Once Again (14 page)

I stopped and waited.

“You must be flattered by Lucas’s attention.”
Her words dripped with contempt.

I thought for a few seconds about how to
respond. What was between Lucas and me was
between Lucas and
me
. And for many reasons, I would not give her information
about the two of us.

But I would also not appear weak or
intimidated.

“I’m happy to know Lucas, yes.”

I stood straight, squaring my shoulders, not
slouching, and not shifting my weight to one leg. Kara might have
been taller than me, but that didn’t mean I had to cower.

“You should know,” she said, her tone
condescending at best. “That Lucas is an exceptionally nice guy,
and – ”

I cut her off before she could continue.
“Yes, I do know that.”

She narrowed her eyes, clearly ticked I’d
interrupted her. I didn’t care. This little exchange had barely
begun and already she was being catty.

“Plenty of other girls have mistaken his
kindness for romantic interest.” She crossed her arms over her
chest and nodded toward me.

I supposed she must’ve thought her word was
law.

“I’m sure I haven’t mistaken Luke’s kindness
as anything other than it was meant.”

“I certainly hope not.” She took a step
toward me, but I didn’t back up. “Luke and I have been together a
long time, and this little separation is just a bump on the road to
our happily ever after.”

I couldn’t tell if she actually believed that
or if she was just trying to convince herself.

“Don’t worry about me,” I said, just as the
warning bell rang.

I took off toward the chemistry room before
she could respond and noticed Jessie standing just outside the
door. She’d witnessed the entire thing.

A half smile played on her face, but I didn’t
feel like celebrating this one. Sure it was a kick in the pants to
think Kara was jealous. But it was another matter entirely to be
confronted head-on with it.

“I just want to forget about it,” I said to
Jessie and I slid into my seat and pulled out my study notes. “I
have more important things to worry about right now than Kara
Jennings.”

Jessie giggled, but in the back of my mind I
wondered if what I’d just said was actually true. Luke’s worries
that the villains from our dreams might have also been reincarnated
played through my brain. Every action of every person we
encountered was now suspect, and I could see how this could easily
become exhausting. Would it now be necessary to analyze and
re-analyze every little thing?

And should I tell Lucas?

If I did, would it look like my own jealous
attempt to lay claim to him by ratting Kara out?

But if I didn’t, might the omission somehow
impede what we were trying to accomplish?

I felt the headache begin to throb in my
temples, and quickly refocused my mental energy on my chemistry
notes. Whatever would happen with the Kara situation could wait one
hour, and, it was absolutely imperative we keep up with the
responsibilities of our real lives as we sorted through the
Swiss-cheese map of our past ones.

According to Lucas, the Sky Cove Courthouse was a smaller version
of the Knox County records department. Yet even with their limited
resources, they did have a computer database with records dating
back to 1966. That’s where we started.

The database had a search feature that
allowed us to hunt for names of property owners. This was very
useful given that most deed searches required the book number and
page number of the deed in question.

By searching for William and Patsy Emerson,
we were able to find their deed to the house. From there we found
the number of the deed-book for the previous owners.

While Luke typed and searched on the
computer, I kept detailed lists of names and dates in a notebook.
After about an hour, we were up to our eyeballs in Emersons.

When we reached the 1960’s we moved to the
“vault” – a small room with floor to ceiling books, shoved into
slots with rollers so the enormous books could be pulled out
easily. Three moveable ladders slid along the walls, making is
somewhat simpler to retrieve the books from the top rows.

It smelled like old paper and dust, and more
than a few sneezes crept up on me. The lack of stirring air made
the vault feel closed and stuffy. The tile floor was a utilitarian
white, dingy from years of foot traffic.

The vault wasn’t exactly a happy room.

Lucas went up and down the ladders and
handled the books, while I continued my record keeping. The
discolored pages in the books crackled, each one harboring the
evidence of years and years of smoking within the courthouse
vault.

“I can’t believe how often this property
changed hands,” I said, flipping to start the fourth page of notes.
William and Patsy had lived in the house since the early 1970’s,
but before them, it seemed no one stayed there for very long.

“Me either.” Lucas pulled another book from
near the floor on the far wall. “My guess is the economy caused
people to move out of the area looking for work. Commercial fishing
was huge in this area in the early 1900’s, but if the fishing
industry took a hit, people probably moved inward looking for
something else. And fishing was difficult on families, with the
husband being gone all the time. I’ve read that a lot of men gave
it up because of that.”

“Interesting.” I found it fascinating. The
history and culture of this place was so very different from what
I’d known in the south. In Tennessee, agriculture was dominated by
cattle and cotton, and in Nashville, where I’d lived my entire life
– until this year – everything had been about the music
industry.

“And nice that somehow it managed to stay in
the Emerson family,” I said, even though one brother had sold it to
another brother, who’d sold it back to him several years later, and
then that brother had willed it to his son, who’d lived there until
he moved away and sold it to a cousin, and so on and so on and so
on.

In addition to all that, there were also
quite a few wills referenced. Those records were in a different set
of books, so in my notes I wrote the book number of each one. I
figured at some point we’d go through those as well, looking for
names or places or anything else that might ring a bell.

I scribbled furiously as Luke read each name
mentioned in every deed, doing my best to jot down what little we
could learn about the person. We really had no idea what year our
dreams were taking place. The only clues we had were the clothing
and the condition of the house, which indicated sometime before the
turn of the twentieth century. When we pulled the deed from 1923,
Lucas thought it might be pertinent to start looking up the wills,
since any ancestors or relatives mentioned might have lived around
that time.

We discovered that in 1923, Walter Emerson
acquired the property through the will of his father, Arthur. Lucas
went to the other room to retrieve the book with Arthur’s will,
then met me back at the conference table outside the vault.

“There are so many names,” I said, glancing
at the handwritten testament and all the names it included. “And I
thought taking notes on the deeds was bad.”

Lucas laughed. “I’ll see if we can make a
copy of the wills.”

“That would be a relief.”

He was quiet for a moment as we both read the
opening.

“Okay, it looks like Arthur was deeded the
property from his father, George, after his mother, a.k.a. George’s
wife Elizabeth, passed away.”

I wondered if next we would be discussing who
begat whom.

“That was in 1915?” Some of the language was
difficult for me to understand, but I did recognize the year.

“Yes. It could be George remarried or moved
away,” Luke suggested. “At any rate, the property became Arthur’s
in 1915, then when he died in 1923 it went to Walter.”

In my notes I continued my timeline, adding
the names Walter Emerson, Arthur Emerson, and George Emerson, as
well as the years that Arthur and Walter gained ownership of the
house.

“There’s quite a bit of personal property
listed.” Lucas flipped to the third page of the will. “Sort of cool
to see what kind of things they felt were important or valuable
enough to pass along.”

I looked over the list and saw things like
oak table, silver tea set, and wedding rings.

The jewelry caught my eye. “It says he left
his mother’s wedding ring to his sister Mary Cutler and his
mother’s silver tea set to Mary’s daughter, Amelia. I wonder why
Mary wouldn’t have gotten those things from their mother in the
first place.”

Luke shrugged his shoulders. “Probably
because the male child inherited most everything. I suppose that’s
how it was back then.”

“I guess so.”

He narrowed his eyes then looked back at the
will. “You said Mary Cutler? And her daughter Amelia?”

“Yes.” I pointed the place on the paper where
I’d seen those names. “Why?”

“There’s an Amelia Cutler Light in some of my
mom’s genealogy records.”

“Really?” My mind spun. Could it be?

“Mom has some records she put together just
by talking to her grandparents. It gets kind of complicated when
you start factoring in siblings and second marriages and all that.”
He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest. “But
I went back and looked over her records a few weeks ago, right
after we had the first dream about the Emerson house. I was curious
if there were any Emerson’s in her records. When I didn’t see that
name, I just discounted the possibility.”

“But if the Amelia in your mom’s records is
the same Amelia in this will, she was Arthur Emerson’s niece.”

“Seems we have some more research to do,”
Luke said, rising to take the book to the counter. He paid the
clerk twenty-five cents per page to copy the will.

“We should probably talk to your mom,” I said
as we exited the courthouse and made our way to his Bronco. “I
think it’s time we told her everything.”

He opened my door and I slid in quickly,
fastening my seat belt as he made his way around to the driver’s
side.

“I think you’re right. Are you okay with
that?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think she may be able to
help us, especially if you’re connected to the Emersons
somehow.”

He drove in silence for a moment, and I could
tell he was deep in thought. I was just about to reach for my iPod,
when he spoke.

“Layla?” he asked in a hushed tone. “In your
dreams and visions, have you ever seen a child or anything to
indicate that these two people had children?”

I shook my head. “The only things I’ve seen
are the things we’ve seen simultaneously, and there’s been nothing
that made me think they had children.”

“So it’s probably safe to assume that if I’m
related to the Emerson’s, it’s not as a direct descendant of the
two people in the dreams.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “I suppose I’ve always
thought the man we’ve seen was an Emerson. It could be you’re
related to a cousin or a brother.”

“What about her? The wife?” He paused,
stopping the Bronco at a traffic light, and looked over at me. “The
one who looks like you.”

“What about her?” I didn’t understand what he
was getting at.

“If we figure out who she was, maybe we need
to look into her family and their descendants.”

“But Amelia was part of the Emerson family.”
And if Amelia was part of Lucas’s family tree, he couldn’t also be
related to the woman in the dreams.

“I wasn’t thinking about me,” he said
quietly, slowly accelerating as the light turned green. “I meant
you.”

“Me?”

“Layla, what do you know about your family
history? I mean, I know it’s unlikely, since you’re from Tennessee,
but – ”

I stopped listening then. Suddenly, I saw
what he was suggesting. If he was descended from the Emersons, it
could be that I was descended from the family of the woman in our
dreams. Was that possible? It seemed so implausible.

I felt my face go pale, the blood draining
from my head until I thought I might pass out. I leaned over,
propping my elbows on my knees and lowered my head onto my
hands.

Luke pulled over to the shoulder of the
highway, just before the turn off to White Bridge Road.

“Are you okay?”

I said nothing, still trying to wrap my mind
around the possibility. It was far more likely than he thought.

“Luke,” I whispered, finding my voice at
last. “I’m adopted.”

“How
long have you known you were adopted?” Gwen asked.

Luke and I had gone over everything with her,
all the dreams, visions, our research at the courthouse. Luckily
neither of us had a test on Friday, and my mom agreed to let me
stay for dinner, which worked well since Gwen always insisted we
eat while we talk.

“I’ve always known, I guess,” I replied. “I
mean, I don’t remember an event where my parents told me. They just
let me grow up knowing.”

“How much have they told you about the
adoption or your birth mother?” Luke asked, then finished the last
bite of his ham sandwich.

“Not a lot,” I said. “They always told me
they’d answer whatever questions they could, whenever I wanted to
know. But I’ve never asked. It just never seemed important.”

“Might be a good idea to ask now, to give us
somewhere to start looking.” Gwen cleared our plates and set them
in the sink. “And speaking of looking, I’ll go get my family
records, and we’ll see where Amelia Cutler fits.”

We stayed at the kitchen table while Gwen
retrieved her notebook from one of the crowded bookshelves in the
living room.

The notebook was a five-subject, spiral-bound
protected by a three-ring binder. There was no real organization to
it, which fit with the way everything else in Gwen’s living room
was. It seemed she kept herself organized in the kitchen and her
office, but enjoyed randomness in everything else.