Read Online My Second Life by Faye Bird - Free Book Online Page A

here?” she said.
    â€œThe answers — they’re here. They must be.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œYou, Catherine, this house, that night … It’s all here. Isn’t it? We were here — ”
    â€œHow long have you known?” Frances interrupted.
    â€œThat I’m Emma?” I said.
    Frances nodded.
    â€œI’ve always known that I’m Emma,” I said. “But I hadn’t remembered about Catherine. Not until this week. Not until I saw you in the hospital. We were there, weren’t we? Both of us, that night?” I said. “I … I just had to speak to you. Since I saw you in the hospital I’ve been remembering things, things I haven’t remembered before. I have no one else to talk to. There is no one I can tell.”
    Frances continued to look at me. She was searching me with her eyes, and even though I didn’t like it — how it made me feel — I let her, because I was desperate for her to let me stay and talk.
    â€œI don’t know why I should believe you,” she said.
    â€œBecause you have to!” I said, my voice getting louder. “Because there is no explanation for what I know — ”
    â€œThere are no explanations,” Frances said. “None! I’ve been searching for an explanation. I’ve been waiting for a reason, an understanding, an answer why she died. I’ve been asking for a sign, for something — anything — to come to me through every day of every one of the long, long years since she died. And there has been nothing.”
    â€œMaybe I know things you don’t…?” I said.
    â€œI doubt that,” she said.
    â€œI have memories, images, inside my head — ”
    â€œI have those too, Ana.”
    â€œBut they won’t be the same. I was with her, wasn’t I? Before she died?”
    â€œYou were,” Frances said slowly, looking at me again. “So you remember that?”
    I nodded.
    â€œWould you talk to me?” I said. “Please. Could you do that?”
    There was another silence between us.
    â€œWe aren’t the same — you and I,” Frances said. “What you did sets you apart. If I agree to talk, you must never forget that.” And she looked at me in a way that made me cold, all over. I could feel my skin rippling with the chill.
    I shivered. And I opened my mouth to speak —
    â€œWhat I want to know,” she said, “is why you are here.”
    I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
    â€œSo what do you know? It seems to me the answer is not very much, young Ana.”
    â€œI need you, Frances. To help me,” I cried.
    â€œAh!” she said. “Help!” And her voice was getting louder now. “Where was my help when I needed it?”
    â€œMaybe … maybe,” I said, stuttering, “maybe it’s me? Maybe I’m here, now, to help, to help you … to help you understand…”
    Could it be that I’d come back to make things better? I didn’t know, but I grasped on to any reason I could find if it meant that Frances would keep talking to me.
    â€œBut you can’t change what happened, can you? You might have come back, Ana — Emma — whoever you are. But Catherine. She’s never coming back. Is she?” Her voice was low, controlled, challenging me.
    â€œNo,” I said quietly. “I don’t think so.”
    â€œNothing will bring my Catherine back,” she said, her voice rising again, angry. “Don’t you see? Nothing! And yet you — you are here.”
    â€œI know,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I could feel tears welling in my throat.
    â€œThere must be a reason!” she said again. “I want a reason!”
    â€œI — I can’t explain it,” I said. “I — I just feel so bad — I…” And the black, black feeling was rising up inside me.
    It filled