Out of Time Read online

  Mel felt vaguely guilty as she unlocked the door and pushed it hard enough to dislodge the piles of mail that would be heaped on the floor under the mail slot of the shabby white door. It would mostly be junk mail. Of necessity, Mel had her bills sent to her financial manager. Otherwise, she’d have to get her utilities turned on again every time she came home—and get ever increasing deposits.

  She found the light switch and flipped it. The old fashioned lamps flared to life, pushing back the dim. At least her manager hadn’t absconded with her money while she was doing time with the SEALs. She dropped her duffle and handbag on the floor just past the mail mess and headed for the bathroom. As usual, she needed to pee.

  * * * * *

  Though the house had gone through some updating, it was essentially unchanged from the way it had been when Norm carried his bride across the threshold. It was a straightforward, unpretentious rectangle with two bedrooms to the left of the front door, both connected by a long closet and the bathroom. A living room and a fairly generous kitchen took up the right side of the structure. Under it all was an often damp basement with another bedroom behind a storeroom. All the fixtures, except for the refrigerator, were original, including a claw-foot tub hogging most of the bathroom.

  Inside the fridge she found several cans of Diet Dr. Pepper, grabbed a glass, added ice and then soda. It hissed and bubbled in the glass. The first drink was always the best. All those chemicals bit pleasurably into her tongue and throat. As the caffeine entered her bloodstream, it temporarily kicked out the jet lag.

  Mel turned back toward the living room, leaning a shoulder against the jam as she took another drink. To Mel’s left, Gran’s chair anchored the space, the imprint of her body still there in the sagging cushion. Her glasses rested on the open book she’d been reading the day before she went into the hospital that last time. Her footstool was pushed slightly to the side, so she could get up. Mel had never been able to take possession of that chair.

  She kept expecting Gran to come out of her bedroom and settle there, before looking up at Mel with a smile of welcome. Across from Gran’s chair was the chair that was Norm’s. If he was also haunting the house, he was a kindly ghost. Sometimes, just as the last of the light was fading from the sky, Mel imagined she could see them both in their chairs, young again and smiling at each other with all the delight of young love. If she didn’t move, sometimes she’d also smell Gran’s powder and Norm’s aftershave. If she closed her eyes, she could feel Gran’s arms close around her, feel the cool softness of Gran’s dress against her cheek and Gran’s hand stroking her hair again and telling her it would be all right.

  This night there were no friendly ghosts to welcome her home, and the air in the room was resolutely stale from being closed for so long. She put her soda can down on a coaster near the computer and went to open some windows, passing the split couch in a pale blue-green. The two halves squatted in front of the windows that looked out on the enclosed porch, and had always been separated by a vintage table. Neither couch was even remotely comfortable, but Mel usually sat there anyway. It was her spot and had been since she moved in.

  “Pretty sad, aren’t I?” she said to the silence. Only ghosts for company, but how was she supposed to make and keep friends when she was never around? It didn’t help that on this street the residents were dropping like flies. She’d noticed a couple of kids toys left out as she drove by. Eventually the street would become young again, but the attrition was slow, albeit steady.

  Mel should have cleaned up all Gran’s stuff and given it away or at least put it in storage, but Gran’s spirit and memory were the only things that welcomed her home. A pet would have been nice for her, but not for the pet.

  On the dining room table was the only truly modern touch in the house, a computer setup with all the bells and whistles. Gran had taken to computing like a Navy SEAL to water. She particularly loved the scanner. It made working with the old fragile photographs from World War II so much easier.

  Those pictures, and all the other stuff she’d collected from the men who’d served with Norm, were now scattered across the top of the dining room table and the side buffet. Mel remembered a time when the kitchen table had been the staging area, since Gran liked to keep the mess out of sight of company, but when Mel brought her the computer, the move was inevitable. And there at the end company was almost nonexistent.

  Mel still worked on her project, at first from a feeling of obligation, but eventually had found the stories of the men of The Time Machine and the other bomber groups’ stories as fascinating as Gran clearly had. The survivors were happy to let Mel continue as their recorder. She’d been going to their reunions since she was little, and they all treated her like one of them, though they weren’t going to be around much longer either. The Greatest Generation was dying.

  That reality had given her a sense of urgency, and she’d actually made a lot of progress the last time she was home. That’s when she’d realized there was no picture of plane and crew all together. Before she left for the SEAL gig, she’d put out a call for anyone with a picture. She looked at the pile of mail. Well, there was only one way to find out if she’d gotten an answer.

  One hour later, she had the mail sorted into the stuff she wanted to keep, the stuff to shred and the junk headed for the trash heap. There were several promising looking offerings from her WWII sources, including an intriguing one marked private and urgent.

  These she took to the dining room table. She turned on the computer, then, while it went through the tedious booting up process, picked up a letter opener and slid it under the flap of the private and urgent envelope. Once containment was breached, she pulled out a single eight-by-ten photograph with a business card clipped to one corner.

  Jack Hamilton. No address. Just a phone number and his name. Talk about a blast from the past. The only member of the surviving crew she’d never met—and the one she’d most wanted to meet.

  She examined the photo, wondering if it really was the complete crew. That was certainly The Time Machine. She could see the name on the nose of the fuselage behind the crew, integrated with the nose art, a tornado-looking object—something Mel had always found puzzling. What did a tornado have to do with time travel? Most of the pilots at the time had named their planes for their girl or a sexy movie star, but not Jack. He was an H.G. Wells fan to his toenails. Because of him, she’d read the books, too. Where in the post-war world had he gone? She looked at the card. At least he wasn’t dead yet.

  Mel picked up a magnifying glass and studied the photo. Norm, the radio operator, was in the back row of five, between Jack and his co-pilot, Ric Bramwell. Gran had always said Norm wasn’t one to put himself forward, Mel recalled with a smile. His face was as familiar to her as her own, since Gran had pictures of him all over the house, but she still felt a sense of loss at not knowing him. The other five filling out the usual complement for a B-17 knelt in front. Slightly off to one side, a woman stood partly in shadow. That was odd. She applied the magnifying glass to that area, and a face, curiously like her own, jumped out at her.

  She pulled back. Okay, that was…weird. She applied the glass again. They even had the same, cropped, flyaway hair. It wasn’t a typical hair-do for the time. She leaned back in her chair, studying the photograph again, a feeling of unease in her middle that she couldn’t begin to explain. She lifted the top on the scanner, put the photograph face down and hit start.

  In a few minutes she had a graphic image to work with on the screen. Even though she was consumed with curiosity about the woman, she still paused a moment to admire Jack when his face filled her screen. Okay, she’d seen other photos of him, but not this one. And he was always worth examining. The photograph was a bit grainy, but it didn’t stop her from noting that his thick dark hair tumbled across a high aristocratic brow. His eyes were set deep under jutting brows. The black and white picture didn’t give away the color, but Mel was sure they had to be a deep and sincere blue. His face wa
s long and narrow, with high, sharp cheek bones and a straight nose. His smile, cutting across his face, the miles and the years, curled her toes inside her shoes every time she saw it, today being no exception.

  Dang, he was cute. Why, she wondered, when she looked at his picture, did she feel like she’d been born sixty years too late? Not that she had any desire to live in the forties. Her feet were planted firmly in the twenty-first century and happy to be there, if only for the comfort of the shoes. But he could have come to one of the crew reunions. Only he hadn’t and no one seemed to know why.

  With a sigh, she adjusted the picture until she could isolate the part with the woman’s face, then selected it and copied it to its own file. The image she had to work with was still large but fuzzy. Luckily she had a good program for clearing up problems. She tinkered with it, watching with interest until a face came slowly into view.

  The girl could be her twin. She backed off the image a bit, bringing more than the face into view. She was dressed like the crew, which was even stranger, considering the highly chauvinistic times. She backed off some more. That’s when she got her second shock. On the wrist that the woman held up to shield her eyes from the sun was a small tattoo that looked a lot like the temporary tattoo presently fading on the inside of her wrist. The SEAL team had insisted she commemorate her jump with a miniature Uncle Sam. She backed off some more and worked on that area, bringing it into better focus. Then she only had to hold her wrist up to the screen to see they matched perfectly.

  Okay, Jack had to be pulling her chain.

  She picked up the card and studied the phone number. It was long distance, but there was no indication of a time zone. She looked at her watch. It was after midnight. And what would she say to him? Why is my arm in an old WWII photo?

  At that moment, her phone rang. She jumped, looked at it suspiciously as it rang two more times. This time of night, it was probably obscene. She lifted the receiver.

  “Mel?” The voice was male and strong, though there was an aged quality to it she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  “Who is this?” Mel had a policy of only being polite to people she knew. It cut down on solicitations calls—or at least shortened them.

  “Jack. Jack Hamilton.”

  Shock held her silent for a long moment.

  “Jack Hamilton.” She felt winded, and for no reason she could think of, her heart thumped in her chest.

  “That’s right.”

  She wanted to ask him if he knew what time it was, but she was pretty sure he did. And somehow, he’d known she’d be up.

  “Your SEAL segment was your best yet,” he said into her silence. “I really wondered if you were going to jump.”

  She’d wondered the same thing.

  “Thanks.” Jeez, did she have to be so lame? She talked for a freaking living, for Pete’s sake! “How are you?” Oh, that’s good, take yourself beyond lame. Be a freaking loser.

  He chuckled. “I’m old.”

  It surprised her when she heard herself chuckle.

  Then he said, “We need to meet. We’re almost out of time.”

  What did he mean by that? “O…kay…when…”

  “Tomorrow. I’ll be there at ten hundred.” There was a pause. “Good-night, Mel.”

  “Good…night…” She didn’t know what to call him. Inside her head, she’d called him Jack her whole life, but he was an elder and, according to Gran, should be treated with respect. The only problem, calling him “Mr. Hamilton” sounded all wrong. Before she could decide, the line went dead. She stared at it. Maybe she dreamed the call. Maybe she was in bed right now and didn’t know it. Maybe she should go to bed.

  She saved her work, turned off the computer and headed for her bedroom, wondering why Jack had called after all these years. And what she was going to wear for her first meeting with the mysterious and elusive ex-captain. She may not cry uncle, but she was still a girl.

  Chapter Two

  When the sun fell across Mel’s face the next morning, she woke with a jerk. For a moment she was disoriented, until she remembered she was home. With that realization, all her questions about Jack jumped her. Why was he coming to see her? Why had he sent that photo? Was it some practical joke planned by the remnants of the bomber group who liked to tease her about her interest in Jack? Maybe it wasn’t even Jack who called. That made a lot of sense, but how had they gotten a picture of her arm and the temp tattoo? Maybe one of the SEALs took the picture? That would be it. They were in on it. Jack, or the guys, probably still had contacts in the military.

  Relieved and yet somehow not, Mel prepared herself for the visit. She looked around her, painfully aware of what her surroundings gave away about her life. Maybe they could have their meeting on the porch? It wasn’t as pathetic.

  She changed clothes several times before settling on a pair of jeans and a simple long-sleeved tee shirt. The sexy black dress she’d considered wearing might kill the old man and it wasn’t typical day wear. She had to keep reminding herself he was old, no longer the dashing captain of the photos. For some reason, the more she thought about what he’d said, and what he hadn’t said, the more nervous she got.

  Almost ten-hundred. She got up and peered down the street, wondering what kind of car he drove. Then she heard a distant clack-clack. She knew that sound. She’d heard it often enough. It was a helicopter. But the only place something like that could land around here was the field behind Gran’s house. She stepped outside and shielded her eyes, straining to see into the rising sun. It was a helicopter all right. It clacked toward her until it was right over her house, the blades stirring up the air and the dead leaves. Neighbors came out into their front yards—the ones not suffering heart attacks from the shock.

  Someone in the passenger seat pointed toward the rear, and then the chopper moved that way. Mel went through the house and out the back door. If this was a joke, it was a pretty elaborate one. Across the yard and through the fence, she saw the chopper land in the clearing, the noise fading as the motor shut down. The pilot went around to the other side and helped someone out of the cockpit. Mel crossed to the gate, feeling nervous and curious…and hopeful it really was Jack leaning lightly on a cane as he came toward her out of the rising sun.

  He was tall enough to be Jack, and though he moved slowly, he held himself rigorously erect, as if rejecting his own aging process. He was close enough now for her to see that his hair was white and still full, and his features were familiar, though time had blurred and softened the edges. His eyes were as intense now as they were in his pictures and, to her delight, undiminished blue.

  “Hi.” She still didn’t know what to call him or what to say to him and, to tell the truth, the sight of him took her breath away. She’d always figured that younger women were interested in older men for their money. She could have been wrong about that. He may be in his eighties but he still had some serious babe factor to bring to the table. She’d bet money he still caused a stir at the nursing home, or where ever it was he’d emerged from.

  Surprise gave her some protection from the intensity of his gaze, but it did nothing to dilute the delight she felt at this long delayed meeting. She had the odd feeling that they’d known each other before and that this meeting was important.

  “Hello, Mel.” He stopped on the other side of the gate and grinned at her with unabashed pleasure. His voice was stronger and clearer in real life and his grin was as engaging as the one in the pictures, despite the wrinkles around the edges.

  She realized he was waiting for her to stop hanging on the gate and let him in. Feeling like an awkward thirteen-year-old, she stepped back and unlatched the gate. It felt like she was letting him into more than her yard. He stopped and looked at the quiescent shrubbery.

  “I’ll bet it’s beautiful in the spring with the lilacs in bloom.”

  Mel felt a smile flicker across her face. “It is…sir.”

  His white brows arched. “Oh, dear. You make me feel a hundred
years old. Please, call me Jack.”

  This time her smile stayed. “Jack.”

  He smiled down at her, crinkling the edges of his eyes and deepening their blue.

  Mel drew a shaky breath. “So, where you been all my life?”

  Jack chuckled and then gestured toward the house, a sober and unsettling insistence muting his gaze. “Can we talk inside?”

  “Sure.” Let’s go inside and you can see my total lack of a life, she added to herself as she led the way toward the back door. “Can you manage the stairs?” Mel turned to ask.

  It was a short flight up to back porch that boasted a washer and dryer and the door to the kitchen.

  Jack held up the cane. “You’re worried about this? I just use it as a chick magnet.”

  Mel chuckled. But she noticed he used the railing and took the four steps slowly. Gran used to say she didn’t feel as old as she looked. Maybe it was the same with Jack. Or maybe it was a case of a boy being a boy.

  Whatever it was, she liked it. She liked him, even though he made her uneasy.

  Inside the kitchen, she turned, managing to avoid looking at him as his gaze moved around the old-fashioned room. The antique countertops were a homely green and set low. She’d loved them as a child because they weren’t too high for her to reach. The sink was set low, too, and had a single basin and old fashioned taps. The table was built into a space behind the cabinets, with two long benches for seating. All in all, it was like going back in time, if she took out the refrigerator, which she was glad she didn’t have to do. It kept her Diet Dr. Pepper cold.

  When Jack’s gaze finally made it back to her she heard herself say, “I’m not here a lot.”