him not to worry about her and told him stories of all the fun things she was doing at her aunt’s house. DJ was crushed—he’d just lost someone else. I let him pick dinner for a week and sleep in my bed until he cheered up. Soon he got into the habit of writing to her and raced to the mailbox to send her a letter and to look for one from her. I noticed there was about the same age difference between her and DJ as there had been between Layla and me. Perhaps there was something else Layla was setting up with this move.
Chapter 22
12 years later ~2014
David
THE STAIRS CREAKED AS DJ came down to the lab. I was busy working on the latest trial of time travel serum. So far, I only had a way for one direction of travel that would take me back in time, theoretically, but no way to return to the present. Much had to be reworked with the original formula to make it possible to send a living being back in time.
The first time I’
d tried to send a white mouse back, the dead body of the mouse appeared in front of me earlier in the day. After a moment, I realized that I was seeing the results of the experiment I was about to conduct. When I actually conducted the experiment, I saw why the mouse had died. I’d sprayed him with the serum to lock onto the backward time stream, and that part had worked, but the mouse’s internal organs had remained behind.
I saluted the little mouse. “I appreciate your sacrifice. I’ll do my best to not sacrifice your family in the future.”
“Dad, guess who’s coming to visit next month?”
“Who?” I turned to find my son dressed in his cross country uniform. He now towered over me.
“Lauren Kate.”
“Really? You two still keep in touch?”
“We never stopped.”
“You don’t get letters anymore.”
“Dad, no one uses snail mail anymore.”
“Right.”
“Anyway she’s coming to South Carolina on business and wanted to come by and see us. Can I make up Uncle Michael’s room for her?”
“Sure, sure. That’ll be great.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Wait.” I walked over to the stack of mail and pulled out an envelope. “I think you got another acceptance letter. This one’s from Wofford where grandpa went. Maybe we could go up and tour it.” I handed him the letter and patted his back. “I didn’t even know you applied there.”
He shrugged. “Grandpa asked me to.”
“Do you want to go there?”
“Maybe. I’m not against going there.”
“It would make Grandpa proud if you chose to go there, but I’m leaving that up to you.”
“I’ll look online at their pre-med program.”
“Good idea.” I gave him a firm pat on the shoulder.
DJ’s phone buzzed. He reached in his pocket to check the text. “Scott’s here to take me to practice.”
“Have fun.”
I went back to look at the dead mouse and the formula. It obviously wasn’t ready for human trials. I took my notebook to the laptop and plugged in more data. Layla said I would do this. I just had to keep going.
Forever Layla: A Time Travel Romance Page 19
