Around me the night got cold, like a twister had somehow swept through the city, not disturbing anything on the streets-no trash cans or post signs along the sidewalks, no tourists taking long shots of the Brooklyn Bridge. Everything was still and quiet, except for the ripping rhythm of my heart and the sweat that formed on my forehead.
Willow looked scared when I stepped back, her wide eyes. "What is?" Willow asked, picking up the picture from where it had fallen on her chair. "Nash?"
It occurred to me then that maybe this was all tied in to Willow after all. All this … this weird connection, the memories that rose up inside me since I met her. I was a man of logic and science. I didn't believe in things like angels or second chances or different lives. I believed in life and death and that both only came around once. But Willow didn't. At least she swore she didn't. That's why she'd left me the night we slept together. That's why she swore she couldn't be with me. Having no faith meant I couldn't have Willow. But this … this connection, it was too much. It was just too damn much. It literally shook the foundation of what I thought I believed.
"What is this?" I pointed at the picture, at the face I'd seen so many nights. The smile was the same, the smooth, dark skin, the flash of laughter in her eyes. It was her, I knew it. But good God, how? "What the hell is this? My God, Will, how is this even possible?"
"What … "
"Your granddaddy?"
"Great-granddaddy," she said, moving her head into a tilt. "What about him?"
"This … " I took the picture from her, head shaking, unable to keep a tight grip on the picture. "That's … that's Sookie."
Willow stared at me, mouth dropping open. "How do you know about Sookie?"
I blinked, eyes narrowing before I answered her. "She's … she was my great-grandpaw's sister. But she died, Will. She died in … "
"A fire."
The noise I'd heard fogging up my head, clogging sense and reason, turned into disbelief and fear, all went away with Willow's words. Something burned me up from the inside when I looked at her. Something that made my head swim and my chest flood with dread and worry as she stepped closer. For the first time since I'd met her, I worried Willow was someone I wouldn't be safe around. A harbinger of something unexplainable. The touchstone of something that simply could not be.
"They chased her," she said, her voice strained, waiting for confirmation. I gave it, my head moving in the slightest nod.
"Those white men. Dempsey's father and his friends," I said, speaking so low that I had to strain to hear her.
I fell against the brick wall behind me, my fingers shaking, my palm sweating. She knew. She'd seen Sookie same as me. Willow had dreamed the same dream.
"How is this possible?" I could hear the alarm in her voice, the disbelief.
"Willow … "
She shook her head, fingers trembling as she covered her mouth. "Nash … I saw it." She watched me, pleading, like she needed me to understand. The tremble in her fingers worsened and a small shudder worked over her shoulders. "I watched the whole thing happen. I … I watched Sookie die."
Willow
There were flashes I did not recognize. Swirls of memory, the feeling of loss and want and anger-it all swam around me, filled my head so that when I dreamed, there was no rest.
My bedroom was silent and cold. It felt like a tomb, a dread that even a touch of light and the slip of laughter could not splinter. It was my cave away from the possibility of what I'd seen, what I'd always believed and how, with one conversation, Nash had dismantled that belief.
"Maybe you should take a vacation." Effie's voice was clam, soothing over the phone, but even with the cool she covered herself with, I caught the hint of worry in her inflection. "Head out somewhere peaceful … the coast, or … oh, I know. Virginia."
Virginia reminded me of the places Riley recalled with such clarity. I couldn't go there. I couldn't go anywhere and not remember the life she'd led and the man she'd loved. She was everywhere.
Riley had loved Isaac. I knew that. She'd loved him like Dempsey had loved Sookie. Those dreams were fainter, the memory not as strong, but running like a current through all those lives was the pulse of something strong. Something that wouldn't be denied. Something, I knew without knowing how or why, that demanded to be felt.
"Or … "
"I think I'll just hide in my bedroom," I told Effie, settling my cell phone on the pillow next to me. The earbud wires got lost somewhere in the tangle of my hair and the pillowcase. "I just want to … I don't know … rest a little bit. Hide from the world." I exhaled, not liking how quiet Effie had become; like she geared up for an argument and needed to decide how to begin it. "You ever feel that way, Effie? You ever just want to forget the world for a little while?"