The Past-Life Chronicles Box Set: Volume 1 & 2: Duet Omnibus Edition

by C. K. Brooke

  “What, was Ray Sanderson the mafia?” Mason’s clearly just trying to make light of it, maybe to apologize or ease the tension, but I shake my head. Now’s not the time for jokes.

  “No, he was just a…smooth-talking salesman,” I mumble. “Ow.” I lean my forehead against the cool glass, trying to soothe the burn.

  “Smooth-talking?” Henry repeats. “Nope. Couldn’t have been me.”

  “Took the words right out of my mouth,” Mason murmurs so that only I can hear.

  I snort feebly against the glass. It fogs up, then dissipates. When it fades, I notice the small, boarded-up building before my eyes, weeds sprouting through the concrete cracks. It looks like it had once been a convenience store and gas station.

  I jerk upright so swiftly, my neck cricks. “Turn left!” I nearly scream. “Turn left, turn left, turn left!”

  “But the GPS says…”

  “I don’t care; turn left!”

  Mason turns down a smaller, one-way road. If anyone was coming in the opposite direction, we’d have to pull onto the gravel shoulder. The grass around us is colorless and waterlogged. But I know exactly what it would look like, the verdant greens and yellows, in the heat of summertime.

  Overhead, there’s no sun in sight; it’s too overshadowed by clouds. The car bumps past a silo and faded purplish barn, the paint chipping away. “That barn used to be bright red.” I point as it drifts past. “There used to be horses.”

  The GPS is recalculating our route. Mason keeps driving as thunder groans in the distance. A fat drop of rain plops over the windshield, then another.

  I hear Henry shift. “I don’t like the look of the storm back there.”

  I glance in the side mirror. Behind us, the shade of the sky is deepening to a darker, slate gray. “At least it isn’t snowing. Then we’d be stuck out here.”

  A panicky notion returns to me, full-throttle, at the idea of being stuck…then subsides as quickly as it came. I let out a breath. “Slow down, Mason.” I know he isn’t going that fast, but I feel like I’m losing control.

  The car slows, and I try to breathe. Try.

  Dead leaves whip around us. A tawny one blows onto the windshield and gets stuck in the resting wipers. Mason switches them on for a quick swipe, brushing off some of the rain.

  He frowns down at my phone. “The GPS is still stuck recalculating. We might be going too far out of the way.”

  “We’re not,” I blurt. “We’re almost there.” My heart is pounding. The last time I took this road, I never came back. Never made it out of my car. I’d drowned inside, trapped—if I’d even survived the impact of the hit. I don’t think I was conscious for the drowning part. Not physically, anyway. Spiritually, maybe.

  All the same, driving this road was the last thing Susan Dochy ever did.

  She was in trouble; that much I can feel to my bones. She had to flee. Why?

  Perhaps it was because Ray was twice her age. Had her family, or any of her many friends, known she was seeing an older man? One who was engaged to another woman?

  No one can know. Don’t want anybody findin’ out… I recall my own voice—yet, also not my voice—in Susan’s breathy, country lilt from the recording on my stepdad’s phone. Keep it secret, y’hear?

  “It was a secret,” I realize aloud.

  Mason’s forehead lifts. “What was?”

  A patch of road where the pavement ends materializes before us. I practically stand in my seat, jabbing my finger against the windshield at it. “Go here. Go here!”

  Mason switches on his headlights, slowing his wheels in the mud. We coast alongside a wooded grove until he pulls as far as a grime-covered barrier gate at the end of the path will allow.

  “There’s no more road.” Mason shoves the gear into park. “This isn’t the right way.”

  “Yes, it is.” To my surprise, it’s Henry who speaks, sounding haunted.

  Chills douse the length of my spine. Not needing any more persuasion, I throw open my door.

  “Willow,” Mason says warningly. “It might not be safe out there.”

  “I’ll go with her.” Henry is out of the car before I am.

  Mason exhales, pushing a button on the dash. His hazard lights begin to blink on and off. “Fine, I’ll just…wait here, I guess. Be careful.”

  Wasting no time, I slam the door shut then tread the dirt road in the rain. I circle the barrier gate and squeeze past it, Henry close at my heels.

  The path before us, still unpaved, takes a quick and rocky dip downward. I grab Henry’s arm for balance as we descend, weaving alongside the wooded bend in the road. We leave Mason in his car, with its swishing wipers and blinking hazards, out of sight behind us.

  “The bridge.” Henry is the first to spot it. Raindrops roll down the sleeve of his coat as he points.

  Down ahead is a flat, gray body of water and a broken bridge crossing it, completely rusted over. We trample the mud, our pace increasing till we reach the bottom of the slope.

  The old bridge is gated off. ‘No Trespassing’ signs hang crookedly over the entrance, swamped with unmaintained growth. It’s totally out of operation.

  Henry stops where the path would’ve connected to the bridge. The rainfall picks up, pounding the dirt by our shoes, but I hardly notice it. All I can think about is the scrape of metal against metal…the red convertible car I was driving, busting through the siderail…

  It all happened. Right here. Just like in my dream.

  My pulse slows as I study the reservoir beneath us. It’s a far enough drop, but not very. It’s not some imposingly large body of water, either. It’s strange to imagine such a tragedy could’ve occurred someplace so ordinary, so seemingly plain and innocuous. It feels like it should all look more dramatic, feel like a Hollywood movie set. Yet so far, all I feel is empty.

  Shoving my icy hands into my pockets, I join Henry where he stands.

  Some part of me had thought that, if I ever came to this point, I would drop to my knees and bawl. I think I’m too much in shock. Either that, or maybe I don’t want to cry in front of Henry. Besides, the general dinginess of this place contrasts with the overwhelming significance I’ve always associated with it. I don’t know what to do next.

  I’m here. This sucks. Now what?

  I realize I left my phone in the car, but it’s not as if I wanted to whip it out and start snapping selfies anyway. It wouldn’t feel appropriate. There’s nothing to do but stand here in the rain with my stepbrother and absorb my dismal surroundings as best as I can.

  I don’t feel terror and fear anymore. Just immense loss. All the hopes I’d once had, of running away, for whatever reason I needed to, were shattered here, decades ago.

  “I was going to follow you,” Henry says.

  I turn to look at him. Raindrops course down his throat and stain his blond hair. At first, I think he meant me.

  But then, I understand, from the depth in his eyes…he’s talking about Susan.

  “I remember now. You telephoned me.” His blinks rain from his eyelashes. “I mean, Susan telephoned Ray. To tell him that her mother was…”

  My body shivers all over. He’s looking at me as though he finally recognizes me, as if he’s waking up from a long and distant dream.

  “You were pregnant.” Rain streams down his face. “The baby was mine. Your mother wasn’t going to let you keep it. She was trying to force you to get rid of it.”

  The spaces behind my eyes hurt. That’s right…he’s right…

  “She was…super religious, I think? Something about…not wanting to be disgraced by her church.” I can almost see the revelations bleeding into him. “But you didn’t want to give up our child.

  “I was going to follow you,” he iterates, his stare intense. “I was planning to break it off with my fiancée. I had every intention of taking care of you and our…our family. But, once I came here, to this bridge…I learned I was too late.” It startles me when his voice cracks here. He runs a hand over
his mouth, his gaze flitting across the reservoir.

  “Why?” I whisper. “Why was I killed? Who was out to—to sabotage…?”

  “My fiancée.” His eyes recapture mine, and my heart gives a devastated throb. “I found out, many years later, when I was sick, I think…on my own deathbed. It was someone we knew…her brother? She’d gone to him for help. They knew you were leaving town, that I was planning to meet you in Chicago.” His eyes widen. “Chicago! That’s where I—I mean, where Ray—told Susan to go. That’s why Susan was driving to Illinois. Ray was going to meet her there, and they would start their life together.”

  “You lied,” I whisper.

  “I didn’t, I swear.” The whites of his eyes redden. I can’t be sure if it’s rain running down his cheeks or tears. “Sh-she was listening in on the phone line, to our call. I had no idea. She told her brother….” He squints. “That I was leaving her in the dust with a girl I knocked up.

  “You’d told me you would take your dad’s car to get away. Everyone in town knew his car…fancy convertible or something. My fiancée’s brother—he messed with the wiring, cut the brake line.” Henry grips his head between his hands, as if it’s about to roll off. “Oh, my God. How do I know this? This is absolutely…batshit insane…”

  “So they killed me. Your fiancée had her brother murder me and our unborn child.” I cross my arms over my chest. “And then you just went back and married her?!”

  This hurts like hell. I hug myself tightly, shedding the tears of another girl.

  “I didn’t know it was murder.” Henry is pale and soaking wet. He looks like he’s at a funeral, and I’m the body in the coffin. Like he’s still grieving me, even though I’m standing right here. “I thought Susan had had an accident. An unfortunate, tragic accident. That she was going too fast in her effort to run away, and must’ve lost control of the vehicle. After we buried her, I…did what was expected of me.” He looks down.

  “You married my killer.”

  The woman who’d ordered a hit against a pregnant teen… The father of my unborn baby had married her.

  No wonder Susan was rolling in her grave. No wonder she had to come back. In my body—as me.

  To settle this.

  “I am not him.” It’s as if Henry has read my mind. His nostrils flare; his jaw is rigid. “Not anymore. And anyway, Ray was coming for you. He was going to do the right thing. Susan’s death, and their child’s…it haunted him the rest of his life, do you understand? He mourned them up to the day he died.” His tone turns desperate as his gaze peruses me pleadingly, almost helplessly. “Can’t you see, Willow? It’s why I came back.” He lifts a hand, gingerly touching my cheek. “To be with you.”

  I’m frozen. Can’t move, can’t speak.

  All this time, even between lives…could I have been so mistaken?

  If what Henry’s telling me is true, then Ray had never meant to betray Susan. He hadn’t known the whole story at the time. He actually had cared about her.

  So much so, in fact, he’d seized another lifetime…just to be with her again.

  He inches closer. “I realize now,” Henry whispers, “why I’ve always been drawn to you.” My eyelids flicker as he fondles my wet hair out of my face. “Why I’m still drawn to you. And I’ve never truly believed you don’t feel it, too.”

  I don’t make a sound. My pulse is racing. Henry just strokes my face, his thumb running along my chin, up to my temple.

  “Susan’s dead. So is Ray.” He lowers his hand. “But you and I are here, now.”

  I stare at him through the pouring rain. He stares back. And I understand, from his wordless gaze, that he never was asking me to give Ray a second chance. He’s only been asking for his first.

  Something inside me is breaking down, like a dam bursting. I’ve guarded myself against these feelings for so long…

  Henry steps in. I’m overcome by the sudden warmth of him as he takes me into his hold. I lay my chin upon his wet shoulder, bringing my arms around him.

  He rocks me slowly from side to side. A lone tear threatens to leak from the corner of my eye. I squeeze it back.

  “I’m so sorry,” he utters.

  “So am I.” I hold him close, in the place of our past, where a future had once been stolen from us. “Henry…”

  He feels warm, so solid in my arms. The smell of his skin in the rain is hypnotic. It hits me like an oncoming train as I sense so vividly, all my nerves alight, how Susan had fallen for the same man. But is it a memory, or is it happening now? Were these her feelings, or are they mine?

  Or is it all the same?

  And yet…I can’t forget what Mason said. Hadn’t I come here to be free, so that I could finally live my life, instead of continuing Susan’s? Or was my present lifetime meant to be my chance with Henry—a chance I’d always felt too traumatized to take?

  Did we even stand a chance, with so much baggage between us?

  Confusion overwhelms me like a tidal wave, and I pull back. Henry lowers his arms from me.

  I turn away, and my chest cinches to spot a figure descending the slope toward us. Mason’s hair clings, darkened, to his scalp as rain pelts over him. He glances between Henry and me, and my heart sinks.

  No. This is all going sideways.

  We’ve figured it out, who we were…but who are we?

  Henry and I have a past. Yet, didn’t Mason and I have a future?

  16

  No one speaks as Henry drives. He’d insisted, once we’d returned to Mason’s car, that he knew the way back, without GPS, to Holy Trinity Memorial Garden. Now we’re en route to whatever he so urgently wanted to see back that way. In the front seat beside him, I watch, listless, as the wipers dance back and forth across the windshield. Rain pounds the glass head-on and drums noisily over the roof of the car.

  I look over my shoulder at Mason in the back. His blue eyes are a placid lake, reinfusing me with calm. They hold no more accusation, no jealousy…although I’m pretty sure detected those things when he first came upon Henry and me, down by the bridge. I know he saw us embracing.

  But I don’t want to think about the guys right now. I try to vacate my thoughts as we sail toward the darkening storm over slick country roads. In so many ways, walking into Susan Dochy’s past feels like entering a dream. And if I’m not careful, I may never wake up from it.

  It feels like forever until the cemetery materializes into view. It’s raining so hard, I’m sure the flat land is waterlogged again, so I’m glad we already visited the grave. My grave.

  I sense a pull toward the grim white statues in the memorial garden, another invisible thread. The carvings of Jesus, Mary, and seraphim angels disappear around a corner as Henry dashes on the blinker and bears left.

  He slows along a wooded back road as a grimy speed limit sign flashes thirty-five behind a sheen of rain. I angle my gaze to my stepbrother’s face. He’s squinting at the road behind his driving glasses. I look away, conflicted.

  I study the scenery instead, feeling like I know where he’s going, yet that’s impossible. Even Henry doesn’t know where he’s going—he just knows how to get there, apparently.

  A line of brown and thinning arborvitaes, either diseased or dead, blooms into view. Henry pulls up to a small, two-story house, painted blue with a wraparound porch.

  “I’ll be damned,” he whispers, lowering his glasses down the bridge of his nose. Without explanation, he parks and unlocks the doors.

  “Henry?” I grimace. “What are you doing?”

  “This is my home.” He removes his glasses, looking incredulous. “Was,” he corrects himself. He glances up at the small, old house wistfully.

  I swivel around to face Mason. “What, no objections this time? How come he gets to see his house and I didn’t get to see mine?”

  Mason shrugs. “He isn’t my client. I’m not responsible for his actions.”

  I falter. “You aren’t responsible for mine either, you know.”

  “
As long as I’m your therapist, I’m responsible, Willow.”

  “You make it sound like you’re my shrink. You’re just my hypnotherapist.” I immediately wince at my own words. Goddess, that sounded harsher than intended. “Mason…I’m sorry. That came out totally—”

  “Are you two coming, or do you just want to sit in the car and bicker all day?” Henry poises to exit the vehicle.

  Mason unbuckles but shakes his head, as if disagreeing with himself. I release my belt as well, and we dash through the rain up a ramp to the front porch. The outdoor floorboards creak beneath our shoes as we huddle near the front door, seeking dryness beneath the porch’s covering.

  Henry pauses, glancing at me and Mason. Then he grasps the brass knocker and raps on the door.

  We wait. There’s another car in the driveway, some movement inside. We know someone’s home. Finally, the door bows open. I’m at once struck by the strong odors of mothballs and chicken soup.

  A plump-faced, youngish woman, possibly mid-thirties and wearing white scrubs, looks between us. “Can I help you?” Her voice is not unkind.

  “Er—we’re looking for a Mrs. Sanderson?” inquires Henry.

  The woman screws up her round face. “I’m sorry. No one by that name lives here.”

  “Are you sure?” Henry is almost demanding. He braces a hand against the doorframe, as if to prevent her from shutting it on us. “Is there anyone else on this street that would know if a Mrs. Sanderson used to—?”

  “Who is it, Pearl?” a haggard voice crows from somewhere inside the house.

  The caregiver calls over her shoulder, “Nothing to worry about, ma’am. Just a couple o’ kids lookin’ for a Mrs. Sanderson.”

  “Why, Lord almighty—that’d be me!”

  Pearl, the caregiver, steps back, giving a wide berth. A moment later, I realize why. A white-haired crone wearing an oversized floral housedress rolls her wheelchair up the narrow hallway cramped with crooked photographs on the walls. She parks across from the door, facing us.

  “Mrs. Sanderson used to be my name,” she tells Pearl breathlessly, “back when I was married to my first husband. I done put two husbands in the ground now—and kicked the third to the curb.” She peers up at us. “Now, what can I do ya for?”