Come Down In Time (A Time Travel Romance) (19 page)

Jamie still didn’t understand
how time changed, but she had learned a lot. She had learned that
there were a lot of timelines, based on every little and big decision
that a person made. There were so many lives to live, lives that
were
lived. What was different for her was that she was keeping her same
mind as she moved through the timelines. It was the Moon Cave and the
moon that enabled her to move from one timeline to another. What
guided her was her everlasting love for Tommy. She didn’t want to
live in a timeline, with her conscious mind as it was, without Tommy.

After a while of thinking about
the timelines and the conundrum that she was in, Jamie went back
downstairs and sat at the kitchen table. Her mother was adding sliced
carrots to her pot.

“
Mom,” Jamie said. “When
you saw Mrs. Grisham, did she say anything about Tommy? His wife?”

Her mother put the top on the pot
and looked at her. “What wife?” she said.

“
I thought he had gotten
remarried,” Jamie said.

Her mother whirled around from
the stove and looked hard at Jamie. She looked angry.

“
You know Tommy hasn’t gotten
remarried. He’ll never get remarried,” she said.

“
Why not?” Jamie said. She
realized then that in this 2013, Tommy had not remarried and did not
have children. She had made assumptions based on the last 2013 when
she had seen Tommy. When he was remarried and had two children and a
third on the way. She should have known that if Bobby wasn’t
getting married and Nate and Stacie weren’t engaged, that Tommy’s
life could be different, too.

“
You know why not. Because he’s
never loved anyone but you. And you left him.” Her mother turned
back to the stove and lifted the lid on the pot. She stirred it for a
few seconds, then she put the lid back on with a slam and walked out
the back door.

Jamie sat at the table stunned.
Tommy wasn’t remarried. And it was because of her. How could she
have left Tommy? Jamie didn’t know the answer to that, and she
thought she never would.

Jamie walked out the back door.
Her mother was sitting in the swing that was attached with chains to
the porch ceiling. She looked out over the garden and didn’t look
at Jamie.

“
Mom,” I’m sorry,” Jamie
said gently. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Her mother turned her head and
looked at Jamie. She had been crying, that was easy to see.

“
Jamie, sometimes I don’t
understand the things you say,” she said. “It’s like you don’t
know things that you should know. But one thing that you should know
is that you left Tommy when you went to college. He was
broken-hearted and he’s never gotten over it. I’m sorry to say it
so bluntly to you, but please don’t act like you don’t know
that.”

“
I do know that, Mom. And I
know a lot more, too. If I felt like I could talk to you, then I
could tell you things. But I know you would think I’m crazy, so I
can’t tell you about the most important thing that has ever
happened in my life. Because you won’t understand.”

“
How can you say that?” her
mother said. “I feel like I’ve been a very understanding mother
to you.”

“
You’ve been the best
mother,” Jamie said. “I love you and Dad so much. But something’s
happened to me that I can’t explain very well. Not in a way that
you’ll believe. Or understand.
“Try me,” her mother said.
“You might be surprised what I can understand.”

Jamie wanted so much to tell her
mother what she had been through over the years, the timelines, the
going back and forth.

“
Let me think about it,”
Jamie said. “Let me think how I can possibly explain the impossible
to you.”

Her mother sighed as she stood up
from the swing. “Okay, Jamie. When you think you can explain it,
then I’m all ears. I’ll listen to what you have to say and I
won’t think you’re crazy.” She walked back into the kitchen.
Jamie looked out over the pasture and saw the opening in the woods in
the distance. She stepped off the back porch and started walking that
way.

It was July 21, one day before
the full moon, but Jamie wanted to walk down the path. Her mother
probably saw her leave and wondered where Jamie was going, what Jamie
was doing, why her daughter was so strange now. Maybe Jamie would be
able to tell her mother, maybe not. Maybe she wouldn’t need to.

She walked through the pasture,
then along the edge of the woods. The July sun beat down on her, but
as soon as she stepped through the opening, it was shaded and cooler.
As she walked, pushing aside branches, Jamie wondered how long the
path was. She knew it took about ten minutes to get from one end to
the other. An old Native American path, Tommy had said long ago.
Surely the path had been much longer in those days before the
pastures and open land had been carved out of the wilderness by the
settlers who eventually took over the land, her ancestor’s land.
The path probably had gone on for miles and miles, maybe from one
Native encampment to another. Only her ancestors knew the answer to
that.

Jamie glanced at the lake to her
left when it came into view. Her ancestors no doubt had fished in
that lake, drunk water from it, made bows from the trees that grew
there. When she reached the midpoint, she kept walking all the way to
the other end. She left the cool darkness and stepped out into the
bright sun. She shielded her eyes for a moment until she was used to
the sun again.

She listened for the sound of the
tractor, but all was silent. The tassels of the tall corn swayed in a
wind that had suddenly come up. The corn went on as far as her eye
could see, and as the wind blew across, she saw the tassels come
alive. And then the breeze was gone and the corn stood tall and
straight.

Jamie jumped off the little hill
in front of the opening and landed on the path that surrounded the
fields. Rows of tall corn were on her left and the woods on her
right, so that Jamie was walking in a maze of sorts, one with a
straight line that would end up at Tommy’s garden. She needed to
see that garden, the one she had worked in and grown plump vegetables
in with Tommy’s special organic fertilizer. The one she had married
Tommy in on that long ago day that was only a few months ago for her.

When she reached the end of the
path, she peeked around the corn into the garden. It was lush like
she remembered. Suddenly a figure stood up where he had been hidden
by tall, leafy plants. Tommy. His hair was short and he was
clean-shaven, like he had been when they were first married. But this
Tommy had lived a decade of loss.

Her heart was beating so hard
Jamie thought she might pass out. She was trembling. She wanted to
touch Tommy so bad. She needed to feel his arms around her again. She
stepped forward.

“
No!” the little girl voice,
Darma’s voice, said sternly in her head. But Jamie ignored it
because she was going to Tommy. A freight train couldn’t stop her.

Tommy looked up as Jamie entered
the garden. Jamie stopped, afraid to go any further. She really
didn’t know how Tommy would receive her. He might still love her,
like her mother had said, but his pain at losing her may have become
bitter and angry in the ten years since he had seen her last, the
years since their divorce in this timeline.

“
Jamie?” he said.

Hearing his voice caused tears to
form in Jamie’s eyes. If Tommy came closer, he was going to see her
tears.

Tommy did come closer. He walked
all the way up to her and stood there.

“
What’s wrong?” Tommy said.
She reached out for him and he encircled her with his arms. He pulled
her to his chest and she felt his heart beating, fast like hers. She
smelled him and knew she was home. Jamie began to sob against his
chest and he smoothed her hair. When she finally was able to stop
crying, she looked at Tommy’s face and saw that his eyes were full
of tears. His face was older, like her own, but still just as
handsome, if not more so.

“
Let’s go somewhere we can
talk,” Tommy said. “I think Granny’s looking out the window at
us.”

Jamie wanted to see Granny so
much, but she needed to be with Tommy more. He took her hand and
together they walked down the wide path beside the corn. Tommy
stepped up the little hill in front of the opening, then turned
around and took Jamie’s hand, pulling her up. Silently, they walked
down the path and, with unspoken agreement, pulled aside the willow
branches and crawled into the overhang.

“
The blanket’s still here,”
Jamie said, breaking their silence. Tommy didn’t question her on
how she knew that. He wasn’t questioning anything about this
experience. Tommy was caught in a timeless place, though he didn’t
really know that yet.

He got the blanket and spread it
out. As soon as they sat down, he reached over and kissed her and
they found each other again. She reached for him and pulled him to
her. He pressed against her as he caressed her all over her body. As
they had when they were teenagers, they undressed each other as
quickly as possible, and then Tommy was inside of her again, pulling
her hips closer and closer, moving with her. She wrapped her legs
around him as he thrust slowly, then faster. Jamie moaned as Tommy
went deep inside of her. He cried out as he had when they were
teenagers. “I love you, Tommy,” she said.

Chapter
Fourteen

That day on the bus with Jamie
had changed Tommy’s life. They had always been friends and usually
sat together on the bus ride home from school, but that day he had
screwed up his courage and asked Jamie if she wanted to see his
garden. She did. It was their first “date,” followed by their
first kiss.

They had both dated other people
before that day, but they were still virgins. Tommy had always been
glad about that. Because Jamie was the only person he ever wanted,
the only one he wanted to spend his life with. The day they first
made love in the overhang was the best day of his life, even better
than their wedding day years later. Because he learned that day what
it was to truly give yourself, body and soul, to someone you loved.
And he loved Jamie Walters.

Tommy blamed himself for the end
of their marriage. He had started talking to Jamie about her
attending college. It had started nagging at him that Jamie graduated
as valedictorian of their class and ended up working in a garden and
canning vegetables. He had started to believe that Jamie would become
dissatisfied with that life, that she needed something to expand her
mind, her very smart mind. He had never known anyone smarter than
her. If he had known at the time that his pushing her to go to
college would actually bring about the end of their marriage, he
never would have done it.

Jamie protested at first when he
brought college up. She was happy. She didn’t want anything to
change. But gradually, she started talking about it as a possibility.
She did Internet research.

“
If I go, I only want to go to
Vanderbilt,” she had said. “It’s the best school around here.”

Tommy encouraged her to apply and
she was re-invited by Vanderbilt to accept their scholarships, the
same ones they had offered when she graduated high school but didn’t
accept because she married Tommy instead and moved into the cottage.
The scholarships would cover everything—her tuition, her books, her
room and board.

“
I could stay in the dorm and
come home on the weekends,” Jamie said. “It’s not that far.”
That sounded reasonable to Tommy. If only he had known then how far
it really was. It was a lifetime away

And that’s exactly how it
worked out at first. Jamie moved into the dorm and came home every
weekend. Then there was the first weekend she didn’t come home
because she had to write a paper. Those weekends became more and more
frequent. Jamie’s emails had become rare and short. She often
didn’t answer when he called her phone. She sometimes didn’t call
him back.

Tommy remembered that Jamie had
told him she didn’t know how her going to college might change
things. She had said that before they got married. He should have
listened to her, because it did change things.

He asked her to stop, to come
back home again. But it was too late.

Jamie came home for the holidays
in the middle of her second year at Vanderbilt. She had seemed
distant, though she did make love with Tommy. But when the holiday
was over, she told Tommy that they were over. She wanted to take
advantage of the scholarships—they wouldn’t come along again—and
she wanted to go to medical school. She couldn’t maintain a
marriage at the same time.

Tommy begged her to reconsider,
but Jamie was unflinching. She hugged him when she left; she waved at
him from her car window as she drove off. He never saw her again.

The following week, Tommy
received the divorce papers in the mail. Jamie wasn’t asking for
anything of his. She wanted a clean and simple break. The thing that
hurt him the most—that would keep him awake at night for months to
come—was that Jamie took her maiden name back in the divorce.

Tommy signed the papers and Jamie
was Jamie Walters again.

Grandpa and Granny got him
through that terrible time. They had been kind and gentle with him.
He lay in bed in the cottage he used to share with Jamie for a solid
week. Granny brought him food and left it on the counter in the
kitchen. She looked in on him, but didn’t intrude.