Time After Time by Antoinette Stockenberg

profoundly
unsettling. For whatever reason, Liz felt deeply connected to the
material she'd found.
    Overnight Liz had learned
enough about Victoria St. Onge to convince herself that the lady
was a genuinely gifted con-woman. She was the kind of person to
whom people were forever saying, "Why, you've read my thoughts
exactly!" But she was also as cynical as they came. Her remark to
Mercy that the summer colonists in Newport were like sheep in a pen
— "easily spooked, and easily fleeced"— was fairly typical.
Presumably Victoria always kept her shears sharpened and
handy.
    She was also either a
thief or a kleptomaniac: "I took the scarf" she wrote in one
letter, "because it was rather pretty, and because Lucy was
altogether too vain in it."
    Worse, she was not above a
bit of prostitution. How else to explain the extravagant diamond
brooch presented to her by a lovesick suitor? "George told me,"
Victoria had written gleefully to her sister, "that in the privacy
of my sitting room I am less a St.
Onge than I am an El Diablo."
    All in all, a picture of
Victoria St. Onge was emerging that wasn't very pretty. It was
impossible for Liz not to think about her own Victoria, tucked
cozily away on Martha's Vineyard with the first two shoeboxes. Was
she, too, becoming disillusioned? And if so, would this be the end
of the reincarnation nonsense?
    Liz drifted into the
kitchen, with its irresistible view of the East Gate estate, and
let herself get lost in the peaceful majesty of the scene before
her. After two weeks in her new house, she could safely say she'd
never seen the same view twice. Every day it grew richer, fuller,
greener; every day the light was new and different. Liz understood,
at last, why some artists paint the same scene dozens of times,
trying to get at its essence.
    She herself couldn't
decide whether she preferred morning light to afternoon, bright
days to foggy ones. She liked the garishness of the noonday sun,
but she loved the subtleties of a rainy day. Dawn always seemed
more wonderful than sunset — until the sun went down. Liz was
overwhelmed by the beauty of the summer season, aware that she had
the rich red blaze of fall, the pristine snows of winter, the
sleepy greening of spring still to look forward to.
    And — unlike Jack Eastman
— she wouldn't have to pay property taxes on any of it.
    Liz thought of Jack,
thought of the near kiss. To call it a kiss would be a bit of a
stretch. She closed her eyes and relived it — again — and chewed
her lip over it — again — and thought, again, that he meant it as a
handshake, nothing more. Dammit.
    "Anyway, who cares?" she
murmured to herself. Did men like Jack Eastman ever really ask
women like Elizabeth Coppersmith on dates?
    She let herself drop back
into the fantasy. Assuming he weren't her client, would she say
yes? Jack was good-looking, powerful, rich. He could, when he
wanted to, be charming. He had a seductive laugh. He knew all the
right people. He was a very eligible bachelor.
    Or — would she say no?
Jack was vain; bossy; ungenerous. It took a major effort for him to
be charming. His laugh was arrogant. He knew all the wrong people.
He was eligible, all right, but he was a bachelor — the most selfish kind of
male.
    Interesting. Liz couldn't
imagine what she'd say — if he ever asked her.
    ****
    After picking up Susy from
school, Liz fed her some lunch and dragged her off to the Newport
Library. Liz wanted to find out when Victoria St. Onge died. For
that matter, she wanted to know if she died.
    The last letter Liz had of
Victoria St. Onge was written in early 1935 , a
rambling note done in a shaky hand. The woman would've been about
eighty-five years old by then and was obviously failing, both
physically and mentally.
    Nonetheless, Victoria St.
Onge came across in the letters as someone so intense and
manipulative that Liz was ready to believe — well, just about
anything. Finding a date of death would be oddly reassuring to Liz
in the mood