"Willow, you yanked me into your apartment inside of a minute of laying eyes on me, and then you announced you wanted to cleanse my aura." I turned, facing her, hoping my smile would disarm her look of skepticism. "Wasn't long after that I started having the dreams. What else was I supposed to think?"
She smacked my arm with the paper, but smiled while she did it, holding back a laugh. "A witch? Really? Do you see me wearing a pointy hat?" I opened my mouth, gearing up for another apology, but Willow looked down at the letter again and started to read. "And you aren't experiencing these memories because you've lived them before. Reincarnation is a dream made up by folk who can't believe there is only one go around in life. They cling to it, to the hope that they will get a second chance. This isn't yours. Well, not completely."
I turned back to the board, focusing on the same boy, tilting my head to stare at his smile and the shape of his chin.
"There is a connection you feel with Willow because it has existed for a very long time and most probably will continue to exist for many generations into the future. It will not end with your life or with hers. It will go on, you see, as long as the world does."
Will came to stand next to me as I continued to examine the picture on the wall. When she caught sight of what I was looking at, she lowered the page she had been reading, and lifted up a hand her mouth, which was suddenly hanging open. "What?" I asked, frowning. "What's wrong?"
She shook her head, as though she wasn't sure what she was looking at. "I didn't realize it with the other pictures." She pointed at the board, right at the picture I'd been staring at. "Dempsey. He's so young in this picture. I've never seen him so damn young."
"What do you mean?"
She looked at me, pressing her lips together like she wasn't sure how to make the word unfurrow from her throat. "Dempsey is my great-grandfather, Nash."
I looked between her and the board, seeing the similarities, the shape of her cheeks, just like Dempsey's and the sharp point of her chin. They were identical, but that didn't make sense.
"How?"
"I... I don't know." She immediately went back to the letter, skimming through the words, her eyes moving down the page until she came to a line that widened her eyes. " … after Sookie and Babette died, Dempsey's father blamed Joe Andres, telling the police, those not in Simoneaux's pocket, that it was the fat man that had started the fire. Dempsey did something stupid, I'd say, though it did free us all up to worry less over that rotten family. He told the sheriff that he'd seen his father start the fire, told him he'd testify if he needed to. Knowing his own son was willing to testify against him, the old man didn't put up a fight and Simoneaux got hauled off to parish prison. Dempsey's word, it seemed, was enough to put his daddy in jail for murder and destruction of property-but it wasn't enough to keep himself safe.
"We took him to Alabama after the trial then on to the Army recruitment station where he signed his name as Eric O'Bryant and O'Bryant is what he remained until the day he died."
Will lowered the letter again, stretching a hand out to rest it on my arm, like she needed me to keep her from falling. Her face was open, her features expressive as she blinked and seemed to look inward, as though there were too many thoughts clouding up her mind and she need to sort them out.
"That means … " she looked at the board, searching for a name, maybe a face, and after a few moments she covered her mouth again, pointing at the string of yarn that ran from her great-grandfather's picture to a smaller one further down. "Nash, look. It's Riley. Riley and Isaac."
I had to look closely at it, and there was Riley, standing on the steps of a synagogue with an older version of Dempsey at her side, next to an older woman-Riley's mother I guessed- and a man that looked even more like Will than her great-granddaddy. I nodded to the man and Will smile. "That's Ryan. That's my daddy's daddy, Nash. Riley's brother Ryan. I'd never put the name together. Riley. They never talked about her. Not ever. I only knew her name because it was in my grandfather's prayer book. I saw it when I was ten and asked him who she was." She stared at the image again, stretching a finger toward it. "He said Riley was his sister who'd gone off to heaven a long time ago. Then he made me promise never to mention her to Gramps. He said it would hurt him too bad to talk about her."
Next to Riley was a tall, broad black man. There was a small grin on his face and he held Riley close to his side, but he stood ramrod straight, like a soldier, and I wondered how long Isaac went on that way, being on guard, once Riley was gone. I wondered if when he was alone with Riley he smiled the way I did when Willow looked at me.