“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I have some things to do with my life, and since I haven’t yet done them, I don’t know how they’re going to work. Ask me in six months.”
“What about—” Ellie began, wanting to hear everything that Leslie had to say.
But Leslie cut her off as she stood up. “I don’t know about you two but I am suddenly very tired. I think I’d like to go back to the house and take a nap.”
“Sounds great to me,” Madison said.
“Me too,” Ellie added, but as she said it, she thought, We’re all lying. We have things we want to do in private. As for her, she wanted to get to the nearest stationer’s store and buy a pen and paper because Madison’s story had given her an idea for a book. She wanted to write something about how we all touch each other’s lives, about—
“Ready?” Leslie said, and Ellie realized that she’d been standing at the table, lost in a daydream.
Madison walked out first, and Leslie caught up to Ellie. “I want to hear what happened between you and your ex-husband,” Leslie said quietly. “What happened in the courtroom?”
“Would it make sense if I said that I need to sit down and remember it?”
“Perfectly,” Leslie said. “I have to think about what happened to me too.”
Ellie looked at Leslie in question. “You went back, but you decided to change nothing. Did your almost-president turn out to be a jerk? Tell me so when he comes up for election, I won’t vote for him.”
She’d meant her words as a joke, but Leslie didn’t smile. “Actually, he was lovely. I think he is probably nicer than my husband is, maybe smarter, definitely more considerate, and certainly kinder.”
“Yeow!” Ellie said. “And you left him behind?”
Leslie took her time in answering. “Would you understand if I said that I love my family very much, but at the same time I am fed up with them?”
“Yes, I do understand. So what do you plan to do about it?”
Leslie smiled. “I have no idea at all. None.”
Ellie laughed. “Okay, so now we’re all going to pretend to take naps, but instead we’re all going to do things in private. Madison is going to call her family and gush to them about how much she loves and misses them, and you’re going to—?”
“I’m going to take a long walk an
d see if I can figure out what to do with my life as it is. No more withdrawing into a fantasy about a boy from college and what-could-have-been. From now on I live in the present.” Leslie smiled. “And you are . . . let me guess . . .” In an exaggerated gesture, Leslie put her fingertips to her temple as though she were thinking. “You’re going to write down all the things you thought about while Madison was talking, and you’re going to try to put her story into a book—without getting yourself sued, that is.”
Ellie laughed. “I’m that transparent, am I?”
“Yes and no,” Leslie said seriously. “I think I’ve finally learned how important self is to a person, and with you, those stories inside your head are what makes you you. Take them away and you have—”
“One fat, depressed woman,” Ellie said.
“Right,” Leslie answered. “Speaking of which, isn’t that a nice little clothing store on the corner? Before you leave, I think you should pay them a visit. You don’t want to go home to Jessie and Nate wearing clothes twice as big as you need, do you?”
At the thought of having her own body back, Ellie had to turn away for a moment. But it wasn’t just having her body back. Thanks to Jessie, she now had her self-esteem back.
When they reached the house, Madison ran inside, obviously eager to get to a telephone. But neither Leslie nor Ellie went inside. Turning back toward town, Ellie went in search of a stationer’s store, and Leslie kept walking down the road, her mind already faraway.
Thirty
Ellie leaned back against the headrest of the plane’s seat and smiled to herself. She was back where she’d started, but this time her life was, oh, so very different. It was nearly two days since she’d returned from . . . What? She still didn’t know what to call it. Time travel? A sort of mega-sized makeover?
Whatever it was, it had certainly changed her life. She still remembered what she’d been put through the first time with her divorce from Martin, but now that time seemed like a story that she’d read—an impossible story that no one would believe, but certainly not reality.
Now, closing her eyes, she again replayed the story as it had happened the second time around. Last night she and Leslie had stayed up late, and Ellie had told Leslie all of it.
“It was Jessie who figured everything out,” Ellie said, smiling in memory. “Before I could love Jessie, I had to let go of my anger and my desperate need for what I thought of as ‘justice.’ Once I did that, I could answer the questions that Jessie asked me. And he . . .”
“What?” Leslie asked.