The Five Times I Met Myself (18 page)

Brock rolled out of bed and staggered to his feet. He glanced at Karissa’s side of the bed. Empty of course. He’d begged her to
come home, but she was resolute that their separation would last at least a month. Wait, the shower was running. Was it possible? Had she come home last night after he fell asleep?

“I gotta go, Ron. I gotta check on Karissa.”

“Again, you’re funny. Really, my stomach hurts, but Alaska Airlines is leaving for the great white north in twenty-seven minutes with or without us. I’d prefer it be with.”

“What are you talking about?” Brock rubbed his eyes again and glanced at the clock on his nightstand. Six and a half hours of sleep, but it felt like he’d slept only three.

“What is wrong with you?” Ron’s voice came through the phone ten decibels louder. “The plane is leaving.”

“What are you doing at the airport?”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes. What are you doing?”

“The same thing we’ve done every year since Dad died. We get on a plane. We fly to Alaska. We go fishing in his honor. We try to get along for most of the trip. We catch fish. We eat them. We toast Dad. We take a few pictures. We come home. Then we plan for the next trip.”

As Ron spoke, the heat inside Brock grew to flammable levels. The dream! Had it worked?
Oh please, yes.

“What about the company?” Brock sat up straight.

“Ours?”

“Yes, ours!” He spat out the words stronger than he meant to.

“What is your problem?”

“The buyout. Did we sell?”

“Are you always like this at seven a.m.?”

“Just answer me.”

“Wake up, Brock.” A sigh of disgust filtered through the
phone. “Profits of twenty-three million last year weren’t enough for you? You think we should sell the company and start something else?” Ron laughed. “Just because pot is legal in Washington doesn’t mean you have to smoke it. Duuuuuude!”

Hope exploded inside Brock. As insane as it sounded, even to himself, it had worked. It must have worked. His younger self must have gone to business school. Karissa was in the shower because she’d never left. There was no separation. He laughed and threw his head back.

“Yes!” Brock shook his fist in triumph. “It worked, brother. It actually, insanely, unbelievably worked.”

“What are you talking about?”

There was no way to explain to Ron what had happened. He wouldn’t believe it. It would be tough enough to come up with an excuse as to why he didn’t remember the trip. Best to ride this wave as smoothly as possible.

“Sorry, finally waking up. Really strange dream, you know, still kind of caught up in it.”

“In other words, I have to see if I can get us on a later flight.”

“Yeah. I blew it. Sorry.”

“You’re truly bizarre sometimes, bro.”

“You don’t know the sixteenth of it.”

“You’re paying for the change fee.”

“Without question. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Brock shook his head as he hung up and laughed again. It wasn’t possible. But it was possible. His younger self really, truly had changed things. Obviously. He must have gone to business school. It had worked. He had no doubt that when he arrived at the airport an hour from now, Ron would confirm that Brock was running the company and held fifty-one percent of the stock.
And best of all, he and Karissa were back together. Wait, not
back
together, simply together.

As he made his way to the overstuffed chair in the corner of their bedroom and sat, waves of giddiness washed over him. Had he really done it? Yes! He needed to stop asking the same question.

So unless he was still in the dream—which he knew he wasn’t—he’d done the impossible. Wait till he told Dr. Shagull. Brock grinned wide and let more laughter spill out of his mouth as his head fell back on the chair. Things were going to be okay. More than okay. Far more than okay.

Brock glanced at the timer on his phone and then at the bathroom door. He’d talked to Ron for four minutes, thirty seconds. Which meant Karissa would be strolling out of the bathroom door, probably within the next minute. It would be tough not to grab her in a bear hug and smother her with kisses. The wind had returned and their sails would soon be full.

The shower shut off a few seconds later. She’d wrap herself in a towel, step through the door, and head straight for the coffee machine. He’d stand, take her hand in his as she strolled toward the kitchen, celebrate the dawn of a new day even if he was the only one who truly knew why.

When the door opened, two thoughts shot through his mind simultaneously. He was about to black out, and he was extremely grateful he was sitting down. Because the woman who stepped through the doorway and glanced at him wasn’t Karissa.

Chapter 27

A
re you all right?”

Brock drew in sharp breaths and blinked three times. He breathed deep twice more before he could focus. A cold cloth was on his head. He reached for it as he stared into the eyes of the woman who obviously put it there.

“Sheila.”

Her brows were furrowed. “What happened to you?”

Brock closed his eyes and opened them slowly as if doing so would make Karissa appear in Sheila’s place.

“Don’t scare me like that.” Sheila rose to her feet and folded her arms. “You going to be okay?”

The sensation of blacking out again washed over Brock, but this time he didn’t succumb. Part of him wished he could. He tried to sit up, but his body felt like lead and he slumped back against the chair and glanced around the room.

“This isn’t my bedroom.”

“Yours? No, it’s ours.”

Brock pressed his hands against his head.

“Easy.” She knelt back down and squeezed his forearm. “Give yourself a moment.”

“Sheila, what are you—”

Brock didn’t finish the sentence. First, asking what she was doing there would make no sense to her, and second, he knew exactly what she was doing here. He’d changed things. Everything. But the shock of seeing her in flesh and blood kept his mouth shut.

“We’re married.” The words slogged out of his mouth.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Karissa and I got divorced.” Sweat seeped out on his forehead but it felt cold.

“Hope so.” Sheila stood and rolled her eyes. “I’d hate to think I’ve been married to you illegally for the past four years.”

“We’ve been married four years. I can’t believe it.” Brock’s mind spun.

“Yeah, me too sometimes.” For the second time Sheila stood and pulled her arms tight across her teal robe.

“How could he do this?” Brock muttered to himself. “Why would he leave her?”

“Do what? And who is her?”

“I didn’t think there was any way he’d go. But he must have.”

“Hey, I’m talking to you.” Sheila stood over him now, hands on hips, eyes dark.

Brock stared up at her scowling face. “He went to business school.”

“Who?”

“Me.”

“What are you talking about? Of course you went to business school.”

“I didn’t really believe talking to myself could change things. I
don’t even believe it now. Part of me wants to believe I’m still in the dream even though I know I’m not.” Brock looked up and frowned at Sheila. “But it happened. I really changed things. He went to business school. And that sets the dominoes in motion. I’m so stupid. One change affects all the others.”

“You’re making absolutely no sense.” Sheila sighed. “Normal.”

“Where’s Karissa?”

“Karissa again?”

“Is she married?”

“You want to tell me why you want to know where your ex-wife is? And you want to know if she’s married? Hello? Did blacking out destroy the remaining part of your brain?”

“Just tell me where she is right now.”

“How in the world would I know that?” Sheila pulled back and glared at him. “What’s this sudden obsession with your ex-wife? And it better be a detailed explanation with a good reason behind it.”

Brock had an overwhelming urge to tell Sheila exactly what was going on, but he resisted it.

“I had a dream, one of those dreams so real you can’t be sure that it isn’t. I was still married to Karissa, and when I woke up, and it wasn’t her that walked out of the bathroom, I—”

“You really are starting to worry me. You need to get checked out. I don’t want your mind to go.”

She gazed at him with expectant eyes.

Act normal
. He had to act normal till he could get control of the panic pounding up from deep inside. “Thanks, I appreciate the concern.”

Sheila turned and strode back toward the door. “I’m not concerned about you. I’m concerned about your money.”

Brock sat in his bedroom trying to stop his mind from spinning out of control. What else about this version of his life was going to turn his world upside down? And what had his younger self done or not done to create it? He had no bearings, no perspective, no idea what role he played with anyone.

One thing he did know: he wasn’t going to Alaska.

“I can’t go,” Brock repeated for the third time.

“You what?” Ron’s frustration poured through the phone.

“You heard me the first time. And the second.”

Brock stood and pushed through the French doors at the back of his bedroom onto the veranda. The sight stunned him. He definitely wasn’t in Bellevue anymore. He apparently lived in a cliff-top home with unobstructed views of Puget Sound. He glanced to his right and left. The home was massive, easily 7,500 square feet at a rough guess.

He glanced down to find a huge swimming pool. A pool in Seattle? Didn’t make much sense to have one in a place that got only two solid months of summer, but it fit with the drowning feeling that now swirled around in his mind.

“Brock, you there?” Ron’s voice brought him back to the problem at hand.

“I can’t explain it, but . . . it’s not good timing.”

“No, it is good timing. You need this break. You need to get away from everything in the Lower 48—turn off your cell, your e-mail, your everything, and get some soul restoration going.”

“I need more than that.”

“What is going on with you?”

“I can’t tell you.”

As soon as Brock hung up with his brother, he called Morgan, the one who’d started this whole thing with the book and hinted at knowing what God was doing with the dreams. Brock needed answers.

“Brock-O. Talk to me.”

“I’ve been dreaming, Morg. Lucid dreaming. More vivid than you can imagine. I met my younger self, talked to him, and he changed things. Radically. I need your help. You said you knew what the dream with my dad meant, and that we’d talk after I read the book.”

“Hey!” Morgan’s laughter boomed through Brock’s cell phone. “Who is this and what have you done with my friend?”

“I need you to get serious.”

“Okay, then tell me what on this planet called earth you’re talking about.”

Heat flooded Brock’s head. “The book on lucid dreaming. You gave it to me after I—”

“I don’t even know what lucid dreaming means, so I’m not thinking I gave you a book on it.”

“Come on, Morg. Not time to be messing with me. You talked about God dreams and—”

“Sorry to interrupt, but truly, Brock. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve heard of Christians who interpret dreams, but that’s not me. Probably won’t be unless God forces it on me.” Morgan paused. “You okay?”

“No, I’m not.”

Brock hung up the phone as waves of despair washed over him. What else had changed?

He spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon discovering that he was indeed the CEO of Black Fedora, that the company had gone public sixteen years ago, that he was worth seventy-six million dollars and his brother was worth fifty-six million, but it hardly mattered.

After searching his phone and finding a number for Karissa in it, he tried calling her, but there was no answer and he didn’t leave a message. What would he say? “Hey, just discovered we’re divorced because I talked to myself in a dream, but I realize I really love you.”

Brock called Tyson’s cell phone as well, but his son didn’t answer either.

He finally wandered downstairs into the media room and turned on the TV to try to take his mind off the insanity his world had become. But he didn’t see any of the stories. His mind was too fixated on how soon night would come so he could get back to sleep and somehow, some way, fix the mess he’d created.