A Way (The Voyagers Book 1) (24 page)

CHAPTER 49

Jessie felt Dex get off the bed, being careful not to disturb her, and heard him quietly cross the room, the door creaking as he left.  She rolled over and buried her face into the indent his head left on the pillow.  The smell of him consumed her: a scent crowded with the smokiness of the campfire and a spicy shampoo.  Wearily, she opened her eyes and rubbed them with bunched up fists, dried tears from the night, coating her lashes.  Sitting up in bed, she stretched her arms above her head; nighttime knots in her neck letting go, and releasing her into the new day.  Jessie smiled, something she hadn’t done in months, so early in the morning.

Dex and Jessie first awoke at dawn.  They forgot to draw the blackout curtains to shut out the inevitable brightness of morning.  This morning’s light wasn’t sharp enough to warrant the thickness of the drapes. Jessie realized it was the storm clouds, rolling across the sky that dimmed the sunshine.  Through her peaceful sleep, her head stayed on Dex’s chest and his arm’s held her tight. She shifted her eyes away from the ominous sky and looked up at Dex.  He was watching her, a smile playing on his lips. 

“Good morning,” he whispered, kissing the tip of her nose. 

“Morning,” Jessie replied, shifting closer.  Her socks were kicked off in the night and her shirt was bunched up, uncomfortably, under her.  She could have stayed like that all day; they were back on the lake shore, the storm clouds replaced by the blazing sun.  She was brought back to the present, when a door opened, closed, and footsteps passed by the bedroom.

“Peter,” Dex stated, “he gets up early to go for a run.” 

She checked the time on her phone, they had only slept for three hours, but it felt like she had been asleep for a year.  Dex made no indication he was ready to get up, so she laid back down and closed her eyes.  It was after 9:00 when she opened them again and found him gone.  This time she knew he was close; she was no longer a lost girl.

Bouncing out of bed, with surprising vigor, she slipped off her jeans and reached into the bag containing the green tights.  After wearing the stiff fabric for a full 24 hours, the leggings felt like silk against her skin.  She pulled the rumpled top over her head, and replaced it with the new tank top splashed with the name, Madison.  It reminded her of something she wanted to do that day.  Now that she remembered the life she had lived in the town decades earlier, she wanted to see it again through her fully opened eyes. 

A soft knock sounded on the door and Sammy’s head appeared on the other side, as she tentatively opened it.

“Morning,” she said.  “Is it ok if I come in?”

“Of course it is,” Jessie smiled, and waved her into the room.  “Where’s everyone?”  She noticed the stillness of the house.  She didn’t think anyone else, other than Dex, was up yet.

“Dex is in the shower, Peter is making coffee and I think Adam took Duke for a walk.  How are you feeling?”  Sammy asked.

House sounds and smells came alive, with Sammy’s entrance.  Jessie could hear the running water and smell the perking coffee.

“I’m good; great, actually.  I was just thinking we should go into town today. I want to see our old house.” 

The current situation drifted away and Jessie was in another room, with a younger Sammy. She was curling her toes into an orange shag carpet.  The mirage faded; her memory was coming back in droves.  She wondered why it hadn’t happened sooner.  The realization, when it came, gave her the feeling that she had been punched in the face. 

“That little bitch,” Jessie gasped, her eyes round. 

Sammy bolted upright. “What is it? Do you remember something?”

“I was trying to figure out why I’m suddenly remembering so many things.  Why everything is coming back to me now, when it wasn’t yesterday?  It’s Allison, Rebecca, whatever her name is.  She was always inviting me out for coffee and when I would get there she would’ve already ordered. She was putting it in my drink!  That taste, that’s how I remember it; she was slipping that tea to me, and I had no idea.” 

Jessie was so angry for allowing herself to be manipulated.  She grabbed her brush off the dresser and pulled it, furiously, through her tatted hair, ignoring the pain.  She knew it was completely irrational.  There was no reason for her to have doubted her friend’s intentions. She turned back to Sammy, who was watching her nervously. 

“Did Dex know all along that Allison, was Rebecca?”  She could tell by the way her sister’s face scrunched up, what her answer would be. “Why would he wait so long to get me away from her?”

“He was scared you wouldn’t believe him, and if he confronted you, then Rebecca would find out we were close.” 

Jessie could tell she was hiding something.  She may have changed her vessel, to be older in this realm, but it didn’t change the mannerisms that Jessie knew, as well as her own.

“She was at the bar last night, Sammy.  She saw him!  What if I wasn’t a crazy person who doesn’t think before she does something? Like showing up at a strange address in the middle of nowhere?  I was on my way to meet her.  I would’ve had the tea and gone back to my normal life.”  Sammy winced, at her words.  That wasn’t Jessie’s normal life, not the one she remembered.  “You know what I mean?”  Jessie said, apologetically.

“There is someone close to you that we trust; someone who gives you clues, and sent you down the path we needed you to be on.”

“Clues?  This isn’t a Sherlock Holmes mystery; this is my life.  Was my life.  My head hurts.”  Jessie sank onto the bed and kneaded her pounding temples.  She felt the bed sag, as Sammy sat down beside her.

“This has been hard on Dex, Jessie.  He still feels like he’s responsible for protecting the gateway, when it’s done nothing but provide us with grief.  Peter and I want to let the single souls destroy it, but Dex sees it as a chance to go back and regain everything you’ve both lost.”

She was about to say more, when Dex entered the room, rubbing a towel through his freshly washed hair.

“Hey, is everything ok in here?”  He asked, glancing between the two sisters. 

“I was just about to tell Jessie, who helped us get her here without Rebecca finding out,” Sammy replied. 

From her spot on the bed, Jessie observed Dex.  He looked rested, but his shoulders still clung to a tension, that one good night of sleep, couldn’t erase. She softened the anger that the mention of Rebecca’s name splashed onto her face.  This wasn’t how she wanted to start the first morning of the rest of their lives.  Jessie stood, slid her arms around his neck, and rested her forehead against his damp chest.

“We can talk about it after we’ve had some coffee,” she said.  She pulled back her head and looked up into his eyes, “I was just telling Sammy it would be nice to go back into Madison, today.  It might help to fill some of the empty spaces in my memory.”

“I wanted to show you a few things on the island, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a great day for a walk.”  He was talking about their tree, she wanted to see it too. 

Jessie had already decided, when her head was buried in his pillow, that she would be there for an extended long weekend.  Sam would be fine, as long as he was getting the overabundance of food that he was accustomed to.  She sent Ger a text, asking her to feed the cat for a few extra day, but she hadn’t heard back from her.  It was still early, she turned her attention back to Dex. He was watching Jessie with a peculiar expression on his face. 
He hasn’t answered my question about going into Madison.
 
He’s waiting for me to change my mind.

“If you don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be out in the open, I could wear a disguise.”  She was joking, but Dex seemed to consider it.

“I was worried about you leaving the cottage, but Rebecca has no idea where we are.”  Dex kissed her and straightened her necklace.  “I found that out for sure this morning.  It’s nice to be the one deceiving her, for once.  It should be fine.”

Another thought occurred to Jessie; she couldn’t stop them.  “Are you sure?  I left your address, for Ger, on my kitchen table.  What if Allis….,” she corrected herself, “Rebecca, went with her to feed Sam, and saw it?  She could be on her way here, right now.”

Dex looked up at the ceiling and inhaled deeply.  Jessie could sense he was rethinking his decision and picking out a disguise for her to change into.  The first sign of a raging storm rumbled over their heads.  He didn’t know, until then, that she had left a trail to her whereabouts.

“She doesn’t know, but maybe we should wait to see what this storm is going to do, before we go anywhere.”

Jessie had been on the causeway, it wouldn’t take much for it to wash away. “You want to make sure we have access to the gateway?”  She posed it as a question, but didn’t need his confirmation.  “So we can leave together, in case Rebecca finds us.” 

“Either way, we’re leaving today.”  It wasn’t a suggestion.

Jessie went numb; it was too soon.  There were still too many things she needed explained.  She wanted to spend some more time with him, maybe swim in the lake and grab a burger at the diner, but she wasn’t on vacation.  That was easy to forget, standing in his arms, in the quaint cottage. Sammy felt her hesitation.

“Don’t you think we should wait a few days, Dex?  Jessie needs some time to get use to this.  You and I might be ready, but she’s only known the truth for less than a day.  Remember how long it took you to completely accept it?” 

Sammy reached for her sister’s hand. Jessie felt like she was being pushed in two different directions, one towards the boy she had always loved, the other towards her family, she had always known.  ‘
Jesus.  My family.
’ 

“What about my brother, Owen, or my parents?”  Jessie asked. Sammy looked down at her feet, her avoiding eyes answered Jessie’s question.  “They know?  Even Owen?” 

The necklace.  She could feel her mother’s gentle fingers closing the delicate clasp around her neck. 
“I have been keeping this for you,”
she told Jessie,
“it was your grandmother’s.”
  Jessie couldn’t help thinking, everything she was ever told had been a lie, but was that better than knowing the truth.  She flicked her eyes up at Dex and knew that it wasn’t.

Dex nodded his head.  “They have an idea.  I’ve told them where we’re planning to go.  You’ll see them in the next realm.” 

Jessie started to shake and Dex put his hand on her shoulder to steady her. 

“They’ve only known a few days.   They don’t even know you’re part of the five.  There are many types of voyagers.  I know it’s a lot to take in, but it will all be fully explained.  You just have to give it time.  There are still some things I’m unsure of.”

She felt her anger abating.  The trust she had in him was more powerful than any doubt. “But if they know where we are, what if Rebecca hurts them, to find out?”  She still wasn’t sure why Rebecca was so intent on ruining her life and wished she could get her alone in a room for five minutes.

“Gerald won’t let that happen,” Sammy said, from behind them.  She was sitting back on the bed. 

Jessie was on a roller coaster that was about to drop over the top and she couldn’t wait to get off.

“So, where is Gerald?”  The look on Dex’s face said that she knew exactly where Gerald was. After all she had been told, she was shocked it had taken this long, to figure it out.

“You have GOT to be kidding me!”

“Shit,” Dex muttered.

CHAPTER 50

Acceptance of her situation, came after her chat with Sammy and Dex.  They were worried that it would be too much, but they hadn’t considered how Jessie felt, living with not knowing.  The cloak was removed from her doubt and when her memories returned, so did the sureness and confidence that had been scraped from her soul by the years of deception.  So much had been taken from her and swept into a locked room in her mind, without her being given a key.  Now that it was unlocked, Jessie felt a euphoria that she only experienced in a rare dream.  It was the sensation that overpowered her, the day she and Owen stumbled upon the tree carving.  She didn’t need to confirm that they were on that same island now.  It told her, when she stepped from the car onto its soggy ground.  She just hadn’t been ready to listen yet.

The coffee brewing downstairs was beckoning, but the need to be alone with her thoughts, for a few more minutes, muted its cries.  She showered, and while the warm stream flowed over her, she understood, like Dex, she never had a choice.  All the realms she had been through, put her on the path, to where she was at that exact moment.  Jessie would leave with him today, to a future that had been put on hold, for too long.

They gathered in the kitchen, clutching mugs full of piping Seattle’s best, when the storm that had been threatening to rip apart the sky, began.  The thunder and lightning came fast and furious and Adam was still drying off after he, and the not overly impressed, Duke, were caught in the epic downpour. 

Jessie had been shell-shocked so often since she left the city, but the seismic meter was in new territory with the news about Gerald. 
Allison was Rebecca, Gerald was Ger.  It all made perfect sense,
the sarcastic devil, sitting on her shoulder, hissed into her ear.  She looked around to make sure no one else had heard him. 

She was doing a good job, so far, remaining calm and she didn’t want anyone to know the small crack that was starting to appear.   Dex told her that Gerald would be there early in the afternoon.  He would be back to the person they all knew and the five would finally be reunited.  They had limited time to decide what they would do: destroy the gateway or leave.  Jessie would support Dex.  She knew what Sammy and Peter wanted to do, and it was up to Gerald to break the tie.

Dex was sitting on the stool beside her, one hand on her leg, the other nervously checking his cell phone.  His brow was pinched together and he hadn’t said a word since he asked her to pass the milk.  She wasn’t the only one who was worried.

“Are we going to be ok?”  Jessie asked, low enough that the others didn’t hear. 

He swept his eyes quickly around the kitchen before they rested on her.  “We are.” 

He squeezed her knee, “I’m just waiting for Gerald to text.  He said he would let me know when he was leaving.”  He left out the part that Gerald would be entering and exiting the gateway, and all the possible problems that could cause for them.

Just like that, her friend Ger, didn’t exist; like she was a living dream.  Her lingering headache was pulsing again.  Sammy explained that Gerald’s transformation was no different than her entering this realm, as a teenager.  He made the decision to hide in plain sight; mostly, to find Jessie, partly, because he was bored.  It worked.  Jessie was here and when she reflected on her choice, she realized the huge part he played in her making it.  Ger didn’t discouraged her from making the weekend trip, she convinced her to move to the city and she never warmed to Allison/Rebecca.  Jessie had always been the buffer in their disjointed friendship; or was she the puppet?

“Does Rebecca know that Gerald was Ger?”  Jessie asked the room, not caring who answered.  Peter and Sammy started to reply at the same time, but it was Dex’s response that made the hairs on her arm, bristle.

“We don’t think so.  She didn’t yesterday, anyway.”  This time he didn’t look up from his phone.

“What has changed since yesterday?  They’ve spent hours together.  Why would Rebecca all of a sudden suspect that Ger was actually Gerald?”  Jessie knew it had something to do with her.  She inadvertently alerted Rebecca to what was going on.

“It was something that happened at Central, on Friday night.  Something she overheard,” Dex said.

Jessie thought back to the night that seemed so far away and removed.  She filtered through every conversation she had, over the last week, with the person she thought was her friend.

“Dammit,” she said, banging her fist on the counter.  She heard the words in her head and recited them with her voice.  “Ger, you could be my brother.”

It was an off-handed remark.  They had been talking about a guy Jessie met.  The comments Ger made, as Jessie had expressed, reminded her of a protective big brother. 

“That’s it, isn’t it?  That’s what’s made her suspicious?” 

Dex nodded his head to confirm she was right and began pacing the kitchen, frustration escaping from every pore on his body.  Peter was picking at the nail on his thumb and Sammy was looking at everything in the room, except for Jessie.  Adam stopped drying Duke and stood nervously in the corner of the room.  The calmness, Jessie fought so hard to maintain, was ripped away from her. 
Are they blaming me?
  Dex’s eyes soothed her paranoia,
of course they weren’t.

“She doesn’t know,” Peter said, emptying the remainder of the coffee, from the pot, into the sink.  “I talked to Gerald last night and he hasn’t seen her since Friday.  It helps that she doesn’t have a cell phone,” he winked at Jessie. 

“If she knows, what can she do?”  Jessie’s voice reached an unintended, high pitch.  To bring it down a few notches, she took a sip of her lukewarm coffee.  Something else was happening.  If she learned anything in the last two days, it was that there was always, something else happening. 

“It’s not as if she can stop us! She isn’t that powerful!”  That was the last thing Jessie needed.  She already had a time travelling boyfriend, a sister who skipped ten years and a brother who decided, temporarily, to become a girl.  All the story needed was a super villain: their very own Loki.

“We never know what she could do,” Dex returned to the seat beside and slipped his arm around her waist.  She knew he was recalling the warning Rebecca had given him, long ago, in front of the store.  He tried to force a reassurance into his smile.

“We don’t use the term time traveler.  They don’t exist.”

Jessie looked at him wide-eyed. “How do you do that?”

There would never be enough time to know as much about him as he knew about her, especially, if Peter and Sammy got their wish and the gateway was destroyed.

“Did you ever find out what her deal is? This all can’t be because you dated her in a realm that you can’t even remember.”  Jessie’s voice had stabilized. 

“I think that’s all it is,” Sammy offered.  “I just think she’s a jealous brat, who hates when things don’t go her way.”

Jessie smiled.  She appreciated their patience with her rehashing the subjects they had already discussed, numerous times.  Dex’s phone beeped and the screen lit up.  Jessie read the words at the same time he did. 

On my way
.
   

He slumped against the stool’s cushioned back and pinched the stress marks between his eyes.  Jessie rested her head on his shoulder and felt him relax. 

“We’re just so close.  What if something happens?”  Dex’s words vibrated through her body.  It scared her to see him doubting himself.  

Sammy threw a dish cloth at him.  “Dex, RELAX.  Ever since Jessie got here you’ve been tied up in knots.  Nothing is going to happen.   She’s here, Gerald is on his way and you haven’t even heard the best part.”  She pulled Peter close to her.  “We’re going through the gateway with you, both of us.” 

Peter nodded his confirmation, at Sammy’s declaration. “We talked about it this morning,” he said.  “It makes the most sense.  If we let the single souls destroy it, then that would be it for us, just when we all found each other, again.”  He bent his head to kiss Sammy’s cheek, causing her to turn a bright shade of pink.

Adam, who had been petting Duke and listening, stood up and joined the conversation.  Jessie still hadn’t been told the part he played in the voyager/gateway saga.

“Wait, so Ger, that girl you were with at the bar, is your brother?”  He asked the room, his eyes full of confusion.

“Sorry, man,” Dex said.  Jessie glanced at him, just as puzzled. “Adam’s new,” he shrugged.  She was glad she wasn’t the only one in the room, who wasn’t completely sure, of what was going on.

A clap of thunder startled them and Duke leapt to his feet, barking.  Simultaneously, Dex’s phone signaled another incoming text from Gerald.  When he read it the crinkle he rubbed out of his forehead returned.  Jessie leaned across, to read it.

At diner…I need your help.