Page 113 of The Keeper and I

“The connection,” she explained. “To us before.”

Jordan wanted to scream at them to get on with it. From the box, Ethan withdrew a smaller one. It was frayed with age, so he handled it delicately as he placed it beside the larger box. He carefully removed the top and pulled out three black and white photographs. He placed them in a row before Jordan and Laci.

Laci gasped, and Jordan drew back. There, in the pictures, were Billie and Ethan. The first photo was a wedding portrait, Billie in a silk gown with puffed sleeves, and Ethan in a military uniform complete with garrison cap and shined shoes. In the second picture, Billie was in dungarees, her hair tied back with a scarf, and Ethan was in shorts and a T-shirt that read US PARATROOPS. He had his arm around her shoulders and was kissing her cheek. In the third, Ethan was back in uniform, sans jacket, and Billie was in a casual dress, her hair up in victory rolls with her arms around Ethan’s neck. Jordan glanced between the photos and the couple in front of him, too stunned to speak.

“Uncanny, I know,” Billie said. “The couple is Henry and Maggie Owens. They met in 1943 when the US Airborne was stationed in Aldbourne in the months before D-Day. Maggie was a Land Girl working one of the nearby farms, and Henry was a paratrooper.”

“They fell in love, and after Henry shipped out to France, they wrote letters back and forth,” Ethan continued. “He survived France, and when he came back to England, he and Maggie got married. He went on to fight in Holland, and later Belgium, but sadly, he was killed in the Battle of the Bulge. Maggie got the letter a couple weeks later.”

Jordan shook his head. “Wh-what’s that got to do with—”

“Maggie lived the rest of her life alone,” Billie went on. “She died in 1994. The year I was born. Ethan and I found our way back to each other after nearly eighty years apart.”

“You…you mean, they were you?” Laci asked. “Actually you just in a-a…”

“Past life,” Billie finished.

Jordan blinked and shook his head.Thatwas what she meant when she said Ethan was her soulmate? He hadn’t thought she was using the term so literally. This was the stuff of fairy tales, not real life. It couldn’t be possible. It didn’t make sense. And yet, there was no mistaking the photographs. And the way Ethan and Billie looked at each other with a fondness that could only be explained by decades of longing.

“The letters in the hall—” he began.

“Written by Henry and Maggie,” Ethan said.

Jordan rested his hands on the table and took a deep breath. It was so out there. Could that be the case for him and Laci? It didn’t seem like their story had any elements of the Second World War about it.

It was older than that.

Jesus, he was already thinking in those terms? It wasn’t something he should even be considering.

“This is mad,” he said. “It can’t be. Two people don’t just reincarnate or whatever the fuck this is.”

“So…it’s a coincidence that an American moved to England due to papers he’d signed and found the love of his life there?” Ethan countered. “We justhappento look exactly like these two people even though they ain’t relatives? And before you ask, we looked into it.”

Jordan shot a desperate look at Laci, hoping to get some backup, but she was still staring at the photos, a pensive expression on her face.

“I don’t know if it’ll be this easy for us,” she said. “Caroline and Samuel are from even further in the past. Regency England, I believe.”

Jordan huffed, incredulous. “You don’t honestly think—”

“What else explains the things we’ve seen, Jordan?” she argued. “Especially at the estate. And Tessa confirmed this weekend that at that time, Lord Colfield had a daughter called Caroline.” She looked at Billie and Ethan. “There won’t be photographs of them to confirm what they might have looked like.”

“That does complicate things.” Billie tapped her chin. “Are there any portraits of the family?”

“One, but the daughter's face looks like it was burned away,” Laci told her.

“Any other traces of the family?” Ethan asked.

“Some, but mostly of the father and the sons. All evidence of the daughter is gone. Tessa said she died young.”

“There must be something left of her,” Billie said. “I know it was centuries ago, but surely…”

She kept talking, but Jordan could no longer hear it over the roar of his heartbeat in his ears. It couldn’t be. He had considered it back when he first reconnected with his mother, and she told him that the girl he drew was also named Caroline, but he dismissed it. Whatever strange occurrences, there had to be some logical explanation, didn’t there?

He ran through everything he knew for sure:

He had been drawing Laci’s face since he was a boy. His mother had confirmed it.

Laci had asked if they’d met before on the night they found each other, so she recognized him on some level.

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