“1902?”
“That’s right.”
“Interesting.”
“You haven’t heard the best part,” Polly said, the eagerness of a gossip-monger in her voice. “Seems that back in 1905, the night before Millie’s sixteenth birthday party, Mrs. Parker was in the kitchen, decorating a big cake for the girl. Millie snuck in behind her and stabbed her in the back four times.”
Unthinking, Paul snapped the pencil he’d been holding ever since he’d written Polly’s name on the note pad. One broken piece popped out of his hand, spun across the top of the desk, and fell to the floor.
“She stabbed her own mother?” he asked, hoping that he had not heard correctly.
“Isn’t that something?”
“Kill her?” he asked numbly.
“No. Dr. Maugham says that according to the newspaper accounts at that time, the girl used a short bladed knife. It didn’t sink in far enough to do really major damage. No vital organs or blood vessels were affected. Louise Parker—that was the mother’s flame—managed to grab a meat cleaver from a kitchen rack. She tried to hold the girl off with that. But I guess Millie must have been completely off her rocker, ‘cause she charged straight at Mrs. Parker again, and Mrs. Parker had to use that cleaver.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah,” Polly said, obviously enjoying his shocked reaction. “Dr. Maugham says she put that cleaver right into her daughter’s throat. Pretty much cut the girl’s head clear off. Isn’t that a terrible thing? But what else could she do? Just let the kid go on jabbing that knife into her?”
Stunned, Paul thought about yesterday’s hypnotic regression therapy session, which Carol had recounted for him in some detail. He remembered the part about how Jane had claimed to be Millicent Parker and had insisted on writing out her answers to questions and had written that she was unable to talk because her head had been cut off.
“Are you still there?” Polly asked.
“Oh. Uh… sorry. Is there more to the story?”
“More?” Polly asked. “Wasn’t that enough?”
“Yes,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. That was enough. More than enough.”
“I don’t know if this information is of any help to Dr. Tracy.”
“I’m sure it will be.”
“I don’t see how it could have anything to do with the girl she brought in here with her yesterday.”
“Neither do I,” Paul said.
“I mean, that girl can’t be Millicent Parker. Millicent Parker has been dead for seventy-six years.”
* * *
In the study, Grace stood at her desk, looking down at the open dictionary.
REINCARNATION (re’-in-kár-na’shen), n. 1. the doctrine that the soul, upon death of the body, comes back to earth in another body or form. 2. rebirth of the soul in a new body. 3. a new incarnation or embodiment, as of a person.
Bunk? Nonsense? Superstition? Bullshit?
At one time, not long ago, those were all the words she would have used to write her own irreverent definition of reincarnation. But not now. Not any longer.
She closed her eyes, and with only the slightest effort, she was able to bring back the image of the burning house. She wasn’t just envisioning it; she was there, hammering with her fists on the cellar door. She was not Grace Mitowski now; she was Rachael Adams, Laura’s aunt.
The fire scene was not the only part of Rachael’s life that she could recall with perfect clarity. She knew the woman’s most intimate thoughts, her hopes and dreams and hates and fears, shared her most closely held secrets, for those thoughts and hopes and dreams and fears and secrets had been her own.
She opened her eyes and needed a moment to refocus them on the present-day world.
REINCARNATION
She closed the dictionary.
God help me, she thought, do I really believe it? Can it be true that I’ve lived before? And that Carol’s lived before? And the girl they’re calling Jane Doe?
If it was true—if she had been permitted to recall her previous existence as Rachael Adams in order to save Carol’s life in this incarnation—then she was wasting valuable time.
She picked up the phone to call the Tracys, wondering how in God’s name she was going to make them believe her.