Soul Survivor by Andrea Leininger, Bruce Leininger Page B

seemed the only practical solution.
    For her, the name Jack Larsen was proof enough of the never-to-be-spoken-of “past life” memory. She did not need a perfect
     circle. She was a mother with meals to prepare, a home to keep clean, and a child to amuse. Life had to go on. Those everyday,
     humdrum imperatives trumped the midnight mysteries.
    As far as Andrea was concerned, the war was won and the troops could come home.
    Of course, she had help in arriving at her new belief. Her mother continued to talk about a New Age paranormal key to the
     problem. She kept alive the possibility of a past life.
    On the other side of the cleft was Bruce, hardened now into a firm nonbeliever. It was his mission, as he perceived it, to
     prove to his wife (and the entire Scoggin clan) that his son’s nightmares were the coincidental rants of a child, not the
     recovered memory of… Well, he would have to find out about “Jack Larsen” to make his point.
    This was not just the whim of a contrarian. At stake for Bruce was the integrity of his Christian faith, as well as the whole
     history of rational thought that he had studied in college and graduate school. He had dismissed the possibility of a past
     life as no more than New Age mumbo jumbo. His background was conventionally schooled and systematically oriented. He had studied
     mathematics and history and Descartes, and he believed in the scientific method and a rational universe.
    And he had another incentive: victory on the home front. He could not surrender his role as custodian of the family’s good
     sense and judgment. He held himself out to be the voice of reason on West St. Mary Boulevard.
    “You cannot argue with the Scoggin women,” he would declare. “You have to prove them wrong.”
    As Andrea went about the mundane business of maintaining the home, Bruce spent hours in his home office, brooding about the
     nightmare problem. That first night, after James revealed the name of Jack Larsen, he went into the office and sat in front
     of the computer screen, trying to figure out how to connect the name to the nightmares. It was late, after ten at night—he
     saw the time glowing on the computer screen—and he had a big day at work ahead of him. He needed his rest, but he felt he
     had to deal with this nagging problem of these nightmares. But how? Where was he going to begin? Was Jack Larsen the little
     man in the burning plane? Was Jack Larsen another name for James? After all, Jack was a nickname. It could be John.
    He turned the puzzle over and around, looking at it this way and that, searching for the key that would unlock the secret.
    The modern version of brooding in the Leininger house took the form of Internet toe tapping. In would go the keywords and
     key phrases, and Google would spit out—in the case of Jack Larsen—blind alleys. Bruce found himself stymied. He had no idea
     where to begin. It was as if he were suddenly speechless on the Internet. And so he went to bed.

    The weather turned sultry again on Saturday, and the quest for Jack Larsen was put on a back burner as the Leiningers celebrated
     Bruce’s birthday. He had his coffee and read the newspaper and went out to do some work in the yard. Then he got his usual
     bundle of hugs and kisses and gifts. As always, he was delighted with Andrea’s choices—his old jogging outfits were threadbare
     and he welcomed clothes that were new and crisp. But his favorite was the jogging stroller. Now he could go on his runs with
     James.
    He took the stroller for a test drive, with James lolling in the seat, his hand out catching the wind, while Bruce ran behind
     and pushed. Then it was back home for what he called “the Scoggin interrogation”:
    “How was it?”
    “Fine.”
    “Did James have fun?”
    “Yes.”
    “What did he do? What did he say? What did
you
do? How far did you go? What do you think? Was it hot?”
    She wanted to know every detail of the test drive; he felt pretty confident that