Stranger in the Mirror [Shades of Heaven] (Soul Change Novel) (2 page)

There was a strange light in his eyes, deep and protective. “If you need anything, anything at all, let me know.” He didn’t leave. “I know you’re not in a talkative mood, but why haven’t you asked about the baby? Even Dr. Toby expected you’d be worried.”

She could only give him a blank expression. Was there a baby in the house?

His shoulders drooped, and he stepped closer. “Don’t you even remember that you’re pregnant?”

She slid off the edge and fell into a heap on the dark green carpet. “P-pregnant?” she croaked out, then realized she’d broken her silence.

Jesse pulled her to her feet and helped her back on the bed. His green eyes held a mixture of confusion and surprise. He still gripped her hands in his, kneeling in front of her.

“Thank God you can still talk.” He gently touched the bruises that ringed her neck, causing an aching tingle. “Dr. Toby was concerned that your vocal cords were damaged.” He removed his hand and looked intently at her. “Did you really forget about the baby?”

Her stomach flip-flopped as she tried her best to compose herself. Could he tell that her hands were shaking within the confines of his grasp? She took a deep breath, hoping for some divine intervention in the form of a real good reason his revelation had shocked her into talking. Damn, but this complicated matters, even more than they were.

“The past is… muddled right now,” she whispered in a hoarse, strange voice. Her hand slipped from his and touched her nearly flat stomach. “Are you sure?”

“You’re only two months pregnant. Didn’t the doc tell you that the baby was all right?”

She shrugged. “She might have, I don’t know. My head was spinning most of the time.” She covered her mouth. “Oh gawd, I’m pregnant.”

“Maybe I’d better call Dr.—”

“No,” she blurted out. “I—I’ll be fine. Really. Just give me some time.”

“Time,” he repeated with a nod. “All right, but this not remembering stuff is scary, Marti. Maybe your brain was deprived of oxygen for too long.”

“My brain is fine.” It was, wasn’t it? She did some math problems in her head. Remembered a joke about a priest and a frog in a bar, her first kiss in third grade. Her self-absorbed mother. She shuddered. She’d sure like to forget that woman.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” He’d been watching her ruminations, no doubt.

No, not okay
. She nodded, then walked into the adjacent bathroom so he wouldn’t see the panic in her eyes. Her heart sank when she saw the stranger in the mirror. She had looked at her reflection a hundred times in the last day and a half. The swelling was going down, making the purple bruises look more pronounced. One bruise, or mark, really, appeared different from the others. It looked like a sideways “V” with two small marks below it. A sharp object had broken the skin.

Oh, how I wish this were all a nightmare, and if I screamed, I would wake up in my bedroom with pounding heart and realize it was all over. Then I’d only have to worry about the obsessive, crazy Mick. But it’s not a nightmare, is it?
She’d pinched herself so many times red marks lined her arm.

She had to remember a life she had not participated in. Or run like hell from this place. But run where? Home to her husband, Jamie, and tell him that she had somehow ended up in the body of another woman, a
pregnant
woman?

She thought of her real husband back in her real life. It had been two months since then for him, during which she had lived in some abyss. She couldn’t dare to hope that he missed her, nor could she dare blame him if he didn’t.

Jesse flipped on the television and settled onto the couch. The room was dark except for the bluish glow from the set. Two weeks ago, he had married a woman he hardly knew because she had manipulated him into getting her pregnant.

He couldn’t deny the protective instincts this attack on her aroused, but he didn’t much like them. Could she have staged the whole thing to elicit sympathy from him? He shook his head. No, she wasn’t gutsy enough to pull off something like that.

Through the night, he kept shifting, twisting, sighing deeply every time he realized he wasn’t asleep. It didn’t take much to put him on alert, even the sound of quiet footsteps walking past him and the
snick
of the front door. Had he really heard Marti go outside alone, after what she’d been through?

Swinging to an upright position, he eyed the digital clock: 5:49. He located his jeans and slid into them as he walked toward the window. He spotted her silhouette on one of the swings that hung from the large oak tree out front.

She was slumped over, using her toe in the dirt to move slowly back and forth. He watched her for a while, trying to imagine what it would feel like to be overpowered and attacked in such a vicious way. He couldn’t. What he really wanted to do was find the son-of-a-bitch and rip him apart. His hand clenched with the need for that, the fury.

He glanced at the clock again: 6:10. He wasn’t going to let her wallow in self-doubt or whatever else she was dealing with any longer. He walked out into the damp, foggy morning.

“What the devil are you doing out here by yourself?”

She shrugged, staring down at the toe that kept her swing moving. He dropped down in the swing next to hers. They sat in silence as the early morning glow filtered through the oak trees. She looked at him for a few minutes, studying him. He held her gaze, wishing he could read her eyes. There was something different about her, but of course, there would be, given her recent trauma.

“Do you believe in God?” she asked.

He narrowed his eyes. “Sure, I do. Do you?”

“I do now.”

“You think it was God who helped you get away from the… creep who attacked you?”

“It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

He wasn’t following her, but he wanted her to get out her anxieties. “Sometimes near-death experiences bring people closer to God, or give them religion when they didn’t have it before.”

She laughed, a strange, thick sound. “I’m not talking about a near-death experience.” She pressed a clenched fist against her lips. “What do you think happens to people when they die?”

“They go to Heaven. Or hell.” He shrugged. “But you didn’t die.”

“Do you think it’s really cut and dried like that? I mean, is your only choice Heaven or hell, or is there another option?”

He shrugged. “Catholics believe in Purgatory, so I guess that’s a possibility.”

She studied him again, as if weighing whether to go on. “What if a person dies, but they don’t go to Heaven or hell. They wake up and are alive … but they’re not in their body anymore.”

“Marti, you’re not making sense.”

“Humor me.
If
that happened, what would you think had occurred?”

Something had gotten knocked loose in her brain. “It couldn’t happen.”

She bit her bottom lip, shaking her head. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

“Marti, what you’re saying is crazy. It would be incredible, amazing.”

“But God can do anything, right?”

“I guess, sure. But things like that don’t happen.”

“Yes, they do. Something crazy, incredible, and amazing happened to me. I don’t know why, but it did.” She took a deep breath, muttering what he thought was, “‘Cause I sure didn’t deserve it.” She spoke louder and enunciated each word, as though he were slow. “I am not Marti. My name is Hallie DiBarto, I’m from California, and I’m married to a man named Jamie.”

She might as well have been speaking a foreign language as far as he was concerned. It had to be delirium. Encouraged by his silence, she continued.

“Two months ago something happened inside my brain, and I died. I think God gave me a second chance here, in this body, this life.” She gestured vaguely around her.

There was no hint of craziness about her, no dilated pupils, but she was sure talking crazy.

“You’ve been through a lot. It’s just the stress—”

She stood and faced him, taking the chains of his swing in her hands. “It is not stress. I know it sounds crazy, it
is
crazy.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “But it’s true.”

“Wait a minute, let me understand this.” He ran his fingers through disheveled hair, trying to make his brain understand. “You’re saying that you’re someone totally different in Marti’s body?” He was trying to put it together, but it sounded so… she had the right word: crazy. “That you died and came back in Marti’s body?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

He stood and paced a few feet before turning to face her. She dropped into her swing again and twisted nervously, watching his reaction.

“If you’re really some woman from California, then where’s Marti?”

She touched the bruises around her neck. “I don’t know. She must be dead.”

“Nolen Rivers swore you were dead when he found you by the side of the road, but—no, it’s crazy. I’m calling Dr. Toby—”

“No!” she said as loud as her hoarse voice could manage. “There’s nothing she can do about it. Do you think I’d make something like this up?”

“The problem is you believe it.”

She looked so fragile, sitting on the swing with desperation in her eyes. Like a battered doll. But it couldn’t be true. Yet, it could explain why she didn’t know she was pregnant. And why she didn’t look at him with annoying adoration the way she had before the attack. He shook his head.

She stood and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, it doesn’t matter if you believe me or not, I won’t be around much longer anyway.”

He realized then that the woman before him was like a stranger. Those were not Marti’s words. “What do you mean by that? Where are you going?”

“Probably home to California. I can’t stay here. I’m married to someone else, for Pete’s sake, and I don’t even know you.”

Those words made him smile. “You didn’t know me before the attack either, doll.” The endearment had slipped by.

She relaxed her tensed shoulders. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “I hardly knew you before we had sex. It just sorta happened, and you said you were on the pill to make your periods lighter. A month later, you were pregnant. That was two weeks ago.”

She seemed to absorb that. “She tricked you into getting her pregnant?”

“
You
tricked me into getting you pregnant. At least you finally admitted it.”

She let out a sound of exasperation. “I’m not admitting it. As bad as I was, I would never have used a baby to snag a guy.”

“Marti, enough of this bizarre conversation. Let’s go inside.”

After breakfast, Hallie watched him clear away the dishes. “Tell me about Marti. What was she like?”

He bowed his head. “Marti, this conversation is making me crazy.” He looked at her. “You work at the Bad Boys Diner with my sister, Caty. She brought you home for dinner at my Ma’s a few times. You were quiet, nice enough.”

“How’d you, um, get with her?” she asked, interested in knowing everything she could about the girl who used to be Jesse’s wife. “I mean, if you didn’t know her very well.”

Exasperation saturated his expression. “One night after dinner, you looked like you really wanted to talk, and Caty had to take off for class. So we picked up a six-pack of beer and headed down to the river. You were lonely, weren’t making many friends. You got another six-pack; we kept talking. We were both full-out buzzed when you leaned over and kissed me. That’s how it started.”

Hallie rolled her eyes. “Sounds romantic.”

“Drunk sex is never romantic.” He stuck his hands in his jean pockets, tilting his head. “Marti, are you doing this because you want out of the marriage? Because if that’s what you’re after, you don’t have to make up all this crazy stuff—”

“You still think I’m making this up? How can I prove to you that it’s real?”

“Why don’t you call home, this place in California where you supposedly came from? You’ve got to have family there, someone who knows you.”

Home. What was home to her anyway?

She dropped back onto the chair. “Oh, sure, and say, ‘Hey, remember me? I died, but now I’m in some other body in some godforsaken town in Florida.’” She felt a frown stretch her mouth. “Besides, there is no home. My mom’s a bitch; I’ve never even met my father.” Her tears, previously pent-up with disbelief, slipped down her cheeks. “I was a lousy wife.” She sat up, facing Jesse. “Look at me. I’m a brunette, shorter… and pregnant! How can I tell them I’m alive? They’ll think I’m crazy.”

He raised an eyebrow. “No-o-o, why would they think something like that?”

“I thought you would understand.”

He laughed in disbelief. “You thought I would buy a zany story like this just because you say it’s true? I could tell you I’m the ghost of Elvis. Would you believe me?”

“Where’s the phone, oh, king of rock and roll?” she snapped.

Jesse got a phone from the living room and handed it to her. He was waiting for her to make the call. Testing her. If she talked to Jamie, told him who she was, would he believe her or slam the phone down? Would anyone believe her? Another look at Jesse’s smug expression prompted her to start pressing buttons.

First, she called the mansion in California. Solomon, the butler, sleepily informed her that Jamie was at Caterina. Jesse leaned against the doorframe, watching her with curiosity. She punched in the number for Caterina.

“‘Mornin’, Caterina,” a sing-song voice answered.

“Jamie DiBarto’s office, please.”

“Certainly, one moment.”

The accent brought back memories that seemed like days ago.

“Good morning, may I help you?”

Hallie’s heart stopped mid-jump when she realized it wasn’t Jamie’s voice. Her hands didn’t stop shaking, however.

“May I speak to Jamie DiBarto, please?” her hoarse voice whispered. It was Miguel, Jamie’s brother.

“He’s out on the boat all day at Stingray Point. Can I—”

“Stingray Point?”

“Yeah, his wife started swimming with the stingrays on the west end, and now it’s our biggest attraction. If you’re adventurous—”

She choked out the words, “H-his wife?”

“Yeah.” Miguel’s tone lowered. “Is there something I can help you with?”