Tags: age difference, bisexual character, found family, getting together, past character death, past tense, pov third person limited, reincarnation, reunion, second chances, united states of america, wlw
*
“I’ve been reincarnated,” Shiloh said in lieu of her name or any proper introduction. She picked at the heat shield on her coffee cup, staring at it instead of at the two women across the table. Away from the bustling noise of the espresso machine, the steady rain pelting against the window behind her was an unexpected comfort.
Shiloh held her breath and looked up.
“It’s a rather yellow feeling, isn’t it?” the woman to her left mused, stirring her mug of green tea.
“Yellow?” Shiloh asked, distracted by her vibrant eyeshadow and copious jewelry.
“Yes, yellow. Positively, if you ask me. Not that you did.”
“Er,” Shiloh started, but the second woman interrupted.
“Don’t mind Amethyst’s colors,” she murmured. Setting down her steaming mug of Earl Grey, the scent of bergamot curling off the surface, she leaned forward. She had a voice like the tea, rich and warm and oddly soothing.
Amethyst stirred her tea, seemingly enamored with the rippling surface. “It’s not only about the colors,” she complained.
“I assume, then,” the second woman smiled gently, “that you’re here for the group? My name is Elsa.”
Shiloh shook her extended hand, her palm sweaty against the woman’s, cheeks burning.
“Yes, I am,” Shiloh said haltingly. “Like I said, I’ve—I’ve been reincarnated.”
“Right,” Elsa nodded. “Sure, reincarnated. Why don’t we start with your name? Are you from the city too?”
She gave her name, distracted by the buzz and hubbub of the shop around them. “I’m from here now, but my past self—he lived in San Francisco most of his life—or, my life? What’s the preferred way to say it?”
Elsa and Amethyst exchanged a look, speaking in a language of blinks. Elsa wore at least three differently patterned shirts, one atop the other, in almost-clashing shades of yellow and green. They were an unusual pair—Amethyst covered in gem-like sparkles and Elsa in gauzy layers—but they moved and spoke like members of the same family.
“Am I in the right place?” Shiloh stared between them, fingers falling back to pick at the coffee sleeve again. “I saw the flyer at the library, and it said this day, this time, and this shop, and you two… you looked the part, but maybe I’ve gotten something wrong…?”
“No, no,” Elsa said, reaching across the table to calm Shiloh’s anxious hands. “This is the Reincarnation Support Group. We don’t get many new faces—despite the name, the flyers are more a promotion for the café than for us.”
“We’re just a bit violet, you see,” Amethyst flicked a hand as though her meaning was perfectly clear. “And you’re early. There are two more on the way.”
“I didn’t mean to intrude or anything,” Shiloh went on, speaking faster the longer she talked. “I’ve just been having these experiences, and I’m sure you know what I mean if you’ve been through it. All my friends say I’m losing it, but I think it could be real. I hope it’s real.”
Amethyst took a long drink of her tea, watching Shiloh with a cheery expression. “We won’t think you’re losing your mind.”
“You’re early, is all,” added Elsa, “and it’s no bother. We don’t always know what to expect from new folks, but I’m sure everyone will be glad to meet you.”
“We are.” Amethyst nodded sagely.
Shiloh shivered, leaning away from the cold window, and pressed her hands around her quickly cooling cup. It stuck to the linoleum table as she lifted it for a drink, but the coffee was rich on her tongue. Drinking bought her a moment before she’d have to tell her story. It had been easier to convince herself of the truth of her reincarnation when it was only in her head.
“I didn’t believe it at first,” said Shiloh. “But now I’m sure. There’s no other explanation for everything I’ve been through and for all the memories I’ve got.”
“Certainly,” Elsa agreed.
Shiloh began to explain, at first slowly, and then all at once, carefully sifting through the memories for those appropriate to share.
She could say this much out loud: the dreams began nearly two years prior, a recurring story that wove in and out of reality. Through it all, a mysterious and intimately familiar woman with short hair and bright eyes followed Shiloh’s every footstep.
Shiloh came to know this woman better than she knew herself. She could predict her responses to jokes that Shiloh’s dream-self told, as if they’d known each other for a thousand lifetimes before. Dreams of kissing her felt more like memories, her skin tangible, warm, and soft. Shiloh could smell her honey-and-strawberry shampoo on the empty pillow in bleary morning moments.
Even as Shiloh described the face in her dreams, flushed pink with the relief at finally sharing her story, she could hear the tone of the dream-woman’s voice echoing in her ears. She could feel the edge of a familiar scar on that other shoulder as she traced fingers down bare skin in a montage of someone else’s memories.
“Then, it was the man in the mirror, the—me,” Shiloh said, clearing her throat and trying to shake off the sense of heaviness around her shoulders. Amethyst and Elsa leaned forward, rapt. “I’m not superstitious. I’m really not.”
Before she could continue—in the middle of her story about realizing that her hand felt wrong without a wedding ring—the bell at the door rang. Two people who couldn’t be more different from each other stepped inside, all bright smiles and laughter, mid-conversation. Amethyst gave a loose wave, glitter bangles jangling on her wrist. It was odd to imagine the four women together even though these were clearly the rest of the group: Amethyst, like a firework in human form; Elsa with her gauzy chamomile personality; and these two, a teenager with bright-blue hair and brighter-red lipstick and a suburban matriarch with a pastel-pink cardigan buttoned up to the neck.
They ordered and walked over to the table, each with a mug in hand.
The teenager introduced herself as Emily as she set the massive cup of black coffee on the table, the mug bigger than her face. The woman—Claudette—assured Shiloh that she wasn’t Emily’s mother and sipped from a blue mug piled high with whipped cream, marshmallows, and sprinkles. Looking at it, Shiloh’s teeth ached.
“A newbie! Sick,” Emily crooned, reaching across the table to poke at Shiloh’s coat. She shrugged it off in embarrassment, pulling it over the back of the chair.
“Give her some space,” Claudette admonished in an unmistakably motherly tone.
Emily rolled her eyes and took a great swallow of coffee. Shiloh gulped. That coffee had to be scalding.
“So, out with it. You got a story?” Emily asked, tilting her chair backward on two legs.
Shiloh hesitated, looking at each of them in turn.
“I’ve been reincarnated,” Shiloh said with new confidence. “I was married to a wonderful woman in a past life, and I died. She’s still alive, and here in this city, and I want to talk to her, but I don’t know what I’m doing or how I should go about it.”
“Right, sure. But, like, what’s your story?”
Shiloh stared at her. “What do you mean? That is my story.”
Claudette raised a hand, and Emily fell unexpectedly silent at the gesture. Though she looked like a modern-day Stepford wife, complete with highlighted and cropped hair, she had kind, genuine eyes.
“We all have our stories,” Claudette said, as though explaining to a child. “We’ve got our reasons, shall I say, for needing a special kind of community.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be the whole… reincarnation thing?”
Across the shop, the espresso machine hissed. Shiloh stared around the circle. None of them would meet her eyes. Confusion, tinged with the bitter twist of embarrassment, settled on her shoulders.
“You do believe me, don’t you? I was reincarnated. It happened.”
“Of course that’s how you feel,” Amethyst nodded, raising both hands as though blessing the table.
“Reincarnation—or the idea of it—brought us together. Each of us experienced something—a dream, perhaps, or bad déjà vu—that made us reconsider something in our lives,” explained Elsa as the whirring of the coffee in the background slowed to a quiet hum. “But really, thinking about reincarnation—and the possibilities of it—was more the indicator we needed that something was missing in this life.”
“ ’s nothing missing in my life,” Emily muttered, snapping her chair forward so the front legs smacked against the ground. “But someone’s got to keep these old biddies feeling young.”
“But—” Shiloh stammered. “But it’s a support group. For reincarnation. That’s what the flyer said.”
“And we get the support we need.”
“What Emily means to say—” Claudette began.
“What I mean to say is that we’re all a little lonely, or whatever, and getting to have this group to, I don’t know, talk about what the fuck our worlds could look like if we led a different life makes things easier. Not that I care.”
It was quiet for a moment. However bitter Emily’s tone was, the group seemed to agree, and Shiloh slipped into the weight of loneliness. If they didn’t believe her—if they met only due to their care for each other and not to discuss the reality of reincarnation—then she was back where she started.
Amethyst leaned across the table and said in a quiet, conspiratorial tone, “I think she does care.”
“But,” Elsa said, then looked at each of them in turn, “I’d like to think we’re decent listeners.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Now, there’s no need to get like that,” Amethyst hummed, “all blue-green and sour. We don’t have to believe you to be willing to listen and care. This is what we do for each other.”
Shiloh considered this, balancing the feeling of isolation—of madness—with her impressions of this little family in their corner of the busy shop. There was something warm and reflective in Amethyst’s smile, something gentle in the way that Elsa looked at her. Those Shiloh had told before had dismissed her story without listening to each detail haunting Shiloh’s days and nights. But, at this table, with the rainy window at her back and coffee in her hands and four new confidantes before her, Shiloh found new courage.
And so she told them everything.
She told them about the restaurant in the alley off Spruce Street where the food tasted exactly like home, exactly like her wife. She told them about how her arms felt a little too short, like she used to be able to reach the top shelves. Amid her recounting of the road trip to the Grand Canyon, Claudette pulled out her phone, showing photos of places far from the regular trails, validating Shiloh’s memory of a place she had never been in this lifetime.
Shiloh told them about the name she’d once called her own, and about what Joel used to look like and how he lived.
She told them about Aline. She told them about the quartz-crystal pendant she always wore and how she’d twirl it in her fingers when she was happy, like on those nights when they both laughed so hard they couldn’t breathe.
The coffee shop filled and emptied and filled again, and Shiloh couldn’t stop the words from coming. Once she’d started believing in Joel, the memories filled every empty gap in her mind.
“And I love her, and I’d love her in every form, even if that love wasn’t romantic. I don’t think that this body is any different from Joel’s, or from any body before that. And I don’t know if she’ll feel the same way, but…” Shiloh trailed off. “Maybe I ought to try?”
She finally looked up, expressive hands falling to the table with the sense of defeat, but four pairs of eager eyes stared at her.
“Of course you’ve got to try,” Emily snapped, and everyone relaxed, tittering at her outburst.
“I want to talk to her,” Shiloh said. “I think—I hope that she’ll see Joel in me, the way I know him and the way that I know her.”
“What are we waiting for?” snapped Emily. “You said she’s got a restaurant, right? Bet we could get in there.”
“I might have…” Shiloh said and hesitated. “I might have done something a bit impulsive.”
The group waited.
“I don’t know,” Shiloh said. “I didn’t want to scare her away. I can’t try to talk to her during dinner, that would be a madhouse. And if some random person sent a note claiming to be Joel, I wouldn’t blame her for throwing it out.”
Emily stared at her. “What did you do?”
“I called the restaurant a few days ago, er… didn’t really say what it was about, just that I needed to speak with her, and was there a time I could come? She said I could have fifteen minutes.”
“More than I’d give,” Claudette muttered.
“I think she thinks I’m a food blogger or something?” She looked down at her hands, warm shame in her cheeks. “I didn’t lie, not exactly.”
“When are you meeting with her?” Elsa cut in before Claudette could add whatever she was about to say.
Shiloh pulled out her phone, clicked the power button.
“Uh. About… half an hour from now. Shit.” She rubbed a hand over her face. “I was so panicked about what to do and what to say, if she’d think I was completely mad. The flyer for this group was the only thing that stopped me from calling the restaurant back to cancel. But I should cancel, right? This is crazy.”
“Absolutely fucking not,” Emily said.
“I don’t believe in reincarnation, not at all,” Claudette said, but the corner of her mouth twitched up, ready to smile given an opportunity. “But, I must say, better to try and get rejected than not try at all.”
“It doesn’t have to be romantic love, after all,” added Elsa breezily.
“What exactly are we waiting for?” Emily said. “The love of your past life is waiting.”
“I—” Shiloh stared at them. “I don’t have the bus schedule from here.”
“Silly girl,” Amethyst hummed, reaching for her arm across the table. “You’re part of the group now, real reincarnation and all. We wouldn’t let you go it alone. That’d be horribly purple of us.”
“Purple!” Emily echoed. “Horribly so. Unfortunately for you, you’re stuck with us now.”
“I’m driving,” added Claudette, and no one argued.
As they broke into a bustle of dishes to return and coats to put on, Shiloh couldn’t help but get swept up in it. It wasn’t until they were slipping out the door that she realized they no longer felt like strangers.
“This is crazy, right?” she asked as she slid into Claudette’s car between Emily and Amethyst.
“Bonkers,” Emily agreed. “And you’re doing it.”
The corner restaurant that smelled like home and Aline was only five miles away, but the drive felt like it took five years. Each red light lasted three times longer than it should, even with Amethyst giving airy directions from the passenger seat, offering ridiculous anecdotes about her younger self and the stores that used to be there. Shiloh wasn’t sure she ought to believe the stories, so she only half-listened, her mind racing toward the end of the drive and their looming destination.
And then they were there, and Shiloh was terrified all over again.
In the minivan outside the restaurant, Shiloh could imagine the gentle brush of familiar hands over broader shoulders than her own, easing the stress of a long workday. Aline felt closer and farther away than she had since the day Shiloh decided the dreams were real.
“I can do this,” she said. It was going to work. Aline would recognize her, would see Joel’s echo in every inch of her. She imagined reaching for Aline, full of hope, but doubt clouded the image. What if Aline couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see it?
“No… no, I can’t do this.”
“We’ll just take a breath of fresh air,” Emily said, and opened the door. The rush of cool breeze into the car was choked with Shiloh’s fear. Emily tugged her out, and Shiloh stumbled as her feet hit the asphalt.
“She’s going to think I’m insane.”
Amethyst stepped over and wrapped her in a tight hug. “It’ll be all yellow,” Amethyst murmured into her hair.
Even so, Shiloh couldn’t relax, thrumming with nervous energy.
“Oh, God. We should just go back now.”
Emily looped an arm through Shiloh’s and tugged her forward one step at a time, hands gentle but firm.
“Hey,” Emily said, in a voice pitched just for the two of them, though the others lingered on the sidewalk close behind. “Tell me about that meal? The one that helped you realize this woman was your Aline.”
Shiloh breathed. Swallowed. Stepped forward. Leaned on Emily, just enough to keep from stumbling. Finally, almost inaudibly, Shiloh said, “It was silly, really. Just a simple dish with chicken and potatoes.”
Emily nodded, and they moved a little closer. The door wasn’t far, and the street was mostly empty.
“Chicken and potatoes,” Emily prompted.
“She’s got this way with seasoning,” Shiloh murmured, losing herself in memories of the rich scents of dinner on the stove and of stealing a bite of potato when Aline’s back was turned. It always ended in the snap of a dishtowel or the gentle rap of a wooden spoon on her—on Joel’s—knuckles. The smell of garlic and rosemary on the stove, with carrots and potatoes steaming rich and sweet, was heady, erasing the blur of the parking lot and the smell of rain. “And when she cooks, I can taste how much she loves me. You know?” she rambled, barely conscious of her speech or her progress toward the door. “You’ll taste it. You’ll all taste it, maybe, someday.”
They reached the door too soon, bright glass and a gleaming handle in bronze. Shiloh reached for it with shaking hands. At least if Aline sent her running, she would have people to run back to.
“We’ll wait for you,” Elsa said, in her gentle way.
Shiloh turned back toward her, and she smiled, and somehow Shiloh felt more confident.
“It’ll be bright baby blue,” added Amethyst.
Claudette tidied Shiloh’s coat, brushing a hand over her hair.
And then Shiloh was tripping ahead, Emily shoving her forward, and she let the faith of the group carry her through the vestibule.
She was inside.
The restaurant smelled like lingering garlic and herbs and a home she remembered from another lifetime. The walls had the woven gold decoration from an artist they’d both fallen in love with many years before at a big craft fair. Drinks in hand, they’d wandered through stand after stand until they had stopped and stared at these beautiful pieces. It had been nearly thirty years ago, and neither of them could have dreamed of affording them then. But here they were, adorning the walls of this quiet restaurant.
It was early, and there was a waitress in the corner folding napkins, music blasting from her headphones so loud Shiloh could hear it. The waitress jumped when she noticed Shiloh, and pulled an earbud out.
“Can I help you?” she asked sharply. “We’re not open yet.”
“I’m expecting her,” Aline interrupted, stepping through the double kitchen doors. “I left the front unlocked.”
The waitress looked between them and slipped the earbud back in her ear, turning her back to keep folding.
Aline’s hair was pulled up, tucked into a tight bun at the back of her head, and far longer than Shiloh remembered. She wore a chef’s coat, crisp and still mostly unstained so early in the afternoon. Aline’s expression was painfully neutral. She wore glasses with stylish frames, perfectly cut to suit her face and absolutely out of place for the image Shiloh had in mind.
“Could we speak for a moment?” Shiloh asked, searching for her voice.
“Isn’t that why you’re here?” Aline raised one eyebrow, neutrality quickly turning to something between annoyance and apprehension. Aline must have realized she was no food blogger; she crossed her arms, eyes closed off. “Do I know you? Are you writing something?”
“I’m not writing something, but I do want to talk,” Shiloh answered. “This would all be a lot easier if I could just explain it.”
“Look, are you all right? You don’t look so great, and I really don’t have time for any…” She waved a hand at Shiloh. “For any oddness. I’ve got staff to oversee and dinner to finish preparing.”
Shiloh swallowed hard and stepped forward. There were three tables between them, and she wasn’t blocking Aline from leaving, but there was electricity in the empty space. The distance pulled at Shiloh’s chest. The truth of her reincarnation was confirmed by every plane of Aline’s face, as certain as the tile floor beneath her feet. Could Aline feel it too?
“You don’t have to sit with me,” Shiloh said quietly. “You don’t know me, and you don’t have any real reason to think I’m not completely crazy, but…” The words came to her, sharp as memory, familiar on her tongue. “Does the phrase, ‘every leap might let you fall, but it’ll get you to the next step’ ring a bell?”
Aline stared at her, a single curl slipping out from her bun.
“What did you say?”
“ ‘Every leap might let you fall, but it’ll get you to the next step,’ ” Shiloh repeated more confidently. She raised her chin and met Aline’s eyes and said the words she knew from Joel’s voice—her voice—two decades past.
“What is this?” Aline asked, heavy with an aged sadness.
“Can we talk?” Shiloh asked again.
Whether it was Joel’s adage, the feeling of something between them, or Aline’s endless kindness, she acquiesced. They settled into wooden chairs on either side of a table for two, half-set plates and an unlit candle between them.
“You had a husband,” Shiloh offered carefully. “Many years ago, you had a husband.”
“That information isn’t difficult to find.”
“Joel Weiss. You lived together for three years in that tiny San Francisco flat before his accident.”
Aline sighed. She made a show of checking her watch, running her thumb over the face of it and staring for longer than she needed to if she was merely check the time. Shiloh was too far in to stop now, though apprehension nearly consumed her words.
“He gave you that watch, didn’t he?” Shiloh asked, jutting her chin at it. “There’s an inscription on the reverse.” She waited, watching for the subtle twitch in the corner of Aline’s mouth: her tell. “JW and AC. There was meant to be a full quote, but Joel couldn’t afford it. I—” she caught herself. “He didn’t tell you that for two years.”
“Right,” Aline snapped. “Right.” She stood up, shoving back the formal chair.
Shiloh copied her, hands on the table. A thousand possible responses passed through her, but none of them were right. This wasn’t how she’d played out this meeting. Aline was supposed to feel that same electric charge, vibrant and real between them, and yet it seemed like she felt nothing. Was Shiloh a stranger to her? Could she feel nothing when Shiloh felt so much?
Aline wouldn’t look at her, but she hadn’t left, either, and Shiloh couldn’t breathe.
“I don’t know what exactly possessed you to contact me,” Aline said. “What kind of a sick asshole comes into my restaurant and my life to say these kinds of things? Are you some sort of stalker?” She raised a hand, dismissive, sharp. “I don’t care. Don’t contact me again.”
“Please,” Shiloh begged, the only word she could think to say. “Wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to invade your privacy. I know this is hard.”
“You don’t know.”
“I know who Joel is, or who he was. I know this sounds crazy. This is a different city, a different lifetime.”
“Completely crazy,” Aline cut in. “You’ve interrupted my workday to excavate old grief, for what? Some ridiculous pleasure?”
“No,” Shiloh said quickly. “I swear it, Aly. I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“You have sixty seconds.” Aline’s voice quivered, but she held onto the back of her chair. “Tell me why you’re here—why you’re really here—or I’ll have you back out the door before you can blink.”
“Do you still believe in reincarnation?”
“What?”
“Do you think that people, when they die, can be born again? With their old memories in tow, all of it, all over again?” She could scarcely breathe, heart in her throat. In another lifetime, they had spent a summer night speaking across the pillows about the possibilities of life and afterlife.
“I’d have to think about it.” It was the answer Aline had given then, too.
“And if you thought about it?”
Aline hesitated. Shiloh knew that she’d thought about it, back then. She’d thought about it for nearly twenty minutes while Joel had stared at the whorls on the ceiling and tried not to fall asleep. In their bedroom, Aline had said she’d do anything to find Joel.
They’d never considered the other possibility.
Shiloh stared at the loose folds of Aline’s chef’s uniform, that crisp white against her brown skin. She was older now, hair lighter at the temples. She had tiny crow’s feet that crinkled as she peered at Shiloh, and her high cheekbones made her jaw more distinct. Meeting Aline’s eyes always felt like baring a part of her soul, and that was even truer in this lifetime. Shiloh couldn’t look away.
It took less than twenty minutes this time.
“It could be possible,” Aline said finally. “We don’t know what happens after death.”
Shiloh pressed into the space left open by her words. “If someone you loved had passed away, could you believe that someone new could be a reincarnation of that person?”
Aline did not break eye contact. “I don’t know.” She knew. She had to know, had to feel this taut rope between them as fiercely as Shiloh felt it.
“You’ve lost someone. Do you ever wish he would come back?”
Aline’s intake of breath was too sharp, too sudden, too angry. Shiloh regretted hurting her instantly.
“Yes,” Aline said, and Shiloh could breathe again. “I wish it even still, some days more than others.”
Shiloh leaned across the table and touched one of Aline’s knuckles, still white on the back of the chair, with the tip of her finger. Aline blinked, then looked down at their hands before Shiloh withdrew, afraid.
She asked, in a voice almost too quiet to hear, “If he were standing right in front of you, would you be happy to see him?”
“I would be happy.”
“Even if he looked different?”
“Even then.”
“Even if he were a young woman?”
Aline sat down in the empty chair with a soft thump, and Shiloh followed suit. Shiloh put one hand out on the table, palm up.
She had woken up one morning, half-delirious with sleep, lost in another half-memory, half-dream. Aline had run her hands over every line on her palm, tracing them as if memorializing every shape, every meaning hidden in the whorls of her fingerprint. When she woke, the image of Joel’s palm still in her mind’s eye, she stared down at her own hand. Each fingerprint and whorl on her palm was precisely the same.
“I know it sounds impossible,” Shiloh said. “But I think I might be Joel all over again. I think we might have a second chance.”
Neither of them said anything.
Aline reached across the table and let her hand fall just beside Shiloh’s, so that their pinky fingers touched. They sat like that for what felt like hours, but must have been only minutes, heat and stillness all at once.
“Can it be possible?” Aline asked, though it was clear that she was asking herself more than Shiloh. “It can’t be.”
Aline pulled her hand away.
“But”—Aline shook her head, jaw set—“it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if it’s true.”
Shiloh stared. And stared. She stared at the frown threatening the corner of Aline’s mouth. She stared at the age spot on the arch of her thumb.
“Maybe I don’t get it,” Shiloh said suddenly, meeting Aline’s eyes again. “ ’Cause I think it matters an awful lot. There’s history here.” She gestured between them. “Years and years of history. That’s supposed to matter. We have a story that spans two lifetimes. Isn’t that enough?”
Aline was already speaking before Shiloh could finish. “That’s exactly the problem. You might be a wonderful person, maybe even a friend, but there are so many years we haven’t lived together. I’m a different person from the Aline of twenty-five years ago, with a different life and different wants.”
“But that’s just it. I’m different, too, this body, this lifetime, and yet: here we are.”
“Here we are.”
An alarm on Aline’s watch began to beep, and she turned it off without looking.
“Maybe this is a start,” said Shiloh. “If we can’t pick up where we left off, maybe we can start here?”
Around them, the restaurant was still, the waitress gone and the subtle clinking of the kitchen staff at work ignorable. Outside, Shiloh was sure that the group was still waiting, would wait for her whatever answer she received at this table. What mattered wasn’t them, nor the quiet patience of the restaurant prepared for dinner guests, nor the time they had spent together and apart. What mattered was this moment, and Aline sitting there, considering Shiloh fully for the first time since they’d laid eyes on each other.
“It won’t be easy, you know,” Aline said. “It’s been a long twenty-five years.”
“Well then,” said Shiloh, taking her hand. “We’d better get started.”