Free Until the End of Time by Danielle Steel

apartment. They had two bedrooms now, but she used one of them as a home office, and she couldn’t give it up.
    There were going to be so many changes in their life, but it felt totally right to both of them. She wanted to tell her mother but hadn’t had time all day to call her. She was going to wait as long as possible to tell her clients. She didn’t want to make them nervous, or have them think that she would no longer be available. She fully intended to manage having both a family and her work, and knowing her, Bill was sure that she could do that, with efficiency, creativity, and grace. It was all going to work out just fine.
    They decided to go to Maine instead of Martha’s Vineyard for a week’s vacation mid-August. They stayed at a tiny bed and breakfast, drove around the area, and rented a sailboat for two days. It was one of Bill’s passions—he had sailed since he was a boy. Jenny had never sailed until she married Bill, it wasn’t part of her experience, growing up with her mother and grandmother, but she had come to enjoy it a lot. He made her wear a lifejacket as she wasn’t a strong swimmer. But she never got seasick, and she trusted him completely. They talked about the baby as they walked through small quaint towns and explored old cemeteries with touching inscriptionson the headstones. They stopped to look at two of them, a mother and infant who had been buried side by side, and near them the young widower, who had died only months later. It told a story of loss and love that brought a lump to Jenny’s throat and tears to Bill’s eyes.
    “I always think that when people really love each other, they find each other again, in another life,” Bill said quietly. It touched her to hear him say it, and she thought he meant that people who loved each other would meet in heaven, like this young couple with their baby. She noticed that it had been a little girl, who died three days after she was born, and the mother the day before, probably due to some mishap at the birth. And the woman’s husband and baby’s father had followed shortly after. The young couple had been only eighteen years old and lived two hundred years before. Jenny liked what Bill had said, that they had all found each other in heaven, in a better life. It followed her belief system as well.
    “I’m sure they wound up in heaven together,” Jenny said softly, holding Bill’s hand. She was haunted by the couple, and the story that the dates on the gravestones told. They had been so young.
    But Bill’s idea on the subject was subtly different from hers. “I think if you really, really love each other, you get another chance. I don’t think even death can keep you apart,” he said in a firm voice, keeping her hand in his, as she turned to look at him in surprise. He had never said anything like it to her before. It went beyond their traditional views to something more.
    “You mean like you come back and find each other again in this life?” she asked him, looking startled, and he nodded.
    “I don’t know why, but I’ve always believed that. I think true lovelives on until the end of time, and you find each other again. If anything happened to us, I’m sure we’d find each other. It wouldn’t just end there. We were meant to be together, in this life or another. I knew it the first time we met. What we have is too strong to just die with us. I don’t think God would let that happen. We would find our way to each other again, even if we didn’t know it. Our story won’t be over for a long, long time.” What he said frightened her a little—she didn’t believe in the supernatural or reincarnation. She believed in the life they had, dying one day, and their spirits going to heaven. Coming back, to be together again, whether they knew it or not, or recognized each other, was too big a stretch for her, but Bill seemed very sure of it, as they walked away from the three graves. But if what he said was true, then had the