The years 2022 through 2024 felt like the longest and shortest of Ethan’s life—time stretching thin with waiting, yet rushing toward an ending he could sense but not see.
He was fully rooted in Richmond now. The tiny downtown studio had given way to a slightly larger one-bedroom in a quiet neighborhood near the river, the kind of place where people walked dogs at dusk and waved to strangers. He worked part-time at the Virginia Historical Society, cataloging donations in the archives. The job paid little but gave him access to uncatalogued letters, diaries, photographs—treasures no online database held.
His search had narrowed to a whisper. The cousin’s lead on Emily Ross had gone cold—no reply to emails, no social media trail. Ethan didn’t push; forcing felt wrong. Instead he trusted the pull, the one that grew stronger every year, like a tide drawing him home.
He dated occasionally—set-ups from well-meaning coworkers, apps when loneliness bit hardest. The women were nice, smart, pretty. But the moment hands touched or lips met, the hollow place inside him echoed louder. He always ended things gently, blaming his “baggage.” They never knew the baggage was a promise from 1863.
Christmas became sacred and torturous. Each year he marked it the same way: a walk to the James River at night, cocoa in a thermos, speaking to her as snow fell or rain drizzled or stars shone cold overhead.
Christmas 2022: “I’m thirty-two now. You’d laugh at the gray in my beard.”
Christmas 2023: “Still here. Still looking. Don’t give up on me.”
Christmas 2024: “Next year feels different. I don’t know why. But I feel you closer than ever.”
The flashes came more often now—vivid, sensory. The scent of gingerbread would hit him in a grocery store and he’d freeze, seeing Amelia’s hands kneading dough in a woodstove kitchen. A woman’s laugh on the street would turn his head, heart racing, only to find a stranger. He started carrying a small sketchbook, drawing her face as he remembered it: gray-green eyes, auburn curls, the determined set of her mouth.
In spring 2023 he found a support group for people experiencing past-life memories. They met monthly in a Unitarian church basement—ten or twelve souls sharing stories over bad coffee. Most were gentle eccentrics; a few were raw with pain. Ethan spoke little at first, but one night he told the whole story—Elijah, Amelia, the river promise, the search.
An older woman, a retired nurse named Clara, listened with tears in her eyes. Afterward she pulled him aside.
“My grandmother had a locket,” she said. “Silver, old, engraved A.R. She wore it till the day she died. Said it belonged to someone waiting for her. Passed it to my aunt, then my cousin Emily. Emily Ross. She lives outside Richmond now—bakes for farmers’ markets.”
Ethan’s world tilted.
“I met your cousin online years ago,” he managed. “She mentioned Emily but wouldn’t share contact.”
Clara smiled sadly. “Family’s protective. Emily’s had a hard time—lost her parents young, keeps to herself. But she wears that locket every day. Dreams about a soldier, she told me once. Thought it was just grief talking.”
She gave him Emily’s public i********:—mostly photos of cookies, cakes, holiday breads. No face shots, but the hands in the pictures were slender, flour-dusted. One post from Christmas 2023 showed a silver locket resting on a countertop beside cooling gingerbread men. The caption: “Old traditions for new beginnings.”
Ethan stared at that photo for hours.
He didn’t message her. Not yet. It felt too big, too fragile. Instead he started visiting the farmers’ markets where she sold—Hanover, Byrd Park, South of the James. He’d linger near her booth, heart hammering, but she was never the one behind the table. A helper, usually. He bought cookies anyway—gingerbread, snickerdoodles, shortbread stamped with stars. They tasted like memory.
Summer 2024 brought a heat wave. Ethan turned thirty-four in July, celebrating alone with a river walk and a*****e-bought cupcake. He was tired—bone-deep tired—but the certainty burned brighter than ever.
In September he found a new rental listing online: a small house in a quiet suburb twenty minutes from downtown Richmond. Affordable, month-to-month, near a creek that fed into the James. The photos showed a cozy brick ranch with a big kitchen window overlooking the backyard.
Something about the listing photo—the neighboring house visible through the trees—made his breath catch. A blue door. White trim. A porch light shaped like a lantern.
He signed the lease sight unseen.
Moving day was set for December 1, 2025.
He didn’t know why that date felt inevitable. He just knew it was right.
As autumn 2024 deepened, leaves turning gold and crimson, Ethan packed his few belongings. Books on reincarnation and Civil War history. Notebooks filled with seventeen years of longing. The sketchbook of Amelia’s face. A small artificial tree and one string of lights—he hadn’t decorated since 2015, but this year he would.
On November 30, 2025, he loaded the Honda one last time and drove to the new house. Snow flurries danced in the air—early for Virginia, but not impossible.
He pulled into the driveway at dusk. The neighboring house was lit warmly, smoke curling from the chimney, the scent of cinnamon drifting on the cold air.
Ethan stood in the empty living room, boxes at his feet, and felt the hook behind his ribs finally still.
He was home.
Tomorrow—December 1—he would need groceries. He’d knock on the neighbor’s door for directions to the nearest store.
He had no idea that the woman who would answer, flour on her hands and a kind smile on her face, had been waiting for him just as long.
But the river knew.
And so did the snow beginning to fall outside.
Aksara