The Last Time We Met

24

I called Cedric early on Sunday so I'd be able to get him off the phone before my past life reading. We Facetimed while we each made breakfast – I made blueberry pancakes for Mom, while Cedric stole the bacon his dad was cooking for the whole family, then he turned the screen so it was like I was eating with his family and he was eating with Mom and me. Mom was pleased to finally meet Cedric's parents. Then Mom made us coffee and I went out back to enjoy the April warmth. Our lawn badly needed mowing. When I mentioned that to Mom, she suggested I do it.

"Do we even have a lawn mower?" I asked. We'd always had a landscaping company that came out once a week to do lawn maintenance.

"Of course we do," Mom said. "It's out in the shed. My parents always told me a person should care for their own lawn."

"Okay, but does it work?"

Mom shrugged. "I used it last year."

I phoned a friend – Cedric, of course – to help me out. The lawn mower was covered in spider webs, but otherwise in fine working order. I managed to do the area around the back patio and the front before I decided that was good enough and went inside to take a shower.

Finally, it was nearing time for my session with Cosima Blue. I put my phone on airplane mode and shut my bedroom door and plugged in my headphones so Mom wouldn't be disturbed by whatever this was going to be.

When Cosima's face showed up on the Zoom screen, my stomach dropped. Her background was a cosmic field of stars, and she looked quite a few years older than the photo on her website.

"Hello, James," she said. Her voice did have a soothing quality to it.

"Hi, nice to meet you." I waved a little, trying to smile. "I've never done one of these things."

"Oh, that's not a problem! I love new people. Always nice to get a fresh read on someone." She leaned in, seeming to peer through the screen directly at me. "So, tell me a little bit about what you're looking for from our time together."

"Well..." I chewed my cheek, thinking of how to come across. Then I remembered that this lady was a psychic, and she was probably used to weirdos. "So I have some past life memories. And I'm pretty sure the guy I'm dating now is my soulmate because of these memories."

Cosima nodded thoughtfully.

"But in my memories, it seems like he always dies. In a plague. And obviously that's a little concerning for me."

I expected her to comment on the fact that I was dating a guy, or that I thought he was my soulmate when I was so young.

"Tell me about some of your lives," she said instead.

So I explained to her how I'd found the photograph and then Cedric, and about my memories of Theodore and Henrietta, and then about Chris and Brent. "I've also had some glimpses of other lives. And sometimes... while I'm in a flashback, I have a flashback to another life. Like, there's a life during the bubonic plague. And a life in India. And another one in ancient Greece or Rome, I'm still not sure which. They wore togas."

"You have very powerful intuition to remember things so fully," Cosima said. "You speak of them as full memories? Not as feelings or a connection to an object, like the photograph?"

"Mostly. Sometimes it's an object, or a feeling, that leads to the flashbacks."

Cosima nodded, and closed her eyes. I waited. She seemed to be swaying. I paid $125 for this? You're an idiot, I scolded myself.

"There's definitely a connection," Cosima said finally, opening her eyes. "It isn't a coincidence that you have met your soulmate in this life, in this time in particular."