“Montana,” I explained, “but I used to spend my summers here. I actually knew the family that owned this place.”
The happiness drained from her friendly, joyful eyes. “Oh…you mean the Fosters.”
“That’s right.”
A dark cloud settled over the room. “I’m sorry to hear that, dear. Did you know them well?”
I didn’t want to put a damper on our conversation, but I couldn’t lie about it either. “I knew their son, Ethan. Very well, yes.”
She regarded me with sympathy. “The boy who died.”
I nodded and turned away as a lump took shape in my throat. I swallowed hard over it and faced her again. “Would it be okay if I took a look around? I don’t want to book a room or anything. I was just curious to see the house again.”
“Of course,” she replied without hesitation. “Why don’t I give you a tour? I can take you backstage, so to speak—into the kitchen and all the rooms that aren’t occupied, which is most of them today.”
“I don’t want to take you away from your work,” I said, feeling guilty about intruding.
“You aren’t. It’s been a slow day. Come with me.”
I followed her out of the living room and back out to the entrance hall.
* * *
“This is the dining room,” Angela said as she led me through the wide archway. “It’s very grand and seats a large number of people, as you can see. We serve a breakfast buffet every morning and guests can come down at their leisure. We try to make it like an experience on Downton Abbey,” she said with a smile. “We also book this room out for private dinners and wedding rehearsal celebrations, that sort of thing.”
I strolled in and recognized the exquisite crystal stemware that I had come to love. It was still stored in the same antique cherry cabinet with glass doors along the south wall, across from the fireplace.
“May I?” I asked, pointing to the cabinet.
“Of course.” She seemed to enjoy my fascination with the place.
I moved closer and studied the Bordeaux glasses closely, the sparkling brandy snifters and whisky glasses. I experienced a flash memory of pouring wine for Chris in one of those glasses, the night we ate spaghetti in this very room.
The memory caused a sudden melancholy in me, for none of that had ever actually happened. At least not in this lifetime.
I wished desperately that it had, because even though we couldn’t be together in the end, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on those days with Chris for anything in the world.
Our relationship, however brief and illusory, had shown me that I was capable of loving again, and there were good men out there. Wonderful, decent, loving men. Happiness was possible. The future was wide open, and now…so was my heart.
Turning away from the cabinet, I said to Angela, “I always loved Mrs. Foster’s crystal.”
“You have good taste then,” she replied with a twinkle in her eyes.
Next, she took me into the library with all the old books. I moved closer and ran my fingers along the spines on the shelves, as I had done before…many years ago.
“I once said to Ethan that this room made me think of those old movies where they could slide a book out, and the bookcase would open to a secret passageway.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Angela said, “considering the man who built this house. He was a sea captain, but he was also an inventor, way ahead of his time. We found all sorts of interesting devices and contraptions in the attic and donated them to the local museum.”
“That’s fascinating,” I said. “What did he invent?”
“Oh…let me think… He experimented with electricity when it was very new and tried to invent a clock that would never need to be wound. See what I mean? Ahead of his time.”
“Definitely.”
“People say he was obsessed with death and mortality after losing his wife at a young age. He even crossed the Pacific and went to Asia in search of the Fountain of Youth. They say he tried to invent a time machine, but he was quite old by then. People thought he was delusional. Maybe he was, I don’t know.”
“He must have been the one who put the sundial down by the water,” I said. “It seems very old. I always thought the dial plate looked ancient and the column it stands on looks like something from the Orient. I wonder if he brought it back from his travels?”
“Probably,” she replied. “There’s something magical about that sundial, don’t you think? Shall we go into the kitchen now?”
As I followed her out of the library, I remembered the shock that had jolted through my body when I touched it on many occasions in my dreams. Was it possible that Captain Fraser had succeeded in his attempts to find an entrance to another time or dimension?
“Are there any records of his experiments with time travel?” I asked. “Did he keep a journal?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Angela replied. “It was his children who mentioned it in some of their letters to each other. They were quite concerned about him at the end of his life. If he had written anything about it, they most likely would have disposed of it to protect his reputation.”
She led me into the kitchen and gently changed the subject. “As you can see, this room is mostly the same as when the Fosters lived here, with a few modern updates.”
We continued the tour back to the front hall and up the wide carpeted staircase. I noticed that she had changed the carpet runner from what had been a plain green color. The new one was an Oriental design, which suited the house perfectly.
Upstairs, she showed me each bedroom and explained that they had added private baths to all the rooms that never had them. I realized they had used my son, Tyler’s, old room for that purpose. Two ensuite bathrooms occupied the space that had once belonged to him.
At first, I was disappointed to see this. I felt as if something had been taken away from me, but perhaps that change was a good thing. I might have broken down into a fit of weeping if I’d beheld the bed where I could remember reading him stories at night, in that other existence.
When we reached the end of the hall and master suite—my former bedroom—I noticed that Angela had placed a Victorian style sign on the door that said “Honeymoon Suite.”
She opened the door and allowed me to enter first. All the linens and curtains had been changed to brighten the space, which was stunningly beautiful. Again, I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. A decade of memories flooded my senses.
This had been my room. I knew wholeheartedly in that moment that I had indeed lived here once with my son and husband. And later after the accident that took them both. How else would I recognize it—and everything else in the house—with every living piece of my soul? All of it was imprinted on my brain, it was a part of my psyche, and I felt incredibly grateful to be seeing it again, to stand here and remember.
I felt as if a profound question had been answered.
It was real. At least it was to me.
So if I had indeed lived in this house, slept in that bed and eaten off Mrs. Foster’s fine china…hadn’t I also gone out in a rowboat with Chris Jenson?
Where was he now?
Turning to Angela, I smiled. “Thank you very much. This has been incredible to see the house again. I really appreciate it and I’ll probably come back and stay sometime. I’d like to…enjoy the ambiance…but I have to leave right now. I just realized there’s someone I have to call.”
She followed me out of the room. “You can use the telephone in the lobby if it’s an emergency.”
I hurried down the stairs. “Thank you, but I don’t know his number off hand. Actually, I don’t even know if he’s still alive. He might be in Seattle. He might be married…who knows? But I have to track him down.”
When we reached the main floor and I stopped to thank her again, I realized I’d said too much. She was bewildered as she looked at me.
“That sounded crazy, didn’t it?” I said.
She laughed. “Just a little
.”
I laughed too. “I apologize. This house just brought back a lot of memories, that’s all. It made me remember someone who was important to me once.”
“I hope you find him,” she said.
I pushed the screen door open and stepped onto the veranda. “Me, too.”
She followed me out. “Good luck, Sylvie, and you’re welcome to come back here to visit anytime.”
I gave her a hug, then ran down the steps to the car and drove straight home to my grandmother’s house.
Chapter Fifty-one
The first thing I did when I turned on my laptop at the kitchen table was google “Dentists in Seattle.”
Over a thousand names popped up, so I narrowed my search, but didn’t find any Chris Jensons. Next, I searched for Chris Jenson on social media in Seattle. I found a few with the spelling of Jensen, but none of them matched up with the Chris I had known when I was sixteen.
I remembered clearly that his family had moved to Seattle after Ethan died, but that was fifteen years ago, so he could be anywhere by now. For all I knew, he could be married with six children, living somewhere in Canada. In this life, he could be a cop or a lawyer or a teacher. The curiosity was killing me.
Knowing I had to get back to the hospital to visit Gram, because she would most certainly be awake by now, I closed my laptop and brought it with me as I left the house and locked the door behind me.
* * *
“Really?” Gram said. “You drove all the way out to Cape Elizabeth just to see the house?”
I wasn’t ready to tell her, or anyone else, that I’d just lived two additional and different lives and had resided in that house for a decade, so I played it cool. “Yeah…the dream I had last night brought back a lot of memories. Did you know it was converted into a historic inn?”
“I think I did know that,” she replied. “About six or seven years ago, wasn’t it? I remember the owners talking about it on one of the local news channels. I never mentioned it to you. I didn’t think it would matter.”
“It was probably best that you didn’t. I was trying so hard to move on and forget about the past.”
She reached for my hand. “Sometimes the answer isn’t to forget the past. It’s to accept it. And be grateful for what you learned from it.”
I let out a heavy sigh and leaned back in my chair. “I think I’m finally getting that now.”
Although I wasn’t quite ready to accept my life the way it was today…
I still believed there was something more out there for me. I didn’t know what it was yet. Maybe it was Chris. Maybe it wasn’t. But I believed in my heart that this newfound joy and gratitude I felt for all the bounty in my life was just the beginning.
The beginning of something wonderful.
* * *
It was nearly suppertime when I pulled up in front of The Old Stone Keep and shut off the car engine. I glanced up at the painted sign that looked like it belonged in a medieval English village.
I’d been to Portland a number of times and I enjoyed specialty beers. It surprised me that I hadn’t known of it.
I got out of the car and approached the front door where the sign said “Open.” The familiarity of it struck me with noticeable vigor. How many times had I flipped that sign over at lunchtime?
The bells over the door jingled as I walked in, and again I was astounded by how familiar everything seemed. Though I’d never set foot in there, I knew every detail—the floor, the walls, the tables and chairs. I recognized the antique cash register, the beer glasses, and the curtains on the windows.
What I didn’t recognize, however, was the woman behind the bar. She was tall and slender with a purple streak down the side of her black bobbed haircut.
Casually, I approached and sat down on one of the stools.
“What can I get you?” she asked while she loaded a martini shaker with ice.
“Could I just have a ginger ale?”
“Sure. Just give me one second to finish making this drink.”
She moved to the far end of the bar, finished mixing the drink, then shook the stainless steel shaker at least forty times. She poured the pink concoction into a martini glass and tossed a lemon slice in for good measure.
A waitress pushed through the door from the kitchen and collected the drink to deliver to a table at the back. She looked young, barely twenty-one.
While the barmaid filled my glass from the soda gun, I spoke up. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” she replied, setting the soda gun back under the bar.
“Is there someone working here named Cassie?”
The barmaid placed a bowl of peanuts in front of me. “Afraid not.”
My heart sank.
“Cassie quit last year.”
I nearly swallowed my gum. “I beg your pardon? Last year?”
“Maybe it was only ten months ago. I can’t remember.”
I waved a finger around my head. “Did she have curly red hair?”
“That’s her,” the barmaid replied. “You a friend?”
“Sort of.” I picked up my ginger ale and took a sip. “We knew each other… Oh, how can I put this? In another life.”
The barmaid nodded knowingly. “I get it. I’ve had lots of those. Two years ago, I was seeing this guy who just wanted to sit in his basement and play video games all day. I got into it, too, for a while. Thank God I woke up. That was definitely a strange life.”
That wasn’t exactly what I was referring to, but I understood what she was saying.
“Do you know where Cassie is now?” I asked.
“She left to take a job in a dentist’s office. Preferred the nine-to-five lifestyle I guess. I think she had kids. She wanted to be home for them at bedtime.”
My heart nearly beat out of my chest. “Did you just say she went to work for a dentist?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Can’t remember. I didn’t really know Cassie that well. We only worked together for a week or so before she left. I was her replacement.”
The food waitress moved behind the bar and knocked on it to get the barmaid’s attention. “I need two Edingers and a glass of Lindeman’s Shiraz.”
By that time, I was digging into my purse for my phone to check the listings for dentists in Portland. I googled Dr. Chris Jenson, and sure enough, a downtown practice with three other dentists appeared at the top of the list. Was it possible that Cassie worked there?
“Holy crap,” I said, as I fished through my wallet for a few bills to pay for my ginger ale. “Thanks. I gotta go.”
“See ya,” the barmaid said as I hopped off the stool and ran out.
Chapter Fifty-two
It was past 5:00, and I certainly didn’t want to burst through the doors of Temple Street Dental and dash straight into Chris’s arms like a long lost lover. That would make me look like a crazy person.
For that matter, maybe I was crazy. How could I actually believe that I’d lived three different lives? Maybe it was all just an incredibly vivid, lucid dream with psychic elements.
Either way, it was likely that Chris was married with a family by now, because that’s the kind of man he was. Settled and dependable. I wasn’t surprised when I learned he’d moved back here from Seattle. But the question remained: Had he brought Katelyn with him? Or some other wife? What had his life been like over the past fifteen years? I was overwhelmingly curious to learn the answers to those questions.
And what about Cassie, my dear, close friend who wasn’t going to know me from a hole in the wall? I tried to prepare myself for that as I searched through my laptop files for my resume and drove to the business center to have it printed.
* * *
I had no idea what my intentions were the following morning when I walked into the reception area of Temple Street Dental. I had originally come to Portland to care from my elderly grandmother who had fallen and broken her hip, but I was also an unemployed
dental hygienist with very few prospects back home in Montana. I needed a job, and ever since my experience with lucid dreaming, this part of the world felt more like home to me than the place I’d been raised. The truth was…I’d never been truly happy in Montana. Maybe it was time for a change. Maybe that’s why all of this was happening. Fate was playing hardball with me, because subtly hadn’t worked thus far.
So there I stood, with the perfect excuse to approach the red-haired woman at the reception desk wearing a nametag that read “Cassie.”
* * *
“Hi there.” She greeted me cheerfully. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” I replied, feeling a burst of giddiness to be meeting Cassie like this, as if we’d never met. Which we hadn’t. I was still having trouble making sense of it all.
“Would it be okay if I dropped off a resume?” I asked. “I’m a dental hygienist.”
Her eyebrows flew up. “Oh, sure! That would be great. I can take it for you and show it to the partners. Each hires their own hygenist, so I’ll make a few copies.”
I passed the sealed manila envelope across the counter. “Thank you.”
Cassie took it and laid it next to her computer keyboard. “Are you looking for full time or part time?”
“Either, or,” I replied. “I just moved here from Montana where I got my diploma last year. I do have some experience, though. I worked a maternity leave for a large practice in Billings. Then the new mother decided to come back to work early.”
Cassie gave me a look. “Don’t you hate when that happens?” Her eyes fixed on mine and she inclined her head. “You look familiar. Do we know each other?”
The question filled me with euphoria and a feeling of hope. Perhaps I wasn’t a total stranger to her after all.
“I’m not sure. I used to spend my summers here as a kid. My sister and I took sailing and tennis lessons. That was a long time ago, though.”
“I always took tennis lessons in the summers. Maybe we played against each other or something.”
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