The Color of Forever (21 page)

Then something happened. My head began to spin and I felt sick and dizzy. The pins and needles returned, and I held my bare hand up to my face to stare at the intersecting lines of my palm. Blinking repeatedly, I could barely focus my eyes.

I looked out at the sea again and recognized the slow swell of an approaching wave, far bigger than any other, like a demon making its way toward me. For reasons I could not comprehend, I felt paralyzed by a strange fascination with it. I was unable to turn away. Then my vision blurred and I knew it was coming for me—this monstrous rogue wave that wanted to carry me away and take me down into its cold, dark depths.

I saw my death before it happened
.

I had once heard from Mr. Harvey that in the moment before death, your life flashes before your eyes in an instant.

I did indeed experience a flash of images—a white sailboat where I stood at the helm with my long red hair blowing in the wind. The house I shared with Sebastian where our children were born, though it looked different, with dazzlingly bright lights. There was a sundial in the yard which I did not recognize. I put my hands on it, and touched the smooth surface, then ran my fingertips along the grooves where the numbers had been etched into the stone.

Then suddenly I was riding in a strange vehicle—a shiny white horseless carriage with my sister. Or perhaps she was a friend…

As the wave drew closer, I laid a hand on my belly and knew somehow—by some miracle of communication with God perhaps?—that I was carrying another child. A son.

I whirled around and looked up at my husband. He shouted at me as he ran toward the snow-crusted cliff, waving his arms at me, warning me to get off the rocks. I could barely hear him above the roar of the surf. It didn’t matter. I already knew the danger.

Then I frowned, for I could not understand why the life that had just flashed before my eyes was a life I did not recognize. It was a life that was not my own.

Katelyn

Chapter Thirty-nine

I woke with a start and sat up in bed, my pulse racing. The sun was up. My room was bright and my hands were tingling.

I had dreamed of the night Evangeline Fraser died. I had watched the wave approach and knew it was coming to end my life.

Panic and terror continued to burn in my chest, for it had felt impossibly real, as if I had been standing on the rocks just now, powerless to do anything to stop that monstrous wave from coming to sweep me under.

In the dream, I was upset, hurt and confused after walking through the frigid predawn darkness to visit the assistant lighthouse keeper, who had held me in his arms to comfort me about something. Then the captain arrived—my husband—and they fought in the yard.

Good God
.

I tossed the covers aside and swung my legs to the floor.

What a dream that had been. So remarkably realistic. I felt such compassion and grief for that poor young woman who had experienced a tragic and frightening death. I could only imagine how cold the water must have been when it took her under, how desperate she must have felt when the surging, foaming ice water swept her off her feet. The gasping and flailing and kicking legs…

Squeezing my eyes shut to block out the horror, I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand, for the memory was causing me terrible, burning anxiety, even though I knew it was only a dream.

I looked up and tried to focus on the flat-screen TV on the desk, where I had watched the Portland Evening News each night. There was a bowl of foil-wrapped candies next to it, as well as a black leather binder with information about the services at the inn.

Feeling more grounded as the dream began to recede from my memory and my heart slowed to a more natural rhythm, I blew out a breath and stood up, but sank back down onto the mattress again when I felt dizzy. In a daze, I held my fingers up to my face and stared at them. I could barely focus.

This is what happens when you stand up too fast.

I took a moment to breathe deeply and waited for the lightheadedness to pass.

o0o

“I was just about to go upstairs and knock on your door,” Bailey said a short while later when I entered the dining room. She was the only person left seated at the breakfast table, and was just finishing a cup of coffee while reading the newspaper.

I glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was almost 10:00 a.m. I was probably the last guest to come down.

“Sorry. I had a weird dream,” I explained as I moved to the sideboard to serve myself some scrambled eggs, cottage cheese and fruit salad. “Actually, it was more like a nightmare. I dreamed I was in the body of Captain Fraser’s wife when she got swept off the rocks at the lighthouse. It was really scary.”

“You dreamed she got swept off the rocks? Yeah, that would be awful. What a horrible way to go.”

I reached for a blueberry muffin and moved to sit across from Bailey at the table. “In the dream, I went to visit the lighthouse keeper, who was this young, hot, rugged guy—a bit rough around the edges—and I was crying on his shoulder about something… Wait, I remember now. I had told him about how my husband cheated on me.”

“You were telling him about Mark?” Bailey asked, interrupting my story.

“No. Captain Fraser,” I clarified, “although there is a common theme here, don’t you think?” I stabbed a grape with my fork and dipped it in the cottage cheese.

“So then what happened?” Bailey asked, setting down the paper to pay closer attention.

“Captain Fraser arrived and caught us, and he dragged the lighthouse keeper outside, and then the lighthouse keeper tackled him and punched him. I got really upset—”

“Naturally.”

“And then I ran down onto the rocks just to get away from them.”

“I don’t blame you,” she said.

“Exactly. Right?” I ate some eggs and waited until I swallowed before I continued. “That’s when it got really scary—when the wave came toward me and I knew, with every inch of my soul, that I was going to die.”

“Yikes.” Bailey set down her cup. “Thank God it was just a dream.”

“Tell me about it.”

She picked up the newspaper again. “I wonder why you dreamed that.”

“Probably because of our visit to the lighthouse yesterday, when we saw where it really happened. And we were all wondering what she was doing there in the first place, on such a cold winter morning. I guess subconsciously, I wanted to come up with a theory.” I broke my blueberry muffin in half and spread some butter on it.

Bailey set down the newspaper and frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

I took a bite of the muffin. “I mean…I was probably freaked out by that.”

“By
what
?”

“By seeing where she actually died. Where the wave took her off the rocks.”

Bailey shook her head at me. “That’s not how she died, Katelyn. She lived to be an old woman and died of old age, here in the house. You know that.”

I set down my fork and knife. “What are you talking about? You and I spent the whole morning at the museum the other day, doing research on the captain and his wife. She died young, and that’s why he was trying to figure out how to build a time machine. Because he loved her so much.”

Bailey started to laugh. “What is wrong with you? I think you’re dreaming right
now.
”

I waved my fork through the air, trying to help her remember. “No, no. The sundial in the yard. We think that’s why he put it there—remember? To find a way back in time to prevent his wife’s death.”

Bailey’s expression darkened, and she leaned forward over the table and spoke quietly. “Are you okay? Because that’s not what happened. You and I
did
do a bunch of research on the sundial, but it was
Mrs.
Fraser who was obsessed with time travel.
She
was the one who insisted they travel to Asia to find it. She didn’t die at the lighthouse.”

I sat back in my chair and frowned. “No, you’re wrong.”

“No,” Bailey replied. “
You’re
wrong. Don’t you remember?”

“Of course I remember. It’s
you
who doesn’t remember.”

She stared at me with concern. “Well, come on then.” She rose from her chair and directed me to follow. “Let’s go check out the picture in the hall.”

I threw my napkin onto the table, slid my chair back, and followed her.

She stood in the entrance hall gesturing toward a black and white photograph in a pewter frame, perched on a side table. I hadn’t seen it before. It showed Sebastian and Evangeline seated before a set of drapes—probably in a photographer’s studio—surrounded by five children. Evangeline looked older than she was in the painted portrait in my room. Here, she looked to be in her mid-to-late-thirties.

We looked even more hauntingly alike.

I moved closer, squinting at the details of the photograph, and my eyes fixed on a young boy about nine or ten years of age. He stood beside Evangeline with his hand resting on her shoulder. “Who is that?”

“One of their children,” Bailey said.

“What’s his name?”

Bailey bent to look closer. “I’m not sure. I can’t remember all their names.”

My stomach began to roll with shock and nervous energy. “Do you remember why we came to Maine?”

“Yes.” She followed me to the front desk, where I rang the bell frantically, over and over. “Because of that vision you had.”

“Yes—and that’s him,” I said. “I recognize him.”

“Who?” Bailey asked.

“The flashback I had on the mountaintop,” I explained, “where I had a son named Logan. That’s him in the picture. I’m sure of it.”

Angela came hurrying out of the kitchen at the back of the house. “Is something wrong?”

“No. I’m sorry, Angela. I didn’t mean to be so aggressive with the bell. I was just wondering…” I led her to the photograph in the front hall. “Do you know the names of all the children in this picture?

“Yes, of course.” She moved closer to point at each one. “That’s the oldest, Nathan, and this is Amelie, Henry, Sarah, and John.”

“John.” I bent forward and looked more closely at the boy I recognized from my flashback. “His name is John?”

Not Logan?

“That’s right,” Angela replied. “He was their third child, I believe, after Nathan and Amelie.”

I backed away, trying to make sense of my perceptions and emotions, which were insisting that the boy in the portrait was the same boy from my flashback on the mountaintop.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Bailey. “Are you all right?”

Nodding, I said, “I just thought I recognized him. He looks exactly the same.”

I didn’t know what else to say, how to explain what I was feeling, for I was confused and bewildered, yet overjoyed to have discovered that the boy I’d imagined was real. Or at least he
had
been real, at one time. Here was concrete evidence of his existence, although it made no sense to me that his name was John. Why not Logan? And was I insane to think that this boy was somehow my son? He was born as John Fraser, to a mother named Evangeline and a father named Sebastian.

In the late 1800s.

Chapter Forty

“Just when I was beginning to think I was ready to move on from all this, I have a dream that changes everything.”

Bailey and I walked outside to the veranda and down the stairs. It was a sunny, breezy morning.

“I have to admit,” she said, running her hand down the white painted railing, “I’m getting a bit worried about your state of mind, Katelyn, because you’re remembering the past week very differently from how I remember it. You have this whole story in your head about Captain Fraser’s wife dying young, when that’s not what happened at all. They lived a long and happy life together and had five children. We’ve known that all along.”

“I didn’t know it,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, since yesterday, the history of this house has changed completely.”

Which had me wondering… How much of it was a dream? Or had the sundial played a part?

We stepped onto the stone path that would take us down to the ancient timekeeper, and walked under the rose arbor. When we reached it, I stood back for a moment, afraid to touch it or even go near it.

“What’s wrong?” Bailey asked. “You look very intense.”

“I’m just thinking,” I said. “When I first fell asleep, I dreamed I came down here by myself. I ran my hands over the top of the stone, then I got really cold, and the next thing I knew, I was dreaming I was Evangeline, walking down the driveway on a cold winter morning.”

“Do you think it was one of those lucid dreams,” Bailey asked, “or astral projection, like what happened to Sylvie? Do you think it’s possible that you actually went back in time?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t
trying
to make it happen. I went to sleep feeling very content for the first time in ages, and happy to move on from all this.”

We strolled to the two Adirondack chairs and sat down to look out over the water. A fishing boat motored past, about a mile out.

“It was like I was actually inside Evangeline’s skin, living her life,” I said. “I was so upset and hurt by what my husband had done—cheating on me with that other woman—and I felt guilty about him catching me with the lighthouse keeper.”