Mrs. Riley reentered the room and set two cups on the table. “It’s cinnamon apple.”
“Thank you,” I said, then sipped the fragrant tea.
“Do you know anything about karma?” she asked.
“I’ve heard of it.”
“It is the belief that we are rewarded or punished in one life according to our deeds in a previous life.” She held her cup in both hands and gazed at her tea as if reading it, then took a long drink. “Karma is just,” she said. “According to it, the victim of an unnatural death will return in a later life and seek out the killer.”
“Seek out the killer?” I repeated.
“It’s justice, dear. If you take away someone’s life, then in the next cycle, your life will be taken by that person. The victim will kill the murderer.”
I stared at her. Did she know what I suspected?
“You’re remembering, aren’t you,” she said quietly.
I sipped my tea, avoiding her eyes.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice soothing. “Avril, tell me what you are remembering.”
“I had a dream,” I said at last. “Helen was very angry at me. She threatened me, said I would pay. But that doesn’t mean anything,” I added quickly. “Brothers and sisters say that all the time without meaning it.”
“True enough,” the psychic replied. “Do you remember anything else-anything from the day you died?”
“No.”
“And yet you are remembering more and more,” she said.
“I don’t know how to advise you.” She rose from the table and walked restlessly around the room. “I have my suspicions. To speak them may influence a clear memory.
Not to may endanger you. You know that Helen came to see me yesterday.”
I ran my finger around the moist rim of my cup. “Yes.”
“I warned you, child, not to tell her you were here.”
“But I didn’t. Someone in the café must have told her.”
“Can you trust your cousin?” Mrs. Riley asked. “YouVe hesitating. That tells me you can’t.”
“He’s very protective of Grandmother.”
Her hands worked nervously. “Then it would be foolish and dangerous to trust him.”
“Why?”
“He’s loyal to her, dependent on her money, and you fear the same thing I do-that you were murdered by Helen.”
For a moment the raw statement of my suspicion shocked me. I struggled to think clearly.
“But if I was the victim in my past life,” I reasoned, “I’m the one who is the threat now. According to karma, Avril would destroy her murderer-that’s what you said. And I would never hurt my grandmother.”
“The act does not have to be intentional.”
“But what if I make sure I don’t hurt her?” I argued. “What if I leave and never come back?”
Was that why Matt wanted me to go? Did he know more about this than he pretended?
“Karma is karma,” Mrs. Riley responded. “There is only one thing that can prevent the victim from achieving justice.”
“What?”
“Her own death.”
I looked at her, startled. “You mean, dying a second time?
You mean my death?”
“Now you understand why you must remember what happened that day. Just because you would not hurt others, doesn’t mean others won’t hurt you, not when it comes to saving themselves. You must find out your enemy.”
My mouth went dry. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. “I can’t will myself to remember. I’m not psychic like you or Sophie. I have no control-the dreams come when they want to.”
Mrs. Riley came back to the table. “Today is the anniversary of Avril’s death,” she said, her voice calm, steadying me. “There is a window of time when the past will be open to you. Can you get to the mill?”
“Yes.”
“Go straightaway. Walk around it, breathe it, touch it.
Listen to its sounds, let it become part of your life again. Go inside and make yourself quiet there, let the past come back to you. Your life depends on it.”
I sat still as a stone.
Her brow creased, then she rested her veined hand gently on mine. “Finish your tea, child, then hurry. You haven’t much time if you want to be home before dark.”
I didn’t run fast, but when I reached the mill, I was out of breath and had a stitch in my side. I walked slowly around the building, waiting for the pain to ease, mulling over what I had learned from Mrs. Riley. If Grandmother had murdered Avril, then I, the reincarnated Avril, was destined to take Grandmother’s life. Did she know that? When she had gone to see Mrs. Riley, what had they talked about?
Grandmother would never harm me, I told myself. But then I thought, if she murdered her own sister, how hard would it be to do away with a grandchild, an adopted grandchild?
With sixty long years in between, another accident would not seem suspicious. And she could count on Matt to protect her.
Matt’s attitude toward me had changed in the short time between our first meeting and that moment on the dock.
Had he exploited my attraction to him to keep tabs on me?
“Tell me,” he’d said later, holding my face gently in his hands, seeming as if he wanted to help. Perhaps all he wanted was information and to keep me from looking further. I was more determined than ever to find out what had happened in this place.
Breathe it, touch it, listen to its sounds, Mrs. Riley had said. I pulled on the long grass, feeling its sharp edges. I took a deep breath and smelled the salty water. The creek lapped gently, slipping between grasses and stones. The birds sounded exceptionally loud and sweet to me. I emptied my mind of everything but the mill and felt as if I were walking in a dream.
Since I had left both basement doors open, I entered the mill easily. I looked across the room at the wheels, then forced myself to go to them, to touch the biggest one. I wrapped my fingers around a metal tooth and gripped it hard. Rusted saws and metal circles that looked like disembodied steering wheels lay here and there. It wasn’t a cozy place for two people to meet. The next floor up would be drier and brighter, I thought.
I saw the stairway along one wall, the same as in my dream, like a tilted ladder with wide wooden treads and no handrail. I walked under it and pulled on each step to see if it would support my weight. One split in half and two others cracked, but they were spaced well enough for me to climb to the trapdoor.
When I was near the top of the steps, I pushed against a square piece of ceiling. The trapdoor was heavier than it looked. I managed to shove it up, swinging it back against a wall, carelessly assuming the door would stay. It slammed down on me. I was stunned by the force and clung to the top step, feeling dizzy. There were small, scurrying sounds-the mill’s residents.
Determined to get to the next floor, I pushed against the trapdoor again. Then I grabbed a long piece of wood and placed it diagonally between the floor and the hinged door to prop it open. I climbed through and looked around the first-floor space.
Though the windows were shuttered, crooked seams of light shown through cracks in the plank walls. In one corner of the room was a round iron stove, missing its chimney pipe. Barrels and bins, burlap bags gnawed apart by rats, and frayed rope were strewn about. Narrow chutes built in long rectangular sections with elbow joints looked like the arms of wooden people coming down through the ceiling.
The ceiling itself gaped with holes. The trapdoor above the stairs to the second floor appeared to be open. Gazing up into it, I suddenly felt light-headed.
I found a millstone, half of a pair used for grinding, and sat on it. Closing my eyes, I ran my hands over its rough surface, feeling the long, angled ridges. Waves of confused images and sensations washed over me: the sound of voices, Thomas’s face, Matt’s, the clock chiming, the sound of engines, my name being called, footsteps against a hard surface. I wasn’t sure what was inside my mind and what was outside. I couldn’t tell what was then and what was now, when I was Avril and when I was Megan. Everything seemed real but distorted, the sounds and images stretched at the edges.