kind would it be? Our fake identities getting married?” Jenny’s passport claimed she was from Alsace. Since nobody believed Seth could pass as French, he carried a Canadian passport instead.
“I just think we should,” Seth said. “I wasn’t thinking about paperwork or anything.”
“It’s sweet of you, Seth. The bond we have is so much more than marriage, though, isn’t it? Lifetime after lifetime, we can be together. Even death won’t do us part. We don’t need some piece of paper from other people acknowledging that.”
“I’m not thinking about ‘lifetime after lifetime,’” Seth replied. “I don’t have all these tons of crazy past-life memories like you. For me, it’s just this life and who we are today.”
“That’s all that matters, Seth.” She embraced him, resting her cheek against his warm chest and looking up at him. “But we can’t have that normal life, with marriage. Or children.”
“Children? Why not?”
Jenny felt like she’d been slapped. She couldn’t believe he was even asking. He didn’t have all the past-life memories she did, but this one should have been obvious. She felt herself crumple as she answered the question.
“Because I can’t. The pox. The baby will miscarry, or it will die on the way out...just like I killed my own mother, on the way out. The babies are never immune.” In her mind, a collection of extremely painful past-life memories sprung up, and she shoved them back. She felt heartsick. “Seth, you’re lucky you don’t remember much before this lifetime.”
“I’m sorry, Jenny,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I should have known. I really haven’t thought about kids one way or the other, so—”
“There’s only one way to think about them. We can’t, ever.”
Seth took this in, looking out at the river again. Jenny could see a mix of disappointment and confusion on his face.
“That’s cool,” he finally said. “Who wants a bunch of kids, anyway? I’d hate to bring some poor little Jonathan Seth Barrett the Fifth into the world. Screw my great-grandfather and his overused name. Screw Alexander. I mean, you did, right? You totally screwed my great-grandfather.”
“It’s so gross when you put it that way. He was reincarnated.”
“It’s gross any way you put it. Or anywhere you put it,” Seth added, raising his eyebrows a couple of times.
Jenny elbowed him in the stomach, and he countered by tickling her ribs until she stood up and escaped, squealing. He ran to catch her, spun her back, kissed her under a tall old linden tree, its heart-shaped leaves blazing with the fiery colors of their slow autumn death.
Things would settle now, Jenny knew. They would drop any talk of marriage and children, continue on into le Jardin des Plantes, a sprawling 28-acre botanical garden that had been carefully developed over the past four centuries. Jenny particularly loved the old labyrinth maze and the garden with hundreds of different breeds of roses. She liked to pass close to the garden of bees and birds, but she never walked through it out of fear that some friendly feathered creature would land on her and die.
As they walked through the rich colors of the park, Jenny felt unsettled and a little sick. No bacteria or virus could survive the pox long enough to make her ill, but the pox did nothing to protect her against worry, fear, and guilt. She could feel her stomach clenching.
The past year had been too good to believe, aside from the lack of any contact with her father. After she’d unleashed the pox on the mob in Fallen Oak, leaving hundreds dead, her father didn’t seem to want much contact with her, anyway.
She and Seth were young, flush with money and living in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, drinking in art and culture every day. They had an apartment only blocks from the Seine, in a district full of theaters and nightclubs. They ate masterfully prepared French meals and drank the best wines.
Life in Paris hadn’t exactly turned Seth into a poet, but he had his hobbies. One of them was volunteering at hospitals around the city, particularly children’s hospitals, where he would spread his healing touch. He didn’t do any dramatic mass healing that would risk attention, but he helped them quietly. He’d touched thousands by now, making his anonymous, angelic way around Paris while she stayed in their apartment, played records, and tried to create art.
“Our life here is too good,” Jenny said. “It’s like riding a magic carpet.”
“What’s wrong with magic carpets?”
“There’s nothing holding