Sisters, Long Ago Read online

  Willow remembered how her mother’s eyes had flashed as she responded, “I cannot believe that God specifically chose Sarah to have this terrible disease.”

  After Mrs. Bremmer left, Mrs. Paige said, “I didn’t mean to offend her. But she thinks she has an easy answer for our problem when there are no easy answers.”

  Willow wondered if a belief in reincarnation was another easy answer to a difficult question. She decided not to say anything to Sarah about the vision and the dream. Not yet.

  The next day, the letter arrived. Willow stared at the glass door of the Post Office box for a moment and then double-checked the box number, to be sure it was correct.

  She slit the envelope open and read the letter right there, while she stood in the Post Office.

  To whom it may concern:

  I think I’m the person you’re looking for. On August 23, my cousin and I went to Pinecone Lake and while I was there, I saw a girl go under more than once so I swam out and pulled her to shore. Later, her mother came and took her to the doctor.

  My name is Helen Granston and I’m 13 years old.

  Willow stopped reading and recalled the face and eyes of the girl with the braid. Helen. Her name was Helen. It seemed to fit.

  I live in San Francisco, the letter said. No wonder her picture was not in the Bellefield School yearbook. I’m visiting my cousin until September 4. You can call me there. A phone number and signature were at the bottom of the page.

  Willow tucked the letter in her pocket and headed home. September 4 was only two days away. She hoped she would be able to meet Helen before Helen went home. Willow couldn’t imagine bringing up the subject of a past life together in a telephone call. It would have to be done in person, after she and Helen got to know each other better.

  Before she made the call, she practiced what she would say. She was afraid if she didn’t, she would get excited and start to babble and then Helen would decide she didn’t want to meet Willow, after all.

  She didn’t babble. When Helen answered, Willow gave her name and said she’d received the letter.

  “My aunt saw your ad in the paper,” Helen said. “I knew it had to be me. I mean, good grief, there couldn’t be two people who almost drowned on the same day, in the same lake, could there now? So I’m the one you’re looking for.”

  “Do you have long blonde hair?” Willow asked. “And you wear it . . .”

  “In a braid.”

  “You’re the one.”

  They decided to meet at 3 P.M. the next day at McDonald’s. It was close to where Helen was staying and it wasn’t far from the hospital. Willow could go to visit Sarah and then meet Helen afterwards.

  She took extra care with her appearance the next day. The only time Helen had seen Willow up close, Willow was vomiting into the sand. She hoped to make a better impression this time.

  She didn’t want to overdo it by getting all dressed up but she wore her good jeans and her blue sweater, the one that made her eyes look wider and bluer.

  She was almost ready to leave when Gretchen called.

  “Do you want to come over this afternoon?” Gretchen asked. “We can listen to my albums and make brownies.”

  “I can’t. I’m going to visit Sarah.”

  “Come afterwards. Mom says it’s OK if you stay for dinner. Maybe we can talk my dad into renting a video.”

  “I can’t today. I—I’m meeting someone.”

  “You sound awfully mysterious. Is the someone tall, dark, and good looking?”

  “Hardly. I’m meeting the girl who rescued me at the lake.”

  “You found her? That’s great! How did you . . .”

  “I’ll tell you about it later, Gretchen. I have to go now.”

  She hadn’t intended to tell anyone about Helen until after they met. There wasn’t any reason to keep it a secret; she just didn’t feel like talking about it.

  When she got to the hospital, Sarah was asleep. Willow sat by Sarah’s bed anyway. Maybe Sarah would sense her presence.

  She told her mother that she was going to McDonald’s on her way home.

  Mrs. Paige looked guilty. “I’m sorry you’ve had to fend for yourself so much,” she said.

  “That’s OK, Mom. Sarah needs you here.”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Paige rubbed her eyes and Willow noticed the dark circles under them. “I want to have as much time with Sarah as I can,” she said, “but unfortunately, that means I don’t have time for anyone else. Not even you.”

  “That’s OK,” Willow repeated. “We’ll have time together when Sarah gets better.”

  A shadow flickered across Mrs. Paige’s face. She stood up and hugged Willow hard. Then she sat again beside Sarah’s bed.

  At 2:30, Willow punched the “Down” button on the hospital elevator and then ran down the stairs without waiting for the elevator to arrive. She didn’t want to be late to McDonald’s.

  6

  WILLOW ARRIVED first. She ordered French fries and carried them to the last booth in the back corner. She wanted to talk to Helen with as few distractions as possible.

  She dunked a French fry into the catsup and nibbled it. She was too nervous to be hungry but she needed to do something with her hands. What would she say to Helen?

  Helen came in and looked around. Willow waved at her; Helen waved back. She ordered a Coke before she joined Willow.

  “Hi.” They said the word exactly together and then laughed. Helen slid into the booth across from Willow.

  They made small talk at first. Willow asked what school Helen’s cousin went to and Helen said he went to a private school.

  “Have you always lived in San Francisco?” Willow asked.

  “No. My dad gets transferred a lot. We’ve lived all over the world—South America, Australia—even a year in Greece.”

  “It sounds exciting.”

  “It is, partly. But it’s hard to be a foreigner and not know the language.”

  “Thanks for rescuing me that day,” Willow said. “I would have drowned for sure, if you hadn’t come after me.”

  “I’m glad I got there in time.”

  “How did you know I needed help? After I got the cramp, I tried to yell, but I didn’t think any noise came out.”

  “I looked out at the water just as your head went under,” Helen said. “Maybe it was mental telepathy.”

  Willow hesitated. If Helen believed in mental telepathy, maybe she knew something about reincarnation, too. Should she tell Helen about Kalos and Tiy? There might not be another opportunity and the worst that could happen would be that Helen would laugh at her and say the whole idea was crazy.

  Willow took a deep breath and plunged in. “I had another reason for wanting to meet you,” she said. “Something odd has happened to me—to us. It began when I was drowning, just as I felt myself lose consciousness.”

  She told every detail of the vision, how Tiy rescued Kalos from the crocodile and how she felt the love between Kalos and Tiy. She told about the dream, too, and the Temple of Amun-Ra.

  She finished by saying, “When I rolled over in the sand that day and saw you looking at me, I believed you were Tiy.”

  “Good grief! Why would you think that? You said she had black hair.”

  “It isn’t that you look like her; it’s a feeling. I can’t explain it very well because I don’t understand it myself. I don’t know why I thought that you were once Tiy. I just knew you were. And now that I’m with you again, I—I still think so. You were Tiy and I was Kalos. We were sisters, long ago.”

  As she spoke the words, Willow felt a chill tingle down her arms. It was true. When she looked at Helen, she experienced a bond too strong to be explained only by the fact that this girl had saved her from drowning. She would be grateful for that, no matter what sort of person Helen was. Willow felt far more than gratitude when she looked at Helen. She felt kinship. She felt love.

  “Good grief!” Helen said. “Are you kidding?”

  “No.”


  “This seems kind of flaky to me.”

  Willow tried not to look too disappointed. “I hope I can figure out where we were, and when, in that other life.”

  “You won’t be able to prove we lived before, so why waste time trying?”

  “I’m curious. I want to find out if there is a time and place in history when the things I saw in my mind might really have happened. At first, I thought the white robes were Roman togas but when I read about Rome, nothing sounded familiar or right.”

  “What about Greece? The Greeks wore white gowns, too. Or maybe it was one of the African countries. People always wear white in countries that are hot because white deflects the heat. Maybe Kalos and Tiy lived in Nigeria.”

  The more suggestions Helen made, the more discouraged Willow felt. Kalos and Tiy could have lived anywhere in the world and there were thousands of years of history to consider. It seemed impossible that she would ever prove anything.

  “If you want my opinion,” Helen said, “you should forget about your past and concentrate on the future.”

  Out loud, Willow agreed. But she knew she wouldn’t give up the search for Kalos and Tiy so easily, no matter what Helen thought.

  7

  THE PHONE rang as Willow unlocked the door. It was Gretchen.

  “Quick!” Gretchen said. “Get the paper and look at the Personals. There’s an ad we have to answer.”

  Willow wasn’t in the mood to write a fake letter but before she could say so, Gretchen bubbled on.

  “This is the best one ever,” Gretchen said. “I’ll hold on while you find it.”

  Reluctantly, Willow got the newspaper and turned to the classified section.

  “It’s about halfway down in the Personals column,” Gretchen said. “It begins: Sixteen-year-old male seeking girl to date.”

  Willow ran her finger down the column. Before she found the ad Gretchen was talking about, she found one which interested her even more. It said, in capital letters, REINCARNATION.

  Her finger stopped. Willow read the rest of the ad. “Informative free seminar for anyone seeking spiritual answers. Sat., 9–1, in the Bellefield Library meeting room.”

  “Do you see it?” Gretchen asked. “He sounds perfect for us. Believe me, we were meant to read the ads tonight. Maybe this time we’ll even mail the letter.”

  “Yes,” Willow said slowly. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we were meant to read the ads tonight.”

  “Can you believe a sixteen-year-old guy would place this ad? I hope he doesn’t have acne.”

  Willow didn’t reply. She was still staring at the ad which began, REINCARNATION. Perhaps this seminar would answer some of her questions.

  “Willow? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Do you want me to come over so we can write our answer now? We don’t want a sixteen-year-old guy to slip through our fingers.”

  “I’m sorry, Gretchen. I don’t feel much like writing an answer tonight. You go ahead without me.”

  “Oh.” Willow heard the disappointment in Gretchen’s voice. “I guess you’re pretty worried about Sarah.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow then.”

  After she hung up, Willow sat staring at the newspaper. The announcement didn’t say who was putting on the seminar. What if the people were weird? What if it was some kind of cult and they tried to get her to join?

  The meeting would be at the public library, though. She was pretty sure that weird cults were not allowed to use the library’s meeting room. And she could always get up and walk out if she didn’t like the seminar.

  On Saturday, Willow told her mother she was going to the library but she said nothing about the seminar. She knew her mother would assume that Willow wanted to check out some books to read. Mrs. Paige’s mind was already in the hospital with Sarah; she didn’t question Willow.

  Willow was the only person in the meeting room who wasn’t an adult but no one seemed to mind. The man at the door gave her a name tag and told her he was glad she came.

  She sat down and glanced around. No one looked strange. They were just ordinary people. Most were about her parents’ age; a few looked like they were sixty or older and there was one young couple who sat close together, holding hands.

  The first speaker, Mr. Tyler, said, “Reincarnation is the process by which the eternal soul inhabits successive human bodies.”

  Willow wrote the definition in her notebook.

  Mr. Tyler said many famous people believed in reincarnation. He read a list of names but the only ones Willow recognized were Henry David Thoreau and Benjamin Franklin.

  Then he read several passages from the Bible and some things written by a man named Edgar Cayce. Willow wasn’t too interested in the readings. Instead of listening, she reread the definition she’d written in her notebook. Reincarnation is the process by which the eternal soul inhabits successive human bodies.

  If this were true, if it could really happen, then perhaps her soul and the soul of Kalos were the same. If one eternal soul could live in different human bodies, then maybe she had actually lived before and was now remembering that earlier life.

  The second speaker was Mrs. Evans. She was young and pretty and she got Willow’s attention right away.

  “I’m going to speak,” Mrs. Evans said, “about the five ways to recall past lives.”

  Willow leaned forward in her chair. She didn’t want to miss anything.

  “The most common way for an individual to regress to a past life,” Mrs. Evans said, “is with the help of a therapist. It’s a one-to-one situation and the results are usually good.”

  Willow wondered how people found such therapists. In the Yellow Pages? Listed under Reincarnation?

  “The second way is for a group of people to recall past lives through the use of guided visualization.”

  Willow wrote guided visualization in her notebook.

  “Third,” Mrs. Evans continued, “a person sometimes has a special fondness for another time or place. Perhaps you care about a certain country, even though you have never been there. Or maybe you take a trip and when you arrive, you can find your way, without asking directions. You feel you’ve been there before.”

  Willow looked around. Other people were nodding in agreement.

  A woman in the back spoke. “I collected Oriental art,” she said, “long before I learned that I once lived in China.”

  “I went all over Paris,” a man said, “without a map.”

  Willow felt discouraged. Did everyone else in the room know exactly what their past lives were? She did not have a special fondness for another country. She couldn’t even figure out what country Kalos might have lived in, so how could she have any strong feelings for the place?

  Maybe she was wrong. Maybe what she had thought was the memory of a past life wasn’t really that at all.

  “Are we born again right away?” someone asked.

  “Sometimes. Or there might be centuries between lives.”

  Mrs. Evans glanced at her notes. “The other two ways to recall a past life are less common,” she said. “One is spontaneous recall. When this happens, the memory of a past life appears one day out of the blue. Usually an entire scene will come to mind, full blown. Often, but not always, this happens during a time of stress.”

  Willow listened intently. Yes, she thought. That’s what happened to me when I was drowning. She wrote spontaneous recall in her notebook.

  “The last way that a past life can become known to us is through our dreams.”

  Willow held her breath. Mrs. Evans seemed to be looking straight at her.

  “People sometimes dream about themselves in a different body, in a different time and place.”

  A man in the front row raised his hand. “I have lots of strange dreams,” he said, “where I see myself as someone else. How do I know if what I’ve dreamed is really a scene from a past life? Maybe it’s just my imagination or maybe a memory of some
thing I’ve read in a book or seen in a movie. How do I prove it was another life?”

  “It can’t be proved scientifically,” Mrs. Evans said. “The only proof is a sense of truth. Someone who has dreamed about a past life recalls the dream as if it were a real experience. It isn’t a vague memory; it’s full of specific details. When you dream about a past life, you know that what you saw in your dreams really happened to you. You know it.”

  Yes, Willow thought. It really happened. All of it. Tiy and the crocodile. The Temple of Amun-Ra at sunrise.

  When the meeting ended, everyone was invited to stay for coffee. Willow stood up and started for the door. Before she could slip out, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Turning, she saw Mrs. Evans behind her.

  “Did you like the seminar?” Mrs. Evans asked.

  Willow nodded.

  “When you came in, I thought you were probably just curious. Once we got some kids who came on a dare. They thought the whole seminar was a joke. I don’t have much patience with people like that, who think reincarnation is all a hoax. But I watched you as I spoke. I saw the reaction in your eyes when I talked of seeing a past life in your dreams. You’ve had a dream like that, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so. Have you told anyone about it?”

  “No.”

  “Not even your parents?”

  “My parents have—other problems to think about.”

  “Divorce?”

  “No. My sister’s in the hospital. She has leukemia.”

  “I’m sorry. I hope she’ll be all right.”

  Willow didn’t answer.

  “Was this seminar what you expected?” Mrs. Evans asked.

  “I didn’t know what to expect,” Willow said, “but I learned a lot, especially from your speech.”

  “Good. I’m glad you came.”

  “Me, too. I was scared there was something wrong with me but now I know there isn’t.”

  Mrs. Evans handed Willow a business card that had her name and telephone number on it. “If there’s ever anything I can do to help you, please call me.”