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“Not like that?”

Deb shook her head.

“What do you think it means? We’re having the same vision, Deb.”

“I have no idea. Do you have any others?”

“A cabin,” Harriet shared.

“In the woods?”

“Yes.”

“Is there a little porch in the front, held up by big logs?”

“Yes,” Harriet said, her eyes growing wide.

“And sometimes, we’re in a field of flowers in these big dresses with the skirts held up by wires or something?”

“Yes, I’ve had that one, too,” Harriet said, heart racing and not believing they’d had the same pictures in their minds.

“Then, I think maybe you’ve been right all along, my love,” Deb replied before she lifted herself and removed her dressing gown, revealing her naked body to Harriet for the first time since their wedding night.

“Oh, you are…” Harriet held a hand out and touched between Deb’s breasts. “So beautiful.”

“And I’ve, apparently, been your wife a hundred times before,” Deb added. “You were right: all your lives are mine, and all of mine are yours, Harriet.”

Harriet sat up, removed her own dressing gown, and when Deb rolled onto her back, she climbed on top of her and settled their hips together.

“I will love you forever,” Deb promised.

CHAPTER 19

Her book would end there, she thought as she finished the last chapter with Deb in Harriet’s arms once again. Abby still had a lot to write. She had skipped ahead because she’d needed to get the ending down before she lost it, but she’d have to go back and write more about Harriet’s time in the war, Deb’s time back at home before and after finding out about John David, and even the time before the wedding of Deb to John David. She wasn’t yet sure if she’d tell that part more as a flashback or actually begin the story there, but she felt good that she at least knew more about how it ended.

The feeling of Deb and Harriet being so real to her still hadn’t gone away. If anything, with the ending of their story written, she felt it even more now. There was just something about this story that was hitting her in a way her previous one never did.

Before she could close her laptop to take a much-needed break, though, she noticed a notification, so she clicked over to where she and Quinn had been messaging. Abby had been sending her links of male realtors to see if she recognized the man who had dropped off the box. At some point, Quinn had asked her to just let this go, but while she worried she was taking things too far, Quinn hadn’t specifically told her to stop messaging the links, so she’d kept going.

Quinn_Jordan: That’s him.

Abby clicked on the link she’d sent earlier that morning, wondering who it was. She’d sent over a dozen, wanting to be thorough, so she could no longer remember which one she’d sent last. It was a man who appeared in his forties or maybe his fifties. She’d never been good with ages, and he had salt-and-pepper hair, so that made it a little trickier for her to be sure. There was a number next to the image, so she wasted no time and dialed. When a woman answered, Abby asked to speak with him.

“I’m sorry; he’s at a showing right now. Can I have him call you back?”

“Oh, okay. Can I askyoua question, then?”

“Sure,” the woman replied.

“The listings shown on the website; are those the only ones he has?”

“I would assume so, yes. We’ve got to keep those up-to-date so people can make offers and request showings. I can ask him when he returns and have him call you back. What’s your name, dear?”

“Never mind. Thank you.” Abby hung up and scrolled through all the listings on the site.

The company had several realtors, so she needed to dig a little deeper. There were three farmhouses listed. When she clicked on one of them, she noticed that another realtor was handling it, so she went back to the main page to click on the second one. This one was managed by her guy, so she took a look at the photos available. Not knowing anything about the house from Quinn’s interaction with the man, Abby had no idea what she was looking for. Then, she remembered the photo. She didn’t know if the picture was taken in front of Deb’s house or in front of John David’s. In her version of the story, John David’s family had agreed to let their home be used for the after-wedding festivities since it was larger than Deb’s family home, but she couldn’t know for sure because her version of the story was just that, a story.

It was getting harder and harder for her to think of it that way, though. Every time she wrote a sentence of their story, it became more and more real to her. She picked up the photo and compared the porch from the listing to the porch in the wedding photo. It could’ve gone through a lot of changes in the previous decades, but if she had to guess, she would say that this wasn’t the house. Clicking away, she moved on to the third listing she’d found, and the moment she focused on the small thumbnail image next to the address and other information that someone looking to buy a house would care about, she felt it; that same warm feeling that hadrushed over her when she’d noticed the antique shop for the first time. There was that same pull to know more, check something out,bewherever the feeling was telling her to be, and she couldn’t ignore it even if she wanted to now.