Come Down In Time (A Time Travel Romance) (8 page)

Jamie parked in the gravel
driveway. The front porch light was on and guided her up the porch
steps to the front door. She didn’t have a key, but the door was
unlocked. Jamie walked inside.

Everything was the same. The blue
and green plaid couch and green wingback chair. The fireplace
surrounded by old bricks. Nothing had changed. She walked into the
kitchen and flipped the light switch. The cream-colored cabinets from
her memory lined two walls of the kitchen with a long island in the
middle of the floor. The breakfast nook was at the end of the kitchen
with the same glass-topped round oak table.

Jamie walked upstairs and opened
the door to her childhood bedroom. The bed was neatly covered in the
same bedspread with pink rosebuds on a white background. Her favorite
stuffed animal, a gray elephant, sat on her pillows. Her white
dresser stood on the wall opposite the bed. Nothing had changed.

Jamie stood in the doorway of her
bedroom and began to cry. For her father. For her mother. For her
brother. And most of all for herself. She had cut her parents out of
her life when Tommy died and she went away. They had mourned their
daughter as surely as she he mourned Tommy. They had created a
shrine. Jamie dropped to the bed and wept hard, bitter tears. She
knew for the first time, really knew, that she had hurt her parents
immeasurably. And why had they put up with that from her? Jamie was
left with the only answer. Because they loved her. With that sure
knowledge, Jamie fell asleep.

The next morning, Jamie showered
and dressed in jeans and a cotton shirt and went back to the
hospital. Her mother was sitting in the chair while her father ate a
breakfast of oatmeal from his hospital tray.

“
I like oatmeal,” her father
said. “But I don’t want to eat it every day.”

Jamie laughed. “I know, Dad.
You won’t have to eat it every day, I promise. We’ll work out a
menu for you that you can tolerate.”

“
Thanks, hon,” he said as he
took another bite of oatmeal.

“
Mom,” Jamie said looking at
her mother. “You should go get some rest and something to eat. I’ll
stay here with Dad.”

“
I think you’re right,” her
mother said. “I feel like my bones are creaky after spending the
night in this chair.”

Her mother kissed her father and
then hugged Jamie. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said.

Jamie spent the day with her
father. They watched daytime shows that neither had ever seen, and
the news. Around noon, her father’s lunch of lean chicken breast,
broccoli, and a roll arrived. Her father ate it, but he wasn’t
happy with it.

“
Jamie,” he said. “I can’t
eat this stuff forever.” She assured her father that he would have
good meals in his future.

Dr. Little came in right after
lunch to talk to her father and to Jamie. He told them that her
father could go home the next day and urged her father to follow a
cardiac diet and take his medications.

“
Anything that’ll get me out
of here, doc,” her father said.

Her mother returned to the
hospital that afternoon and Jamie went back to the house. “There’s
some tuna casserole in the fridge,” her mother said. “It needs to
be eaten.”

Jamie headed for the refrigerator
as soon as she got back to the house. She found the tuna casserole
and put a heaping amount on a plate and microwaved it. It was
steaming when she got it out. She sat down at the kitchen table and
put the first bite in her mouth. So creamy. It was the taste of her
childhood. She was home again. She was loved and protected again.

For the second night in a row,
Jamie went upstairs to her childhood bedroom. She changed into her
gown and sat on the bed to call Nate. He must be worried about her
and she had been out of touch. He answered right away.

“
How’s your father?” he
asked.

“
He’s doing fine,” she
said. “It was a mild event. He’s getting out of the hospital
tomorrow.”

“
That’s a relief,” he said.
Jamie was touched that Nate would be so worried about her father, a
man he had never met and knew nothing about.

“
I’m going to stay here a few
days to make sure he’s okay,” she said.

“
Of course,” Nate said.

“
Have you told them about us?”
he asked.

“
Not yet. I haven’t had a
chance to, everything’s been so busy with the hospital and doctors
and stuff. I’m going to tell them when Dad gets back home and
things are more normal.”

“
That sounds like a good plan,”
Nate said. “I hope I get to meet them soon.”

“
I want you to meet them,”
Jamie said. “You need to meet them because I love them so much.
They’re so important to me.”

“
I’m glad to hear that,” he
said.

“
I haven’t been good to
them,” Jamie said. She started to cry.

“
I don’t believe that,”
Nate said.

Jamie was going to have to tell
Nate about everything. If she was going to marry him, then he
deserved to know the truth of her past. What had happened to Tommy.
How it had changed who she was.

“
When I get back, I’ll tell
you all about it,” Jamie said. “I miss you right now. I love you
so much.”

“
I love you too, Jamie.
Whatever it is you have to tell me, I’ll understand.”

Jamie went back to the hospital
the next morning around ten. Her father was out of the bed and
dressed to go home. Her mother was putting clothes in a plastic bag.

“
You ready to go home, Dad?”
Jamie said.

“
Been ready,” he said.

Jamie could see that her mother
was exhausted from spending two nights in the hospital in an
uncomfortable chair that supposedly made a bed. She would need to
take care of both of her parents when they got back home.

The nurse finally came in with
discharge instructions for her father. An attendant rolled in a
wheelchair, which her father said he didn’t need, but Jamie
convinced him to sit in anyway. She walked to the elevator with her
father while her mother got her car. When they got downstairs at the
back entrance of the hospital, her mother was waiting. The attendant
helped her father into the car.

“
I’ll see y’all back at the
house,” Jamie said.

When the three of them were
standing in the living room for the first time in a dozen years,
Jamie insisted her mother get some rest. She went into the master
bathroom and ran a bubble bath for her mother.

“
I’m going to take care of
you two for a while,” Jamie said. “I’ll get lunch and I’ll
make supper, too. Something Dad will like.”

Her father was sitting in his
recliner watching television when Jamie went back to the living room.
Jamie brought him a glass of iced tea, then checked the refrigerator
for lunch. She was going to have to get her father on a low carb, low
fat diet. He wasn’t going to like it. There wasn’t much to choose
from, but Jamie found whole wheat bread and sliced turkey in the
fridge. She made her father a sandwich and went light on the
mayonnaise. She added lettuce so he would feel like he was crunching
down on something. The cabinets had an array of soups, but they all
had a lot of sodium, which Jamie was trying to avoid. The sandwich
would have to do. She added a dill pickle to the side.

“
Thanks, hon,” her father
said when she sat the plate on a TV tray and pulled it close to him.
He took a bite of the sandwich and didn’t complain. That was a
miracle.

Jamie went to check on her
mother, and found her fast asleep on the bed. She hadn’t even
gotten under the covers. Jamie found a light blanket in an armoire
against the far wall and laid it over her mother.

When her mother got up, Jamie
decided she would go to the grocery store and buy essentials for a
new cardiac patient who had had a wake-up call. She would prepare
their food, and when she left, they would have food in the freezer.
Jamie wanted to be a good daughter now. She had let them down.

Her mother wandered into the
living room while Jamie and her father were watching “Jeopardy.”
Her father was getting all the right answers.

“
I feel so much better,” her
mother said. “Like a new person.”

“
I’m going to the store to
get some groceries,” Jamie said. “You can relax. I’m going to
make supper.”

At the store, Jamie got a whole
chicken, boneless chicken breasts, salmon filets, tuna packed in
water, lentils, whole wheat noodles, more whole wheat bread, two
types of lettuce, and fresh broccoli and cauliflower. She also
grabbed two bottles of red wine and one of white, and a six-pack of
light beer. Her father would want that.

While she was checking out with a
full basket, someone behind her said, “Jamie?”

She turned. The woman’s face
that looked at her was older than the last time she had seen it more
than twelve years earlier. It was a face that had known sorrow, and
it was forever etched on her features.

“
Mrs. Grisham!” Jamie said.
Tommy’s mother. “How are you?”

“
I’m okay,” she said,
hollowly. “How are you doing? I didn’t think you’d ever be back
here again.”

Jamie cringed with remorse again.
She had left her family and Tommy’s, too. They probably needed her
too, somehow, but Jamie had been too wrapped up in her own grief to
recognize that.

“
I live in the mountains now,”
Jamie said. “I’m a doctor.”

“
I heard that,” Tommy’s
mother said.

“
How is the family?” she
asked.

“
Bill and Susan are both in
college, Bill in Nashville and Susan in Knoxville. I have an empty
nest now.”

Why did she say “I” and not
“we”? Jamie was afraid to ask.

“
How is Mr. Grisham?” she
asked.

“
He died last year,” Mrs.
Grisham said. “Heart attack. And so young, too. I’m alone in the
world now.”

“
I’m so sorry,” Jamie said
touching Mrs. Grisham’s arm.

“
I’ve learned that life is
about loss,” she said. That made Jamie so sad.

“
My father died the year after
Tommy,” she continued. “Mama moved into the house with us, but
she didn’t last very long. She missed Daddy.”

“
I’m sorry,” Jamie said
again. She had loved Tommy’s grandparents, and they had loved her,
too.

The checker finished with Jamie’s
purchases, which were bagged up and waiting in a shopping cart. Mrs.
Grisham had already placed her groceries on the belt. It wasn’t
much—frozen dinners and cans of soup, as far as Jamie could tell.
Tommy’s mother only had herself to feed.

“
Come see me,” she said as
Jamie moved away.

“
Okay,” Jamie said. “It was
so good to see you.” She waved before she turned to her basket and
walked out of the grocery store to her car. She thought she might
have to go see Mrs. Grisham, as painful as that visit would be. The
woman had lost all of the spark in her life. She had lost her reason
for living. Jamie could identify with that.

When she got back home, Jamie
broiled the salmon and made steamed broccoli and brown rice. She set
the dining room table with the good china and called her parents to
supper.

“
Is that salmon?” her father
said sitting down in his chair. “I haven’t had that in a long
time.”

“
Yes, it’s salmon,” Jamie
said. “I think you’ll like it. Here’s some lemon you can
squeeze over it.”

Everyone got a lemon wedge from
the china plate and squeezed it over their salmon. They ate without
talking for a few minutes. Jamie felt a little awkward. She hadn’t
sat at that dining table for so long. It had been the place of many
happy memories and meals. Holiday meals and special occasions. Like
the night she and Tommy announced their engagement. It had been at
that table. They had eaten lasagna that night, on the same dishes.
Jamie wondered if the plate she was eating from was the one Tommy had
that night.

“
Honey,” her father said.
“This is delicious. Maybe this diet won’t be so bad after all.”

“
I think you’ll manage,”
Jamie said. “And it’s not like you can never have anything good
again. Just in moderation.”

“
I can do that,” her father
said.

After supper, Jamie loaded the
dishwasher and scrubbed the pans. She was so tired. She had plans for
the next day.

“
You go on to bed, honey,”
her mother said. “You look exhausted.”

“
Okay,” she said. “I am
tired.”

Her mother brushed her hair back
from her face. “I sort of miss your long hair, but I like it
shoulder-length, too. It’s so dark and shiny.”

Jamie hugged her mother. “I got
it from you,” she said before she went to her bedroom. She called
Nate as soon as she shut the door and sat on her bed.

“
My dad’s home from the
hospital,” she told him. “He’s doing very well. I’m trying to
introduce a new way of eating to him.”

“
He’s probably not liking
that too much,” Nate said. “I’ve seen it a lot of times. They
miss the fried foods the most.”