Chapter 9
Back at the apartment, a red Jeep Wrangler with the roof and doors removed was backed into the driveway next to Mary’s parking space, the spot that used to be James’s. For the briefest moment, she let herself believe the vehicle belonged to James, that he still lived here, and would help her navigate her new life. On some level, she knew he couldn’t still be here. He lived on the West Coast and was an international superstar. Besides, he didn’t even have a license anymore. He’d let it expire because his chauffeur drove him everywhere in a black Mercedes SUV. When James lived in the apartment below hers, he’d driven a fifteen-year-old rusty blue Renault Le Car with a hole in the floorboard on the passenger side. Watching the road zoom by below her as they drove around MetroWest together, Mary had always felt as if she were on the fast road to success. Boy had she gotten that wrong. Her old life had gone nowhere.
The door to the first-floor apartment swung open. A man who most certainly was not James but most definitely resembled Lady Gaga’s handsome ex-boyfriend, Taylor Kinney, the actor who played a Chicago firefighter, stepped onto the landing, a large black dog with a white diamond-shaped fur patch on his chest following behind. Mary shut her eyes, more sure than ever she was hallucinating. When she opened them again, the man, presumably her downstairs neighbor, was still there, walking toward her car. Not only did he resemble the Chicago Fire actor, but he wore a gray T-shirt with a fire department insignia. He grinned at her like no handsome twenty-something man had in quite some time, and Lord help her, that made her feel powerful. She was so used to being invisible to young men.
He stood by her driver’s side door, waiting for her to climb out. By the way he was smiling at her, she was certain she was supposed to know him, yet he was a stranger to her. For several seconds, she remained rooted behind the steering wheel, afraid to interact with him. Surely he’d realize there was something off about her, that she wasn’t a typical twenty-something. Finally, she slid out of the car and stepped onto the driveway. The dog rushed to her side and leaned against her. She reached down to pat him. As her hand traveled over his silky hair, she had the inexplicable urge to belt out the lyrics to “My Way,” a song she’d never liked.
“How’s our resident Savannah Guthrie today?” her neighbor asked.
At the sound of his low-pitched teasing voice, she stumbled and had to grab on to the side mirror to steady herself. Was she really so lucky that she had a job at Channel 77 and that this Taylor Kinney look-alike lived below her? And was he flirting with her? She hoped this hallucination wouldn’t end anytime soon.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked. He stepped closer, the scent of his sharp, zingy cologne filling the air between them. “I hope you’re not still embarrassed about last weekend.”
What happened last weekend? She waited for memories to fill in like Darbi said they would. Nothing came to her, not even his name. How will I get by if people know me and things about my life but I don’t know anything about them—or even myself? She forced herself to silence her inner dialogue and engage with the neighbor with the sexy, manly stubble outlining his jaw.
“Are you embarrassed?” he asked again.
She waved her hand as if dismissing his suggestion. “I’ve already forgotten all about it.”
“You haven’t. You just don’t want to talk about it, but I think we should.”
Her mind raced, trying to think of something that might have happened between them.
He kicked at the ground. A small stone skidded across the pavement and bounced off the front tire of her car. “I don’t want things to be awkward between us.”
No, no, no! She drew in a deep breath. Did she sleep with him?
“I’m hoping we can still be friends.” He looked so earnest as he said it that she was almost certain they’d been together. A wave of guilt washed over her. She’d never cheated on Dean. Had never even thought about it. So, why was she dreaming about this guy?
A woman walking a yellow Lab passed on the sidewalk in front of the house. The black dog bolted from Mary’s side down the driveway toward them.
“Frank,” her neighbor yelled. “Get your butt back here.”
Mary felt a jolt to her temples, and the driveway seemed to move as if it were a treadmill. Her grip on the mirror tightened as memories came to her, just like Darbi had promised. The dog’s name was Frank Sinatra, and he had belonged to the downstairs neighbor’s grandfather, who had moved to an assisted care residence that didn’t allow pets. Her firefighter neighbor had insisted on taking the dog so he wouldn’t end up at a shelter. While she was certain the information was true, she had no idea where it had come from and no recollection of this guy’s name. Still, the memory dump reassured her that other details of her new life would emerge.
The Taylor Kinney look-alike whistled. Frank Sinatra reversed direction and trotted back to his side.
“You’re still coming to Belli’s birthday party Saturday night, right?” he asked.
Mary waited for information about the hot firefighter or Belli to come to her just like it had for the dog, but it didn’t. Belli was probably his girlfriend. Gabriella or Isabella. Whatever her name was, Mary didn’t want to meet her. Not if what she thought had happened with him had happened. “I don’t know.”
“Because of last weekend?”
She looked into his bright-blue eyes, wishing she knew what had happened and really hoping she hadn’t slept with him. Just thinking about it made her feel like a dirty old woman. She’d never identified with Mrs. Robinson or wanted to be a cougar.
“Let’s go inside and talk,” he said.
“No.” The last thing she wanted to do was talk about something some other version of herself had done. “I’m on my way out.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You just got here.”
She bolted for her car.
“Come on, Mary,” he called out. “Let’s be adults and talk about this.”
The tires kicked up dust as she peeled out of the driveway.
Mary’s entire body vibrated with nervous energy as she drove off. She pulled over to the side of the road to collect herself but couldn’t stop shaking. What was happening to her felt too real to be a hallucination, and she certainly hadn’t been hallucinating when Darbi had told her about Mulligan magic at lunch that day. She’d been telling the truth. Somehow by getting her wisdom teeth out, Mary had entered another dimension where she was thirty years younger. All she’d wanted was a chance to work at a news station again. Instead, she’d broken her marriage vows to Dean with a boy Kendra’s age. And she was living in a world where Kendra didn’t exist, which made it a less happy place than her real world. Mary shook her head. It had been fun to look in the mirror and see her young self, but it was time to get back to her husband and daughter. She stepped on the gas and sped across town to Darbi’s.
Like earlier, Darbi floated around the pool on the unicorn. This time, Jackson Browne singing “Somebody’s Baby” blasted from the wireless speakers.
Mary raced toward the diving board. “How do I get back?” She shouted to be heard over the music.
Darbi, who had been lying on the float, pulled herself up to a sitting position. “What happened?”
“I slept with my neighbor.” The words left a nasty taste in Mary’s mouth. She wished she had a mint.
“In the thirty minutes you were gone, you had sex?”
Mary kicked off her sandals and plopped down on the diving board, wincing as the hot plastic scorched the backs of her bare legs. The pool’s bluish-green tiles reflected off the water, making it the color of the Caribbean Sea. She dipped her feet below the surface. Her entire body cooled. “Before I got here.”
Using her hands to paddle, Darbi maneuvered to the deep end and reached for the edge of the pool below Mary’s dangling feet to anchor herself. “You’re not making sense.”
“You told me I’d be able to pull up memories, but I met my downstairs neighbor, and nothing came to me. I think we slept together.” She splashed water over her arms as if trying to wash the neighbor off her skin.
Darbi bit down on her lip. She had a gleam in her eyes that let Mary know she was trying not to laugh. “Why would you think that?”
“The things he said.”
“Is he attractive?”
An image of his face with his square jaw and plump, kissable lips popped into Mary’s head. “Extremely.”
Darbi cocked her head. “Maybe you want to sleep with him.”
“No, I don’t.” Her cheeks flamed as she thought about undressing in front of another man. Dean had looked at her with wide-eyed wonderment the first time they’d been together. “You are so beautiful,” he’d said, his voice breaking with emotion. Even now, after all this time, on the occasions they were together that special way, he still looked at her as if he was amazed she was with him, making her feel like the girl she used to be instead of the beyond-middle-aged woman with the saggy body she was. “The only man I want to sleep with is Dean,” she said.
Sorrow replaced the gleam in Darbi’s eyes. Mary didn’t understand why. It wasn’t as if she would never be with Dean again. She just couldn’t be with him while she was twenty-four.
“What exactly did your neighbor say?” Darbi asked, her voice flat, with none of the teasing from before.
“He asked if I was embarrassed about what happened last weekend. Said he didn’t want things to be awkward between us and hoped we could still be friends.”
“‘Awkward’? Yikes.” Darbi rolled off the float and disappeared underwater.
Mary squirmed. That word had triggered the same reaction in Darbi as it had in her. “What should I do?” she asked when Darbi emerged in the shallow end.
“There isn’t anything you can do.”
Mary hung her head. “I hope that memory never comes to me. It would make things really uncomfortable with Dean when I return to my real life.”
Darbi’s face turned ghostly white. “Return to your other life?”
Mary nodded.
Darbi stared at her for several seconds. A few times, her lips parted as if she was about to say something, but then she snapped them closed.
“What?” Mary asked.
“Forget about Dean. Forget about the neighbor. You’re here because you wanted to anchor the news. You need to do that.”
Mary fidgeted, and the diving board bounced in response. Darbi was right. She couldn’t waste this magical do-over opportunity. All she had to do was stay here long enough to be offered the promotion. She would say yes, and voilà, she’d return to her real life as a famous anchor. The Independent Cable News Network ID badge she’d found in her wallet let her know that dream was within reach.
“You told me memories of my new life would come to me, but not all of them are. Why is that?”
Next door a dog barked with an insistence that made Mary wonder if he’d been eavesdropping and had the answer she needed.
Darbi covered her ears with her hands. “I don’t know.” She pulled herself up the ladder and hustled across the pool deck to a small table with her suntan lotion and her essential oils. She sprayed the oil on her wrists and took three deep breaths.
Mary wondered what had made her uncomfortable and why she needed a calming spray when she’d been relaxing by the pool all day. Well, of course, this crazy situation must be the reason.
“I never had to worry about filling in the blanks because I moved here right after it happened to me. Uncle Cillian lived his entire life in the same tiny village, so he went through it. He sent me letters that explained some of his experience.”
Mary jumped to her feet. “What did they say?”
Darbi shrugged. “I never read them.”
“What?”
“This whole thing makes me so uncomfortable.” She sprayed some of the oil on her neck. “I wanted to put it out of my mind and live a normal life. Before I left, he told me he was going to write, give me advice. I asked him not to.” She scrunched up her face. “It infuriated me to see his chicken scratch on those international envelopes.”
“Oh, Darbi.”
“I kept them, just in case I ever needed them, but can’t remember where I put them. I’ll keep looking.”
The familiar jingle of an ice cream truck played out front.
Darbi glanced at the clock hanging above the pool bar. “It’s getting late. You should go. Jacqui will be home soon. We have to act like everything’s normal so she doesn’t suspect anything. I don’t think we’re ready for that.”
“What if I can’t figure out what’s happening at work tomorrow?”
“You will.”
“How do you know?”
They walked toward the fence gate in silence, the glare from the June sun making it hard to see in front of them.
“Because somehow you already know you have to work tomorrow.”