If Only in My Dreams Read online

  And the train is stopping and the door is opening and…

  And…

  How did this happen?

  Clara stands frozen for just another moment, pondering the miracle.

  Then she hurtles herself forward, toward the door, down the steps, onto the platform…

  A wooden platform.

  A wooden platform and a wooden depot house, and on the nearest wall someone has drawn a line with an odd little caricature of a man’s eyes peering above it, and the words KILROY WAS HERE.

  And it isn’t raining—the sky is a study in whitish-purplish-gray above a snowy landscape. It’s cold, much colder than it was in the city, where she stashed her red hat and mittens in the zippered pockets of her down jacket.

  It feels different, here. It feels…

  Like 1941.

  Still, she isn’t sure.…

  Not even when she looks toward the hills for the condominium complex and finds only woods—nor when she looks for the supermarket and finds a Victorian mansion.…

  Maybe I’m hallucinating, or dreaming, or having an episode, or…

  She walks slowly across the empty platform and down the steps, her rubber-soled sneakers making a thumping, hollow sound on the snow-coated boards.

  The familiar stretch of village green and Main Street await.

  Even from here, she can see the old-fashioned houses and people and cars.…

  But this might not be real.

  It might just be in my head.

  It might just be that I want it so badly that—

  “Clara!”

  She whirls around in the direction of the voice…

  And there he is.

  Jed Landry, running coatless toward the depot, calling her name.

  That’s when she knows…

  It’s real.

  Clara is running—but this time, she isn’t fleeing from Jed.

  She’s running toward him.

  That, to him, is easily as astounding as having seen her materialize on the platform just now, almost as if he willed her here.

  That isn’t the case, of course. He knows that she came to town in the regular way—he witnessed her stepping off the train from down the block just as he was racing toward the station on a ridiculous, glorious whim.

  I must look like a crazy fool.

  He can feel people turning to watch him as he sprints past and knows that he’s creating another spectacle for the whole town to gossip about, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if he winds up in Hedda Hopper’s column tomorrow.

  All he cares about is Clara.

  He wonders, as he covers the last twenty yards between them, what he should do when he gets to her.

  It would seem rather silly to stop short, walk up, and shake hands.

  Yet it wouldn’t be right, either, to seize her and kiss her as though she’s his long-lost love.…

  Would it?

  Who knows?

  Who cares?

  Whatever happens, happens, he tells himself, racing toward the finish line with a final, elated burst of energy.

  In every wishful Clara scenario he’s created these last two days, never did he imagine that she would launch herself fervently into his arms.

  Yet that’s exactly what happens when they reach each other.

  “Jed, I can’t believe it.” She encircles his neck in an embrace and he can feel her breath warm against his skin.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks in wonder, holding her close, not caring who or what she really is. “Did you hear me calling you?”

  “Calling me?” she echoes.

  “Never mind,” he says quickly, realizing that she either doesn’t know what he’s talking about—or isn’t ready to admit anything about the transmitter. “I just can’t believe you’re really here.”

  Her face is buried against his neck just above the collar of his dress shirt, her skin tantalizingly warm against his. “I had to come back.”

  “For your bags,” he remembers, pulling up to look at her.

  “My bags…?”

  “Your suitcase, your pocketbook…”

  Your spy transmitter…

  Though now that she’s here, the word spy is utterly incongruous.

  Clara McCallum, if that’s her real name, may be an enigma, but whatever she’s hiding can’t possibly mean him—or anyone—any harm.

  “Oh, my bags… I almost forgot.” She smiles.

  That’s when he notices… she looks so different.

  Everything about her… her face… her hair… her clothes…

  Her lashes, her lips, her skin are startlingly free of cosmetics. She radiates a simple, wholesome beauty, her face framed by a tumble of unfettered waves that beg his fingers.

  Gone are the trim, prim suit, the silk stockings, the fashionably high platform sandals. Her figure is obliterated by some kind of quilted, satiny red parka. With it, she wears long, sadly worn, uncuffed dungarees, and thick-soled, chunky white shoes that appear to be made of rubber and leather.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she says softly, and he looks up to see her watching his face. “No, wait… I really don’t know what you’re thinking. But I can imagine.”

  He smiles faintly, trying not to look down at her curious clothing again. “I was just…” He trails off, not wanting to insult her.

  “Wondering what I’m wearing?” She smiles back, but only with her mouth.

  He tries to decipher her strange expression before a gust of wind blows her hair across her face, obliterating it.

  “It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing,” he tells her truthfully, watching her duck her head, then toss it.

  She’s trying to get the hair out of her eyes, he realizes, and she doesn’t want to let go of me to do it.

  He doesn’t want to let go of her, either. He wants to hold her closer—wants more than that.

  “It does matter what I’m wearing,” she’s protesting. “I look ridiculous.”

  “No. You look beautiful.” Giving in to temptation, he reaches down and brushes the stubborn strands away from her face. Her hair is spun silk in his fingers.

  “But… I can’t go around looking like this.”

  “Yes, you can. All that matters is that you’re here.”

  “You know what? That’s all that matters to me right now, too.”

  She looks into his eyes, and he gets the sense that she wants to tell him something else.

  But instead of saying another word, she stands up on her tiptoes and, incredibly, brushes his lips with her own.

  The contact is feathery-swift: angel’s wings. A kiss as gossamer as the soft strands of hair still draped in Jed’s fingers.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “No.” Before she can pull away, Jed’s mouth instinctively claims hers with a hunger he hadn’t known he possessed, a hunger that can’t possibly be sated with one brazen kiss.

  Miraculously, Clara doesn’t stop him. Her mouth opens against his and he deepens the kiss, daring to allow his tongue to caress hers for a few tantalizing seconds until he remembers where they are: in the middle of Main Street, in broad daylight.…

  Undoubtedly with an audience.

  Summoning a supreme tide of willpower, Jed manages to break the kiss. For her sake. He can just imagine what people will say about her.

  He opens his eyes reluctantly, uncertain what he’ll find.

  One glance at Clara’s face, flushed with the heat of requited passion, and…

  To hell with what people think or say.

  Nearly consumed by the powerful, primal urge to kiss her again, it’s all he can do to find his voice. He wants to ask her if he’s dreaming. But if this were a dream, they would be alone together, away from prying eyes.

  He reluctantly allows the downy strands of her hair to fall away from his grasp at last, fighting the urge to entwine his entire hand in that lustrous mane and kiss her again.

  “I can’t believe you’re really here,
Clara.”

  “I can’t, either.” Again, the flicker of an inscrutable expression in her gaze.

  “I honestly didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

  “I didn’t, either. And it wasn’t easy for me to get back here, but… I had to find a way.”

  “What do you mean? Why was it so hard for you to get here?”

  She hesitates. Shrugs.

  Then she breaks eye contact, lowering her gaze.

  In that moment, for Jed, the real world begins to intrude.

  He hears a car door slam in the distance, tires crunching along the snowy pavement, faint swing music on a far-off radio, the gleeful shouts of children sledding on the hill behind the redbrick elementary school down the block.

  Though he doesn’t dare to turn his head, he can feel the stares of curious bystanders scorching him like hot rays on a July beach.

  He and Clara can’t just stand indefinitely on the street, talking… kissing.

  “Can you come back to the store with me?” he asks, belatedly remembering that he dashed out the door without a moment’s hesitation, thus recklessly abandoning his business for the second time this week.

  He braces himself for her to say no.

  Or that she’ll come just to pick up her things before catching the next train back to the city.

  But when she looks up at him again, she’s smiling.

  In a voice that rings almost serene to his ears, she replies, “Of course.”

  Jed is silent as they walk toward the five-and-dime.

  Clara is grateful for the chance to collect her thoughts.

  She’s actually done it!

  She’s successfully transported herself back to 1941, propelled by a force more powerful than many times the magnitude of the sun’s cumulative energy.…

  An energy that could only have come from within.

  And in the end, is that really so surprising? Can science ever possibly begin to interpret the potency of pure human emotion?

  Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation.

  I needed to be here, for him, she thinks, glancing over at Jed Landry. And so I am.

  This time, knowing that she’s really traveled back in time, she pays more attention to the details. This is what the world was really like sixty-five years ago.

  No, this is the world, sixty-five years ago.

  Eyes wide with exhilarated wonder, she takes in the oversized cars tooling along the avenue, the quaint stores with their deco-lettered signage, the passersby who look as though they just stepped out of a Frank Capra movie.…

  And who, she can’t help but acknowledge, are looking at her as though she just stepped out of a spaceship.

  They can’t possibly suspect anything, she assures herself.

  After all, even Jed doesn’t seem suspicious.

  Yet she keeps catching people staring at her, far more politely and surreptitiously than they do in Clara’s century—but still staring.

  I have to do something about these clothes.

  And she will. First chance she gets. Jed said he has her bag; there must be something in it that she can wear.

  They’ve reached the five-and-dime.

  Jed closes the door firmly behind them, shutting out the outside world at last.

  If he took her in his arms again right here and now, Clara wouldn’t stop him.

  But he just clears his throat and says, “Here we are.”

  Yes, here they are. Clara looks around at the tin ceiling, the worn wooden floor, the vintage merchandise, drinking it all in like a welcoming cup of steaming cocoa.

  On a nearby table, she spots a snow globe with a smiling, dark-haired angel inside. Picking it up, she shakes it and a blizzard erupts beyond the glass, momentarily obscuring the angel.

  “Why is this marked as is?” she asks Jed, wishing she could add it to her own collection of brunette angels.

  “Because her wing is broken and the glass is cracked. See?”

  She peers at the globe and spots the angel’s wounded wing tip. “Yes, but you can barely see it. I would buy this in a heartbeat.”

  Yes, because she’s scarred, just like me. And…

  “She’s all alone in there,” Clara notices. “All the other snow globes have more than one angel.” And, of course, they all have golden hair.

  “That’s because she’s special. And this globe is musical… see?” Jed takes it from her and winds a key in the bottom.

  Clara smiles, recognizing the delicate melody: “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”

  Too bad she doesn’t have 1940s’ currency in her pocket. If she did, she’d buy the snow globe to display with her angels on the mantel back home.

  Carefully setting it back on the table, Jed returns his attention to Clara, eyeing her ski parka with renewed ambivalence.

  “Can I take your… uh, coat?” Clearly, he uses the term loosely.

  Hmm. What is she wearing underneath it?

  It takes her a moment to remember: It’s her old hooded Yankees sweatshirt—emblazoned with the Red Sox and Yankees insignias and the words AMERICAN LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES 2004. She clears her throat. “I’ll keep my coat on for now, thanks.”

  He looks surprised. “Are you sure?”

  Oh, trust me, I’m positive.

  She simply nods, wondering how long she can get away with this.

  Not just keeping her coat on.

  This whole… charade. How long before he figures out that she’s not just a regular 1940s’ gal dropping by for a visit?

  Should she break the truth to him?

  How would she even begin?

  If she’s going to save him—and she still has no clue whether that is even possible—she may at some point need to tell him, in a calm, straightforward way, what she knows and how she knows it.

  Right. And then he will very calmly place a straightforward call to the local psychiatric hospital.

  But right now, he isn’t looking at her as though he thinks she’s crazy. He’s taken a step closer, looking at her as though he’s thinking pretty much the same thing she was a moment ago: that he wouldn’t be opposed to taking her into his arms again and—

  “Hello, Jed,” trills a voice.

  A woman’s head, wearing a brimmed hat, pops out from behind a shelf at the back of the store.

  “Oh, hello, Mrs. Shelton. I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”

  “I came in a few minutes ago. I thought you must be back in the stockroom,” the customer informs him, flicking a curious gaze over Clara. Her eyebrows rise visibly as she takes in the outfit and hairstyle—or rather, Clara realizes, the lack of both.

  “Can I help you find something?” Jed asks politely.

  “I was just looking for a chenille bed jacket for my sister Gertrude as a Christmas gift.” Her eyes remain fastened disapprovingly on Clara. “But I don’t see any here.”

  “We have quite a few bed jackets in stock.” Jed crosses the floor to help her, shooting an apologetic glance over his shoulder.

  Clara shrugs to show him that it’s all right.

  Of course, it isn’t. Why did that woman have to pop up just as Jed was going to kiss her again?

  Why? Because this is a dime store, not a bedroom. And you’re not here to lust after Jed Landry, you’re here to figure out if you can save his life, remember?

  Mr. Kershaw might not believe that’s possible, but there are plenty of physicists who probably wouldn’t believe any of this is possible.

  But what if…

  No. It’s real. You know it’s real.

  Still, as soon as Jed disappears behind a clothing rack with Mrs. Shelton, Clara strides over to the display of newspapers on the counter. She wants to check the date, just to be absolutely sure.

  And…

  There it is.

  Wednesday, December 3, 1941.

  A little thrill shoots through her at this latest validation that she really is here… not, she reminds herself again, that there was any lingering doubt. />
  Nineteen forty-one is real, and Jed is real, and, for that matter, so is the attraction she thought she sensed from the moment they first met.

  But what good is that going to do either of us?

  On that dark thought, a group of chattering schoolboys enter the store from the street, obviously fresh from the last bell. They’re wearing caps and wool coats, carrying lunch pails and their books bound by straps slung over their shoulders.

  “Say, ma’am, do you have any pop gums?” the tallest and boldest of the boys asks, and to Clara’s relief, he appears completely oblivious to her attire.

  Okay, then, what’s a pop gum? Some kind of candy? Bubble gum?

  She quickly surveys the row of labeled glass canisters on the counter. Peppermint sticks, lollipops, bubble gum, licorice…

  Clara glances over her shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” the ringleader kid asks in a tone that makes Clara fairly certain that she shouldn’t be looking for pop gums amid the penny-candy jars.

  “What was it that you asked for again?”

  “Popguns.”

  “Pop guns?” she echoes, just to be sure.

  Nodding, the boys exchange glances.

  Then she catches one of them looking down at her right sneaker as though he’s never seen such a thing before… and is about to ask what it is.

  “Hang on a second, um… fellas,” she inserts strategically, lest anyone dare suspect that she’s not completely at home here in 1941, where children are apparently free to roam the streets in search of weapons. “I’ll go check.”

  Clara slips to the back of the store, where she finds Jed holding up a pale-pink chenille bed jacket for Mrs. Shelton’s perusal.

  “Excuse me… sorry to interrupt, but there’s a group of boys up there who want to buy popguns.”

  “Can you do me a favor and show them where they are?” Jed asks.

  “I can… if you tell me where they are.” Not to mention what they are.

  “Oh—past the dolls, in the bin next to the spinning tops, on the shelf below the board games on the side wall.”

  Clara nods. All right, so they’re talking toy guns, here. You learn something new every… second.

  “Does she work here?” Mrs. Shelton asks in surprise.

  Without missing a beat, Jed says firmly, “Of course she works here. What did you think?”

  Mrs. Shelton sputters some kind of reply meant to indicate that she knew all along that Clara was an employee.…