Chapter Fourteen
There was a strange grating noise; it was incessant and clawed at my consciousness. Pulling the pillow over my head, I tried, without success, to reclaim the mindlessness of sleep, but the sound wouldn’t stop. The longer it went on, the more impossible the idea of falling asleep became. Pushing the quilt from my body, I scrubbed my eyes with my hands and stepped barefoot into the hall.
Following the noise, I walked to the adjacent room and peeked inside. James was hunched over an ancient wooden desk. His head rest against his palm, and his fingers were threaded through his hair. I took a few steps inside the room, and a floorboard creaked. James looked up, his features tense.
“What’re you doing up?” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s not even eight.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” I pointed to the printer that was frantically spitting paper from its bottom. “What’s all that?”
There were several stacks of paper on the desktop alongside the sheets James had spread out in front of him.
“I found sleep difficult last night.” James was wearing the same jeans and white T-shirt from the night before, and judging from the shadows under his eyes, he hadn’t slept at all. “How’re you feeling?” he asked.
He took my hands in his. With gentle care, he pulled my sleeves back and examined the scabs on my wrists, running his fingers over the lighter marks. “They look better.”
I flinched. “They are. And I’m fine, really.”
James’s brow scrunched. He wanted to say something, but whatever it was, he let it go.
“What kept you awake?” I asked, hoping to change his focus.
His lips did that thing they did when he was trying not to smile. “You were talking in your sleep.”
Blood flushed and burned against my cheeks. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The corner of James’s mouth quirked up. “It wasn’t bad, and at times not even coherent.”
“Do I even want to know what I said?” My mind raced with possibilities, most of them embarrassing.
“You talked about Thomas.” James moved to his desk and sifted through the papers he’d printed.
“Really?” I said, surprise evident in my voice even as a shiver of relief washed over me. It could’ve been so much worse. I cleared my throat and pointed to the stack of paper in his hands. “And that has something to do with Thomas?”
He looked at the papers and held them out to me. “See for yourself.”
The first page was an article from the Galveston Daily dated June 22, 1922. It was a single column article about the murder of James Bellingham. Below the headline was a photo, and staring at it made my heart stop. Even in the dated black and white picture, James’s eyes held an intensity that made me shake.
The article recapped how his body was found. A young man, on his way to work at the Bellingham Hotel, stumbled across him by accident. Century-old guilt tickled the recesses of my mind, like the part of me that lived all those years ago still regretted the decision to escape with Colin.
As I read, I wasn’t surprised to see my name mentioned more than once. Roselli had shown me a similar article last night. What bothered me was my alleged involvement with his murder.
“None of this is true,” I said, dropping the paper to my side. “How could they think I’d been involved?” I looked back at the article and choked on the contents. “I can’t believe it.”
James moved around the desk to stand in front of me. “You have to remember, it isn’t you they’re talking about. Just like that isn’t me.” He pointed at the picture on the paper. “You need to separate yourself from it.”
“How? I lived this.” I shook the paper. “I remember it like it happened yesterday. This isn’t something abstract I came up with. It feels like real life, like real memories.”
James frowned. “I know my experience with our past-life is different, but it makes it no less real. I know what it’s like to have ghosts haunt your days. To have things you can’t explain bury you.” He licked his bottom lip and heaved a sigh. “You need to keep perspective. Especially if we’re going to find that necklace.”
Thinking about finding the necklace only made me think of Roselli—of last night. We had two days, and how we were going to find it was beyond me. I knew very little about my past life, and other than fleeing to Houston, I had no idea where I lived, how we made money, how we even survived. Had I made friends? Had I gotten a job?
I lifted the article I held in my hand. “How did you find this?”
“When I heard you talking, it made me think. If you’re seeing it—if I’m painting it—there has to be a record of it. You know, if this truly is a past life, wouldn’t there be something out there to confirm it?”
“So you just typed in his name, and there it was? It was that easy?”
James shrugged. “Sort of. There was more digging involved, but once I found it and nailed the dates down, it wasn’t hard. Turns out the Bellingham family was pretty famous in Galveston during the twenties. The murder and disappearance of the Bellingham boys was big news. Literally, it covered the papers from 1922 to ’23.”
“You found all of this?” I sifted through the pages lying on the desk. There were at least thirty different articles. “You’re like an internet super-sleuth.”
“Not even close.” He chuckled before turning his focus back to one particular paper. “It turns out that James and Thomas Bellingham were heirs to—”
“The Bellingham Hotel fortune,” I finished.
“Right.” He nodded and placed the page in my hand. “Read that.”
“If this is more nonsense about me luring you to your death, I think I’ll pass.”
“No, this is important.”
I sighed. “Six days have lapsed since the disappearance of Thomas Bellingham. Arthur and Marie Bellingham, owners of the Bellingham Hotel in downtown Galveston, plead with the public to come forward with any information regarding their son’s whereabouts. James Bellingham, murdered the night his brother, Thomas, went missing, was laid to rest at Old City Cemetery in the early hours of June twenty-fourth.”
I couldn’t read any further and dropped the paper on his desk. James was pensive, his eyes narrowed and thoughtful.
“Does any of that seem off to you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You said you saw Thomas murdered,” he said.
I nodded, still staring at the article in hand.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
I sucked in a breath when I finally understood what he meant. “You’re wondering why his body wasn’t found.”
James nodded. “Why would they have taken it?”
“And why would they have left yours?” I took in a great gulp of air while James shuffled some of the papers before handing me another.
“Here. I thought this might explain it, but there’s something I’m missing.”
I cringed at the heading. “Priceless Diamond Stolen by Prominent Society Heir.” I shook my head and looked to James. “He—you—James didn’t steal the diamond. It was given to him by Thomas.”
“Keep reading,” James encouraged.
“Nino Roselli, owner of the Valentine Room on Seawall Boulevard, accuses Thomas Bellingham, heir to the Bellingham Hotel fortune, of stealing the priceless yellow diamond he gifted his daughter, Valentina, only one week ago. Valentina was staying at the Bellingham Hotel when the valuable was reported stolen.”
“What do you think?” he asked.
I scanned the rest of the article and dropped the paper on the desktop. “I think Roselli lied. Thomas wouldn’t have needed to steal that diamond. He was wealthy in his own right.”
“Then how did Thomas end up with it? Why did he give it to James? Why not return it? Why die for it?”
James fired the questions at me, and I shook my head at each one. “You’re right, we’re missing something,” I said.
James ran a hand through his hair and plunked his hands loosely at his hips.
“You should try and get some sleep,” I told him.
“Probably,” he admitted. “But I can’t. At least not until we figure this out.”
I pulled my hair over my shoulder and twisted it into a knot. James believed we would find the diamond, but I wasn’t so sure.
“What’s wrong,” he asked, sensing the change in my mood.
I stared at him and tried to gauge my feelings. “What if we can’t find it?”
James straightened his shoulders and his eyes burned with intensity. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s a legitimate question.”
“It won’t come to that. I’ll figure this out.”
I walked around the desk to the window that overlooked the backyard and stared at the patches of dead grass and dirt.
“We have two days. Even if we knew where to look, I’m not sure it’s enough time.”
“Look, we may not have much—yet—but it’s a start, and I’m convinced the answers are here.” James moved from behind the desk and placed his hands at my waist.
Everything about him screamed with determination. “It’s just—I need to know my options. Our options. We can’t face him again without a plan B.”
“Well,” he said with a sigh. “That’s easy.” He wrapped himself around me. “We’ll run. We get out of town and start over somewhere.”
History was repeating, and even though his warm body was pressed against mine, I was cold. I wanted to tell him that it was no use. Roselli would find us, and even if he didn’t, how could I leave my father and Gracie behind without an explanation? And what about my drifts? Running wouldn’t stop them; I’d just be carrying the same problem to a new location.
“You’re quiet,” James said, interrupting my thoughts. “What’re you thinking about?”
“I was supposed to graduate this May,” I said into his chest. “Start my life. Look for a job.” James’s arms tightened. “It all seems so pointless now. All that time I spent worrying about my grades. Stressing about exams. I should’ve had more fun. You know? Lived a little.”
“You sound like you’re giving up.”
“I’m not giving up, it’s just that the future I’ve planned for isn’t what’s being handed to me.”
James nodded. “Sometimes, life sets us on a path, and believe me, it’s not always the one you want to be on. But, I can’t help but think that there’s a reason to go through it.”
“I get that, I do, it’s just that this feels different, like I’m standing on the wrong side of a mountain during an avalanche. I can’t shake the feeling that Roselli’s going to crush us. With or without that diamond.”
James held me arm’s length. “He won’t. I won’t let him.”
I tried to pull away, but his hands tightened at my waist.
“Look at me,” he said. “Roselli isn’t going to hurt you. He won’t even touch you, because I’m not leaving your side. Ever.” His words pierced my skin and crawled through my bones. James was a fierce thing to behold. Determined and immovable, solid as stone.
I wanted to believe him, to believe that everything was going to be okay. He made it easy to think that it would, but there were worse ways to hurt me that had nothing to do with killing me. I thought about James’s murder and the devastation I felt kneeling over his broken body. Yes, watching him die again would be worse than my own death. Much, much worse.
“What’re you afraid of?” he asked, his hands softening against my skin, holding me rather than caging me.
“Everything,” I said honestly. “I’ve never been so afraid, and every solution I think I find ultimately leads to a terrible end.”
An image of my mother, her arms folded around her knees as she stared blankly at the wall, flitted to mind.
“My mother couldn’t separate her drifts from her reality.” I remembered her last lucid moment, the last time I ever saw her. “I don’t want to end up like that. I don’t want to lose myself to my drift, reliving that horror over and over again. If we run, and I don’t figure out how to stop my drifts, I’ll end up just like her.”
“I’d rather have you alive and drifting than dead and buried.”
I pulled away. “You don’t understand what it will be like. You don’t understand what I’ll become.”
James placed his palm, rough with calluses, against my cheek. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. You never met my mother. I won’t put you, or anyone else, in that situation.”
“Then let’s figure it out, okay? Tell me about the night Thomas was killed.”
“I’ve told you everything. Thomas had run to the corner, across the street from where we stood. A car pulled up and—”
“What about before that? Can you remember anything Thomas said before he ran to the corner?”
I fell silent and closed my eyes. “Thomas said to tell her he was sorry.” I shook my head. There had to be something else, something that could help. The image of Thomas running toward us felt alive as I replayed the drift. My eyes snapped open.
“What is it?” James asked. “What do you remember?”
“I didn’t, nothing new anyway.”
“Tell me.”
“It was something Mack said when he first told me about Roselli. He had a daughter, didn’t he?” James nodded and fumbled through his papers.
“Valentina,” he said. “Why?”
“What if Valentina was the ‘her’?” Tendrils of excitement swirled around my ankles and wound their way up my body.
“Who?” James asked, not following my line of thinking.
“That night, right before Thomas ran off, he said to tell ‘her’ he was sorry. I wondered who he could’ve been talking about, and then last night, during my drift, you—I mean, James Bellingham—mentioned that Thomas was in love. That he was seeing someone whose father would never approve of their relationship.”
James ran his hand over the scruff of his beard as his eyes lit with understanding. “But if it was Valentina he was in love with, why would he steal the diamond from her?”
“I don’t think he did. It wouldn’t make sense.”
“Then how did he end up with it?”
I crossed my arms and tapped my fingers against my elbows. “Because she gave it to him.”
He shook his head. “No, that doesn’t fit. You said yourself that Thomas didn’t need the money. He was to inherit a fortune.”
James was right. It didn’t make sense, but something he said jarred a memory in the back of my mind. I turned to James and smiled.
“That’s it.”
“What?”
“He was to inherit a fortune.” My heart raced with excitement, and last night’s drift came flooding to the forefront of my thoughts. “Last night, in my drift, you and I had a similar conversation. I told you I couldn’t…” My face flushed and I looked away from James.
“You couldn’t what?”
“Nothing, it’s just that I told you I had no money, and you told me you didn’t, either. It was your parents’ money, not yours. What if Thomas felt the same way?”
James eyes narrowed.
“Don’t you see?” I asked, but James didn’t move. “He didn’t consider himself wealthy, even though, by right, he was incredibly rich. If they truly wanted to be together, and they knew that Roselli would never approve, they would have to leave town. And to leave town they would need—”
“Money,” James finished.
“He didn’t steal it,” I said with certainty. “She gave it to him, probably to pawn or sell or something. That’s why he said to tell her he was sorry. Roselli must’ve found out before he could do anything about it.”
A weight shifted in my chest as the mysteries surrounding the diamond and my drifts began to clear. Now, if I could only figure out what happened to the necklace after I took it to Houston. I glanced at the articles scattered on the desk. The answers I was looking for wouldn’t be there, and a nervous round of butterflies kicked inside my stomach. We had less than two days before Roselli’s deadline, and I could only hope we’d find it before then.