by L. E. Waters
“Is it what I told you yesterday?” One eyebrow rises in curiosity. “About the past lives?”
A lovely smile spreads. “No, that I’m most intrigued by.” He sits down next to me and it soothes my nerves. “One of the reasons why I ventured back today. Tell me more.”
“What would you like to know?”
“Where was your past life?”
“Which one? I’ve had eleven before this one.”
“Eleven!” He rocks to his side. “I can barely get through this one.”
“Oh no, you’ve lived at least eleven as well.”
“How would you know that?”
“Because you’ve been in all my past lives.” I watch his eyes as the words sink in.
“You think we’ve known each other before?”
“Don’t you feel like we have?” His hand is so close within my reach.
He looks out on the garden instead of at me. “It’s funny you should say that, because that is what I’m fighting.” He glances at me, but when he catches my eyes, his dart back to the raspberry bushes. “Even though I’ve barely talked to you, I feel as if I can’t stop coming here to see you. I should’ve gone back to Munich by now.”
I can’t talk since my stomach has flipped up into my throat.
He gives a nervous laugh. “Silly, right?” He checks back to me. “I must be at least ten years older than you.”
“Things like age and many other things don’t matter when we’ve been through so many things together.”
“Like what? Where were we before?” His green eyes are full of so much belief. No one has trusted my memories so quickly.
“We were brother and sister before, in America. Our father was killed in the Civil War, and our mother died soon after. You joined the army and I followed you there.”
“But you were a girl?”
“I know, it was thrilling.” I laugh and he joins me.
He rubs his hands together. “What happened to us?”
“You died at Gettysburg. Mortar fire.”
“That explains a lot.” He takes a handkerchief from his coat pocket to wipe his brow even though there is an early fall chill in the summer air. “I’ve always had terrible nightmares about something that screams and falls on me from the sky. As soon as it hits the ground next to me, I’m thrown in the air and everything goes dark.” He looks directly into my eyes. “Those dreams paralyze me with fear.”
I get the nerve to touch his hand and he doesn’t move away. “That is exactly what happened to you. I saw the whole thing.”
He tilts his head up to the clear sky. “I’ve never told anyone about that, and suddenly I feel free of it.”
I squeeze his warm hand. “Those types of memories are heavy to carry around.”
“You see, this is why I came. I knew I shouldn’t, but somehow I felt like I had to.”
I withdraw my hand. “Is it such a terrible place?”
“No. Not at all.” He looks around the blooming garden walls. “I’m actually very comfortable here. It’s just that…” He swallows. “I promised myself that I would concentrate on something that is very important, something I need to devote myself completely to. I wasn’t going to be distracted.” He laughs. “And now I’m distracted.”
“Maybe this is what you’re supposed to be doing.” I decide to gamble with my next statement. “I went to Dresden that night to meet you.”
His brows knit. “But how did you know I’d be there?”
“I have dreams sometimes of things that are coming. I dreamed of you and that alley and knew I had to go because we were meant to meet that night.”
“So this is where I’m supposed to be right now.” He cracks a smile as I give him a happy nod.
Teresia starts to paw the chicken wire to get my attention. We walk over and I let her out on the gravel. She kicks her back legs high up in joy. We walk along behind her as she stops to sniff the different flowers trailing over their boundaries. His arm brushes up against mine with every step on the narrow path.
“Why do I feel like we haven’t always been brother and sister?”
“That was the only time.”
“Tell me about the life before that one.”
“I was a poet and you were my childhood sweetheart.”
“Sounds like a wonderful life.”
“It could have been, but you never became my wife.” I start laughing as his face screws up in disgust.
“What do you mean, wife? Are you telling me I was a woman? No, no, no.” He shakes his hands playfully at me. “I don’t believe you now.”
“You were very pretty.” I laugh, enjoying the game. “But you always were.”
“Stop.” He gives me a stern but playful look. “Hopefully the life before that one I was a warrior or a fearless explorer.”
“Actually, you were another beautiful girl who broke my heart.” I put my chin high. “I was the courageous spy.”
“Don’t tell me I was the damsel in distress in every life, tell me about my prouder—hopefully more masculine—lives.”
“Like when you were a slave in Egypt and I was your master.”
He cringes.
“Or when we were highwaymen and I thought you’d tried to murder me. Or when we were stowaways on a ship that crashed on dangerous soil and you decided to abandon us. Or when you cut off our engagement and got married to a wealthier, older man…twice.”
Oh, that felt good.
“It hasn’t always been happy endings, then?” He gives an apologetic grin. “You can go back to talking about how pretty I was.”
No one can make me laugh like he can…well, except for Kathrin. “Well, it hasn’t always been your fault. My brother did have you strangled when you were my husband in Italy, and I did try to change your mind about the chastity of monkhood in medieval England. Oh, and I did have you executed in my place in ancient Egypt.” I offer up my palms in truce. “It probably all goes back to that somehow.”
“I’m getting dizzy now.” He sits back down on another bench. “I see how this could make you crazy. Maybe it’s better not to know these things.”
I sit down as close as I can to him. “I try not to hold grudges.”
“Is it too late to say sorry?” He laughs. “With all that behind us, imagine what lies ahead.”
I place my hand right beside his, and he nudges his over to barely touch mine. “I really do want to try to do things right this time.”
He meets my eyes for one thick moment. “It would be nice to have a happy ending.”
“Annelie!” Frieda calls just at the moment he might have kissed me. “I hate to interrupt, but it’s time to bring you to your session with Dr. Evert.”
I wish we had a few more minutes.
He jumps up politely. “Of course, it’s no interruption.” He gives me a strong hand up. “Goodbye, Annelie.”
I pat down the wrinkles in my old skirt. Oh, I wish I had my nicer dresses here. “I hope you’ll find some time to come visit again.”
A cloud shadows the glimmer in his green eyes. “It might be some time. I have to do some traveling.”
A wind picks up and, just before I can plead with him to come sooner, Frieda says, “You’re already a few minutes late, and we have to cut across the courtyard.”
“Oh, what about Teresia? I let her out.” We search around us and see the fat brown bunny hopping across the garden, dangerously close to the vegetables.
“I’ll wrangle her for you,” Georg offers.
“Do you think you can catch her and put her back in the cage?” I seriously doubt it when he was so uncomfortable just holding her.
“If not, I’ll die trying.” He laughs and Frieda pulls my arm.
“Thank you, Georg.”
He nods, and I keep catching humorous views of him leaping this way and that and coming up with empty arms. I secretly hope he won’t be able to catch her and I’ll find him still there w
hen my session is over, but I know the garden will be empty when I get back. I don’t even hear what Frieda babbles on about while I try to remember our visit word for word.
Chapter 16
“Hurry up, you’re five minutes late.” Frieda knocks on his door, and Dr. Evert must have been standing just on the other side to open it so quickly.
“Sorry we’re late, Annelie had a visitor.”
The smile he greets us with fades slightly. “Her sister?”
Frieda just shakes her head and he can tell by my eyes that it was Georg.
“Visitor or no visitor, I expect you to bring her on time, Frieda.”
“I’m sorry, Doctor. It won’t happen again.” She closes the door behind her and I know that he wouldn’t have said the same thing had it been Kathrin or Mother.
I take my seat anyway.
“Was breakfast as bad as I feared?”
“Almost as terrible as before, but the fruits and vegetables make it tolerable.”
He twiddles his thumbs on his desk for a moment and then puts up a finger as he searches in his desk drawer. He pulls up an old newspaper clipping of Helen Whitman and puts it right beside his face for comparison.
“Where did you find that?” He can always make me laugh.
“I’ve squinted long and hard, trying to see the resemblance here, but I can’t find any.”
“I don’t know, if you curled your hair like hers or put on a bonnet, it would be hard to tell you apart.” It feels good to laugh with him again.
“All laughing aside, I do see something familiar in the eyes, like you said.” He lays the photo down. “I’m trying to hunt down any photos of my past selves. It’s addictive.”
“How do you think I felt when I picked up a picture of Edgar Allan Poe?”
“Oh, but you both have the same mopey eyes and wonderful temperament.”
“Ha, ha.” But I uncross my arms.
“I was hoping we could do another hypnosis session.”
“Why? I thought you believed me.”
“Oh, I still believe you, so much so that I want to document more for research. Imagine if I could keep verifying other lives.”
“I don’t need to be hypnotized to remember. I’m aware of everything.”
“What if I want to learn more?”
“Ask me, then.”
“I want to know more about us.”
A heat sets in on the room. I wish he’d open the window.
“What do you want to know about us?”
“How did our relationship start?”
“The first life I met you was in ancient Sparta.” Oh, how would I explain Demetris? “You were a slave and I was ordered to arrange…”—he watches me intently—”conception with you while the army men were away for too long.”
He holds back laughter. “That is very interesting. And…did you arrange it?”
I have to look over his shoulder. “Yes, we had a little girl. But you never met her; you left to join the slave army.”
“And I never saw you again?”
I shake my head. “The next life, we were both slaves, to the Vikings.”
“A slave, two lives in a row. That has got to leave its mark.”
“We were very close. It was difficult to leave you when I had to.”
“Were we the same sex?”
“No, you were a young girl and I was a young boy.”
“Again, we never were able to have a relationship?”
“Right.” I take a deep breath. “In the next life, you were a lover.”
His eyebrows rise slightly.
“But you were murdered for getting me pregnant.”
“I see a common theme running here.”
“No, it isn’t always like that. The next life, you were a kind bishop that helped save us when we were Spanish sailors trapped on the coast of Ireland. Then you were a fellow highwayman, then a priest that actually separated a love from me, then a good friend in the Revolutionary War. So see, we didn’t always have a romantic relationship.”
“It seems we started out that way, and the last couple of lives have continued it, with Helen and James.”
I shift in my chair. “Every relationship changes.”
“But you call the green-eyed soul your soul mate. Why do that if you say yourself that every relationship changes?”
Jealously simmers in his eyes.
I unbutton my cardigan since I can barely breathe. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
He gets up and pulls a chair right next to mine. “You’ve said yourself that you have unfinished business with this…gapped-tooth person, but”—he picks up my hand and takes it within both his hands, almost in a pleading way—”why is it fine for you to fix things with Elser? We have unfinished business too.”
I try to pull my hand free, but he holds it tight. “I’m very sorry for confusing you like this. I don’t have the answers, but I somehow know that I’m supposed to be with Georg. The closure you have given me about James has truly healed me, but now I must get that same thing from Elser.”
“But I don’t have that closure. I never got to see you again. I never got to fix things. I didn’t want you to leave that morning. I woke up and saw you there and I knew you might die there if I didn’t save you. It was dangerous for you to be there. I had to make you leave. But I didn’t stop thinking about you, and I dreamed of going out to Kansas City to find you again. To make it up to you.”
“How would you know that?”
“I had a different dream the other night. Not the usual nightmare, but a dream of that night we shared and how I felt the next morning.” He steps up and slowly moves my hair off my shoulders and leans in to kiss me.
I pull away after the achingly sweet moment. “I’m sorry, Fridric.”
A storm flashes across his eyes, greying them. “What if I’m your soul mate? How do you know it’s him?”
“I don’t know anything. I only know that I’m drawn to him in this life and I must see what comes of it.”
“You don’t want to see what could become of us?”
I scoff. “I’m in a psychiatric hospital and you are my doctor.”
“I can get you out of here in an instant and you could find me after. No one needs to know of your past. We can go to another city, or another country, anywhere.”
I stroke his cheek. “You are very special to me, Fridric. You always have been, and Josephine wanted nothing more than to see James again, but right now this is where I belong.” I look up to the grey, high walls. “And Georg is who I have been led to. I have to see where this path leads.”
Two tears fall like diamonds from his grey eyes. “Fine, then. Maybe your path will come back around to me again.”
Chapter 17
Whenever we have storms, we park our chairs in front of the huge windows and watch each drip and flash of lightning like we’re at the cinema. From our windows, we can see the dark clouds creep over the mountains and unload their burden on the valley below. From far away, an uneven, misty column of rain appears, and it’s strange to think of the people that it’s falling on so distant from us.
“There’s someone down in the garden,” Minna says, and we all get up to look since the rain is only just letting up after a particularly rough storm.
Juliane squints her eyes. “It’s a man, under the arbor we built.”
Ursel says, “He’s with the fairies. They hate getting wet.”
“Is it Fridric?” Verena says hopefully. “He’s probably waiting for us.”
“No, it’s Georg.” Gitta claps and hugs me. “He’s waiting in the rain for Annelie. How romantic!”
My heart starts to race, but I want to be sure of it. It’s so hard to tell since the man has his coat over his head for protection. They gasp when the mysterious man pulls his coat down to reveal that it is indeed Georg, a very soggy-looking Georg. Of course he’s out watching the storm. I�
��ve forgotten how much he loves them.
“It is him!” they squeal. “Hurry, before he leaves.”
I wonder why he didn’t tell anyone. I ask Frieda if she’ll take me down to the garden, and she smiles and agrees as soon as she sees Georg out in the rain. Once we reach the door outside, she hands me her umbrella and lets me go out to the garden by myself.
“Georg!” I call from under the black dome.
He looks up, surprised. “It’s raining. You shouldn’t be out here.”
I laugh. “Then why are you?”
“I came to see you, but then I started watching the storm. It was so beautiful from your garden, on this hilltop.”
“We watched it from our windows.”
The rain wanes to slower, heavier drips, and the clouds thin out to reveal a red setting sun.
He points up to the gap between the clouds. “Do you know what that means? The red sky?”
“That another storm’s coming?”
“No, just the opposite. ‘Red sky in morning; shepherds take warning. Red sky at night; shepherds delight’.”
“Good, we could use a little sun.” I collapse the umbrella even though there is still a little drizzle. It feels silly to be so dry with him so wet.
“I should have thought of how much fun it will be to ride the train back like this.” He laughs. “At least no one will sit next to me.”
Something about the sogginess of his clothes, the way his wet hair clings to his face, and the way his green eyes shine against his pale, glistening skin makes him breathtaking. Most people look worse after the rain, but he glimmers. I watch as the drips of rain run from his dark hair, down his cheeks to his chin or off his straight nose to land on his thin, pink lips. I feel so safe and happy under the vine-covered arbor with him. The smell of the vapor rising off the hot plants and soil reaches my nose and I have to close my eyes a moment to take in the earthy, delicious scent, but then I remember he’s watching me. “Sorry, I forgot you were there.”
He laughs again. “I blend in with all the droopy plants.”
“You’ve always loved storms.” I tuck damp hair behind my ear. “Actually, the first time I remember you were captivated by them was when we were cabin boys together. You used to climb the masts to watch the storms roll in.”
