Her hug almost crushed his vertebrae to powder. “But,” he said, “But—”
“I know. I know,” said Jessica, her voice a soothing lullaby as she led a shocked Jim over to the sofa next to her chair. Sitting on the arm of the chair, she grasped Jim’s hands in her own and looked deeply into his eyes.
“I know you must have questions for me, Jim. And I know that you are as confused as we are, so why don’t we just let Thomas explain what happened?” she said soothingly. “Okay?”
Of all the Kafkaesque events Jim had experienced during his first day in the past, this was the most bizarre, the most personal for him, overwhelming in its emotion. Afraid that if he opened his mouth his brain would simply stall and refuse ever to start again, he contented himself with a simple nod of acquiescence.
Thomas took that as his cue to begin explaining exactly what had happened.
“I was at my brother Jed’s in Miami,” Thomas began. An eddy of emotion rippled beneath the surface of his crisp accounting of the resurrection of his long dead wife, but a smile from Jessica allowed him to gather his emotions before continuing.
“He asks me over there every year, so this year I figured, what the hell, I’d take him up on the invite. The family was all there. We’d seen in the New Year and I was on my way upstairs to bed.”
Thomas paused before continuing. Jim knew he was rerunning the split-second just before the event through his mind. “Next thing I know, I’m in our back garden; it’s the middle of the damn day and I’ve got the water hose in my hand and I’m watering Jessie’s roses. I always loved to do that, ’cause of that look she’d give me when she saw me doing it. I thought I was dreaming. Thought maybe I’d had a stroke or some mental problem. Thought something might have snapped inside here,” Jim tapped his forehead with a finger.
“Anyway, I had no idea how I got back home, but the sun was shining and the bees were buzzing and it was too real for it all to be a dream. And then here she comes, like nothing ever happened, like she’d never… never…” His words trailed away to nothing and Jessica reached out her hand, grasping her husband’s in her own and giving it a tight squeeze to accompany her reassuring smile.
Thomas squeezed his wife’s hand back and wiped the tears away from his eyes. “Anyway, here she comes walking down the path toward her roses like she hadn’t been gone more than a minute. I guess that’s all it’s been for her after all, just a minute. She had this confused, odd expression on her face. She just walks up the path and stands in front of me, looking straight into my eyes and I can’t say a damn thing.”
“His mouth was hanging so far open it about touched the ground,” Jessica interjected with a wry smile. “I swear, for a man who has so much to say he’s been pretty damn quiet today.”
Thomas continued as if he hadn’t heard the fun his wife had just poked at him. “Next thing I know my leg is freezing cold and soaking wet from the damn hose. That snapped me out of my dumbness and I just grabbed her.”
“You about broke my back you hugged me so hard, you big brute you,” said Jessica, throwing a playful punch at her husband’s arm.
“She kept asking me what was wrong, over and over. I couldn’t speak a damn word — mouth kept moving but no sound came out. She was saying that she didn’t remember how she got home. That she might have had a blackout and all I could do was hug her and cry my damn eyes out like some big old baby.”
Jim’s father-in-law’s voice became sober. “But James, I knew any second I was going to wake up, that I’d find out this was just a dream. But it’s not James, it’s a miracle.” Thomas’s jaw quivered, on the verge of tears again. “An honest to God miracle.”
Jessica took over: “The last thing I remember before finding myself back at the house was taking the car to do some shopping. It was raining and I stopped at an intersection about to turn into the lot of the Albertson’s out in the village. There was a bang, and I remember being jerked against my seatbelt and this… screaming sound. Next thing I know I’m standing in the kitchen peeling carrots and I don’t have a clue how I got there.”
Jim could still remember the Sheriff’s account of the accident that killed Jessica Shane: the driver of an SUV lost control as he approached the set of traffic—lights where Jessica had pulled to a stop. The SUV aquaplaned on the rain covered surface, right into the back of her Toyota with so much force he knocked Jessica’s smaller car into the center of the intersection. She was hit driver-side—on by an eighteen-wheeler doing fifty plus — at least ten miles over the legal limit the Sheriff had explained — she didn’t stand a chance.
Died instantly, the Sheriff had assured him.
Jim went with Thomas to identify her body. He volunteered to make the identification himself at the morgue, but Thomas said he had to do it, otherwise he would spend the rest of his life never really knowing if it was his sweet Jessica or not. The Sheriff’s Deputy who accompanied them had already warned Jim it might be best for him to make the ID rather than the deceased’s husband, and he tried his best to persuade Thomas, but the older man was having none of it.
He’d escorted his father-in-law to the viewing gallery and the attendant pulled back the sheet covering the corpse on the gurney. Thomas had broken down, collapsing into Jim’s arms at the sight of his wife’s decimated body.
But now, here she was.
Remade and looking just as she had years before she had died. It truly did seem to be a miracle.
Jim was still too stunned to comment.
After the initial shock of their reunion, Thomas had walked Jessica into the living room, sat her down, poured them both a drink and insisted she finish hers before he sat down himself to describe what had happened. He explained to her about the accident; how she had been gone for so many years, and how every day he had prayed it would be his last. That he would be able to join her, so the pain her absence had left could end — because he loved her, he loved her more than he could ever possibly say.
“I told her something wonderful had happened. That God had brought her back to me,” said Thomas.
“I don’t know if it’s a miracle or something else,” Jim replied, finally finding his voice. “There’s so much death and destruction out there that I have to believe this is probably manmade rather than divine intervention.”
“Of course it’s a miracle,” insisted Thomas, a broad smile crossing his face. “James, don’t you understand? Don’t you realize what this means?”
Jim shook his head. “What are you getting at?”
Jessica reached out and took his hand. “Jim, if I’m alive then what about all the others who died between now and 2042?”
“What about Lark?” said Thomas.
The realization hit him like a hammer blow to the chest. “Dear God, almighty,” he whispered, instantly on his feet. “I’ve got to try and find her. What if she’s out there? What if she’s alone?”
The panic that overcame him was total and choking. He was going to fail his kid again. She was out there somewhere in the night and he could do nothing to help her.
Jessica was with him in a second. Her arms enfolded him pulling him to her. “It’s okay — Lark’s okay,” she insisted, the words spoken with such sincerity and certainty he found himself believing them too. This event was too big, too huge for it not to hold some kind of cosmic meaning. For it to be just a random act of an uncaring universe beggared belief. The universe could not be so cruel — could it?