Will handed it over and I copied her smile, spotting Roan’s messy scrawl “My man…”
When I opened the envelope there were numerous sheets of neatly folded paper and a silver key which fell from between them. Read this inside was jotted on the outside of the pages. “What does he…?”
“Here,” Willow said, picking up the key to hand it over. “There’s more to discover, it seems.”
The old bastard had slipped his apartment key in the envelope, something that struck me as monumental since I’d never gotten even the smallest glimpse inside his place before now. But the key had a number, 1313, and I knew exactly which door it would open, though none had numbers.
“Come on.”
We headed to the last door on the third floor, a place Roan had told me he had taken over when he moved into the building because he liked to watch the sunrise from that spot. It gave him a clear view of the park.
A slip of the key and we were inside, exploring the nearly empty apartment. There was no furniture anywhere in the large, loft space, which I guess hadn’t always been a loft. Heavy wood beams stretched from one end of the room to the other and in the center, near to where a small kitchenette sat in a corner, two more beams ran vertically on either side. It looked like Roan had used a small air mattress to sleep on, but it was deflated and a thick blanket sat in the center, folded neatly with a pillow on top of it.
“Didn’t leave much, did he?” Will asked stepping away from me to nose through the row of upturned boxes and the books that lay scattered across the brick floor. She squatted down, picking up one by the corner, a smile tugging on her mouth when she read the cover.
“What is it?” I asked, coming toward her.
“The Ancestor’s Tale, by Richard Dawkins.” My mom has this one. In fact,” she said, standing up to hand over the book. “I’m pretty sure Roan… or Mr. Lewis… whoever he was gave it to her.”
“Sneaky asshole.”
There was a make-shift wall dividing the main living area and when I walked to the far side of it, I came face to face with an expanse cluttered with photographs, printed images, sketches, and graphs. Multi-colored strings of yarn linked one image to another, mapping out relationships, drawing one generation to another. I decided whatever I thought I knew about my old mentor was going to get thrown right out the window—along with so much that I once thought I believed.
“Son of a bitch,” Willow said, voicing my thoughts as she came to stand next to me. Almost all of the pictures were old, some going back a hundred years, maybe even earlier than that. “Nash, the letter.”
Until she mentioned it, I’d almost forgotten. “You read it,” I said, stepping closer to the wall. There was a clear division, with a length of black string separating one section of pictures from the other. At the top of the right side was the messy scrawl of “Simoneaux.” To the left, came “Lanoix.” Those names were familiar and, by looking at the pictures, I started to get an idea why.
Some were in color—those I only glanced at. Some, like the one Willow had shown me earlier that night, were of Roan, or the man who I thought was Roan. Near the top, taped to a brick, was a picture that Will’s great-granddaddy had also had in his little box of keepsakes. There were four people in this one—Sylv and Sookie standing next to Dempsey, all smiling, all glancing to their right, looking at a tall man with dark skin who wore a jaunty fedora. The picture in the old man’s box had listed four names: three we knew, and one we didn't. Sookie, Sylv and Dempsey were familiar, but not the man who went by “Uncle Aron.” Yet even though the name wasn’t familiar, the face certainly was. He hadn’t been Aron when Willow met him as Mr. Lewis, her mother’s university colleague who’d given her the key to his rent-controlled apartment. He hadn't been Aron, but Roan, when I got to know him as one of my college professors, then my mentor; he was the one who, four years ago, clued me in about an apartment building in Brooklyn that I might want to check out. Now his face was in a decades-old photograph, while the letter he had written only a day ago was in my hands.
“Read it, please,” I said to Will, my gaze never leaving the images. Hundreds of faces reminded me of my kin; many looked like Will and what I guessed her people had looked like.
Willow unfolded the papers and began to read. “Nash, you’re reading this letter because things have aligned. Finally, I hope. For the duration of your life, at least, I pray.”
As I listened to her voice, I studied a picture of Sookie and Dempsey. Something about the boy’s face in this one seemed vaguely familiar.
Behind me, Will continued. “There are things that should not be explained. Things I wish I could tell you, but fear you’d never believe, about me, about the life I have led. You told me of the dreams you had and the memories you shared with your Willow. First, let me say that you have not lost your young mind. You aren’t being set up for some prank and Willow isn’t a witch, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself she is.” She lowered the page, telling me with the quick arch of her eyebrow that she wasn’t amused. “You told him I was a witch?”
“Willow, you yanked me into your apartment inside of a minute of laying eyes on me, and then you announced you wanted to cleanse my aura.” I turned, facing her, hoping my smile would disarm her look of skepticism. “Wasn’t long after that I started having the dreams. What else was I supposed to think?”
She smacked my arm with the paper but smiled while she did it, holding back a laugh. “A witch? Really? Do you see me wearing a pointy hat?” I opened my mouth, gearing up for another apology, but Willow looked down at the letter again and started to read. “And you aren’t experiencing these memories because you’ve lived them before. Reincarnation is a dream made up by folk who can’t believe there is only one go around in life. They cling to it, to the hope that they will get a second chance. This isn’t yours. Well, not completely.”
I turned back to the board, focusing on the same boy, tilting my head to stare at his smile and the shape of his chin.
“There is a connection you feel with Willow because it has existed for a very long time, and most probably will continue to exist for many generations into the future. It will not end with your life or with hers. It will go on, you see, as long as the world does.”
Will came to stand next to me as I continued to examine the picture on the wall. When she caught sight of what I was looking at, she lowered the page she had been reading, and lifted a hand her mouth, which was suddenly hanging open. “What?” I asked, frowning. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head, as though she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. “I didn’t realize it with the other pictures.” She pointed at the board, right at the picture I’d been staring at. “Dempsey. He’s so young in this picture. I’ve never seen him so damn young.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked at me, pressing her lips together like she wasn’t sure how to make the word unfurrow from her throat. “Dempsey is my great-grandfather, Nash.”
I looked between her and the board, seeing the similarities, the shape of her cheeks, just like Dempsey’s and the sharp point of her chin. They were nearly identical, but that didn’t make sense.