Page 88 of Timeless

Forty-one. They had had visions, heard the voices of, and felt as if they’d lived the lives of forty-one couples. With Simon being away for the weekend on a camping trip with his scout troop and both of them having a day off, they’d decided to spend as much of their free time making love and going through everything they’d discovered about their past lives over the years. They’d been together for seventeen years now and had written a few things down here and there, but nothing comprehensive. Of course, they couldn’t let anyone find it, not even Simon, who would undoubtedly have questions for his mothers. He was getting to that age where any differences in his life would get him mocked at school, so while he understood that his mothers were a couple, that he had to keep it a secret, and he’d always seemed fine with that, the older he got, the more concerned they became that he might not like being different than the other kids in his school.

Things had changed a lot since they’d met in 1958. It felt like the country and the world had gone through a major transformation. It wasn’t as bad for them today as it had been in the past, but with their adopted son, they still had to be cautious. The war protests were starting to die down, drugs and sex were being talked about more openly, and women, dare Diana say it, were becoming more and more vocal and moving toward equality. They could technically buy a house by themselves now without needing a man to co-sign or be married, though some lenders were slow to allow it without a man’s involvement in some way. They were finally allowed to get their own credit card. They could even divorce theirhusbands, if they really wanted to, without needing a cause or reason for the first time. All of that was good for them, but they still wouldn’t take any chances with their son.

With Simon out of the house for two whole days, they decided to catalog everything they’d discovered through the years and began by checking their list of couples to make sure they didn’t miss anyone. Then, on the wall in their bedroom, with the curtains closed and the lights turned on to let them see, they began trying to put them all in order on pieces of scrap paper.

For some couples, they knew the approximate or even the exact dates. Antoinette and Dorothy had met in 1900 and died in 1920 and 1922. From what Diana and Cheryl had seen and heard in their visions, those two had met and started to discover their joined pasts when they’d been teenagers, so they hadn’t had long together. Then, there were Bess and Elizabeth, and they only had a vague understanding that those women had lived in the mid-1700s. The Spanish princess and her servant wife had lived in a convent in the 1600s, but with their research, they’d discovered that Maria had been born in 1613 and had died in 1645. There was no information on Isabella because to the world, she’d never existed. Maria’s life was only recorded because she’d been royalty. Before that, everything else was blank.

“I feel like we’re missing something,” Cheryl told her, staring at their wall.

“Like what?”

“Isabella and Maria can’t have been the first version of us because they’ve talked about knowing each other before, but we’ve never heard them mention any names or specifics; just that they’ve known one another in another life.”

“I wonder if that’s because they couldn’t talk about it much at all. They lived in a Catholic country, where practicing any other religion or talking about things like reincarnation or anything like that could’ve gotten them tortured and killed. Besides, they lived in a convent. They were only permitted to be in the same small room because Maria was a princess. Shewasn’t allowed to bring any other staff with her. And the nuns didn’t want Isabella to be there in the first place. They didn’t like that Maria got special treatment. But the king ordered it. So, they were probably afraid to talk about it too much.”

“But who came before them? And why haven’t we been able to see them?”

“I don’t know. Things just get foggier the further we go back,” she replied and moved behind her wife, wrapping Cheryl up in her arms. “We can only tell that Elizabeth and Bess were in the 1700s for sure, but we think it might be the 1750s or 60s and maybe in the South. We seem to get a little clearer the closer they are to us. We remember most of Deb and Harriet’s life now.”

“Do you think we should find him?” Cheryl asked.

They’d talked about the fact that Paul, Deb and Harriet’s son, had been left without any of his parents. He’d lost his father and his second father in the war. Then, Harriet and Deb had died trying to keep him safe in a storm. They didn’t know what happened to him after that, but they both felt like he’d been taken care of by family, so they tried not to worry too much. In a way, it had felt for years like they had two sons. Of course, Paul was older than them, so if they did try to find him, they could never tell him who they were.

“We only know the name of the town. We don’t even have an address for the farmhouse. And he might not even still be there.”

“He’s still there,” Cheryl said.

“How do you know?”

“I feel it. He might not be in the exact house, but I don’t think he would have left town. I feel like he’s still there, right where they left him. He’d be about thirty-seven now. He’s still probably working the farm with a family of his own.”

“Our son from a previous life has a family of his own,” Diana uttered as she shook her head back and forth. “Hard to wrap my head around that.”

“Me too.” Cheryl chuckled. “Maybe when Simon goes to Lily and Sandy’s for a week next month, you and I can takea long drive.” She turned in Diana’s arms. “He’s the only living connection we have to any of this.”

“Maybe. We really have no way of knowing. Other versions of us have had children. Most of them had had no choice, given the time they lived in, but we could have hundreds of living descendants in one way or another.”

“Oh, I…”

“What?” She wrapped Cheryl up in her arms.

“I’ve never thought about that.”

“I suppose I hadn’t, either, until you said something.” Diana pulled out of their embrace, walked to the wall, and pointed at a piece of scrap paper that had the names of one of the couples. “We know they had two children, one each with their husbands, and that those husbands left to fight a war and were gone for three years, so they had that time together.” She pointed to another piece of paper stuck to the wall. “Four children here.” She moved on to another. “Nine kids between them. Six survived to adulthood, from what we can remember.”

“They’d all be long gone by now. But maybe they had kids, and those kids had children?”

“Exactly.”

Cheryl walked up to her, leaned into Diana’s side, and rested her head on Diana’s shoulder. Diana wrapped her arm around her middle.

“There’s no way for us to know anything for sure, is there?” Cheryl asked. “We don’t even know where some of these people lived.”

“Sometimes, we don’t even knowwhen.”

“And besides my wife, the former princess, we don’t know if any of them were well-off or would’ve had anything recorded about their lives.”

“I would doubt it.” She kissed the top of Cheryl’s head.