Page 95 of Memories of the Lost

“Thank you.”

“All those mirrors,” Sage said. “Eerie, isn’t it?”

Tillie’s mouth dropped open. Mirrors. “Oh my gosh. Mirrors, mirrors everywhere.” Her eyes filled with tears.

Sage rounded the table. “May I?”

Tillie nodded, and her lost sister wrapped her thin arms around her and held her while a tidal wave of grief swept over her.

But she still didn’t remember.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Liam took Tillie back to the hotel, and when she left, he paced with his sense of unsettledness, rounding the room over and over until he recognized the insanity of it. He lived the confrontation with Krish over and over, seeing it from all sides. He saw the expression on Tillie’s face when she looked up to him and said, “What about my mom?” and he knew she didn’t mean Clare, her newly discovered mother.

The unsettledness was also over the realization that he’d recognized Tillie because he’d known her twin as a child, not because she was a soulmate. It made him ache somewhere deep, that this time he’d been so sure, and once again, he was wrong.

And if he was wrong about the sense of connecting souls, maybe he was wrong about Krish. Maybe Krish had been right all along, that Liam had no judgment in these matters. He fell in love too fast, too wildly, for it ever to be real.

But he thought of Tillie’s quick mind, her metaphorical grasp of the world, her strength enduring everything she’d faced, and he felt a million layered things. Love and protectiveness and admiration and sorrow for her losses, and lust and satisfaction and yearning and contentment. He felt that she made him a better version of himself. He thought of holding her in the night, her hair streaming over them both like a silken blanket, and the emotion he felt in those momentsand how it anchored him to himself in some strange way he couldn’t articulate. He thought of the first sight of her, crouching down to help an old woman in the rain, leaving her umbrella—embodying kindness. He’d gone down to the gallery to find her. Even right now, he longed for her company, as if he’d found an extra arm and now needed it.

It wasn’t like it had been with Opal. She had dazzled him physically, and he was enthralled by the sex. That happened to people all the time. Human beings were wired for sex and for wanting a lot of it with the possible mates who triggered the chemical response genes insisted upon.

Which was the scientific angle of soulmates, he supposed.

With Tillie, yes, he wanted her physically. He wanted tomateon some visceral level that meant children and families and all of that unfolding into the future. On some deep level, he loved that she was from his mother’s village, that their bloodlines looped back and forth through time, their ancestors probably going back to the Bronze Age. He imagined a Tillie at the dawn of Stonehenge, laying an offering on the stones at the solstice, and it gave him a shiver.

Standing at the window, he looked down to the street and watched the rain make patterns on the pavements. He wished he had someone to call, to talk things out with. Krish had been his only close friend for a very long time, and maybe that had been part of the problem, too. He’d leaned on him too much. And maybe Krish had grown greedy as well.

That, too, was a thing that happened. It just did. Humans were wired to want more and more.

Leaning on the casement, he brushed a hand over his chin, feeling prickles, and took a breath, centering himself. What was here now? Could he stand just in his body and be aware?

He took a breath, let it go. His thoughts chased themselves around his mind: Krish, Tillie, India, the workshops that had grown so crazy and out of control. He let them whirl round and round.

Standing in his body, he felt his empty belly. His arms were cold from the draft off the window. He had a little ache in his midchest that might be missing Tillie, or sadness over the loss of the cheerful lunch he’d been anticipating. Perhaps he should return to Clare’s. She must be so devastated by all of this. And Sage, too, although of all of them, she’d been the calmest.

He left the window and sat down on the big chair, wrapped a blanket around his cold shoulders, and settled in for meditation. Muddy waters, left to stand, would clear. He sat for an hour, sat in the moment and his body.

As he sat, the water cleared at last. He saw that he loved his work, truly. Loved the people who came to practice with him. Loved seeing their joy when they discovered moments of peace. He loved the love inherent in spiritual work.

Love. A sense of expansion struck him. Love like a wind or a breeze, love blowing over mountains and rivers and oceans. Love settling on him in a bar in Auckland when he saw a girl as pretty as a fairy. Love rising from a crowd at a workshop like pink steam, filling the air with a fragrance of peace. Love in the offerings, love in the app, love in Clare’s kitchen and love in Sage’s chocolates. Tillie’s paintings and the light in her face when they made love, and the way he felt doing simple things, like eating with her.

We are all soulmates.

He saw her bending to help the old woman up, saw himself helping her up the stairs to her apartment, saw her ex in despair on the steps. Love, love, love, love.

We are all soulmates.

When he finished, he stood and opened his laptop.

What did he know for sure?

He loved the workshops. He genuinely did. The people, the pleasure of helping them find their way. He loved the big groups sometimes, and he loved the financial rewards of the app.

What he didn’t love was being on the road all the time. It was draining and left him out of touch with himself. He needed a home base. His people around him.

Maybe here.