Serendipity Page 4

the bottom. It was the only thing inside the bench. It looked like a snapshot done on glass plates, like those old pictures you see from the Civil War. It depicted a man and woman sitting on a large rock in what was apparently a jungle. A few natives stood in a cluster behind them watching with great interest. It looked like a picture from an early copy of National Geographic.

  I picked it up gently. It was yellowed along the edges, torn at the bottom. On the back, a caption was scrawled in faded ink: Robert and Martha, Ceylon, 1889.

  I stared at the words. Ceylon, 1889. Ceylon, I knew, was the old British Imperialist name for…

  Sri Lanka.

  This was a photograph of two people – apparently European or American travelers, or perhaps explorers – in the jungles of Sri Lanka in the late years of the nineteenth century.

  Instead of clearing things up, the discovery only deepened the mystery. What was Rebecca trying to tell me?

  Late that night, long after I had fallen to sleep, she visited me again. I awoke quite suddenly in the quiet of the night, finding myself wide-eyed in the darkness. Tor was snoozing quietly at my feet and didn’t see her when she appeared. It was as if she materialized out of the wall: one moment she was not there, the next she was walking toward me across the room. Real clothes, real skin, real body. The movements were just as I remembered them: the way her arms swung freely at her sides; the way she shifted her shoulders and hips. It was all classic Rebecca. This was no imitation. She stopped right beside me and for a moment I thought she was going to climb in bed with me. But instead she just smiled and said, “It’s in the watchtower.”

  I’m not sure exactly what happened after that. I awoke with sunlight filtering in through the window and Tor stretching by my feet. Perhaps I had fainted dead away after she spoke to me. Perhaps I had just been dreaming. But either way, I knew where I needed to go.

  I had been inside the watchtower on a couple of occasions, but hadn’t spent much time there. It was where Rebecca’s office had been, and although I had been meaning to look through some of the shelves and drawers up there, I hadn’t gotten around to it. The tower was sort of creepy and cold, and with my recent propensity for seeing ghosts, it was the last place I wanted to while away lonely hours.

  Taking the photograph of Robert and Martha with me, I mounted the stairs. It was about ten o’clock in the morning and sunlight filtered in from above and below, but it was still dim – that ethereal dimness that seems the trademark of old houses. The stairs wound upward in a spiral until opening into the room at the top.

  The office was small and classically furnished. Curved windows were set into each wall, affording a splendid view of the surroundings, and a small desk sat at the head of the room. There were a few maps, a globe, and a couple of bookshelves. An oriental rug covered the hardwood floor. There was a well-used coffee mug on the desk. I had noticed it once before but had been too disturbed by it to take it downstairs and wash it. Clearly she had left it there the last time she’d been home. It even had a stain in the bottom.

  I looked around the room. What was it in here that she wanted me to see? It’s in the watchtower, she had said. What was in the watchtower? I scanned the bookshelves. A bunch of dusty volumes, mostly textbooks and medical journals. A few novels. Nothing stood out to me.

  Perhaps there was something in the desk. I sat down in the chair and began opening drawers.

  And that’s when I found it.

  An envelope. With my name on it.

  With trembling hands, I opened it. Inside was another photograph and a letter. The photograph, like the one I’d found in the piano bench, was old and grainy, yellowed along the edges. There were Robert and Martha again, standing this time before a large house. This house, I realized with a start. Yes, indeed. There they were, standing side-by-side, right in front of the very house in which I now sat. The picture was dated 1889, just like the other one. It must have been taken right before they left for Sri Lanka, or just after they returned.

  Shaken, I sat the picture aside and took the letter. It was long, handwritten, in Rebecca’s familiar style. I began to read.

  My Dearest Jake:

  I suppose if you are reading this, then my destiny is complete. I hope my parents took the news well. I know they’ve spent their lives worrying about me, and I guess it was for good reason. I always wanted to work with people, and help people, and do my part for the betterment of humanity. I guess danger goes with the territory. But you know this.

  I’m sure you have a lot of questions, particularly about Robert and Martha, and I can understand if you’re a little confused and unnerved. I’m sorry it has to be this way. But don’t worry. You aren’t losing your mind.

  The first time we met, I remember being struck by how strong my feelings were for you. Even that very first day, when I approached you by the hut, and you were standing there fingering that place on your arm, my first thought was that you were my soul mate. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But I have always trusted my instincts and they have never failed me. I don’t think they failed me that time either. Back then, I didn’t understand any of it. I knew what I felt, but I didn’t know why. I just thought it was love at first sight.

  But as it turns out, Jake, it wasn’t first sight at all. Not by a long shot.

  Five years ago, when I was working in Sri Lanka, I stumbled upon something quite by accident. I had taken a short leave from our base camp and was spending the week in the urban capital, away from the creeping jungles. I had been doing some research on Sri Lankan history, and while in the library, I came upon the story of two American anthropologists who had worked in Sri Lanka in the 19th century when it was still a British colony named Ceylon.

  Thus, I was introduced to Robert and Martha. At first, I thought they were a husband and wife team. Turns out, they were just colleagues. Neither was married. I was reminded of you and me. Bittersweet memories.

  Robert and Martha spent a year in Ceylon, living with and studying several native tribes on the island’s interior. When they returned to the States, they published a thesis on their discoveries. I read it. It was boring stuff, really. In reality, the two of them were much more interesting than their subjects.

  It was while researching their lives that I came upon a startling discovery. Why I was researching their lives in the first place, I cannot say. It was like some sort of primal urge. I wanted to know about these people. They intrigued me in a way that was, at the time, completely unexplainable. I just felt a natural affinity for them.

  What I discovered was that Martha had owned, and lived in, my house in Scott County. The one you’re living in now.

  What were the chances, Jake, that I would randomly buy this house after medical school – a house that I knew I was never going to spend much time in – and then ten years later find myself doing research, for no good reason, on some obscure anthropologists that I had come across in Sri Lanka, and find that one of them had owned the very same house? It couldn’t have been a coincidence.

  Turns out, it was serendipity.

  I became obsessed with Robert and Martha. I wanted to learn everything I could about them. During a leave of absence in the States, I learned that Martha had owned the house about fifteen years, but that she spent very little time in it, living there mainly between her journeys across the globe. I also learned that she died suddenly when she was in her mid-forties, cut down by a disease she caught from a sick native in some far-flung country. According to her family records (yes, I even interviewed a few of her descendants), she spent her entire life in the service of others and longed for the companionship of Robert – a longing that was never reciprocated. She and Robert were partners, and worked together on several occasions, but he had his career and apparently didn’t want it derailed by the demands of a family. In time, they grew apart, and when she died, he was halfway across the globe, involved in some imp
ortant work in the Congo.

  He was crushed by her death. Taken unawares. It sent his career spiraling out of control and he never published another paper or gave another speech or taught another course. He lived to be seventy-four, but never married. And he never got over his grief for Martha’s loss and for the loss of their future, which he, through his stubbornness, had denied them.

  This house, this property, seems imbued with her presence. I think some of the furniture might actually date all the way back to the time when she lived here. Certainly some of the pictures in the parlor and the library belonged to her.

  Jake, I believe she was me. That I am her. We lived in different bodies, in different centuries, but I believe we share a soul. And Jake, I believe the same is true for you and Robert. I remember telling you once that we were old souls, like two halves broken apart at conception, destined to be put back together. At the time, those were just feelings I couldn’t explain. Now I can. We are old souls, Jake. Two pieces of the same part, moving through a cycle of lives that always ends the same way: with my early death and with your decades of grief and regret.

  You may be asking yourself, “Why didn’t she tell me sooner?” Why have I waited until after my death to let you in on my