Come Down In Time (A Time Travel Romance) (2 page)

Jamie played the radio for the
first part of the drive. When the scenery became hilly, she turned
the radio off. She was back in her territory and the longer she drove
the more she thought about home, her parents, her house, and Tommy.

After Tommy had been killed
driving off a cliff to pick her up for graduation, Jamie had
retreated to her bed. She had cried many hours of the day, at first,
and her mother took care of her. She brought her food on a tray and
sat with her, holding her hand. Her mother stayed up late at night
tending to Jamie during those first weeks.

It took a long time for Jamie to
process the fact that Tommy was dead. She kept thinking, if only he
wasn’t picking me up, then he would be here now. She kept thinking
if only she could go back in time, she could change everything. She
would ride to the graduation with her parents and little brother,
Bobby. Tommy would go with his parents. They would see each other at
graduation and get together afterwards.

As many times as Jamie tried—and
there were so many times—to change what had happened, she was still
left with the fact that Tommy had been killed coming to pick her up.
Finally, she did come to accept that. She could not change what had
happened. Tommy was dead and he would not be coming back.

Jamie spent the following year at
home with her parents and little brother. Eventually, she did get out
of bed and started contributing to the household. Her father taught
biology at a nearby junior college and her mother worked part-time at
the Baker Baptist Church as a secretary. There were times when Jamie
was alone in her childhood home, left to her memories. Those were
terrible times for her. She spent those days in bed or watching TV.
When her mother got home after noon, she took care of Jamie in the
only way she knew how. She brought her food and sat with her until
she had to leave to pick up Bobby from school. Over that year, Jamie
gained a lot of weight. Maybe thirty pounds, but she didn’t care
about her weight. She didn’t care about anything. Tommy was dead
and it was her fault.

At first, Jamie couldn’t
believe that the world went on without Tommy in it. How could that
be? Tommy was dead and the world should have died with him. Her world
died. Gradually, as Jamie began to move around in the house, she
started to realize that she would have to do something with her life.
It wouldn’t be the life she and Tommy had planned for themselves.
Living in the cottage near his grandparents’ farmhouse, growing
organic vegetables and herbs. Tommy was all about organic farming and
wanted to make a difference in the world. “We can grow heirloom
vegetables and sell them to the restaurants in Nashville,” he said.
But the best thing about it, Tommy said, was that they would be
making their own way in the world without relying on an employer in a
boring job. “I don’t want us to end up like my father,
complaining all the time about how stressful my job is and how much I
hate it,” Tommy had said on many occasions. “We’ll be doing
what we like to do.”

Jamie had agreed with Tommy. Her
parents had hoped she would go to college, but when she told them she
was going to marry Tommy right away and live on a his grandparents’
farm, they didn’t argue with her. They knew as well as anybody in
Baker that Tommy and Jamie were an inseparable pair. And though they
had only been with each other, neither felt the need to be with
anyone else. Why should they? They had already found the person they
were meant to be with. They felt lucky to have found each other so
early in their lives.

The more Jamie drove, the more
she thought about Tommy and her hometown. She had been avoiding this
area of the country for years. Now, she wondered why she was moving
so close to home. She kept thinking about things that she had put
away in a locked box in her mind. She didn’t want to remember, but
she couldn’t stop remembering.

Jamie applied for college at
Vanderbilt in Nashville and got a full scholarship. Her parents
wouldn’t have to pay a thing. When she drove away that day on her
way to college, in a used Honda her father had bought her, she didn’t
look back. She never went home again.

She moved into the dorm and
unpacked her boxes and suitcases alone. Hours later, her new roommate
moved in, with her parents and brother helping her. Jamie had felt
awkward that day, meeting a new roommate and her family. She had been
so isolated the past year. But Linda, who was from Nashville, made
her feel at ease.

“
Let’s go exploring,” she
said. “When my parents are gone.” She rolled her eyes then, and
Jamie laughed. She and Linda had walked the campus from one corner to
the other, checking out all of the buildings where their classes
would be. They got hamburgers at the student center afterwards. Linda
chattered away about her boyfriend between bites of hamburger and
French fries. She took long sucks on a straw of her chocolate
milkshake, and Jamie sat there and listened. She didn’t have to do
much talking of her own.

“
Tyler’s father insisted he
go to Yale, like he did. Tyler had the grades for that. I didn’t,”
Linda said. “He’s been gone already a week, but I don’t really
miss him.”

“
You don’t?” Jamie said.

“
I know I should,” Linda said
taking another bite of hamburger. She chewed for a few seconds. “But
I’ve been with him since tenth grade. I want to see what life has
to hold for me. It’s not like we were going to get married or
anything.” She took another hard draw on her milkshake. “It’s
kind of a relief,” she said finally.

Jamie had been with Tommy since
tenth grade too, but she missed him every day. She was going to miss
him the rest of her life.

At first, Linda talked on her
cell phone to Tyler late at night, her back turned to Jamie. Tyler
called her all the time, and Linda took his calls. But then she
stopped taking his calls.

“
He’s really getting on my
nerves,” she said one night. “I told him I want us to experience
college as free agents, know what I mean?”

Jamie nodded. She could
understand that.

“
He’s not taking it well,”
Linda confided. “But it just has to be this way. I’ve already met
several people I want to date, and I can’t do that as long as I’m
still Tyler’s girlfriend.”

After a few days, Tyler seemed to
get the message. He stopped calling and Linda started dating. She
went out several nights a week and every single Friday and Saturday.
On one Saturday that Jamie would never forget, Linda had a different
date for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

“
This is getting complicated,”
Linda said, laughing. “I can hardly keep it straight who I’ve got
a date with.”

Jamie laughed too. “Do you want
me to make you a database?” she asked her. They both laughed then.

“
That might not be a bad idea,”
Linda said.

It was a long time before Jamie
told Linda about Tommy. She never wanted to talk about that. But one
night, when Linda had come in early from a date—“he was boring so
I said I had a headache,” she said—they started talking. Linda
started asking her questions, mainly about why Jamie didn’t date.
“You’re gorgeous,” she said. “I know the guys have got to be
all over you.”

Jamie had been asked out several
times, but she always refused. She couldn’t see herself being with
anyone but Tommy. Not even on a date with small talk and a movie or
something. So, one night, Jamie told Linda about Tommy and what had
happened.

“
That’s the saddest story I
ever heard,” Linda said. “I’m crying, it’s so sad. I’m so
sorry.”

“
Thanks,” Jamie said.

They had both fallen asleep then.
But a few nights later, Linda asked Jamie if she would go to a
festival.

“
This guy I’ve seen a couple
of times has a friend who’s going with us to a bluegrass festival
out in the sticks. Do you think you would want to go with us? It’s
going to be fun. You don’t really have to be his date or anything.”

It was late in the spring
semester by that point, and Jamie hadn’t been on a single date.
Maybe she needed to get out more, she thought.

“
Okay,” she said.

“
Really?” Linda said. She got
off her bed and came over to Jamie and put her hands on her arms and
looked directly in her eyes. “Really?” she repeated.

“
Really,” Jamie said.

“
I told Josh I’d bring the
food,” Linda said, “but I have no idea what I can possibly make
in this dorm room.”

“
We’ll make sandwiches,”
Jamie said. “And get chips and stuff. If we didn’t live in this
dorm room, I could make fried chicken and potato salad, but we can’t
do that.”

Jamie and Linda went to the
grocery store near campus on Friday and bought smoked turkey and ham
and everything else they would need to make sandwiches. Jamie got
fresh tomatoes, which she would slice and put in a plastic bag to add
to the sandwiches later. They bought Doritos and potato chips. As an
afterthought, Jamie grabbed a bag of chocolate chip cookies.

“
Josh is bringing a cooler of
beer,” Linda said. “So we don’t have to worry about that.”

The next morning, Josh called
Linda and said he and Matthew were waiting downstairs in the lobby of
the dorm. Jamie and Linda transferred the sandwiches from the mini
fridge to a cooler, grabbed the grocery bag of chips and cookies, and
went downstairs.

Josh and Matthew were both
wearing jeans and t-shirts, and both had their hair pulled back in
ponytails. Josh blonde, Matthew brown. Both good looking.

Jamie sat in the backseat with
Matthew. She felt shy and awkward. She had never been on a date with
anyone but Tommy. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She
didn’t know what to say. All she could think about was Tommy.

Jamie and Tommy had grown up next
to each other, if you could call houses separated by acres and acres
next to each other. Jamie lived on land that her father had grown up
on and his father and grandfather before him. By the time her father
inherited the land and house, it was no longer a working farm. Her
father had gone to college and had no interest in maintaining a full
farm. The acres of fields became pastureland, but her mother insisted
on keeping one acre free to grow vegetables for the family. The apple
and peach orchards still stood, still providing sweet fruit for
another generation of Walters.

Tommy’s parents lived on land
owned by his grandparents on his mother’s side. His father was an
accountant at the same junior college where Jamie’s father worked,
and his mother stayed home raising the children. As soon as Tommy was
old enough, he started helping his grandparents on the farm, which
grew mostly corn and soybeans. But Tommy wasn’t just working in
the fields. When he got older, he started doing Internet research on
organic farming. By the time he was fourteen, he had started his own
acre, his “experiment,” he called it.

Jamie remembered what she guessed
must have been their first date. She was sitting with Tommy on the
school bus, as she often did, but that day when they got close to
Tommy’s house, he asked her if she wanted to see his garden. He
talked about it all the time, and Jamie was curious. What was so
great about a garden? she wondered. They had walked up the dirt
driveway to Tommy’s house. They waved at his mother, who was
looking out the kitchen window, and walked toward the back. She could
see fields and fields of corn beyond the house, but in front of that,
a lush green area. Tommy’s experiment.

As she and Tommy walked down
straw-covered rows, he pointed out each vegetable to her—eggplant,
squash, onions, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes, purple hull peas, black
eyed peas, green beans, cucumbers. Tommy was trying several types of
heirloom tomatoes and squash. “When I get my license next month,
I’m going to sell these vegetables at the farmer’s market,”
Tommy said. “People are starting to want organic.”

After the tour, Tommy offered to
walk her home. “Let’s go through the woods,” he suggested. “See
what’s going on in there.” Jamie grabbed her backpack, which she
had left in front of the garden, and followed Tommy along the edge of
the corn field, around the corner, and to the woods. She knew where
they were going. The long pathway through the forest started at
Tommy’s land and ended at hers.

As she walked behind Tommy—there
wasn’t room on the path to walk side by side—Jamie felt a new
appreciation for him. She was attracted to the passion he felt about
his organic gardening. He seemed like he knew what he wanted to do
and he was going to get there. Jamie really had no idea what she
wanted to do. She was only fifteen—almost sixteen—but nothing had
really grabbed her yet to be passionate about. Tommy’s brown hair
hung over his collar, and Jamie noticed how shiny it was. When Tommy
stopped to show her a tree, he reached out to touch a branch and she
noticed how muscular his arm was. When her long dark hair got caught
in an overhanging bush, Tommy untangled her hair, and she noticed how
gentle he was.

They reached the lake and kept
walking along side it. When they were at the midpoint of the lake,
Tommy stopped. “This is the property line,” he said. “We share
a lake.” Of course, Jamie already knew that, but she loved it when
Tommy talked about it.