All playful humor left me. “What does it say about Amber?” I asked, my voice moving down to a whisper. “I mean, I thought it was Ben Spencer’s murder file.”
“It is. But the two deaths were definitely connected. The police just didn’t know how. The lead detective on my uncle’s case was a guy named Nick Paparella. He concludes in his final report that Amber Greeley killed my uncle in a jealous rage and then committed suicide four days later.”
I winced as if what Cole had just said physically hurt me. “That’s not what happened,” I said. “I don’t know how I know that, Cole, but I do. Amber didn’t kill Spence.”
Cole nodded as if he’d already concluded the same thing. “I don’t know that anybody but Nick Paparella thought Amber killed Spence, Lily.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
Cole pointed to the file. “I’ve been through this thing a dozen times. It’s a compilation of crime scene photos and witness testimonies and a timeline of the prom. No one, and I mean no one ever remembers any trouble between Amber and Spence. Witness statement after witness statement says that they were crazy about each other. And there’s even a photo of them in here dancing together during a slow song. You should see them, Lily. There’s no way either of them was unhappy with the other. It’s obvious from the picture that they’re crazy about each other.”
I tapped the file. “Can I?” I said. “See the file?”
Cole took a deep breath. “The reason I’m not sure about showing it to you is because there’re also photos of Amber’s body in here.”
“There are?” I said, pulling my hand back.
“Yeah. Paparella put them in to show that Amber had felt so guilty about killing Spence that she committed suicide, but he also included the coroner’s report, which ruled her death suspicious but undetermined.”
“Undetermined?” I said. “What does that mean?”
“He couldn’t rule suicide either totally in or totally out,” Cole said. “The medical examiner stated that stabbing oneself to death was a highly unusual form of suicide, especially for a girl. He did say, though, that Amber could have made the angle of the wound if she was motivated enough. Paparella included a close-up photo of the knife sticking out of Amber’s chest and another photo of her hand with the bloody imprint of the knife handle in her palm to make his case for suicide.”
I glanced nervously at the file under Cole’s palm. I wasn’t so curious to see what was in it anymore. “Can you tell me why you wanted to show the file to me?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Ever since I was a little kid, my mom has told me how much I act like my uncle. She’d point out stuff that I’d do or say, and tell me that her brother used to do it the exact same way. Then, when I was seven, my mom got me a pet guinea pig. I told her he was my new best friend and I named him Jamie.”
I blinked. The name struck a chord with me, but I couldn’t quite figure out why.
“My mom said that her brother’s best friend had been named Jamie.”
“Whoa,” I said.
“Right? And then, when Jamie the guinea pig died, I asked my mom for a dog. I think I pestered her for nearly a year before she gave in and said okay, and then I wouldn’t let up about what kind of dog I had to get.”
My eyes dropped to the floor where Bailey was lying quietly at Cole’s feet. “A golden?” I asked.
He nodded. “We went to the breeder and I got to pick her out. The second I held her I told my mom that I was going to call her Bailey.”
Cole reached into the folder, withdrew a photo, and put it on the counter. The photo was of a large blond dog—a golden retriever—lying next to a bed with a yellow comforter, with a trail of blood leaking down it. The angle didn’t allow me to see what was on the bed, but it was obvious to me that it’d been taken inside Amber’s bedroom.
“This is the dog that Spence gave Amber for her eighteenth birthday. She named her Bailey.”
“Whoa,” I said, reaching for the print.
I felt such a familiarity with the beautiful dog. It was like an instant connection, and I longed to wrap my arms around her. But of course she’d be long dead by now.
And then I also realized that Cole was speaking of things that were similar to the odd coincidences in my own life. I lifted my gaze to meet his. Could he be trying to say what I thought he was? My eyes settled on the amber bead at his throat. For a moment I was mesmerized by it. My breathing and heart rate ticked up, too.
“My mom is super-cool,” Cole said. “I mean, she and my dad split when I was three, and he moved to Toronto where he’s from, so she’s been both a mom and a dad to me. She’s always been there, but she also gives me a lot of freedom to do what I want, within reason, and we get along really good, but she’s not like other moms. She’s a little bit out there.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, still focused on the bead at Cole’s throat.
“Well, she’s really into metaphysical stuff. I mean, she believes in ghosts and crystals and past lives and psychics and all that.”
“Really? She does?” I asked, lifting my gaze.
“Yeah. Anyway, her favorite psychic is this guy she met about two years ago named Kyle. He’s supposedly been really accurate with all his readings for her. Like, he told her she was getting a raise when the clinic where she works froze all salaries due to budget cuts, but three days after she sat down with Kyle, Mom’s boss called her into his office and gave her a raise because he said she was his most valuable nurse and he didn’t want to lose her.
“And Kyle also told Mom that my dad was getting divorced again, when we thought his marriage to his second wife was solid. He got divorced last May.”
“Wow,” I said. “He’s that specific?”
“He is,” Cole said. “But that’s not the freakiest part. The freakiest part is that the first time Kyle read for my mom, about two years ago, she had him over for a little psychic party she threw for a few of her friends. Kyle read for everybody at the party, and I tried to stay out of it, you know. It’s not my thing.”
“Sure,” I said, careful to suppress a grin, because clearly, Cole was a bit intrigued by this man Kyle.
“Anyway, at the end of the night I was sitting right here, eating some leftover pizza from the party, when Kyle came out of the back room where he’d been doing the readings and he just, like, started looking at me all weird. My mom was here, too, and she asked him what was up, and Kyle pointed to me and said that I was the reincarnation of a guy who’d been murdered who had a connection to our family. He said it was why I had a future in law enforcement. In a past life, I’d died unjustly, and my reincarnated soul had to work through that karma by getting a badge.”
“Whoa,” I said in a breathy whisper.
“Yep,” Cole agreed. “Anyway, the really weird part is that he said all that before I’d even told my mom that I wanted to join the FBI. And then, Kyle pointed to this”—Cole paused to reach up and touch the bead at his neck—“and said it was my lucky charm. He said it had a connection to the past and that it was an important totem. I’d made this that morning, Lily, and it wasn’t until Kyle mentioned it that I even connected that the bead I’d used was made of amber.”
I put a hand to my mouth, stunned. “He really said all that?”
Cole nodded. “Mom swears that she never told Kyle anything about my uncle. She never mentioned Ben in her session with him, and she said that I only came up when she asked him how I’d do in school.”
“He could’ve looked you guys up on the Internet,” I said, thinking that that’s how I’d learned that Cole and Ben Spencer had been related. But then I remembered that the article I’d read was less than a year old. Kyle had said all these things to Cole two years ago.
“Lily, I did a search on us and my uncle the second Kyle left,” he said. “There wasn’t anything online about Ben’s murder. He was killed before the Internet was a big thing, and no one has written or talked publicly about it in thirty years. There was nothing out there to conn
ect us to Ben or Amber’s murder, not even our last names.”
“Is that why you got the file?” I asked.
Cole smoothed his palm over the folder. “Maybe,” he said. “It was like, once Kyle put the idea into my head, I couldn’t get it out, you know? I started asking Mom about Ben’s murder, but she was only eleven when it happened, and she doesn’t remember much. My grandma won’t talk about Ben at all. You mention his name and she changes the subject, starts talking about the weather. In her house, his bedroom is a shrine. She hasn’t changed a single thing in thirty years. Nobody’s allowed in. She keeps the door locked at all times, but I remember, when I was little, being at her house and she’d leave the room. I’d go looking for her and I’d find her in there, sitting on the bed, holding the pillow and just staring out into space and crying quietly.
“Mom says that Gram never got over losing Ben. She told me that he was her favorite, and the day he died something in her died, too.”
“That’s heartbreaking,” I said.
“It is,” he agreed. “More than anything I think I want to know who really murdered Uncle Ben for Gram. I mean, I know the police told her Amber did it, but I just don’t buy it. Mom doesn’t, either, and I don’t think Gram thinks she did, either. All these years, that’s gotta eat away at you, and I want to give her some peace about it.”
We fell silent for a moment and my thoughts tumbled over one another. “So what did you think about the part where Kyle told you that you were reincarnated?” I asked. It’d never occurred to me that Cole and I would share so many weird coincidences.
He shook his head. “It was the one thing I really wanted to shrug off, you know? Like, how crazy does that sound?”
“Pretty crazy,” I said. “And I mean that from experience.”
“Exactly,” he said, pointing at me. “But there are all these things, all these weird little coincidences in my life that we’ve never been able to explain. And it goes way beyond a guinea pig named Jamie and a dog named Bailey. There’re like a hundred other similarities between my Uncle Ben and me that are just too dead-on to be random.
“So when you showed me that video where you actually became Amber, I mean…Lily, it’s like everything sort of clicked into place.”
A wave of relief washed over me. “So, you think it’s possible? This whole reincarnation thing?”
“Yeah,” he said, as if it was a no-brainer. But then he grew quite serious and he said, “It explains why I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind from the moment I met you.”
My breath caught and the air between us felt charged with electricity. I hadn’t been mistaken. There was a connection between us. Something special. Something intense. Something both familiar and brand-new. “Whoa,” I whispered.
His hand lifted slowly off the folder and came up to cup my cheek. “I never really believed that I could be Ben,” he said. “I mean, I’ve thought about what Kyle said to me for two years, and it always nagged at me, but I’d kinda dismissed it. I thought it was all new-age crap. But the other day when you called me Spence, you know what the first thing I thought was?”
“What?”
“I thought of what Kyle said. That I was Ben reincarnated. It just popped into my mind. And then you called me Spence again the next day, and I wondered how you could see through me to him. It didn’t freak me out; it just felt…right.”
My breathing had quickened as the energy between us grew more intense, more charged, more electric. He leaned toward me, still cupping my cheek. My eyes closed, and then, there it was: the featherweight caress of his lips against my own. Up close he smelled of lightly scented soap and fresh-cut grass. My fingers sought his shirt, and through the fabric I found the ripple of taut muscles and the heat of his skin. Splaying my hands against his chest, I felt the thunder of his heartbeat, which sent my own into a faster rhythm.
Cole’s lips settled more firmly against mine, and the sharp stubble of his chin prickled my skin. But mostly there was the kiss; I’d never felt lips so alternatively soft yet hungry, so gentle yet commanding, so sweet yet wanting. It made me tremble.
His hand moved to my hair, and he wound his fingers through my locks as his other arm reached around me to pull me off the bar stool and close against him. The intensity of our kiss began to mount as his lips parted mine, and I sank into that extraordinary moment of passion, wanting it to go on and on and never end.
Just when I was about to lose myself, my iPhone rang, and Cole and I sprang apart as if someone had just walked in on us. I fumbled to answer the phone. “Hello?!”
“Lily?” Mom replied, her voice concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. What’s up?”
“You sound out of breath. Are you having another panic attack?”
I forced a laugh. “No, really, Mom. Everything’s cool….I was…I was just running up some stairs.”
“Where are you?”
“Uh…” I didn’t think Mom would like to hear that I was at Cole’s house unchaperoned. Mom was really cool, but she had her limits. “At the library.”
“On a Friday afternoon after a half day of school?” she asked. Mom’s got a pretty good lie detector.
“Yeah, but I’m leaving now,” I said. Glancing up at the clock on the stove, I remembered I had to pick her up before we headed into Richmond to see Dr. Van Dean.
“Okay,” she said, but I could tell she was still concerned. “Drive safe, sweetie, and don’t speed or text while you’re driving.”
“I won’t,” I told her, smiling at Cole, who was looking curiously at me. And then I thought of something and I added, “Mom, wait. Can you hold on a sec?”
“Of course,” she said.
Holding the phone to my chest, I said to Cole, “What’re you doing this afternoon?”
“Not sure. Why? You leaving me already?”
I ignored that obviously flirtatious question and said, “My mom and I are driving to Richmond to meet this doctor who’s an expert on reincarnation. He saw the video of me under hypnosis and he wants to talk to me about the dreams I’ve been having. I was wondering if you wanted to come, too.”
Cole’s brow shot up. “Hell yeah.”
“Really?” I was surprised that he seemed so excited by the idea.
“Lily,” he said to me, “meeting you and talking about this stuff is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me. I mean, I know it’s freaky, but you gotta admit: if it’s actually real, it’s pretty awesome.”
I felt a tension I hadn’t been aware I’d been carrying leave my shoulders. Until Cole had said that, I’d been so anxious and scared about what was going on with me. The fact that he thought it was interesting and cool made me feel so much better about what most people thought was pure make-believe.
“Mom?” I said, putting the phone back to my ear. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. And, just so you know, I’m bringing a friend….”
“ARE YOU WAITING FOR A FRIEND?” I heard a voice say.
I stood away from the locker I’d been leaning against while I flipped through Seventeen magazine, and smiled at Mrs. Wishborne, one of the school secretaries who must’ve come in on a Saturday to get some extra work done.
“My boyfriend,” I said, motioning to the closed door of the classroom.
She looked to the door and nodded, then carried on down the hall.
Spence was inside taking his SATs. This would be his third attempt at the test. Jamie’s, too. Both of them had taken the test once last year, then again early this year, and neither had done very well. Spence had a hard time with tests in general, especially multiple choice. He was a decent enough student overall, but when it came to big exams like finals, the ACTs, and SATs he’d get so anxious that sometimes he’d bomb.
Jamie was an entirely different story. He was a very smart kid who just didn’t apply himself. He’d shown up at the SAT in September half-asleep and never finished it.
I’d been working with Spence on the practice tests for
the last three weeks, and I’d also offered to help Jamie study, but he’d only shown up at the first session, and I had no doubt he’d bomb on this try, too.
Still, I had high hopes for Spence. He’d been doing well enough on the practice tests for me to keep my fingers crossed about his chances of getting into UCLA. His application had already been sent in, and he’d talked to the coach, who was very interested in Spence joining the team, but even he’d warned him about maintaining his grades and doing well on this last attempt at the SATs. He’d told Spence outright that UCLA didn’t make an academic allowance for incoming athletes. Spence would have to get in on his own merits before the coach could offer him a place on the team and, hopefully, some money.
That was another hurdle we were going to have to overcome. The coach had said that most of his scholarship budget had already been assigned to other incoming freshmen, and the best he could offer Spence if he got in was a partial scholarship for tuition only. We’d have to figure out how to get the money for room, board, and books on our own.
There was a scholarship fund from the Bennett foundation, and I’d helped Spence fill out the application, but he still had to interview with Mrs. Bennett and impress her, and I wasn’t sure anyone could impress Mrs. Bennett. A good SAT score could only help his cause with her, but I didn’t know that she’d be sympathetic to the star of the football team with the B average, no matter how great his financial need.
But we weren’t entirely out of options yet. There was hope.
I began to pace the hallway, nervous about so much riding on Spence’s performance today, when the door to the classroom opened and out came several students. From the pack, both Jamie and Spence appeared, and one look at their faces told me they thought they’d done well.
“Hey, Ambi,” Spence said, stopping in front of me to give me a quick kiss.
“How’d it go?” I asked, trying to keep the anxious tone out of my voice.
“It was good,” he said.
“Really?”
He took up my hand and started to lead me down the hallway. “Yeah. Those extra practice tests helped. I got through the whole test this time, at least.”