"Oh, for heaven's sakes, honey, yes. Go right ahead! Enjoy yourself."
Linda put on a floral one-piece swimsuit like the one she wore in the dream and spent a couple of hours floating, swimming, enjoying the water, wishing that Seth was there with her.
By Thursday night she worried less about his arrival. She'd been studying hard and was tired. Sleep came easily that night. Soon, she found herself at a Fourth of July fireworks show.
Strangely, though bright, all of the fireworks exploded with the same pale yellow color.
Ordinarily, fireworks on the Fourth of July streamed spectral showers of reds, blues and oranges across the sky. Suddenly she realized she was seeing the lights trip inside the mask. After she realized she was in a dream, her senses heightened. When she looked down at her hand, she saw that it was small, with the puffy fingers she'd had when she was eight years old. She carried a pinwheel with glow in the dark lights at the tips, one of her favorite toys from back then.
They all sat in the bed of her father's pickup. As he pointed to the sky in the darkness she could see that his hair was thicker, and he wasn't wearing glasses. Her mother, who held little Molly in her lap, was wearing her hair long.
Geraldine woke her up when the booming finale occurred and Linda breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm still capable of having a normal, low-stress dream," she said.
The next day she spent hours tidying up her cottage, knowing that it was pointless to try to study. She needed to work off her nervous energy. Seth told her he would call just after he reached town and checked into a motel.
Her phone rang at nine o'clock. "I'm out here at the Shady Acres, near some kind of a mall," Seth said. "Do you know any good places to eat here? I'm starved."
Her heart pounded throughout the short drive from her cottage to the mall. By the time she found his room at the motel, on the second floor, her knees were weak from trembling. She lightly knocked at his door. A tall, clean-shaven man with a fashionable, feathered short hairstyle answered the door. For a moment she didn't recognize him as they stood there, studying each other. "Hey, beautiful," he said, taking her into his arms for a hug.
To her it felt just the same as when they floated in the warm crystal pool together, or when he'd thundered out to her parent's house with his buddies. Although this time, they were truly alone.