The Truth About Gretchen Page 7

“Was she pissed?”

  “Yep. But I’m gonna stop and buy her some flowers.”

  “Take some out of the backyard,” he says, walking to the window. “Those gladiolus and carnations are pretty. She’d love that. Baby, I think you missed your calling. With your green thumb, you should have been a florist.”

  “Thanks, Tay. That’s a good idea.”

  “Okay, I’d better go. By the way, your hair looks nice down. Glad to see you come out of the braids.”

  “Thanks. I did it with the curling iron this morning.”

  He plants a juicy kiss on my lips and leaves the house. After a couple of minutes, I hear his truck rumbling down the driveway.

  I fling open the door and step into the backyard, my spirits uplifted. Joy flares in my chest when a butterfly circles my head. “Yep, this is Terrific Tuesday, Robert.” I spin around the yard, taking in the apple, lemon, and orange trees—inhaling the smell of gladiolus, carnations, gerberas, and roses. I walk to the fountain in the middle of the yard and submerge my hand in the water, thinking about all the time we spent swimming at the park when we lived in Shady Grove, before they shut down the pool. Robert was a great swimmer. Hell, he was great at everything. He would have loved this backyard, I think to myself, sitting in the recliner on the patio. I lay my head back and jump up when I hear my phone ring. I bolt to the kitchen and snatch the phone from the island. Dancing Hills University flashes across the screen.

  “Hello?” I shift from one foot to the other.

  “Is this Regina Wilson?”

  “Yes, yes, it is. Did you find it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I called there this morning. I talked to someone in the cinema department, and they said they’ll get in touch with Gretchen Holloway and the casting director for Project HIM.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know someone had already returned your call, and they’re taking care of it.”

  I now wonder if anyone is taking care of it. “Okay. Well, thanks for calling,” I say, my positive vibes evaporating. I glance at the clock on the stove. I probably should meet with Carol first, get that over with. I return to the yard, gather the flowers, and put them in a vase. Then I grab my phone and purse and head out.

  Chapter 9

  Gretchen

  I descend the staircase in our condo, gripping the handrail, still a little off balance from last night. Lance put me to bed. I tossed and turned and then got up and researched past lives via reincarnation. Then I forced myself to go back to sleep. I slept for twelve hours, straight through my to-do list. Lance, worried about me, took the day off. As I approach the kitchen, the sweet aroma of my favorite breakfast envelopes me. The one good thing about last night is that he didn’t badger me about what he thinks was another nightmare, or about Robert.

  Standing in the doorway, I watch him swirl around the kitchen, shirtless, wearing a pair of cutoff jeans. I smile when he arranges banana slices on my pancakes. The kitchen reminds me of him—not too small, not too big. Just the right size for a wooden table that seats two, and a vintage stove and refrigerator covered with his niece Trisha’s childhood drawings, sent special delivery from New York. The walls are bright yellow, like his unruly hair, with blue trim that matches his eyes.

  “Good morning, Chef Lance.”

  He stops and looks me, his face melting into a welcoming smile. “Good morning, Red.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  He puts a plate of pancakes in the center of the table set for two. “Because you needed to rest. You needed to take a break. Last night kind of freaked me out.” He motions for me to have a seat. “You’re on house arrest, Red. No calls, no meetings.”

  “But—”

  “And no buts! You’re killing yourself with your schedule.”

  I push my oily hair out of my face and slump into the chair. Sitting on the windowsill, the water bottle and my phone stare at me, begging me to retrieve them. I wonder if I’ve gotten any calls. Any emails. My mind goes into overdrive. Suddenly, I’m thrust into the throes of my mission.

  “What’s wrong? You look like you’re about to have a panic attack.” Lance touches my forehead. “You’re burning up.”

  I nod, wishing he’d gone to work. “I got soaked leaving school yesterday. I may have come down with something. Unfortunately, we don’t have anything here at the house.” I look at him, willing him to make a trip to the local drugstore.

  He scratches his head. “I probably should buy you something. You might be coming down with the flu.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “I’ll be back. Eat up.” He kisses the top of my head, grabs his shirt draped on the back of the other chair, and leaves. The garage door grinds and squeaks, and I hear him pull out.

  I jump up, grab my phone, and turn it on. As usual, it’s taking forever to power up. Anxious to check my emails, I snag the water bottle and hurry to my office. I wake up my monitor. I have three replies, but they’re all negative. And there’s one mail delivery failure email. I investigate. RWillson@pvtemail.com. Why did that one bounce back? Crap. I spelled Wilson wrong. I didn’t notice that last night. Lance wasn’t the only one who was exhausted.

  My phone rings, and I nearly pee my pants. My armpits dampen and prickle when I see Dancing Hills University on the screen.

  “Hello?”

  “Can I speak to Gretchen Holloway?”

  “This is she. How can I help you?”

  “This is Belinda from the cinema department. We were asked to contact you about a missing water bottle. A lady said she left it in the lobby while she was auditioning yesterday.”

  My mouth opens so wide I can see my tonsils reflected in the computer monitor.

  “Gretchen, are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here,” I say, standing. “I’m here. And yes, I have it. Who is she? What’s her name?”

  “Regina Wilson.”

  I stop pacing. What’s significant about that name? Then it hits me—she was the one whose email bounced back, and she was the no-show. “Okay. Do you have her number, so I can call her?” She tells me the number, and I jot it down. “Thank you, Belinda. I appreciate this. Have a great day!” I hang up and spin around my office like a kid in a toy store. With trembling hands, I dial Regina’s number, praying she picks up on the first ring, because if I don’t reach her right here and now, I might go crazy. Now I want to know why she didn’t stay. No, I need to know why she didn’t stay. I need to know everything about this woman, who yesterday I couldn’t have cared less about.

  I can’t believe this. I can’t believe I’ve won an Oscar. I have so many people to thank. But before I do, please leave a message, and I’ll return the call after my speech.

  I stare at the phone. “Is this the right number?” I dial it again and hear the same recording. This time I leave a message. “I’m not sure if I have the right number. I’m trying to reach Regina Wilson. I have your water bottle, and I want to return it to you ASAP. Please call me as soon as you get this message. I’m at 626-555-3459. Oh, and this is Gretchen Holloway, the writer/director. Thank you. I look forward to speaking with you.” I hang up and set down the phone, hoping she calls sooner rather than later. Who is this Regina Wilson? After she skipped out on the audition, I paid little attention to her photo and resume. I barely remember what she looks like. I look her up on IMDb.

  Her IMDb profile appears on my computer monitor, and I study it like I’m preparing for an exam. She’s been acting for a long time. Almost longer than I’ve been alive. She has some decent credits, but nothing that stands out. I take the water bottle off my desk and compare Robert’s face to hers. I wonder if they’re related. They don’t resemble each other. She’s much darker, with wide-set eyes and a broad nose. She reminds me of Viola Davis. She’s pretty. Maybe she’s his girlfriend. No, she’s too old. Maybe she’s his mother. That would be ironic.

  I leave her IMDb page and search for her on Instagram and Facebook. She’s on both. I devour th
e pictures like a starving refugee, looking for photos of Robert. My heart revs up when I come across numerous childhood pictures of the two of them. And it flips over when I notice one of the captions. My big bro Robert & me @ the game. Holy crap. It wasn’t a dream. His name is Robert. They’re brother and sister. So the photo on the water bottle is old. My eyes sting. I blink back my tears. There are a ton of photos chronicling Robert’s football career. I was spot on with having him be a football player. How did I know this stuff? I keep scrolling, on the edge of my seat as his life in pictures unfolds in front of me, paralleling what I’ve written in my film.

  “Red, where are you?”

  “Damn!” I log off and run out of the office. I nearly crash into Lance.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  “Nothing. What did you get from the drugstore?”

  “Theraflu.” He tries to glimpse into my office.

  I drag him into the kitchen. “I’ll take some now.”

  He looks at my uneaten breakfast and shakes his head. “You haven’t touched your food.”

  “I will. Let me take the medicine first.”

  “Okay.” His eyes narrow.

  I sit at the table while he takes the cap off the Theraflu, fills a spoon with the syrup, and feeds it to me. I swallow it and then finish eating under his watchful gaze.

  “Good girl.” He places his hand on mine. “Red, last night you said the guy on the bottle over there … Where is it?” He points to the empty windowsill. “I put it over there with your phone last night.”

  “I moved it. What were you about to ask me?”

  “You said the guy on the bottle is the same guy in your dream. What did you mean by that?”

  I contemplate whether I should tell him what’s really going on. If I venture down this road, there’ll be no turning back. This thing is larger than I am, more massive than my film, and too huge to hide. I take a deep breath, as if I’m about to dive headfirst into an empty Olympic-size pool. “Lance, I know you have a scientific mind, but I need you to be open minded. I need you to think outside of the box.”

  He rears back a bit, as though bracing for horrific news. “You’re scaring me, Red.”

  “Don’t be. Look—yesterday after the auditions, I experienced something out of this world. Something crazy. It was like I went to another dimension or something.”

  I study his face for signs of disbelief. He flushes, stands, and walks to the refrigerator.

  “Lance?”

  He grabs a beer, pops the tab, and chugs. The clock on the wall near the pantry displays 12:00 p.m., a little too early for a can of beer. I keep my thoughts to myself. He returns to his chair and lets out a monster belch, the kind goofy prepubescent boys would be proud of. He sets the beer on the table and says, “I don’t understand.”

  “I found the water bottle in the trash. The man on the front is the man who has been in my nightmare.”

  “You mean he looks like the man in your nightmare.” He swigs the beer.

  “No, he is the man in my nightmare. It’s him, Lance. I was so shocked when I saw it, I had this out-of-body experience. And during this trip or whatever you want to call it, I became him. I was him, and I saw and heard things.”

  “What things?” He rolls his eyes and finishes the beer.

  “I saw a door, and someone was coming out of it. Then I was outdoors, and people were saying, ‘Happy New Year’ and ‘happy birthday.’ Then someone pointed a gun at me. They shot me because I knew something. I was him. I was Robert. They called me Robert. Lance, I think I might be the reincarnation of Robert.”

  He drags his chair across the floor, and it topples over with a loud thud. “Okay, stop the frigging presses, Greeet-cheeen. Enough! You said making this nightmare your thesis film would be cathartic, that it would put an end to your restless and sleepless nights. But it’s made things worse. Now you think you might be the reincarnation of some black guy?”

  “Lance, based on what I read last night, what I experienced is like what people experience when they go through past-life regression therapy. I experienced my past life when I was Robert.”

  “And you expect me to believe this? That you’re this guy you call Robert?”

  “I’m me. I’m my own person, with my own spirit, but this spirit didn’t just come about twenty-six years ago when I was born. I don’t know how many lives I’ve had, but I do know that I lived as the man Robert, and when I was killed, my spirit continued on in the body I have now.”

  He picks up the chair from the floor and storms away. I run after him.

  “Lance, listen to me.”

  He flounces into the living room and stands in front of the fireplace, his back to me. “Gretchen, if you don’t want to marry me, tell me. You don’t have to concoct this fantastical story to turn me off—to chase me away. I get it now. The distance. Busying yourself, not being available to me. And when we do spend time together, I feel like you wish you were somewhere else or that I was somewhere else. Maybe Patty was dead wrong about us. Maybe we’re not a match.”

  I walk to him and set my hand on his shoulder. He shrugs it off, then turns and faces me with tears in his eyes. “Gretchen, I fell in love with you the moment I saw you and that crazy red hair of yours. In that moment, I saw our entire future—us, a couple of kids and a Siberian husky, a beautiful house, summer vacations, a good life. My parents told me I was making a mistake getting involved with a creative person. They said creative people weren’t stable; they were fickle. I fought for you. My parents have accepted my choice, and they’re excited about meeting you in the flesh. Now it looks like they were right, and I was wrong.”

  My stomach twists. Not because I’m finding out what I already knew—that Lance’s parents had their hearts set on him marrying a New York debutante—but that Lance believes I want to break off our engagement. As preoccupied as I am, I know I love him. “Lance, I’m not trying to run you off by making up a bizarre story. I love you, and I want to marry you. What’s happening is real, but out of my control.” I take his hand and lead him to the sofa. He collapses onto it, dispirited and defeated. I sit next to him. “Lance, I know things about this guy I shouldn’t. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence.”

  “Like what?”

  “In my film, he’s a football player.”

  “You eat, breathe, and sleep football. Of course, he’d play ball.”

  “Did you ever wonder why I’m so into football?”

  “Your father bribed your mother to watch it when she was pregnant with you.”

  “I don’t think that would have made any difference. The person who left that bottle was a lady named Regina Wilson. I went on her social media pages. She’s Robert’s sister, and that’s his name—Robert. His birthday is January 1, they lived in Shady Grove, and he was murdered there when he was twenty-four. How could I have known that?”

  “Gretchen, it’s scientific fact that the brain recognizes and detects information we may have ignored or weren’t actually conscious of. Somewhere along the way you read about this guy or heard about him or saw something about him on one of those investigative shows you like to watch, and you simply didn’t remember, but your mind did. So you saw his face on the bottle, and everything came back to you.”

  His words hang in the air for a moment, then I get up from the sofa, realizing this is a lost cause. “I don’t believe that, Lance. I think we have to agree to disagree.”

  He also stands and steps into my space. “So what are you saying, Gretchen? Where are you going with this? How far are you going to take this? I thought we had a life here. I thought we had a future. It’s been the damn dream for two years. Now this. What do you frigging want from me? I can’t live like this, with you chasing a ghost.”

  Confusion, fear, and panic surge through my body, and I grab his arm to keep from falling. “I’m not chasing a ghost. Lance, someone killed me twenty-six years ago. And according to Regina’s posts, the killer was never found. I may be able to sol
ve the mystery.”

  He jerks away. “Do you hear yourself? You sound insane.” He leaves, and I collapse onto the sofa in a heap of tears, fearing I may have gone mad. I get up when I hear the garage door crying louder than I am. I run out, hoping to catch Lance before he leaves, but he backs out in his BMW, burning rubber. I stand in front of the condo, wondering where he’s off to, and for the first time in a long time, wishing he were here.

  My gaze dips to my engagement ring, and tears spring to my eyes. I stand there wondering how to fix this, thinking about the day Lance said the five words I thought I’d never hear. Gretchen, will you marry me?

  It was New Year’s Day, and my twenty-sixth birthday. Lance had rented out a swanky restaurant downtown and invited all our friends, my parents, and his aunt and uncle. The last thing I’d expected was for him to propose to me. We’d agreed that we wouldn’t get married until after I finished graduate school. In my mind that meant that there would be no proposal until that time. I should’ve known Lance was up to something because a few months prior to my birthday, he and Patty were talking more than usual. And Patty kept talking about rings. She even showed me rings in a magazine. As we neared my birthday, I’d forgotten all about that. The proposal remains fresh in my mind and my heart.

  ******

  Sitting at the top of the French restaurant, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows, I admired the picturesque skyline view, thinking I was the luckiest girl in the world. I glanced at my parents and friends, dancing to the velvety sound of a solo singer accompanied by a live band. It was a magical night. Heat colored my cheeks as Lance, dressed in a custom-made blue suit, approached our table, all smiles. He stopped and motioned for the band to stop playing. The chatter and laughter in the room subsided, and the spotlight was on me. Lance approached and extended his hand. I got up from the table and joined him on the dance floor. He again motioned to the band, and they began playing Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect.” It took all my willpower not to lose it. Our guests oohed and ahhed while Lance spun me around.