If Only in My Dreams (26 page)

“Getting off at this stop?” he asks as the doors open.

“The next one.”

“Tired of sitting, huh?”

She nods distractedly.

She can’t sit down. Nor can she face forward.

Everything has to be just as it was the first time it happened.

Though of course, certain key elements are missing.

This is a sleek, modern commuter train as opposed to the vintage car in which Clara was riding that day.

And she herself is still wearing jeans, sneakers, and a down jacket: distinctly twenty-first-century clothing.

But maybe none of that is relevant.

Maybe, if she keeps trying to put herself in a 1940s’ frame of mind, just as she was doing on Friday morning, the contemporary trappings won’t matter.

This time, however, she isn’t concentrating on becoming the fictional Violet.

This time, she’s just Clara… willing herself back to 1941, and Jed Landry.

Please, take me back
.

Beyond the window, she notices, the familiar low stone wall has materialized, running alongside the track bed.

Please take me back
.

They’re passing the wooden signpost now.

WELCOME TO GLENHAVEN PARK
.

Please take me back
…

“If you can hear me… you have to come back. I need to talk to you. Please, Clara. Please come back.”

Jed pauses, listening, half expecting a reply.

Not a sound—the room is hushed.

He closes his eyes, willing the impossible.

“Please come back, Clara. If you can hear me… please come back.”

Please take me back.
…

The track is starting to curve; the train slows ever so slightly.

Please take me back
.

Clara closes her eyes to block out the rows of blue-vinyl upholstered seats, the glare of the overhead lights, the wide, modern windows.

Please take me back
.

She focuses every bit of her concentration on 1941.

Please take me back
.

Her body is beginning to tingle as if from an electric current.

Please take me back
.

And… there seems to be a far-off humming in her ears.

Please take me back.
…

“Please come back, Clara.…”

She can’t hear you. This is crazy
.

Yet he can’t seem to make himself stop.

“Please come back.…”

Jed pauses to listen.

Do you honestly think she’s going to answer you?

No, he honestly doesn’t.

So there is no surprise when he can hear only the beating of his own heart… then, at a great distance, the far-off whistle of a train making its approach to the depot.

No other sound. Not even a crackle of interference from the transmitter—if that’s what it is.

Put it away and get back to work now
.

You know you’re not going to hear her voice
.

“Please come back, Clara,” he persists ludicrously, ears trained on the stillness, until he realizes that it is gradually broken by a distant rumbling.

“Please come back, Clara.…”

The train. He looks at his watch. It comes through every day at this time. Nothing unusual about the train…

Unless…

Unless Clara is on it
.

CHAPTER 12

S
tation stop… Glenhaven Park. Glenhaven Park. Please watch your step as you leave,” the conductor calls.

Clara’s eyes snap open.

Conductor?

Yes. The station announcement was just made by a living human, as opposed to a robotic recording.

Through a haze of cigarette smoke—
cigarette smoke!
she marvels with the wonder of George Bailey discovering Zuzu’s petals—she spots a uniformed conductor coming down the aisle.

“Glenhaven Park! Next stop!”

He isn’t the same conductor who just asked her if she was getting off the train.

No, and Clara sees that on either side of the aisle, the seats are occupied by women in sleek hats and red lipstick and shoulder pads, men in baggy suits and fedoras, or military uniforms.…

Literally in the blink of an eye, the seats have become mohair and the lighting fixtures are bare bulbs and the people are smoking and…

And the train is stopping and the door is opening and…

And…

How did this happen?

Clara stands frozen for just another moment, pondering the miracle.

Then she hurtles herself forward, toward the door, down the steps, onto the platform…

A
wooden
platform.

A wooden platform and a wooden depot house, and on the nearest wall someone has drawn a line with an odd little caricature of a man’s eyes peering above it, and the words
KILROY WAS HERE
.

And it isn’t raining—the sky is a study in whitish-purplish-gray above a snowy landscape. It’s cold, much colder than it was in the city, where she stashed her red hat and mittens in the zippered pockets of her down jacket.

It feels different, here. It feels…

Like 1941.

Still, she isn’t sure.…

Not even when she looks toward the hills for the condominium complex and finds only woods—nor when she looks for the supermarket and finds a Victorian mansion.…

Maybe I’m hallucinating, or dreaming, or having an episode, or
…

She walks slowly across the empty platform and down the steps, her rubber-soled sneakers making a thumping, hollow sound on the snow-coated boards.

The familiar stretch of village green and Main Street await.

Even from here, she can see the old-fashioned houses and people and cars.…

But this might not be real
.

It might just be in my head
.

It might just be that I want it so badly that
—

“Clara!”

She whirls around in the direction of the voice…

And there he is.

Jed Landry, running coatless toward the depot, calling her name.

That’s when she knows…

It’s real.

Clara is running—but this time, she isn’t fleeing from Jed.

She’s running toward him.

That, to him, is easily as astounding as having seen her materialize on the platform just now, almost as if he willed her here.

That isn’t the case, of course. He knows that she came to town in the regular way—he witnessed her stepping off the train from down the block just as he was racing toward the station on a ridiculous, glorious whim.

I must look like a crazy fool
.

He can feel people turning to watch him as he sprints past and knows that he’s creating another spectacle for the whole town to gossip about, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if he winds up in Hedda Hopper’s column tomorrow.

All he cares about is Clara.

He wonders, as he covers the last twenty yards between them, what he should do when he gets to her.

It would seem rather silly to stop short, walk up, and shake hands.

Yet it wouldn’t be right, either, to seize her and kiss her as though she’s his long-lost love.…

Would it?

Who knows?

Who cares?

Whatever happens, happens
, he tells himself, racing toward the finish line with a final, elated burst of energy.

In every wishful Clara scenario he’s created these last two days, never did he imagine that she would launch herself fervently into his arms.

Yet that’s exactly what happens when they reach each other.

“Jed, I can’t believe it.” She encircles his neck in an embrace and he can feel her breath warm against his skin.

“What are you doing here?” he asks in wonder, holding her close, not caring who or what she really is. “Did you hear me calling you?”

“Calling me?” she echoes.

“Never mind,” he says quickly, realizing that she either doesn’t know what he’s talking about—or isn’t ready to admit anything about the transmitter. “I just can’t believe you’re really here.”

Her face is buried against his neck just above the collar of his dress shirt, her skin tantalizingly warm against his. “I had to come back.”

“For your bags,” he remembers, pulling up to look at her.

“My bags…?”

“Your suitcase, your pocketbook…”

Your spy transmitter
…

Though now that she’s here, the word
spy
is utterly incongruous.

Clara McCallum, if that’s her real name, may be an enigma, but whatever she’s hiding can’t possibly mean him—or anyone—any harm.

“Oh, my bags… I almost forgot.” She smiles.

That’s when he notices… she looks so different.

Everything about her… her face… her hair… her clothes…

Her lashes, her lips, her skin are startlingly free of cosmetics. She radiates a simple, wholesome beauty, her face framed by a tumble of unfettered waves that beg his fingers.

Gone are the trim, prim suit, the silk stockings, the fashionably high platform sandals. Her figure is obliterated by some kind of quilted, satiny red parka. With it, she wears long, sadly worn, uncuffed dungarees, and thick-soled, chunky white shoes that appear to be made of rubber and leather.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she says softly, and he looks up to see her watching his face. “No, wait… I really don’t know what you’re thinking. But I can imagine.”

He smiles faintly, trying not to look down at her curious clothing again. “I was just…” He trails off, not wanting to insult her.

“Wondering what I’m wearing?” She smiles back, but only with her mouth.

He tries to decipher her strange expression before a gust of wind blows her hair across her face, obliterating it.

“It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing,” he tells her truthfully, watching her duck her head, then toss it.

She’s trying to get the hair out of her eyes
, he realizes,
and she doesn’t want to let go of me to do it
.

He doesn’t want to let go of her, either. He wants to hold her closer—wants more than that.

“It
does
matter what I’m wearing,” she’s protesting. “I look ridiculous.”

“No. You look beautiful.” Giving in to temptation, he reaches down and brushes the stubborn strands away from her face. Her hair is spun silk in his fingers.

“But… I can’t go around looking like this.”

“Yes, you can. All that matters is that you’re here.”

“You know what? That’s all that matters to me right now, too.”

She looks into his eyes, and he gets the sense that she wants to tell him something else.

But instead of saying another word, she stands up on her tiptoes and, incredibly, brushes his lips with her own.

The contact is feathery-swift: angel’s wings. A kiss as gossamer as the soft strands of hair still draped in Jed’s fingers.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“No.” Before she can pull away, Jed’s mouth instinctively claims hers with a hunger he hadn’t known he possessed, a hunger that can’t possibly be sated with one brazen kiss.

Miraculously, Clara doesn’t stop him. Her mouth opens against his and he deepens the kiss, daring to allow his tongue to caress hers for a few tantalizing seconds until he remembers where they are: in the middle of Main Street, in broad daylight.…

Undoubtedly with an audience.

Summoning a supreme tide of willpower, Jed manages to break the kiss. For her sake. He can just imagine what people will say about her.

He opens his eyes reluctantly, uncertain what he’ll find.

One glance at Clara’s face, flushed with the heat of requited passion, and…

To hell with what people think or say.

Nearly consumed by the powerful, primal urge to kiss her again, it’s all he can do to find his voice. He wants to ask her if he’s dreaming. But if this were a dream, they would be alone together, away from prying eyes.

He reluctantly allows the downy strands of her hair to fall away from his grasp at last, fighting the urge to entwine his entire hand in that lustrous mane and kiss her again.

“I can’t believe you’re really here, Clara.”

“I can’t, either.” Again, the flicker of an inscrutable expression in her gaze.

“I honestly didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”