Until I Die Again [On The Way To Heaven] (Soul Change Novel) Read online

  CHAPTER 2

  Chris’s stay at the hospital was finally behind her; four miles behind her to be exact. Los AlmedaAlmeda sprawled lazily among the hills and valleys of Southern California. Chris immersed herself in the scenery, trying to absorb the life that pulsed everywhere around her. Everything had a new vibrancy, a new meaning to her. Where did each tree fit into the scheme of life? What of the creatures that depended on that tree to live? There were so many things to think about now, so many different ways of looking at everything around her. She watched the wild shadows dance across Jamie’s face as they passed a park with towering eucalyptus trees.

  The town looked as if it had been plucked from Mexico and cleaned up for the wealthy, with its picturesque red tile roofs and adobe-style shopping centers. Flowers bloomed everywhere, and palm trees swayed on their ridiculously tall, skinny trunks in the afternoon breezes.

  As they headed inland, the town quickly turned rural, and shopping centers turned into country clubs and nurseries. Sprawling homes were perched on hillsides to catch a glimpse of the ocean, and she felt even more out of place from her middle class, small town origins.

  She had seen little of the cast of characters in her new life during her last three days at the hospital. The Sharp Rehabilitation Center All plagued her thoughts. Now she had a chance to prove that her mind was intact, if in the wrong body. Jamie had picked her up at the hospital that morning, but a glimpse of Mick lurking near the lobby had sent an eerie panic pulsing through her. After the scene in her room that day with Jamie and Mick, she was glad Jamie hadn’t spotted him. Now she occasionally glanced back to check for suspicious cars.

  “Mick’s not back there,” Jamie said in a matter of fact way.

  Chris looked at him with widened eyes. “You saw him at the hospital?”

  Jamie stared ahead. “Did you?”

  “Only in the lobby. He looked like he was hiding.”

  “He was spying on you. He likes to do that.”

  She tried to still the shudder that ran through her. “Why?”

  His shrug was pronounced, perhaps not as casual as he might have intended. “I never could figure the guy out. Or your attraction to him.”

  She looked at his profile, at the blond bristles that covered his chin and jaw, the faint darkness beneath his eyes for lack of sleep. Even so, he was far better looking than Mick could ever be.

  “You’re not angry about… the affair?” She didn’t want to claim it as her own by saying ‘my affair’.

  “We all make our choices. Sometimes they’re not the right ones, but we have to live with them.”

  Was he talking about Hallie’s choice to cheat or his choice to marry her? The short conversation left tension in the confined space of the car. Chris wasn’t sure what else to say. Exactly where these two men fit into her life wasn’t clear yet. In fact, where she fit into her life wasn’t clear.

  They drove farther up into hills spotted with brown and green sagebrush in bloom, white stalks reaching for the sky. Red tile roofs dotted the hills to the south, and huge boulders created bald spots on the mountains to the north and east. The wavy, beige strip snaking horizontally along the side of one of the mountains caught her eye. She had heard about the flumes that brought water to cities with none of their own.

  Jamie drove between two wrought iron gates and onto a zigzagging drive. Through the haze, she could see the deep blue of the ocean in the distance. The grounds that stretched out on either side looked like a golf course, with rolling hills, ponds and perfectly manicured grass. The house itself was magnificent, a fortress of the rich. It was set off from the other homes in the distance by its charcoal tile roof. She closed her mouth and tried to hide her awestruck expression.

  When they pulled into the circular drive, one of the massive front doors opened, and a tall, thin man dressed like a butler stepped outside. She realized that he actually was a butler when he walked over and opened her door before Jamie could get around the car.

  “Good to see you feeling better, Mrs. DiBarto,” he said in a dull voice, no smile to indicate he felt the least bit glad to see her alive.

  Jamie helped her out of the car, and she stood a little shakily in the sunshine. The butler pulled a couple of suitcases out of the trunk and walked inside. A short, blonde woman in her early fifties passed him on the way out. She issued some instructions to the butler, then continued walking toward them. The woman’s face glowed with a smile as she reached up and bussed Jamie on his cheek.

  Chris could see some resemblance between them, and guessed her to be his mother. She looked like the perfect Italian mother, warm and loving. It made her ache for her own parents, still alive and mourning her death. When the woman turned to her, that warmth froze over, and her steel blue eyes were colder than Jamie’s when he’d walked in and seen Mick at the hospital.

  Jamie turned his mother toward Chris. “Do you remember her?”

  To pretend to remember, or to pretend to have amnesia? The more she “remembered,” the more she would appear normal, recovered.

  Chris smiled. “Your mother,” she guessed in a confident tone. When she saw that she was correct, she asked, “Did I call you ‘mom’?”

  If someone like Jamie’s mother could snort, that is what Chris would have called the sound. “No, you called me Theresa.”

  “I see.”

  “You’re feeling much better, no? I told my son you could recuperate here for a few weeks. It could be even less time before you’re on your way, maybe?”

  Chris didn’t know how to react. She had never done anything to this woman; the question was, what had Hallie done? “I—I don’t know.” She turned to Jamie.

  He looked at his mother, a silent demand for peace in his eyes. “As long as necessary.”

  She touched his hand, her small, blue eyes issuing a stern warning that Chris didn’t understand. Then Theresa waved them inside as she walked toward the open door. Chris glanced at Jamie, but his gaze was aimed straight ahead. She had never felt so lost in her life.

  Jamie knew that bringing Hallie here was not going to be easy. He wasn’t even sure why he had been so adamant about it. Mick would have probably been attentive. He seemed almost obsessed with her. Velvet was her mother, and that had to count for something. Then there were her dozens of friends in San Diego and Los Angeles. Of course, they were too busy partying or being self-involved to care for someone else. So Mick would have been the obvious choice. He had been anyway.

  There was something, though, something about the way she had looked at Jamie in the hospital. And, given the choice, she had chosen to let him take care of her.

  They followed Theresa up the winding staircase to the second floor. Solomon had already put the luggage on a bench in the second master bedroom.

  “James, we’re going to have dinner around six o’clock,” Theresa said. “You look exhausted. Why don’t you rest before then?”

  Jamie smiled. Mothers never stopped mothering. Just the mention of looking exhausted made him yawn. “I probably will.”

  He found Hallie just standing there, looking at the room as if she’d never seen it before. Usually she darted directly to the bathroom and, amid complaints about the long flight, immersed herself in a bubble bath and long beauty routine. How much memory had she lost?

  He looked at the bed, then at the chest of drawers and armoire. “I’m going to sleep in the room on the other side of the balcony, considering…” No need to state the obvious.

  She sat down on the bed and looked up at him, seeming more like an innocent girl than the woman he knew so well.

  “Considering what?”

  He walked closer, leaning against one of the wooden posts on the bed. “Considering what happened before your collapse.”

  Uncertainty lingered in her eyes. “What was I doing when I had the hemorrhage?”

  “You were asking me for a divorce.”

  Hallie’s face paled. “Oh.” Her voice sounded so small. “What did you say?�
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  His upper lip twitched involuntarily. “I said, ‘Absolutely’. I had my reasons for letting our marriage go just as I once had reasons for holding on.”

  Jamie studied her reaction. He didn’t think she could get much paler, but she did. She seemed to be bracing herself on the bed. “What were the reasons you wanted to hang on?”

  “They don’t matter now.”

  She chewed her bottom lip, looking up at him with a wide-eyed expression. “And you said ‘go’, just like that?”

  He pressed his forehead against the post. He didn’t want to get into the painful discussion they had that day. Obviously, she didn’t remember it. The doctor had warned that people with brain damage usually didn’t remember events just prior to the incident.

  “We had an argument after I walked in on a phone conversation you were having with Mick. I told you that something had to be done about the farce we called a marriage, and you stormed out. I followed you to get some answers and that’s when you asked for a divorce. Then you got one of your awful headaches, only it was worse than usual. You said you couldn’t feel your arm and then you collapsed.”

  Hallie shook her head. “There’s a lot I don’t remember.”

  “Do you remember me?”

  She nodded, but he sensed a trace of hesitancy. Was it raw alarm he saw in her eyes? He had a sudden desire to sit down beside her and hold her. He tightened his grip on the post, as if to keep a strong wind from blowing him toward her. She was vulnerable now, and the rare state was touching the outer edges of a heart long frozen. It would pass. Soon her memory would return, and with it her old self. By then she would be living in France.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, noticing the color slowly returning to her cheeks.

  “I couldn’t begin to tell you. I don’t even know myself.”

  He nodded. “Rest for a while. I’ll come by around dinner time to get you.”

  When the door clicked shut, he leaned against it. Maybe it had been a mistake to bring her back here. Right now, she was delicate, weak. He had never seen her that way before, and it had the most curious effect on him. But it was his duty, as her husband, to take care of her. Once she was back on her feet, he would set her free.

  Chris sat on the bed, her knees pulled up to her chest. Jamie had left a few minutes ago, but his presence still lingered like good aftershave. The drapes were drawn, but the grim darkness seeped inside her. Hallie had left her a mess to deal with. A wrecked marriage, an affair with a man Chris had absolutely no interest in.

  She knew only two things at this point: she could not tell anyone that she was someone else in Hallie’s body, or Sharp Rehabilitation Center would be the next stop. Therefore, she would have to pretend to be Hallie, to actually be the woman. That was why she lied when Jamie asked her if she remembered him. Her memory loss would seem plausible, but she was going to have to assume Hallie’s life in full. To do that, she would have to find out more about the woman.

  She got up, pushed apart the lace drapes and walked to the nearby mirror. It startled her every time she looked at her reflection, still expecting the tomboyish girl with kinky brown hair and brown eyes.

  She was no longer tired, just curious. Her quest was to find out more about the woman she was. She had two weeks more or less, and then she was on her own. Jamie could go on with his life, and Mick would have to forget about their trip to France.

  Chris opened the suitcases on the bench. Everything had been thrown in haphazardly. Everything, except the collection of perfume bottles that were wrapped in hand towels. She pulled out linen shorts, silk shirts, and jewelry, jewelry, jewelry. The makeup kit filled the entire carry case. She found the two tickets to France. And two tickets to the San Diego Opera. She had never been to an opera before. If the former Hallie had liked it, then she would have to give it a try. She tossed the opera tickets on the long dresser next to the line of perfume bottles.

  In the armoire were suits, dresses, and shoes. Obviously, they went to fancy parties when they stayed in Los Almeda. She touched the tuxedo, picturing Jamie stepping out of a white limousine, his wide shoulders filling the jacket, the black of it setting off his blond hair.

  Shaking the thought from her mind, she turned and was caught short by a photograph on the wall: Hallie and Jamie on their wedding day. She no longer had to imagine what Jamie might look like in that tux. Hallie had been gorgeous, glowing. Jamie looked handsome and happy. The date, inscribed on a gold plate, was three years before. They had been in love then. What had happened?

  The small plastic bag with the hospital label on it caught her eye. It contained even more jewelry, what Hallie had been wearing the day she collapsed. She laid out the necklaces, watch, earrings, Hallie’s wedding ring. A large, perfect diamond surrounded by a swirl of smaller diamonds. She slipped it on her hand and let the strange feeling of suddenly being a married woman wash over her.

  Chris walked out onto the balcony, breathing in the fresh, slightly salty air. The distant mountains looked majestic and hazy in the distance. She would enjoy living in California, she decided. Still, the mountains reminded her of home in Colorado. A tidal wave of homesickness washed over her as she remembered her parents, her three sisters, her friends, her dogs.

  Alan. There was a pang of a different sort when she thought of him. She had been so in love with him, and so unsure where she stood.

  A faint knock drew her back into the room. When she opened the door and realized it wasn’t Jamie, a spike of disappointment poked at her. It was the solemn face of the butler.

  “Ma’am, you have a visitor. A Mrs. Mellondorf.”

  Chris’s expression went blank. “Oh. Okay, send her up.”

  The butler’s eyebrows rose, making his face seem even longer. “Ma’am, we don’t invite guests into the bedrooms. You may receive her in the living room where she waits for you.”

  “Oh. Right. I’ll be down in a minute.”

  He turned and walked away. With a panicky feeling, she realized that she had no idea where the living room was. Catching up to the butler, she sheepishly asked, “Can you show me where the living room is? I’m afraid I can’t remember.”

  “Certainly.”

  He continued walking, and she fell into step behind him, imitating the stiff way he lifted each leg straight up before moving it forward. When her stifled giggle reached his elongated ears, he turned around. The grin disappeared, and she looked back at him as if she had no idea why he was staring at her. Boy, did I need that laugh. She followed him down the winding staircase, and just to the right of the entrance, he pointed to a closed door.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  As her hand closed over the doorknob, she took a deep breath. Another person to deal with. She hoped this one was friendlier than the other three occupants in the house.

  “H-a-a-l-l-i-e!” the woman squealed out, then leaped at her before Chris could even get a good look.

  Chris hugged her back, her face lost in a mass of curly, red hair somewhat like her own had been. Finally, the woman moved back, a warm smile on her face.

  “Let me see you! I was so worried! But you look great, well, as great as you can look without makeup or your hair styled, which is pretty great, I hate you.” The woman stopped to catch her breath, then said, “Why are you looking at me like that? You’re mad at me because I didn’t come visit you at the hospital, right?” She plopped down on the blue velvet sofa. “I wanted to, I really did, but Stan was in a pissy mood all week just because I took off with some friends to the Baja and didn’t give him a month’s notice! You know how he is, such an old fuddy duddy when it comes to my having fun with my friends. Anyway, if I told him I’d be leaving again to visit a friend in the hospital, you know he’d never believe me.”

  Chris smiled, grabbing onto a tiny thread in the conversation and going with it. “Yeah, your dad can be a bummer sometimes.”

  Now it was the woman’s turn to look blank. “My dad? I’m talking about Stan. My husband, St
an. Hallie, are you all right?”

  “I’ve lost some of my memory from the stroke. I don’t remember you.”

  The woman’s mouth dropped into an open-mouthed pout. “You don’t remember your best friend, Joya? We grew up together.”

  Chris touched her hand. “Joya, I don’t remember anyone. It’s kind of like starting over.”

  Joya’s round, brown eyes widened. “You didn’t remember Jamie? Or Mick?” she added in a low voice.

  Chris shook her head. “I even had to ask the butler where the living room was.”

  Joya leaned her head back and hooted. “I’ll bet he loved that! Considering how much he likes you, I mean.”

  “I got the impression he wasn’t too friendly, but I thought butlers were supposed to act like that. They do in the movies.”

  Joya gave her an odd look. “How come you remember butlers in movies, but you don’t remember Solomon?”

  Chris shrugged. “Good question. So, why doesn’t he like me?”

  “Well, the way you told it, and I wouldn’t know firsthand since I wasn’t invited, but you got drunk at a party Theresa threw here and propositioned him. Then you started to strip off his clothes to a jaunty tune. It sounded hilarious! I guess neither he nor your mother-in-law were too happy about it. Or Jamie,” she added. “Then again, he’s no fun at all.”

  Chris reddened at the thought. That man was cold toward her because she’d embarrassed him in front of Theresa’s friends and acquaintances. And she didn’t even do it! Chris would never do such a thing. She hardly drank at all.

  “Aw, don’t sweat it,” Joya said with a flip of her hand. “He’s only a servant.”

  “Yes, but he’s a person, too.”

  Joya laughed again, then sobered. “You’re serious? Oh, get with it. Ever since you were ten years old, you liked picking on people. It’s no time to stop now.”

  Chris forced a laugh. She wasn’t too sure she liked Joya, but at least she was the first friendly person she’d met. Besides Mick, of course, who was too friendly.