approached, he couldn’t stop staring at her. Her raw sexuality hooked him, he told himself. But there was more. Much more.
The spaghetti straps over her naked shoulders made him tremble with desire, something he had never done before. And she wasn’t the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. In fact, Sarah Thomas had been more so, and he had dumped her after two dates. Still Rose attracted him like no other, she had an ease about her. The feelings of knowing her from before, some other time, a time that never existed, struck him. He had never believed in love at first sight, but she had changed all that.
Rose was crude, saying “Let’s get out of this dump,” after only saying hello. He normally would have refused, liking to get to know the women he slept with beforehand. This time, he had gone with Rose. Some feeling of rightness had pervaded everything, so he had done it. That in itself was unlike him, taking a chance like that.
“Hello?”
“Oops sorry. I guess I was just remembering how we met.”
“You old romantic.”
“Well, we’re planning on getting married next month. Valentine’s Day. Hope you and Dave can make it. That’s why I called in fact. And of course to catch up.”
“We’ll try. Make sure to send an invite though.”
“We will.”
Life went on. Rose and Kevin conceived a son, William. They started him in high school the same year that Rose found the nodule on her breast. It was the couple’s thirteenth anniversary.
Rose, the woman Kevin loved with his entire soul, died two short years after chemotherapy started. They cremated her.
With Rose’s parents unreachable in Europe for another week, Kevin postponed her funeral until they returned. That entire week his eyes remained fused with tears. Every morning he almost had to pry the eyelids from his face to open them.
The last hauntingly familiar thing he found out about Rose’s family was they had lived in the same small neighborhood he had for a time. The one where Beth now resided. His family had already moved when Rose’s landed. Eventually she moved away from them. Yet she had such fond memories she insisted upon having her ashes interred there.
The funeral took Kevin back there. To where Rose’s family resided now. To where he had lived so many years ago.
Deja vu kept occurring while driving into the area. He knew what was around almost every corner, remembered things he hadn’t remembered in years, and got confused when some major aspect had changed. Many had. His old house no longer stood on Pine Street. Instead, a three-story townhouse of red brick occupied the land. Many stores had come and gone in the years since his last visit.
His old friend Jimmy Summers still lived there. Beth had told him that some time before. Jimmy attended Rose’s funeral as a sign of respect for Kevin. That was what he believed at least.
The day after the funeral, Kevin dropped off William at Beth’s house. For some reason, one he did not understand, he needed to be alone. When he finally decided to revisit the graveyard he made a crazy wrong turn, getting himself completely lost. Lost in a town he had once known from alleyway to alleyway. He recognized something finally. Something from the past. Like he was a child again, running home with his friends, Johnny, Tony, Jimmy and Billy. Playing games and stupid pranks.
Memories flooded his mind as he drove-he came to an intersection that was totally familiar, yet somehow alien. The ghastly looking railroad crossing hadn’t been there before, his child brain was sure. It hadn’t existed in the past. The cavernous train tunnel resembled the giant mouth of a stone man-open and ready to eat him alive. As the bar descended, bells started ringing-warning him of an impending train-connecting his past with his present. Kevin daydreamed back. Back to that fateful day when his life had been changed. When Billy’s life had ended. Submerged in his brain, Kevin understood.
“You killed Billy, Kevin. Do you know that?” A voice inside his head asked. The voice of time, indescribably old, was correct of course.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Kevin said.
This location, where two boys’ lives went askew, his and Billy’s, seemed to radiate a heat. He envisioned the accident-Billy working hard to remove the train tie, using all his might-then the train, loud and angry. His mind swirled with thoughts-Kevin understood what had happened. This was his destiny-as it should have been all those years before.
This place held the cards to so many lives.
The voice spoke again, “It was not your fault. Yet the choice you made, your offer to take Billy’s place, changed what finally happened. Do you understand that?”
“I guess I do. But I was just trying to protect Billy. Really.” The roar of the train in the tunnel reminded Kevin of that previous day-but there was no escape today-it sounded like a snoring giant awakening, his starving stomach screaming for food…almost as if the giant would gobble Kevin up alive. Closer-hungrier-closer-angrier-the train rumbling its approach.
“I guess I screwed everything up. Didn’t I?” Kevin knew what his whole life had been-he had lived out Billy’s dreams, his hopes…his fate. His life. Experiencing Billy’s needs, loving Billy’s wife. Things Billy would have done had he not died. Rose was Billy’s woman all along.
“I think you understand what happened. You lived for Billy, but you must die when he was to die. Do you understand that as well?”
“Why?”
“Fate is mutable, but some things must occur.”
The words seeped into Kevin’s mind. And he thought he understood. Billy would have died. Today.
