Yesternight

by Cat Winters

  “Janie . . .” Michael leaned forward in the rocking chair. “Does the man in the photograph look familiar to you?”

  Janie peeked at Nelson and shook her head. “Nope.”

  “Are you sure?” asked her father. “You don’t remember him from your dreams, or from anything else?”

  Janie brushed at the cracker crumbs dusting the skirt of her dress. “How much longer are we going to stay here?”

  “Janie!” snapped her mother. “We’ve come all these miles to be here because you’ve been asking to visit for years. For heaven’s sake, why aren’t you taking any interest in Violet Sunday’s house?”

  “It might simply be too much for her,” I offered. “Best not to pressure her and—”

  “You don’t know that!” Rebecca spun my way in her chair. “You don’t know anything about what she’s going through right now because this is all new to you, too, isn’t it? Don’t pretend to be an expert on reincarnation just because you’re an expert on everything else.”

  Her sister choked on her coffee. “Rebecca! Why are you attacking Miss Lind? She’s merely trying to help.”

  “Because I know she’s sitting there, formulating all of the things she’s going to say about Janie in some hoity-toity psychological journal. She’s scrutinizing my daughter as though the child were a monkey in a laboratory. Look at all of those notes she’s taking.” Rebecca pointed at the notebook in my lap, in which I was, indeed, scribbling at the moment. “She isn’t going to let this go. Simply visiting isn’t going to be enough for her.”

  “Are you planning to publish these findings, Miss Lind?” asked Mrs. Rook. “I personally wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

  “That friend of mine I was telling you about,” added Mr. Rook, “the one who photographs all of the old murder houses, he knows a doctor who moved to New York City to compile strange stories for the American Society for Psychical Research. I’m sure they’d take quite an interest in this case.”

  “No!” Rebecca put down her plate and rose to her feet. “I’ve agreed to come to this house solely to allow Janie to find peace of mind—nothing more.” She balled her hands into fists. “I think we ought to go.”

  “Wait!” said Michael, rising as well. “Alice has already sworn she’s not going to write up any articles about Janie.”

  “Why are you calling her Alice now, Michael?”

  “Good Lord!” Michael stepped forward on one foot. “Don’t start accusing me of things just because you’re scared.”

  “What happened to Nel?” asked Janie from her seat down on the floor.

  “My daughter will not become some laboratory toy for psychics, or teams of psychologists, or whoever else might be itching to get their hands on her. And, above all, you had better not contact any more newspaper men about this, Michael.” Rebecca grabbed the child’s hand and yanked her to her feet. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. and Mrs. Rook, but—”

  “What happened to Nel?” asked Janie again, a little louder, and this time the room fell silent. Rebecca stilled, and the anger ceased blazing in her eyes.

  Janie turned her freckled face toward Mrs. Rook. “Did he die, too?”

  Mrs. Rook closed her mouth and swallowed. “Y-y-yes, dear. I’m afraid so.”

  “Why?”

  Mrs. Rook gulped again. “He became deathly ill in January 1892, just two years after he became a young widower. As I told Miss Lind, my sister fell through a sheet of ice while skating figure eights on a lake in the back of our property.”

  Tillie and Mr. and Mrs. O’Daire all lifted their heads and exhaled the word “Ohh.”

  Janie blinked as though working to digest that information.

  “No one killed her?” asked Michael with a glance at me.

  “No, it was simply an accident.” Mrs. Rook returned her gaze to Janie. “I’m sorry to say it, dear, but Nels’s body and soul simply were never the same after he dove into that cold lake to fetch . . .” Her lips formed the word you, but she drew a short breath and instead said, “Violet.”

  Janie traced her left index finger along the bottom left corner of the photograph.

  “Do you remember him, sweetie?” asked Mrs. Rook, cupping her hands around her cheeks. “I know it’s been a long—”

  “He was such a nice boy,” said Janie.

  Someone in the room sniffled as though he or she cried, but I could not pry my gaze away from Janie, who continued to study the photograph of Violet and Nelson Jessen.

  “Yes, he was,” said Mrs. Rook with a nod. “A very nice boy who loved you dearly.”

  Janie removed her fingers from the picture. I expected her to return to her lunch; to return to being Janie.

  Instead, she slipped her hand inside Mrs. Rook’s.

  THE ENTIRE GROUP of us roamed through a field of green winter wheat that poked through the snow like patches of whiskers. The ground crunched beneath the heels of my boots, and the silent white sky stretched over the earth for endless miles.

  Janie walked along in front with her mother, none of us thinking twice about the fact that this seven-year-old girl, this little stranger to the farm, led the way. Michael chatted with Mr. and Mrs. Rook about Violet’s predilection for math, which left Tillie and me bringing up the rear.

  Tillie slowed her pace so that we dragged at least twenty feet behind the others. She pulled a cigarette and lighter out of a coat pocket. “May I ask you a question?”

  “I’m truly not going to publish an article about Janie,” I said before she could even get the words out.

  “That’s not what I was going to ask.”

  “Oh?”

  She stopped and lit her cigarette, and I waited for her to continue, my hands buried inside the folds of my pockets, a vicious chill chomping at my cheeks.

  Tillie tucked her lighter away and exhaled a cloud of smoke that ghosted past my eyes. Her entire body relaxed, and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. “Boy, did I need that.”

  I snickered.

  “You want one?”

  “Oh, I don’t smoke.”

  “Here.” She handed the lipstick-stained end of the cigarette my way. “Try mine.”

  “I’ve tried them before and just ended up coughing and embarrassing myself. I’d hate to do that here.” I trekked onward to keep from falling too far behind the rest of the group, even though they didn’t seem to detect our absence.

  Tillie caught up to me. “Here’s what I was actually going to say.” She sucked two more puffs into her lungs before asking, “Do you think you would be where you are today if you had been educated in a little one-room schoolhouse in a nothing town?”

  “Where I am today?” I asked with a laugh. “Do you mean traipsing through a snow-dusted field in a remote corner of Kansas, trailing after two families I hardly even know—right before Christmas?”

  “I mean, do you think you would have had the means to obtain a master’s degree with an education like Janie’s? And don’t be too polite to give a blunt answer simply because I’m Janie’s teacher.”

  I plodded forward three more steps and watched the snow break into chunks of ice beneath my feet. “It would have been much harder, I admit. My sisters and I attended city schools, and both of my parents were teachers. They’ve always been strong proponents of higher education for both men and women.”

  Tillie hugged her arms around herself. “Do you think Janie would benefit from an education in a city?”

  “Is Rebecca considering moving?”

  “You can’t say a word to Michael, but yes. Despite fearing you, my sister has been inspired by you. She wants Janie to experience the same opportunities you’ve had.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “She absolutely must speak to Michael before making a decision such as that.”

  “What good will talking to him do? He’ll only say no.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Aren’t you two coming?” asked Michael from up ahead.

  My shoulders flinche
d at the sound of his voice. The little party now approached a cabin the shape of a shoe box with log walls and a shingled roof. The “other house,” if I had to guess.

  “We’ll catch up in a minute,” I called back.

  Tillie, still hugging herself, dangled the cigarette from between two of her right fingers. I stole the thing out of her hands, shoved it between my lips, and breathed in the anesthetizing smoke until my chest expanded and my eyelids fluttered closed.

  “You’re not coughing, Alice,” said Tillie in a throaty voice that told me she cracked a wry grin.

  I opened one eye. “I might have smoked a little more than I let on.”

  “I have a feeling you’ve done a lot more things than what you’ve let on.”

  I smiled and passed the cigarette back to her. She promptly slid it between her lips and nudged me with an elbow.

  “Please tell your sister to be careful,” I warned, our heads bent close. “I admire her desire to advance Janie’s educational opportunities, but she must also be cautious of the girl’s mental health, especially after all of the emotions from this trip come crashing down back at home.”

  Tillie nodded. “I’ll tell her.”

  We continued onward, switching the cigarette back and forth, our lipsticks smearing together into a rosy flowering of scarlet and magenta. It was the closest I’d come to kissing another person on the lips since my long-ago night with Stu, and the intimacy of it, the girlish silliness of it all, gave me the giggles. The O’Daires and the Rooks disappeared into the log cabin, and we stopped and hurriedly took more puffs before gaining the strength to join them.

  “How are you going to go back to intelligence tests after all of this?” asked Tillie, nestling close to keep warm.

  “I honestly don’t know.” I handed the cigarette back. “Despite how exhausted I am from all of the traveling, how routine the job often seems, I do enjoy helping the children. I know they need people like me, especially the tougher cases.” I sighed and drew a line through the snow with the heel of my right boot. “However . . .”

  “Ah, yes, the big ‘however.’”

  “I’ve wanted to study human memory on a more advanced level ever since graduate school. And now this . . .” I turned to face the cabin, inside which Janie now chirped about numbers written across the walls. “This opens an entirely new door to the uncharted limits of human memory. This changes everything.”

  We both stared at the cabin, hearing the cadence of the others’ voices within.

  Tillie dropped the cigarette to the snow and snuffed it out with the toe of her right boot. “Shall we go in?”

  I nodded. “I suppose.”

  “Aren’t you curious about Violet’s writing on the walls?”

  “Of course.”

  I followed Tillie to the cabin, realizing I didn’t necessarily want to observe Janie’s reaction to Violet’s equations. I imagined her tracing her little fingers over the curves and the lines of the numbers and biting her bottom lip as she studied Violet’s incomplete work, perhaps discovering missing components of her own theories. I even pictured her trooping onward with the families to the frozen lake on the property. I could see the graveness of her eyes as she peered out at the layer of ice shielding the waters that had claimed Violet’s life, and I envisioned her marking the figure eight on the ice with the toe of her little brown boot.

  And yet I couldn’t do a single thing with that information. Frustration smacked me hard across the face out there in the brutal cold. The impotency of my situation was comparable to someone telling Thomas Edison, Well, it’s swell that you figured out how to create an electric lightbulb, Tommy old boy, but you can’t breathe a word about it to anyone. You must sit in the dark and pretend as though you hadn’t discovered it at all.

  Tillie stepped into the cabin first, and I poked my head through the doorway behind her, finding that the structure consisted of only one single room that smelled of damp wood. Two oil lamps burned on a table that looked to have been built from a barn door, and they cast a meager light across the backs of the families, who surrounded Janie in front of the farthest wall. I edged three feet farther inside and shivered at the sight of pencil markings scrawled across the lighter slabs of wood. Sure enough, the equations—a jumble of numbers, algebraic letters, and signs—resembled the markings on Janie’s yellow walls. The more I blinked and allowed my eyes to adjust to the cabin’s dimness, the more the calculations emerged on the boards, from floor to ceiling.

  “Do you understand any of this, Janie?” asked Mr. Rook.

  “Of course.” The child giggled. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  Rebecca glanced over her shoulder and caught me watching them like a spy in the shadows. An intruder.

  “I’m going back to the main house,” I said, backing up.

  “Are you sure?” asked Michael with a peek at me, his eyebrows knitted.

  “It’s time for the families to be together without me observing everything and getting in the way. I’ll meet you all back there after Janie has seen and heard all that she needs to experience.”

  “Thank you, Miss Lind,” said Rebecca, and she put a hand on Janie’s left shoulder, the only part of the girl I could see from my vantage point.

  I burrowed my hands back into my pockets and retreated across the field of snow, leaving the O’Daires, the Simpkins, and the Rooks to finish weaving their memories together without me.

  DEAR GOD, I believe! I wrote in my notebook back at the house. The evidence is astounding and conclusive: Janie O’Daire proves that reincarnation deserves serious research within the academic circles of the United States of America. I wish more than anything to be the person to conduct it.

  Countless obstacles stand in my path, namely a lack of authorized proof that I can present to a research clinic. However, I will not give up the fight for children such as Janie.

  For former children such as me.

  CHAPTER 25

  Mrs. Rook invited all five of us to stay through Christmas. “It’s been such an unexpected pleasure having all of you here,” she said as we disappeared into our hats and coats in the entry hall. “Won’t you consider staying with us? I’m sure Janie would prefer to spend Christmas inside a comfy house rather than in a hotel or on a train . . .”

  “Three of us already own tickets for a train that’s departing this evening,” said Rebecca, which caused my fingers to fall still on the buttons of my coat.

  Michael looked similarly flummoxed, his right hand frozen halfway inside his glove. “You’re leaving this evening?” he asked.

  Rebecca affixed Janie’s hat on the child’s head. “I appreciate the offer, Mrs. Rook, but Tillie, Janie, and I made plans for a Christmas escape in a lovely hotel elsewhere.”

  Michael still didn’t move. His voice deepened. “You’re not staying in Friendly any longer than today?”

  Rebecca didn’t answer him, and neither did her sister. They wound their scarves around their throats and refrained from looking at him, although Tillie glanced at me with anxious eyes.

  Michael fitted his cap over his head with his gaze fixed upon his ex-wife. “Are you certain Janie has experienced enough of Friendly?”

  “She’s ready to go home,” said Rebecca.

  “Are you, Janie?”

  Janie fastened her coat buttons and nodded.

  “How did she react to the lake?” I asked Tillie beside me, my voice lowered to a near-whisper.

  “She didn’t want to stay at it for long. She started talking about wanting to go home.”

  I nodded and turned toward Janie, asking, “Do you have any last questions for the Rooks?”

  “Nope.” Janie brushed her hair off her cheeks. “I’m getting really tired. I want to go home.”

  Mrs. Rook bundled her nose beneath her handkerchief. Her husband wrapped an arm around her shoulders and swallowed, which, for some reason, brought my attention to that cleft chin of his that Janie had described as a Rook family trait way back in Gordon Bay. Ag
ain, the progress I had made disintegrated with the swiftness of sand sifting through my fingers.

  We bid our hostess good-bye out in front of their house, next to the Model T that still bore our frosty suitcases upon its roof.

  I shook Mrs. Rook’s hand. “Thank you so much for allowing us to visit. You’ve been a tremendous help.”

  “I wish it had all lasted a bit longer.” She lowered her face and wept into the handkerchief.

  I stroked her right arm, below her shoulder. “If your sister truly did move on to the body of this little girl, then know that she has a bright and wondrous future ahead of her. She’ll continue on with her mathematics and finish whatever it was she’d been starting. Her parents will see to that.”

  “Yes . . .” Mrs. Rook nodded. “I’m sure they will.”

  More handshakes ensued, although Janie climbed into the backseat of the car without saying good-bye to anyone. She looked exhausted. I reminded myself she was just a child. The sky purpled from the onset of twilight, which meant her bedtime likely neared.

  Mr. Rook cranked the Ford to a start, and we all situated ourselves in the same seating arrangement as before. Mrs. Rook waved good-bye, and her husband steered the car around in the driveway.

  To my surprise, Janie craned her head and watched the woman fall into the distance behind us. I observed the girl, wondering what thoughts coursed through her young mind, yet not daring to ask in front of her mother, who surveyed me with unblinking eyes.

  We reached the end of the driveway.

  Janie stiffened. “Stop the car!” she shouted. “Stop it quickly!”

  Mr. Rook slammed on the brakes, and we skidded to a jarring, squealing halt.

  “What is it?” asked Michael. “What’s wrong?”

  “I didn’t say good-bye to Eleanor.” She crawled over her mother’s lap and grabbed the door’s handle.

  “Careful, Janie,” said Rebecca, raising her arms for her to pass. “You’re hurting me.”