Forever

by Lewis, Linda Cassidy

  Kate moaned. “He’s married, isn’t he?”

  Fighting back the tears, Annie nodded. “Ironic, huh? I’ve fallen in love but with someone else’s husband.” Her tears won the battle.

  Kate pulled Annie down beside her and held her while she cried. Her voice soft, Kate reminisced. “Remember all the times we huddled together like this, when we were kids? Mama and Daddy drinking and cussing at each other? Only then, it was you holding on to me, telling me everything would be all right.”

  Annie nodded against Kate’s neck.

  “Then Daddy would slam the door and burn rubber down the street. After all that noise, the silence seemed almost scary. We’d finally fall asleep, our arms still wrapped around each other.” Tenderly, Kate stroked Annie’s hair. “You were always the peacemaker, Annie, trying to make everyone happy, trying to keep the family together.”

  With Kate rocking her like a baby, Annie relaxed and her eyes grew heavy. Kate lowered Annie’s head to the pillows, kissed her forehead and whispered, “I hope you get what you want, Sissy.”

  6

  June 8, part two

  Naked and with eyes closed, Eddie lay on his bed masturbating as he recalled one of the many pleasant nights of long ago.

  Maggie slumped naked in the corner of the room. He appraised her condition with contempt. If only she’d obey without a struggle he wouldn’t have to beat her so badly. As he stepped toward her, she dared to beg him.

  “Please … no more.”

  He laughed and kicked her in the stomach. “You’re a filthy whore, and I’ll do anything I want to you because I own you.”

  Her pain excited him. The dark, fetid smell of sex and blood oozing from her cunt and ass excited him. That she was young excited him most of all.

  He grabbed her by the hair and pulled. “On your knees, bitch.”

  She opened her mouth without being told to.

  “Good girl. You’re learning.”

  Eddie’s smile turned to grimace during orgasm. Then he smiled again. He’d relive those good old times with Annie soon. If only she were still as young and innocent as when he’d married her two centuries ago. Still, every second of pain he inflicted on her would excite him. All the more so if he could do it while Tom observed. And maybe he’d think of sexy little Lindsay while he fucked Annie. He’d make sure Tom knew that, of course.

  Eddie’s cackle split the night air. “Oh, yes, it’s great to be back in human form again.”

  7

  June 9

  When the clock buzzed him awake, Tom growled his resentment and stumbled to the bathroom in the pre-dawn gloom. “Congratulations,” he muttered to his reflection in the vanity mirror. “Only nineteen years left till retirement.”

  After a shower and shave, he returned to the bedroom to dress. He pulled on a pair of jeans, but had to switch on the closet light when he couldn’t distinguish one shirt from another in the dark. He looked over his shoulder to make sure the light hadn’t disturbed Julie. Shock zinged through him an instant before he consciously registered the cause.

  The bed was empty. Worse. Julie’s side of the bed had been empty all night.

  “Julie? Julie!”

  Tom flew downstairs to the empty kitchen and flung open the door to the garage. Between Lindsay’s car and his truck loomed a gap like the bloody socket left behind when his dentist had yanked a molar years ago. When the association his mind had made hit him full force, Tom stumbled back into the kitchen. Had some act of violence taken Julie from him last night while he sat in a bar with another woman? Could the punishment for his sin be this swift and cruel? The jolts from his pounding heart seemed to scramble each thought in his brain before it could fully form, and for a minute, he couldn’t remember where Julie had gone last night.

  Patricia!

  For once, he thanked God that Julie had been with Patricia. He grabbed the handset of the kitchen phone, but as he punched the first number, he saw the message Lindsay had written on the dry-erase board next to it.

  Mom called. She drank too much wine. Patricia talked her into crashing there.

  Relieved but irritated, Tom erased the message. Now, Julie was spending day and night with that woman. Julie’s friendship with Patricia mystified him. Patricia was arrogant, demanding, egotistical—just plain overbearing. Almost two years ago, when Julie doubted her own ability to decorate her new home, she’d hired Patricia who, at the time, was an interior design consultant. Julie was thrilled to find someone “so in tune” with her style, but he and Patricia had been out of sync from the start.

  Once, when he and Julie had argued in front of her, Patricia had chimed in, accusing Tom of being jealous. He could never remember exactly what he replied at the time—he could only remember telling her to butt out—but he’d considered the implication of the word several times since. In the end, he decided he wasn’t jealous, but he sure as hell resented Patricia’s influence in their lives. It was evident in everything from that damned oatmeal carpeting to the lack of time Julie now spent with her family.

  Patricia was a threat to the life he and Julie had made together. But what did it say about his marriage, that Julie remained friends with that woman?

  Tom heaved a sigh. He considered making coffee, but he was already wide-awake. The panic-induced adrenaline rush had substituted for the caffeine in the three cups he habitually drank before leaving for work.

  Max, who’d greeted Tom this morning with his usual enthusiasm, now waited by the back door. With a whimper of misery, he got Tom’s attention. “Sorry, boy, guess your bladder’s about to burst.” Tom let the dog out, then went back upstairs to finish dressing.

  Three minutes later, he stood on the patio inhaling his nicotine fix as he watched the sun break over the horizon. Unbidden, a picture of Annie in the dress she’d worn yesterday flashed in his mind. He smiled and touched the phone through his jeans pocket. How would she react to being woken at dawn? Lindsay was asleep. Julie would be gone for a couple of hours more, at least.

  (It’s wrong to call Annie from here.)

  He lifted his hand off his phone.

  (Annie should not be in your life at all.)

  His whistle for Max muffled but couldn’t drown out that second reminder from his conscience. He pushed Annie out of his mind and turned to go back inside.

  Pain hit his head like a hammer blow. “Goddammit.”

  With his head now aching like the devil, he repealed his earlier coffee decision, impatiently filling his mug before the brewing cycle could finish. He took two Excedrin from the bottle in the cupboard and, as he did most mornings, he carried his coffee to the table in the breakfast nook.

  The light from the bay window behind him filtered through the room like smoke, softening all the edges and bathing the room in illusion. Tom felt he was a ghost haunting the silent rooms. He sat frozen by the eeriness of that thought until a white-hot surge of anger burned it away.

  Why the hell should I feel like a ghost in my own house?

  Well now, there’s a laugh. He’d saved for it, customized it, and paid for it, but it wasn’t really his house. This was Julie’s house, and always had been. He slept and ate here. He barbecued on the patio that he’d laid brick by brick, and drank beer in this very room as he watched the games on his big-screen HDTV. But did that make him any more than a resident here? Had he ever truly lived here? The throb in his head increased when the thought struck him that he hadn’t been living at all—for a long time.

  Tom was still sitting at the table when Julie walked in twenty minutes later.

  “Oh,” she said. “I thought you would be gone already.”

  “Were you trying to sneak in?”

  She laughed. “Of course not. What I meant was I hoped you’d still be here, but I thought I might be too late.”

  “I thought you’d still be sleeping off the wine.”

  “Funny.” She poured herself a cup of coffee. “Want me to fix you some breakfast?”

  “I’ll get som
ething later.”

  She sat down opposite him. “How’d it go last night?”

  He stopped breathing and looked at her blankly.

  “The job? Lindsay said you were having dinner with a client or something.”

  “Oh. No, it was just some guys … from work.” He took a gulp from his cup, nearly gagging at the now cold brew. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

  “Where did that come from?”

  “It’s something that came up last night … in conversation.”

  “How drunk were you guys?” She started to laugh then caught herself. “Are you serious?”

  He shrugged. “Just a question.”

  “Okay. Well, no, I don’t. We only get one chance. Isn’t that what you believe?”

  The look on Julie’s face made it plain what she expected his answer to be. He stood. “Yeah, sure. The guy was talking about a movie he saw. I’d better get to work. You should go back to sleep. You look worn out.”

  He kissed her good-bye. On the way to his truck it hit him that Julie did look more tired than she should have after one late night. And if he’d been paying more attention to her, he would have noticed before now. She was right, we only get one chance. And it was time he made more of an effort not to blow his.

  *

  Annie left the house at seven o’clock to take her turn at the grocery shopping. She’d rushed through that, stowed it all at home, and drove off again. She was on her way downtown. Her destination was the central branch of the library to search out evidence of Jacob and Maggie’s existence. She’d found online sites with possible help, but you had to pay to use them. Besides, with only a couple of names for clues, she needed help to know how to search for the proof she needed.

  She wasn’t stupid. Tom had tried to hide it, but he resisted that they were the reborn Jacob and Maggie. But if she could prove those two had really lived when and where he suspected, maybe he would accept the truth. “You get a second chance,” Kate had said, and Annie hoped to convince Tom of that.

  He’d probably tried to call her by now, and that’s exactly why she’d left her phone at home. She didn’t want to talk to him until things were straight in her mind. Her heart, like a dry sponge, ached to soak up any love it could. She couldn’t trust it. Her heart had led her into the nightmare of her marriage. She had to listen to her head this time. Another bad choice might kill her.

  The morning rush hour was over, but traffic had backed up. Road construction or accident? She tapped her nails on the steering wheel and read the bumper stickers on the car in front of her. One of them read—I’M AWESOME. DEAL WITH IT. Was that meant to be a statement of fact or just amusing? If bumper stickers described your life accurately what would hers be? The answer came to her immediately. “Unlucky in Love.”

  That wasn’t the way it worked, though. It wasn’t a matter of luck, it was a matter of choice. After last night’s confession to Kate, she’d cried herself to sleep wondering if she would ever see Tom again. That she shouldn’t see him again crossed her mind, but she hushed that thought. She had to see him. The visions had brought them together for a reason.

  Annie had gone to the wrong place. A librarian at Central told her the records she wanted were at the Indiana State Library. Several minutes later, Annie stood in that library’s genealogy room explaining to another librarian what information she hoped to find.

  “I suggest looking for this man in the census records.” The librarian walked to a row of cabinets and pulled a small box from one of the drawers. “This is a film of the 1830 Hendricks County census book.”

  “But the man I’m looking for might have died before then,” Annie said.

  “Well, then your search is going to be more difficult. At least one white settlement was located in the area before 1820, but the county wasn’t formed until 1824. The records don’t start before then. I’m afraid 1830 is the earliest census taken in that county. Why don’t you check this film anyway?” The woman slid the drawer closed and walked toward a nearby doorway.

  Annie followed her into the darkened room. She showed Annie how to load the reel of microfilm on the reader and gave her instructions for using the printer function of the machine.

  “If you’re not familiar with it,” the librarian said, “the handwriting in these old records can be difficult to decipher. If you need help, I’ll be at the front desk.”

  Within thirty seconds of viewing the film, Annie understood the warning. Not only was it a struggle to decipher the names on the pages, some of the pages were blurred or spotted, or had crumbled edges. The census taker had apparently recorded the information in the order he made his rounds, and the entries had not been rearranged alphabetically or even indexed. This particular census consisted of fifteen pages. The only Stout was listed on the thirteenth.

  Only the heads of households were listed by name. The entry she found was for Charles Stout. Not Jacob. But Charles was marked in the age range of 20-30 years, so she couldn’t ignore the entry. Maybe Jacob was a middle name. Also listed in this household was a female in the same age range, and one female and three males, all under the age of ten. Annie assumed this was Charles, his wife and their five young children.

  Was this couple Jacob and Maggie?

  Nothing within her responded. There was no thrill of discovery, no quickening of her heart. To her, that lack of a sign was in itself a sign. Charles was not her Jacob. Annie rewound the film and returned it to the librarian.

  “Where else could I look for him?”

  “They’re incomplete, but we have deeds and probate records beginning in 1825. He’d almost surely be found in the dee—”

  “I’ll take the probate records,” Annie said without hesitation. An odd sensation, like cold water running the length of her spine, accompanied her response, and that feeling assured her she’d chosen the right records. As she carried the film back to the machine, she reached up to touch the still cool spot at the nape of her neck.

  Relieved, Annie saw that this film started with an index. She scanned to the “S” section, her heart quickening even before she consciously registered the name—Stout, Jacob p.127. Her breathing quickened and shallowed as she scrolled the film forward. In her haste, she passed the page, then backed up too far and had to start forward again. After another false stop, she slowed her winding to a crawl until she found the correct page. The entry, dated 19 April 1826, was a report to the court by the administrators of the estate of “Jacob Stout, deceased.”

  Annie scanned the report. With a trembling finger, she pressed the button to print the pages. Thank God. Now, Tom would have to believe Jacob existed. And if Jacob existed, Maggie existed. Annie believed in her heart that Jacob and Maggie were revealing their story to her and Tom for only one reason—to remind them of the love they’d shared. The love they deserved to share again.

  *

  Though Tom had downed half a dozen Excedrin since morning, his head still throbbed. He pushed his half-eaten lunch away and sat with his head bowed, rubbing his temples. Annie slipped into his thoughts. She’d told him she was going to the library to look for proof of Jacob and Maggie’s existence. What if she found it? If he broke off contact with her, he’d never know. He didn’t have to see her. She could tell him what she found over the phone. The phone he was already picking up.

  After his fourth attempt to reach her cell, he called the theater. The girl who answered checked the schedule and told him Annie wouldn’t be in until four. Damn. Damn. Damn. He wouldn’t have time to go by the theater. He’d already promised Julie he would be home early.

  And, really, what did anything Annie found out about Jacob and Maggie concern him? He didn’t believe in reincarnation. He believed in pretty young women being a temptation. But giving in to that was not something he would do—not if he wanted to stay married. And he did.

  He cleared his desk of the lunch trash and massaged his temples. Shit. This pain might be the beginning of a full-blown migraine. If it kept up, he’d ha
ve to take off work even earlier than he planned and go home to bed.

  *

  Tom arrived at the theater as the crowd for the next showings lined up at the refreshment counters. He waved to Annie and took a seat at a table by the windows. After she served the last of the cafe customers, she filled another cup, grabbed something from under the counter, and came to sit with him

  “I couldn’t find Jacob listed in either the census or the deed records they have for Hendricks County.” She set the cup of coffee before him. “And I looked for his will. There wasn’t one, but his name was in the probate court records.”

  Tom listened with one ear, still pretending he cared about Jacob and Maggie. Whoever they were—if they were—didn’t matter.

  “I hoped the record would name Maggie and maybe even some children, but it was only a court report on his estate.”

  “And you read the report?”

  “I did, and guess what.”

  “What?”

  “Jacob did own a longrifle. The handwriting is really hard for me to read, but I deciphered some of it. They recorded every little thing the person owned … every item of clothing even. They listed powder horns, and lead, knives, and quite a few pelts—evidently he was a hunter, like you said. I made a copy for you too. Maybe you can make out more of the words than I could.” She handed him the two sheets of paper she’d taken from under the counter.

  “Yeah, sure.” He folded the pages, and shoved them into his back pocket without a glance. What the hell was going on? Why was he here with a woman who couldn’t stop jabbering about some man who lived and died nearly two hundred years ago?

  “I have more to tell you,” she said.

  “Is it about Jacob?”

  “Yes. I looked—”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” Seeing her hurt frown, he softened. “Not right now.”