Twisted By Love, Reincarnation Tales, Book 1 (29 page)

The plan had come to her as she drove through
the city. There was a place no one would ever find Bern’s phone or
the tire iron.

After crossing the bridge, she took the
steady climb up to Marin. She exited for the headlands, maneuvering
the car along the twisting road. At the top, she pulled into a
parking spot, then popped her trunk lid. She’d wiped off the end of
the iron, but there remained the possibility that the police could
still find a microscopic drop of blood, a hair, his skin. Who knew
what they could discover with all their tests.

Grabbing a canvas bag from the trunk, she
shoved the tire iron inside. Though she was alone, no other cars
for the moment, she wasn’t taking any risk of being seen with
it.

Following the path from the parking lot, she
passed no one. Though the sun was bright, the winds on the
headlands were cold, whipping her hair across her face. Her heels
teetered on the gravel path, and she wished she’d had some better
shoes in the trunk. Too late now. She hugged her purse and the
canvas bag close, as if they might be blown away from her.

Someone who cared about it would have found
the view of the bridge, the bay, and the city magnificent. All Toni
saw was Alcatraz. What a horrible, depressing place. She wouldn’t
do well in prison. But she needn’t worry about that.

As she reached the edge of the cliff, the fog
was beginning to slip over the top of the San Francisco hills.
First there was Bern’s phone. She found it at the bottom of her
purse.

“Really, you should have turned it off and
everything would have been fine,” she said aloud. But she’d so
enjoyed that frantic ringing every time Livie called. Once it had
stopped beeping for a reminder for his messages, she simply hadn’t
thought about it.

It was her only mistake. She’d correct that
now. Dropping it to the ground, she stomped on it, in case there
was something to that GPS chip thing which supposedly gave away a
cell phone’s location. She wasn’t taking any chances. Picking up
the pieces, she stepped closer to the edge to peek over. It wasn’t
a straight shot down, but craggy rocks and scraggly bushes.
Something might not make it all the way to the water if she just
dropped it. Toni tossed the pieces as far out as possible, then
glanced down. She couldn’t see any trace of the phone.

Pulling the canvas bag off her shoulder, she
was about to pull out the tire iron. Then she figured she could get
a much better wind-up by holding the handles of the bag itself.

She got a good grip, threw it back like a
baseball bat, then stepped into the throw, letting the bag fly far,
far out. But with the momentum, her foot kept going, the toe of her
shoe sliding on gravel. Her high heel snagged something.

She saw the bag sailing out across the ocean,
the tire iron falling from it, plummeting.

And Toni felt herself plummeting with it. She
might have screamed. No, she
was
screaming. She twisted and
grabbed, her fingers scrabbling for handholds. But all she found
were tufts of grass that gave way and rocks that cut deeply.

Then she was falling, falling, falling.

* * * * *

The day was gloriously bright, the Golden
Gate’s spires majestic against the blue sky, the sun sparkling
magnificently on the bay. The city landscape rose up the hills on
the far side, spots of sunlight reflecting in building windows.
Boats dotted the water, their colorful sails catching the stiff
breeze. Up here on the headlands, the wind howled, whipping Livie’s
hair about her face. Yet she stood Bern’s embrace.
He
was
her shelter.

He’d held her that day one week ago when they
officers came to say they’d found her sister’s body floating in the
bay. He’d held her through the questions and explanations. The
police believed it was suicide. Someone had reported what they
thought was a woman jumping off the cliff just outside the Golden
Gate. She’d hit the rocks below, then the waves had taken her out.
Toni’s abandoned car was found in the park’s lot. And in the
morning, a couple enjoying a sail on the bay had discovered her
body. She’d been identified through her dental records. Livie
couldn’t get the images out of her mind.

“She wouldn’t have killed herself,” she said
to Bern. In light of Toni’s history, the police had come to their
own conclusions, but Livie knew her sister. Her suicide attempt all
those years ago had been a calculated move to manipulate Livie.
This time? No. Unless she was afraid she’d go to prison. Except
Toni always figured she’d find a way out of whatever trouble she’d
gotten herself into.

“No, she wouldn’t,” Bern agreed. “She was up
here for another reason.” Getting rid of evidence, but something
had...gone wrong. Why Toni had driven all the way up here to do it,
God only knew.

They had come to this hill alone together.
Toni had no mourners. She hadn’t had any friends. Their mother
didn’t fly anymore, and the drive up from Palm Springs was too far.
She’d washed her hands of them both long ago, she’d just never said
the words. Julia would have attended if Livie had arranged a
memorial service, but she’d only have come for Livie, not for
Toni.

Livie wondered how someone could live for
thirty-three years and have no one to mourn them.

Even I don’t mourn her.
She’d voiced
the terrible thought only once in the days since Toni had died.
Bern had simply held her, murmuring meaningless words. The rumble
of his voice had been her comfort.

When the police released her body, which
would be within the next few days, Livie would have Toni cremated.
There would be no service, no formal scattering of ashes. This
moment was Livie’s memorial to her sister, to come to the place
where she’d fallen.

“I forgive you, Toni,” she said into the
bright afternoon sky. The wind whipped away her words, carrying
them high, high enough for Toni to hear. If Toni had been alive,
Livie couldn’t have said those words, not after finding Bern down
in that cellar. Nor could she say that she loved her sister. She
felt sad, angry, guilty, hurt, and, as awful as it sounded,
relieved, but she didn’t feel love toward Toni anymore.

Bern held her tucked beneath his arm. “It
wasn’t your fault.”

“I know.” Toni had chosen her own path. “If
you’d died—” She held that thought for a moment. If he’d died,
there could be no forgiveness. Yet he’d died so many times before,
and still they’d found each other again. If Toni had killed him,
he’d have come back to her eventually. “I wonder if this is the
first lifetime we actually have a future together.”

He pressed his lips in a slight smile. “We
could ask Suze to regress us.”

Livie laughed and shook her head. “God
forbid. I don’t want to know anymore.” But if they hadn’t learned
what they did, Toni might been able to do the job. It made her head
hurt to think of all the possibilities. “All I know is that I’m not
going to let Toni’s memory destroy us. We’ve found each other, and
I’m going to savor this lifetime with you.”

“Forever,” he said.

“And ever,” she agreed.

Epilogue

Wade’s house, the following weekend.

The house was dark and quiet. Bern tread
softly on the steps. He’d left Livie sleeping upstairs. His family
had taken to her, and she’d taken to them.

Heading for the kitchen, he noticed a
silhouette in the front window.

Opening the door, h expected to find Wade, or
even Clare, but it was Jake. “What are you doing out here? I
thought you’d gone home.”

“Contemplating,” Jake said simply.

“About what?”

Slouching on the porch swing, his arms over
his chest holding his thick flannel jacket closed, Jake gazed into
the dark night. “Life and death.”

“And reincarnation?” Bern asked as he sat
beside him.

His brother’s lips quirked in a half smile
tinged with sadness. “So you think Nana’s right, that Dorie’s
coming back soon.”

“I don’t know.” He thought about his next
words. He’d never believed Jake. Sometimes he’d even thought Jake
was completely off his rocker. But now he owed his brother the
truth. “But I do know about George and Myra.”

Jake laughed, the sound barely enough to
carry on the night air. “Don’t tell me you believe.”

“I do now. I’m sorry I never did when you
needed us to believe right along with you.”

His brother turned, the laughter gone, a look
in his brown eyes, pleading perhaps. No one had ever believed, no
one except their sister and an old lady with dementia. Wade never
would. He’d cling to the rational explanation. But Bern could give
Jake this,
his
belief in him.

“Things came to me down in that cellar.
Knowledge. Events I could know nothing about.”

“The skeleton behind the wall?” The find had
made the news. His family had discussed it and speculated.

But Bern
knew
. “Yes. Who he was and
how he got there.” He remembered the picture he’d put in his
pocket. He doubted it would have survived the years of decay.

After he’d been pulled out of the cellar, the
police had finished excavating. They’d knocked down the brick wall,
removed the hinges of the door behind it, and found a skeleton. On
the dirt floor of the dank cellar, the flesh had putrefied. There
was just bones, scraps of cloth still clinging to them. He tried
not to remember that it was
his
skeleton, but he’d be sure
to add to his will that he wanted to be cremated at the end of this
life. A forensic pathologist had taken possession of the remains
and would do a thorough examination to determine the sex of the
victim and the cause of death. That was the official version. The
unofficial version was that a man had been walled up in the cellar
after being killed by a blow with a blunt instrument. The skull was
crushed. No identification was found. He wondered what Betty had
done with the duffel bag. It would have made the most sense to
throw it in there with him. Not that an identification mattered.
Bern knew who it was. He would never find absolute proof, certainly
not enough to convince anyone else, but
he
knew. So did
Livie.

“I had a dream while I was down there.” He
shrugged. “Or a vision. Whatever you want to call it. About an
unhappy man and his wife around the time of the World War Two.”

“George and Myra?”

Bern shook his head. “George and Betty.”

“So who was Myra?”

“Betty’s sister. George’s lover.”

“A triangle?”

“Yeah.”

“Which one of them put him behind the
wall?”

“That would be Betty. Kind of stupid to kill
him at that point, since he was going off to war anyway. But she
got angry.”

What had Betty told Myra when she returned?
There would have been no farewell letter wedged in the rocks. She
would have believed he’d enlisted, probably to die on some Pacific
Island or a European battlefield. And Betty had driven her sister
mad with guilt.

They were silent for a time.

Jake broke it. “You were him? Or he was you?
Or...”

“I
know
it was me. I don’t have a
single doubt. I felt something when I saw that house and stood in
front of those cellar doors. Not déjà vu. This was an emotion.
Dread. Fear. Anger. Hatred.” He’d felt love, too, but not while he
was at the house. He’d experienced that down at the rock with
Livie.

“You really believe all that?”

“Yes. And I believe the sisters were Livie
and Toni. Toni tried to kill me all over again.”

Jake chewed on the inside of his bottom lip.
The wind rustled through the leaves as if it were whispering to
him, telling him things Bern couldn’t hear.

“So you came back together,” he finally said.
“All three of you.”

“Correct.”

Jake turned his head slowly. The sliver of
moon didn’t reach his eyes. “So that means I have to die before
Dorie can come back.”

“I don’t know.” How could anyone know? “But
if souls do come back time and again, why wouldn’t it also be
possible for you to meet the same soul twice in a lifetime? After
all, Nana says she knew George and Myra.”

Jake went back to his contemplation of the
trees. “Yeah. Why couldn’t it be possible.” It wasn’t a question;
it was a conviction.

###

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Will Dorie come back to Jake? Find out in
Haunted by Love, Reincarnation Tales, Book 2
.
Coming 2013.

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