The Necklace - The Dusky Club, June 1962 - Linda S Rice (books to read fiction txt) 📗

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 a reckless 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 between you and James 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 watch over 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 time-traveling 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…

 

Also by Linda S. Rice

PART I

The Necklace – The Dusky Club, June 1962

The Necklace II – Back to Brighton, November 1962

The Necklace III – London, August 1967

The Necklace IV – Brighton, December 1999

The Necklace V – Strawberries & Wine

The Necklace VI – Snow on the Mountain

PART II

The Necklace VII– London, 1815

The Necklace VIII – Brighton, 1815

The Harpist

 

About the Author

As a child, Linda was mesmerized by storytellers, and her mother always made sure she had a supply of books close at hand while she was growing up. Sitting on her lap and listening to her read is one of her earliest memories. She recalls drawing pictures and then making up stories to go with them, and as she got older, her stories became longer and more fanciful. At age ten, she began to write them down, and when she was twelve, she wrote her first “book,” all handwritten. During rainy days in gym class, she wrote when the students had to stay in the locker room and sit on benches. She had a small cult following of friends who waited for her to finish each page, which she would then pass down the row. When she got a typewriter for her thirteenth birthday, she typed up her “masterpiece” and put it in a 3-ring binder, then hid it away. The story was actually quite silly. Having a typewriter, however, made it possible for her to write even more, which she did on almost a daily basis.

But, as happens to many young, aspiring writers, reality grabbed her, and when she graduated from high school and headed to college then into the workforce, the dream of becoming an author washed away. It wasn’t until she turned 62 and experienced her 3rd job layoff that she decided to make her writing dream come true.

Writing has since become an addiction to Linda, and she’s finding that ideas for numerous scenarios and characters keep flooding her brain, with the characters screaming, “Write