Time After Time by Antoinette Stockenberg Read Free Book Online

both
named Victoria?"
    "More than that, Liz!" her
friend insisted. "Listen to me. I know you think I tend toward
flakiness, but just listen. She lived in
this house. Victoria St. Onge lived in the
house that I tracked down for you. Didn't I track it down? We both agreed
I did," she insisted almost feverishly.
    She began a wild shuffle
through the letters, looking for one particular one. "Not only
that, but — okay, you tell me — how have I decorated my house? In what
scheme?"
    "You mean, in high
Victorian style?" asked Liz, baffled.
    Victoria slammed a fist on
the table like an auctioneer. "Right again! This Victoria," she said, tapping
the letters with her forefinger, "was my
age during the high Victorian
period."
    "I'll bet lots of people
your age named Victoria have done up their houses in Victorian
style. So what?"
    "My God," whispered
Victoria. "1 can't believe you don't get it. What motif" she said slowly,
as if Liz were in the final round of the College Bowl, "what motif have I featured in
every room of my house — in my bedding — even in my
bathrobe?"
    "What? Your thing about
angels?"
    "How's your French?"
whispered Victoria, more to herself than to Liz. "Ange or 'Onge'? Close
enough, don't you think?"
    It was, at last, beginning
to dawn on Liz that her friend was serious. "Victoria," she said
gently, "Everyone's into angels nowadays. I have an angel."
    "I gave it to
you!"
    "Whatever!" Liz snapped.
Victoria was fragile; her entire identity was a piecemeal,
makeshift affair. Liz knew it and respected the fact — and still
lost her cool. "Are you nuts? You think, what? That you're a reincarnation of
this Victoria St. Onge?"
    "Who else can I be?"
Victoria asked ingenuously. "I don't know who I am. I have amnesia.
In the hospital I pluck a name out of the blue — Victoria. I buy a
Victorian house, do it up as a period piece, fill it up with all
kinds of angels, then I find you a house, then you find the trunk, then I happen to haul down some letters
.... My God." She smiled a truly angelic smile, as if she'd fallen
off a cliff and landed unhurt on a cloud.
    "Who else," she repeated
as a tear rolled out, "can I be?"
    Liz, worried now, laid the
letter she was holding on the table, then bent over behind her
friend and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. "You can be
anything you want to be, kiddo. Haven't you always told me
that?"
    Victoria turned and
pressed her cheek to Liz's, then sat her friend down in the chair
alongside. "There are little things as well — like the fact that
she rinsed her hair red with some kind of tea and henna mix — and
the fact that she liked Johann Strauss. Didn't I just buy the
complete collection of his waltzes on compact disc? You were with
me at the Music Box, accusing me of being an impulse
buyer."
    She lifted a packet of
still-bound letters and pressed it to her breast. "Don't you see,
Liz?" she asked in a plaintive voice. "Isn't it as obvious to you
as it is to me? Judy Maroney died in that car accident, along with her husband and
two children. And Victoria St. Onge stepped into her body and
started it up again. It explains the amnesia. It explains so many
things."
    "But why?" Liz asked,
despite herself. "Why would this Victoria St. Onge do
that?"
    Victoria lifted her
shoulders in a smiling, forlorn shrug. "I don't know. I'm hoping I
find the answer in these letters."
    "Which reminds me," said
Liz. "The box."
    She ran out to the car to
retrieve it, then laid it on the table between them. "The locksmith
had a key that fit. Look what was inside," she said, lifting the
lid, not without trepidation.
    But she heard no chiming
sound, only blissfully deafening silence.
    "Ah, how pretty!" said
Victoria, taking up the pin. "I love it. Do you suppose it was
hers?" she asked in her guileless way.
    "It could have been, I
guess. I'll tell you what," Liz said impulsively. "You have
it."
    Victoria colored and said,
"I wasn't hinting for it. I just meant —"
    "No, take it. To be
honest, I'm