Come Down In Time (A Time Travel Romance) (21 page)

“
I didn’t know what was going
on. I ran back home and my mother was younger. Bobby was playing a
video game and my father had not had a heart attack. I was so
confused. My mother was starting to worry about me because of the
things I was saying. I was terrified, Tommy. Absolutely terrified. I
thought I must be in a dream.”

“
Then I found out it was the
day before graduation. I could change what happened. So, I called you
and begged you not to pick me up for graduation. I told you something
bad would happen if you did and you believed me. I need you to
believe what I’m telling you now, Tommy.”

Tommy didn’t say anything.
Jamie sat up and looked at him. “This is me, Tommy,” she said
looking into his eyes. “Me. I’m telling you the truth no matter
how hard it is for you to believe.”

“
I’m listening,” Tommy
said.

Jamie lay back down and took his
hand again. He pressed his fingers against her hand and she kept
talking.

“
Let me backtrack,” Jamie
said. “I left out something very important, the key to all of this.
Before I came back home, a little girl came to the clinic with
asthma. A little Native girl named Darma. While I was treating her,
she said, ‘Tommy loves you. He’s waiting.’”

“
It was very upsetting because
Darma had no way of knowing your name or anything about you. But I
somehow pushed it all out of my mind and chalked it up to a little
girl’s delirium due to lack of oxygen.”

“
So, back to the story. You
agreed not to pick me up for graduation and I saw you at the high
school. We were so happy, Tommy. I was so happy to be back with you.
We got married, just like we planned and we went on a honeymoon to
the coast. We lived in the cottage and you worked on the farm and I
helped Granny everyday.”

“
Then one day, Grandpa had a
heart attack. I was a doctor in my mind, even though I was only
eighteen years old and had never been to medical school in that
world, and I pumped Grandpa’s heart. He survived and you were so
grateful. Everyone was so grateful, but I had only done what I was
trained to do.”

“
Grandpa never had a heart
attack,” Tommy said.

“
Not in your timeline now. He
never did. But in that timeline, he did have one.”

“
This is freaking me out,”
Tommy said.

“
I know this is hard to
believe, Tommy. I know that.”

“
Just keep talking,” he said.

“
Okay,” Jamie said. “So,
shortly after that, I had a dream about Nate. He was giving me the
sapphire ring and I told him I couldn’t marry him because I was
already married. When I woke up, I was back in my childhood bed. You
were gone and it was 2013 again. But it wasn’t the same 2013 I had
left before. In that timeline, I had divorced you. I hadn’t
abandoned my parents and the house was completely different looking.
My parents had updated everything and I was a part of their lives.”

“
This is the hardest thing to
say,” Jamie said. “But you had remarried and had two children and
your wife was pregnant with a third child. I was devastated.”

“
That wasn’t me,” Tommy
said. “I would never have done that.”

“
But it was you, Tommy. In a
different timeline. We can all do stuff we wouldn’t think we would,
depending on the circumstances.”

Tommy didn’t respond and Jamie
kept talking.

“
I went back to the clinic and
everything was different. I wasn’t engaged to Nate anymore.”

“
I’m glad,” Tommy said with
a note of jealousy in his voice. Jamie didn’t blame him for that.

“
I was glad, too. Because I
didn’t want to be engaged to someone else when I was married to
you. Had been married to you. He was engaged to Stacie! After a while
of being back, I decided I needed to get back home. That the overhang
somehow had something to do with what was happening to me. So I came
back home and took some sleeping pills with me and I fell asleep out
here.”

“
When I woke up, my hair was
long again and it was 2001. I lived with you for several months.
Granny and I were planning Thanksgiving when I went back to 2013
again. I woke up in my old bed after making love with you just hours
before. I tried so hard over the next week to get back to you, Tommy.
I took all of my father’s sleeping pills over that time, coming out
here, falling asleep and waking up again in 2013. Finally, I had to
give up and go back to the clinic.”

“
Were you engaged to Nate
again?” Tommy asked.

“
No!” Jamie said. “But Nate
and Stacie weren’t engaged either! Stacie was engaged to her old
boyfriend and Nate’s father had died and he was gone for a while.”

Jamie saw no point in telling
Tommy about the night she had gone to the juke joint with Nate. It
served no purpose for him to know that.

“
Anyway,” Jamie said. “Darma,
the little Native girl, came to the clinic with another episode. She
told me that she knew I had seen you but I had lost you. I had been
through so much at that point that I believed Darma. She told me I
needed to see the dream weaver, someone named Blackbird.”

“
Blackbird?” Tommy said.
“That sounds like an Indian name.”

“
Yes,” Jamie said. “He is a
Native. So, Chancy, Darma’s father, had heard of Blackbird. He
remembered the name from his childhood. He took me deep into the
mountains to see Blackbird. He lives in a very secluded place in the
woods. I think he might be over a hundred years old.”

“
Blackbird knew everything
without me telling him. He said that this, this very cave we are in
right now, is a sacred place. It’s called the Moon Cave. Blackbird
told me that I time traveled during full moons. He said that it was
unstable and that I need to decide what time I want to be in and
bring him some things from that time.”

“
What things?” Tommy asked.
Jamie could tell Tommy was intrigued enough with her tale to not
question her at that moment. He wanted to hear the end. Then he would
decide if she was crazy.

“
He said to bring him a jar of
water from the lake, a jar of dirt from the cave, a branch from the
willow, and the writings on the ceiling of the cave.”

“
I’ve never seen any words in
this cave,” Tommy said.

“
Me either,” she said. “But
we’ve never looked. We’ve always been doing other things in
here.”

“
That’s true,” he said.

“
I’m almost finished,”
Jamie said. Tommy squeezed her hand again and she squeezed back.

“
Before I left, I realized that
I needed to get good and clear directions from Chancy. Because if I
went to see Blackbird in 2001 with my jars of water and dirt, Chancy
would only be twelve years old. He wouldn’t be able to help me. He
wouldn’t know who I was. So, I got those directions from him and
I’ve got them back at the house right now in my suitcase.”

“
I think my parents wondered
why I was visiting so much. When I got back just today—it seems
like a lifetime ago now—I found out that you had never remarried. I
didn’t realize that when I left before. Even though other things
had changed, I didn’t realize that you had never remarried in this
2013. My mother said it was because you still loved me. She was angry
at me for leaving you.”

“
I was angry, too, for a
while,” Tommy said.

“
I’m sorry, Tommy,” Jamie
said. “I never left you in a time that I have any memory of. Please
believe that.

“
I believe you,” Tommy said.

“
So, I walked on the path and I
found you in the garden,” Jamie said. “And now, here we are, in
the Moon Cave.”

Tommy didn’t say anything.

“
Tommy, if you don’t believe
me, then I’ll understand. I will come out here tomorrow for the
full moon and I will go back in time and be with you again,
hopefully. I will take the things to Blackbird and I will stabilize
everything.”

“
What will happen to us now if
I walk away and think you’re crazy?” Tommy asked. “Where will
you go? Where will I go? Will this time cease to exist?”

“
I don’t know the answer to
that. I just know that I have this one consciousness that has carried
me through all of this. I’ve come to realize that time is a very
fluid thing and not linear like we think of it. I’ve learned that
there are timelines all over the place, with slight variations and
with drastic variations. I think every decision creates another
timeline of possibilities. It’s infinite. But what I know is that
what you do, what you decide, does matter. But I don’t know why I’m
keeping my original mind through all of this.”

“
So, somewhere out there in the
infinite timelines, there is every possibility you can think of,”
Tommy said. “There’s even a timeline where you died and I
didn’t.”

“
I think so,” Jamie said.

“
But right now,” Tommy said.
“I’m here with you. I’ve got a history with you, but you don’t
remember all of it. You don’t remember that you divorced me.
Because you’ve come to me now from a different timeline.”

“
That’s right,” she said.

“
I’m so blown away right now,
I can’t wrap my head around it,” Tommy said. “The only thing I
know is that I love you, I’ve always loved you, and I can’t
imagine a timeline where I married someone else and had children with
them.”

“
And I can’t imagine a
timeline where I ever divorced you, because I love you more than my
own life,” Jamie said.

Tommy sat up and Jamie sat up
beside him. He looked deep into her eyes.

“
What are we going to do?” he
asked.

Chapter
Sixteen

“
Do you believe me?” Jamie
asked.

“
I believe you. I don’t think
I’d believe anyone else, but I believe you.”

“
Thank you,” Jamie said. She
put her arms around Tommy and hugged him. “Thank you.”

“
But I’m me right now,”
Tommy said. “I don’t know anything about a time when I died or
when you saved Grandpa. I don’t know any of that. I’m me and I
want to stay me. If I walk away from you now, I’ll live a miserable
and lonely life, always wondering if what you are saying is the
truth. And you’ll go back and be with me in another timeline where
I’ll be happy, but I won’t know it. Not the me now.”

“
The way I see it, we’ve got
two choices,” Jamie said. “Because I think I may have screwed
things up by seeing you today, being with you. I’m not sure because
I don’t understand anything, really. But Darma told me to stop and
I didn’t.”

“
But, we can choose to stay
here, in this time,” Jamie said. “We’re only thirty years old
and it’s not too late for us to have children and have a good life
together.”

“
That’s true,” Tommy said.

“
Or, if we want to go back and
pick up at the beginning of our marriage, then we’ll have to take a
big risk. Now that I’ve revealed everything to you, I think we’ll
have to go back together. I don’t even know how that works. I don’t
know the mysteries of the Moon Cave.”

“
Let’s find the writings,”
Tommy said. “Let’s see if they’re here before we decide
anything.”

“
I’ve been thinking about
it,” Jamie said. “And they must be in the back, in that little
opening.” She looked behind them and gestured with her hand. “We
never looked back there,” she said.

Tommy reached over for his jeans
and pulled his iPhone out of his pocket. “I think we should get
dressed now,” he said. They both pulled their clothes on. Tommy
took his phone out of his pocket and put it on the flashlight
setting. He crawled away from Jamie and stuck his head through the
opening at the back of the overhang. He shined the light all around
and on the ceiling of the tiny cave he found himself in. Well, where
he found his head and shoulders in.

“
I see something up there,”
he said. “I can’t tell what it is, but there’s definitely some
kind of scratching on the ceiling up there. I’m taking a photo. I
don’t know how good it’ll be, though.”

“
We need to get something to
write on,” Jamie said. “I’ll go home and get something and I’ll
bring the map with me.”

“
I’ll go with you,” Tommy
said.

“
Really?” Jamie said.

“
I’m not letting you out of
my sight,” Tommy said. “No matter how long this takes, I’m
sticking by you like glue.”

“
I love you,” Jamie said.

“
I love you, too, sugar.”

Tommy brought his head out of the
little opening and together they left the overhang. Tommy started off
down the path, but held her hand as she walked behind him. “I’m
not letting go,” he said. “I’m not taking any chances with
this.”

They walked hand in hand through
the pasture on Jamie’s side of the woods. They walked into the
kitchen and her mother looked up. She was wiping the countertops with
a sponge. When she saw Jamie and Tommy come in the door, she dropped
the sponge on the floor and put her hands to the side of her cheeks.

“
Tommy!” her mother said.