They had escaped the hospital room to pick up dinner and Noah had already finished placing the delivery order before they even reached the hospital courtyard. It was a beautiful courtyard with a state of the art ceiling which was said to be made of a proprietary material developed by the local university. Charlotte zoned out on her phone call as she tried to remember what she'd read. Something like Nanotech-Phase-Adaptive-EAP-Super-Polymer?
Charlotte caught sight of Noah as he fidgeted with his hoodie as he waited for her to get off the phone. The accent color of the lightweight sweatshirt shifted as he twisted his hand over the wrist, absently changing it until she hung up finally. His apparent eagerness and impatience snapped her back from her brain's attempt to momentarily escape from everything that was going on and renewed her own need to tell him what she'd experienced.
"Sorry, if I hadn't taken it she just would have kept calling and texting you know?" Charlotte sank onto a bench at a nearby table, dropping her bag on it. She knew Noah was anxious to tell her something, but she couldn't wait either, as a result they ended up mostly talking over one another.
"I had this really weird vivid dream…and then I was like gone." Noah was practically leaning over the table as he sat across from her.
"Something happened to me-" Charlotte blurted at the same time
"Wait what?" They both spoke at the same time again and Charlotte couldn't help but laugh though Noah still looked almost manic.
"What do you mean you were gone?" Charlotte asked, wanting to get their facts straight regardless of how much she still had to say. Something made her feel like it would have to do with the surrealness that she'd experienced early that morning.
"Explain 'happened'." Noah had said at the same time, and he looked to be getting a little frustrated with her, Charlotte thought.
"You go first," she finally insisted, biting the inside of her cheek to keep herself from saying anything else that might interrupt him.
"Okay," he sighed, Charlotte could see a sheen of sweat on his mostly clear forehead. "I fell asleep sitting next to mom and I thought I was dreaming because it just felt like a dream at first if that makes sense."
Noah didn't wait for her to confirm if it did or not, but she listened as he continued his story. "But I woke up, in the dream. It doesn't feel like a dream now but anyway, I woke up in Memphis. You remember we took that really long road trip?"
"I was just thinking about that last night to clear my head before going to sleep!" She couldn't help her outburst. With everything that had happened in the past few days, it didn't feel like she could believe in coincidence anymore. "Sorry, go ahead."
"It's okay. But I wasn't me, in the dream. I wasn't me then or me now really. I don't know how to describe it. I woke up on a bench and I felt like me, like me now. And I didn't remember leaving Mom's room. So I thought I was having a lucid dream, because everything felt so real and vivid. I could smell it, feel the sun and humidity. It was so real. I tried to start flying, that's my go to, you know? I couldn't though. And then I could read, which I don't think you can read in dreams."
"You could have just thought you could read it," Charlotte put in, but she could tell from Noah's expression that he didn't agree. She made a gesture for him to continue.
"Do you remember A. Schwab, that old store? I read the sign before I went in. Wait, let me back up, I was looking at my reflection and I saw this woman. She was walking, I wasn't the woman, to clarify. I still thought it was a dream then, so I thought that I was supposed to follow her. I wonder if that's what people having like a psychotic break feel like." He added the last sentence thoughtfully and then seemed to get lost in the idea until Charlotte gently cleared her throat.
"Anyway, I went in and we were in the store, the whole family. I saw me and Dad downstairs but I was a kid. And then you were upstairs looking at candles. And Mom was upstairs too, talking to the lady."
Charlotte was able to keep herself from commenting but her heart had started racing so fast she thought it might explode. A chill ran down her spine when he mentioned the two women having a conversation, more of the memory returning to her now as he told her about his dream. He kept pressing his thumbnail against a spot on his index finger.
"She was trying to get Mom to come away to some place with her but she wouldn't because she thought it was dangerous or something." Noah was saying as more of the memory of their trip came back to her.
"And then the man knocked over the hats and they threw him out," Charlotte said quietly, remembering the scene. She'd felt so bad because the guy had only been a few years older than her and he hadn't been doing anything wrong. When she looked up again to apologize once more for interrupting she noticed that Noah was as pale as a sheet. "What is it?"
"That was me," she hadn't seen her brother look this scared in a long time, even when he'd confided to her about the strange things happening with their mother. Between her concern and the hushed tone he'd spoken in, Charlotte was having trouble understanding and he'd had to say it a few more times to register. When it did though, she felt as if every hair on her arms and up to the back of her neck were standing on end. He'd been there, but not as a man, and he hadn't knocked down any display. The man who'd done that had been older than them, and had looked troubled, at the time she'd assumed he was homeless and maybe having a mental health crisis. Charlotte couldn't even fathom her brother looking that way.
"How could it have been you?" She asked, expecting somehow for him to be able to supply the answer. Despite her doubts however, and the lack of any rational explanation, something made her believe. And if something extraordinary could happen to him, she thought, it might help her to make sense of what had happened to her.
"I don't know," he said, still looking dazed a moment longer before a hint of satisfaction hit his eyes. "And they didn't throw me out," he added as if that mattered, "they just asked me to leave if I wasn't going to buy anything."
"I don't know," he said again, looking frustrated and a bit sad. Charlotte felt guilty over her own skepticism, as if she were letting him down by not taking him at his word. There just had to be other explanations that made more sense than some alternate form of himself having been present at some former time in their lives. Charlotte felt the nagging thought that what he'd described felt familiar though. Something about the feel of the sun and being able to smell. Noah thrust his hand into her face, his index finger pointed out like a gun, interrupting her thoughts.
"Charlotte, look," he told her, tapping the small slice with his thumb. "This happened when I was there. And it's still here. So that's proof. I got a paper cut looking at some piece of paper in my pocket."
She wanted to point out that that paper cut could have happened anywhere and he could have simply dreamed about it later. But Charlotte couldn't say anything, she didn't know what she truly believed, but Noah was clearly convinced that one way or another, he had been there.
"Oh!" Noah was still hurrying on. "And I could play the harmonica. I was a busker. I ate at the Arcade because I could play the harmonica, but when I left the restaurant I was back in Mom's room. And, Dad was annoyed because nobody had seen me all night."
Finally quiet, he looked at her expectantly. But Charlotte didn't know what to say, she tried to take her time to process what he'd told her. It was hard not to want to rationalize the whole thing. For instance, Noah had been known to sleepwalk. Once, they'd even found him in the bed of his truck. She just knew, however, that this wasn't that. She'd felt something too, this morning at that weird old fashioned wedding. But it was different, she had never been to a costume wedding.
"Charlotte, please say something," Noah softly pulled her from what were quickly turning into racing thoughts. "Please say you believe me or you understand because-"
Noah didn't finish his thought and her heart broke. She got up and moved around the table to scoot onto the bench next to him and wrap him in a hug. "I believe you," she whispered.
The relief he felt as he relaxed into his sister's hug was a living breathing thing. All of the fear and confusion and anxiety he'd felt moments ago were melting away. To get that all off of his chest and to finally feel like she really, truly believed him and was with him made him feel like someone had lifted a boulder from his chest. He was so caught up in his own solace that he barely heard her say, "Noah there's something else."
He wanted to protest the loss of her comfort as she moved back to the other side of the table, carefully digging in her purse as if there might be a snake in it. "Something happened to me too. But it wasn't somewhere we'd been before, it was at a costume wedding I think. And not in any place I've been."
"It started when I found this," Charlotte had put on one of her motorcycle gloves and was dangling the silver locket.
"The locket!" He yelled, unconcerned over if anyone around them turned to stare. He remembered in the memory his mother had shown him before bed, their grandmother had been yelling and had mentioned destroying the locket.
"Wait, I want to tell you this," Charlotte shook her head, and Noah knew that if he didn't let her continue she may decide against telling him whatever it was she was working up to at all. He tried to pay rapt attention to his sister, but his brain insisted on cataloging every detail of the memory his mother had shared with him the night before. He had to understand the significance of that locket.
Charlotte set the necklace on the table, clearly afraid to touch it. Noah's leg bounced under the table, he wanted to talk so badly that it was almost impossible to listen. "I could smell the flowers and the grass, Noah, like how you felt when you woke up on Beale Street." She shook her head almost imperceptibly, but he caught it. Noah knew his sister, he knew it was probably one of the hardest things she'd ever had to do, to accept that something like this could happen. He was proud of her though, as she continued to recount her experience. "You know how in the memories it's like you can feel things but otherwise it's like watching a movie?"
"Well I was in control. I was able to talk, and look where I wanted, and someone spoke to me in a weird language, but I understood them." She continued when he nodded, but he was already convinced that she'd traveled some place too. Some time. The thought came to him as a shiver ran down his spine.
"I know what it is." He wasn't sure if he'd actually spoken, his mouth and throat felt like they'd been filled with sand. Noah was reaching to pull the locket towards him for further inspection. He felt dizzy with the realization of it, with his conviction at what he now knew to be their mother's big secret.
"Noah, no!" Charlotte screeched, snapping him out of his trancelike focus and causing him to meet her eyes, "don't touch it."