Legacy of Lies

  “Well, I don’t have any phobias,” I told Sophie. “And besides, if Avril’s spirit was reincarnated, I don’t see how she could have a ghost.”

  “Maybe there isn’t one.”

  “I saw her with my own eyes!”

  “In a mirror,” Sophie pointed out. “Maybe you had an out-of-body experience and saw your own spirit. Which is what others have been seeing just before dawn. That, too, makes sense-living in a different time zone, your sleep cycle is later than ours.”

  “No,” I insisted.

  “Think about the night you saw the mist in the mirror. Do you remember at any point looking down on yourself, looking upon your body as it is now?”

  My spine tingled. “At the very end l-l thought I saw myself lying dead.”

  “Like the way people describe a near-death experience?” she asked. “Like when someone whose heart has stopped sees himself lying on an operating room table?”

  I nodded slowly.

  “It’s an out-of-body experience.”

  “Or a dream,” I replied stubbornly.

  Sophie sighed and got up from the bench. “I’ve got to work. Talk to Miss Lydia. She’ll help you understand.”

  I stood up. “There’s nothing to understand.”

  She laid a hand on my arm. “Megan, listen to me. Sometimes a premature death keeps you from doing the work you were meant to do. Sometimes it separates two people meant to be together. Reincarnation isn’t something to fear, it’s a second chance.”

  “I never asked for a second chance.”

  “Okay, let me put it this way. Do you want the dreams to stop?”

  “I want it all to stop.”

  “Then accept the possibility of reincarnation. Find out who you are and what you’re to do with your second chance. Once you have, the past will let go of you.”

  I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t the kind to run away from something, and I certainly wanted the strange things that had been happening to end.

  “See you tomorrow,” she said softly, then went inside.

  I walked down High Street and sat for a long time by the water. I knew that Grandmother was more than cold to me-she was jealous. Matt seemed confused, torn between protecting her and defending the time he spent with me. I, for some crazy reason, actually cared about Grandmother. And I was trying to overcome an attraction to Matt that I didn’t want to admit. The parallels between the past and present were eerie. Were the three of us playing out parts in a triangle that had existed sixty years ago?

  thirteen

  I wasn’t ready to talk to Mrs. Riley Wednesday afternoon and didn’t ask Grandmother why she had gone to see her. Obviously, she was feeling haunted. Questioning her would only make her more hostile toward me. That night I tossed and turned in bed. I discovered the one advantage to lack of sleep: lack of dreams. Still, my mind raced with thoughts as strange as dreams.

  If Matt were Thomas, then he must have held me once, he must have kissed me. I quickly squelched that daydream. According to Mrs. Riley, there were a lot of girls in Thomas’s life before he settled on Avril. It occurred to me that his love for Avril was not a proven fact. Mrs. Riley told me what she believed at the time, but for all she knew, Thomas may have been planning to break things off with Avril the night she had died. He and Avril might have had a terrible fight. Perhaps the negative feelings from that time had carried over; it sure seemed as if Matt had set his mind against me before we met.

  By eight-fifteen Thursday evening I had spun so many theories in my head I didn’t know what I thought about Thomas and Avril. But my belief in the possibility that Matt and I had been reincarnated waned: The two of us meant for each other in a previous lifetime? No. He and I were nothing more than a pair of high school kids, cousins who occasionally got along, heading for a party. We set off in his Jeep to pick up Alex and Sophie.

  “I hope Kristy won’t mind Sophie and me coming,” I said, when we stopped at a red light.

  “She told us we could bring whoever we wanted,” Matt replied. “Which doesn’t mean she’ll be nice,” he added. “But you can handle her.”

  “Of course I can,” I said, which made him laugh. “It’s Sophie I’m worried about.”

  “I’ll look out for her,” he assured me.

  We picked up Alex by the college.

  “Stay where you are, Megan,” he told me as he climbed in the back. “It’s a short ride to Sophie’s.”

  She lived on Shipwrights Street, in the middle of a block of small wooden houses, each one two stories high, two windows wide, with a porch spanning the front. Their tiny yards were neatly hemmed with picket fences.

  As soon as we drove up, Sophie came out, followed by her three younger sisters, the oldest of whom looked about nine. The trio lined up on the porch steps to watch.

  “Girls,” we heard a voice coming from the house. “Gi-irls.”

  They made stretchy faces and slowly trooped back inside. Meanwhile, Alex had run around the Jeep to open doors.

  “Hey, Sophie,” I greeted her, about to climb out of the front seat so she could sit there.

  I saw her hesitate.

  “Oh, yeah,” Alex said. “I forgot about that. Megan, do you mind riding up front?”

  I looked at him surprised.

  “Or I can,” he offered.

  When I saw Sophie blushing, I quickly pulled in my feet. “No problem.”

  As soon as she and Alex were settled in the backseat, she leaned forward. “Sorry, it scares me a little up there.”

  “Don’t blame you, the way Matt drives,” I replied.

  Matt glanced sideways at me, one side of his mouth curling up. “Sophie,” he said as we drove off, “have you been to Kristy’s new house?”

  “No. I heard it’s awesome.”

  “It’s got bathtubs big enough to row across,” Alex said.

  “Deep enough to drop a trot line?” Sophie asked.

  He laughed. “No, it’s nice, but not perfect. Hey, guess what I noticed tonight while getting dressed?”

  “I don’t think I want to,” Matt quipped.

  “Your valentine,” Alex said to Sophie. “I had it tacked inside the door of my bedroom closet. You know, the card with the crab legs drawn around the heart and a boat oar going through it?”

  She gazed at him, speechless, then turned to look at me.

  “I was wrong,” I told her. “I suppose one in a million guys are sentimental.”

  “Did I miss something?” Matt asked.

  “How many things would you like me to list?” I replied.

  He rested a hand on mine. “Glad you decided not to be on your good behavior tonight. I wouldn’t know what to do with you.”

  I didn’t answer. I was too aware of how his hand felt touching mine.

  “You actually saved my valentine?” Sophie said to Alex.

  “Is it too late to apologize for being a jerky fifth grader?”

  Her voice was gentle. “You weren’t jerky, just a fifth grader, a fifth-grade boy.”

  “How come you don’t hang around with Kristy anymore?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t have the time,” she replied. “I help Mom with her job and take care of my sisters. After Mom and Ron had Jenny, I couldn’t do all the things Kristy wanted to do. And with Kristy, you’re either in or out. I’m out.

  They continued to talk, catching up on news about his family and hers.

  “Okay, guys, I’m going to need some help finding the turnoff,” Matt said.

  Only our headlights brightened the dark country road.

  “It’s about a half mile beyond Dead Man’s Curve,” Alex told him.

  Dead Woman’s, I thought, remembering Evie’s annoyance with the name of the place where Angel Cayton had died.

  I glanced back and saw Alex reach for Sophie’s hand. It wasn’t a friendly pat. He intertwined his fingers with hers and moved closer.

  Matt glanced in the rearview mirror. “You taking two dates to the party, Alex?” he aske
d lightly.

  “No, just getting beyond this curve.”

  “It’s always scared me,” Sophie explained.

  “When we used to ride our bikes down here to fish,” Alex said, “she’d make me go the long way so we wouldn’t have to take the curve.”

  We started around the bend, which began slowly, then sharply doubled back on itself. I looked over my shoulder and saw Sophie close her eyes.

  “Thanks, Al,” she murmured when the road straightened out again.

  I stared at her wonderingly. I had been so caught up in Thomas and Avril, I hadn’t thought about anyone else from their time. Avril’s best friend had been Angel, and Angel had died on the curve that Sophie feared to the point of being phobic. Sophie said she felt a “connection” with me. Was it an old friendship she sensed? Angel had lost her love in the war, so she and Sam Tighe were another case of a couple separated too soon.

  I felt surrounded by ghosts, trapped in the events of the past.

  “Are you okay?” Matt asked.

  When Sophie didn’t answer, I did. “She’s fine.”

  “I was talking to you.”

  I glanced up at him. “Me? Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Megan,” he said gently, “look at your hands.”

  I did, then made them lie quiet in my lap.

  “I didn’t think my driving was that bad,” he remarked.

  “Here it is,” Alex called from the backseat.

  The turn off took us all the way down to Wist Creek. By the time I climbed out of the Jeep, I’d pulled myself together.

  Kristy’s house was huge with long sloping roofs, wide wooden beams, and amazing spans of glass. The four of us walked into a two-story foyer lit by a globe chandelier.

  “Hey, guys! Come on in,” Kristy called, her voice carrying from another room. Then she came through the archway and saw Sophie and me. For a long moment she didn’t say anything-she didn’t have to. The dramatic way she stopped and blinked her eyes let us know she couldn’t believe that we had come.

  “Well, hello. This is a surprise.”

  “I told you we were bringing dates,” Matt said.

  “Yes, but you didn’t-well, never mind.”

  Didn’t say you were bringing them, I filled in the blanks.

  “Come on, party’s in the back. I haven’t seen you for such a long time, Sophie,” Kristy said and took her by the arm.

  Alex and Matt waited for me.

  The party, which started in the kitchen and family room, where Kristy’s parents were, spread to a wide double-level deck, then spilled out on the lawn below, ending at the dock on the creek. Music blasted from the deck and groups of kids sat on blankets in the grass. It was all pretty laid back.

  When Alex and I stopped to talk to some kids on the deck steps, Matt moved on with Sophie and Kristy. Alex introduced me to a guy and girl who had camped in Colorado and loved white-water rafting as much as I did, and after that, a girl who worked for a vet and wanted to be one. It would have been a great party if I hadn’t had so many strange ideas and questions running through my mind—and if it hadn’t been Kristy’s.

  “You’re frowning,” Alex observed, his eyes following mine.

  I was watching Kristy. “You’d think she was Sophie’s best friend,” I said indignantly. “But I know what she’s doing. She’s using Sophie, and then she’s going to ditch her. All Kristy wants to do is flirt with Matt.”

  “That’s all a lot of girls want to do,” Alex replied with a smile. We walked down the hill toward the creek. “How about you?”

  “How about me what?”

  “Are you interested in Matt?” he asked.

  “He’s my cousin.”

  “Sort of,” Alex reminded me.

  My laugh sounded fake. I quickly changed the subject. “Want to go out on the dock?”

  “You’re asking me? The closer to the water, the better,” he said.

  We walked to the end, about thirty feet offshore. The dock’s pilings were lit with small lights that drew lavender circles on the dark water.

  I asked Alex about catching crabs, about how you chicken neck and set a trot line, the things that Sophie had mentioned.

  “You and Sophie really hit it off,” he observed, sounding happy about it.

  I nodded. “I’ve known her only a couple days, but it seems like we’ve always been friends.”

  I couldn’t believe that had popped out of my mouth. Coincidence, I told myself; you’re reading into things.

  “She can be the best friend in the world,” Alex replied fervently, then gazed in her direction.

  She and Matt were standing by a table beneath a string of colored lanterns. Sophie talked and Matt bent his head, smiling, listening intently to her. For a moment I wondered what it would be like to have Matt smiling at me, as entranced as he seemed right then. I snuffed out that thought. Sophie was interested in Matt, and if the two of them got together, it would be the best thing that could happen.

  At that moment Kristy moved in. Talk about rude! There were three guys standing close by, waiting to help her set up food, but apparently it was Matt’s help that she wanted-Matt’s attention.

  Alex threw his head back and laughed. “Megan, if you were a cat, your back would be arched and your fur standing on end.”

  I grimaced. “My father says I wear my heart on my sleeve.”

  “No, just your thoughts,” Alex replied softly. “It’s pretty easy to guess what you’re thinking. But your heart, you keep that hidden.”

  “Sometimes even I’m not sure what’s there,” I admitted.

  He smiled and gave me a friendly hug. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s okay.”

  When Alex let go, I saw that Matt was staring at us.

  “Hey, they’re putting out food,” Alex said. “Stay where you are. I’ll get some and we’ll have a picnic out here.”

  “Great!”

  He started off and I turned away from the party to gaze out at the creek. With a late-rising moon and no street lamps nearby, the stars were brilliant. Close to the dock the water rippled, then lay quiet again, hiding the creatures that moved beneath its surface. The darkness was beautiful; the secrets it held, enticing.

  A few minutes later I heard Alex coming back.

  “I wish I could visit here in the summer,” I said, “and swim in the creek at night.”

  “Do you?”

  I turned around quickly when I heard his voice. “I thought you were Alex!”

  Matt gazed long and hard at me. “He’ll be back. I came out to let you know that Sophie is having a good time, so you can stop worrying. You can stop watching her.”

  “I guess I’m being obvious.”

  “I told you I’d look out for her,” he said.

  “I’m glad she’s having fun. She’s really nice and really pretty and, uh, Matt, mind if I give you some advice?”

  “You’re going to anyway.”

  “I know you’re like-well-the main heartthrob of your school.”

  His expression changed. He seemed surprised, then amused. “Really,” he said.

  “I know you can have any girl you want.”

  “I can? I wish someone had told me that before. Any girl?” He took a step toward me. We were standing close, too close, but I couldn’t step back-there was no dock left behind me. “Anyone at this party?”

  “Well, just about,” I told him.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “A moment ago there weren’t limits.”

  “Don’t be greedy. My point is, there’s Sophie.” I gestured toward the shore, but he kept his eyes on me. “She likes you. She’s gorgeous-1 mean you must have noticed yesterday at the shop.”

  “I can see.”

  “Obviously, Kristy is, too. Gorgeous, I mean.”

  He tilted his head to one side, frowning.

  “The point is Sophie is not only pretty, like some girls, she is also nice, friendly, sweet, and-”

  “Not my type,” he said.

&nbs
p; “And,” I continued, undeterred, “she doesn’t have a mouth.”

  His gaze dropped down to my mouth. I glanced to the side. When I looked back, he was still gazing at me, his eyes dark and mysterious as the creek. His lips parted slightly. He looked so long and so steadily at my mouth, my cheeks burned and heart pounded. I felt his eyes making my lips soft. I felt as if his eyes were kissing me.

  “Not like yours,” he agreed, then turned and walked back to shore.

  fourteen

  For the rest of the party I was careful not to look at Matt and Sophie, but Alex picked up where I had left off. I wondered if he was becoming interested in his best old friend. The ride home was awkward, our conversation mostly dumb cracks about Kristy’s house. After dropping off Alex and Sophie, Matt and I rode in silence.

  I was aware of his every movement, the way he shifted in his seat, how his hand rested on the steering wheel. Why did I respond to him so strongly? Even when Matt was his most obnoxious, the day I met him, his eyes had cast a spell on me. Had we once been in love? Was I falling for him a second time?

  At home I thanked him for the ride and headed for the refuge of my room.

  Having slept little the night before, I drifted off as soon as I lay down. When my eyes opened again, the sky was beginning to lighten. I heard the chime of the clock on the stairway landing and counted the hours-five, six, seven-l turned over-eight, nine, ten-couldn’t be-eleven, twelve, thirteen. Silence.

  My digital alarm read 5:00 A.M. I listened for a moment, then climbed out of bed and tiptoed to the door of my room. Opening it, I saw the stairwell was lit from below. I crept down the steps to the landing and gazed at the clock’s pale face. Its hands pointed to a few minutes after midnight. In the window above the numbers, the picture of the moon was halfway up.

  Using the key, I opened the glass door that protected its face. Though I could hear the clock ticking, its hands didn’t move. With the tip of one finger, I tried to push the large hand forward. It would not move, so I eased it counterclockwise till the clock read a few minutes after five. I thought I had set things right, then I noticed the small second-hand dial in the clock’s face. Its wand flicked backward over each lash of a second. Ever so slowly the clock’s minute hand moved in reverse. Time was turning in the wrong direction.