If Only in My Dreams (34 page)

Clara savors the small-town atmosphere as she weaves her way along the snow-scraped sidewalk, marveling that she feels almost at home here after just a few days.

If only…

Stop that!

No use in
if-onlies;
she can’t stay here under any circumstances.

In fact, if today proves that Jed is doomed regardless of her intervention in the past, she should leave right away, before she falls even more deeply in…

Stop that!
she scolds herself again.

You don’t love Jed. You can’t possibly love someone after only a few days together
.…

Or can you?

It feels like love.

But even if what she feels for Jed is authentic, what does it matter?

It can’t last,
Clara reminds herself as she turns down Oak Street.

The long block is lined by two-story Victorian homes with tall old trees overshadowing small front yards. At the end, she can see the looming three-story brick rectangle that is Glenhaven Park Hospital.

But she isn’t going that far; the house she seeks turns up in the middle of the block. The black 59 above the metal mailbox matches the address scribbled on a slip of paper in her pocket. She found it last night when, under the pretext of visiting the powder room during supper, she snuck a peek at the Landrys’
Glenhaven Park Telephone Directory
.

The festive evergreen wreath on the front door seems incongruous with the missing shutters, peeling paint, and
straggly shrubs. The front walk could stand to be shoveled, as could the wooden steps that creak under Clara’s weight as she ascends to the porch. Somebody must have made a haphazard attempt to clear a narrow path at one point, but fresh snow has since fallen and hardened to a bulky crust.

As Clara rings the bell, she again rehearses what she’s going to say.

Her carefully prepared speech might very well be met with suspicion. It certainly would be in her own day and age.

But she’s noticed that things are different in 1941. People are more trusting of strangers.…

Unless they think the stranger might be involved in espionage, she thinks ruefully, remembering Jed’s initial assumption about her.

The door opens, and an elderly woman looks out in confusion and surprise.

“Yes? May I help you?”

“Hello, my name is Clara McCallum. I’m new in town, staying with the Landry family over on Chestnut Street. I’m going door to door to see if anyone would like me to run holiday errands… you know, like grocery shopping, that sort of thing.”

The old woman raises a white eyebrow. “I wish I could hire you, dear, because there are quite a few things on my shopping list and I hate to go out when it’s so cold. But I’m a widow, and I’m afraid I just can’t afford—”

“Oh, I don’t want to be paid,” Clara hurriedly assures her. “I’m doing this strictly in the holiday spirit. Really, whatever you need from the store, I’ll be glad to pick up for you.”

Minnie Bouvier’s face lights up. “Well, bless your heart. I’ll get my list.”

“Jed, I’ve got to talk to you.”

He looks up to see Arnold Wilkens striding toward the cash register, his wrathful expression barely contained beyond thick lenses.

Thanks to a temporary lull in business, Jed can do nothing but fold his arms and wait for the storm to erupt.

“Jed,” Arnold growls, fists clenched, ears bright red beneath his crew cut. “I can’t believe this.”

“What’s going on, Arnold?”

“
Crazy Maisie?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You told the entire town that I call my wife Crazy Maisie!”

“Not the entire town. Just Pete Kavinski,” Jed concedes.

“Just Pete Kavinski, who then told the entire town.”

Jed shrugs helplessly. “I’m sorry, Arnold, I didn’t mean to—”

“Jed, do you know what kind of hell I’ve lived through these past few days since this got back to her? She won’t let me leave her, even for a few minutes.”

“Is she still constantly thinking she’s in labor?”

“Not only that, but now she’s got it in her head that if I go anywhere, I’ll never come back to her.”

Jed briefly considers telling Arnold he wouldn’t blame him if he did just that.

Thinking better of it, he simply points out, “Well, you’re gone now.”

“Only because Maisie finally fell asleep. I figured she would sooner or later.… No human can go days and days, ranting and raving, pacing and complaining, without sleep. I’m telling you, Jed, she’s—”

“Crazy?” Jed asks mildly when Arnold breaks off.

“You said it. Not me. And you’ve got to tell her that, Jed. Tell her you’re the one who made up that nickname. She doesn’t believe me.”

“I will, Arnold. I promise, the next time I see—”

“No, now. You’ve got to come with me right now and tell her. And we don’t have much time. She won’t stay asleep for very long.” Arnold looks around furtively, as though he half expects his wife to bluster into the store at any moment.

“I can’t leave right now, Arnold. I’m alone here.”

“Yeah? What happened to your new clerk?”

“She’s… out. How did you know I have a new clerk?”

“In this town? Do you really have to ask?” Arnold leans closer and says in a low voice, “It’s her, isn’t it. The spy.”

“She isn’t a spy.”

“Then who is she? And why was she carrying that transmitter?”

“It was a regular radio… sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“It plays records, only they aren’t records, and—say, have you heard that new song by Frank Sinatra yet?”

“Who’s he?”

Jed shrugs. “Some kid from Jersey who sings with Tommy Dorsey. He has this song, ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas,’ that I can’t get out of my head. Clara played it on her music machine, and—”

“Clara? So you really think that’s her name?”

“I know it is.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she told me.”

Jed hates the skeptical gleam in Arnold’s eyes—hates even more that it’s suddenly reflected somewhere deep inside of him.

That’s just because she isn’t here.

When she’s with him, he trusts her implicitly. All he has to do is look at her and he knows she’s telling the truth.…

Except she really hasn’t told him much of anything at all.

Not about her life, anyway.

But what does that matter?

“Jed, just watch yourself, okay?” Arnold says, clapping a heavy hand on Jed’s upper arm. “Don’t let some bit of fluff do you in.”

“For crying out loud, Arnold… she isn’t a bit of fluff.”

“Right. And Maisie isn’t crazy.”

With that, Arnold strides toward the door, calling, “Don’t forget to come on over to my place to talk to her later, Jed. I’m counting on you.”

Jed gives him a two-fingered salute. Then he crosses to the plate-glass window to watch Arnold climb into his blue Packard and drive away.

Scanning the street, hoping to catch sight of Clara on her way back here, he almost thinks he glimpses her disappearing into Ferguson’s Grocery down the block. But he probably just imagined that.

After all, when you want something badly enough
, Jed thinks, turning away from the window,
you can talk yourself into seeing just about anything
.

“Will that be all, ma’am?” asks the aproned grocer as Clara sets her purchases on the counter.

Despite having all but memorized the list, she peruses Minnie Bouvier’s spidery handwriting one more time, to be sure she hasn’t forgotten anything. In addition to eggs, baking powder, and molasses are the spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, allspice.

“Mice got into my spice cabinet and I had to throw away every last spice I keep on hand,” Minnie confided as she handed Clara her shopping list. “I just hope I’m not forgetting anything. I have the feeling that I am, but I can’t figure out what it is.”

“Why don’t you check the recipe?” Clara suggested uneasily.

“Oh, I keep my recipes in here.” Minnie tapped her white head. “But I suppose that doesn’t seem like the safest place these days. My memory isn’t what it used to be—unless, of course, I’m thinking about my dear Homer. There’s nothing about him that isn’t as fresh in my mind as if it happened just today.”

“Homer is your husband?”

Minnie nodded. “We were married almost seventy years.”

“
Seventy
years?”

“I wasn’t even fifteen yet when we wed back in sixty-nine.…”

Sixty-nine
…
she means 1869
. Clara was incredulous.

“My papa told me that I was too young to know what I wanted. But I did. I wanted Homer. And I had him for all those years.… Someday soon, we’ll be together again.”

Minnie’s faded gray eyes twinkled in her weathered face as she carefully counted and recounted two precious dollar bills and two quarters into Clara’s hand, saying, “I’m giving you a little extra, to keep for yourself.”

“No, I can’t do that, Mrs. Bouvier. This is my pleasure.”

“You’re an angel, my dear,” the woman responded. “A beautiful dark-haired Christmas angel.”

Now, as the grocer rings up Minnie’s purchases, Clara recalls what she said about being with Homer again.

It was exactly the same with her own grandfather, talking about his beloved Irene.

What if…?

No! Don’t go there, Clara
, she warns herself.

But she can’t seem to keep the dark thought from breaking through.

What if you aren’t meant to save Jed… or survive your cancer?

Are they meant to be together in some other world.…

Or perhaps, in some other lifetime?

But that won’t be enough. Not for me. I’m not an old woman. I want to live my life, the one I have. I want to be Clara. I want to get married, and have children
.…

No, she isn’t ready to die.

Not even to be with Jed.

“That will be two dollars and twenty-three cents, young lady.” The grocer’s chipper tone cuts into her thoughts.

As Clara counts out Minnie’s money, she wishes she could use her own cash instead. But it’s as useless here in 1941 as counterfeit bills would be. Yes, the quarters at least look almost the same at a glance, but the last thing she needs is to arouse suspicion with dated currency from the future.

“You must be doing some Christmas baking,” the store owner comments, packing Clara’s groceries into a paper sack.

“I am,” Clara agrees, because it’s the simplest explanation.

A female customer steps in from the street with a gust of frigid air. She’s stylish in a sweeping fur coat and a wide-brimmed hat cocked at an angle. Her lipstick is deep crimson, and Clara can smell her floral perfume from several yards away.

“Hello, Mr. Ferguson,” she calls from behind a curtain of wavy blond hair that curiously shrouds one half of her face.

“Hi there, Betty. Cold out there?”

“It is, but this new fur coat is keeping me toasty warm. Do you like it? It’s Manchurian wolf!”

“Very nice. Is it snowing out there yet?”

“Not yet, and I don’t think it’s going to.”

Oh, but you’re wrong about that
, Clara tells the newcomer silently as the storekeeper hands over the sack containing Minnie’s groceries.
It’s going to snow
.

Oh, and by the way, tomorrow at this time, America will be at war, and nothing in your world is ever going to be the same
.

Clara trudges to the door, her steps heavy with the weight of her own useless precognition.

Useless…

Unless it turns out she can alter the past after all.

And I’ll know very soon.
…

She quickens her pace, opening the door as the store owner asks the other woman, “What can I help you find today, Betty?”

Betty?

Clara suddenly remembers the giggling woman she heard Drew Becker talking to in his apartment the other night.
Oddly—at least in the twenty-first century—her name was Betty, too.

“Just some nice sweet apples. I’m going to bake one of my famous pies for a very lucky fella.”

“That lucky fella wouldn’t happen to be Jed Landry, would it?”

Clara stops cold, one foot out the door, her hand frozen on the knob behind her.

The blonde giggles. “How did you guess?”

“This is a small town, Betty. Don’t you think I don’t know who’s keeping company with whom.”

Another giggle, followed by a pointed, pouty, “Brrr.”

“Say, miss,” Mr. Ferguson calls in Clara’s direction, “could you please close the door? You’re letting in the chill.”

Yes, and she’s taking it with her, too. Numb to the bone, she walks dejectedly toward Minnie Bouvier’s house.

It never occurred to her until this very second that Jed might fall in love with somebody else after she leaves Glenhaven Park.…

Or that he might very well have been—
keeping company
—with other girls before she got here.
Of course he was. He’s a red-blooded man
.

Clara is desperately jealous of the fur-clad, pie-baking blonde—even as she reminds herself that her feeling is utterly irrational.

Jed’s life will go on when she’s gone.… Isn’t that the point?

Doesn’t she want him to live happily ever after—the key word being
live
—even if it can’t be with her?

Of course she does.

It just hurts, knowing that she can’t have him.

Knowing that she’s saving his life to be shared with some other girl, perhaps old one-eyed Betty.…

If I can save him at all
.

She quickens her pace toward Minnie Bouvier’s house, anxious to deliver the groceries… and, in doing so, avert the tragic accident that was to occur at dusk on the corner of Oak and Main.

Because if the past can be altered and Minnie Bouvier survives…

Then she’ll know Jed Landry can, too.

CHAPTER 16