Landline

And now she was talking to him during that week, that lost week. . . . Why?

Was she supposed to change something? If this were Quantum Leap, there’d be something specific she was supposed to change. (This is not Quantum Leap, Georgie—this is your life. You are not Scott Bakula.)

But what if . . .

Christmas 1998. They fought. Neal went home. He came back. He proposed. They lived not-exactly-happily ever after. Wait, was that what she was supposed to fix? The not-exactly-happy part?

How was she supposed to fix something like that, over the phone, when she wasn’t even sure it was fixable?

Christmas 1998. A week without Neal. The worst week of her life. The week he decided to marry her . . .

Was Georgie supposed to make sure that he didn’t?

CHAPTER 14

“I don’t know what to say,” Seth said. He was leaning on the white-board, frowning at her Metallica T-shirt. “On the one hand, your hair is wet, so you’ve obviously showered and changed. I applaud that. On the other, I miss the velvet jogging pants. . . . Georgie? Hello? Hey.”

Georgie stopped trying to plug her phone into her computer and looked up at him. He’d kicked away from the wall and set his hand on her shoulder.

“I know I’ve been asking you this all week,” he said, “but I’ll try one more time—are you okay?”

She wound the USB cord around her fingers. “If you could travel into the past and fix a mistake, would you?”

“Yes,” he said, without even thinking about it. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, you would? You’d mess with the past?”

“Absolutely. You said there was a mistake—I’d fix it.”

“But what if you messed everything up?” Georgie asked. “Like, what if that one action changed everything?”

“Like in Back to the Future?”

“Yes.”

Seth shrugged. “Meh. I don’t believe it. I’d go back and fix my mistake—everything else would work itself out. World War Three isn’t going to happen just because I got a higher SAT score.”

“But if you’d gotten a higher SAT score, you might not have gone to ULA, and then you’d never have met me, and we wouldn’t be standing here right now.”

“Pfft,” he said, lowering an eyebrow. “Do you really think that’s all that brought us together? Circumstance? Location?” He shook his head. “I find your perspective on space and time to be very limiting.”

Georgie went back to fumbling with her laptop. Seth took the cord out of her hand and plugged it in. “I printed out what we worked on yesterday,” he said. “Why don’t you take a look?”

Neal had noticed Georgie was different—on the phone last night. He’d mentioned it. Maybe he’d figure out what was happening. . . .

There was no way he’d figure out what was happening.

Why would Neal ever jump to the completely implausible and correct conclusion that he was talking to her in the future?

Georgie hadn’t said anything to date herself. She hadn’t mentioned the Internet. Or the war. Or their kids. She hadn’t tried to warn him about the stock market or 9/11.

“You don’t sound like yourself tonight,” he’d said. It was after they’d been on the phone about half an hour.

“Why not?” Georgie’d asked. God, it was like talking to a ghost. Something weirder than a ghost—a sending.

“I don’t know what it is.”

“Is my voice lower?” That would make sense. She was fifteen years closer to menopause. “Maybe it’s the crying.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t think so. You seem . . . like you’re being really careful.”

“I am being really careful.”

“You seem like you’re not sure of anything.”

“I’m not,” she said.

“Yeah, but Georgie, ‘sure of everything’ is kind of your signature color.”

She laughed. “Was that a Steel Magnolias reference?”

“You know all about my Sally Field crush,” he said. “I’m not apologizing for it now.”

She’d forgotten about Neal’s Sally Field crush. “I know all your dirty Gidget secrets,” she said.

“It was the Flying Nun who really did it for me.”

Had Georgie been sure of everything at twenty-two?

She’d had a plan.

She’d always had a plan. It seemed like the smart thing to do—have a plan and follow it, until you have solid reasons to change course.

Neal had the opposite approach. His one big plan, oceanography, had gone sour on him; and then his plan turned into keeping his eyes open until something better came along.

Georgie used to think she could fix that for him. She was really good at making plans, and Neal was really good at everything else; this seemed like a no-brainer.

“You could just do this for a living,” Georgie said one night at The Spoon, before they even started dating.

“Entertain you?” Neal said. “Sounds good. How are the benefits?”

She was sitting across from him (always sitting across from him) leaning on his drafting table. “No. This. Stop the Sun. You’re good enough—I thought you were already syndicated.”

“You are very kind,” he said. “Very wrong, but very kind.”

“I’m serious.”

“I couldn’t do this for a living.” He gave the woodchuck he was drawing a cigar. “It’s just messing around—it’s just doodling.”

“So you wouldn’t want to be Matt Groening?”

“With all due respect, no.”

“Why not?”

Neal shrugged. “I want to do something real. I want to make a difference.”

“Making people laugh is real.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “I’ll let you take up that mantle.”

“Do you think that comedy is just messing around, too?”

“Honestly?” he asked.

“Of course, honestly.”

“Then yes.”

Georgie sat up straighter and folded her arms on the table. “You think my dreams are a waste of time?”

“I think your dreams would be a waste of my time,” he said. “I wouldn’t be happy.”

“So what would make you happy?”

“Well, if I knew that, I’d do it.” He’d looked up at her then, his eyes pained and almost too sincere for the circumstances, for the bright lights and the basement of the student union. He held his dip pen over the margin of his comic and let it drip. “I mean it. If I figure out what makes me happy, I’m not going to waste any more time. I’m just going to grab it. I’m just going to do it.”

Georgie nodded. “I believe you.”

Neal smiled and looked down, sheepish now, shaking his head a bit. “Sorry. I’ve had too much time in my own head lately.”

She waited for him to start inking again. “You could be a doctor . . . ,” she said.

“Maybe.”

“You have doctorly hands. I can imagine you performing very neat stitches.”

“Weird,” he said. “But thank you.”

“Lawyer?”

Neal shook his head.

“Indian chief?”

“Don’t have the co

“Well,” Georgie said, “that’s all I’ve got—wait. Butcher? Baker? Candlestick maker?”

“None of those sound bad, honestly. The world needs bakers.”

“And candlestick makers,” she added.

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about—” Neal glanced up at her, then looked down, licking his lips. “—I’ve been thinking about the Peace Corps.”

“The Peace Corps? Really?”

“Yeah. It’d give me something worthwhile to do while I figure the rest out.”

“I didn’t know there was still a Peace Corps.”

“That or the Air Force,” Neal said.

“Aren’t those two radically different directions?”

“Not at all.” He glanced up over her shoulder, then lowered his eyebrows and looked down.

Georgie knew that expression. She sat up and turned around to see what Seth wanted.

Seth had stepped all the way into the production room—usually he didn’t come past the door. But tonight he sat down on a stool near Georgie and leaned onto a desk. “Hey, Neal, what’s going on?”

“Not much,” Neal muttered without looking up.