Sunsets at Seaside(68)
Her tone sent a shiver down his spine. These were the words she’d used the day she told him that his parents had died. The very same words, being delivered in the very same fashion. A flash of memory he’d buried so deep he thought he’d never be able to revisit it burst forth in his tortured mind. Just before those words left her lips all those years ago, she’d stumbled at the kitchen counter where she’d been making his grilled cheese sandwich. He’d jumped from his chair—Gram! He was a little thing at six years old. He could still feel the cold linoleum on his bare feet as he ran toward her. He could still feel the weight of her, as if it were yesterday, as he’d put one lithe arm around her waist and guided her to the kitchen table. His hand was barely big enough to wrap around the wooden spindles of the chair as he tugged it from the table and guided her into it. What he didn’t remember, had never been able to recall, was a phone call telling her of their demise. No matter how many nights he’d stayed up replaying the moment in his mind, he never could recall the shrill ring of the phone.
Now she patted his hand and nodded. “Go. You’ll know what’s right.”
“I…”
“Jamie, just as you knew then, you’ll know. We couldn’t stop them. I warned them, begged them to stay, but your mother insisted, and your father, he’d have followed her into a volcano without a thought.”
“You…You believed me.”
“I believed you. You told me then that they weren’t coming home. As a boy, you were very in tune to your parents, but after…Jamie, I prayed you’d lose that connection over time, and you did. You got busy filling your mind with everything and anything you could. It was as if you never wanted to feel that connection again. Not that I blamed you. No. I knew you were right. You dove into puzzle after puzzle. Oh, the hours you spent doing every puzzle imaginable. Figures, crosswords, math calculations, and any other puzzle you could get your sad and angry little hands on. You put enough chaos in your head to fill those lonely spaces your parents left behind.”
“Gram.” He laughed at the notion. “Are you saying that it wasn’t just a feeling, but that I had a premonition about Mom and Dad dying?”
She squeezed his hand. “I’m not one to give names to things. I don’t believe like your generation does, that everything needs a label. All I know is that you knew that they were not coming back, and when I couldn’t convince your parents to stay home, I moved into your house and insisted that you stay with me.” She smiled and waved her hand in the air. “You probably don’t remember, but they put up quite a fight about leaving you home. Your mother called me every name in the book.” She paused, and her eyes filled with sadness.
He must have blacked that out, because he didn’t remember any of it, but he remembered clear as day, standing on the front porch of his parents’ house waving to them as they left for the very last time. His mother’s face was streaked with tears, her thick dark hair loose and wild, tickling his cheek and nose as she clung to him. I love you, Jamie. You’re the best boy in this world. I’ll take pictures of your favorite animals, and I’ll write to you. I love you so much. And his father, dressed in a pair of jeans and a black tee, looking virile and powerful. Jamie remembered feeling like his father was as big and solid as the oak tree in their front yard, and when he picked Jamie up and wrapped those powerful arms around his only son, the scent of Old Spice filled Jamie’s senses. Take care of Mama, he’d said to his father. I’d die before I’d let anything happen to her, his father had answered with his deep voice, full of tethered emotion. He wasn’t one to openly cry, and when he set Jamie back down on the ground and palmed Jamie’s head with his big hand, Jamie knew his father was a man of his word and meant what he’d said.
Vera squeezed his hand again, pulling him from the memories he’d thought he’d buried long ago.
“Go,” Vera urged. “Before it gets late and you have to drive in the dark. Put the past behind you and concentrate on your future. That’s where you’ll find your answers.”
Chapter Twenty
MONDAY MORNING JESSICA sat in front of her computer staring at the OneClick search screen with her cell phone pressed to her ear, listening to her father talk about the show he and her mother had seen. Other than Saturday’s concert, which she’d attended in a zombie-like state, she’d spent the entire weekend home alone, wallowing in the ache of missing Jamie. How would she survive another day? She typed in Jamie’s name for the millionth time, just so she could see his picture appear on the screen. The sight of him never failed to bring fresh tears to her eyes and an ache to her chest, and still she tortured herself.