THE AFFAIR (6 page)

“How can you not?” His response was automatic, as if he’d been waiting for me to ask him just that question. So I answered him with what I hoped would put an end to this conversation.

“Because I’m over twenty-one, married with five kids and a paid off mortgage. I don’t have time to indulge in foolishness.”

“Is your little speech intended to scare me off? I don’t scare easily. If you remembered anything at all about me it should be that. That and the fact that I’ve loved you forever. I vowed that no matter where or when, I would always find you and reclaim you. And I have. This lifetime took a little longer, that’s all.”

I sat watching him, a feeling of fullness in my head. He was sounding like a guru. The things he was saying, the way he was looking at me, touched the core of my being and I believed him. I not only believed him, but I knew who he was and the knowing scared me more than the thought that I could at last be going crazy. I shivered and pulled my arms around my body.

“Could I have a drink of water?” My throat suddenly felt parched. Hopefully, something tangible, like water, would help to ground me. He picked up the phone and asked someone to bring in a glass of water.

There was a soft knock on his door. I expected him to move from his perch on his desk, but he didn’t.

He called out for the person to come in and one of the secretaries entered and extended the water to him. He thanked her, nodded his dismissal, then relinquished the glass to my trembling fingers.

“I’m not married. I was once, for almost two years to a beautiful woman that I thought I loved. We’ve been divorced for twenty years. No children.”

I allowed some of the droplets of water to linger on my tongue and moistened my chapped lips. “Why did you get a divorce?”

“I realized I was playing a part,” he continued, “There was too much missing. Her touch was foreign, her kisses, her loving me. It all felt so wrong. I didn’t want to go on like that for thirty or forty years so I ended it.”

“Is that a shot at me?”

“It wasn’t intended to be. I was merely telling you what happened. I always had a sense that I was waiting for the woman who would complete me. A year after I was married I knew it was a mistake. I started having dreams of another life, of another woman I had loved, loved still. Then something happened to confirm it.”

He was waiting for me to ask what had happened. I couldn’t, I didn’t want to know. I glanced at my watch. I didn’t want the staff thinking anything was going on with the door closed and us in there so long. I knew he was watching me. I brought my eyes up quickly and stared into his.

“With you it’s not necessary. Your thoughts are so transparent.” He smiled then. “Just as when you thought I was an ax murderer. That was an easy one to get.”

How could he be smiling, talking about our having lived many lifetimes together? What was he expecting from me now? What did he want me to do?

A long, sad sigh filled the room before he spoke again. “I’m sorry to have sprung all this on you. I assumed you’d been waiting for me also. I heard you calling me. I thought maybe you already knew.”

A flash of my hands searching his body, as though in remembrance, replayed in my mind. And I remembered it had felt as if he were my true husband when he’d registered us as Mr. and Mrs. at the hotel

“Aren’t you curious, just a little?”

I had to admit I was curious. “Chance, how can you be so sure that even if this is true, I’m the one?”

His hand reached out for my face and I pulled away. I was thinking of Larry and knew that if Chance Morgan touched me again I would be convinced of his statement and my marriage would be over.

He stopped, his hand in midair, and smiled. “When I held you in my arms in the parking lot I knew. When we made love there was no doubt in my mind that we had a history, that you were the one I’d been waiting for.

“When I tasted your skin it was just as I remembered and your smell…I could feel my soul rejoicing at the scent of you. How could I not know? How could you not?”

I didn’t answer him. Instead I stood to leave. My good sense was failing me. I wanted nothing more than to allow Chance to wrap me in his arms, to feel what I’d felt that night, that I’d found my way home. Instinctively I knew he was right. I felt the connection.

“I bought you something.”

I stopped and waited at the door. “How could you know I was coming?” This time it was Chance who didn’t answer. I watched him as he went back to his desk and pulled open a drawer.

He handed the heavy package to me and stood away. His eyes connected with mine and I knew he was aware of my need for space. He wasn’t going to crowd me, and for that I was grateful. I saw my name on the card.

“I don’t know if I should accept gifts from you, Chance.”

He started toward me, laughing, his face glowing with amusement. “Michelle, it’s no big deal. It’s not like I’m giving you a contract for your soul”

He was teasing me, his smile warm and inviting. “Come on, please. Open it.”

I tore away the wrapping and spotted a bundle of books dealing with reincarnation and other psychic topics. The one that caught my eye seemed to deal with regression therapy.

“Have you read all of these?” I asked in amazement.

“Yes, and many more. I’ve been through regression therapy a number of times. Now I don’t need it. The memories come to me as clearly now as what I had for breakfast this morning.”

I saw him hesitate. I was wondering why. So far he’d done nothing to prove he wasn’t some middle-age hippie. Then for some reason I thought of Jim Jones, that preacher from the seventies who’d led all those poor people out of the country to a supposedly better life and forced them to commit mass suicide. Would this thing with Chance end with my death?

“I’m having dinner with my husband.” I glanced at the wedding ring fitting snugly on my finger, a symbol of my life and the choice I had made. “It was nice seeing you again, Dr. Morgan. Thanks for the books.”

“Larry, do you believe in past lives?” I waited as my husband paused long enough in his eating to give me a quizzical look.

“What is all this talk with you lately?”

He was watching me intently. I could tell he wanted only to eat and go home, maybe make love and watch a little television. I could be opening up a conversation that I wouldn’t know how to handle, yet I still wanted to pursue this avenue of thought.

I glanced around the crowded restaurant wondering if there were any other conversations going on that paralleled what I wanted to discuss with Larry.

“I’ve just been thinking about fate and our lives. I was just wondering if this life we have… You know…is this it?”

I caught the look on his face, the one that said I was going over the edge
.
I decided not to give up, not yet. “Honey, don’t you ever want more than what we have now?”

He was eyeing me strangely. “I have everything I’ve always wanted, Mick. I thought you did too.”

LET IT GO
. I heard the inaudible warning, but chose to ignore it. “I’m not talking about material things,” I said to my husband. “I’m talking about us, our spirits. I want to know what happens when we die. Is right now all there is? Were our lives predestined? Do we keep repeating lives until we get it right? I want to know what you think.”

He smiled at me. At that moment he looked so much like the young boy I’d fallen in love with. The years had been more than kind to Larry. He was more handsome now than the day we married. Big beautiful brown eyes that sparkled with love and mischief, dimpled cheeks and thick brownish hair with red highlights that was softer than our grandchildren’s. He cut an imposing figure with his six feet of male energy. He was still trim but more muscled. And he never failed to elicit looks from adoring women. That never made me jealous. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Larry loved me.

“Honey, don’t you ever wonder?” I persisted. I wanted just once not to be told that I was being silly. I wanted to discuss this and I wanted to discuss it with my husband.

Larry smiled at me. Then his smile turned into a full- fledged grin. That was one thing about Larry that I loved. His smile was always so wide and warm. It made me feel special when he turned it on me as he was doing now.

“You know I deal in evidence, honey. Show me proof that we’ve lived before and I’ll let you know.” He hesitated. “Don’t tell me you believe in that stuff. You never have before. Why now?”

“How do you know I’ve never believed in it? Maybe I just didn’t mention it to you.” Thoughts of my dreams flashed before me.
Maybe I’ve always believed
, I thought,
and was just too afraid to admit it
. I was still too afraid to admit it.

“In all the years we’ve been together, I think I would know if you believed in anything so kooky.”

He turned his attention then to his steak. “I talked to the kids today. Erica and Roy were wondering if we might like to keep the grandkids for a couple of weeks so they can spend some time alone.”

“What did you tell them?”

I amazed myself at how easily I could switch gears. I still wanted to know my husband’s opinions on reincarnation, but he’d effectively slammed that door. Now I supposed I was to pretend some sort of enthusiasm for caring for a spoiled three-year-old boy and an even brattier five-year-old girl.

“I don’t recall your mentioning this to me, nor did our daughter call and ask me. She asked you, so I assume that you will be the one taking vacation time.”

“My God, what’s wrong with you?”

Larry slammed his fork onto his plate and then hastily wiped his mouth with a linen napkin before tossing it across the plate in disgust.

“Are you going through the change?” he asked.

“Why are you asking me that?”

I was so proud of myself for being able to sit there and talk in a rational tone of voice even though inside I was crying. I hated feeling guilty because I didn’t want to keep two rowdy kids with absolutely no discipline. They were my grandchildren, but still.

“Well, look at you.” He pointed a long slender finger toward my face. “You’re talking nonsense about past lives and now, when I ask you to keep the kids, you behave as if I’m asking you to commit murder.”

“I have a job, Larry.” One look into his eyes and I knew what was coming before he spoke one word.

“That’s not my fault, now is it?” Larry shouted. “I’ve never asked you to work. In fact, I believe I’ve asked you more than once to quit that damn job. It interferes with our plans too often. Every time we plan a trip to visit one of the kids, you have to work.

If I didn’t know better I’d think you’d rather work than take care of our grandchildren.”

“Have you ever thought that maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do? I would rather work than take care of those two spoiled, obnoxious kids.” I smiled, then said, “You know what, I’m not going to. You volunteered, you take care of them. In fact why don’t you go to Arizona and keep them there. I don’t feel like rearranging my life.”

“Don’t tempt me, Mick. I’ll do it.”

I laughed out loud and felt my spirit soar. “You really don’t hear me, do you? I’m not kidding. I’m not taking one moment of vacation time to baby-sit so Erica and Roy can have time alone. They created those little monsters, let them deal with them.”

“They’re our grandchildren, Mick. Don’t you love them?”

“I’m not sure.” I looked at the shock on his face and decided to go all the way. “I know I don’t like them. They have no respect and they’re destructive.”

“They’re babies.”

I thought about that for a second. “You’re right, they’re babies. Maybe I shouldn’t blame them, but their parents aren’t babies. I don’t like them very much either. Have they ever offered to pay for one thing those two have deliberately destroyed?”