The Past-Life Chronicles

15

Mason backs the car out of the memorial garden's parking lot. Wistfully, Henry watches the back roads shrink out of sight through the rear windshield. I don't have time to pity him or wonder whatever he thinks is back there. I'm on a mission.

I study the map on my phone. "Robin Road is on the way to the reservoir." I connect the device to Mason's mount. "I just want to do a drive-by first."

Mason's lips tighten, but he doesn't object.

We course through downtown Elms Creek. I recognize it, but only vaguely. It's been updated, modernized since the era of the black-and-white photograph I found on the Internet. It's not how I remember it.

Susan Dochy... Susan Dochy...

I repeat the name internally, trying to recall any more memories of being her, other than the visions I've already received. I think I remember the night of her junior prom...or maybe it was homecoming. I wouldn't go near events like those in this lifetime. But as Susan, I'd lived for them.

I was the queen.

Some of it is coming back to me. There was a beautiful dress...a tiara glittering in my hair... I loved that tiara...

My gaze slides over to Mason. He'd said it felt messed up, like we weren't supposed to be here. I can't agree. At the same time, I can't think; too many thoughts and feelings are competing for airtime in my skull. I can't even begin to separate the good from the bad, let alone the shouldn'ts from the ought tos.

My pulse kicks up as we turn onto a series of ill-kept residential roads. The older ranch and two-story homes, while slightly larger than the house Henry and I live in, are modest at best. I know I've seen this neighborhood a hundred times before, long ago. And I don't need the GPS to tell Mason to turn left, then hang a right.

He brings the car before a small, colonial brick house as the electronic voice on my phone announces, "You have arrived at two twenty-nine Robin Road."

I stare up through the car window, lost for words.

I know every room. The floorplan is committed to my memory like instinct. I know that, were I to open the front door, there'd be a stairwell, front and center. The dining room is to the left, and the kitchen just behind it. I know there's a den across from the kitchen, and a brown-carpeted living room. The washer and dryer are in the basement. It was unfinished concrete the last time I saw it.

My eyes trail up to the top story and land upon one of the gables. I can't stop staring at the window tucked into it. It was the window to my bedroom.

I unfasten my seatbelt.

"What are you doing?" demands Mason.

"I just want to go knock on the—"

"You aren't thinking straight." He blocks me from pulling the door handle. "You can't just go knocking on the door. This isn't your house anymore."

My voice is trembling. "What if her parents still live here?"

"Look," Henry utters behind us.

A pair of young children, a boy and a girl, come leaping around the side yard. They're dressed in boots and rain slickers. The boy swings a foam sword, and the girl runs up to the door, cradling what looks like a Raggedy Ann doll. Their high-pitched shouts echo to our car, but I can't make out the words.

The girl slips inside the house with her dolly, escaping her brother's chase. The little boy looks about to follow suit when he notices our car stalling in the road. He halts in the front lawn to watch us.