Remembrance Read online

  “If you go back you might want to remain there,” Nora said. “You have nothing to pull you back to the present time.”

  “I have a book contract and due dates and a desk covered with bills that need to be paid,” I said, joking.

  But Nora didn’t laugh. “You must not do this. You must promise me. It is dangerous.”

  “But there’s a possibility that she’s a ghost!”

  “Ghosts are very unhappy spirits and you are not the one to deal with them,” she said sternly.

  Thirty-nine years old and I started whining. “But I saw a talk show on TV and lots of people have done it. It’s ordinary. In California—”

  “You are not ordinary,” she said with quite a bit of spirit. “What has happened to you in the past is not ordinary.”

  She took a breath and calmed herself, and secretly I was a bit glad she’d lost her cool. “Hayden,” she said, “I know you do not believe me when I tell you these things about karma and curses, but they are true. You must let nature take its course.”

  “I’m to wait three lifetimes until I get to see Jamie, is that it? I’m to spend this life and the next and the next alone without him?” There are times when sanity plays no part in one’s life and this was one of them. I was like a child begging its mother for a piece of candy. I want Jamie and I want him now! is what I was demanding of her.

  “Come in tomorrow and we’ll talk. I’ll explain things more fully to you then. Until then just rest and”—she paused—“and stop eating.”

  At that I stuck my tongue out at the telephone and hung up. There should be rules to govern psychics; they would be allowed to look in some areas of your life but not in others. Eating habits would be definitely off limits.

  Ill manners aside, I didn’t feel any better than I had before I talked to her. However, I did decide she was right about the eating. I decided to make myself a salad. I took down my largest serving bowl, then cleaned out the refrigerator, adding high-calorie Chinese sesame noodles to the bowl along with enough lettuce to feed a couple of rabbits. Nuts and tiny pieces of fried bread added to flavor, then I smothered it all with half a bottle of dressing.

  If I didn’t do something to break this mood soon I was going to have a bit of a weight problem I thought as I dug in and went back to the TV.

  I think everything would have been all right, that is, I would have obeyed Nora, except for two things happening. One was that I tripped over a book and the other was that Milly called.

  I can assure you that if you are near me, tripping over a book is a given. I own thousands, and I mean that literally, thousands of books. They are everywhere: on shelves, tables, on the floor, under tables. Everywhere. For the most part, people are horrified by the number of books scattered around me. Except for Daria. When Daria comes to visit, I have to straighten up or she’ll spend all her time rummaging through my books and pay no attention to me.

  So, anyway, tripping over a book that caught on my bathrobe was nothing unusual. But when I picked it up I saw that it was a book I’d bought years before in a town in Wales that, in an effort to bring in tourists, gave itself the title of Most Bookstores in the World. I’m sure that slogan would draw tourists in America, right?

  The book was an 1898 copy of Debrett’s Peerage.

  So far I hadn’t been able to find out too many details about Lady de Grey’s husband and his family—or her family for that matter—because the title had become extinct. But in 1898 it was still active.

  Eagerly, I tore through the book to find the family title. Sometimes Debrett’s told how people died; they frequently gave dates that other books didn’t. Maybe in here I’d learn some truly useful information.

  What I found was not what I’d expected. What I found just about knocked the wind out of me.

  Right there in black and white, on page 645 was something that shocked me. But it was shocking only to me.

  Lady de Grey’s husband’s full name was Adam Tavistock, Lord de Grey.

  8

  What happened after that was all Milly’s fault. She, along with ninety-nine percent of all romance writers, lives somewhere in Texas. I say “somewhere” because I figure life is too short to try to comprehend Texas. When I want to go to Texas for some romance writers’ get-together I call my publicist and she sends me a ticket. I get on a plane and land somewhere in Texas. There are only two cities in the state: one called Houston and one called Dallas. One city has a mall called the Galleria and one doesn’t.

  Basically, I’m not sure where Milly lives. It’s outside the city that does not have the mall, which I’m sure is why I met her in the first place. Otherwise I would have been shopping.

  Nora said that in a past life Milly was and was not my mother. I can believe it. On our passports, I’m older than Milly but she is what Nora calls an “old soul.” She lives alone and writes the sweetest, gentlest romances you can imagine. Her heroines are noble and good and live on farms and enter pies in the county fair, as opposed to my heroines who ride black stallions and wave swords around.

  I called Milly and started telling her what was going on in my life. My two friends, Daria and Milly, are so different. Daria has a lightning-quick brain and the attention span of a three-year-old. To make her laugh you have to be genuinely original, with a fast and perfect delivery. Anything less bores her. Daria keeps you on your toes.

  Milly’s more the let’s-make-cookies-and-talk-about-it type. So that night after I found out that my “soul mate” had the same name as all the divine men I’ve written books about, Milly suggested I come visit her in her Texas city.

  A few days later I went to Milly’s house. That’s when she told me she’d invited a few friends to dinner. I must say I was a bit hurt by this because I wanted Milly’s undivided attention to listen to my problems about my life and my book. I’m ashamed to say that Milly’s limitless kindness always brings out my most selfish side. Unfortunately, shame doesn’t stop selfishness (I’d learned that on Oprah).

  However, I did cheer up a bit when Milly told me that she’d invited to dinner a man who does past life regressions.

  Have you ever done something in your life that you know is wrong before you do it yet you still can’t stop yourself?

  I hadn’t told Milly all of my story; in fact I’d told her very little in the few days it had taken to arrange my trip to visit her. I’d sort of, well, left out the part about Nora. It was one thing to visit a psychic in private and hear all about soul mates and love that is actually hate, but it’s another to say the words out loud in the light of day.

  I’d sort of skirted the issue and told Milly a story about Jamie, then researching and finding this man named Tavistock, then seeing a past life regressionist on TV. I could have told the true story to Daria because she’s more into entertainment than truth, but Milly believes anything anyone tells her.

  But now I was going to be spending the evening with a hypnotist and there was no Nora around to tell me not to do this thing that I wanted to do so much. If I saw Jamie—I mean, Adam—I could warn him about…I don’t know what I’d warn him about because I knew little more than the date of their deaths, but I knew that I’d love him. If I saw Jamie I would love him, not hate him as people said Hortense hated her husband.

  While Milly and I waited for the man to arrive, I could hardly keep my mind on what she was talking about, which was contracts and money, of course, what all writers talk about. I kept looking at the door and thinking I heard the bell.

  When he and three women finally did arrive, I was beside myself with excitement and had to work to stay calm enough to eat dinner. I thought the meal would take forever and by the time we left the table I was ready to scream.

  For the sake of brevity I’m going to forgo writing how I think New Yorkers and Texans are the same people but with different accents—it’s why they hate each other.

  Nora once told me that in order to be hypnotized all one had to do was want to go under. By the time Milly’s regression