A slow-moving truck appeared out of the mists ahead, and Paul passed it. For a moment the filthy spray from the truck’s big tires drummed on the side of the Pontiac, and the noise was too loud for Grace to speak above it.
When they had passed the truck, she said, “Since 1865, Laura has been pursuing revenge through at least two and probably three other lives. Reincarnation, Paul. Can you believe in that? Can you believe that in 1943, Laura Havenswood was a fifteen-year-old girl named Linda Bektermann and that the night before her sixteenth birthday she tried to kill her mother, who was Willa Havenswood reincarnated? It’s a true case. Linda Bektermann went berserk and tried to ax her mother to death, but her mother turned the tables and killed the girl instead. Laura didn’t get her revenge. And can you believe that Willa is now alive again and that she’s our Carol this time? And that Laura is alive again, too?”
“Jane?”
“Yes.”
Together, Carol and Jane cleaned the cabin in an hour and fifteen minutes. Carol was delighted to see that the girl was an industrious worker who took great pleasure in doing even a menial job well.
When they were finished, they poured two glasses of Pepsi to reward themselves, and they sat in the two big easy chairs that faced the mammoth fireplace.
“It’s too early to start cooking dinner,” Jane said.
“And it’s too wet out there to go for a walk, so what game do you want to play?”
“Anything that looks good to you is fine with me. You can look over all the stuff in our game closet and take your pick. But first, I think we really should get the therapy session out of the way.”
“Are we going to keep that up even on vacation?” the girl asked. She was clearly uneasy about it, though she had not been noticeably uneasy before, even on the occasion of the first session, the day before yesterday.
“Of course we’ve got to keep on with it,” Carol said. “Now that we’ve made a start, it’s best to continue working at it, pushing and probing a little bit every day.”
“Well… all right.”
“Good. Let’s turn these chairs around to face each other.”
The fire flickered off to one side, creating dancing shadows on the hearth.
Outside, the rain rattled ceaselessly through the trees and pattered on the roof, and Carol realized that it did sound like even more fire, as Jane had said, so that they seemed to be totally surrounded by the hiss and crackle of flames.
She needed only a few seconds to put Jane into a trance this time. But as had happened during the first session, the girl needed almost two minutes to regress to a period at which memories existed for her. This time the long silence didn’t disturb Carol as it had done before.
When the girl spoke at last, she used the Laura voice. “Mama? Is that you? Is that you, Mama?”
“Laura?”
The girl’s eyes were squeezed shut. Her voice was tight, tense. “Is that you? Is it you, Mama? Is it?”
“Relax,” Carol said.
Instead of relaxing, the girl became visibly more tense. She hunched her shoulders, fisted her hands in her lap. Lines of strain appeared in her forehead and at the corners of her mouth. She leaned away from the back of her chair, toward Carol.
“I want you to answer some questions,” Carol said. “But you must be calm and relaxed first. Now, you will do exactly as I say. You will unclench your fists. You will—”
“I won’t!”
The girl’s eyes popped open. She leapt up out of her chair and stood before Carol, quivering.
“Sit down, honey.”
“I won’t do what you say! I’m sick of doing what you tell me to do, sick of your punishments.”
“Sit down,” Carol said softly but forcefully.
The girl glared at her. “You did it to me,” she said in the Laura voice. “You put me down there in that awful place.”
Carol hesitated, then decided to flow with it. “What place do you mean?”
“You know,” the girl said accusingly. “I hate you.”