A Way (The Voyagers Book 1) (4 page)

Jessie never got over the guilt she felt for almost losing her brother, but she also never forgot that carving on the old maple tree.  In that moment she had felt that the number meant something. The déjà vu she experienced when she had touched the scarred bark was almost paralyzing.  It happened to be the same feeling she felt in the cab the night before and standing beside her car in Madison.  It was in that instant of reminiscing she also recalled the initials that accompanied the number, the number that happened to be same as the address she was headed towards.  D + J.  Dex and Jessie.  She shifted the car into drive and headed out the opposite end of town.

CHAPTER 7

Driving down a paved road, if you could call it that with the crab weed reaching through the cracks, and the yellow line barely visible, Jessie rolled down her window to let the fresh country air encompass the interior of the Focus.  Keeping her eyes on the road and one hand on the wheel, she felt around in her purse to retrieve her drug store sunglasses. 

“Nothing but the best for this girl,” she muttered as she ripped the price tag off with her teeth. 

A rabbit scampered across the road in front of her, so quickly, she just had time to brake.  Jessie found it odd that she was only a few minutes out of town, but she had not passed a single car.  It was like she had crossed an invisible barrier, between where she was only slightly insane, to where she had gone full-on bonafide nuttie.  She felt so isolated that she checked her cell to make sure that it still had a signal. 

“Three bars.  Ok, no matter how many corn fields and random lonely cow you see there is still civilization just on the other side of that hill,” she said, trying to sound reassuring. When had she became such a conversationalist with herself?
  It still wasn’t too late to call that therapist
.  Instead, she reached to try and find a radio station that was playing anything better than the aging rock band screeching about nameless streets. 

“Turn right in 500 feet.”

Hearing a voice that hadn’t come from herself made Jessie jump slightly. Forgetting the song search, she turned her attention to following the directions the computerized voice had spoken.  She may be an expert at jumping in a car and driving to god knows where, but when it came to distance, she had no clue. 
Was there a setting on this Siri to have her blurt out distances in time?  Three minutes and turn right would be much better
.  She drove the car at a snail’s pace, oblivious to the fact she was still two hundred fifty feet from the turn. 
Where is it?  It must be close
.  Finally, after what felt like close to an hour, Jessie made out what was slightly more than a cow path cross the road ahead. 

The next voice Jessie heard was her own. “This can’t be it, is this it?  Was that five hundred feet?”  

She twisted the wheel and the car dipped slightly onto a road, which turned into a causeway after a few feet, with an iron gate across the end.  The path had been grated recently and cushioned the ridges that could have made it a lot more uncomfortable of a ride than it already was.  She felt her teeth vibrating and the burger she had for lunch moving around in her stomach.  On either side of the causeway was a body of water, no bigger than a pond one would find exploring the fields on any farmland.  Even still she found it pretty and calming.  Stopping to let an unidentified bird poke its way from one side of the path to the other, she noticed the lily pads in bloom and ripples in the water where fish were hiding, just below the surface.  Moving closer to the gate she spotted a place to park on her left and the car rolled to a stop.  From this vantage point, she could see what she first perceived to be a pond, open up to a larger body of water at the far side of the island.

Before she sent a text, to the number she had received back in Madison, she grabbed the brown bag containing her pharmacy purchases and pulled out a hair brush and a travel-size mouth wash.  She smoothed her curls, freshened her gravy breath and rolled a cherry flavoured lip smacker over her dry lips. 

Sitting in the car, the radio silent, she felt peaceful.  The silence was almost deafening and she got the feeling if she listened carefully she could hear a rabbit sneeze.
Do rabbit’s sneeze?
She shook her head.
Who cares if they sneeze? I’m probably about to be murdered and become fish food in that pond.
  It would be nice to turn her off her mind for just one day. 

This was her last chance to turn back, forget this crazy quest and be back in the city in time to grab some tacos at the Central’s happy hour.  She picked up the phone and typed a single word. 

Her
e
.  Send.

Chapter 8

While Jessie waited in the quiet, she tapped her fingernails against her designer cell phone case, the only designer thing she owned.  Tap, tap, tap, check the rear view mirror, tap, tap, tap, look over her shoulder, towards the gate, to what she was assumed was a drive way beyond it.  Tap, tap, tap.  Knock, knock, knock, on the passenger side window. 

Where did he come from?
 

It was Dex.  She was right, her heart never doubted he was the person sending the anonymous texts.  It was her brain that tried to dispel that reasoning, more than once, during her impromptu road trip.  One point, instinct; zero, self-doubt.  She pressed the button to open the window, at the same time he opened the door and climbed into the seat beside her. 

“Hi,” he grinned, “you’re here.”

His eyes sparkled a little in the sunlight that was shining off the hood of the car.  Jessie felt the inside of her mouth turn to cotton and she looked desperately around the console that separated them to find a drink she knew wasn’t there.  Composing herself, she brought her eyes up, the right one twitching slightly.  Dex casually, like he wasn’t even thinking about it, reached over to move the clasp of her necklace to the back or her neck.  She was shocked by his closeness, but didn’t pull away.  Shocked, yes.  Uncomfortable, not at all.

“Yep, here I am.” Jessie managed to speak through the sand that had collected at the back of her throat.

She swallowed after he moved away from her, his back resting against the interior of the car door.  This was going to be either a really long weekend or an extremely short one.  Dex opened his door again and started to exit the car.

A short one
, she thought. 

He leaned back in the car, his hand on the frame. “Switch spots with me.”

Dex lightly shut the door and Jessie watched him walk around the back, before appearing on her left side.  She hadn’t moved. 
Did he think she couldn’t drive
? The voice in her head, and the devil on her shoulder, told her that now wasn’t the time to be argumentative.

Looking again at the muddy path, Jessie reluctantly realized it was probably a good idea that he did take over from here, and she awkwardly slid across the car.  She silently thanked her good timing when he hadn’t yet opened the driver side door and missed seeing her left leg get tangled in the iPhone charger and the few curse words that followed.  Jessie stretched her arm at an almost painful angle to dig her purse out from underneath her. She righted herself before her head bounced off the partly rolled down passenger window. Graceful had never been her middle name, it was barely in her vocabulary.

Dex adjusted the seat to give his long legs more space than she needed, gave her a side grin, and turned the key.   He strained his neck to look over his right shoulder, draped his arm across the back of her seat and navigated the rental so that it was pointed towards the now open fence.

“This driveway is tricky,” he said, without looking at her.  “You probably would’ve been fine, but I’m used to it.” 

“So, do you live here or something?”

“Or something.  It’s in the family.”  He didn’t give any further details. 

Jessie shrugged and turned her body slightly in his direction, partially to get a better look at him, but mostly to make way for her overstuffed bag that was still wedged under her.  He was wearing jeans, not skinny jeans,
thank god
, and a dark purple t-shirt with an emblem on the front that she didn’t recognize.  He may have been a bit taller then she first observed him to be, but it was hard to tell. He was wearing his docs again.  His hands seemed strong clutching the steering wheel. His lips, reminded her of someone that was always on the verge of smiling, but rarely did. This didn’t make him unfriendly, more the opposite.  His hair was the shade of dark chocolate, like his eyes, with a few golden strands hiding in its thickness. It looked like he had just gotten out of the shower, when she sent her text announcing her arrival, and she noticed a few droplets of water dangling on the ends that curled around his ears; shimmering bulbs on a Christmas tree.

They passed through the opened gate, the car lurched to the right, and then pulled to the left.  The mud covering the path sucked at the tires as the motor strained to pull them forward.  She braced her hand against the dash and even though the car advanced forward slowly, she caught herself air braking as Dex expertly maneuvered the vehicle.

After they had curved away from the pond and moved farther into the woods, Jessie caught a glimpse of a building ahead of them. Trees with lush leaves and wild flowers lined the driveway, their scent mixing with the fresh soapy one that clung to Dex.  A house came into view and she could see two cars parked in front of a closed garage.  There was a hammock swinging leisurely on the wrap around porch, and an upstairs window treated with dark curtains dancing in the gentle breeze.  The shaker siding and dimpled windows reminded her of the cottages in long ago fairy tale books, tucked away in boxes, under the stairs, at her parent’s house. Cottages, weathered but sturdy, warm, but a little lonely.  She instantly loved it. Her thoughts returned to the cars.

“Are there other people here?”  She asked.  Happy they might not be completely alone, a bit disappointed they weren’t. 

He parked the car beside a smaller SUV. “Just a few close friends.  You’ll like them.  Don’t worry,” he added when he saw a look of hesitation shimmer across her eyes. 

She didn’t even know him.  Now she had to meet a house full of strangers?
  Her inner voice screamed its concern.  She found it was getting harder and harder to ignore.

Jessie’s hand had been on the handle of her door since Dex stopped the car, but she hadn’t made a move to push it open.  He extended across the space between her and grazed her arm.  At his touch, she turned towards him. Even this slight contact created tingles that spread from her pink painted toes, up to her double pierced ears, and back again.

“I promise, every question you have asked yourself in the last twenty four hours you will get answers to.  You aren’t crazy.  This isn’t crazy.”  It mildly comforted her when she noticed the tiniest shake in his voice.

She pulled the latch and swung out of the car. The warmth of his fingertips lingered on her arm while her feet sunk into the muddy driveway.

CHAPTER 9

Jessie grabbed her purse from the car, but forgot her Madison purchases in the back seat. She followed Dex up the five stairs that led to the front door of the cottage.  The wood creaked slightly under their feet. On the porch, she noticed a smaller-than-Sam cat snoozing on an Algonquin style chair. On the other side of the main entrance was the swinging hammock.  Jessie ran her fingers through her now disheveled hair.  She blamed the humidity and not her nervous habit of never keeping her hands out of it.  She almost ran into Dex when he stopped short, turned around, and gave her a confident smile.  An, ‘it’s all good’, expression was splashed across his face.

He opened the door to a spacious entrance that turned into a hallway, leading to a kitchen, and stairs up to the second floor of the ranch style home.  On their right, in the shadows, was a dark room. Jessie could just make out the corner of a fire place and a black leather couch against the far wall.  To their left was a room painted blue, a blue that looked brighter than it was, bathed in sunlight that streamed through the floor to ceiling picture window. 

From the back of the house, Jessie heard voices and the computerized beeping that sounded like a video game from her childhood.  She removed her shoes and allowed Dex to take her hand to lead her down the hall, towards the kitchen and the noise. She silently thanked the universe for blessing her with the miracle of dry palms.  Jessie was sure Dex could hear her heart pounding in her chest. 

They entered a room hidden behind the stairs and occupied by three strangers.  She knew she had never seen any of the people that sat crowded on the lone couch, but felt like she had already spent many long weekends with them.  The only light came from the tv and a small corner window bordered by mini-blue lights.  A coffee table held an open bag of chips, three beers, three cell phones and a candle waiting to be lit.  There were two bean bag chairs that looked more bag than bean. Between their limp shells, stood a slightly slanted table, scarcely holding onto a lamp, that could have only come from an antique shop.  It was perfect. Right down to the one red painted wall that seemed whoever started painting it got bored or ran out of paint.

The only girl was sandwiched between two handsome blond guys on the overstuffed plaid couch.  She stood when Jessie and Dex came around the corner.  Before Jessie had time to react, the girl rushed forward and pulled her into a bone crushing hug.  Still holding Dex’s hand, Jessie returned the hug as best as she could with her other arm.

The girl, about a foot shorter than Jessie, peered up at her with wide, damp, green eyes, like she was on the verge of crying, and looked at Dex. “She’s exactly as you described her!” 

She bounced on her toes with excitement.  Her hair was a cross between Ally Sheedy’s, at the beginning of the Breakfast Club and the end of St. Elmo’s Fire, but the color of Andie’s in Pretty in Pink.  Dex rolled his eyes, his smile giving away his pretend annoyance. 

“This,” he released Jessie and inclined his head towards the pixie-like bright, eyed girl, “is Samantha.” Jessie liked her instantly.  Dex continued, “that should be easy for you to remember.” 

Why
? Jessie was puzzled. He couldn’t possibly know about the Sam that was probably hungry and waiting for her to come home.
 

Dex crossed the room to where the two twenty something men sat, watching Samantha with amusement, their game temporarily on hold.  “The Mario brothers here are Adam,” the dark blond gave a quick wave.

He has nice smile, definitely Ger’s type. Had he been at the table with Dex last night
? She wondered.

“And Pete,” Dex finished the introductions.

Also a nice smile, she couldn’t help but notice, as Dex circled back to her. “This is Jessie, not Jessica, not Jess, just Jessie.” 

Her, “nice to meet you guys” was answered with triple chorus of “Hey Jessies.” 

Dex returned to his position beside her.  The little man on the television screen, across from Samantha, Adam and Pete, was put back in motion. 

Samantha wedged herself between her competitors and yanked a controller out of Pete’s hand.  “My turn,” she stated as the trio quickly lost interest with the new person added to their circle. 

“Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the house.”  Dex said, guiding Jessie out of the room. “And grab us some beers,” he whispered, reading her mind. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Samantha watched them leave. The distraction spelling disaster for her video game life.

*******

After Dex had shown her around the cottage, starting with the kitchen - help yourself to anything- and ending with where she would be sleeping for the two nights she planned on staying, Jessie quickly washed her trip off her face. 

The bathroom was two doors from her temporary bedroom. The door in between opened to Pete and Samantha’s room who, she just learned, were a couple.  Dex was staying in the only room across the hall.  Adam drew the short straw resulting in him having to spend the weekend on the pull out couch in the beanbag chair room. 

Jessie pulled up the light green, horizontal blind in the bathroom to check out the view while she absentmindedly smoothed cream on her freshly washed cheeks.  Through the thick pine trees, shading this side of the house, she could just make out the sun glistening off the water she had crossed.

Within five minutes she headed back down stairs to collect the freshly opened beer waiting for her on the kitchen counter.  She met Dex at the bottom of the stairs, her forgotten purchases in his hand.  He reached up to hand them to her when she stopped on the last step.

“There are a few sweaters and things in this closest.”  He pointed to the door across from the stairs. “We might have a campfire later; it could get chilly.” Dex looked down at her feet, a bright pink polished toe poking through the sock on her left foot.  He stifled a laugh, more endearing than mean. “Samantha has a bunch of parka thick socks too, if you need another pair.” 

Jessie self-consciously crossed her feet, curled her toes beneath her and wished she had decided that morning to forgo the socks. “Thanks, I mean this is great, but don’t you think we should maybe talk about the crazy girl that drove out to your weekend get-away?”

She uncrossed her feet, leaned against the bannister, stood back up straight, and then balanced on her left leg. “Or we could just have that beer and talk about this week’s Walking Dead?” 

“Beer, Walking Dead, and then crazy girl.  You are as patient as you are graceful,” he teased.

He touched her arm, the same way he did in the car, as he moved past her to the kitchen.  Without his docs on, his eyes were almost at the same level as hers, and she noticed the gold flecks that matched the ones she had spotted earlier in his hair.  Jessie followed him, for the second time that day, to the back of the house.  They found Pete rooting through the refrigerator.  He removed his head from its depths, turning to face them, when they entered.  A beer in one hand, he blindly grabbed for the opener, disguised as a magnet, stuck to the side of the stainless steel appliance. 

“Sammy really needs to jump off this flavored, import beer wagon she’s been on.”  He popped the cap off and winked at Jessie. She took a less than lady-like sip of her domestic - slightly warm from sitting on the counter too long - beer. “You have the right idea,” he complimented. 

“That’s me, not fancy at all.  Give me a Coors light or wine from a box and I’m all yours.”  Jessie joked, returning his smile.  Like Samantha, she felt a fondness for him almost immediately.  

“How about if I make you a sandwich?”  Dex took his turn checking out the contents of the fridge. “Then will you be all mine?” 

His question caused her to blush, pushing from her a girly, nervous laugh.  She cursed herself for sounding like a giddy teenager and brought the beer bottle back up to her lips.  “Depends on what kind it is.”  She was only slightly kidding.

Was it possible she was already hungry again?  How many hours had gone by since she had first pulled off the main road to this place in the woods?  She instinctively looked at her wrist, to check the time on the watch she never wore, and remembered the phone wedged in the pocket of her jeans.  Dex distracted her when he began unloading sandwich ingredients, onto the island she was seated at, then expertly started constructing two sandwiches.  Spreading mustard on two of the four pieces of bread, not looking up, he challenged her.

“In the time it takes me to make these, you can ask me any question you want, but after we eat, I get to ask you anything.” He glanced up at her, mischievously.  “Deal?”

He peeled some black forest ham out of its deli wrapping and dabbed it on a paper towel before placing it on the mustard kissed bread. 

“Deal,” she smiled.  Questions had been swimming in her mind since he tossed her that cigarette the previous night.

“Full name.”

“Dex Martin Sharpe.”

She smirked. “Any relation to Doc Martin?” 

“Next question.” It was his turn to smirk.

“What do you do?”

“What? Do you mean besides make amazing sandwiches and having a great taste in wine?” 

His eyes shifted to the counter under a shelf housing a microwave, to a box of wine she hadn’t noticed before.  Jessie raised her eyebrows at it. 
How unlike me to enter a room and not have my vision directly pulled to that.  My favorite brand even.
  The neon green time on the microwave display winked at her. Exactly three o’clock.  She had been there for just under two hours. She felt like she could stay forever.

“I work in catering and volunteer at a dog shelter.”

Two words popped into Jessie’s mind.  They rhymed with heart and melting. 
Really, a dog shelter
?

He sliced a tomato, two slices for one sandwich.  One slice cut in half for the other.

“Age?”

“Twenty-four.”

A year and a half older than me,
I would’ve guessed that.

Dex had his back to her to rinse some romaine lettuce under the water streaming from the tap.  He turned back to the kitchen island and made sure the leaves were completely dry before using them to top the almost completed sandwiches.  She only had time for one more question.

“Why me?”  She stared at him, gauging his reaction.

He gave none, except to cut their lunch into perfect diagonal halves and slide the one with less tomato, towards her. “Ask me that again, later. You don’t want your sandwich to get soggy.” 

He was right, she hated soggy sandwiches.  Jessie considered herself far from being a picky eater, but too much tomato and wet lettuce touching the bread was enough to make her gag.  He had made her the perfect sandwich, exactly how she liked it.  Her questions could wait.

Trying not to reveal too much of what was going on behind their teeth, their conversation turned to small talk as they ate: the weather, the cottage, dogs he had met at the shelter.  Jessie had always been a dog lover, but apartment life forced her to push the urge to bring home every one she passed on the street.  She was curious why Dex, obviously a dog person, didn’t have a few wandering around the cottage, waiting for crumbs to drop onto the floor. 
It must be the city apartment living excuse
. 
Too bad
,
it would have been nice to have a dog around this weekend.
 

As if on cue, a bark interrupted their chatter. Dex put down his almost finished sandwich and got up to open the back door, located in a mud room, just off the kitchen.  She heard the pitter-patter of nails hitting linoleum before she saw who joined them for lunch.

“Jessie meet Duke,” Dex moved aside to let a dog she recognized barrel past him into the kitchen. 

Jessie couldn’t believe it as she bent down to pat the soft fur behind the dog’s ears. 

“Hey buddy,” she said.  Stroking his head she looked up at Dex.  “I know this dog.  I mean, I met him earlier, outside the restaurant in Madison.  That’s a thirty minute drive from here.”  There was no way this dog could be the same dog that had greeted her when she entered, and again when she left, the diner.

Jessie’s revelation didn’t seem to phase Dex.  He knelt beside his dog and explained that Pete had taken him into town earlier to pick up Samantha’s designer beer, that Dex had forgotten, accidently on purpose, the day before. 

“Were you exploring, Dukie?”  He asked his panting companion.  The shaggy dog’s response was to lick the floor beside Jessie’s chair, which no doubt had a layer of crumbs on it.  If graceful wasn’t her middle name, messy may have been. 

Dex straightened and moved her empty plate into the double sink, while Duke remained enthralled with the abundance of unintentional leftovers on the floor, and Jessie finished her beer.  She dug her vibrating cell phone out of her pocket, before it vibrated her right off the stool she teetered on, and saw three text messages from Ger.  Nothing urgent.  Her response could wait.

Dex stretched across the counter with a devilish grin. “My turn.” 

Duke’s arrival made her forget their pre-sandwich deal.

“Ah yes,” she backed slightly away from him, to get a better view of his changing expressions, and crossed her arms.  “You can have three questions to equal the number you so graciously allowed me.”