The Mirror (The Lost Bride Trilogy #2)

When I left home. When I met Charlie. When I found out I was pregnant. My wedding day.

I had plenty of fun, and some not so fun mixed in there, but those were my most perfect and happiest days.

That night, Charlie and I made love as life mates, and the two hearts shined on my finger.

The next morning, we left for Maine, and the manor.

Sonya woke in the quiet just after dawn. Outside the windows, the sun bloomed like roses over the sea with streaks of gold shimmering through them.

And the sea drummed, a quiet thunder.

For a moment, just a moment, she caught the scent of flowers. Not the ones on her dresser but a scent like a mountain meadow basking in the sun.

She lay there, revisited the images that had flowed in the dream.

“All right, Clover,” she murmured. “I won’t forget.”

She got up, and since Yoda yawned and stretched his way out ofhis bed, went downstairs. She watched the cat slink her way out of Cleo’s room.

“An early start for all of us.”

She stopped by the library, took her tablet off the charger, and carried it with her.

Downstairs, she let the dog, and the cat who streaked by him, out. She made coffee, and taking a mug to the counter, sat to write out all she remembered.

As she expected Bree late morning, Sonya dressed—no house/work sweats today—then settled in to work until Cleo surfaced.

When she did, Sonya rose to hand her the story she’d printed out.

“Read this, will you, over your coffee?”

With a nod and grunt, Cleo continued downstairs.

Inside ten minutes, Cleo, wide awake, came back. She waved the papers in her hand.

“Did you walk? Did you go through the mirror? I didn’t hear a thing. I’m so sorry I didn’t—”

“Don’t be sorry, and I don’t know. I woke up in bed, and I felt her, Cleo, I felt her right there when I did.”

Annie Lennox’s voice sang from the tablet: “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).”

“It was sweet, yes, very sweet and very vivid. Here, let’s sit down a minute.”

She went to the sofa, waited for Cleo to join her. Yoda padded over to lie at her feet, and the cat leaped onto the armrest.

“Were you there?”

“It was… like she was telling me a story—her story—but I could see it happening, and hear it. Hear her narrating it. I watched her leaving home with a backpack and a duffel. God, Cleo, she was just a kid. Hitching rides—this lovely teenage girl climbing into cars and trucks with strangers.

“When you think what might’ve happened to her. It didn’t,” Sonya reminded herself. “Or she didn’t show me the bad parts.”

“She gave you a kind of antidote, didn’t she? From watching her die. Because she loves you, and because she wants you to know more about her, and to know you come from love. Not just your parents, but from her and Charlie.”

“I could see her at different points. Sitting in some room talking with people about Vietnam, about civil rights, about standing up against oppression. Listening to music, getting stoned.”

Clover told her, via Tom Petty, “You Don’t Know How It Feels.”

“I guess I don’t, and I swear, no judgment. My parents loved each other. Not that they never argued, but I did come from love, and I grew up in it. You, too, Cleo.”