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While he was sleeping, Stevie and I sat outside on the back deck with the ocean breeze blowing in. We continued catching up on our lives and we also talked about our future plans. Everything fell right back into an easy and natural rhythm with Stevie, and I was so thankful.
I had a surprise for her—something that I wanted to show her on my cellphone. I told her to close her eyes and then pulled up a picture.
“Okay, you can look now,” I said.
Stevie’s eyes moved across my phone screen, then she looked back at me. “Who are those people in that painting?”
“Our ancestors from the fifteen-hundreds. The first Buchanan/Sinclair marriage.”
Stevie gasped. “No.”
“Yes, it’s them.”
“How did you…”
“A professional genealogist is how. I hired one, and all he needed to begin journeying back in time down your ancestral line and mine were our full names, our dates of birth and our parents’ names. It took him a while, because there were a lot of records to comb through, but he did it. He verified our connection. And that painting? I have a framed copy of it waiting for you to hang up wherever you want it.”
Stevie grabbed my phone out of my hand and took a closer look at our ancestors. I was waiting for her to notice what I’d noticed about them the first time I saw them. My only guess as to why Stevie didn’t immediately see what I did was because of how overwhelmed she was by everything that had happened.
When her lips parted again, I knew she finally recognized her face in her Sinclair ancestor and she also recognized my face in my Buchanan ancestor.
“Oh, wow,” she whispered, looking back at me again.
“I know. It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m covered in goosebumps.”
Stevie grew quiet but kept her eyes on mine, searching them. Then she asked, “Zac, do you think it’s possible that these two people are…”
She couldn’t finish asking the question and I knew why. It seemed too outlandish to believe the man and woman in the painting were actually Stevie and me from lifetimes ago. But was it too outlandish? I didn’t think so.
If the couple really was an earlier embodiment of Stevie and me, then it explained a lot. It explained why we were so familiar to each other the moment we made eye contact the first time. It explained why we were able to stray from our moral compasses and be each other’s exception. It explained why we were drawn to each other and also why we could sense each other’s emotions even when we were apart. It explained why I ached for Stevie and why I never could let go of her. We were soul mates. Although neither of us could prove it, we both knew it was true. We knew we’d traveled through time and found each other again.
I told Stevie my belief about our ancestors and us, and then she smiled and nodded in agreement. Then I pulled her into my arms and kissed her again. We were breathless in no time and wanted so much more from each other, so I looked around and saw where we could be alone. I carried my beautiful mermaid across the white sand to the warm tropical water of the Caribbean where she and I became one again with an ocean of stars above us.
Two days later, she, Malcolm and I flew back to Texas. We didn’t part ways, though. Stevie didn’t go to Austin alone. Malcolm and I went with her and helped her get packed up tocome to Dallas with us to the new house we’d had built hoping Stevie would one day make it a home. In March, she finally did.
It was October now, I was wearing a gold band on my left hand, Stevie was wearing a beautiful diamond ring on hers and she had my last name. It was Sunday, she was in the kitchen preparing dinner, and Malcolm and I had just come inside from taking a swim in the pool. We walked over to Stevie, who was standing next to the kitchen counter, peeling an avocado, and we both hugged her. I got her upper half and Malcolm got her lower half and all three of us started giggling. Precious moments like this one had happened so many times over the past months and they always made me smile with so much gratitude.
After Malcolm and I changed into dry clothes, we walked back into the kitchen and Stevie looked up from the Mexican casserole that she’d just taken out of the oven. The expression on her face wasn’t what it was only minutes ago. Now she looked nauseated, and when she covered her mouth and then took off running for the bathroom, I realized I was right. I also realized I was right about something else.
I gave Stevie a couple of minutes, and then Malcolm and I walked into the master bedroom and I tapped on the bathroom door. When Stevie opened it, I couldn’t keep from grinning.
“It’s not funny,” she said, still looking so nauseated.
“I know it’s not. I’ve just never seen you like this before is all.”
“It was like a wave came over me in the kitchen, then I got hot and then I felt what was inside my stomach start coming up. Maybe it was the breakfast that we ate.”
“I don’t think so. Malcolm and I are fine.”
Stevie looked down at him standing beside me and smiled through how badly she was feeling, then met my anxious gaze. That’s when I gave her the box that I was holding behind my back. She frowned at first, but then her eyes grew big and I just kept grinning.
“I can’t be,” she whispered to me.
“Yes, you can and you are, but take the test anyway.”
“But I…”
