Chapter 5

Theresa wonders what will come of Peter’s session tonight. It’s always an exciting trip to take with her clients when they make seemingly unconscious decisions to open the doors to past lives while in a trance. Though she appreciates that no choices while under the spell of hypnosis are unconscious. Every choice is made consciously through the spirit. It is the spirit she is witnessing while the body enters the trance.

After a two-hour session, she disinfects her lounge, where the client left teary-eyed and grateful for her lesson. It’s a very personal experience, and Theresa feels honored to be allowed into another person’s life – or lives – while they describe what they’re experiencing. Afterward, she will sit with them, repeating the highlights, and offer counseling on how a life or lives can teach the client about their present trauma. It’s enlightening for both. It’s how she experiences life, she thinks.

As a relative recluse, Theresa knows she has not lived her own life to its fullest. She hasn’t allowed herself to get close enough to a stranger to form a romantic relationship since she was 18. She has no children or even any family to speak of. Her mother’s sister lives in Halifax, and her father didn’t have siblings. After the funeral, of course, they vowed to stay in touch, but that lasted three years, and now it’s the obligatory emails at Christmas and birthdays.

When she rallies the courage to go out, she has one friend who shares everything with her. Theresa met Nyra in high school. Nyra, the cheerleader, and Theresa, the wallflower. Still, for whatever reason, probably because their parents were old friends, Nyra took Theresa under her wing, getting her involved with the popular crowd and forcing her out of her shell. Theresa remembers that it was a lot of work and a lot of fun. She wouldn’t have had half the experiences she had without Nyra in her life. Their friendship prepared her for college, where she briefly thrived on the social scene. Theresa and Nyra have a special bond where Theresa asks questions, and Nyra answers freely. Nyra knows Theresa’s past and understands her need to live vicariously through her. She reports her good and bad decisions in raising her three children, marriage, vacations, and celebrations. Theresa knows Nyra would like to hear about her own experiences, but she has none to offer. None she feels she can. Client/therapist privilege keeps her from relating any of her practice, and she simply has nothing else. Still, one-sided conversations are hard on the other person. They must dredge up all their histories just to keep an evening going. Would Nyra eventually grow tired of her constant questions? Maybe. But people, Theresa has experienced, like to talk about themselves. Theresa would be sad to lose her for not participating in similar stories of her own. Perhaps she ought to be more adventurous. The deaths of her parent’s made her meek. Sure, she traveled to go to school, but that was to get away from the house and its memories. While studying, she had her father’s friend, a contractor, replace the carpet with laminate hardwood and manage a few minor upgrades to the house. When she returned from school, she asked him to build her a treatment room.

Though the experience was good for her, she felt the anxiety creep back upon returning home. Perhaps she should have just moved. But then, she didn’t want to erase their memory. She loved her childhood home and felt grateful she could afford to keep it. She’d decided it was still a safe place regardless of what had happened. To say she was conflicted over the decision is putting it lightly. With ten years behind her, the renovation, and a career, Theresa no longer questions her motives.

She enters the kitchen and wishes she had had the wall removed separating the front dining room. Open concept is how people are building these days. Still, she never really spends any time in the dining room. It was made into a sitting room where she assesses potential clients. Ten to fifteen minutes at a time. It’s enough.

Theresa warms up leftovers from the night before and sits at the kitchen counter to eat. She’s lonely at times. It might be nice to have a partner. She’s still young. She’s not ugly, she concedes, but her nose is longer than most. Her eyes aren’t too far apart or close together, and her lips aren’t as thin as some. Her dark, black hair is long but not so thick as to require copious amounts of conditioner. It does tend to make her look paler than she is, though. She’s a few pounds overweight which collects on her thighs, but she’s not an unattractive person. She hates to judge herself and refuses to most days. She discourages judging others based on their appearance, catching herself when she does, rather judging them on their actions or inaction.

Back to that, Peter seems a good person caught up in the gravity of self-assessment. He was a soldier following orders. He gave his peers and those under his protection time to flee a country that had reverted to its former. She wonders what lives he might discover tonight to help him put his current life into perspective.

He’s pretty handsome, she thinks. Tall, lean muscle under his fitted button-up, she imagines. His chestnut hair is cut short and falls neatly over his brown, piercing eyes. Ears tight against his head, a straight nose, and kissable lips. She gives her head a shake. She would never risk a client for a relationship and pushes the thought from her mind. He’s come to her for help, and she will provide that for him, or at least open the doors that will assist in his recovery.

Theresa places her dishes in the sink and runs the tap. She hates to use the dishwasher for single meals and won’t let them build up so she can use the appliance. No, like her father, she hand-washes everything. The act itself incites his memory. He was a good father, always with a kind word. He was an excellent husband who provided for his stay-at-home wife. Mom had held only one job before they’d met and married. They were always touching one another. Touch was their way of saying I love you. Theresa feels a warmth in her chest at the memories and pushes her glasses higher on her nose.

Why they were taken in such a violent, meaningless manner was a point of contention for her. How good people fell to the desires of the wicked kept her awake in those early years. She better understands life’s plan now. She sees the lives of others unfold on her chaise and how they play into their present. Life isn’t so much a mystery to Theresa anymore as it is a muddied path to enlightenment.

She expects to achieve great things with Peter in the coming weeks as he volunteers his past lives in the hopes of realizing his purpose in this life. Or at least discover the reason for his misplaced guilt.