Remembered (Erotic Romance) (Bound By Time) (4 page)

Next to me in the
photo postcard was Mac. As I gave it a closer look, it appeared as though the
photo had been taken years ago and the angle suggested that Mac took the
picture himself from an arm's length away.

Mac was younger
than he was now by at least a decade or two. I've never seen him in person, yet
I was certain it was Mac. I was also positive the female in the photo was me. Or
my Doppelganger.

It didn't seem like
something Mac would do, but maybe he'd had a trick photo created to get a
chuckle out of me.  Still, wouldn't he have put us together at our current
ages?

About the only
thing I was sure of was the scenery behind the couple on the postcard. It looked
like the countryside near Conwy. I'd done enough research on the area after I
first talked to Mac, that I was reasonably sure it was the Conwy Suspension
Bridge in the distant background.

That in itself was
strange, as he'd already sent me postcards of all the great and unique bridges
in Wales, including the Conwy Suspension Bridge. There had to be something I
was missing. But what?

Unable to glean
anything else from the front of the photo, I turned it over. When I did, I was
confounded even further.

It read:

           
Remember.

            love,
Mac

Mac was a wordsmith,
though he wasn't a man who used words for filler. He said what he needed to
say. No more, no less. Still, the abruptness of his message, front and back of
the card, was a bit alarming. Maybe Mac's son was getting to him, and he was
beginning to unravel from the stress.

I analyzed the
words. First off, I knew Mac wrote it because of the small letter in the word
love
.
He must have sensed my American reserve when we initially began corresponding.
He'd write
love, Mac,
in closing, but I wouldn't respond in kind because
it would have felt a bit like I was leading him on if I used the word
love,
too. So I had just signed off with
Penny.

After a half dozen
missives, he assured me that using the word love with a small letter l was a general
way to say farewell. He assured me that he wasn't flirting with me, so I
started doing the same as we became better acquainted.

However, not long
after I began finishing my notes to him with
love, Penny
, I began to
feel like I should capitalize the l. The bond between us was much stronger than
boss and employee. Even stronger than lifelong friends.

But then I wondered
if I did use the word Love, would he rebuff
me
? Maybe Mac's charming
words to me were just that -- charming words. If his feelings for me weren't
growing as mine were for him, I'd be devastated.

I didn't care about
losing work. I just didn't want to lose a friend I was beginning to feel more
than comfortable with, despite the thousands of miles that separated us.

Because the message
was so brief, I picked up the envelope to look for more clues, not that I
expected any. Then I found a light pencil inscription beneath the stamp that
said very succinctly:

           
Beneath
Stamp

The words
"Beneath Stamp" were written directly under the stamp he'd used to
post the letter/postcard to me. Was he trying to be clever?

I opened the
envelope and looked inside. Behind the stamp, I saw the faint stain of ink that
had bled through. It looked as though he had written something behind the
stamp!

Placing the
envelope on my desk, I turned on my lamp, leaned in, and carefully used my
fingernail to begin peeling the stamp off the envelope. The envelope itself had
the familiar "BY AIR MAIL par avion Royal Mail" stamped on it, but
this particular piece of post had a Jubilee stamp on it that I told him I
thought was really cool.

I smiled at his
thoughtfulness and began carefully removing the stamp. First off, I'm not a
stamp collector. At least not a true stamp collector. I only hang on to those
that remind me of something that interests me. Like wolfhounds, or the Jubilee,
or the Olympics, or pretty flora or fauna from a distant land.  I'd be
irritated if one of my favorite stamps disappeared. Not devastated.

Even so, I was quite
happy to see the Jubilee stamp. Following Mac's instructions to remove the
stamp along its bottom edge, it came up much easier than I thought it would.

I was so pleased
that he'd gone out of his way to send me the Jubilee stamp, that I temporarily
forgot about the odd postcard ... until I got the stamp all the way off and saw
his tiny little message in impossibly small spidery handwriting. It read:

            Contents
of next envelope will reunite.

Jeez, Louise!  A cryptic
message could be mysterious and even sexy. Mac's cryptic message, however, was
frustrating and confusing.

About the only
thing I did know for sure what that he was most likely sending another
envelope. He probably sent two so I'd have another version of the Jubilee
stamp.

That made me smile,
so I gave the postcard and the woman that looked just like me and a man that
looked just like Mac, except way younger, another good look, then put everything
back in the envelope.

A sudden flash -- so
vivid it was almost like a memory -- of the river near Conwy, hit me like a
freight train. I saw the trees, the tall rods of flowers, and a young Mac
looking at me with a teasing smile.

I shook my head and
grinned to myself at my odd flight of fancy, though I did decide
 
then and there, to take on extra writing in order to
pay for a ticket to Wales.

There was nothing
more in this world that I wanted at this point in time than to see Mac in
person.

Pieces of a Puzzle

Two 2,000 word articles later,
I made myself a sandwich and did a load of laundry. Just another day, right? It
would have been, except for a blouse I just bought at a discount boutique. It
was new and I had room in the washer, so I thought I'd wash it.

But when I pulled
the blouse out of the delicates bag, I was shocked to see that it had a V of fabric
torn out of it. Like it had gotten hooked on something. The bag was intact, so
how on earth could the shirt have gotten torn?

I went through the
rest of the load of laundry looking for any more laundry mishaps, but everything
else was in one piece. Odd. Odder still:  Where did the V of material go? It
was about 4 inches long and two inches long at the base, tapering to a quarter
inch at the top, yet it was nowhere to be found.

I tossed everything
in the dryer on the delicate cycle and tidied up a bit.  I wasn't sure what I
was going to do with the torn blouse in the condition it was in, but I wasn't
about to toss it. Frugal was my middle name.  

Once I finished all
the writing I planned to do for the day, I decided on a walk to clear my head. There
were lots of old Native American trails in the area that were beyond beautiful.
To top it off, they were safe and provided the natural solitude I had come to
enjoy since moving out West.

On the way to my
bathroom to take a shower, I stopped near my desk. The sight of Mac's postcard,
propped up against the base of my lamp, caught my attention. When I was
writing, I'd almost put it out of my mind. But now something compelled me to take
a closer look.

The pair still
looked eerily like me and Mac when he was 30 years old. If Mac was trying to
make some sort of statement, I still wasn't sure what it was.

I sighed. All I
knew was that Mac was a handsome man at any age, a man any woman would be proud
to know. At the thought, I felt warmth spread throughout my body as I
remembered my "encounter" with him on the chaise.

I looked at the
word
Remember
that he'd written on the postcard.

No chance of
forgetting last night, I thought with grin.

A sudden bolt of
heat lightning streaked across the sky outside my house. Any other time of year
it would have been strange, but it was summer, and a pretty ordinary
occurrence. I guessed I wouldn't be taking a walk after all. The sound of a thunderclap
followed a couple of seconds later.

Another horizontal
bolt of lightning split up and shot across the sky like a ball of fireworks.
I'd never seen a bolt of lightning do anything so strange. A chill ran down my
spine.  

This time no sound
of thunder followed the lightshow. The sky went calm. Deciding against a walk,
I impulsively kissed Mac's face on the postcard and replaced it against the
base of the lamp.

Sleep was a long
time coming that night. And when I did finally dream, I spent all night trying
to reach Mac's hand from across the ocean.

Present Perfect

The mail came as I
was on my way out the door to drive to a trail outside of town. As I passed the
mailbox, I grabbed the several envelopes inside it, tossed them on the seat of
my car and headed away from Sioux Falls.

Located on the northwest
side of town, the trail was a winding, sandy path carved into a rocky hillside.
I wore a tank top underneath the shirt that had a tear in it. I figured the
blouse, even though it was ripped, was good enough for hiking.  No one but me
would probably see it anyway. And if someone did, they would assume I'd torn it
on the trail.

Once I parked my
car, I shoved the envelopes inside my backpack. I'd go through my mail when I
stopped for a rest, midway up the hill.

When I say rest, I
actually mean taking a moment to take in the beauty of the area. While I rarely
needed to catch my breath -- I was in good physical shape -- I did like to
listen to the sounds of nature and try to locate the source.

I wasn't a tree
hugger, but I truly was happiest when I was in the open air, smelling, seeing,
and hearing nature.

When I reached the
summit of trail, with an incredible panoramic view, I hydrated with a bottle of
water I'd brought along, then pulled out the three envelopes I'd received in
the mail.

One was an electric
bill, one was actually a flyer for a dollar store, and the final envelope was
an odd-shaped plain envelope with the familiar blue air mail logo on it. Oddly,
this envelope didn't bear a fancy Jubilee stamp.  It had only one ordinary
"queen" stamp on it.

Even so, my heart
skipped a beat because I knew it was from Mac. And this envelope, though light,
felt like it had another envelope inside.

 After I opened the
outer envelope, I carefully opened the taped flap of the inside envelope.
Whatever was inside, Mac wasn't taking any chances of it falling out.

Inside was small
clear sandwich bag with something folded inside.

I nearly dropped it
when I realized that the "something" was a piece of cloth that looked
nearly identical to the material of the blouse I was wearing.

My fingers started
shaking so hard I could barely hold the envelope. If I hadn't been leaning against
a boulder, I was certain I would have collapsed.

I looked more
closely at the cloth. It still looked like it was the same material as my torn
shirt, but the material Mac sent looked aged somehow. Almost faded.  

It didn't make
sense. Why would Mac send me such a thing?

Weirder still was
my reaction. I was almost afraid to touch the bit of cloth with my fingers, so
I handled the bag instead, looking at it from every angle, but never making
contact with the material.

My heart
constricted painfully. What was going on? Had Mac hired someone to watch me?
Even if someone had seen me purchase the blouse, there wouldn't have been time
to send a piece of it to Wales and back again in the time since I'd brought it
home.

I licked my lips
and nervously looked all around me.  Though I hadn't passed any hikers on the
way up, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

I forced myself to
take a deep breath and calm down. Here I was, my imagination beginning to get
the better of me -- and I dealt with only facts for most of my waking hours.

Must be the Native
American spirits that watched over the area, I reasoned, and managed a shaky
chuckle.

Feeling a little
silly about my overactive imagination, I peeled back the stamp to see if there
was another cryptic message behind it, but there was none. No message of any
kind anywhere. There was only my name and address and Mac's name and return
address.

I'm guessing the
cloth had to have some meaning to Mac, but for the life of me I couldn't figure
out what it could be. Because it was so odd, I wondered once again if Mac was
beginning to crack under the pressure of what his son was putting him through.

"What are you
trying to tell me, Mac?" I asked out loud.

Of course there was
no answer.  I'd have to wait until I got home to either send him an email or
call him. To soften things, I'd just tell him I wasn't clever enough to figure
out his mysterious envelopes.

Mac would chuckle
and there'd be no hard feelings. The mystery would be solved.