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

by C. K. Brooke

  Somehow, though, I think Elms Creek has changed us.

  Henry and I haven’t had a chance to talk since we arrived home yesterday evening. This morning, he left for class and I went back to work. Mason has the day off, and we might hang out later, but maybe we also kind of need some space. It was a long weekend.

  I still have questions for Henry, although I’m not sure he’ll want or even be able to answer all of them. I want to ask him how it felt seeing Joy again. He had remembered her name, their house, their children… I wonder how he’s been holding up since the experience. I know that visit wasn’t exactly easy—for either of us.

  I roll back my desk chair, gazing out the bedroom window for a change of scenery (there’s only so long I can stare at a computer screen, after all). That’s when my phone buzzes. I look down to see a text from Henry.

  There’s no note, just a preview of an online article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I tap the link.

  As I read the headline, my jaw falls. Elms Creek septuagenarian confesses to murder of pregnant teen over 40 years ago—dies next day.

  My heart slams against my sternum as I scan the article. Mrs. Joy Bernard of Elms Creek, Missouri passed away at the age of seventy-one yesterday, Sunday, October 29, the morning after confessing to assisting in the murder of a teenaged girl, who was pregnant at the time, back in August of 1974…

  Immediately, I hit the icon to call my stepbrother.

  It rings once before he picks up. “Willow,” he says urgently.

  “Henry! Holy—”

  “Hang on.” I hear rustling as he adjusts something on his phone, followed by footsteps. The background noise disappears. “Okay.” He sounds a little out of breath. “Just found an empty classroom. This isn’t exactly a conversation I want people overhearing.”

  “That article. Wow.” I’m floored. “Just…wow. Joy. She’s—?”

  “I don’t understand what happened and I’m freaked out.” Henry lowers his voice, almost to a murmur in the speaker. “It says she called the police to her home on Saturday evening and gave her confession. Then on Sunday morning, she was found dead in her bed.”

  “I only skimmed the article. Did it say how she died?”

  “Natural causes,” replies Henry, although he sounds dubious. “There’s no way her confession was a coincidence. It had to have had something to do with our visit. Why else would she have done it apparently just hours after we left? When I was out of the room, you and Mason didn’t…say anything to her, did you?”

  “Mason didn’t.” I sigh. “I did.”

  “What?”

  “When we were leaving, I just told her…” I falter, feeling guiltier than expected. “I told her Susan was moving on.”

  “Willow, how could you?” He sounds stricken. “This isn’t just in our heads anymore. These are real people, with real implications!”

  “And Susan wasn’t a real person?” I’m stung. “What difference does it make, anyway? She won’t be punished. She’s dead.”

  “Her kids aren’t! Her grandkids, the rest of her family will now have to live with—”

  “Your family, you mean?”

  “They aren’t my family anymore.” He pauses. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

  Although it shouldn’t, this pisses me off. He’d said he’d only married Joy out of pressure and expectation. Yet here he is, siding with her—again.

  “So how did it feel?” I ask, hating how bitter I sound. “Seeing your wife again?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “By the way, are you ever going to admit you were wrong? About reincarnation?”

  Finally, he says, “We were both wrong about a lot of things, Willow.”

  I blink. What does that mean?

  “Look—I’ve gotta run. Lab started, like, two minutes ago.”

  “Fine.”

  “Willow,” he says, before I hang up.

  “Yeah?”

  “I wish…” He trails off, and I almost wonder if he won’t finish. But he continues, “I wish things could’ve been different. I tried, but…it was complicated. We can’t change what happened. But I’d like to think that…well, maybe someday, we can heal it. If you’d just give me a chance to make it up to you.”

  The fire in my belly extinguishes. All the same, my heart is waging war against itself. “You’d better get to your lab,” is all I say.

  “I know.” Even though he’s late, he no longer sounds rushed. He lingers on the line before he finally offers, “Talk later?”

  “Okay.” I hang up, then stare at my phone, my heartbeat a dull thud in my chest. Decidedly, I forward the St. Louis Post-Dispatch link to Mason. I’m not surprised when the phone rings ten seconds later.

  “Dude.” Mason sounds as intense I had, at the beginning of my conversation with Henry.

  I let out a long breath. “Mason…”

  I still hadn’t told him everything. I hadn’t known how to bring it up. On Saturday night, we never discussed it, content just to hang out as friends, making fun of old music videos and forgetting the past for once. I didn’t broach the topic on the drive home either. It just didn’t feel right, talking openly about something that still felt so…personal, private…between Henry and me. But now, I feel like I owe him the whole story. Mason helped bring us this far. And I hadn’t shared anything with him—not about Ray planning to follow me and meet me in Chicago, not even about the baby.

  “Susan was pregnant?” Mason’s incredulous. “I’m reading the article now…”

  I shut my eyes briefly. “Yes, she was. And there’s more.” Carefully, I divulge to him everything Henry had told me, down at the bridge the day before yesterday. About the phone call, his fiancée listening in and enlisting her brother for vengeance. About our plan, the pregnancy, and the fact that Susan’s mother was trying to force her to get rid of the baby.

  “When you say ‘get rid of it’,” interrupts Mason, “do you mean her mom wanted her to have an abortion, or give the kid up for adoption?”

  “I’m not sure.” I shudder. “I just know either option was unthinkable to Susan. That’s why she was ditching town.”

  “Odd. If her mom was such a religious nut—like your brother said she was—wonder why she’d want her daughter to have an abortion, potentially.”

  “Things were different back then.” I watch my reflection in the windowpane as I speak, as if my eyes might hold more answers. “In the seventies… I don’t know, the memories are hazier since we left Missouri. But I’m pretty sure some ultra-religious families believed it was a greater sin to have an illegitimate child than to prevent that child from being born in the first place. Obviously, times have changed.”

  “Hmm.” I can almost picture Mason stroking his goatee thoughtfully on the other end of the line. “So, apart from Joy and her brother, you can almost say this was all catalyzed by Susan’s mom. Forcing her daughter to flee for her own child’s life and all…”

  “Yeah.” I think about the headstone…the number of times I’ve stared at the pictures I took of it on my phone. There’s a Bible verse on it—Philippians 1:3. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that Susan’s mother chose it. “I think Mrs. Dochy was religious to a fault.”

  “Maybe that’s why you chose such an open-minded pagan mom this time around,” muses Mason. “Your last mom sounds more like…Heather.”

  I straighten in my chair so suddenly, the seat bounces beneath me. “Mason.” My breaths quicken. Does he realize what he just said? “In high school, when Heather told us she was converting, she said it felt like ‘coming home.’ It’s not much to go by, but what if…?”

  “Ah.” He doesn’t miss a beat.

  “I have to go,” I say at once.

  “Go,” he entreats me simply. We hang up.

  I waste no time, shooting to my feet, and slap my laptop shut.

  18

  Greg drove Mom to her dental appointment earlier, so I’m borrowing her Yukon. She won’t mind.

/>   Never in a million years would I have thought I’d be driving myself here—or anywhere, period. And technically, with only a learner’s permit, I shouldn’t be driving by myself. But nothing stops me today. It’s finally making sense with Heather, and I’m so determined to confront her that I will both get behind a wheel and set foot in a place like Grace Calvary.

  In the church parking lot, I yank the keys out of the ignition and hop down from the silver Yukon. With quick strides, I cross the lot, breathing through the knots in my chest. I can already feel a barricade of stiff energy as I open the front double doors, telling me I’m not welcome there, even though no one’s there to greet me—or turn me away—in the vestibule.

  I search down a carpeted hall for the offices. They’ve got to be around here somewhere. There’s a sanctuary to my left with auditorium-style seating, and I shake my head. Who wants to be sitting down when they practice their spirituality? Why not stand and chant, dance and invoke—be an active participant in the ritual?

  I head down the hall, peeking into a few offices as I do, but all I see so far are closed doors or empty desks. Until I spot a secretary in a blue blazer hanging up a desk phone. She glances up, noticing me. “Can I help you?”

  “Um…is Heather Huber in?”

  “May I ask who’s inquiring?”

  “I’m her sister.”

  At the secretary’s brightening smile, I assume Heather must not have told her co-workers about me and Mom, the fact we’re pagan. Otherwise, I’m sure this woman wouldn’t be smiling at me like that.

  She lifts the receiver of her desk phone again, dials two digits, and announces, “Heather? Your sister’s here to see you.” She hangs up and directs me to the last office down the hall.

  I follow her instruction, discovering the last office to be connected to the head pastor’s. Thankfully, he’s not at his desk. It must be the lunch hour or something.

  “Willow?” My sister sounds more confused than surprised when I find her. She’s just getting to her feet, a half-eaten pita-wrap on her desk. My theory about the lunch break is confirmed.

  “Sorry.” I take a step back. “I didn’t mean to disturb you on your break.” I shouldn’t be disturbing her at work anyway. What had I been thinking?

  “It’s all right.” She’s still regarding me oddly. “What are you doing here?”

  Making up my mind, I shut the door behind me, giving us privacy. “I came to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  Where do I even start? I’d barged in without even having a plan. What was I going to say to her? Surely, I can’t just launch into a speech about reincarnation and discovering our shared former lives. She’d probably call security on me. Either way, she definitely won’t believe me.

  I hesitate, feeling foolish. “How are you? How’s your health?”

  She scrunches her brow. “Fine.”

  “I was just…” Anxiety plagues me as I stand there, facing my sister on her turf, in the church where she works and worships, having no idea how to tell her the real reason I’ve come. The truth was that we’d shared a lifetime before and had left our issues unresolved. Now those same issues are coming back to haunt us in our current lives, affecting the futures we’ve been trying to make for ourselves.

  It’s all connected. She needs to understand that—for her own sake.

  “Look.” I raise my chin, meeting her gaze squarely. I don’t have a way around it, so I decide to just say it. “If you hope to become a mother someday, then you need to open up to our mother.”

  She looks as though I’ve slapped her.

  Her miscarriages, the failed attempts at pregnancy—I know they’re an extremely sensitive topic. But I wouldn’t be a good sister if I believed I knew the solution yet withheld it. Not that Heather had ever seemed to consider me a good sister, no matter what I did…but I had to try. Especially since her choices in both directions of time have a ripple effect upon everyone around her.

  She crosses her arms. “What are you talking about?”

  I’m desperate to get through to her. I have to find a way to speak to her in terms that’ll reach her, that she’ll actually listen to. My gaze peruses the walls around her and the pastor’s office, across portraits of Jesus and rainbows and drawings from children—when it finally settles upon a painting of Moses on Mt. Sinai, holding up two stone tablets.

  That’s it.

  “The Ten Commandments,” I say. “One of them is to honor your mother and father, right?”

  “The fifth,” she agrees.

  “There.” I nod. “See?”

  Her lip curves, somewhat patronizingly. “Willow, I do honor Mom. Dad too, even though he left us. I’ve forgiven them both. But that doesn’t mean I have to agree with Mom’s blasphemy.”

  “B-but,” I stammer, “Jesus didn’t tell his followers to shun the pagans. He told them to love everyone.”

  Heather unscrews the lid on a bottle of flavored water, leaning back against her desk to take a swig. She’s keeping her cool; it’s clear she’s ready for this debate, maybe has been for a while. She thinks she has the upper hand. But she doesn’t know what I know. “He told us to love our neighbors,” she rebuts. “Which means other Christians. We don’t owe anything to non-believers.”

  “That’s not true,” I argue. “He said to love and pray for your enemies.”

  She looks a little too cheerful. “Have you been reading the Bible, Willow?”

  Please. I make an earnest effort not to roll my eyes. “This is common knowledge, Heather. Just because our mom’s a witch doesn’t mean I’m not educated on the religion that claims seventy-five percent of this country.” Besides, I think to myself, the Wiccans I know have read more of the Bible than most Christians have. Which is why they’re now Wiccan.

  “Well.” She sets down the bottle. “I do love and pray for Mom.”

  “Are you implying Mom is your enemy?”

  “Any enemy of Christ is an enemy of mine.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Heather.” My patience is gone—evaporated. I won’t do this anymore, dancing around the subject with her. She’s being obtuse and she knows it. “Give me a freaking break. Mom’s not an ‘enemy of Christ’; no witch is! Wiccans respect and accept all spiritual paths—you know this. All we ask is that you return the favor!”

  Her lips purse.

  “But instead, you cut us off—your own family who, believe it or not, does love you. You shun us. That’s all you do.” It’s all you’ve ever done. “And maybe…maybe that’s because that’s all you know how to do. Now, and in the past,” I realize, more to myself. “Repeating the same cycle…” The words drift away, the knowledge dawning on me in a new light.

  “Are you done?” Her voice has lost all its friendliness; it’s flinty now as she glares at me with eyes like spears. “Or do you really want to hear what I have to say?”

  I outstretch my palm, although in part I’m being sarcastic. “By all means.”

  “Wicca,” she flings the word out of her mouth like a rotten tooth, “is Satan’s little white lie. Don’t you hear the error in your own thinking? If Wiccans accept all spiritual paths, then they accept lies as well as truth. Our mother’s religion misleads people into thinking there’s no right or wrong, that the darkness is equal to the light, that there’s no objective good or evil, but only matters of opinion. That’s not what I believe.” She taps her chest. “I wanted the truth. This,” she indicates the office around her, and I gauge she means her church and its tenets as a whole, “spoke to me. I can’t explain it. I just knew, the first time I heard a sermon over at Piney Meadow when I was in high school, that this was where I belonged. It was a calling, Willow. In my heart, to God.”

  “No.” I shake my head defiantly. “It was a memory, from a past life.”

  She looks baffled. “What?”

  “Past-life memories are powerful things. They can make you think you’re in love with someone when you’re already in love with someone else. They c
an hinder you from doing things—from living your life as your own person. They can limit you with nightmares and nostalgia and unforgiveness and phobias, until you finally recognize them for what they are and decide to break free of them.” My chest heaves from the rush of words even I hadn’t been prepared to say.

  “You sound insane.” Her eyes darken. She mutters a quick prayer, warding herself against my allegedly demon-possessed tongue. “I’ve told you time and again, when the rapture happens, I want you to be with me. Maybe you don’t get it, Willow, but it’s because I love you—”

  “No, you’re the one who doesn’t get it!” I don’t care that I’m raising my voice, or that there’s someone in the window approaching the office. I reach back for the door handle and flip up the latch, so we won’t be interrupted.

  Heather eyes the action with evident disapproval but makes no move to stop me.

  “You won’t get another chance to be a mother until you finally realize the damage that putting your dogma before your family does to people. You pushed your first daughter away with your disapproval and you lost her. You’re pushing Mom and me away in this life, so you’ve lost the privilege to become a mom yourself. Karma is real, Heather. And what you do affects other people more than you know, and ultimately comes back to you.”

  I shake my head. “Maybe someday, you’ll get over your religion enough to realize that your relationships are what’s important—and not which imaginary gods we worship.”

  Heather sucks in a breath. “Dear God,” she prays aloud, “please forgive my sister…”

  My head gives a pound. Where have I heard that before?

  Susan Dochy’s lifetime meshes with my current one, once more. It’s like it’s happening all over again…I’m being pulled by the hand into a little church, past the long white pews, my former mother uttering under her breath, “Dear Lord, please forgive my daughter…”

  Tears well in my eyes at the humiliating memory. Susan was just a sixteen-year-old child. She didn’t need forgiveness.

  Ray did.

  Joy did.

  Joy’s brother did.