My thoughts drift to the portrait—what it means, how it came to be. We’re no closer to answering those questions than we ever were. Sometimes, I find myself wondering if its only purpose wasthis. Bringing me and Jude together.
“Do you believe in fate?” I ask him.
“No,” he replies.
“That’s a confident answer.”
“I’m not a fan of inevitability.”
“You want your choices to matter.”
“Don’t you?”
“Of course,” I say. Like discovering a mystery and pulling on the string. The portrait may have brought us together, but it didn’t have to keep ustogether. It was our choice to pick up the string, to follow its path, to be here now. Wasn’t it?
“Alright, Whitlock,” Jude says with a sigh. “Let me hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“Your theory. About these dreams.”
“For a while I was contemplating reincarnation. Like, what if every time I die, my memories are erased but I’m born again into the same body? It would explain how Ezra painted the portrait. My path crossed with his in a past life. These dreams could be memories from past lives seeping into my current life. But then I realized that can’t be true, because in that scenario, your great grandmother would be my doppelgänger, too. She’s not, though. I found a wedding picture in Maggie’s archives and there’s no resemblance.”
“Selah.” Jude pulls me to a stop. “This is crazy.”
“I know.”
His eyes smolder with frustration. “Aren’t you bothered?”
I mull over the word.
I’m stumped.
Fixated.
Fascinated.
Enthralled.
Bothered, though?
“No,” I say.
He lifts his brow—and with it, a lock of errant hair—then repeats the words I said to him moments earlier. “That’s a confident answer.”
I smile. “Yes, well, in case you’ve forgotten, I co-host a podcast about really weird things. Weird is kind of my jam.”
A flicker of amusement pulls at the corner of his mouth.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I think eventually, we have to come to terms with the fact that not everything in life can be explained. And honestly, wouldn’t it be a pretty boring world if it could?”
Water laps against the rocky shore. Music thumps in the distance. And Jude Vandenberg stares at me like I’ve said something profound. Then, he bends over to pick up a stone. With a flick of his wrist, he sends it skimming across the water in perfect arcs before it disappears into the fog.
“Show-off,” I mutter.
He grins.
“Was this one of your extracurriculars at boarding school?”
