“What is it?”
He dragged in a breath and let it out before answering. “I was one of them.”
She blinked, struggling to process his words. “Did I hear that right?”
“Yes. As soon as that scene flashed into your mind, I remembered it. I was there, too.”
She twisted around, and their eyes locked.
Almost in slow motion, Jake moved his hand down her arm, then to her wrist and finally her hand as he moved around the table, pulled the other chair over and sat down beside her.
She closed her eyes, studying the long-ago scene. She’d forgotten about it, or blocked it out. Now it was so vivid in her mind she felt she could reach out and touch it.
It was like she was a child again. Back there, where her parents had brought her. And the other children she saw were the same ones, over and over.
“I came there every few months,” Jake said in a voice that was full of wonder.
“I did too.”
“And . . .”
As they sat holding hands, she looked up and saw a boy a few years older watching her. It was Jake, and she gasped in shock. The reaction wasn’t from the little girl she’d been. It was from the woman who recognized him.
The little boy scooted over, pushing a school bus full of little peg people. “Wanna play?”
“What’s your name?”
“Jake.”
“I’m Rachel.”
We talked.
Yes.
“I’ll be the driver. You be the little girl going to school.”
“Okay.” She picked up a peg person with brown hair and a red dress.
In the present, Jake’s hand tightened on her, but she couldn’t take any more. Twisting out of his grasp she jumped up and stood with her shoulders pressed to the door, gasping.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed.
“It was a shock–to both of us.”
She nodded, her mind desperately trying to sort through new information.
“I’d forgotten all about it,” he said.
“So had I.”
“Maybe because something disturbing happened there.”
Her gaze flew to him. “What?”
“We went there . . . a lot.” His expression turned hard. “Whatever’s happening to us now, I can’t believe it doesn’t have something to do with that place.”
She nodded, unsure and yet certain at the same time.
