Preview for The Necklace II – Back to Brighton

Chapter One

The Link Remains

It was November of the same year that Lynn and Susan had taken their girl’s cruise where Susan had traveled back into the past to the year 1962 to the Dusky Club in Brighton, England. Lynn followed her when she realized things were getting out of hand, but it was too late to stop the torrid love affair between Susan and James, the person Susan had gone back to meet, a person she had loved since she was twelve years old. The cruise had been in June and five months had passed since their adventure.

Although she had come back from her time travel experience with a new outlook on her present life, Susan couldn’t let go of the memories of being with James or forget all that had happened between them. She didn’t understand why she felt so unsettled or anxious, or why she kept seeing his face when she closed her eyes at night to go to sleep. She didn’t want to see his face! It was unnerving.

When she tried to explain her feelings to Lynn, Lynn became annoyed and scolding. “You’ve just got to stop this, Suz!” she urged. “It’s over. You learned what you needed to learn, and that’s the end of it! James was not for you; you even admitted that you two would never have gotten along. Be happy with what you have! You have the best thing in the world, and you know it!”

While Susan agreed with her very best friend outwardly, knowing she was right, her mind just wouldn’t let go of James. He was like cancer, eating away at her peace. When she started to have more and more flashbacks to the seven days she’d spent in the past, she called her other best friend, John, for advice, who she’d relayed her time travel adventure to shortly after she and Lynn returned the previous June.

John and Susan had been good friends since high school, where they’d eaten lunch together just about every day, and had maintained contact through all the years since. John often came to her house for dinner with her and Susan’s husband. They frequently talked on the phone, and John knew just about as much about her as Lynn did.

“John, something is wrong with me,” she wailed. “I should be over this, but it keeps coming back. I just don’t know why. I know I have everything wonderful. I know we would never have suited, but I just can’t stop myself from thinking about James. It’s like I have no control! I feel like I’m trapped in a spider web or something!”

Instinctively, as she’d been doing for the past five months, she reached up to pull on her necklace, but it wasn’t there. She dropped her hand back into her lap and sighed. “What should I do John? Why do you think I feel this way?”

John contemplated her comments and question for a minute then said, “Maybe you need to try and find that Mika lady from Haiti who sent you back. Maybe she could tell you. Maybe something went wrong when you came back, or she forgot to do something.”

“She told me I would be just a dim memory to him. But, she didn’t say what I would remember. I thought she said he’d be a dim memory to me too, but I just can’t stop thinking about him and everything that happened. And, the horrible thing is that I don’t remember the bad stuff, just the good stuff. It’s unnerving!”

“Then I think you need to track her down and ask what’s up. If anyone would know, it would be her.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Her granddaughter, Marta, gave me her e-mail address in Haiti. I guess I should e-mail her. Geez! I just hate this! I thought going back would cure me of this ‘James thing,’ but I don’t think it did.”

“Well, e-mail Marta and ask. Let me know what she says. If you need me to help in any way, just let me know.”

“That’s so nice of you, John. Lynn doesn’t understand, and I don’t blame her. I was a basket case at that concert last year when we went to see James, and then she had to come and try to rescue me when I went back to the past in June. I don’t have anyone else to talk to about this. I’ll let you know right away what Mika or Marta says.”

Susan sent the e-mail to Marta as soon as she hung up the phone after talking with John.

She was grateful for his advice. She should have thought of contacting Marta on her own, but sometimes it just took someone else for you to see what was right in front of your face.

It was eight days before she got a response from Marta. It said:

“I explained to Grandmere about your problem, and she is concerned for you. You should not be having this reaction! What happened to you in the past should have made you put this James person out of your mind and your life forever. She remembers that you left a necklace back in the past and wants to know where you left it. Did you, by chance, leave it on the person of this James? She thinks you did. If so, that is the problem. In fact, if that is what you did and he is still wearing it, you will not be a dim memory to him until he removes it. She thinks he has not yet removed it and that’s why the past is vibrating into your present.”

Susan gasped as she read the e-mail for the second time. “He’s still wearing my necklace!” she exclaimed. “I wouldn’t have thought… I mean, I figured I’d become the dim memory like Marta said I would, and that he’d forget all about me and the necklace.”

She immediately wrote back to Marta asking what she should do. It was nice that Marta had responded with a possible explanation, but she’d offered no advice as to what to do. If it was five months later back in the past, the boys’ were now becoming well-known and on the brink of being world-famous. They would be recording their second record any minute now. The thought sent shivers through her.

Then she started wondering… What was James doing? Did he get back together with Hilary? Were he and the boys still making wagers, or did they just have to nod their head at any girl and instantly have her fall at their feet? A pang of jealousy tore through her, and she had to shake it off. What the hell did she care anyway?

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, again reaching up to her chest where the necklace had been since she was twelve years old.

And then she thought, “I want it back. I should never have left it with him. If I get it back, this link, or whatever it is, will be broken. Won’t it?”

She didn’t even recall the reason she’d so impulsively taken it off her neck and given it to him. She thought it must have been an impetuous moment triggered by her hormone-inflamed body. She blushed at the thought. She’d certainly been a wanton during those seven days. Well, at least for most of them. It hadn’t taken much at all for her to surrender. A shiver coursed through her, and she blushed even more. Damn him for affecting her that way!

It was another eight days before she heard back from Marta again. As she read the e-mail, she began to tremble and shake her head. Oh no! Oh no!

What Marta wrote confirmed Susan’s thoughts:

“By leaving your necklace in the past, you created a bond that cannot be broken. The only way to sever it is to return to the past and retrieve the necklace. While he wears it, he cannot forget you or what you mean to him. If he removes it, you will become a dim memory to him, but if you do not bring your necklace back into the present, YOU will never be released from the hold he has on you. Grandmere thinks she needs to send you back to retrieve your necklace.”

Susan sank back in the chair and covered her face with her hands. She didn’t care about James right now. He’d end up taking the necklace off sooner or later and probably discarding it somewhere, like in the bottom of a drawer or something. But as long as it remained in the past, she was doomed to the same yearning and desire she believed she had obliterated by her trip into the past. And while he wore it around his neck, he would be suffering from her memory as well. It might even be affecting his relationship with the boys and their rise to fame.

What to do…what to do…

She picked up the phone and called John. He was both stunned and disturbed to hear what Marta had told her.

“So what are you going to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know. What do you think I should do?” she responded, sighing heavily.

He paused before he spoke again. “Well, are you going to go and try to get it back?”

“Oh, John! How can I? What would I say to him after being gone for five months? What would he think? What kind of story could I make up?”

“Well, if he’s still wearing the necklace, he’s just as doomed as you are, at least for the time being. And, he doesn’t even know it.”

“But what would I say? How could I get it back without, well… you know… getting involved again? Oh geez! I don’t think I could handle getting involved with him again…”

“Well, I’m sure you could think up enough stuff to explain why you’re back or what happened when you vanished last time. You do have a crazy imagination, you know.”

“Okay, so I’ll take that as a compliment. I’m just not sure I could pull it off. I’d have to go back in the same seventeen-year-old body… and you know what kind of trouble I can get into with that.” She could feel the heat flood her face. She felt as if the seventeen-year-old hormones were laughing at her and her inability to control them. She frowned.

John laughed. “Well, I won’t speculate on that then.”

“Wait!” Susan said suddenly. “I have a brilliant idea!”

“All your ideas are brilliant. They’re also crazy and insane, but don’t let that stop you. What do you have in mind?”

“Simple… You go with me.”

“I what?”

“You heard me… You go with me. I’ll say you’re my brother. I told him I had a brother so you can be my brother.”

“Just like I said, you’re crazy and insane. What good would it do for me to pose as your brother?”

“Well… you could protect me, you know. Stop me from being wild and wanton. Like Lynn might have done if she’d gone back with me the last time.”

“You know, I’d like to help you out, but I don’t know about this traveling in the past stuff. It’s just too weird. And I have no clue how to stop you from being wild and wanton when it comes to that guy.”

“It is not weird! You don’t even feel a thing. You just ‘poof,’ and there you are in the past, and then, ‘poof,’ and you’re back. It’s as simple as pie. Plus, just think, you could be eighteen again. I never told him how old my brother was, so he’d never know.”

“I don’t feel good about this for some reason… And you’re not saying what I could do to stop you from being wild and wanton.”

“Oh, come on… Have I ever led you astray? With you there, I could nab the necklace, and we could poof right back without me even getting to anything wild or wanton. A piece of cake!”

Her seventeen-year-old hormones giggled. “Wanna bet?” they whispered.

John paused on the other end of the phone. “I think this whole idea is a mistake. I think you should ask Marta if there’s another way to break this vibration or connection or whatever it is.”

“Oh, please, John, please? Pretty please? We won’t be gone long. And besides, I’m going to be alone all next week when Donald is going on his annual ski trip with his dad. He just won his last case in Federal court last week and is taking a break. It would be a perfect time, and I might not have another chance for a year. Please? I couldn’t stand to feel this way for another whole year!”

She could hear him breathing through the phone, then he said, “I can’t be gone too long, you know.”

“I told you, I could make it quick. I just have to think of how I’d get it off him or convince him to take it off and give it back to me. I could cry maybe…”

“Lynn told me that’s all you did the last time you were with him, and he hated it when you cried.”

“That’s just the point. I could cry and beg him to give it back to me. Explain how I’d had it since I was twelve years old and that it was sentimental.”

“But you gave it to him as a token of your love. What would he think if you just asked to have it back?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“You always think of something… and that’s the problem. You get yourself into too much trouble by thinking too much.”

“Which is why I need you to come with me… to keep me out of trouble. Besides, don’t you want to meet ‘the boys?’ Hear them sing? Go to a practice session? It’s awesome.”

“And then when James slips you off somewhere and I can’t find you?”

“That won’t happen. I’ll be real careful. I still have my old and aged brain, you know.”

“I just don’t know if I can trust you when it comes to him…Lynn told me all about the last time.”

“Oh, come on. Of course, you can. I’m not the innocent weakling I was on the last trip.” Her hormones giggled again. She ignored them.

“Let me pray about it first, okay? I don’t feel right doing this.”

“Okay, I understand. Pray all you want. But get back to me by tomorrow. I’d like you to

go… but if you don’t, I’ll go by myself. I was going to ask Lynn, but she’d just get all pissy with me. You know how she feels about my ‘James thing.’ She thinks I can just set it aside, like putting a book back on the shelf. But, I can’t.”

“You’d go by yourself?”

“Yes… yes, I would!”

“What if you got stuck back there? And, have you thought about this? What if you go back and find out you’re five months pregnant because of what you did the last time?”

“Oh, geez! I didn’t think about that! I don’t think that could have happened. I did come back to the present for five months, you know…”

“Well, it might be something you’d want to check with those Haiti ladies.”

“Yeah, okay, maybe I’ll do that. So then, go and pray about it. I understand that’s what you need to do; I understand what your faith means to you. Then let me know tomorrow if you’ll go with me or not. I want to get back in touch with Marta as soon as I can. I have to figure out the logistics of this. I wonder if we can do this through Skype. I hope so. There’s no way I can fly back to Haiti or meet them somewhere. Talk to you tomorrow then?”

“Okay, I guess so. Have a happy night, and I’ll call you, probably tomorrow night.”

“Thanks, John. You’re a great friend; you know that?”

“Yeah, uh huh. Bye then.”

“Bye, bye.”

As she pushed the “End” button on her phone, she smiled. John was a great friend. She was sure his prayers would guide him to go with her, especially if he could keep her out of trouble.

But would he be able to? She shrugged her shoulders.

Maybe…maybe not…It didn’t really matter. She was going back anyway…