The Color of Forever

by Julianne MacLean

  “I wonder if you could help us,” I said, smiling warmly at him. “We’re looking for some old family friends of ours who I think are members here. The Peterson’s from Chicago? The last time we spoke, they had a boat called Evangeline and they invited us for a sail. I don’t suppose you know if they’re still members here?”

  “The Petersons? Yes, they are, but they don’t usually keep their boat here at the club when they’re in town. They keep her moored at their summer house.”

  “Oh!” I replied, brightly. “Would you mind giving us their address? I’d love to pop by.”

  The manager regarded me warily. “I wish I could help you, but I can’t give out that kind of information. I’m sure you understand.”

  I casually waved my hand about. “Of course. We’ll just give them a call. I’m sure we can find their number. They’re in Cape Elizabeth, aren’t they? Kettle Cove?”

  The manager shrugged apologetically.

  “No problem,” I said, letting him off the hook. “Thank you for your help.”

  o0o

  By the time we drove back to Cape Elizabeth with Bailey behind the wheel, the sun was low in the sky and the wind had died down. The water was blissfully calm.

  “I’m nervous about calling,” I said after finding their number in an online search, which also listed their address—assuming it was the same Petersons who owned a sailboat called Evangeline. “Maybe we should just knock on their door.”

  “And say what?” Bailey asked. “Hi, my friend had a vision that your boat washed onto her lawn during the hurricane a year ago. Do you know why she might have envisioned that?”

  “That does sound crazy,” I said. “There’s got to be a better way to handle this, because I honestly don’t even know what we’re searching for. I don’t know what I’m hoping to discover.”

  “I wish I could help,” Bailey replied, “but I don’t know either. It sure is pretty out here, though.”

  We followed the twisty road along the coastline and admired the view of the water while the tide was out.

  “What if you play the TV reporter card,” Bailey suggested, “and say you’re doing a story on something? I don’t know what. You’re better at this than I am.”

  “That’s a possibility,” I replied, trying to think of a reason why I would knock on someone’s door to ask questions about their sailboat.

  Just then, we saw the Peterson’s home and slowed down as we drove by. It was a modest little cottage with gray cedar shakes and black trim, overlooking the beach, not far from a grassy park with benches. I admired the nautical lawn ornaments—the old wooden buoys, driftwood and an aged lobster trap. A white painted lifesaving ring hung on the gate.

  “This is it,” Bailey said, pulling over in the parking lot at the end of Kettle Cove Road.

  “I noticed a car in the driveway,” I said. “They must be home.”

  Bailey shifted the vehicle into park and shut off the engine. “So what do we do now?”

  I thought about it for a moment, then unbuckled my seatbelt, opened the car door and got out. “I’m not sure yet, but you stay here. I’m going to go and knock, and if they answer, I’ll probably make everything up as I go along.”

  o0o

  “Hello,” Mrs. Peterson said guardedly as she opened her door and greeted me on her front step.

  She was a plump older woman with a dark brown bob and red plastic-rimmed glasses.

  “Hi there,” I replied in a friendly voice. “I hope I’m not interrupting your supper.”

  “No, we just finished. Stan is doing the dishes. What can I help you with?”

  I swallowed hard and tried to sound sure of myself, when I was merely putting one foot in front of the other with no idea what I was about to step into.

  “This may sound a bit strange,” I said, “but I’m a reporter from a TV station in Seattle. My name is Katelyn Roberts and I’m doing a story on the poet, Henry Wadsworth-Longfellow. I couldn’t help but notice when someone mentioned a sailboat in the area called Evangeline. I believe you might be the owners?”

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Peterson said, sounding suddenly delighted.

  “Would you mind if I asked you a few questions about your boat?”

  “Not at all. Please come in. I’m Margie.” She opened the door to invite me inside and called out to her husband. “Stan! There’s a reporter here from Seattle who wants to talk to us about Evangeline.”

  Her husband appeared from the kitchen at the back, wiping his hands on a dishtowel. He looked to be in his late sixties, with thinning white hair and silver-rimmed glasses.

  “Hi there.” He strode toward me and tossed the dishtowel over his shoulder. “I’m Stan.”

  “I’m Katelyn.” We shook hands. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  They led me into their living room which boasted cottage-style white painted walls and a blue-and-white striped sofa and chair. I noticed a ship in a bottle positioned on the window sill.

  “Please have a seat,” Margie said. “Would you like a cup of coffee or anything?”

  “No, thank you,” I replied. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time.” I withdrew a notepad and pen from my bag. “It’s so good of you to talk me. Maybe you could tell me about your boat. How long have you had her?”

  They glanced at each other, questioningly. “About thirty years,” Stan replied. “We bought her brand new when I inherited this cottage from my parents, so that we’d have something to do with our children during the summers.”

  “How many children to do you have?”

  “Two boys.”

  “Are you from here originally?” I asked.

  “I grew up here,” Margie replied, “but Stan was born and raised in Chicago. We met in college, and now we travel back and forth.”

  I wrote a few things down, then looked up. “So you named your boat Evangeline. Did that have anything to do with Longfellow’s poem?”

  Margie blushed. “Not exactly,” she confessed. “It was our son who suggested the name. He was only five when we bought her. We were trying to decide on a good name, and we told him it had to be a girl’s name, because boats were usually named after girls, so he pulled that name out of a hat. Not literally, of course.”

  I wrote this down and looked up again. “Was he studying the poem at school?”

  “I don’t think so. He was only five.” She glanced at her husband. “Of course we told him about the poem after that, but you know boys. He wasn’t much interested in poetry. He just wanted to be captain of the boat. But he did once mention to me that he was going to marry a girl named Evangeline. I thought that was so cute.”

  I wrote that down as well. Not that I needed to. Everything she was saying seemed to be imprinting itself permanently on my brain.

  “How old was he when he said that?” I asked, working hard to maintain a light and casual tone and not reveal that my heart was beginning to pummel my ribcage.

  “It was around the same time, when we first got the boat.”

  I thought back to the research I’d done about reincarnation cases where very young children remembered their past lives, and with all the connections here, I felt compelled to probe a little further.

  I cleared my throat. “And what’s your son’s name?”

  “His name is Aaron and he’s our eldest. He still sails the boat all the time. Our younger son is Jack, but he lives in New York.”

  My gaze shot up from my notebook. “Really. What does he do there?”

  “He’s a news director at CNN.”

  My head drew back in surprise. “No kidding. I just applied for a job there.”

  “I thought you worked for a station in Seattle,” Stan said.

  I set my pen down. “I do, but I’ve been there for more than ten years and I had my sights set on a promotion to lead anchor. Unfortunately they hired someone new from another station. It just made me feel like it was time for a change.”

  “Understandable,” Stan said. The
n he glanced at Margie. “Maybe we could call Jack tonight and put in a good word for her.”

  “For sure,” Margie replied. “What an amazing coincidence. Or a lightning-strike of destiny.”

  “This week has been full of those,” I mentioned under my breath as I glanced down at my notepad and looked over my notes, all the while struggling to stay on track with this so-called interview. “Let’s go back to your other son, Aaron.” I said, looking up. “Would I be able to talk to him as well?”

  Margie and Stan looked at each other. “I suppose we could give him a call at work.”

  “Where does he work?” I picked up my pen again, poised to take a few more notes.

  “He owns a boat-building company in Portland,” Margie explained, eyes suddenly beaming. “He’s very successful with it.”

  I swallowed with difficulty and struggled to find my voice. “He builds boats? That sounds interesting.”

  “Yes, we’re very proud of him,” Stan said. “He built that company from the ground up. Specializes in luxury yachts, but his real passion is for racing schooners. A number of his boats have done extremely well. We all hope that one of these days, one of them will win the America’s Cup. That would be a proud moment.” Stan stood up to fetch a framed photograph from the mantelpiece, which he brought over to me. He handed me the picture and pointed at it. “That’s him right there, on one of his racing boats on the day they launched her.”

  Aaron was dressed in a navy windbreaker and cream-colored trousers, and sat casually on the helmsman’s seat, behind the steering wheel of the boat. His hair was thick, dark and wavy, and the sun shone brightly on his smiling face.

  As I gazed down at the photograph, I felt a sizzle of electricity in all my extremities, a sense of familiarity, as if we knew each other already. He wasn’t a mirror image of Sebastian Fraser by any means, but there was something about him that seemed to reach out to me. I wanted to go and sit next to him in that picture.

  At the same time, I was worried that I was imagining things, fantasizing that he might be my husband from another life.

  “That’s impressive,” I replied, handing it back. “So he lives right here, in the area?” A frenzied flock of butterflies invaded my belly.

  “Yes, in Portland.”

  “Is he married?” I blurted out, realizing at once how inappropriate that question was, when I was supposed to be conducting an interview about Henry Wadsworth-Longfellow.

  “Not anymore,” Stan replied matter-of-factly. “He’s divorced.”

  “I see.” I couldn’t explain why I was so happy to hear that, when I knew how painful a divorce could be, under any circumstances.

  Although I suppose, deep down, I knew exactly why I was entertaining such selfish thoughts—because I was letting my imagination run riot.

  Could it be that Aaron Peterson was Captain Sebastian Fraser, reincarnated? A man who had loved his wife desperately enough to sail around the world in search of a time machine to bring her back from the dead? Could he also have followed her across the centuries to be with her again?

  And was I the wife he had loved so devotedly and passionately?

  All at once, my mind began to flounder. I didn’t know what to make of all this, or what to do next. I felt anxious and jittery, as if I were going insane, losing touch with reality. I’d always considered myself to be a rational person, but none of this seemed the least bit real. How could it possibly be?

  “I’m sorry,” I said, flicking my pen, tapping it on the paper. “I don’t know why I asked that question.”

  “Are you all right?” Margie asked. “Can I get you a glass of water or something?”

  I lifted my gaze and fought to give them an easy smile. “No, I’m fine. I’m just processing everything. Thinking about my story. But I would love to meet Aaron if you wouldn’t mind putting me in touch with him. I’m interested in his boat-building company. That sounds like another great story.”

  “I’m sure he’d love the publicity,” Stan said to Margie.

  She stood up and walked to the kitchen. “I’ll give him a call right now.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  When I returned to the parking lot a short while later, I found the rental car empty, and the doors locked. Glancing around, I spotted Bailey sitting on a bench in the park overlooking the water. I stepped onto the green grass and walked toward her.

  “Hey,” I said, taking a seat.

  She turned to me. “How did it go? Did you learn anything?”

  “Oh, yes,” I replied as I set my purse down on the bench between us, “and I will never again question the magic of the universe.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Why? What happened?”

  I leaned back and pointed at a few sailboats moored in the cove. “Do you see that boat right there? That’s her. Evangeline.”

  Bailey faced the water. “The big one?”

  “Yes. And get this. The Petersons didn’t come up with the name. It was their son Aaron who came up with it. He was only five at the time, and he said he was going to marry a girl named Evangeline.”

  “Seriously?”

  I nodded. “They also said that all he wanted was to be captain of the boat. Now he owns a boat-building company in Portland.”

  She inclined her head at me. “Isn’t that where Captain Fraser’s money came from? A shipbuilding company in Portland?”

  “That’s right. Kind of strange, isn’t it?” I raised an eyebrow as I regarded her in the late-afternoon light.

  “It could just be a coincidence,” Bailey replied, as if she wanted to grab hold of my ankle and prevent me from lifting off the ground and floating up into a bunch of fluffy white clouds of fantasy.

  “Of course it could,” I replied, “and I’m trying to keep my head on straight about all this. But they showed me a picture of him, and maybe I was under the influence of everything they’d just told me, but he looked so familiar to me. Like we already knew each other, though I’m absolutely positive we’ve never met.”

  She turned toward me and touched my knee. “Please be careful, Katelyn. I don’t want you to get your hopes up and be devastated if it doesn’t pan out, and then spend the rest of your life alone, believing that he was your one and only true soulmate. He’s likely just a guy who happens to share a few things in common with…” She stopped herself and looked out at the ocean again. “Oh, I don’t know. It is mindboggling, all the links and connections. I had a hard time believing all of it when we first started, but now…” She met my gaze. “What are you going to do?”

  I watched Evangeline bob gently on the wake of a passing fishing boat, then I fixed my eyes on the distant horizon. “I’m going to go and meet him right now.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.” I rose from the bench and picked up my purse. “His mother just called him and arranged for me to meet him at his office. I’m going to interview him for a story about his racing schooners.”

  Bailey stood up as well. “It’s a perfect cover, at least.”

  We started walking back to the car. “If you don’t mind,” I carefully said as we reached the vehicle and got inside. “This time, I’d like to go on my own. I can drop you off at the inn first, then I’ll meet you back there later.”

  “Are you sure?” Bailey asked, sounding concerned as she buckled her seatbelt. “It might turn out to be a terrible disappointment. I can come if you want. I could wait in the car or do some shopping.”

  “I’ll be fine.” I inserted the key into the ignition and started the engine. “I really want to try and get a sense of who he is, just in case there’s something there. And don’t worry. I won’t do anything stupid. And I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.”

  I backed out of our parking space and drove onto the main road. “Oh,” I added, “and there’s one other thing I forgot to tell you. They actually have two sons, and the other one lives in New York. You’ll never guess where he works.”

  She stared at me intensely. “No way.”
/>
  “Yes. He’s a news director at CNN.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Did you tell them you just applied for a job there?”

  “Of course. And they said they’d call him, too, and put in a good word for me.”

  Bailey faced forward again. “Well, if nothing else, maybe this whole bizarre escapade will result in you getting the job of your dreams.”

  “Maybe so,” I replied. “But first things first. I need to go and meet that boat builder.”

  o0o

  I sat on a comfortable black leather chair in the reception area of Voyager SeaCraft, flipping through a sailboat magazine while I waited for Aaron Peterson, Owner and Managing Director, to arrive from the factory.

  The luxurious head office was located in one of the century-old brick buildings in downtown Portland. The reception room boasted oak doors, mahogany furniture, and a shiny modern chrome chandelier overhead. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected. Although I don’t know what I had expected, exactly, because everything seemed to be happening at lightning speed, and I was barely able to keep up with the twists and turns my life was taking from one moment to the next.

  When I woke earlier that morning with tingling hands, I never imagined that, within hours, I would be tracking down a man who could very well be my beloved husband from another life. Would he know it when he saw me? Would he recognize me?

  Stop it, Katelyn. You need to control your expectations or he’ll think you’re mad.

  I set the magazine down, and my eyes fell upon the large antique desk where an attractive silver-haired receptionist sat. She was busy working on something at her computer.

  Just then, the sound of a car door shutting outside caused me to sit up in my chair. The office seemed to go absolutely still and quiet as I waited. Then the front door swung open, and Aaron Peterson walked in.

  Chapter Forty-four