I called Cedric early on Sunday so I'd be able to get him off the phone before my past life reading. We Facetimed while we each made breakfast – I made blueberry pancakes for Mom, while Cedric stole the bacon his dad was cooking for the whole family, then he turned the screen so it was like I was eating with his family and he was eating with Mom and me. Mom was pleased to finally meet Cedric's parents. Then Mom made us coffee and I went out back to enjoy the April warmth. Our lawn badly needed mowing. When I mentioned that to Mom, she suggested I do it.

"Do we even have a lawn mower?" I asked. We'd always had a landscaping company that came out once a week to do lawn maintenance.

"Of course we do," Mom said. "It's out in the shed. My parents always told me a person should care for their own lawn."

"Okay, but does it work?"

Mom shrugged. "I used it last year."

I phoned a friend – Cedric, of course – to help me out. The lawn mower was covered in spider webs, but otherwise in fine working order. I managed to do the area around the back patio and the front before I decided that was good enough and went inside to take a shower.

Finally, it was nearing time for my session with Cosima Blue. I put my phone on airplane mode and shut my bedroom door and plugged in my headphones so Mom wouldn't be disturbed by whatever this was going to be.

When Cosima's face showed up on the Zoom screen, my stomach dropped. Her background was a cosmic field of stars, and she looked quite a few years older than the photo on her website.

"Hello, James," she said. Her voice did have a soothing quality to it.

"Hi, nice to meet you." I waved a little, trying to smile. "I've never done one of these things."

"Oh, that's not a problem! I love new people. Always nice to get a fresh read on someone." She leaned in, seeming to peer through the screen directly at me. "So, tell me a little bit about what you're looking for from our time together."

"Well..." I chewed my cheek, thinking of how to come across. Then I remembered that this lady was a psychic, and she was probably used to weirdos. "So I have some past life memories. And I'm pretty sure the guy I'm dating now is my soulmate because of these memories."

Cosima nodded thoughtfully.

"But in my memories, it seems like he always dies. In a plague. And obviously that's a little concerning for me."

I expected her to comment on the fact that I was dating a guy, or that I thought he was my soulmate when I was so young.

"Tell me about some of your lives," she said instead.

So I explained to her how I'd found the photograph and then Cedric, and about my memories of Theodore and Henrietta, and then about Chris and Brent. "I've also had some glimpses of other lives. And sometimes... while I'm in a flashback, I have a flashback to another life. Like, there's a life during the bubonic plague. And a life in India. And another one in ancient Greece or Rome, I'm still not sure which. They wore togas."

"You have very powerful intuition to remember things so fully," Cosima said. "You speak of them as full memories? Not as feelings or a connection to an object, like the photograph?"

"Mostly. Sometimes it's an object, or a feeling, that leads to the flashbacks."

Cosima nodded, and closed her eyes. I waited. She seemed to be swaying. I paid $125 for this? You're an idiot, I scolded myself.

"There's definitely a connection," Cosima said finally, opening her eyes. "It isn't a coincidence that you have met your soulmate in this life, in this time in particular."

Duh, I thought. "But what do I do about it? I don't want him to die." Unexpectedly, my eyes stung with tears. I blinked them away. "His mom's a nurse. He's at high risk for contracting COVID, and I don't know..." I stuttered out a few more words, until I was more blubbering than saying anything real.

I tried to pull myself together as Cosima's soothing voice talked me down. "Yes, that would cause much anxiety, wouldn't it? We are living in very uncertain times right now. I have so many clients with fears similar to yours, fears of losing a loved one. The things you have to remember, James, is that even when you lose a loved one, they are still with you. Their energy, their spirit, it surrounds you. I connect many clients to their loved ones."

Nodding, I wiped at my eyes. There was no discreet way to cry over Zoom. My tears were drying up, because this was not what I wanted to hear. I didn't want to hear that I could still talk to Cedric after he was dead, paying Cosima Blue as a paranormal cell phone. Then she said something that did help.

"Now, many times, situations replay themselves in multiple lives, until the cosmic trauma can be resolved. Perhaps in your earliest life together, this death became an obsession for your soul. Perhaps in each life, this fear of losing your soulmate continued, becoming worse with each life. In this life, your awareness gives you the ability to break this cycle."

I leaned forward. "How can I do that? Break the cycle?"

Cosima closed her eyes again. "This might take some time. We'll need to sort through each life and what you remember."

Reaching over, I pulled out my past lives journal. "I wrote down everything I remember."

"Now, in your flashbacks, have you experienced the death of your soulmate?"

I opened my mouth to say yes, then I realized that wasn't quite true. "I don't think so. I had a memory where in my past life I remembered the death in a previous past life, if that makes sense?" I told her about Theodore's memory of Anne's death during the bubonic plague. "And I had this memory recently, of my life before this one, after my soulmate had died. I had become a teacher, and one of my students was my soulmate reincarnated. So I know my soulmate died once of AIDS, and then I'm pretty sure this student died of the measles in 2001. And I died of a brain hemorrhage, I know that because I found his obituary."

Cosima's drawn-on eyebrows were raised, though her response seemed unfazed. "But you haven't directly had a memory where your soulmate died."

"Right," I said.

"It's possible that a past life regression might help here. A regression would allow you to experience the traumatic event while in a detached frame of mind, eliminating the resulting psychic pain."

I grimaced a little. "I mean, he keeps saying COVID is only deadly for people who are older or immuno-compromised. He says it's just like a bad flu." I looked down, trying to will back the tears that were starting up again.

"Yes, so let's try that. A brief regression. We'll go back to a safe memory, and see where it takes us."

"Right now?" My heart started beating faster.

"Yes. It's perfectly safe." Her soothing voice cut through all my anxiety. "I studied past life regression with Brian Weiss. Have you heard of his book, Many Lives, Many Masters?" I shook my head. "It's one of the seminal works on past lives, and I'd highly recommend it if you're hoping to explore further. But yes, this regression is completely safe. Are you ready?"

I nodded again, even though I wasn't quite sure. This was what I had paid money for, right?

"First, I want you to prepare your space. You can dim your lights, if you prefer, or leave them on. Then see if you can find a comfortable seated position where you can rest your head back and close your eyes."

I looked around. I didn't have my bedroom light on, but I got up and shut my curtains, then created a little pile of pillows on my bed. My heart was still racing a bit when music began playing, soft and slow Native American flute music like in Mom's yoga videos.

"This is not hypnosis. You can wake yourself at any time. You can open your eyes whenever you'd like."

I settled back and closed my eyes, and Cosima led me through some relaxation, telling me to release the tension in my body, and relax my jaw, and my shoulders, and went through the rest of my body, until my heart did start to slow down. She reiterated how safe this was. "Allow yourself not to judge, to allow your thoughts to go where they need to go. If you begin to feel anxious, or uncomfortable, you can float away from any thoughts you have, and view them from above, detached." Then she started talking about a blue light, imagining a blue light beginning from my brain that flowed through my body, and around my body, and finally she began a countdown to lead me deeper into whatever meditative state this was.

"You are now in a garden," she said. She described the garden, which I imagined as the Japanese tea garden at Golden Gate Park. Then she told me to go back in time. "Not too far back. Think about a childhood memory, you will remember this moment from your childhood." She counted down again, and I was there.