CHAPTER 29
Everyone was gone now. Her mom had left the TV on in the living room, so the pugs could listen to Christmas carols.
Georgie sat at the kitchen table and stared at the Touch Tone Trimline phone mounted on the wall.
Neal wouldn’t call now, from the past. She didn’t really want him to.
She just didn’t want this to be over.
Georgie wasn’t ready to lose Neal yet. Even to her past self. She wasn’t ready to let him go.
(Somebody had given Georgie a magic phone, and all she’d wanted to do with it was stay up late talking to her old boyfriend. If they’d given her a proper time machine, she probably would have used it to cuddle with him. Let somebody else kill Hitler.)
Maybe the Neal she’d talked to all week was on his way to California, maybe he wasn’t, maybe he was a figment of her imagination—but that Neal still felt like he was within reach. Georgie still believed she could make things right with him.
Her Neal . . .
Her Neal didn’t answer anymore when she called.
Her Neal had stopped trying to get through to her.
And maybe that meant that he wasn’t hers. Not really.
Neal.
Georgie stood up and walked over to the phone, running her hand down the cool bow of it before lifting it off the cradle. The buttons lit up, and she carefully pressed in Neal’s cell number. . . .
The call immediately went to voice mail.
Georgie got ready to leave a message—though she wasn’t sure what to say—but she didn’t get a beep. “We’re sorry,” said one voice. “This mailbox is . . . full,” said another. The call disconnected and Georgie heard a dial tone.
She crumpled against the wall, still holding on to the receiver.
Did it even matter whether Neal was on his way to her in 1998—if he didn’t come back to her now? What good was it to win him in the past, just to lose him in the future?
In a few days, Neal would bring the girls home to California. She’d meet them at the airport. What would he and Georgie have to say to each after ten days of silence?
They were frozen in place when Neal left last week. Now they were frozen through.
The dial tone switched to the off-the-hook signal. Georgie let go of the receiver, and it bounced lazily on the spiral cord.
Is this how Neal had felt? Last night? (In 1998.) When Georgie left the phone off the hook? He’d already been so upset, he already sounded so scared—it must have driven him crazy when he couldn’t get through to her. How many times had he tried?
Georgie had always thought it must have been a powerful romantic urge that made Neal drive all night to get to her on Christmas morning. But maybe he got in the car because he couldn’t get through to her. Maybe he just needed to see her and know that they were okay. . . .
Georgie stood up in slow motion.
Neal. King of the grand gesture. Neal who crossed the desert and found his way through the mountains to reach her.
Neal.
Georgie’s key fob was on the counter, where Heather had left it. She grabbed it.
What else did she need? Driver’s license, credit card, phone—all in the car. She could sneak out the garage door and leave the house locked up. She checked on the puppies on her way out.
Georgie could do this.
There was nothing else left for her to do.