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CHAPTER 27

Abby sat on Quinn’s sofa, drinking a beer and eating the best piece of pie she’d ever had of any flavor. She definitely wouldn’t tell her mother that. The woman prided herself on her baking skills, and they were certainly good, but, apparently, Mrs.Potter’s were better. She’d been chewing for a minute in an attempt to stall because she didn’t know what else to say. They’d acknowledged the fact that they were quite possibly reincarnated versions of women who had fallen in love again over and over again. Abby could no longer call it anything else. They’d had too many visions, scenes playing out in their minds, details they both knew about those visions, but they couldn’t know those things without this truth. They were both themselves and a combination of other women throughout time.

“Do you think we’ve ever been anyone famous?” Quinn asked as she set her fork down on her empty pie plate.

“What?” Abby laughed a little, liking how Quinn had this ability to joke and laugh while talking about something that was very serious.

“Well, it’s a valid question. Think about it. It’s what everyone thinks when they talk about this. No one ever thinks they used to be a random Jane or John if they believe in reincarnation. It’s that they were Jane Austen or John F. Kennedy or someone like that.”

“So, you think one or both of us could have been Jane Austen?”

“You know what I mean.” Quinn smiled at her before she took a sip of her beer. “It’s possible, right? I don’t know how many times this has happened, but if it’s happened for at least a couple hundred years or more, odds are that we’ve lived at least ten different lives. Maybe one of those was asa rich couple who pretended to be roommates, and people thought we were old spinsters. Maybe we were famous at that time.”

“What about Elizabeth and Bess? I’ve gotten visions of them since I started writing Cheryl and Diana. When do you think they lived?”

“It felt like mid-eighteen hundreds to me. Like the American South, too. I don’t know why I think that, but it feels right. Two women who fell in love but had to marry men, given the time. They live in the woods, a few miles away from each other, and have to walk or ride a horse to see the other one, only able to do that every so often because their life is so hard.”

Abby nodded and said, “Sounds about right. The cabin I saw was different than another one I’ve seen, though, so I think we were someone else, too. And it felt much older to me. Like, much, much older. Not in America, either.”

“Well, I still think that we lived in Victorian England, so it makes sense that we wouldn’t have always lived here. We could’ve lived all over the world, and it’ll start coming back to us. God, imagine having, like, ten or so lives rolling around in our brains. And it could be more, right?”

“Where wouldyouwant to live?”

“Huh?” Quinn asked, seemingly a little lost in thought.

“Where would you want to live?”

“Here. I like it here.”

“No, I mean, in our past,” Abby said to clarify. “Where would you have wanted a different version of you to live?”

“Honestly, that’s tricky.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d want them to live somewhere else in the present day, not past somewhere else.”

“Explain.” Abby kicked off her shoes and slid her feet under her body, turning to Quinn, who lifted an eyebrow at her.

“Well, they had to be together in secret pretty much at any time period but our own. Maybe a little earlier than us,but it was still hard. I know it’s not exactly easy now, and it’s gotten worse recently, but there are places in the world where you and I can get married right now and be together forever, not having to keep it a secret or be forced to marry a man. We now also have the science to have a baby, if we wanted, we could adopt one through someone or an agency, and even surrogacy is an option, too. Yes, we’d need money to do all that stuff, but at least it’s possible. So, I guess I’d rather us just travel the world today than think about the myriad of struggles that they all had to go through no matterwherethey lived because ofwhenthey lived.”

Abby smiled softly at her and said, “I like that.”

“Traveling the world with me?” Quinn asked.

“Don’t push your luck. I still haven’t decided if I even want to date you.”

Quinn laughed and replied, “You’re still here. You just took off your shoes and got comfortable. Why did you do that?”

“Because I’m enjoying our conversation.”

“You were rushing out of here a minute ago, prepared to finish writing another story about real people and maybe looking those people up on the internet so that you could find out what happened to them in real life.”

“I think I’d rather write it first, like I said. I was going to talk to you and look them up after, but I think I’d rather write about Cheryl and DianabeforeI look them up.”

“To see what you got right?” Quinn asked.

“Not just that necessarily. I’ve never enjoyed writing so much in my life. My first book was a chore to write. I liked the time period I chose, but not all the research I had to do before I even got to plotting. Then, the characters started to annoy me during that phase all writers go through and hate when they can’t stand the book they’re writing. I’m not really experiencing any of that right now. And yes, it’s scary what we’ve discovered, but it’s just made the words pour out of me. It’s made me love writing again.”