“But d’you know what else was a surprise, Mom? You taking Dad’s death so hard. The others are too young to remember, but you guys used to fight. A lot.”
“About your uncle! About how he was an irresponsible junkie shithead we all should have stayed away from.”
“Not just about— Well, yes, you fought about Dennis. But I remember Dad wanting some space, and you weren’t having it.”
She snorted. “He wanted a lot more than that, but this isn’t about him.”
Um. It’s not? Isn’t EVERYTHING about my dead dad?
“It’s about you wasting your life. It’s about how even though you know how I felt back then and how I still feel, you’re still trying to save Dennis! You’ve pissed away years trying to save someone who was always worthless. How can you do that?”
For several seconds, Angela could only gape at the enraged banana before her. “That’s why you withdrew from me? From all of us? Even Jack, and he was little more than a baby at the time! You’ve been . . . what? Sulking? ‘She’s ignoring my wishes, I’ll ignore hers’? For ten years? Seriously?”
The banana deflated. “I can never make you understand.”
Back atcha, Mom. “Did you ever like Uncle Dennis?” Angela remembered very little of pre-murder Dennis. Whenever she thought of him, post-murder Dennis was always at the forefront. As best she could recall, he’d been the fun uncle, the guy who was always up for anything. But to a kid, that could mean going to Dairy Queen after 9:00 p.m. How wild and crazy had he really been when she looked at him through the lens of time?
As if her mother could read her mind, she said, “He was always a pain in your father’s ass. And mine.”
Yes. That message is loud and that message is clear. “I know . . . I remember you used to tell us how jealous he was of Dad.”
Her mother shook her head. “It was more than envy. He wanted to be your father. And sometimes, your father wanted to be him, if you can believe it.”
Hmm. That was a new take on the old story. “I remember he was always happy to drop everything and have fun with us. Even when Jack was just a baby, he’d bundle us all in his car—”
“Your father’s old car. Which he took. Often without asking.”
“—and off we’d go.”
“Yes. So he could pretend he had what your father did.”
“Or maybe they were just brothers who shared their stuff?”
Mom shook her head.
“So all the fun things he did for us, they were only ever about him? Dennis never loved us because we were just symbols? Because that’s harsh, even for you.”
“No. Harsh is stealing what other people have and pretending it was yours all along. It’s almost as bad as just coveting what others have.”
Here was a well of bitterness Angela had never suspected. It was one thing to loathe your husband’s killer. It was another to realize the loathing had always been there, long before the murder. “For example?”
“Well.” Up came the hand again, fiddling, fiddling. The neck of her gown was starting to fray. “He—he ruined your father’s credit rating!”
“Thank God they locked him away, then. I feel safer already. Why didn’t you leave?”
“What?”
“You guys were fighting all the time about Dennis, why not pack us up and leave?”
“How can you ask that? I never would have left him. And he never would have left me.”
Angela started to reply when she suddenly had—not a recollection, exactly, but a piece of memory: her father standing in his bedroom doorway, holding a bulging suitcase.
Where did that come from? But the more she tried to pin it down, the faster it faded.
“You know what?” her mother was saying. “Never mind.” Her mother let go of the gown and held up her hands, palms out. “Forget I came in here. Forget we talked.” And just like that—poof. Meaningful, painful, long-overdue family discussion over. Exit Emma Drake.
Angela stared at the empty doorway for several seconds.
No, Mom, I won’t forget. That’s what you’ve been trying to do.
She got back to work.
FIFTEEN
OCTOBER 1846
HUMBOLT RIVER, NEVADA
Walk or die.
But he couldn’t walk.
So.
He’d known there were risks. Of course he had; he wasn’t born here, but almost five thousand miles away in Belgium. That journey had been fraught with peril and he had despaired of ever seeing land again. More than once he had dropped to his knees: Please help me in Your wise compassion, O Lord, please spare me an ocean grave and in Your mercy, guide me to land.
He had been heard and, at the time, was grateful to have been spared drowning, a bad death surrounded by hundreds of fellow passengers, all gasping and crying and praying, all fighting the sea.
Now he was surrounded by land stretching infinite miles in every direction, and he was alone. The Lord Almighty had answered his prayer with a vengeance that, under different circumstances, he would have found amusing.
He supposed he should pray and prepare for death, he supposed he should greet his Maker in as serene a state of mind as possible. Forgiving them—forgiving Lewis Keseberg—would be the Christian thing to do. It would prove John Snyder Hardkoop was worthy of a spot in heaven.
But.
John had spent hours trying to get serene, but every time he closed his eyes to pray, Keseberg was there, telling him to get out and walk, telling him the party in general and Keseberg in particular would not waste their precious, dwindling resources on a seventy-year-old immigrant. (An odd distinction, since Keseberg was himself an immigrant from Germany.) Warning him again when he collapsed beside the stream: Hardkoop would not be allowed to ride and no one would stay with him.
A true Christian would not ascribe sinister motivations behind Keseberg’s exhortations that he rise, that he walk, that he keep going. A good person would assume Keseberg was being encouraging in his blunt way, was trying to save him.
But Keseberg couldn’t hide the relief on his face when John didn’t move. He might as well have scrawled it on his forehead: More for the rest of us if he stays. More for me.*
Now, a day later, after he spent the night shivering and staring at the stars and mentally murdering Lewis Keseberg in several satisfying ways, he’d propped himself up beside the stream and contemplated his ruined feet. They’ve burst like overstuffed sausage casings, he thought dispassionately. But here was a blessing at last: The colder he got, the more tired, the more hungry, the more the pain receded.
What didn’t abate was his howling rage at being dismissed as a burden and abandoned. He simply could not get his mind serene. Dogs had been granted more dignified deaths than what he was facing.
He knew there was life beyond death. He knew that, one way or another, John Snyder Hardkoop would continue. And if it was the Lord’s will that he be born again, if another life was his burden or blessing, so be it.
But he would take every care in the next life: He would make himself valuable. Irreplaceable. Someone who would never be abandoned in a vast wilderness and left to die.
And if he ever ran into Lewis Keseberg, he would cheerfully murder the man.
Yes.
He closed his eyes. It would be over soon, surely.
SIXTEEN
Leah snapped awake in the darkness. It took her a few seconds to remember
(it smells strange in here)
where she was
(streetlight’s in the wrong place)
and then it clicked. Archer’s old bedroom. Visiting his family, dealing with a multitude of Drakes. And the nightmares. Dealing with those, too. This was the second in two days, and they weren’t hers.
That would have been frightening enough, even for someone in her line of work. She was used to seeing the past lives in her clients’ eyes; she was a licensed Insighter (ID #29682), certified in Reindyne therapy,* and she’d been seeing far too much since she was a toddler.