Second Time Around (45 page)

Millie rushed toward him, her hands trying to press down his words. “Shh. Please.”

Ray and Rhonda appeared in the doorway. “Ah. Too late. Our audience is assembled.” He led Rhonda to the rocker, and Ray took a seat on the couch.

“What’s this about?” Ray asked.

“It’s about deceit. Betrayal. And don’t ask me; ask your daughter.”

Rhonda’s hand once again found her collar.

“Millie? What have you done?” Ray asked.

Millie’s eyes filled with tears, and she flung the coat across the room. “What have
I
done? I’ve tried to survive. No one can fault me for that.”

Ray turned to David. “What is she talking about?”

Millie laughed. “See? You’ve just proven everything, Father. You don’t ask me to explain myself; you ask David to do it for me.” She moved to the edge of the coffee table, which divided them. “Between you and David planning my life, planning my wedding…”

“Don’t use that tone with me, young lady.”

She raised both hands in surrender, took a step back, then kowtowed. “Forgive me, almighty father, for daring to express my own thoughts.”

He got to his feet, pointing at her. “You
will
show me respect!”

“You don’t want respect, you want servitude.” She crossed to her mother, putting a hand on the back of the rocker. “You want me to be another silent, obedient, meek woman like you’ve made Mom, never daring to confront, to question, to express herself.”

Rhonda’s eyes flitted between her husband and David. Her mouth moved, but she said nothing.

“You leave your mother alone.” Ray offered his wife a hand, pulled her from the rocker, and deposited her on the couch beside him.

“Mom, do something. Say something. Stick up for yourself.” Millie started crying. “Don’t let him beat you down. We’ve talked about this. You agree with me. Show him some of the spark you’ve shown me.”

Rhonda looked at Millie with panic in her eyes. Then Ray put his hand on her knee. Silencing her. Which was fine with David. This had nothing to do with Rhonda Reynolds.

“Can we get back on track, please?” David turned to Millie. “I want you to explain to your parents—to all of us—why you have a suitcase full of clothes and nearly three hundred dollars in a locker at the bus station.”

Oddly, Rhonda looked at her hands, while Ray said, “A locker? Where were you planning to go?”

Millie raised her chin defiantly. “Anywhere that’s away from both of you.”

Her father shook his head. “This doesn’t make sense. You’re getting married. You’re planning the wedding.”

“No, you’re planning the wedding. David’s planning the wedding. Mom and I are merely supposed to agree and marvel at your brilliance.”

“I’m putting up a lot of money for this affair, Millie,” Ray said. “I’m doing it for you. It doesn’t matter to me if you have a big to-do—”

“Of course it does. The president of Mariner Construction can’t allow his daughter’s wedding to be small and nondescript.”

“You’re making it sound as if I have an ego problem—and I don’t. I’m as humble as the next man.”

She laughed as if he’d told a joke. “You two know nothing about how a real man should behave. A loving, kind, generous… never mind.”

Since she’d brought him up… David pulled the snapshot from his pocket. “Were you leaving town with this man?”

Millie didn’t touch the picture.

Ray held out his hand. “Let me see.” He looked at it. “Who’s this?”

“My teacher.”

“He’s more than that,” David said. “Look at the way his arm is around your shoulders. Plus, I’ve seen the two of you talk while you’re in class. It’s more than normal student-to-teacher—”

Millie tossed her hands in the air. “Who needs a husband when one can have a spy? You see why I have to leave?”

David moved close, his voice low. “I’d find you. I’d come after you.”

Her chin quivered, then firmed. “But you wouldn’t have found me. Because Millie Reynolds would be no more.”

He remembered the driver’s license. “You’d change your name. So what? There are still ways to find you. I’d find ways.”

“Not if you thought I was dead.”

No one moved.

Millie straightened her shoulders. “You didn’t know it, David, but you foiled the plan last weekend in Bar Harbor.”

His brain wasn’t functioning. “What are you talking about?”

“When you stopped me from driving away in your precious car, in the rain. Just a few seconds more… if only I hadn’t flooded the thing, I would have been on the road, driving away from you, driving to a particularly steep, curvy point in Acadia Park.” She smiled at him proudly. “I must admit it was going to be an added bonus to let your car be involved in my plan. I was going to take great pleasure in seeing your 1958 Calypso and Burma green Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe with the sliding Plexiglas sun visor and the ‘Memory-maniac’ power memory seat destroyed.”

The “Memo-Matic”
power memory seat.
“What were you going to do to my car?”

She strolled past him, pulling a finger under his chin. “I thought it was
our
car, darling.”

“Millie, enough!” her father said. “What were you going to do with David’s car?”

She closed her eyes and raised her face to the ceiling. “You two. With every word you confirm my choice. You are the two most unfeeling, possessive, controlling, arrogant—”

Without warning, Rhonda stood up. “She was going to fake her death by letting the car drive over a cliff into the ocean! She was going to take her new identity, run away, and start over with a man who truly loves her and who doesn’t feel the need to control her.”

After her outburst, Rhonda hurried to Millie’s side, taking refuge under her arm. “Thank you, Mom.”

“You knew about this, Rhonda?” Ray asked.

“I encouraged it. I helped plan it.”

All David could say was, “Why?”

She smiled at her daughter. “I was not about to risk having Millie live the same broken, weak, beaten-down life I’ve lived. I want her to be happy.”

How simplistic. It sounded like Rhonda. She was not a bright woman. Anyone who thought in terms of happy or sad was—

All of a sudden David saw a pop of light like someone had taken a flash picture. But when his eyes cleared, no one was standing before him with a camera. In fact, they were all looking at him oddly.

“David?” Ray pointed at his face. “Are you all right? You jerked like you’d been shocked.”

David wanted to say he was fine, but it wasn’t the truth, or wasn’t quite the truth. Physically he did feel fine, but mentally… it was as though his mind was a video, fast-forwarding.

Video. Fast-forward.
There is no such thing.

And then he knew. Knew everything. This was the Dual Consciousness! He knew all about the David Stancowsky in 1958 but also about the David Stancowsky of the future. He caught a glimpse of himself in a wall mirror and rushed to see. He was young again! Twenty-eight. He ran his hands over his face. There were only hints of wrinkles on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. It would be years before the lines became the permanent fissures that marked his age.

He looked down at his body. Though he’d taken good care of himself his entire life, he felt a strength now that had been absent too long. He flexed his biceps. Muscles. Power.

“David, what’s gotten into you?”

He turned toward Millie and his breath left him. She was stunning. She was alive! He rushed toward her, taking her face in his hands. “Millie!”

She tried to push him away. “Let go!”

Rhonda looked to her husband. “Ray…”

He realized how strange his actions must seem. And there was no way he could explain it to them, to these people who thought television was a modern marvel, these people who’d never heard of computers, microwaves, the Vietnam and Gulf Wars, or that there’d been a man on the moon. The Berlin Wall hadn’t been built yet—nor torn down. They only knew of Nikita Khrushchev, Sputnik, and forty-eight states. Elvis was a GI,
West Side Story
was a new show on Broadway, and Buddy Holly was still singing “Peggy Sue”—live.

David felt Ray’s hand on his arm. “Let her go, David. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but—”

David raised his hands, setting Millie free. She moved to the other side of the room. He couldn’t blame her.

But then he remembered that she’d wanted to move farther than that away from him. She’d planned to run away with another man. She’d planned to wreck his car… That’s where they’d left off when the Dual Consciousness had kicked in. He finally said what had not been said. “You were going to fake your death.”

Millie and her mother exchanged a look. Then she said, “Yes.”

“You hated me that much.”

She let out a breath. “I don’t hate you, David. I just need to be free of you. Free of my father. Free of the past. Free to have a future.”

He nearly laughed. Wasn’t that the point of the Time Lottery? “But faking… you didn’t have to go to that extreme.” He wished his thoughts would calm. He needed to think clearly. “I’m just glad you’re alive. I’m just glad I stopped you from driving off the—”

His mind skipped the here and now, and landed on the there and then. The first time through 1958 he hadn’t stopped her. She’d driven off in the rain and wrecked the car and—

Died?

He sucked in a breath, nearly losing his balance. “You didn’t die? You never died!”

“What?”

His chest was tight. Was he having a heart attack? “I have to sit.”

He found a chair. “I’ll get you some water,” Rhonda said.

He shook his head in total disbelief. “You never died!” Everything he’d known. Everything he’d believed. Everything he’d based his life upon was false.

Ray put a hand on his shoulder. “David, you need to calm down.”

They didn’t understand. They couldn’t. He bolted from the chair, shoving their attention away. “I need to go. I need to be alone.” He grabbed his coat and made for the door.

“Stop, David. You shouldn’t be alone when you’re like this.”

He yanked open the door and pointed a finger in Millie’s face. “You’ve been alive the whole time! I mourned for you. My entire life was spent mourning for you.”

She took a step back into the waiting arms of her mother. “You’re talking like a madman.”

Oh, yes, indeed. A
madman.
That’s what he was. He ran to his car and drove away. He was assailed by its new smell. Repulsed by how much it had meant to him. He would drive it off a cliff himself if it meant he didn’t have to know this awful truth.

A car honked. He’d missed a stop sign. He was speeding.

Speeding toward what?

He pulled to the curb and shut off the car. He had to calm down and think.
If only I didn’t have to think. It hurts to think. It hurts to know.

He slammed his hands onto the steering wheel. “Enough! I have only an hour to decide whether I want to stay or go back. Be logical. Think it through.”

He forced himself to take some deep breaths and was relieved his chest no longer hurt. Wouldn’t that have been laughable? To have a heart attack and get stuck in 1958 forever?

But would that be so bad?

A little girl came down the sidewalk on roller skates. Roller skates, not Rollerblades; the kind worn over shoes and tightened with a key. She wore a dress and saddle shoes.

A milk truck pulled across the street, and the milkman tipped his cap to David when he got out. He took two glass bottles of milk to the back door, put them in a milk box, and retrieved two empties.

It was a simpler time. Innocent. A better time? The calm before the storm of an assassinated president, Vietnam, civil unrest, shuttle disasters, and 9/11. There was so much history to suffer through. Why would he ever choose to do it again?

He closed his eyes, blocking out this time and place. What if he did stay here? What would he be leaving behind?

The first time around, when he’d thought Millie had died, he’d found comfort from Ray—and comforted Ray. His father-in-law-never-to-be had decided to ignore that technicality and had taken him into the business as a son. David had found great satisfaction turning Mariner Construction into a mega-corporation. If he stayed here and started over, would he be able to duplicate that same success? There was no grief to bond him and Millie’s father. There was no guarantee he’d even have a job.

And yet… wouldn’t that be exciting? To truly start over fresh? Over the years he
had
occasionally wondered what he would have done if he hadn’t teamed up with Ray. But it was a risk. Though he’d be the first to ring his own bell, if he stayed here, he might not rise to his former height. And would he be content as a middle-class business owner, struggling to make the payroll each week? So much of his identity was enmeshed with what he did.

That’s because you didn’t have a family.

Ah. Family. Why hadn’t he ever settled down? Sure, there had been a few women, but never a relationship. He’d always held back, content to mourn Millie.

“She’s alive!” His words echoed through the car.

Back in the future Millie was alive! She’d been alive these forty-some years, living another life with a man with curly red hair. Was there a Tracy Osgood alive and well and living in…

He had the sudden urge to find her. Demand to know—

Know what? Right here in 1958 he’d discovered why she’d gone to such lengths. “I picked out her wedding dress.”

At the sound of his own words, he cringed. It just wasn’t done. Not in 1958. Not ever. What had he been thinking? Sure, Ray had condoned it, even egged him on. But that didn’t make it right. Two controlling men, controlling their women. Being
too
involved.

A snicker escaped. After Millie’s “death,” Rhonda had found her freedom, too, though in a less dramatic way. Soon after the crash she’d divorced Ray. It had been a totally uncharacteristic act of gumption. But now, knowing the plan, it made sense. Rhonda was in on it. Rhonda knew where Millie-Tracy was going to live. So for the past four decades, they’d been having the last laugh on the men in their lives. Living free. Being happy.