Shifting Shadows (14 page)

The scene winked out, and
Analise saw nothing but the dusty library basement. The black curtain that had recently become so much a part of her settled between her and the rest of Elizabeth’s life.

“
Analise? Are you still with me?” Dylan laid a hand on her shoulder. “Move over and let me read this.”

She blinked, swallowed hard. She was again having tro
uble distinguishing between herself and Elizabeth.

“
Not yet,” she whispered. “I need to know the rest.”

She scanned the next ed
ition of the paper and found it—a report that Elizabeth’s drowned body had been discovered several miles downriver from Holbert.

In vain she searched her memory for details of that drowning, but her mind seemed to shy away from the inc
ident. Perhaps, she thought, it was simply too horrifying to remember one’s own death. All she knew for certain was that she had been running away from her husband and had died.

And that gave credence to Lottie
’s assertion that she had been reincarnated to reconcile with her husband, to make it right this time.

“
Come on,” Dylan ordered, crashing into her thoughts. “You’re as white as a ghost. You need to get out of here for a while.”

Dylan had watched Analise become totally immersed in the sepulchral atmosphere of the old library. The place gave him the willies. When he’d read the story about Shawn Fitzpatrick, the man from Elizabeth’s journal, for a moment he’d imagined he could feel the man’s agony and determination. If it affected him so strongly, what must it be doing to Analise’s mental state when she was much more susceptible than he? He shouldn’t have let things go this far, but she’d seemed to need to find the end of Elizabeth’s life in order to get back to her own...and he needed her to get back.

“
Analise? Let’s go,” he urged when she didn’t move.

She
looked at him, nodded and came without protest. He led her outside and ushered her into his car.

“
Where are we going?” She finally spoke as he pulled into the street and turned in the opposite direction from which they’d come.

“
I don’t know. To get a cup of coffee, something to eat...something to keep you from passing out. What did the article say? What’s upset you so badly?”

“
That I—that Elizabeth drowned in the Missouri River. She was running away from Blake, but something went wrong. I’ve got to get down to the river.”

Elizabeth had been running away from her husband when she died.
Analise had left her husband and survived, but she had been left with a lump on her head and bruises all over her body. The parallels were close enough to make him feel weird.

He pulled up in front of a local restaurant.
“We’re not going anywhere until you get something to eat,” he said firmly. She hadn’t regained any color. Even away from the gloomy library, her fair skin was frighteningly pale. Her eyes shone with a fevered green fire, and her breath came too quickly.

“
I can’t eat right now. I have to get to the river. I have to go to the same spot.” She spoke rapidly, her hands darting up and down, fluttering. She met his gaze, refusing to back down. He compressed his lips, equally obstinate. She needed to eat then go home to bed, not on a wild goose chase around the city.

“
Be reasonable. You’ll never be able to find the place where Elizabeth fell in.”

“
Yes, I will. I can find Blake’s house. It may take me a little while. Things are so different now. But I’ll find it, and then it’ll be simple. I remember every inch of ground between there and the river.”

“
Analise, listen to yourself.” He clutched her arms, held her steady. “You’re talking like you were Elizabeth. You’re not. She’s been dead for a hundred years. And even if her ghost came back, she couldn’t find where she fell in. The Missouri River changes course regularly. It’s not the same as it was in Elizabeth’s time.”

If his words made any im
pression on her, he couldn’t see it.

“
I have to try.”

“
Why?” he demanded. “What more can you possibly find out about Elizabeth by locating the place of her death?”

“
I need to remember exactly what happened and then maybe I can avoid that same fate.”

For a brief moment she looked frightened. He sucked in a deep breath, drew back, almost released
her. Did she remember everything after all? Had he accepted her amnesia story too easily?

His fingers clutched her arms more tightly.
“You can’t remember Elizabeth’s life because you didn’t live it.” His voice was grating. He forced himself to loosen his grip, to relax. Was he trying to convince her or himself? He was no longer sure what he believed or what he was going to do with her.

“
I have to understand Elizabeth before I can know what’s going on with Analise...with me. I know there’s a connection.”

“
All right,” he agreed, throwing up his hands in surrender. “We’ll go to the river.” She was going, with or without him. He had no doubt about that. At least he could be there with her.

“
We need to go to Blake’s house. That’s where we have to start.”

“
And you know where Blake’s house is?”

She blinked a couple of times, her eyes losing some of their feverish glitter as she seemed to return to a semblance of
reality. “I can find it. Maybe I went there looking for antiques or something. I know where it is.” She looked about her. “Sort of. I need to find a landmark. Where’s the courthouse?”

“
The old one?”

She smiled sadly.
“Yes, it would be the
old
one now.”

He didn
’t miss the meaning behind her words. In Elizabeth’s time the courthouse would have been new. She had returned to her fantasy. He had no idea where this was leading, but he knew he had to stay with her for a lot of reasons, some of which he didn’t come close to understanding. Beyond the chance that she might remember everything at any time, and even beyond his crazy desire to be with her, he couldn’t shake the peculiar feeling that he had to be there because he was somehow a part of it all.

He drove her to the old courthouse and followed her directions from there.
After half an hour of going mostly in circles, she leaned back with a sigh. “It’s all changed so much. Nothing looks familiar.”

“
Analise, the town hasn’t changed since your accident,” Dylan said firmly. He turned at the next street, heading home. She’d only been dreaming after all. She had no knowledge of Elizabeth’s world. He’d known that. Yet he felt an odd pang of disappointment.

She drew a weary hand across her forehead.
“I know. I’m mixing things up again.”

“
It’s all right,” he assured her.

They passed a small church with a bell steeple, and she sat upright abruptly.
“There!” she exclaimed.

Dylan slammed on the brakes.
“That’s not a house. That’s a church.”

“
I know! And I could see that steeple from Blake’s second floor balcony. None of these other houses were here. There was a clear view. Blake’s house is right through there.” She indicated a diagonal path.

The feverish look was back in her eyes, and the
ir green color darkened, seemed more forest than ocean. Without further protest or even thought, he turned down the nearest street, went right at the next and made a zigzag path in the direction she’d indicated.

“
There it is,” she exclaimed, and he came to a stop in front of a very old, rundown house.

A hand-painted sign on the sagging front porch advertised
Rooms for Rent
. The house was different, Analise realized, scarcely recognizable, but it still sent a chill through her. In that house a young girl’s dreams had died a cruel, violent death.

How fitting and just, she thought, that
the people who live in that house now rent rooms, come and go and only use it. Nobody loves it enough to take care of it. There’s too much hate trapped inside.

She opened the car door and stepped out, crossed the yard between the houses. The
woods and fields were gone, replaced by more houses and streets, but she had only to continue in a straight line. She circled around the chain link fence behind Blake’s house, crossed to the next block, skirted the houses, ignored a barking dog, moved onward past the invasion of civilization to undeveloped land.

The trees were bigg
er than she remembered, but she couldn’t stop to think about that. She had to get to the river. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and her legs felt weak and shaky. She’d been lucky, unbelievably lucky, that he hadn’t wakened when she’d dropped her hairbrush. But with Blake, she couldn’t count on that luck to continue.

She walked faster and faster, afraid at any minute that he
’d catch her, that she’d never reach the river. It seemed to take forever to get there. Please God, she hadn’t taken a wrong turn in the darkness.

She broke into a run, tripped,
stumbled over a fallen limb, and strong arms from behind grabbed her.

She screamed. He
’d caught her! Within sight and feel of freedom, he’d caught her.

At the scream, he let her loose immediately, and she whirled to face him, already cringing away from what she knew he
’d do to her.

But it wasn
’t Blake.

She laughed in delirious, ecstatic relief and flung herself into his arms.
“Thank God it’s you.” She stretched up, offering her lips, herself.

For an instant he looked surprised, didn’t respond, and she almost pulled away, almost realized...but then his mouth came down to meet hers, the hunger matching her own. Her soul leapt with happiness as her body strained to his. The fear vanished. She was with Shawn. She was safe now.

She reveled in the familiar taste of his kiss, the softness of his lips, the special way they moved against hers.
Reveled in the secure strength of his arms about her, the passion that surged in her at his touch. Until he’d come into her life, she’d had no idea a woman could feel such passion.

His hands stroked along her waist, cupped her buttocks and pulled her against him. She felt his desire for her and shivered with delighted anticipation, as though it were the first time he
’d touched her this way...or as though he hadn’t done so in a long time.

Now
there’d be no more
long times
between them.

They
’d hold each other every night, all night, eat breakfast together in the mornings, love each other through wrinkles and gray hair and grandchildren.

As she clung to him, the fresh scents of the spring around them filled her, and she rejoiced at the rebirth of the earth, of her life. She tangled her fingers in his wiry hair and
pressed herself against him.

They should stop, she knew. They couldn
’t make love now. Their escape wasn’t complete. They still had to get on the boat, get to New Orleans. But as always when she was with him, she couldn’t seem to stop, didn’t want to stop...not ever.

Finally it was he who pulled away, and reluctantly she let him go. Savoring the warm feel of his breath on her face, she opened her eyes and looked into his, thrilling to the way their bright blue color always darkened with desire. But something wasn
’t right. They were too dark, almost black...

The sound that escaped his lips was somewhere between a groan and a word.
“Analise.”

Analise
.
She sucked in her breath, looking into his face, into Dylan’s face. She wasn’t Elizabeth, and this man wasn’t Shawn. Frantically she tried to clear the fog from her brain. Her mind knew who he was, who she was, but her heart didn’t. She wanted to fall back into his arms, kiss him again, savor the love she’d been so long without.

This was the completion of the kiss they
’d only started in the attic, and now she understood. She knew with a certainty that transcended logic that she had lived as Elizabeth and Dylan as Shawn. She’d loved him desperately and completely in another lifetime. She’d left her husband to meet him down by the river, to run away with him...and she’d died.

She stepped backward, away from him, away from the whirlwind that raced through her mind.

He dropped his arms. His eyes slowly cleared. As if on command, the unreadable mask he normally wore enveloped his face, hiding the blatant desire. He muttered an expletive, jammed his hands into his pockets and looked into the distance.

“
Dylan,” she whispered, “you have to tell me the truth. I’ve got to know if we were lovers before my accident.”

He shook his head.
“No. We have never been lovers.”

He lied. Maybe they hadn
’t been lovers in this lifetime, but they had loved before, and the attraction between them still ran rampant. In spite of his firm assertion, she sensed that he knew he was lying. Maybe he didn’t know what the truth was, but he knew he hadn’t spoken it.

“
You kissed me like a lover,” she accused. “I know you remember. You knew it when you read Shawn’s story in the attic. It was Shawn kissing Elizabeth then. And the first time I mentioned Blake, that night we were standing on my porch, you almost went into a trance. You remember when you were Shawn and I was Elizabeth, don’t you?”

As he faced Analise in the middle of the field, Dylan’s heart was still pounding, his blood still racing from that kiss...maybe still racing from their first kiss in the attic. He could almost believe her insane assertion that they were reincarnated lovers, so strong was his attraction to her in spite of everything. She felt so right in his arms, the passion and desire so deep, that they might have kissed a thousand times during a thousand lifetimes.

But of course they hadn
’t. “Stop it, Analise! You’re being irrational.”

“
How did you feel when you read about Shawn? Why did you call Blake a bastard?” She looked and sounded more sane, more in control than she had since her accident, maybe even before. Yet her words were insane.

“
I’ll admit that sometimes I get emotionally involved in the past,” he said, unable to deny that he’d had the feelings she accused him of. “But that doesn’t mean I lived there. I’m not Shawn, and you’re not Elizabeth.”

“
Are you so sure?” she asked quietly, then turned and started picking her way slowly over the same ground she’d run recklessly across minutes before.

He couldn
’t answer her. After that mind-boggling kiss, how could he be completely sure of anything?

He followed wordlessly behind her.

She’d really lost her memory, really thought she was someone else. She hadn’t been able to deal with the realities of her life and had left them behind. She’d seemed to be doing better, recovering, but now he wondered if she’d gone so far away she might never return.

Yet in spite of her doubtful sanity, in spite of her poss
ible knowledge of, if not involvement in, Tom’s death, in spite of what he knew he had to do, he wanted to fold her in his arms, hold her slim, vulnerable, determined body against his, kiss her until neither of them knew or cared if they were Shawn and Elizabeth or Dylan and Analise. Until the world shifted to a place where it was okay for him to kiss her.

Analise listened to the whisper of Dylan’s footsteps behind her. She shouldn’t have blurted out her realization about his identity. Now he really thought she was crazy...and with good reason. A few days ago she’d have thought the same thing if someone had told her she had lived before.

Anyway, it didn
’t matter, was probably for the best. She was drawn to him in this lifetime as she’d been in the last. If he returned her ardor, she might suffer the same fate as before. She’d loved Shawn, had rejected her husband for that love. And she’d died.

The memories came
rapidly, tumbling over each other.

Elizabeth hadn
’t stopped seeing Shawn as Blake had ordered. She’d believed in his cause, had wanted to help ease the agony of the people her husband oppressed. With Rachel’s help, she’d continued to meet with Shawn in secret. But not just because she wanted to assist in his work.

The friendship he offered had rapidly become addictive, rapidly become more than friendship. She
’d been too naive to identify the feelings at first, had only known she wanted to be with this man who was so strong and determined one minute, yet so kind and gentle the next.

Then, when he awakened in her the passion she hadn
’t even suspected she possessed, Elizabeth knew she had to be with Shawn, no matter the cost. Divorce, particularly from a man who owned the town, wasn’t a viable option. But when Shawn asked her to run away with him, she agreed, immediately and ecstatically.

They
’d planned to catch a riverboat on the Missouri, go to St. Louis, then down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Shawn had been there before and told her wonderful stories of the carefree, colorful life in that city. As soon as they were settled, he promised, they’d send for Mama. They could all get lost in the crowd in New Orleans, and Blake would never find them.

But,
Analise reflected, Elizabeth hadn’t made it to New Orleans. She’d never left Holbert. Something had gone wrong. She’d drowned, gone down into the cold, wet suffocation of the Missouri River.

Had it been an accident as the newspaper reported? Lo
ttie’s words came back to her.
Rachel blamed herself for her best friend’s death.

Rachel had helped her rendezvous with Shawn, had encouraged their romance. She
’d delivered messages between them and come by Elizabeth’s house to pick her up so Blake wouldn’t be suspicious.

If Rachel blamed herself for Elizabeth
’s death, she must have known it had something to do with Shawn. She must have felt that her part in helping the lovers meet had contributed to Elizabeth’s death.

Analise
’s mind rebelled at the idea that Shawn could have harmed her. He’d loved her. But she’d been so inexperienced then. Had she really been able to gauge the sincerity of a man’s affections?

Something had happened after she met him at the river. She shivered as she recalled the terrifying feeling of hands on her shoulders, pushing.
Hands on her shoulders, the same as in the dream of being pushed downstairs.
Had those shoulders belonged to Analise or to Elizabeth? Or to both? How many times had she felt those hands on her shoulders?

Dylan
’s car loomed suddenly in her field of vision, and she realized they’d arrived back at the street, back in the reality of the present. But were the present and the past truly separate?

The spring air carried a chill that invaded her body, but the chill in her soul came from elsewhere.

*~*~*

Dylan parked in front of his house and came around to open
Analise’s door. Instead of letting her out, however, he stood there, blocking her way, one hand on the door, the other on the roof. “What are you going to do now?” he asked.

“
I don’t know. Rest, take a nap. I promised Phillip I’d go to dinner with him tonight.” She’d almost forgotten that and now wished she’d never agreed. “I need to know what he can tell me about Analise. About my life.”

Dylan
’s nostrils flared, his eyes darkened, losing all trace of the blue she glimpsed more and more often. “Don’t go.”

Was he jealous? She felt herself blush at the pleasure that idea gave her.

He didn’t appear to notice. His knuckles on the door were white, his other arm stiff as he leaned on the roof. “Why don’t you take a few days off? Go stay with your parents. Get away from here for a while.” His expression and tone were ominous, making his suggestions sound more threatening than concerned.

A part of her yearned to do just what he said, to stop tr
ying so hard to find answers, let them come when and if they would. But another part whispered that might be too late.

She shook her head.
“I can’t do that right now. Maybe later.”

“
You need to go now.”

“
Tell me what you know that makes you say that, and I’ll consider it,” she offered boldly.

He
said nothing, simply stepped aside and let her escape.

As she walked toward her house, she paused and turned back. He was still standing there, watching her. She stared back at him, but he didn
’t flinch.

She ought to resent his blatant spying. She probably ought to fear him. And sometimes she did. But mostly she wanted to give him whatever it took to erase that sorrow and rage from his heart.

But what if that meant losing her life the way Elizabeth had lost hers when she went with Shawn?

She broke the stare and went inside, closing and locking the door behind her. The day
’s events had left her exhausted. She needed a hot shower and a nap before she had to face Phillip.

But as she passed the door to her office, she hesitated.

As much as she wanted to rest, even more she wanted to find the mysterious papers that kept nagging at the fringes of her memory, the papers her memory seemed to shy away from as if they were too awful to confront.

Standing in the doorway, she scanned the crowded room.

The massive, old-fashioned desk held her computer and printer. A four-drawer file cabinet stood in one corner, a two-drawer one beside her desk. A telephone sat on a utility table. A wide assortment of books filled the shelves of a small bookcase. File boxes on every surface held loose papers.

Nothing reached out to her, offered its secrets.

She began a systematic search. Pulling out the wide, shallow middle drawer of her desk, she poked through the various items—pens, pencils, paper clips, staple remover, rubber bands, cellophane tape.

The tape.

She
’d tried to secure something to the underside of the drawer.

Pulling the drawer out, she turned it over. Only a couple of pieces of to
rn tape remained stuck to the wood, but she could visualize the large brown envelope that had been there.

She stared at the evidence
, despair washing over her. After she tried so hard to hide it, someone had found it anyway. The night he’d pushed her downstairs?

No, she thought with a surge of relief, of hope. She
’d removed the envelope herself, fearful that he’d find it.

She sat straight up in the desk chair as the realization of what she
’d just remembered hit her.