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She’d choose one way or another, and at that point I’d feel like a failure if she didn’t see the possibilities I hoped for.
    Just as she came back into the room, the bell rang from downstairs. Her face tensed until I told her it was the food delivery. To my surprise, she sighed with relief. “I’m starving.” And as if turning over a new leaf, she raised her shoulders up and pulled me downstairs toward the source of the aroma.
    I expected her to eat with Wes and me, but she asked if we’d mind if she ate in the guest room.
    “Not at all,” I replied, more concerned than hurt.
    My expression must have given me away, because she stopped a moment and gave us a soft smile. “I’m good, guys. Really. I just want to think this through.”
    Wes and I ate, and he was obviously relieved that Dawn didn’t know everything. I was too. That would have been way too much for her to reconcile with, considering her ordeal. So I felt a little bit more at ease, and made it a point to enjoy my dinner and the time with Wes. The relief was enough for me to fall asleep a whole lot easier that night, though staying that way was a whole other matter.
    Sometime during the night, I was awakened by the bed jostling. Startled, I turned over to find Wes tossing and turning. “No!” he mumbled loudly, bolting into a sitting position.
    I sat up too. “What is it? A bad dream?”
    He looked at me, still breathing heavily. “Um…yeah.”
    “You okay?”
    “Yeah, I’m good.” He patted my knee. “Sorry. Go back to sleep.”
    I ignored his prompt and flipped on the small lamp. “What was it about?”
    “Nothing.”
    “So you’re going to be a hypocrite right now?”
    He turned his head in my direction, his eyes still adjusting to the light. “What?”
    “You get upset when I keep something from you, yet you’re doing the same thing.”
    “No, I’m not.”
    I raised my brow. “Then tell me what it was about.”
    He stared at me for a long moment. “You don’t want to know.”
    “Seriously?” I tilted my head to the side, and he eyed me.
    Turning his body toward me, he sighed in submission. “I had a dream about us.”
    “And?”
    “And…your house was on fire.”
    “You mean our house?”
    “No, we weren’t living together. It was different.”
    Yikes.
I placed my hand on his back. “What a strange dream. At least that’s all it was. Right?”
    He shook his head. “No, I think it was a memory.”
    Now he had my full attention. “Why?”
    “Because it was from the past.”
    “I don’t remember that happening.”
    “Because I think it was before my transfusion. It looked like it was during the Revolutionary War.”
    “What?
The war
? How do you know?”
    He paused a long moment and looked at me. “I was wearing a red coat and my regiment was the one that burned your house.”

Chapter 5

THE FIRST DREAM
     
    W e both sat quietly for a moment, reflecting on his words. I should have been used to Wes’ flashbacks by now, but this one caught me off guard. I asked him whether he remembered anything else. He told me he'd been trying to fish out memories of a possible life before Amelia and Wes ever since he’d started to think there was such a past.
    He said he’d only had a couple of other dreams, but that this one had been the most vivid. He expressed frustration with having a hard time deciphering his thoughts, because he had so many memories already. One hundred years’ worth of true memories made it nearly impossible to separate fact from fiction when it came to a dream. He reached across me, turned out the light, and rolled over. If he saw anything else, he wasn’t sharing.
    The following morning, he dressed quickly and holed himself up in the study. Dawn and I moved about much more leisurely. By ten, we were eating cereal, still in our sweats. My plan was to let her lead the conversation and feed off of her, hoping she was in a positive state of mind.
    It was awkward, but after a few minutes of