The Five Times I Met Myself (38 page)
T
en minutes later Brock was on his way toward Seattle’s Lake Union. In another thirty he merged onto Western, which would put him at Beth’s in five minutes—if she truly lived there and wasn’t just a creation he’d concocted inside his dreams. He held little hope she was anything more than that, but he had to be sure. Yeah, he could’ve Googled her to see if she existed, but he needed to stand on her doorstep before he let his sliver of hope go.
A few minutes later, he pulled into the tiny parking spot in front of the houseboat he knew as Beth’s. He reached into the backseat for the paper bag full of Black Fedora coffee.
As he approached the dark-red houseboat, a puff of wind made the wind chimes hanging from Beth’s roof sing as if announcing his arrival. Brock knocked on Beth’s door and whispered to himself, “If she lives here, this is going to be really weird.”
A moment later, Beth’s door swung wide. It was her. She stood before him in a flowing red-and-white kimono, her dirty blonde hair a mess, her smile drawing him in like a magnet.
“Can I help you?”
“Hi.” Any semblance of an appropriate introduction vanished, and Brock stood with his mouth cracked open.
“You are?” Beth squinted at him.
Brock suppressed an urge to hug her, and a quick laugh puffed out of his mouth. “Sorry. My name is Brock Matthews.”
“Wonderful.” Beth’s smile dropped a few notches. “And?”
“I’m sorry to drop in on you unannounced.” He shifted his weight as her face turned into a frown. “I should try to explain—”
“It’s not that.” Beth waved her hand. “I feel almost like . . . do we know each other? We’ve met before this, yes?”
Brock glanced at the house next door, the one he’d owned in his dreams, and debated what to say. No. Not time for crazy yet. “I don’t think so.”
“No, I guess not. I just had the strangest sensation though.” She shook her head and beckoned him across the threshold. “But come in. Come in and tell me why you’re here. And you simply gotta tell me what you have in that big paper bag, ’cause I’m the curious sort and you wouldn’t have brought that bag unless you meant to show me what’s inside.”
Brock smiled. This might turn out okay.
Beth led him to her living room, and Brock set the bag next to his feet and pulled out ten different flavors of Black Fedora coffee. As he handed each of them to Beth, her eyes widened.
“Are you serious?” Beth rubbed her hands together almost fast enough to start a fire. “I absolutely love Black Fedora coffee.”
“I thought you might.” Brock clasped his hands together and leaned forward. Might as well dive in. “Do you believe in fate?”
“Depends.”
“I think we’re fated to be friends, Elizabeth.”
She stared at him and a shard of . . . what? Brock couldn’t tell
what flashed into Beth’s eyes. A shrouded memory? Recognition? It left too quickly, replaced by that megawatt smile.
“No.” Beth protested with both hands. “You can’t call me Elizabeth. Or Lizzie. Or Liza. The only thing that will work for you is Beth.” The smile again. “Okay?”
“Okay.” Brock let a grin take over his face. “Beth it is.”
“Now, why don’t you explain who you are and why you’re really here. And explain how you knew my name before I gave it to you if we’ve never met.” She winked.
“That is a story indeed.”
“I love stories.”
“Fiction or nonfiction?”
“Oh boy, wind up the toys.” Beth laughed. “This is going to be a good one.”
Brock glanced through Beth’s windows at two kayakers paddling past, then leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Let me just preface this by saying I’m not crazy, and—”
“Wait a minute, grab the horses, give a yank backward.” Beth mimicked pulling back on invisible reins, then picked up a bag of the coffee Brock had just given her. “I know where I know you! You’re one of the owners of Black Fedora, right? You’re the guy who shows up in the TV ads from time to time.” She grinned and clapped her hands together over her head. “I gotta celeb in my house. This is so sweet.”
“Me? No, no, no.” Brock waved his hands. “You’re the celebrity, not me.”
“Because I write a few columns every now and then that people maybe enjoy? Hardly.” She laughed and it filled the room. “What a wonderful surprise. Someday I should write about your phenomenal coffee.”
“That would be incredibly generous.”
“Just a chance to tell the truth.” Beth winked. “Good to find out there’s a decent man behind the beans.”
Silence settled on the room as if Beth was giving Brock an opening to say why he’d come. He took a slow breath in, let it out slower, then dove in.
“This is going to sound a little nuts, Beth.” Brock rubbed his hands together. “A lot nuts.”
“Oooo, yes. Wonderful. I love outlandish tales.”
“This is so far past outlandish there’s no map.”
“Oh my, now you really have my attention.” She leaned forward and winked again. “What? Did we know each other in another life?” She laughed.
Again, Brock hesitated for a moment before diving into the deep end. “Yes. That’s exactly right.”
When he finished telling his story of the month, and what she had meant to him, Beth’s expression flitted back and forth from one that said Brock was certifiable and she was about to leap for the phone and dial 911, to one that said she would choose to believe every word.
“Just so I’m clear. We’re not on camera. This isn’t going up on the Internet or anything like that, right?”
“No.”
“Well then.” Beth clapped her hands together and shifted on her couch.
“Still interested in being friends?”
“I have plenty of friends who are crazy, so you’ll fit right in.” She raised a flat palm over her head. “But I will say you are now the Mt. Everest of my loony pals. So I might need to call you Sir Edmund.”
“Hillary?”
“Precisely. You say I was your great counselor, your own personal Yoda.”
“But much more beautiful.” Brock nodded. “You changed my life.”
Silence filled the room again.
“So what do you do now with the fact nothing in your life has changed?” She leaned forward as her face grew as serious as he’d ever seen. “The fact you’re stuck with all the same problems you had when your dreams began? The fact that what happened to you was only in your head?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. Where to go from here. Show me how to figure this out.”
“What about talking to this doctor friend of yours?”
“A good man, but he’s more about the head, and right now I need someone who is more about the heart. And nowhere more than when it comes to Karissa. I need someone with heart to show me how to win her back. Life without her . . .” Brock pulled in a breath and held it for a time before releasing the air.
“I can’t show you anything, Brock.” Beth leaned back on her couch. “All I can do is guide you toward what you already know. Then pray your eyes will open wide enough to see what you already know to be true.”
“Then what do I already know?”
“You’re much wiser than this.” She shook her head and gave a thin smile.
He asked again, fervor growing in his voice. “What do I already know?”
Brock waited for her to answer, but she stared at him, the slight smile still on her face, and he thought she wouldn’t respond no matter how long he waited. But finally she did.
“Let me ask you once more, Brock, my precious new friend.” Beth tapped her forefingers together. “How do you deal with the fact none of what happened to you was real?”
“It was real.” Brock blinked as the realization swept over him.
“Yes. I think it was.”
“It doesn’t matter that it didn’t happen in the physical world.”
“No, it does not.”
“It doesn’t matter because I’m not the same man.”
“No, I don’t believe you are.”
Brock stood and a smile grew on his face that turned into laughter. “I shouldn’t feel this way.”
“Why?”
“Because nothing has changed.”
“And yet everything has changed.” Beth’s smile matched his own. “Now go after her.”
Brock tried Karissa three times before reaching the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, and three times the call went to voice mail. No matter. He’d be at his sister-in-law’s house in fifteen minutes. Plenty of time to make two phone calls at the top of his priority list. Brock prayed and dialed the first number.
“Hello?”
“Ron, it’s Brock.”
“Yeah, I figured that one out.”
“How are you?”
“Peachy. You?”
“I’ve never been better in my entire life.” He glanced at the sailboats harnessing the wind on Lake Washington.
“Really.” Ron’s voice was flat, but he followed up with the requisite question. “Why’s that?”
“I want to tell you all about it, but on one condition.”
“Okay.”
“We do it tomorrow morning on the golf course.”
Ron went silent for a solid five seconds. His voice was a millimeter warmer when he spoke again. “You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“What are you doing, Brock?” Ron’s sigh filled Brock’s phone. “Your plan to go back and talk to your younger self and fix things didn’t work? So you’re going to try to soften me up to give you more time before I sign?”
“No. No agenda. Just two brothers out on the course together. No company talk. I promise.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” Brook reached the end of the bridge and crossed into Bellevue.
Ron went quiet for so long Brock almost broke the silence. But then Ron spoke.
“You found something, didn’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter. Truly.”
“Did you?”
“Yes,” Brock said.
“You know who hacked into our accounts.”
“There’s someone probably worth checking into.”
Again silence from his brother.
“All right,” Ron finally said. Then so softly Brock wasn’t sure his brother spoke the words. “Eighteen together. That’d be okay.”
“And, bro?”
“What?”
Brock nodded to himself before speaking. He needed to say this. “Do you remember our favorite toy from when we were kids?”
Ron didn’t answer for a good ten seconds. When he did, his voice was half its normal volume. “Captain Action, right?”
“Yeah.”
Again, a long pause before Ron spoke. “What about it?”
“We need to talk about the Code. I need to ask you to forgive me. And I need to tell you a story that will blow your mind.”
As he hung up, Brock glanced at his watch. Twelve minutes till he would stand in front of Karissa and give his confession. Plenty of time to make one more very important call.
B
rock dialed Sheila’s number and prayed she’d pick up. What he wanted to say wasn’t the kind of thing to leave in a message.
Three rings and no answer.
C’mon.
She picked up on the fourth. Relief. And nerves. But this was right.
“Hello?”
“Sheila? It’s Brock.” He hesitated then added, “Matthews.”
She laughed. “I don’t need the last name. I don’t even need the first.”
“How are you?”
She was silent for a few seconds. “Before you say anything, I have to apologize. I never should have sent that e-mail. I’m so sorry, it’s just that—”
“I found the note.”
“What?”
“The note,” Brock said. “The one you probably wondered if I’d ever find. I went into my attic the other day and found the lion and unicorn drawing. For some reason I turned it over and discovered what you wrote under the paper on the back.”
“Oh wow.”
“Yeah.”
He listened to the hum of the phone as he struggled to get his next words right. “Sheila? You’ll always have a piece of my heart.” He paused. “That’s a good thing. A wonderful thing. We were great together and brought each other so much joy. That will never be taken away. And that’s not just a good thing, but a very good thing.”
A nervous laugh came through the phone.
“You okay?” Brock said.
“More than okay.” Through the phone he heard her draw a deep breath. “I needed to hear that. Really needed to. Thank you.”
“Good-bye, Sheila.”
“I’ll miss you, Brock.”
“Me too.”
Two minutes later, Brock pulled into his sister-in-law’s driveway and for a few moments watched her neighbor prune her trees. He needed to do the same for his yard. Maybe in a few days. He had a plan for tomorrow. If a miracle happened and Karissa would agree to go along with it.
Karissa’s sister turned when he opened his car door. “Hey, Brock.”
“Is she here?”
“She’s out back. Come on in.”
“Thanks.” Brock hesitated.
Karissa’s sister cocked her head. “You okay?”
“No. But that’s exactly why I’m here.”
Brock shot up a silent prayer as he moved through the house to the sliding glass door at the back. He hesitated for a moment, then slid it open and stepped onto the patio. Karissa sat cross-legged in
a lawn chair gazing straight ahead. If she’d heard him, she didn’t give any indication.
“Karissa?”
She didn’t answer.
He eased over to Karissa and sat in the chair beside her.
“Hey.”
Again, no answer.
He gazed at her profile, more in love than he’d ever been. “I never saw you. Not like I should have. But I see you now.”