Stranger in the Mirror [Shades of Heaven] (Soul Change Novel) (3 page)

Heat engulfed her face. Holy Toledo, Jamie had already remarried!

“His w-wife, is her name Renee?”

Miguel laughed. “No, her name is Hallie. Who
is
this?”

Her voice dropped to a whisper as she tried to catch her breath. “Is Hallie there? Right now?”

“No, she’s out with Jamie.” His voice lost the friendliness. “If you want to leave a message—”

Even using two hands to hold the phone, it slipped out of her grasp.

Jesse lifted it to his ear for a moment but didn’t respond to Miguel’s voice. He hung up, giving Hallie a curious look. “Are you all right?”

She swallowed the huge lump in her throat. “Hallie is there. She’s there with Jamie.”

“So this Hallie didn’t die then. And if she didn’t die, then you can’t be her, right?”

She shook her head, taking deep breaths to calm herself. “I did die. I was Hallie. So how is she still alive? How can that be?”

“Same crazy logic that you’re here when you supposedly died?”

Her eyes widened. “That’s it! Someone got a second chance in my body. With my husband.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“But you’re right.” She pulled her hair away from her face in a tight ponytail, staring at the blanket. “I’m not the only one. See, there are more of us getting second chances in other people’s bodies. It’s possible. Does Jamie know?”

“Marti, you’re talking crazy again. So now you’re going to tell me that you’re jealous and want your husband back, right?”

She shook her head, reality sinking to the bottom of her soul. “It doesn’t matter; we were getting divorced anyway. I asked him just before I died.”

“Oh. I’m … sorry?”

“You don’t have to be sorry. I’m sorry enough for both of us.”

CHAPTER 2

For the rest of the day, Jesse kept busy around the house, staying close in case Marti needed him. What a heavy story she’d laid on him that morning. He couldn’t ignore the possibility, bizarre as it seemed, that it might be true.

Wherever she had called that morning, she’d talked to real people. And knew the numbers by heart. Marti didn’t know anyone in California or some place called Caterina. His curiosity got the better of him, and he figured he deserved some answers. He pressed the redial button on the phone.

“‘Mornin’, Caterina. May I help you?” a woman’s rich voice sang out.

“Where are you located?”

“We be just east of Jamaica, on da Isle of Constantine.”

That threw him. That was nowhere near California. “I see. And is there a Hallie DiBarto there?”

“Yah, ‘dere is. I can put you through to the house, or to her husband, Jamie’s office. She do the books ‘dere. Which you like?”

“Uh, no, don’t put me through to either. But can I ask you another question? Did Hallie… die two months ago? Something to do with her brain?”

“Yes, she be in California when her brain explode, but she come back to life. It was a miracle from God.”

So she
was
from California.

“This is going to sound a bit crazy, but since the brain thing, is she different?”

“Oh, yah, very different. She and Jamie have da light of love in ‘dere eyes, you know? You don’t want to talk with her?”

“Maybe I already have. Thanks for the information.”

Jesse hung up. Hallie DiBarto did exist, she had suffered some kind of stroke in California, and she did have a husband named Jamie. Jesse sauntered over to the front window. Marti wasn’t sitting on the swing with slouched shoulders anymore. She was…
swinging
?

Every time she reached the bottom of her arc, her shoulders rose up to give her more height. At first he was glad to see her doing something besides moping. When the swing went so high that there was slack at her upward reach, a pang of fear shot through him that she might jump.

He strode across the leaf-strewn ground toward the swings, camouflaging his worry with a smile. “What’cha doing?”

Marti grinned. “I haven’t done this since I was in grade school.”

She appeared to be enjoying herself. Her face was regaining its normal shape as the swelling went down. On the forward swing, she closed her eyes in the sun. On the backward swing, she got lost in the sun-dappled shade beneath the oak tree’s upper branches. Her hair floated behind her as she came forward, then washed over her shoulders on the way back.

“Who built these swings?” she asked.

“I put them up for my brother Billy’s kids. They haven’t gotten much use since his ex-wife, Abbie, took the boys and left town two years ago.”

“Why did she leave him?”

“He was a jerk. Spent more time with his fishing buddies than her and the boys. Abbie was going nuts, raising two little hellions by herself, so she dropped ‘em off here now and then. Eventually she got a job in Georgia. I get a postcard from ‘em every month.”

He ducked around her and sat on the other swing and soon got in sync with her. “You look like you’re feeling better.”

“I feel a little more in control. I’ve accepted that I’m Marti. Now I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do.”

A thought pushed itself into his mind:
What if she leaves
? He would be free again. Not that he’d planned on settling down, but he wouldn’t have to wait until the baby came before getting back into racing.

Another surprising thought crept in, too. That was his baby inside her. His. No matter the inconvenience, that baby was his responsibility. No, he couldn’t let her leave until she had the baby. Then she could do whatever she wanted, and he’d work the rest out somehow.

Hallie sat on the swinging bench out on the front porch that evening. What
was
she going to do? Getting back to her home turf would help, but she had some planning to do before she could hop on a bus to California. Losing her identity was the hardest part.

She looked down at herself. Well, she had an identity, all right; it just wasn’t hers. Since she was stuck with this one, the first step was to make it her own.
I am Marti now. I’m Marti. Marti
. And Marti glanced up as Jesse walked out the front door and sat down beside her, making the whole thing creak and swing.

He said, “Chuck called today, wondering when he could expect you back to work. I told him when you were good and ready. Don’t let him push you.”

Work? She remembered mention of a job before but couldn’t remember what it was. Work meant money, and money meant escape. That was the second step to gaining control over her life again. She’d already discovered that Marti had only twenty-nine dollars in her savings account and not even one credit card.

“Where did Marti work?”

“She—you work at Bad Boys Diner.”

She wrinkled her nose. “A diner? Don’t tell me I was a cook.”

“No, you’re a waitress.”

“Oh, gawd.”

“It was good enough for you before.”

“Before was a completely different story. I didn’t deliver other people’s food and clean up their dirty dishes.”

“Well, la tee dah. Maybe you should have picked a princess’s body to pop into.”

“I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t even know what had happened until I was already here.” She narrowed her eyes at him, sitting there in the crook of the swing, a smug grin on his face. She didn’t let herself notice how the muscles bulged beneath his white T-shirt with his arms crossed in front of him. Okay, she’d noticed, but she wouldn’t dwell on it. “I think I’m being tested.” She gave him a pointed look. Or punished.

“
You’re
being tested?” He gave a hearty laugh, making the swing rock. His expression sobered. “If you hadn’t been nearly raped, I’d think this was one of those practical joke shows.”

“It’s not.”

“Okay, miss priss from California. What did you do in this other life? CPA? Attorney?”

“I’m not talking to you about it.” She looked away from him, concentrating on a squirrel hanging upside down to steal from a bird feeder.

“Ah, you might as well tell me. Maybe you’ll have some useful skills.”

Her nose wrinkled. She met those green eyes of his and realized he was still having fun on her. “I, well, I went to college. And I modeled.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You were a model?”

“Don’t look so surprised. I was tall, blonde, and I had nice boobs.”

Jesse regarded her appraisingly. “Nothing wrong with the way you look.”

“But this isn’t me. I wasn’t petite; I was sexy. I even did ads in major magazines. That’s how I met my husband.”

Jesse leaned back on the swing and propped his feet up on the porch railing. “So this Jamie guy was a model, too?”

She smiled, remembering the first time she’d seen him. A redhead was brushing his hair, flirting with him. Jamie’s eyes were on Hallie, though.

“Yeah. He was rich, good looking, and fun. We got married soon after we met. About a year later, he bought part of an island and turned it into a resort.”

“If he was so great, why were you a lousy wife?”

Marti’s shoulders tensed before she remembered she’d used those exact words earlier. “I didn’t appreciate what I had.”

“Sounds like you still have that problem.”

She glared at him. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, if I died and got a second chance, I’d be happy in the body of a dwarf, just to see the sunshine and smell the fresh air some more. Playing along with your crazy game, it seems to me you should be damned grateful you got a second chance, no matter where you are or what you look like. But all you keep talking about is how rich and gorgeous you used to be.”

She ignored his remark about craziness. “I’m thrilled I got another chance, but is it ungrateful to want my old life back? I had a great life, a great husband, more money than I knew what to do with… of course I want it back.”

Jesse crossed his bare feet on the railing, leaning further back on the bench. “Why were you going to leave your good-looking, rich husband?”

She stood and leaned against a nearby wooden post. “You listen too much, you know that? I said I wasn’t smart enough to appreciate what I had when I had it.” She sighed. “I wasn’t all that smart anyway.”

“I thought you went to college.”

“I went to three classes, all right? That’s when I got into modeling. That seemed a lot more fun than sitting in a classroom. And I made good money at it.”

He shook his head almost imperceptibly. She looked away. Why did he put her on edge just sitting there beside her? They remained silent for a while, static electricity between them. Her past was nothing to be proud of, and she didn’t want to share it with anyone, particularly Jesse.

All the times she and Joya went out dancing, flirting…
oh, be honest with yourself, picking up men, that’s what you were doing.
The day after, on the phone with Joya, they’d talk about how great or how lousy their man had been in bed. Only Hallie had lied most of the time, varying the details so Joya wouldn’t pick up on the fiction of her bedroom tales.

Like an addict, she craved the validation men’s attention gave her. Having sex was something she couldn’t do, so she invariably ended up picking a fight and stalking out in a huff before ever getting to the bedroom.

She let out a soft sigh and sank down on the bench again, focusing on the wood grain on the post. “I can see so much more about myself and my life from a distance. Almost like Hallie DiBarto is someone else. She pushed Jamie. Tested him. Because she didn’t feel she deserved him, or anything nice. She pushed him past his limits so he’d leave her like she was sure he was going to eventually.”

“Why’d you feel that way?”

“It’s how I was raised to see myself. Maybe it was how my mother was raised, too, to put all her value in her looks. When I hit my teens, I suspect she felt threatened by a daughter who got the attention she no longer did. I don’t think she did it on purpose, but she made me feel insignificant and ugly … inside.”

Wait. Where had that come from?
She’d never had the clarity to see the truth, but now it seemed so obvious.

She shot to her feet, her hand over her mouth. “I was becoming like her. Oh, God, I was.” She pictured the woman desperately clinging to the only attributes she thought she had—her sexuality. The makeup and skin-tight, low cut clothing … the same kind of clothes Hallie had worn. “You’re right. Dying was probably the best thing to ever happen to me.”

Now some other woman was having to deal with her mother. But the new Hallie wouldn’t have the childhood scars she had borne, scars that still marked her soul. Or the memories of a mother who negated every compliment Hallie got, even as a child.

That woman’s obviously blind. Look at your mess of hair.

The only reason he said that is ‘cause he wants to get in your pants.

Men’ll tell you anything
…

Can’t believe a word they say
…

After a while, Hallie started doing what her mother did, eschewing compliments or viewing them with jaded eyes.

She dropped back down again. “You think I’m crazier by the minute, don’t you?”

“Well, we started out pretty high on the scale already.”

“I suppose we did.” She laughed, trying to see this from his point of view. It was a wonder that he hadn’t trotted her off to a mental hospital. Yet.

He rocked the bench, assessing her as though he were considering just that. He actually looked kind of cute, when he wasn’t irritating her.

She decided to change the subject. “I can’t believe my name is really Marti May. At first I thought it was some cutesy nickname.”

“That’s your maiden name. We joked about how funny it was, you going from Marti May to Marti May West.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And that makes you Jesse West?”

He bowed. “Jesse James West, if you please. My brother’s Billy the kid. And my sister’s Calamity Jane West, although my parents didn’t want to actually name her Calamity, so they shortened it to Caty.”

Marti forced a smile. “Well, it sounds as if your parents had a sense of humor, anyway.”

“My pa was obsessed with old westerns. You’re not going to want me to call you Hallie now, are you? I couldn’t get used to that.”