The position was too intimate, even for a non-prude, non-biddy. But her limp form refused to shift, both too heavy and too comfortable. Vivian decided she would sleep here, until her bare arm caught a shiver.
“You leave a coat back there?” he asked.
She tried to shake her head, unsure if she succeeded.
After a moment, Gene patted her upper arm. The tentative gesture transitioned into short yet gentle strokes. The heat of his skin contrasted against the coolness of her own. She let her eyelids drop, lulled for an instant back in time, back to when Isaak, too, had soothed her in such a way. She had missed this more than she realized-not just Isaak’s presence, but the sheer wonder of being touched.
Vivian released a shuddered breath. With it came flashes of her behavior. What a spectacle she must have been. She curled her hands beneath her chin, her knees up to her chest. How foolish she was acting, and long before tonight.
“I just wanted to forget,” she whispered, wholly wishing that she could.
Gene’s hand paused on her arm, and for a second she expected a reply-a mock, a chiding, a suggestion they continue home. But he simply resumed his strokes, and for the first time in years she didn’t feel so alone.
23
Audra flipped her pillow to its cool side, and a shiver ran down her neck. Five minutes passed. Then ten. The digital screen glowed like a taunt: 1:22 A.M.
She rotated the clock on her bedside stand to make it face the wall. Through the gap in the doorway, left open so she could hear Jack when needed, the night-light shone in yellow. It sliced a beam down the middle of her bed, dividing the vacant half and “hers.”
She pondered potential sleep aids: hot bath, warm milk, a book. No doubt, thanks to Dr. Shaw, the discussion about a book today was the source of her insomnia.
Finally giving up, she kicked off the comforter. If she wasn’t going to rest anyway, she might as well be entertained by the author’s preposterous theories. Who knew? Maybe she would learn the Queen of Sheba had come back as a poodle. Worst case, the text would be dry enough to knock her right out.
In the living room, she clicked on a lamp. She plopped onto the couch with the book.
From Beyond.
“Beyond what? Sanity?” She bit off the sneer, told herself to keep an open mind, to stop being so cranky. She was reading this for Jack, to gain even a dash of helpful insight.
Starting at the beginning, she skimmed the introduction. Memories from reincarnation, it stated, typically faded by age six or seven.
The tidbit punched a small but distinct hole in Dr. Shaw’s theory.
Still, she forged on to the first account, in which a five-year-old Ukrainian boy often rambled about needing to practice for a large performance. He played no instrument, didn’t dance or sing. But during a visit to his aunt’s, having never touched a piano, he sat down at her Wurlitzer and poured out the Moonlight Sonata.
Supposedly.
In Prague, a young boy suffered from a phobia of blades. If even a small butter knife was set out for dinner, he would break into wild hysterics. Eventually, he described being murdered in another life. He cited the birthmark on his rib cage as the place where he’d been stabbed. A transcendental scar. On a similar note, several other kids described having phantom pains, indicative of wounds that had ended their previous lives.
The next chapter featured an Australian girl with asthma. After recovering from a severe attack, she recalled being strangled in an alley. She named specific landmarks, all verifiable yet absent from modern maps.
A couple in India spoke about their daughter and her claims of being a courier in the French Revolution. They chalked it up to imagination until she suddenly spurted phrases in antiquated French.
The stories went on and on, testaments to another realm. Effects of tragic deaths sometimes carried over, they said, while other souls sought closure to unfinished business.
Before Audra knew it, she had sped through half the pages. She couldn’t deny goose bumps had risen from each similarity to Jack—birthmarks, phobias, and foreign speech. But how much was lore? Were they tales created just to sell a book, or to draw attention to families starved for the spotlight? That’s not to say nuggets of truth weren’t there. Even the National Enquirer based many articles on fact before distorting or exaggerating to craft alluring headlines.
But Audra had no interest in those. She had come to revere the provable. What she could hear, smell, and touch were the nuts and bolts of her world. In fact, with decent effort, she could derive explanations for every factor of Jack’s case. Except for one.
His knowledge of the engraving.
Odds were low that she and the soldier had both misheard the phrase. She should have studied the necklace closer to properly investigate. The more she learned, the more she could eliminate. And that elimination, she decided, would lead her to the actual cause.