Timeless

CHAPTER 31

1975

F orty-one. They had had visions, heard the voices of, and felt as if they’d lived the lives of forty-one couples. With Simon being away for the weekend on a camping trip with his scout troop and both of them having a day off, they’d decided to spend as much of their free time making love and going through everything they’d discovered about their past lives over the years. They’d been together for seventeen years now and had written a few things down here and there, but nothing comprehensive. Of course, they couldn’t let anyone find it, not even Simon, who would undoubtedly have questions for his mothers. He was getting to that age where any differences in his life would get him mocked at school, so while he understood that his mothers were a couple, that he had to keep it a secret, and he’d always seemed fine with that, the older he got, the more concerned they became that he might not like being different than the other kids in his school.

Things had changed a lot since they’d met in 1958. It felt like the country and the world had gone through a major transformation. It wasn’t as bad for them today as it had been in the past, but with their adopted son, they still had to be cautious. The war protests were starting to die down, drugs and sex were being talked about more openly, and women, dare Diana say it, were becoming more and more vocal and moving toward equality. They could technically buy a house by themselves now without needing a man to co-sign or be married, though some lenders were slow to allow it without a man’s involvement in some way. They were finally allowed to get their own credit card. They could even divorce their husbands, if they really wanted to, without needing a cause or reason for the first time. All of that was good for them, but they still wouldn’t take any chances with their son.

With Simon out of the house for two whole days, they decided to catalog everything they’d discovered through the years and began by checking their list of couples to make sure they didn’t miss anyone. Then, on the wall in their bedroom, with the curtains closed and the lights turned on to let them see, they began trying to put them all in order on pieces of scrap paper.

For some couples, they knew the approximate or even the exact dates. Antoinette and Dorothy had met in 1900 and died in 1920 and 1922. From what Diana and Cheryl had seen and heard in their visions, those two had met and started to discover their joined pasts when they’d been teenagers, so they hadn’t had long together. Then, there were Bess and Elizabeth, and they only had a vague understanding that those women had lived in the mid-1700s. The Spanish princess and her servant wife had lived in a convent in the 1600s, but with their research, they’d discovered that Maria had been born in 1613 and had died in 1645. There was no information on Isabella because to the world, she’d never existed. Maria’s life was only recorded because she’d been royalty. Before that, everything else was blank.

“I feel like we’re missing something,” Cheryl told her, staring at their wall.

“Like what?”

“Isabella and Maria can’t have been the first version of us because they’ve talked about knowing each other before, but we’ve never heard them mention any names or specifics; just that they’ve known one another in another life.”

“I wonder if that’s because they couldn’t talk about it much at all. They lived in a Catholic country, where practicing any other religion or talking about things like reincarnation or anything like that could’ve gotten them tortured and killed. Besides, they lived in a convent. They were only permitted to be in the same small room because Maria was a princess. She wasn’t allowed to bring any other staff with her. And the nuns didn’t want Isabella to be there in the first place. They didn’t like that Maria got special treatment. But the king ordered it. So, they were probably afraid to talk about it too much.”

“But who came before them? And why haven’t we been able to see them?”

“I don’t know. Things just get foggier the further we go back,” she replied and moved behind her wife, wrapping Cheryl up in her arms. “We can only tell that Elizabeth and Bess were in the 1700s for sure, but we think it might be the 1750s or 60s and maybe in the South. We seem to get a little clearer the closer they are to us. We remember most of Deb and Harriet’s life now.”

“Do you think we should find him?” Cheryl asked.

They’d talked about the fact that Paul, Deb and Harriet’s son, had been left without any of his parents. He’d lost his father and his second father in the war. Then, Harriet and Deb had died trying to keep him safe in a storm. They didn’t know what happened to him after that, but they both felt like he’d been taken care of by family, so they tried not to worry too much. In a way, it had felt for years like they had two sons. Of course, Paul was older than them, so if they did try to find him, they could never tell him who they were.

“We only know the name of the town. We don’t even have an address for the farmhouse. And he might not even still be there.”

“He’s still there,” Cheryl said.

“How do you know?”

“I feel it. He might not be in the exact house, but I don’t think he would have left town. I feel like he’s still there, right where they left him. He’d be about thirty-seven now. He’s still probably working the farm with a family of his own.”

“Our son from a previous life has a family of his own,” Diana uttered as she shook her head back and forth. “Hard to wrap my head around that.”

“Me too.” Cheryl chuckled. “Maybe when Simon goes to Lily and Sandy’s for a week next month, you and I can take a long drive.” She turned in Diana’s arms. “He’s the only living connection we have to any of this.”

“Maybe. We really have no way of knowing. Other versions of us have had children. Most of them had had no choice, given the time they lived in, but we could have hundreds of living descendants in one way or another.”

“Oh, I…”

“What?” She wrapped Cheryl up in her arms.

“I’ve never thought about that.”

“I suppose I hadn’t, either, until you said something.” Diana pulled out of their embrace, walked to the wall, and pointed at a piece of scrap paper that had the names of one of the couples. “We know they had two children, one each with their husbands, and that those husbands left to fight a war and were gone for three years, so they had that time together.” She pointed to another piece of paper stuck to the wall. “Four children here.” She moved on to another. “Nine kids between them. Six survived to adulthood, from what we can remember.”

“They’d all be long gone by now. But maybe they had kids, and those kids had children?”

“Exactly.”

Cheryl walked up to her, leaned into Diana’s side, and rested her head on Diana’s shoulder. Diana wrapped her arm around her middle.

“There’s no way for us to know anything for sure, is there?” Cheryl asked. “We don’t even know where some of these people lived.”

“Sometimes, we don’t even know when .”

“And besides my wife, the former princess, we don’t know if any of them were well-off or would’ve had anything recorded about their lives.”

“I would doubt it.” She kissed the top of Cheryl’s head.

“So, we’ll never really know, will we?”

“If we could find records of some of them, we might be able to trace their children, but that’s a big if . The princess and Isabella didn’t have children, but Maria was a royal and the seventh child of a king. We know she had relatives and that she has descendants who are alive today. There’s still a Spanish royal family, after all.”

“Not the same as their actual children, though.” Cheryl sighed. “I think I want to find him, Diana.”

“Paul?”

“Yes. I know we can’t tell him who we are. He’d only think we were lying or just plain crazy, anyway. But I want to see him just once; know that he’s all right. We should’ve done this years ago.”

“We’ve been a bit busy, sweetheart. You’re a popular reporter at your paper now; I’m a nurse, which isn’t an easy job; we have a son who needs us to be here for him; and we’ve also got two fake husbands to be seen with in public occasionally to be safe. I’m not sure when we would’ve had the time.”

“We’ll have it next month. We took the week off work to spend away with Simon.”

“Shouldn’t we be here still, just in case it’s too much for Lily and Sandy and they want to bring him home? It’s the longest they’ve ever spent with him.”

“They’ve been planning for this for months. They’ll be fine. They’re both really excited that he’s older now and can do more in the city with them. They have a whole itinerary worked out. And you and I can drive to see our other son from another life together.”

Diana knew that once her wife got something stuck in her mind, there wasn’t much she could do about it. Cheryl had a stubborn streak, and most of the time, it was something Diana loved about her. Other times, Cheryl insisted that they have a casserole for dinner, and Diana hated casseroles. That probably stemmed from the fact that after her mother died, she had to do all the cooking for her and her father, and the easiest things for her to learn were casseroles, so she’d had her fill of those already.

“We’ll get a map, then,” she replied and kissed Cheryl on the lips.

◆◆ ◆

One month later, after stopping at a pay phone to make an expensive, long-distance call to check on Simon with his birth mother and her wife, they got back into their car and continued on their journey.

“We’re close,” Cheryl said, taking Diana’s hand.

“I feel it, too. Wow, the closer we get, it’s stronger, isn’t it?”

“The connection to them?”

“Yes.”

“I can see them sitting at their kitchen table right now.”

“Me too.”

“ You ’re driving,” Cheryl said with a laugh.

“I’m all right. If I need to pull over, I will.”

“He’s still here. I was right, wasn’t I?”

“I think so, yes.”

When they left the highway, turning onto what appeared to be the main street in the small town, Diana pulled over and parked on the street.

“I just need a minute. I’m seeing flashes, and it’s making it hard to focus on driving.”

“It’s okay. Take your time,” Cheryl replied. “Maybe we can get out and stretch our legs a bit. It might help.”

“Okay.”

They got out of the car and stood next to one another on the sidewalk. Across the street, Diana noticed a man who was painting the window of an old building with a new business name.

“ Antiques and Collectibles ,” she mumbled to herself.

“New shop in town?” Cheryl asked.

“Maybe,” she replied. “We should walk. I feel like he’s here somewhere, Cheryl.”

“Me too. Come on.”

Without saying which way to go, they both seemed to know and turned right, walking down the sidewalk until they hit a little ice cream shop that reminded Diana of the soda shoppe they’d spent time in as teenagers before they’d left their old town.

“He’s…” Cheryl pointed. “That’s him.”

Diana had seen him, too. Paul looked just like Deb. He had a nose like his father’s, she supposed, but there was no mistaking that he was Deb’s son. It was still odd to both of them how the women looked just like them to each other, but when they’d seen the one portrait of Maria that they’d been able to find, she looked nothing like Diana. Many of the couples hadn’t even been white women, but in their visions, they’d both known that and still saw them as each other.

“He’s handsome,” Cheryl added.

“He is, yes.”

Diana smiled at the man who was sitting at a round table outside the shop. He had an ice cream cone in his hand, and there were two girls sitting there with him and the woman who was probably his wife. The girls looked to be around eight or nine and twelve or thirteen, if she had to guess.

“They’re our grandchildren in a way,” Cheryl said.

“They are, yes. They look like you.” Diana smiled.

“Really? I think the younger one looks like you .” Cheryl bumped her shoulder playfully.

“That’s not possible,” Diana replied.

“She has your hair,” Cheryl pointed out, causing Diana to smile at the thought of someone out there looking like her.

Simon had been adopted and took more after his birth mother than either of them, but as she looked at Paul, who was smiling down at one of his daughters, she saw a bit of Harriet in him now. She couldn’t explain it. Maybe it wasn’t tangible and was just how he was or carried himself, but it was there, and it made her smile go wide.

“He’s okay,” she said more to herself than to Cheryl.

“He’s happy,” Cheryl added. “Harriet, he’s happy.” She looped her arm through Diana’s.

“Yes, he is, sweetheart,” Diana replied, but she knew it wasn’t her actually saying those words.

Harriet and Deb were right there with them. They were watching this, too. She could feel the two of them watching their son right along with Cheryl and her, who were seeing him for the first time.

“We should probably–” Cheryl stopped.

Diana saw it, too. Paul was looking around the street, confused. His head turned toward them then, and his eyes met Diana’s before he noticed Cheryl as well. He tilted his head a bit as if considering something.

“We should go,” Cheryl suggested.

“I think…” Diana nodded at Paul, and when he nodded back and gave her a confused smile, she added, “He recognizes us without recognizing us.”

“We should go, Diana. He’s happy. I can’t…”

Cheryl turned into Diana’s body, and Diana held on to her tightly. She turned to see that Paul was still looking at them in curiosity. She knew it could be a bad idea, but when Paul was little, Harriet used to sit with him by the radio, and he’d listen to his favorite adventure programs. One of the characters used to have a line about putting on his thinking cap, so they’d pretend to put on theirs, too. Diana removed one of her arms from around her wife and pretended to put on her own thinking cap. Paul’s eyes widened. She winked at him, gave him another nod with a motherly smile, and pulled Cheryl away back toward the car.

“Now, he knows that they’re all right too,” she said to her wife as they hurried away.