A Way (The Voyagers Book 1) (23 page)

She sounded older than her eight years. Dex knew it was the right choice to keep his promise.

“Then it’s set.  Let’s go.”  Dex picked up two journals and slipped them into the pocket of a leather coat.

Anxious to start their journey, Sammy was the first to leave the room, followed by Gerald.  Standing on the porch, before pulling the door shut, Dex glanced down the hallway and up the stairs of the cottage, one final time.  He pictured Jessie skipping down the steps towards him, a wide smile reaching her bright eyes, and a hole in her sock.  He locked the door.

PART 4

JESSIE & DEX

PRESENT DAY

CHAPTER 47

The flames licked the air, diminishing the chill that settled in the air and took shelter in her heart.  Jessie listened to their story and watched the images dance in the fire, as if she was sitting in the audience of a live play.  She saw the school house, smelled the scent of freshly extinguished kerosene lamps, tasted the whipped cream from a fresh chocolate pie, and felt the cold of the snow storm.  She believed them, because she remembered.  The blanks were slowly filled in when she recalled the summer Madison days. She was able to inject her own recollections into their tales, without knowing what part of her memory she was retrieving them from. Jessie saw images appear, like a black light shining on the shadows of her mind.

Her thoughts returned to the present, to the island in the middle of the lake.  Sitting beside the campfire, Dex was holding her hand, his fingers laced through hers; missing puzzle pieces, locked into place.  She knew they were waiting for her to speak, but she needed the words, that were blowing across her brain like a cyclone, to quiet.  Jessie squeezed her eyes shut and willed the thoughts to float softly to the base of her skull, into her throat, across her heart and land like soft feathers in her stomach.  She looked at Sammy, the green eyes of her sister glistening in the fading light of the fire.

“Sammy….” she managed to say before her voice cracked. 
How could I have forgotten my little sister?
Jessie saw her spinning in a cartwheel across the lawn and calling for Jessie to join her. The images were as clear as if Sammy had gotten up and performed in front of her seconds earlier.  Happy memories were pushed away by the darkness of the day Jessie left; every moment they shared, came to a screeching halt. The other half of the film was still waiting to be played.

Sammy grabbed for Jessie’s free hand.  “Do you believe us, Jessie?  I know what it sounds like, and there is still so much to explain, but you do remember.  You know who we are?” Her eyes sparkled with hope. 

All Jessie could do was nod her head; she remembered them, but her voice had abandoned her during the process. She swallowed the lump in her throat, which was preventing any words from escaping. 

“I believe you; I remember.  I don’t know how, but I remember everything.  The memories are even clearer than things I did yesterday,” said Jessie, her smile starting to twitch. 

“To be fair, you were drinking yesterday, so that isn’t much of a comparison,” Dex said, trying to bring her smile back, to the brightness he loved.  It worked and the laugh he had missed for so long, tickled his ears. 

“What’s the last thing you remember?  About us?”  Dex urged.  He needed to know what the extent of the damage their might be, from so many years of repressed memory. 

“Where do I start?” She laughed, more from nervousness, than relief.  “I remember the day we went to the lake, Sammy and I, hoping that you and Gerald would be there.”  She knew his name was Gerald now; she wondered where he was.  Had they lost each other, like Dex feared they would?  “I was disappointed.  I was sure there was more to what was going on, than just a chance meeting at the diner.  I didn’t tell Sammy, but she kept asking me strange questions, and kept calling you, Dex.”

Sammy was next to laugh, the final release of tension.  “It was driving me crazy that you couldn’t remember who Dex was, then Jed showed up, and I knew I was too late.”  Sadness clouded her expression, but was instantly replaced by unimaginable happiness.  She reminded Jessie of a kid on Christmas morning, another flashback jumping out of the fog.

“I remember the diner,” Jessie continued, “but mostly I remember the time from the other realm: the walks to school, swimming, our tree, sledding.”  An abundance of memories attacked her awakened mind.  She couldn’t get the words out fast enough. 

There were so many questions, how could she pick one, without the rest rushing out? The parents she knew, were not the people that just bobbed to the surface of her remembrance.  What had happened to them, the parents that Dex called her protectors?  Was it really the tea that made her memory so hazy and disjointed?  When they told her about the tea, a taste had overwhelmed her taste buds; phantom flavor stuck to the roof of her mouth, even after taking a swig out of the cup that was still clasped between her knees.  Something was too familiar, but Jessie swept it to the back of her mind, deciding that first, there was a more pressing issue to address.

She released Sammy’s hand and twisted in her chair to face Dex.  The familiarity that gripped her body, when her eyes locked with his, spread a warmness through her that had nothing to do with the freshly stoked fire.  The light it was throwing played with the blond flecks in his hair and set off fireworks deep in his eyes.  In them, Jessie could see their past and the future that was taken from them.  She twisted her necklace around her trembling fingers, understanding, finally the comforting feeling it held for her.  They were back in the barn, Dex’s arms were around her and she was happy, but she saw something else.  There was an unhappiness that seeped from him, that was now apparent to her.  How could she have not seen it?  She had let them both down. 

“I’m so sorry; I should have known.  That night in the barn, I knew something was wrong, I wish I had convinced you to tell me what it was.  I never would’ve let you leave, without me.”  The tears were back, she tasted the salt on her tongue when she ran it over her trembling lips.  Dex reached across and brushed them gently away.

“Nothing you could’ve done, would have convinced me to tell you, what I chose to do.  I could hardly believe it myself.  Promises were made, that I learned later, were completely untrue.  None of this is your fault.  It’s mine, the protectors, the voyagers that worked against us, but not yours.”  He lifted her hand and brushed his lips against the back of it, sending shivers up her arm to prickle the back of her neck.

The image of Jessie’s past parents flashed in front of her.  The elation Dex’s touch brought was substituted by bitterness, fear and sadness.   

“What happened to Mary and Jed? How did you get me away from them?” she asked.  Jessie saw Dex’s eyes move slightly to Sammy’s, then they returned to hers.  Peter, or Adam, coughed uncomfortably from across the fire.

“I did that.  I got you away,” Peter replied.  Jessie sensed the guilt in his voice. She missed him too; the memories of him were not foremost in her mind, but that didn’t make them any less meaningful. “Sammy and I led them into other realms, after we promised that we would give up trying to reunite the five, and then….”  

“And then, we left,” Sammy finished.  “They lied to us.  It wasn’t hard to mislead them; they underestimated me, they always did.”

“They’re still out there?” Jessie asked, keeping the fear that was brewing, in a secured space.  There were too many emotions overwhelming her that the fear couldn’t find its way in, unless she let it.

Dex nodded.  “They are, but we have voyagers watching them and they will alert us if they decided to enter this realm.  You have nothing to worry about, I promise.”  He hated those words.  They had been spoken to him so many times, then smashed into pieces, like a glass figurine. 

Sitting silently, watching Jessie across the flames, Adam found his voice. “You don’t know that, Dex.  I’ve been on board with this plan since I met you, but we’ve wasted too much time.  Jessie should’ve been told weeks ago, as soon you saw Rebecca.”  Dex put his hand up to stop his friend, but Adam had already said too much. 

“We said we would tell her everything, Dex,” Peter insisted.  A log snapped loudly in the fire: an ominous sign.  The noise startled Jessie.  She wished they were inside, behind a locked door; she felt too exposed. 

“What about, Rebecca? Where is she?” Jessie’s heart pounded in her ears and visions of Rebecca’s poisonous smile brightened behind her eyes, squeezed shut, bracing for the answer.  Jessie would kick herself later for letting Rebecca insinuate herself: into her life, her past life.  Certainly, she couldn’t have been so naïve again.

“Rebecca is here, in this realm,” Dex answered, and looked at Sammy.

“She’s close, Jessie.  That’s why we needed to get you here, this weekend,” Sammy said.

“You mean, she’s in the city? Do I know her?”  Jessie kept the panic from her voice, but Dex felt it surge through her hand and into his own.  She conjured up the faces she encountered at school, the coffee shop, Central.  None of them matched the pinched face and bitter eyes of Rebecca: those eyes!  Allison!  She choked on the bile that crept up her throat.  Like a tidal wave, the fear was unleashed.

CHAPTER 48

Her revelation was validated by Dex, her friend wasn’t really her friend.  Allison was in her life to keep Jessie in the constant state of limbo, her soul had been forced into, for her entire existence.  Quietly, Sammy and Peter left the fireside and disappeared into the cottage.  Shortly after, Adam said good night to Dex and Jessie, the dampness of the deep night claiming another causality. Jessie couldn’t feel anything, her teeth chattering so hard she thought they might snap off at their roots.  She couldn’t speak.  Their story and its images rotated on a carousal, through her mind.  Dex kept a tight grip on her hand; he would never let go of it again.

She knew the conversation would resume in the morning, after, she hoped, she decrypted most of what she had been told. As the fire faded and the early morning hours started to reveal themselves, Jessie was faintly aware of Dex lifting her from the chair.  In a trance she trailed behind him, into the cottage.  She hadn’t spoken in an hour, preferring to sit with him, in silence, and let the enormity of their situation sink in.  Jessie wished for a notebook, to record her thoughts, giving her the ability to read the words as a story; not her reality.  She was grateful to be reunited with the people she was sure of: Dex, Sammy, Peter and Gerald, the five.  Halfway up the stairs, she snapped to a halt.

“Gerald!  Where’s Gerald?”

Jessie was wide awake, but when she spun around, mid-step, to look at Dex, she could tell he was about to fall over, with exhaustion.  She just learned her whole life was a trick, but the toll of trying to fix it was carved into his face.  Jessie pushed his hair back from his forehead and placed her palm on his flushed cheek.

“It can wait.  You need to sleep.”

He turned his head and kissed the inside of her hand.  She stepped down one stair, so they were face to face.  Their breaths intermingled and the walls around them blurred.  They were standing in an empty space, where only they existed.  Jessie kissed Dex, like she did that day on the steps of the store, with a sureness, that they would always be each other’s and that he would always find her.  Even if she had one thousand years, to describe the feeling that gripped her in that moment, she would never be able to.  She pushed herself deeper into his arms, too far off the step, and Dex moved swiftly to stop them both, from tumbling backwards, down the stairs. 

“Jessie,” he lightly, chided, “I just found you, please don’t kill us both.”

Her face was glowing from the kiss, and its abrupt ending, caused by her clumsiness. “I really need to work on that,” she giggled.   When the laughter came out louder than intended, she clamped her hand over her mouth.

They climbed the remaining stairs, hand in hand, and tip toed through the sleeping cottage, that only hours before, had been so full of noise.  Jessie looked at her surroundings with new eyes.  She was right where she was supposed to be.  The sister she never knew, but always felt was there, was in the next room.  The missing piece of her heart, the one she thought she would never find, was beside her, holding her hand.  Jessie flicked on the light in the bedroom and saw it instantly, knowing for sure, it hadn’t been there earlier.

Dex followed her eyes and spotted the notebook, with a pen teetering on top, sitting on the bedroom table.  “Sammy,” he sighed.

Reluctantly, Jessie released Dex’s hand and picked up the book.  Sitting cross-legged on the bed, she leafed through the blank pages, popped the lid off the pen and started to scribble, furiously.  Dex sat across from her and brought his fingers up to her chin, gently tilting her head away from her new project, and up to his eyes. 

“Jessie, you need to sleep.  We can pick up where we left off tomorrow.”  She blinked at him, like she had forgotten he was there.  He recognized the determination in her eyes; she would be up for days. 

“But, if I don’t write down all the things I’m thinking or all the questions I need answered, I might forget.”  Jessie twisted her head away and pushed him back, gently.  She lifted her knees up to block him and protect her note taking hand. 

“You won’t forget.”  Dex scolded himself, inwardly, the second the words left his lips.

“I won’t forget!”  She laughed at the absurdity.  “I’ve forgotten everything!  I didn’t know you yesterday. I was talking to you, I touched you and you were nothing more than a stranger I met on the street. I didn’t remember I had a sister or another brother.  What if I go to sleep, wake up and don’t remember, again? If I write it down….”  She bit her lip, her damp eyelashes holding back another wave of tears.

“You won’t, Jessie.  This isn’t a dream.  It isn’t going to fade away.”  He moved his hand from her face, to the book that she was gripping like a life preserver.  She allowed him to remove it, folded her arms across her knees, and sunk her head into their cradle.

“You said you would always find me,” her voice was muffled against her knees.

Dex placed his hand on her soft hair and watched it cascade through his fingers.  They stayed like that for a long time, listening to each other’s heartbeats, as they slowed to a relaxing pace.  Dex felt himself being hypnotized by the steady beat and laid on the bed, pulling Jessie down with him.  She lifted her heavy eyelids, smiled his smile and tucked her head under his chin, like she had never left. For the first time, in a long time, Jessie didn’t dream.  The discarded book slipped off the bed, landing on the floor, with a thud.  When they woke up the next morning, it was gone.