Flight to Freedom (Flight Trilogy, Book 3) by Mike Coe

believe it is the path of the sun that will lead us to our hopes and dreams …
    His mother’s words echoed in his head, “Two souls that are meant to be together can never be separated.”
    * * *
    Ryan opened his eyes when Keri touched his arm. Not fully transitioned to reality, he looked around the room. It was confusingly different but somehow familiar at the same time.
    “Wake up, sleepyhead, I don’t want you to miss church,” she said.
    “How long did I sleep?”
    “About eight hours.”
    “Did you say eight hours?”
    “Maybe a little more.”
    That means she won’t remember the allergic reaction — just like she didn’t yesterday morning .
    He tested her. “So, I slept all night and didn’t wake up?”
    “Like a dead man in a lumber yard—snoring away.”
    With his thoughts planted firmly in reality, he recalled his dream: He did not go to the beach with Rex, therefore, he did not meet Emily Anderson. He mailed his letter to Keri before Rex changed it. Shortly after she moved to California he married her—not Emily. Keri never married Rex.

CHAPTER 9
    Southern California
    Sunday Morning — April 2003
    Ryan’s eyes widened with excitement. “Keri, it works! The perfume is magical!”
    “Calm down. What perfume are you talking about?”
    That’s right … she won’t remember anything that happened before I went to sleep — Starbucks ; the perfume ; the sneezing — none of it .
    The choices he had made in his dream had changed everything. He was no longer in Georgia, but instead, back in California. It was as if they had never moved. It was April 2003.
    He sat on the edge of the bed beside her.
    She probably won’t understand , but here goes …
    “In my dream, I was in Rex’s condo in Del Mar, back in 1983, when we were flight instructors at Miramar. I had just come home from work and I called my mom to wish her happy birthday. She started telling me about you and how you had sent her a birthday card. And then…I realized it was all a dream…a very clear, lucid dream. It was so weird!”
    “It’s not unusual to be lucid in your dreams. That has been very thoroughly documented.”
    “But that’s not all. I knew everything that had happened or was going to happen in that dream. It was like I had already lived it. My life was being replayed like a movie—a movie I had already seen. The only difference was I had the opportunity to make decisions that I knew were going to alter my future. For example, do you remember the letter you received from me while you were a flight attendant in Fort Lauderdale?”
    “Of course I do. That letter was the reason we got back together and were eventually married. When I received that letter, I called you and we talked for two hours. I told you about my upcoming transfer to California in July and how excited I was about seeing you and reconnecting with you. You practically asked me to marry you on the phone. Just so you know, if you had asked me, I would have said yes. After that conversation, I knew we would be married soon.”
    She doesn’t know . The only letter she received was the unaltered one … she is not aware that there ever was another letter .
    Everything Keri said he knew to be true, but his mind struggled to understand his other life—the life he knew before he went to sleep.
    Was it really only a dream ?
    In the midst of his dream it was impossible for him to know how his new choices would affect his future, but seeing that Keri had no recollection of the altered letter was proof that his new reality was definitely different. For her, his new reality was her only reality, and there was no other life. He wanted Keri to understand what was happening.
    “Do you have any recollection, at all, of Rex changing the letter I sent you?”
    “I’m not sure what you mean. You talked about Rex all the time, but the first time I met him was at our wedding, remember?”
    That’s right ! She never married Rex . The first time she met him was at our