THE AFFAIR by Dyanne Davis

ignored the question. To me that didn’t matter, not as much as trying to make Larry understand. “I touched a chair today, Larry. It was an antique, at least a hundred years old. I sat in it and I felt it envelope me. It was my chair.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I’m talking about past lives.”
    “Not that shit again!” he roared. “I warned you, Mick. No more. All you had to do was tell me anything else, you missed me, you loved me and I would have come home to you in a flash. But this…God…”
    I heard the end of the profanity he muttered before he hung up on me. I wrapped my arms around my body and cried for the loss of innocence in my marriage. For sure we would never be the same.
    Every nerve in my body tingled with awareness. I wanted Larry, but I needed Chance. I needed him to help me make sense of what was happening to me. My glance caught the recent picture of my husband smiling from the frame on the mantle. I loved him. With all my heart I loved him.
    At two in the afternoon I made my way toward my bed, reaching to take my husband’s picture from the mantle. I curled up in bed with it and cried, begging God for strength.
    Three days later I made a decision. I had not talked to Larry again. He’d not bothered to call me and I’d not called him.
    What finally made up my mind were the dreams I had for three nights in a row. Vivid dreams of another lifetime. Chance was there with me, holding me. He didn’t wear the face he wore now and neither did I, but it was us. Of that I was sure. This time there was no blood, just the two of us laughing, loving, being happy. Again I saw myself sitting in my rocker, Chance staring up at me tenderly, only his name was Jeremy. “I’ll love you always, Dimitra,” he said. That was the name he’d called me that night in the hotel. I didn’t know if I’d made myself hear that name in my dream or if this was what it felt like, a memory, a long ago forgotten memory.
    This time as I dialed the phone I knew the man on the other end would have a different response. He would be there whenever I needed him. In my dream he’d made a solemn vow that we would always be together, that death would only separate us for a moment.
     

     
    Larry sat glaring at the phone, willing it to ring. He’d not spoken to Michelle in three days. He was afraid to call her, afraid to hear her tell him that she’d awakened after twenty-six years of loving him and realized she no longer did.
    Damn. The whole episode was crazy. They’d never handled their problems this way. He missed her with every fiber of his being. Maybe that was the reason the kids were getting to him. He’d never seen it before, but they could be rather obnoxious. As much as he loved his grandchildren, he had to admit that.
    He’d only been there with them for one day alone. The other two days, he had taken a good long look at his daughter, the daughter that Mick always accused him of spoiling, of favoring.
    Maybe it was true. He’d looked at her the day before thinking how much she looked like her mother. He’d been surprised that her resemblance to Mick did in fact create a bond. He had never dared admit it to anyone, least of all to himself.
    But now he knew Mick was correct in her assessment of the situation. But how could he not love Erica a little more? She was the spitting image of the woman who’d given her life. Her birth had been the cement that glued them together as a family instead of a couple.
    Larry looked around his daughter’s spotless white kitchen, remembering how amazed he’d been not to see any clutter. The all white kitchen was new. Something they never would have tried with young kids, something Mick wouldn’t try now for fear of their grandchildren’s visits.
    He’d walked around the house looking at Erica’s collection of Lladros safely ensconced behind glass in a curio cabinet. Not one fingerprint marred the glass. He’d been the one to start his daughter’s collection.