Legacy of Lies (13 page)

Alex, for once, had been left speechless, so Matt took care of their mission. “Are we on for tomorrow night?” he asked Sophie.

She glanced at me.

“It’s your call,” I said.

She smiled. “Sure.”

Matt volunteered to drive and arranged pickup times, then the guys left. I watched Ginny pose Sophie, thinking that if her camera could catch the glow on Sophie’s face, it was a sure sale.

When Sophie had changed back into her school clothes, I took a break and walked her over to the Mallard. As soon as we were on the street, I told her about my conversation with Mrs. Riley.

“It’s starting to really scare me, Sophie,” I said. “I wake up in a room-1 guess I sleepwalked-and find out it was Avril’s. Things are moved to where they were when Avril was alive. I dream of a place I’ve never seen, then see it for real-the mill where Avril and Thomas used to meet, where she went the night she died. I feel like she’s haunting me.”

“I wonder why she’d choose you,” Sophie mused, “other than the fact that you may be psychic,” she added slyly.

“I think it’s happening to Grandmother, too. I know the relocation of things is getting to her.”

“And Matt?”

“He knows something he’s not telling me. And he wants me to leave.”

We were standing in front of the window of Tea Leaves. Jamie passed by inside and waved to us.

“Did Miss Lydia say anything about how Avril died?” Sophie asked.

When I recounted both versions of the event, Sophie’s eyes lit up. “Maybe Avril is trying to set the story straight. There are lots of stories of murder victims haunting people and places until the truth is known.”

“The death was an accident,” I reminded her.

“Maybe,” she replied, and walked on to a bench in front of the Mallard.

I sat down with her. There was one thing I’d been holding off telling her, and I needed to get it out.

“I saw the ghost.”

Her eyes opened wide. “You did? When? Where?”

“A couple nights ago, in the upstairs hall. I saw her in the mirror.”

Sophie got a funny look on her face. “In the mirror?”

I nodded. “She looked like a mist.”

Sophie gazed down at the sidewalk, tracing the shape of a brick with her toe. “Have you ever seen her outside the mirror?”

“No, but I saw her only once.”

“When you passed the mirror,” Sophie said.

“Ye-ah . . .” She was making me uneasy. “What is it?”

“Megan, the way you talked about your dreams, I thought you were seeing the future or tapping into your mother’s past. But maybe that’s not it. What if you’ve been remembering places and objects that you saw in your own past?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if you’re Avril-reincarnated?”

I pulled back. “Now you’re getting weird.”

“It makes sense,” she argued. “When you returned to your old house, you instinctively went to your old room. You put your clock back where you kept it. Since the mill was important to you, you noticed a painting of it that seemed out of place.”

“Are you saying I moved those things?”

“While you were sleepwalking,” Sophie replied. “It probably happened more than once.”

I shook my head.

“Avril died when she was a teen,” Sophie went on, “and that makes it all the more likely. Reincarnation is a chance to complete what’s unfinished in a previous life. For instance, if two lovers-”

“I’ve seen the movies and know what it is,” I said, cutting her off. “A woman gets hypnotized, then remembers bizarre stuff from another century. I’m just having dreams.”

“They’re the same thing,” she replied, “memories buried in the unconscious. They come out in different ways, that’s all. Sometimes when a person has experienced a tragic death, there is a symptom of it in the next life. Say a girl died in a fire. In her next life, just seeing a candle being lit might frighten her. Her phobia comes from a memory buried in the unconscious.”

“Well, I don’t have any phobias,” I told Sophie. “And besides, if Avril’s spirit was reincarnated, I don’t see how she could have a ghost.”

“Maybe there isn’t one.”

“I saw her with my own eyes!”

“In a mirror,” Sophie pointed out. “Maybe you had an out-of-body experience and saw your own spirit. Which is what others have been seeing just before dawn. That, too, makes sense-living in a different time zone, your sleep cycle is later than ours.”

“No,” I insisted.

“Think about the night you saw the mist in the mirror.
Do you remember at any point looking down on yourself, looking upon your body as it is now?”

My spine tingled. “At the very end l-l thought I saw myself lying dead.”

“Like the way people describe a near-death experience?” she asked. “Like when someone whose heart has stopped sees himself lying on an operating room table?”

I nodded slowly.

“It’s an out-of-body experience.”

“Or a dream,” I replied stubbornly.

Sophie sighed and got up from the bench. “I’ve got to work. Talk to Miss Lydia. She’ll help you understand.”

I stood up. “There’s nothing to understand.”

She laid a hand on my arm. “Megan, listen to me. Sometimes a premature death keeps you from doing the work you were meant to do. Sometimes it separates two people meant to be together. Reincarnation isn’t something to fear, it’s a second chance.”

“I never asked for a second chance.”

“Okay, let me put it this way. Do you want the dreams to stop?”

“I want it
all
to stop.”

“Then accept the possibility of reincarnation. Find out who you are and what you’re to do with your second chance. Once you have, the past will let go of you.”

I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t the kind to run away from something, and I certainly wanted the strange things that had been happening to end.

“See you tomorrow,” she said softly, then went inside.

I walked down High Street and sat for a long time by the water. I knew that Grandmother was more than cold to me-she was jealous. Matt seemed confused, torn between protecting her and defending the time he spent with me. I, for some crazy reason, actually cared about Grandmother. And I was trying to overcome an attraction to Matt that I didn’t want to admit. The parallels between the past and present were eerie. Were the three of us playing out parts in a triangle that had existed sixty years ago?

thirteen
 

I wasn’t ready to talk to Mrs. Riley Wednesday afternoon and didn’t ask Grandmother why she had gone to see her. Obviously, she was feeling haunted. Questioning her would only make her more hostile toward me. That night I tossed and turned in bed. I discovered the one advantage to lack of sleep: lack of dreams. Still, my mind raced with thoughts as strange as dreams.

If Matt were Thomas, then he must have held me once, he must have kissed me. I quickly squelched that daydream. According to Mrs. Riley, there were a lot of girls in Thomas’s life before he settled on Avril. It occurred to me that his love for Avril was not a proven fact. Mrs. Riley told me what she believed at the time, but for all she knew, Thomas may have been planning to break things off with Avril the night she
had died. He and Avril might have had a terrible fight. Perhaps the negative feelings from that time had carried over; it sure seemed as if Matt had set his mind against me before we met.

By eight-fifteen Thursday evening I had spun so many theories in my head I didn’t know what I thought about Thomas and Avril. But my belief in the possibility that Matt and I had been reincarnated waned: The two of us meant for each other in a previous lifetime? No. He and I were nothing more than a pair of high school kids, cousins who occasionally got along, heading for a party. We set off in his Jeep to pick up Alex and Sophie.

“I hope Kristy won’t mind Sophie and me coming,” I said, when we stopped at a red light.

“She told us we could bring whoever we wanted,” Matt replied. “Which doesn’t mean she’ll be nice,” he added. “But you can handle her.”

“Of course I can,” I said, which made him laugh. “It’s Sophie I’m worried about.”

“I’ll look out for her,” he assured me.

We picked up Alex by the college.

“Stay where you are, Megan,” he told me as he climbed in the back. “It’s a short ride to Sophie’s.”

She lived on Shipwrights Street, in the middle of a block of small wooden houses, each one two stories high, two windows wide, with a porch spanning the front. Their tiny yards were neatly hemmed with picket fences.

As soon as we drove up, Sophie came out, followed
by her three younger sisters, the oldest of whom looked about nine. The trio lined up on the porch steps to watch.

“Girls,” we heard a voice coming from the house. “Gi-irls.”

They made stretchy faces and slowly trooped back inside. Meanwhile, Alex had run around the Jeep to open doors.

“Hey, Sophie,” I greeted her, about to climb out of the front seat so she could sit there.

I saw her hesitate.

“Oh, yeah,” Alex said. “I forgot about that. Megan, do you mind riding up front?”

I looked at him surprised.

“Or I can,” he offered.

When I saw Sophie blushing, I quickly pulled in my feet. “No problem.”

As soon as she and Alex were settled in the backseat, she leaned forward. “Sorry, it scares me a little up there.”

“Don’t blame you, the way Matt drives,” I replied.

Matt glanced sideways at me, one side of his mouth curling up. “Sophie,” he said as we drove off, “have you been to Kristy’s new house?”

“No. I heard it’s awesome.”

“It’s got bathtubs big enough to row across,” Alex said.

“Deep enough to drop a trot line?” Sophie asked.

He laughed. “No, it’s nice, but not perfect. Hey, guess what I noticed tonight while getting dressed?”

“I don’t think I want to,” Matt quipped.

“Your valentine,” Alex said to Sophie. “I had it tacked inside the door of my bedroom closet. You know, the card with the crab legs drawn around the heart and a boat oar going through it?”

She gazed at him, speechless, then turned to look at me.

“I was wrong,” I told her. “I suppose one in a million guys are sentimental.”

“Did I miss something?” Matt asked.

“How many things would you like me to list?” I replied.

He rested a hand on mine. “Glad you decided not to be on your good behavior tonight. I wouldn’t know what to do with you.”

I didn’t answer. I was too aware of how his hand felt touching mine.

“You actually saved my valentine?” Sophie said to Alex.

“Is it too late to apologize for being a jerky fifth grader?”

Her voice was gentle. “You weren’t jerky, just a fifth grader, a fifth-grade boy.”

“How come you don’t hang around with Kristy anymore?” Alex asked.

“I don’t have the time,” she replied. “I help Mom with her job and take care of my sisters. After Mom and Ron had Jenny, I couldn’t do all the things Kristy wanted to do. And with Kristy, you’re either in or out. I’m out.

They continued to talk, catching up on news about his family and hers.

“Okay, guys, I’m going to need some help finding the turnoff,” Matt said.

Only our headlights brightened the dark country road.

“It’s about a half mile beyond Dead Man’s Curve,” Alex told him.

Dead
Woman’s
, I thought, remembering Evie’s annoyance with the name of the place where Angel Cayton had died.

I glanced back and saw Alex reach for Sophie’s hand. It wasn’t a friendly pat. He intertwined his fingers with hers and moved closer.

Matt glanced in the rearview mirror. “You taking two dates to the party, Alex?” he asked lightly.

“No, just getting beyond this curve.”

“It’s always scared me,” Sophie explained.

“When we used to ride our bikes down here to fish,” Alex said, “she’d make me go the long way so we wouldn’t have to take the curve.”

We started around the bend, which began slowly, then sharply doubled back on itself. I looked over my shoulder and saw Sophie close her eyes.

“Thanks, Al,” she murmured when the road straightened out again.

I stared at her wonderingly. I had been so caught up in Thomas and Avril, I hadn’t thought about anyone else from their time. Avril’s best friend had been Angel, and Angel had died on the curve that Sophie
feared to the point of being phobic. Sophie said she felt a “connection” with me. Was it an old friendship she sensed? Angel had lost her love in the war, so she and Sam Tighe were another case of a couple separated too soon.

I felt surrounded by ghosts, trapped in the events of the past.

“Are you okay?” Matt asked.

When Sophie didn’t answer, I did. “She’s fine.”

“I was talking to you.”

I glanced up at him. “Me? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Megan,” he said gently, “look at your hands.”

I did, then made them lie quiet in my lap.

“I didn’t think my driving was
that
bad,” he remarked.

“Here it is,” Alex called from the backseat.

The turn off took us all the way down to Wist Creek. By the time I climbed out of the Jeep, I’d pulled myself together.

Kristy’s house was huge with long sloping roofs, wide wooden beams, and amazing spans of glass. The four of us walked into a two-story foyer lit by a globe chandelier.