“You’re stalling,” Blaine said as he captured my hand in his. I could tell he too was amazed at the connection we shared.
“Answer one question for me, and I’ll answer yours.” I took the lift of his brow for a yes, so I began. “All those years when you longed for a mother to take you to the zoo, did you ever imagine it would be to grill her about her love life?”
He started laughing hysterically. Before I knew what was happening, he lifted me from the ground and began twirling me around.
“You’re right. Let’s enjoy the zoo.”
Several hours later Blaine and I were beat. We’d ridden the train three times and walked miles. My God, did we walk, covering every square inch of the zoo at least twice.
For the first time in a long time I enjoyed it. There were no kids fighting, no one wanting to go to the bathroom every ten minutes. It didn’t feel strange at all that I was sharing something I’d done with my children dozens of time with this adult son I’d never had a chance to know. It felt right. We had fun.
When we walked to the parking lot, I felt myself not wanting to let go of the day. Blaine and I had reverted to our usual good natured jousting.
We reached my car first. I stopped, my key out but not ready to get in, not wanting to admit how hard it was for me to see the day end. I thought some of it might be my not having a home to go to, but mainly I wanted to be with Blaine.
I put the key in the lock. “Well, Blaine,” I turned toward him, “is this what you had in mind?”
“Yes,” he answered, his eyes turning serious. “This was exactly the way I dreamed.” He looked away toward the street at the traffic.
“Michelle, would you like to have dinner with me? Then we can talk,” he offered. “It’s just that I don’t want to see the day end.”He turned toward me, a hopeful look on his face.
“That’s perfect,” I confessed, “I was thinking the same thing. Instead of going out somewhere, why don’t you come back to my hotel. That way we can have a long private talk. I want to hear about your life.”
“And I want to hear about yours,” Blaine replied
We got in our cars and drove back to the hotel. After ordering room service we sat on the sofa and began to really talk for the first time.
“Blaine, tell me when you first knew you were different, that you had some strange…gift, I guess.”
I didn’t know what to call it. I wasn’t sure if I thought of what he did as a gift.
“It’s a gift, Michelle. At least that’s how I look at it, and all the people I’ve helped think of what I do as a gift.”
He poured himself a glass of water. I saw the slight trembling of his fingers. I’d insulted him. That surprised me because he was so good at hiding his feelings.
“Blaine, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. I just didn’t know what to call…what you do.” I took a drink from the glass he had poured for me and waited.
He appeared to be thinking over something as he continued drinking. In an instant his mood transformed and he was once again smiling, the lines around his mouth softening. He gazed at me and I realized what he was about to reveal to me would be something very important so I remained quiet and just listened as he began to speak.
“It took me a long time to think of this as a gift. I shouldn’t be so touchy.”
Blaine looked away from me, his mouth working, no words coming out. Something I’d said had struck a nerve.
“Michelle, you would have no way of knowing…” He turned his palms upward, toward me. “It’s just, I guess, I thought with everything that’s been happening between us, you would automatically know how hard it was for me to have this particular gift.”
I felt terrible. I should have thought before I blurted out my insensitive words. I should have remembered my own childhood and the difficulty my parents had in raising a daughter who claimed to have lived in a previous life, who declared she’d lost her husband and son. “It was probably hard for you as a child, wasn’t it?”
“Let’s say I wasn’t the most popular kid around. But who can blame kids for not wanting to play with someone who was always talking to someone who wasn’t there? Someone who could tell them every bad thing they’d done.”
“How old were you when you started--when you became aware of your gift?” He smiled at me, making me feel that I was probably the first person he’d shared this with.
“I was three,” Blaine answered, his face turning pensive. “At least that’s the age I remember. Who knows what I did in my crib?”
I thought of Larry and the lonely five-year-old boy he’d been.
“What happened to your parents?” I tilted my head to better observe him. “If it’s not too painful for you to talk about I’d like to know.”
“No, it’s not painful at all. The girl they told me was my mother was a teen who gave me up for adoption. My adoptive parents gave me back.” He smiled, “So you see, maybe I was a strange baby.”
I wanted to touch him, but held back. I didn’t feel I had the right to act as though I was privy to his pain, though my heart carried a deep sorrow.
“No one else wanted to adopt you?”
“Would you have? Think about it, a strange little kid that stands around claiming to speak to the dead, that asks husbands about the girlfriends they were out with, that tell mothers that the fathers of their babies are not the husbands.”
“Did you do all of that?”
“Yeah, in several foster homes, until I learned that it was the reason no one wanted me around.”
“What did you do then?”
“For a while I tried to stop talking with them when they came. The spirits,” he explained.“I tried not to hear their voices. I tried not to see things I wasn’t supposed to see, but it didn’t work. Still, no one wanted me, it seemed, except the dead, so I continued talking to them.”
I gave a tiny smile once again, remembering my own childhood. “I never had psychic gifts, just dreams.”
He smiled at me, as if I were a child innocent in the ways of the world.
“When I was five, I began hearing your voice. No psychic gifts, Michelle?”
His eyes took on a dreamy quality, and he appeared to be going into a trance. I called softly to him. “Blaine, are you alright?”
He opened his eyes. “Yes, I’m fine,” he answered. “I was just remembering.”
I felt cold suddenly, shivers of remembrance racing up and down my torso. “How did you know?”
“I don’t know.” He looked at me strangely. “I just remember your voice, your touch, your love and…your giving me my birthright. My gift.” He smiled.
I watched as he closed his eyes and ran his hand over his face before continuing. “I guess that’s why it bothered me a little, what you said before.
“I always knew I’d lived before. I’ve been searching my entire life for you, hoping you’d kept your promise, that you were here somewhere looking for me. You’d made a promise to find both Jeremy and me. It was a promise I always believed you would keep. I thought when I found you you would know all of this without my telling you. I wanted you to know it.”
So that was it, I thought. I got up and walked away from him. I wasn’t ready to delve into the promise I’d made in a past life. If I’d had gifts, I no longer did. I’d passed them on to my son. I groaned inwardly thinking of the childhood Blaine had told me about. He’d had a life of loneliness. I wasn’t sure if I’d given him a gift or a curse.
“I can’t imagine how your life has been. I don’t think I would have been able to do what you’re doing. You’re putting yourself out there to be judged by millions of people, having millions more think you’re a fake or crazy or both.”
I turned back. “I don’t like people thinking I’m crazy, Blaine.”
“And I don’t care what they think about me,” he answered. “Hell, it’s how I make my living. The very people who shunned me years ago now come to me for information. Can you believe it?”
&n
bsp; I glanced at him, not detecting any bitterness in his voice. “It doesn’t bother you?”
“Why should it?”
“Blaine, how did you get involved in all of this? How did you start making a living at it, I mean?”
“When I was almost eighteen, I realized that the state would no longer be responsible for me. A few people here and there were asking me for readings. The first time I jokingly told someone to pay me, they did, with no hesitation. I knew then I’d found my calling.”
“About this reincarnation, how did you become comfortable with it?”
“It was never a matter of me accepting it. It was a part of me. I always knew I would one day meet my true parents in this lifetime, but of course my mentors never thought it was possible.
“I got into regression therapy to recapture lost memories. I became an expert at it, hoping that one of my clients would be the mother I was looking for.”
He stood and began walking toward me. “Love never dies, Michelle. You must have really loved me. That first time in the auditorium after I touched you, I felt your love, for me, for Chance.”
He reached out his hand, tilting my chin upward. “You’re the key, Michelle. You’re the reason we found each other. Your love for us was so powerful that it reached out across time, ignoring death, to find us.”
“But that’s not my life.” I was shaking like a leaf. “I believe this happened because I can’t begin to put any other name to it, but still I feel this Dimitra had her time. I don’t think I can be her again. I can’t complete her life.”
“You’re the one who called out to us.”
“How? I don’t have any special gifts.”
“You do.”
“What?”
“Love, Michelle, perhaps a bit more. The rest I’m not certain of but as for your love, I’m positive about it. You called out to both of us with your love. Do you think my touching you and seeing the past is something that happens every day? Do you think it happens with Chance, with anyone else? No, it’s you, Michelle. You’re the key. I figured it out.”
I didn’t want to hear any more. I wanted the room service guy to interrupt us, the phone to ring, anything. I attempted to move away from Blaine, but he wouldn’t allow me to escape.
“Don’t you think you’ve been running too long? You wanted this to happen, you’re the one who brought us together.”
“I didn’t. I met Chance in a parking lot. It was just coincidence that we came to see you.”
He grabbed my hand and held it in his. “Try and remember. In your dreams you went to Chance for many years. You’re the reason he got a divorce. He heard your voice. He recognized it, he remembered. Chance never once thought he was going crazy. He researched what was happening to him and then, Michelle, he began looking for you.”
A knock sounded on the door. Blaine was still holding my hand, his eyes burning with memories that he wanted me to share.
“Get the door, Blaine.”
He dropped his hands reluctantly, going for the door, his hand reaching into his pocket for his wallet.
“No, Blaine, I’ll sign it to my room.”
“And have another member of your family accuse me of taking advantage of you?” He laughed. “I don’t think so.”
I took the few seconds that he was paying the bill to remember the dreams that I’d had through the years of a dark-haired lover.
Could any of this be true? I did remember many times waking up from the dreams crying, ‘I can’t find you,’ and Larry comforting me, thinking I’d had a nightmare.
It was then I remembered Chance’s words to me when we first met. “I’ve been waiting for you.” And my answer to him, “And I’ve been trying to find you.”
God in Heaven. Blaine was right. I felt the smog lifting from the memories I’d kept submerged through the years. Poor Larry, he’d never had a shot. How was he supposed to have a happy marriage with a woman who in her dreams traipsed off to be with the family she’d lost?
I felt the jolt of what surely had to be more than ten million volts of electricity running through every cell in my body. It was all true. I remembered.
I sat stunned as Blaine paid for our meal, watching as he closed the door and came to sit at the table preparing to eat.
I couldn’t believe it. How could he possibly eat at a time like this? He’d just delivered a bomb, and now he was calmly lifting the covers and sampling food.
“Blaine,” I called to him. “How can you possibly think of eating?”
“I’m hungry,” he answered and continued chewing. “Come and join me. You may as well eat.”
I stared at him, wondering if I had imagined the conversation of a few moments before.
I sighed, looking at him exasperation. “Blaine, let’s finish our conversation.”
“No,” he said.
“No?” I repeated. “You’re the one who brought it up.”
“I know. I shouldn’t have. Chance wants to talk to you about this himself.”
“I’m not calling him.”
“You will eventually.”
I couldn’t believe him. He was eating, not bothered about what he’d said. He didn’t even know that I believed him, that I remembered. I looked again at the amused expression on his face. I was wrong. He knew.
“Michelle, you may as well eat. I’m not saying any more.”
I sat down opposite him, my hand ready to still the next bite he attempted to take.
“Let’s talk,” I demanded, trying to ignore the look in his eyes that told me he wasn’t going to budge.
“That’s fine with me, only I think we should change the subject.” He shook his head, smiling. “Why don’t you ask me for help?”
I looked at him, puzzled, wondering what he was getting at. Finally he stopped eating, and his eyes fixed on me waiting for something from me. I stared back at him.
“What? What do you want to help me with?” Then I knew. Chance had told him.
“I’ve invaded your life enough. While that was my original objective, now it would feel as if I’m using you…you know, taking advantage of your gift.”
“Michelle, you’re very good at giving but you’re lousy at accepting help. What about letting me help with Viola?”
I couldn’t believe I’d almost forgotten Viola. In the past weeks, my life had become so hectic. And to think she was the beginning of my voicing my displeasure. How could I have forgotten her?
I sighed, closing my eyes and rubbing away at my temples. “I just need to know what happened in the seconds before I hit her, if I was distracted. I want to know why I didn’t see her.”
“Say the words and I’ll take you back to the accident. You just need to tell me what you want.”
Fear invaded my body for a moment but I’d already decided I was done with running away. I gave Blaine a weak smile before saying, “Let’s try.”
“Good,” Blaine said softly, his admiration for my agreement showing in his eyes.
“So what do we do first?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“You’re kidding, right? You get me to agree to this and you…you…”
“Michelle.” He laughed, holding up his hand as though in defense. “I do have an idea. I can hypnotize you, take you back to the accident.”
He pushed the table away after sneaking another bite, prepared to begin. Too many things had happened to me in the past months, things that I felt I could verify at least to myself. I didn’t want to be put under.
“You’re a psychic. Why don’t you just tell me what happened?”
“Because you wouldn’t believe me. You require more proof.”
“Blaine, isn’t there any other way? If you hypnotize me, I still won’t know for sure.”
“You will. I won’t put you in a deep trance. You’ll know. I’ve done this a thousand times.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him; it just wasn’t the way I wanted to do it. “No,” I said firmly.
“I don’t understand,” Blaine frowned as though trying to figure me out. “Why are you saying no?”
“Because I don’t want to be hypnotized.”
“Do you have a better suggestion?”
I felt myself smiling, me who had run in a panic from this man just a few short months before. I couldn’t believe what I was about to propose.
“Try touching me, just a little, while I think about Viola and the accident.”
“Michelle, I’m not a crystal ball or a genie. My touch can’t give you the answers to your questions.”
“How would you know? You admitted you don’t know why we have this thing between us. Maybe it can work.” I was insistent. “We can at least try.”
“Are you the same woman who didn’t want to touch me without rubber gloves for insulation? I can’t believe it; surely you have to be someone different.” He laughed softly. “Is this what I missed by not having a mother, being coerced and manipulated by your wonderful smile?”
I knew then he was going to give it a try. “Mothers are famous for that, Blaine.” I gave him a grin. “I’ll bet you’re thinking now that you didn’t have it so bad.”
He turned serious. I saw it in his eyes, in the slight change of his body, his jaw tightening. “I’m glad to have you in my life. I hope no matter what happens you’re here to stay, Michelle.”
I didn’t answer. He was asking me for a promise and I couldn’t give any more of those. In my heart, I knew I would never be far away from Blaine, but the memory of the promise I’d given to Larry years before our marriage wouldn’t allow it. I had not been able to keep my promise to him. I didn’t want to break another one.
THE AFFAIR Page 23