“So think about it,” I told her. “We’ll do whatever you want to do.”
“Sophie, don’t go anywhere,” Ginny said. “I need a favor.
Would you put on this dress and let me take your picture?”
“The pearl dress? Oh, my gosh!” Sophie gasped.
“I think that’s a yes,” I said.
Ginny undid the buttons and removed the dress from the form. “Let’s see now,” she said, talking to herself more than us, “we’re going to need some shoes, and let’s put your hair up on your head, so a nice comb, soft ivory pearls for that red hair.” Ginny picked up an armful of items, then ushered Sophie to the dressing room in the back.
I served two customers, waiting for Sophie to come out.
When the bells hanging on the shop door jingled a third time, I looked up to see Alex and Matt in their running clothes.
“Let me guess,” I said, “you’re interested in lace hankies.”
Alex grinned. “Do you have any that match our shorts?”
“White goes with everything,” I replied.
Matt flashed a smirky, flirty smile.
“So, what’s up?”
“Have you talked to Sophie?” Alex asked. “Does she want to go to the party?”
“She’s still deciding.” I heard Ginny’s voice coming from the back. “If you wait a minute, you can ask her yourself.”
Ginny emerged from the dressing room, followed by Sophie. I don’t know who was more amazed at the sight of the other, Alex or Sophie.
“Nice dress!” Matt complimented Sophie.
The silk and slender pearls were as shimmering and delicate as Sophie herself. Her upswept hair showed off her high cheekbones and long neck. The aquamarine pendant was the same misty blue as her eyes. Neither Alex nor Matt could stop looking at her.
“Sophie,” Alex said, “for a minute I didn’t know you. You, uh, you’ve grown up.”
She frowned. “Since math class? You saw me in math today, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” He reddened. “I guess it’s the dress and all.”
“No,” Ginny corrected him, “it’s the girl in the dress and all. Okay, honey, let’s get your picture over here.”
Alex, for once, had been left speechless, so Matt took care of their mission. “Are we on for tomorrow night?” he asked Sophie.
She glanced at me.
“It’s your call,” I said.
She smiled. “Sure.”
Matt volunteered to drive and arranged pickup times, then the guys left. I watched Ginny pose Sophie, thinking that if her camera could catch the glow on Sophie’s face, it was a sure sale.
When Sophie had changed back into her school clothes, I took a break and walked her over to the Mallard. As soon as we were on the street, I told her about my conversation with Mrs. Riley.
“It’s starting to really scare me, Sophie,” I said. “I wake up in a room-1 guess I sleepwalked-and find out it was Avril’s.
Things are moved to where they were when Avril was alive. I dream of a place I’ve never seen, then see it for real-the mill where Avril and Thomas used to meet, where she went the night she died. I feel like she’s haunting me.”
“I wonder why she’d choose you,” Sophie mused, “other than the fact that you may be psychic,” she added slyly.
“I think it’s happening to Grandmother, too. I know the relocation of things is getting to her.”
“And Matt?”
“He knows something he’s not telling me. And he wants me to leave.”
We were standing in front of the window of Tea Leaves.
Jamie passed by inside and waved to us.
“Did Miss Lydia say anything about how Avril died?”
Sophie asked.
When I recounted both versions of the event, Sophie’s eyes lit up. “Maybe Avril is trying to set the story straight.
There are lots of stories of murder victims haunting people and places until the truth is known.”
“The death was an accident,” I reminded her.
“Maybe,” she replied, and walked on to a bench in front of the Mallard.
I sat down with her. There was one thing I’d been holding off telling her, and I needed to get it out.
“I saw the ghost.”
Her eyes opened wide. “You did? When? Where?”
“A couple nights ago, in the upstairs hall. I saw her in the mirror.”
Sophie got a funny look on her face. “In the mirror?”
I nodded. “She looked like a mist.”
Sophie gazed down at the sidewalk, tracing the shape of a brick with her toe. “Have you ever seen her outside the mirror?”
“No, but I saw her only once.”
“When you passed the mirror,” Sophie said.
“Ye-ah. .” She was making me uneasy. “What is it?”
“Megan, the way you talked about your dreams, I thought you were seeing the future or tapping into your mother’s past. But maybe that’s not it. What if you’ve been remembering places and objects that you saw in your own past?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if you’re Avril-reincarnated?”
I pulled back. “Now you’re getting weird.”
“It makes sense,” she argued. “When you returned to your old house, you instinctively went to your old room. You put your clock back where you kept it. Since the mill was important to you, you noticed a painting of it that seemed out of place.”
“Are you saying I moved those things?”
“While you were sleepwalking,” Sophie replied. “It probably happened more than once.”
I shook my head.
“Avril died when she was a teen,” Sophie went on, “and that makes it all the more likely. Reincarnation is a chance to complete what’s unfinished in a previous life. For instance, if two lovers-”
“I’ve seen the movies and know what it is,” I said, cutting her off. “A woman gets hypnotized, then remembers bizarre stuff from another century. I’m just having dreams.”
“They’re the same thing,” she replied, “memories buried in the unconscious. They come out in different ways, that’s all. Sometimes when a person has experienced a tragic death, there is a symptom of it in the next life. Say a girl died in a fire. In her next life, just seeing a candle being lit might frighten her. Her phobia comes from a memory buried in the unconscious.”
“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 outof-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?”