Short Stories

A Taste of Time (end)

*** Jane can rewind time by drinking from her hidden wine bottle. ***

6.

Breakfast was a macabre affair. Her mother, transfixed by the morning news, insisted that Jane clean her plate. "And hurry, or you'll be late!" she added.

Jane had to think a moment before she recalled the summer she'd spent working at Dunkin Donuts. "Oh. Right." She had one more year of high school ahead of her.

This time, she would aim for the best college she could win a scholarship to. She wouldn't waste time on the redhead boy, or any boy. Instead of getting drunk with Karen, she would try to emulate Karen's study habits.

On the news, the anchorwoman announced the Power Lotto numbers. Jane's mother shook her head. "Wouldn't it be nice to win that jackpot? We could sure use eleven million dollars around here."

Jane paused on her way out the door. She didn't want to memorize the winning Lotto numbers, but they were so simple, they stuck in her head. 19. 5. 36. 24. 2.

They reemerged in her thoughts while she worked the dough-nut counter, a mental chant, like a song that wouldn't go away.

7.

The jackpot was up to sixteen million, the highest the state of New Hampshire had ever seen. Jane knew that someone else would win tomorrow.

"Please, Mom?" she begged. "Buy the ticket this once, and I'll do all the house chores for a week, unless we win the jackpot."

Her mother burst out laughing. "Oh, all right. I can't pass that deal up." She wrapped her hands around the cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. "You've been acting strangely these last few days, you know that?"

"How so?" Jane asked.

The past five days had been torture. It was a small miracle that Jane hadn't been fired; she'd forgotten the name of her boss. Now even Karen was teasing her about short-term memory loss.

"Well, just ..." her mother thought for a moment. "You're spending time with me. It's nice. I like it. You seem a lot more ... mellow."

Jane laughed. She knew exactly how it felt to be an adult. Maybe her lost decade of life hadn't been entirely wasted, after all.

8.

"We've won! We've won! We've won!" Jane and her mother screamed together.

9.

One day stood out in particular, to Jane. That day on the deck of the cruise ship, where she slipped perfectly into Robert's arms, and he held her while they watched the sun set over towering thunderheads on the South Pacific. Then they danced in the ship's ballroom. If she could relive any day over and over without making it stale, it would be that day.

But she hadn't thought to touch the Tabula Rasa to bring back that outstanding day until decades later. By then, the intervening years stopped her from jumping back.

10.

In her seventies, Jane had trouble sleeping. She tossed and turned, and kept touching the place next to her, where Robert should be.

He was in a hospice, with Alzheimer's. Jane feared that she might be headed down that path, herself. She exhibited no signs of memory loss, but her mother had gone senile during her last years, and Jane figured it was only a matter of time.

For the first time in many decades, Jane allowed herself to think of Tabula Rasa.

She no longer kept it nearby. The temptation was too great. She'd used it often during her lottery-winning years, enough so that the catchphrase "a Lucky Jane" was common in households across the United States.