The Time I Died
Chapter Eleven
Hey, Kate here again.
Thinking about the future used to scare the hell out of me. It can be pretty scary, right? You could get hit by a bus, or fall down the stairs, or get dragged into a basement and hypnotized into wearing a metallic gold bikini. You don’t expect any of those things to happen when you get out of bed in the morning, but… sometimes that’s how your day goes.
Lately, though? I’ve started to enjoy daydreaming about the future. We’re hoping to get to Paris this year, if we can find a good deal on a flight. Maybe we won’t, but a girl can dream, right?
A girl can dream.
This girl can dream!
How cool is that? Years ago, I would have laughed in your face if you told me to dream of a better future. If you caught me at the wrong place and the wrong time, I would have monotoned something about my Master being my past, present, and future. That Kate never dared to dream, because she didn’t know that she could.
This is another one of those ‘Kate tells you to try it’ moments. The next time you start to dream of a happy future thing, whether you’re in your bed or at your desk, stop and appreciate just how amazing it is to be able to imagine a better future. Even if it’s a long shot, even if it would take a miracle. Because there’s a girl out there who can’t. Trust me. I was once her.
And now I dream every chance I get.
August 8
“I don’t think I’ve ever asked if you wanted to have children, Kate. Is that the plan?”
“It wasn’t. I always rebuffed the idea when I was brainwashed, because of course I did. But since Decker died, I’ve been thinking more and more about it. It’s become this real thing that I might actually do, which is a little scary. It’s so much! It’s so not old me!”
“You’re feeling much less afraid now. Has that been the catalyst?”
“My mom would have lost her mind if she knew that I would be here in my early thirties and childless. And then at the other end of the field you’d have my Aunt pretending to faint from shock because her niece was thinking of tying herself down with children.
So… yeah, we’ve been talking about it more often. I think James gets a lot of pressure from his family. The kind of pressure they won’t lay on him when I’m in the room, but if it’s just him, they’ll act just like my mom. ‘Why are you still childless? Where’s my grandchildren?’ I guess that’s pretty common.”
“Do you feel that pressure from them as well? Even if indirectly?”
“I do, I guess. But I think I want kids. At least one. The… it… just feels right? The timing is right. We have the house. It has two bedrooms. Three, if you count the study. Things are pretty stable. James is happy in his job. I’m doing okay with my art, and I can always try going into consulting or freelancing. I’m not anyone’s brainwashed pawn. I’m not getting hypnotized and sent around the world.
And… I think I trust myself to be a good mother. My fears about hurting James, hurting my kids, hurting myself… I’m in a better place with that. I feel safe these days. Loved. Capable? Capable. But there’s also… okay, I’ll state for the record that I’m fully aware that what I’m going to tell you is a little petty.”
“Which is?”
“ when we talked about wanting to prove Decker wrong? I want to prove Decker wrong. I want to bring something good into this world.”
Freeport
He pulled up to the house and into the driveway. The garage was a tight squeeze with two cars, but James didn’t mind leaving his outside. The only time they really had to squish was on those nights when snow was expected, something that seemed to happen less and less often in Freeport these days. Still, he conceded, they would probably have to expand the garage eventually, one of many expensive home-improvement projects sitting on their collective back burner.
But at least they would be tackling it together, and to James, that was all that really mattered. Just another part of the life they were making for themselves. For that, he would spend every last dollar he had.
He locked up the Nissan and walked down to the curb to check the mailbox—flyers and bills—before heading for the front door. It occurred to him that the house seemed dark for being occupied; normally Kate left lights on all over.
He stepped inside and pocketed his keys. “Kate?”
She was standing in the entry, a few feet from the door, still wearing her coat and boots. She was looking at something on the floor. He’d been right about the lights. Aside from the entry, the whole house was dark, suggesting that Kate had gone from the garage to here and no further.
His stomach curled. This wasn’t like her at all.
“Hey.” He was by her side in moments. She shrank from him, which also wasn’t like Kate. Cautious, and sympathetic, he retreated.
“Are you okay? Did you lose something?”
“No.”
He winced. He hadn’t meant to crack a joke, but ‘did you lose something’ skirted awfully close to one. He could feel the fear inside, growing bigger with every Kate non-answer. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m… I don’t really have a good answer for that.”
“Do you want me to grab something from upstairs? Pepto, aspirin?”
“No, the thing… James…” She tapped her boot against the tiles. “I died here. Right here, on this floor. In this spot.”
Rarely a day went by when James hadn’t found himself in the same place, thinking the same thing. He often wondered if either of them would ever not immediately flash back to that day.
He set the mail on the floor. It could wait.
“I’m right here if you want to talk about it, hun. Can I set up the couch for us? Make some coffee? Hot chocolate?”
“You’re sweet.” She sniffled, loudly, and he realized that she’d been crying. She looked up at him with puffy red eyes. “Hot chocolate would be amazing right now.”
“I’m on it,” he replied, his voice softer than before.
He circled around Kate and was about to head into the living room when she spoke again, her voice echoing faintly off the tile.
“I hypnotized her.”
August 8
“Have you been working on your guilt?”
“Yes. Well, no.”
“How do you mean?”
“I said ’yes,’ but that’s not true. It’s just ‘no.’ It’s too easy to get swept up in my day, and then I forget that I even feel guilty about things. Then I , and it throws me down a guilty hole every time.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Does it happen a lot? Going down the hole?”
“Not as much as it used to. It’s mostly because I’ve been really busy, but also… it’s easier for me to forget? The further away from everything I get, the less it gnaws at me. I haven’t hypnotized anyone or been brainwashed to do anything in a long time. I never thought any of that would fade away, but…”
“That’s really good news, Kate. I can’t assure you that time heals all wounds, but the brain’s resiliency is truly a remarkable thing. Let’s talk about the guilt. What sort of guilt do you feel, when everything builds up and you fall down that hole?”
“The usual. Guilt over the things I’ve done, the people I’ve hurt, even if they don’t it. And then a big heaping spoonful of survivor guilt to top it all off.”
“We haven’t talked about that much. Survivor guilt. Is there someone you feel that you could have saved, but didn’t?”
“Maybe? I mean, yes. It’s definitely that. A nagging voice that tells me that I could have been stronger, and broken free earlier.
It’s like… when we talked about Alice? She told me that I would free myself when I was ready. And it took so long for me to become ready! If I’d gotten my shit together earlier, I could have saved lives. I was a brainwashed assassin working for an awful piece of shit. How many of those people might be alive today, except that I wasn’t ready?”
“I’ll share a piece of advice I got from my own aunt, Kate. She used to say ‘it has to bake in the oven.’ What she meant by that was that no matter how much you wanted something right now—and back then, it was us kids demanding cake right now—if you wanted something, you had to force yourself to wait until it was baked. Because opening the oven door didn’t get you the cake earlier, it got you a gross, mushy mess.”
“I like that. Also, are you my husband in disguise? The man loves baking, but he hates the waiting. Always checking the little clock on the stove.”
“Well, as far as your own guilt goes, Kate, that when we spoke about Alice, you pointed out that there were many reasons beyond your control that contributed to you not being ‘ready’ to free yourself. And that even if you had somehow freed yourself, you would have surrendered your free will to the next mind controller who came along.
Your husband was the reason why you were finally prepared to escape. Like you said, he was the first person to see you as a person, and not as a tool or an object. Until he came along—and for most of your time under Decker, he was on the other side of the country—you were trapped. Suffice to say that you took advantage of Alice’s suggestion as soon as you could.”
“A year, though. We were together a year before the accident. That’s an entire year of me doing bad things to people.”
Freeport
“You hypnotized…” He stopped and faced her, confused. “Who’s her?”
“It happened so fast. I just blurted it out and she dropped into trance.”
His mind raced through a few increasingly unlikely suspects—Claire, Disha Kapoor, the waitress who saved all of their asses from Decker, the Queen of England—before circling back to a more obvious answer.
“Michelle? The woman you ran into today?”
Kate nodded. Her hands were trembling. She hid them behind her back, afraid to let James see them. “She walked up to me, and I ed her from Golden Dawn. And I still her trigger phrase, because that bastard made sure I’d never forget it. And I just… at first I just wanted to see if it worked.”
“Kate,” he began, but she waved him off.
“N-no. Please, James. Not now. I need to get this off my chest. Also… I kind of practiced what I was going to say in the car driving home.”
“I understand. I’ll shut up and listen.”
Kate took a deep breath, then another, then a third, trying to force the words out. “I used Michael’s old trigger phrase on her. And it worked. She dropped into trance just like college was yesterday. And then… I… fuck. I’m so sorry. I’m just… James… I’m just…”
Her hands shook themselves free and dropped into view. Her lips chose that moment to tremble as well, and she clamped her mouth shut, teeth pressed against tucked-in lips and lips mashed against each other. The tears resumed. She didn’t try to stop them.
James closed the distance between them. He spread his arms and draped them loosely around her, waiting patiently for her to continue.
“I could have snapped her out of it. And… instead of doing that, I made her take me to her hotel room. And then I had her strip naked, and I brainwashed her.” A sigh, loud, desperate. She let her head fall against his shoulder.
“He made you want to hypnotize girls like her. It was—”
“No! It wasn’t his… it wasn’t like that. This time it was me, all me. But I swear, James, I swear on my heart and soul that I wanted to help her! I brought her up to her room and brainwashed her so I could protect her. I wanted to make sure that no one could ever use that phrase on her ever again!
So I erased it, and I replaced it with a new trigger phrase. Just some nonsense words we made up that I flushed down the toilet, and then I left her there in the room to wake up. I got dressed, and I went downstairs, and I met you for dinner and I acted like nothing happened.
And… I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know that your wife hypnotized a woman on the street today and then brainwashed her, against her will. I wanted you to know that about me. That it’s the kind of person I am, even now. Even after I died, and all of that died with me… I’m still her and I’m so, so fucking sorry.”
“Please don’t be sorry.”
“I am sorry! I’m not a monster. I promise I’m not. I’ve been trying so hard! I don’t know why I’m so stupid!”
“Hey,” he said. He hooked his thumb under Kate’s chin, gently encouraging her to look up at him. She followed his lead, their eyes meeting for the first time since the parking garage. They were both crying now.
“I… um… met my wife here.” He pointed to the floor. “Right here, on this floor, in this spot. I met the Kate without the facade, without the brainwashing, without the programming. I met her for the first time, right here, in this spot. I watched her come back to life in my arms.
You didn’t know who you were, and I guess I didn’t know who you were, either. But we stuck it out together, because nothing that Decker or Mulroney did to us could change us.
And I’m stupid, too. Because every day I walk by this spot and I think ‘that’s where Kate hit her head’ or ‘Kate likes to say that she died there’ and that’s not… it’s not true. I’ve been thinking about it all wrong. The truth is that it’s the spot you were born, Katie-Bear. In a way, it’s… where we got married. It’s where we fell in love. It’s where we found each other.
You know I promised that I would always trust you. After what happened in the bathtub, I promised I’d never doubt you again. And tonight… that’s what I’m gonna do. We can talk about it more, and I hope that we do, but… I wanted you to know that about me.”
“James…”
“I want you to know that I’m not going to judge you, and that I’m going to believe you, and that you’ll never, ever be a monster in my eyes.”
“Jesus. I love you so fucking much. I can’t even describe…” She raised her head, James lowering his to match, until they kissed. His arms tightened around her, keeping her safe, protecting her from the world. “I don’t deserve you.”
“I think by now we’ve earned each other.” He kissed her again. “We had to fight like hell for this. You had to fight like hell for this. Everything that’s happened to us happened because you didn’t die that day. You got back up, and you kept on going.”
“How do you… how do you always know exactly what to say to me?”
“That was off the top of my head. I know it’s probably a little cheesy, but—”
“No. It was beautiful. It really was.”
He motioned at the couch, nudging Kate ever so slightly in its direction. “Do you want to sit and talk? Or, sit and not talk? I promised you a couch date.”
“You did promise,” she noted. “You make lots of promises.”
“I try. It’s the Scout in me.”
She choked out a laugh, mixed with snot and the remainder of her tears. It dissolved into a brief coughing fit. She attempted a weak smile, holding up her right hand and giving him a thumbs up. “I’ll… gah! I’m going to die again in this same spot, fuck! I was… whew… I was going to say, I’ll put the kettle on if you take my coat for me.”
“Sounds good,” he said, extending his arm.
“Sounds good,” she agreed.
August 8
“That’s why I always my aunt’s advice. We would look through the oven window and see the cake, or the cookies, and they would look baked. The dough had risen, and the edges were golden. But what we couldn’t see was that the innards were still raw. The same for fish, or chicken, or anything, really.”
“You’re going to make me hungry.”
“Sorry about that. But you see my point, don’t you? Sometimes we have to trust that things will work out in due time, and that all we can do until then is wait.”
Owl Cove —2011
“That’s right. Baaaack and forth. Keep your eyes locked on it. Back and forth. Most people can’t keep their eyes on the pendant as it swings, but I can tell you’re an expert. Back and forth.”
“Back and… forth,” Michelle DiMera mumbled. She tried to silence the little alarm bells in her brain, the ones telling her that being this sleepy in the middle of the day—she hadn’t been this tired an hour ago—was concerning.
“I feel a little… weird?” She closed her eyes again, and sighed. Normally, falling asleep in public would have terrified her, but with Kate it was so safe and she could just relax so easily, so quickly, so calm…
“That’s just your body adjusting to being completely focused on my pendant, and on my voice. I knew you’d be good at this. If your eyes get heavy, you can let them sliiiiide closed, because you can still see the pendant even when they’re closed. Try it now. Close your eyes.”
Michelle did. She exhaled again, softer this time, as if even her lungs were completely and totally relaxed. A smile spread across her otherwise blank face. “I can see it. I can see it!”
“The pendant?”
“Yesss… I can see the pendant. S’pretty… I feel… uh…”
“It’s beautiful. Watch it swing back and forth inside your mind. You’re going to do so much better in class when you learn how to watch and listen, no matter how sleepy you are, no matter how tired your body feels, no matter how much you want to drop into a deep, peaceful sleep. A deep, deep sleep. You can fall into a deep, relaxing sleep now. Tired, and calm. Calm, and relaxed. Relaxed, and safe. Safe, and at peace.”
Michelle began to slide out of her chair, or at least to felt like she was. She was too tired to open her eyes and check. If she was falling, she was still doing it, tumbling over and over into an infinite blackness of space and time. Like someone had picked her up and thrown her into outer space. Not that it mattered. She could still see Kate’s pretty pendant back and forth, and hear Kate’s pretty voice sleep now, eyes closed, head down. Kate was so pretty. A pretty girl with a pretty voice and a pretty back and forth pendant that sent lighthouse flashes bouncing though her skull, over and over, back and forth.
Kate was saying something to her, something unimportant, something she could easily forget and would forget. The redhead snapped her fingers, and Michelle found herself still in her chair. At some point she had placed her head on the table. She sat upright, and smiled.
A thought came to her, something wonderful, something she simply had to share with her brilliant and pretty academic tutor.
“Yes,” she glowed. “I’m in a very deep hypnotic trance.”
Freeport
Kate returned from the kitchen with two steaming mugs in her hands. “Coffee’s ready.”
James pulled the fuzzy black blanket over himself, making room for Kate to sit next to him. He reached out to take the offered mug, settling back into the couch as Kate leaned into him. With an ease and flair that came from many months of practice, he flipped the blanket with a single hand so that it covered Kate from waist to toes.
“Thanks,” she smiled, raising the blanket to her shoulders. She dug into the couch, crossing her legs so that she could rest her feet on the coffee table. “The coffee’s a little strong tonight. I got a little carried away with the instant stuff.”
“It’s okay. I’ll… whoa.” He scrunched his face. “Oooh! Dang. That is strong!”
“I forgot that for this stuff you have to use the little spoon. I grabbed a regular one and dumped a huge heap in each mug. Sorry.”
“Who needs sleep?” He made a show of taking a big sip. “Besides, it’s Friday.”
The crying had stopped, but the sniffles continued. Lacking a handy box of tissues, Kate resorted to running a finger under her nose. Luckily, James was still thinking about the extra-strength brew, and paid her no mind.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Fighting the urge to get up right now and drive back to her hotel to undo what I did?” She set her mug on the end table and tucked her exposed arm under the blanket. “By the way, we are never getting rid of this couch, James. It’s been our lifeboat so many times.”
“Yeah, right? I never imagined the things that would come out of our mouths, sitting here on it. I just liked the color, and thought it was comfy.”
“It is comfy. I’ve missed our blanket couch dates.”
“Me, too.” A pause. Another sip and face scrunch. “You wouldn’t actually go back there though, would you?”
“To the hotel? God, if I knew you wouldn’t try to stop me, I would seriously consider it. If I had just ignored her on the street, she’d still be the same Michelle she was last week. But now? I have no idea what she might do, or say, or react. I did my best to take a light touch on the programming, but you know how people interpret commands sometimes.”
“I can’t imagine she would complain that you took a trigger phrase out of her head.”
“Well, she won’t a moment of it, so no.”
“Hun…” James slipped an arm around her, smiling as she sighed. “Do you know why I didn’t freak out when you told me about what you did to Michelle?”
“Because you promised you wouldn’t?”
“Okay, aside from that. I’m still only human. I could have been like ‘oh my God, Kate, how could you? I’m shocked! Why, Kate, why?’ I didn’t, and it’s because I knew you were going to tell me that you did it for her own good. That’s… that’s my Kate. You had the power to fix something, and you did. You always do.”
“I tried to fix it. What if I screwed it up? I didn’t… did I tell you that I programmed her to reprogram any other Golden Dawn girls she knows? She knows at least four of them.”
“You didn’t.”
They sat in silence for a minute.
“But,” James continued, “is that a bad thing? If they all have a trigger phrase squirreled away, and it’s that easy to spring it on them? You’re only fixing something that someone at the FBI should have fixed years ago.”
“What if one of them goes crazy and goes on a killing rampage?”
“Would they? You didn’t brainwash them to go on a killing rampage.”
Freeport Hyatt, Room 707
“Mmmph. Hello?”
Michelle tried to blink the grogginess out of her eyes. Her head felt like a sandbag.
Watch the pendant. Back and forth. You’re feeling so good. So hot. So horny.
Yesss… I need… so horny right now…
“Are you there? Michelle? Did I lose you?”
She snapped to full awareness, bolting upright in bed. The dream woman and her soft, seductive voice vanished, hidden away until the next sexy dream. “Tom! Hey!”
“Can you hear me? Oh, there you are.”
Yeah, I’m here! I… um… I was taking a nap just now.” She glanced down at her gloriously naked body, a naughty grin on her face. She neverslept in the nude at home. “How… um, how was your day, darling?”
“I tried calling earlier.” He sounded annoyed, which was nothing new. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him, at the ridiculous things he sometimes said and did. It was a bad habit, one that she knew she would catch hell for if caught, and she had resolved to break herself of it before he noticed.
“I told you, honey, I was napping. Today really took the wind out of me! It was…”
What had she been doing that had left her this tired? A full conference day, sure, but that ended hours ago and she’d had the entire afternoon and evening to-
“…really busy,” she said. Her body slumped, eyes glazing over. “I had dinner in this cute little seafood place, and then I took a long walk around town. It’s so pretty here! But I was pretty tired when I got back to the hotel, so I took a long nap.”
Yes, that’s exactly what happened. The leaves in Freeport were a perfect blend of gold, orange, and red. She really liked the way they fluttered the ground all around her. Memories of an evening stroll along quiet streets filled her head. Blocks of quaint Victorian bungalows, neatly trimmed front yards, stout stone walls that looked centuries old. So much nicer than their boring suburb… maybe they could move? The commute would be hell on both of them, but…
“Are you coming home tomorrow?”
“No, they scheduled this stupid bus tour thing for Saturday. We’re supposed to cruise up the valley and look at successful projects.” God, it even sounded duller than shit. Seven hours on a bus listening to Jacey Cohen droning on and on and on about tax increment financing.
“Oh.” He sighed, filling her phone with scratchy static. She mentally prepared herself for a lecture. Had she given him the wrong return date? Had she screwed up his weekend plans? It was-
“I miss you,” he said. “It’s quiet around here without you. I’ve been thinking about you coming home all day. You are a strong, confident, beautiful woman. Whenever you’re awake and aware, you’ll know that you are capable of anything.”
What did… Michelle blinked and shook her head violently enough that she nearly knocked the phone out of her hand. After a fumbling recovery, she pressed it against her ear. “What did you say?”
“I asked you when you were getting in on Sunday. If it’s early, let’s do brunch.”
“Really?” She pictured Tom sitting alone on a stool in their kitchen, shirtless and in boxers, his skin still glistening wet from a sweaty workout or a cold shower. Phone in his hand, his steel-blue eyes full of concern for her. For her.
Master looks after his best slavegirls.
“Really! If you hit the road on time, you’ll probably be back by noon.”
You are a strong, confident, and beautiful woman.
A wild thought came to her. “What if you drove up here? Come up tomorrow. I’ll make an excuse to get out of that stupid bus tour and we can do brunch here instead. There’s a really nice place called Romanesque that everyone raves about.”
“I can’t just leave,” he began, and her heart sank. She was tired of the conference, and she needed some Michelle time. Spending it with Tom sounded fantastic. Why couldn’t he-
“You know what? Screw that. Screw everything. Let’s do it! I can be there by eight? Nine if the traffic’s bad? Will you get in trouble if you miss the bus?”
“Pfft. The only reason anyone signed up was to do some extra ass-kissing. It’ll be fine. Get your sexy ass up here and we’ll do brunch, walk around town…”
“You’re spicy today, babe.”
I am. I am confident and capable of anything. “Oh, that’s just the start of it. This bed is built for fucking. We have to… we have to give it a go.” Her free hand slid down to her clit. “I need a Michelle day tomorrow, and I want you to be part of it.”
“Wow. Um… okay? I will be there at seven, then.”
“Good! We can give it a go twice, then!”
“I’m going to turn in, babe. Go take a cold shower before you explode.”
“I love you.” It felt good to say.
“See you tomorrow.”
She switched the phone to silent mode and shoved it under the pillows. Rolling onto her back, she let both hands fall exactly where she needed them to be, exactly where Tom would be touching her in just eleven, twelve, plus… eight hours.
Eight hours…
She promised herself that she would spend at least half of that sleeping, then closed her eyes and began to moan.
Freeport
“You know how mind control goes. Smudges. I just left a big, greasy smudge in her brain. And for what? Because there’s a zillion-to-one chance that someone might also the Golden August Sunrise trigger? I should have left her alone, James. Just let her be. Let the past be the past.”
“I’m all for that, too. But… do you have a penny for my thoughts?”
“You’re cheap. I charge ten cents now, minimum.”
He frowned. “I’m serious, hun.”
“Sorry.” She mimed handing him a coin. “Ten cents for your thoughts, lovely husband.”
“We both saw what Decker did to Claire. What he made you do to Claire. It doesn’t sound like you did or said anything to Michelle that you wouldn’t have said to her, right? You can’t hypnotize Claire because you specifically told her that it was impossible. You made sure that no one else could, either. That seems… reasonable?”
“James, I can’t just go around cracking people’s heads open and messing around inside! It’s wrong, and I knew it was wrong, and I did it anyway!”
“I let you into myhead,” he countered. “And I haven’t gone on a killing rampage.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“That’s sexy hypnosis! That’s us fucking around. This is the opposite of sexy!”
“My point, he pouted, “Is that I trust you. When you pick up that pendant, I give you complete control of my mind, and the only thing you do with that power is make me think I’m a sexy pirate, and we go upstairs and have sexy pirate sex.”
She pondered that for a moment.
“Sexy pirate sex?”
He made a face. “Do you notenjoy the sexy pirate sex? Yaaarrgh?”
“I didn’t say that. And also—”
“And also, you need to trust yourself! Even if Michelle was just some random girl on the street, I have no doubt that you could have hypnotized her anyway. No trigger phrase needed. You could hypnotize anyone on this block or anyone in this town. But you don’t.”
“I don’t,” she conceded, reaching for her mug. She took a sip and frowned. “Ugh, it’s already getting cold. So why can’t Michelle trust me the way you can? The way everyone in town can? Why couldn’t she trust me not to hypnotize her?”
“I’m going to plant my flag on ‘she could trust you, even if she didn’t know it, because you always try to do the right thing.’ what Doctor Straud said? You’ve tried your best to help every woman you come across who’s ever been hypnotized, or brainwashed, or both. Starting with Claire and… I guess now up to and including Michelle. That’s not a bad thing, Katie-Bear. That’s something to be proud of.”
“Do you really trust me?”
“The whole entire world trusts you. And the best we can do together is trust that we’re doing the best we can to make the world better, to be the opposite of Decker. Trust that at the end of the day, it’s going to be okay.”
“Like cookies.”
Confused, James tilted his head like a dog. “What’s like cookies? Or… do you want cookies?”
“No, it’s something that Doctor Straud said. About trust. He said it’s like cookies. You have to just trust that the oven’s going to do its job and that in ten minutes or so those cookies will turn out okay.”
“Oh.” His face brightened. “That is a good analogy! Although… now I kinda want cookies.”
“You’re a nerd.”
“And a sexy pirate.”
“And a sexy pirate. And a sexy husband. Who is really good at talking me off the ledge.”
He raised his hand to her shoulder and gently encouraged her to lean against him, which she did. “Trust is kind of what we’re made of, you know? From that day at the art museum all the way up until tonight. It’s nice. You probably don’t me telling you this, but I struggled a lot with trust as a kid, even as an adult. Meeting you changed all of that.”
“Mmm. I’m glad.” A pause. “You know what’s funny?”
“No. I mean…” he shook his head. “No. What’s funny?”
“It just came to me now, but you know how much trouble with trust I had going up. And yet, it’s funny. I trusted you right from the start.”
“Do you the first thing I said to you, after the accident? Like, right after it happened?”
“I running to the kitchen to get you a glass of water. I have no idea why. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time?”
“So while you were getting the water, I was coming to on the floor, and the first thing I thought of was that I’d gotten drunk and ed out on the floor of your house. For a hot second I thought about sneaking out the front door and walking back to my apartment on Grant Street. I was running entirely on adrenaline and embarrassment.”
“You’re not exactly the ‘get drunk and out on the floor’ type of girl.”
Her eyebrows darted up. She stared at him.
“Okay, not now,” he conceded.
“Not now, sure. Anyway, there was this huge crash in the kitchen and I ed that you were getting me water. I started to walk through the living room and it hit me that the house was empty. There wasn’t a party going on. It was just you and me in here, and I was ed out on the floor.”
“Ooohhh. So that explains what you said!”
She nodded.
2018
He rushed back into the kitchen and threw open a cabinet, blindly reaching for a glass and nearly bringing an entire shelf of them down on himself. He set one next to the tap and waited for the water to cool a bit before filling it. From behind him, he heard a soft moan. Spinning on his heels, he found Kate clutching the doorframe with one hand and cradling her face with the other.
He held up his hands. “Hey, don’t move. It’s okay. Just try to stay still.”
She looked at him with a mixture of bewilderment and fear.
“James, what am I doing in your house?”
“Cosmic reset button. You’re just a guy I know, who has a house, and I’m in that house… and you’re giving me water and holding me up and making me a comfy bed right on this couch. Calling me ‘hun’ and ‘Katie-Bear’ and I’m wearing a wedding ring? I should have run screaming all the way to the police station.
And instead… I closed my eyes and took a nap, because I trusted you. I didn’t even know who you really were, and honestly everything before that was just me being Decker’s puppet. You could have been a psycho and I would have made puppy dog eyes at you all day long.
But you’re right. We met for the first time that day. I didn’t know you, and yet I trusted you.”
She curled her lower lip beneath her upper teeth, a gesture she favored whenever a really profound thought seemed to come to her. “Hmmmph.”
“And it was okay,” said James. “It took a while, but eventually, it all worked out okay.”
She released her lip with a wet smick. “And it came out okay. Like cookies.”
“Like cookies.”
“Now I want cookies, too.”
“I’ll bake some tomorrow,” he laughed. “It’s going to be good baking weather, highs in the forties.”
She snuggled against his warm, strong body, wishing she could drop him around her like the blanket. “Do you really think she’s going to be okay?”
“Michelle?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s a cookie.” He kissed her on the forehead. “We just have to trust that she’s going to come out of the oven.”
“What about me?” She craned her head until she was looking into his eyes. “Am I going to be okay? Am I ever going to come out of the oven? Am I ever going to be okay?”
“You’re okay,” he smiled. “You really are.”
“I am?”
His face was just inches from hers. His breaths were slow and even, warm little breezes that smelled like instant coffee. He looked into her eyes.
“Trust me,” he said.
“I trust you. I’ll always trust you.”
They kissed, gently, then confidently, as Kate’s eyes drifted closed.
There’s always an epilogue...